Readings for the Week of Aug. 20, 2017

Readings for the Week of August 20, 2017

The joy of God is expressed powerfully in the Psalms.  The readings this week seek to express to us why God is our joy. 

Sun., August 20: Psalm 145  David calls upon the people to offer joy to the Lord. 

Mon., August 21: Psalm 24-God’s power over the Earth is made clear.   

Tue., August 22: Psalm 46-God is our fortress, giving us reason for joy.

Wed., August 23: Psalm 69-Daring to cry out to the Lord for His salvation.    

Thu., August 24: Psalm 98-A celebration of our God’s saving power.    

Fri., August 25: Psalm 131-A call for us to be calm and receive the power of God.    

Sat., August 26: Psalm 146-Trust in the Lord.

Readings for the Week of August 13, 2017

There are a number of passages that assume and undergird the need for a church to have smaller groups to thrive.

Sun., August 13: Mark 4  This is the full chapter inclusive of our Sunday Scriptures today.

Mon., August 14: Ephesians 4: 1-16 Paul describes the church in terms of the human bodies, the parts acting together.   

Tue., August 15: Matthew 18: 10-20 In the ways of forgiveness, Jesus outlines how the smaller gathering acts first, concluding with what qualifies as a Christian gathering.

Wed., August 16: Galatians 6: 1-5  As Paul closes his letter, note how he assumes that smaller parts of the community will work one with another. 

Thu., August 17: Hebrews 3: 7-19  In the context of a passage on the consequences of unfaithfulness, the writer assumes the smaller gathering of believers. 

Fri., August 18: 1 John 4: 7-21  The assumption of smaller, intimate relationships among the believers is assumed as John reminds the love binds them together. 

Sat., August 19: Acts 5: 7-42  This may not be our definition of a ‘successful church’, but the persecution suffered by the apostles continued to drive the home communities that formed the basis of the church at that time. 

What Does Wealth Have To Do With The Christian Faith?

Some churches have a theology of prosperity, in which the depth of one's belief is connected to the shower of material blessing that will be received.  There is Biblical precedence to this sort of behavior.

Throughout the Old Testament, God was always in a battle for the hearts and minds of God's people.  After the Exodus, God granted them the Promised Land where they would find their rest.  It always worked for a little while.  There was always a problem.

The problem (for the people) was how God did things.  This all-powerful being dealt with all-fallible human beings.  The focal point was the Ark, the footstool of God, located first in the tabernacle and then in the Temple in Jerusalem.  There was a center of worship.  God's problem was that the local religious practices were more...well...'practical'.  There was Baal, there was Ashteroth, there were rituals for the harvest, rituals for prosperity, rituals for the activities of daily living.  A lot of them involved sex.

Doing things the local way gave the people two distinct (and apparent) bonuses.  The first was 'hands-on', so hands-on it was carnal.  There were ways to get things done to beat the odds.  It was not simply a matter of planting the seeds, the local deities provided for an extra 'oomph' that was both religious and recreational.  The second was that it allowed the people to feel like they had a hand in their own future.  Their work would push the deity to get them what they wanted.

The trouble was that THE God, our God, did not operate this way.  In fact, our God is a jealous God, one who is all-providing.  So, needless to say, things did not go so well a lot of the time.

Fast forward to our time and place, and we have our same God, the same yesterday, today, and forever.  AND we have the gift of Jesus, God's only begotten Son, who brings forgiveness as a free gift to the whole world.  AND we have the universal offering of the Holy Spirit, God at work within us.  But...and there is always a but...

But we live in a world where the promise of wealth arises as our solution to everything.  We can invest for it, we can gamble for it, we can shop for it, we can prepare to retire early with it, it will make us happy (if you believe the commercials).  $350 million jackpot in the lottery, why not?  "Give your dreams a chance."  Heck, "anything can happen in Jersey".  This is the American dream, is it not?  People came here, and come here to build a better life.

It carries the same appeal as the Baals and the Ashteroth!  This work is hands-on, we can do it.  And it feels good.  Have you heard of "retail therapy"?  Building wealth is something I can build.  My hand is in it.  A theology of Prosperity is appealing because this returns me to the old ways.  I can push God to help build my wealth, if I am but faithful enough.  And it surely helps that God is an American, after all...

But this is NOT the way God operates.  God's wealth is invested in us as love, not dollars.  Money cannot buy happiness, it can only buy.  There is nothing more to it than that.  Physical wealth is provided to us by the grace of God for something other than its own pursuit.  It is provided to us so that we, all of us, the collective human experiment created by God, can invest in love.

During the Cold War, a Canadian Prime Minister dared to say that if both sides, back then the US and USSR, took the money they spent for ONE DAY of military purchases, they could feed the world.  That is the purpose of money.  He was ignored of course.

A wise man once said, "You can't have everything, you have no place to put it."  Jesus spoke of the rich man who tore down his barns to make bigger ones for all his stuff, only to lose it all when his life was demanded of him.  Wealth is not the answer.  In Christ, there is more, so much more.
   
     

The Renewal, the Need of the Mainline

Our fearless leader led the Presbytery of Elizabeth through a book study about not leading a dying church.  Cheryl Galan, our Transitional Leader, gave us that book.  And although I am not what one might call a faithful Presbytery-Meeting attender, that book gave me pause.  It started a train of thought.

We have been limping along for far too long.  I am in Perth Amboy since 2001, I was there for the Christmas after the attack that redefined who we are.  I have done too many pledge campaigns, wandered through too many 'vision quests', looking for the magic bullet that would change the church.

Let me say it out loud.  Right now, my church is fading into oblivion.  My Presbytery is fading into oblivion.  MY DENOMINATION is fading into oblivion.  If it were dying, we could bury it with honors, but it is fading to nothing.

For a couple of years, I thought the church growth movement was the answer.  Entrepreneurial in spirit, it had practical measures of growth, money in the plate and backsides in the pews.  By their measures, our PCUSA is the ideal reverse of all they measure.

So what else is out there?  There are two areas of thought in American Christendom that, quite frankly, scare me.  The first is prosperity theology, what I understand to be preachers daring to share from the pulpit that the more we believe, the more wealth God will shower on us in this life.  The second is the fear-threat response to evangelism.  I have read the gospels, I am just about through the book of Acts, nowhere can I find a place where Peter or Paul or the others told listeners that they best accept Jesus as Lord and Savior or they were bound for the barbecues of hell.  But I hear that a lot in American evangelism.

Wealth is the new idolatry.  More and more is being concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer, and what happens to the rest?

Love and justice and generosity, all the fruits of the Spirit, where have they gone?

The Christian faith, how often has it been co-opted into the politics of the nation?  What answer is there to how it has been changed from its origins?

What else can we point to?  How else had the voice of Jesus been twisted, suppressed, and recast into things that are not even recognizable?

The vision is not the small, not the community changing, but nothing less than changing the face of the church for the coming age.

Readings for the Week of June 4, 2017

The readings this week include the book of Malachi, the final prophetic book in the Old Testament, and the first chapters of Ephesians.  Malachi carries in it a good number of prophetic references fulfilled in Jesus Christ.  Paul opens his letter to the Ephesians by reminding them of the relationship that Jesus has established with them.

Mon., June 5: Malachi 1

Tue., June 6: Malachi 2

Wed., June 7: Malachi 3

Thu., June 8: Malachi 4

Fri., June 9: Ephesians 1

Sat., June 10: Ephesians 2

Readings for the Week of May 28, 2017

The reading for this week will be Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia.  Our passage for Sunday comes from the final chapters, but consider the context of the entire book.

Mon., May 29: Galatians 1

Tue., May 30: Galatians 2

Wed., May 31: Galatians 3

Thu., June 1: Galatians 4

Fri., June 2: Galatians 5

Sat., June 3: Galatians 6

Why Support The Church?

I almost left out the word 'support'.  It smacks of asking for money, and I do not know about you, but when it comes to asking for money, there are fewer things that make my ears disengage.

But in church this past Sunday, during the Prayers of the People, we added a category under the "Joys" section of "Joys and Concerns".  If anyone reading is unfamiliar with that, we have a two stage prayer process in our worship service.  The first is to open the floor to joys and concerns to lift to the Lord.  Concerns usually come faster, but the joys are just as important-maybe more so.  Once we have gathered those, they become the heart of the Prayers of the People.  It is how we do things.

Three generations of one family sit and worship together on Sunday.  It is a thankful testament to the Word of God that passes from one generation to the next.  The work of the church has been to continue to make its worship into something that all ages can invest in.  While our 'style', if it had to be labeled, might be called 'traditional', the hope is that families can worship here together.

Friendship, enduring friendship, was also a thankful testament to the church.  We have people who have known each other and enjoyed one another's company for more than 75 years within our congregation.  This is a joy that transcends the tenure of the pastor by FAR.  It is also a demonstration that there is, within this community, a spirit that carries this church family over the long term.

The competition for the hours of our lives on Sunday mornings, the physical distances that carry people away, the changes of day to day life, they make Sunday morning a difficult thing to commit to on a regular basis.  Some churches lament that, others respond by trying to rise up and wrest control of people 'in the name of Jesus', using guilt or manipulation.  Still others simply throw up their hands.

What we have come to realize is that this church has a special place in the hearts of so many people even though they cannot be here on a regular basis, for whatever reason.  That does not come from sheer luck.  There is a movement of the spirit in our extended family.  Whether here on a Sunday or not, whether consciously thinking about the church, or not, make a move to take it away, and people get VERY testy.

We have found that out the hard way when we have sought to 'clean the rolls' of the church, delete the names of those no longer active in the daily life of the congregation.

Why support the church?  These are not the answers of the pastor, but those of this church's members.  I am asking for your answers as well.  What is it about this place that you do support?  What makes it worth something to you?  Where has your faith been embedded in the place, the people, and the mission that make up the First Presbyterian Church of Perth Amboy?

Peace,
Pastor Peter