Month: July 2023

Scripture: Micah 4:1-5

Dear Church,

The prophet Micah famously told us what the Lord requires of us–to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God. 

But before he told us what to do, he told us what God was going to do for us and through us.  King Hezekiah called the prophet to the throne room to give a message from God while the Assyrian army was laying siege at the city gates.  Facing inevitable doom, inexplicably, the prophet began to speak of peace.

A day is coming, he promised, when peoples of every nation will stream to Jerusalem, not to destroy it but to seek God’s wisdom.  After that day, people will melt down their weapons and refashion them into garden tools, because no one will make war anymore.

The Empires of this world only know how to make peace through violence.  But God’s peace will not come through violence.  I hope you will join me as together we will receive Micah’s vision and learn the only path that leads to God’s peace.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture: Jonah 4:1-4

Dear Church,

Do you believe in repentance?

This week we turn to the book of Jonah–and that’s the question.  We like to pretend Jonah’s story is about obedience or the ‘problem of evil.’  But it isn’t.  The book of Jonah is about the problem of Goodness.  Ultimately, the book of Jonah asks us to consider whether or not we believe in repentance.

God does. 

Jonah doesn’t.

Do you?

We’ll consider how we feel about it when prophecy ‘works’ and people turn away from evil and commit themselves to faithful living with God.  That’s a feel-good story when we are the ones forgiven and made new.  But when it’s our enemies who are washed clean with a grace they don’t deserve and haven’t earned, it doesn’t feel so good. 

I hope you will join me as we confront the outrageously unfair goodness of God from the other side.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture: Isaiah 58:1-63:14

Dear Church,

In the 58th chapter of the book of Isaiah, God tells the prophet to start shouting as loud as he can, raise his voice like a trumpet alarm and call out the people for their many sins and total rebellion against God.

So–that sounds terrible and terrifying, doesn’t it?  What were the people up to that was so awful?  Mass murder? Child abuse? Sexual immorality?  Turns out, God’s fury is focused on the people’s obsession with…fasting: 

Day after day they seek me out. They seem eager to know my ways.  They ask me for just decisions.  They seem eager for God to come near them.  And then they say, ‘why have we fasted, and you have not seen it?  Why have we humbled ourselves and you have not noticed?’

What. In. The. World? 

How can it be wrong that people seek God in worship? Why is God offended that they desire to know more and have greater intimacy? Isn’t a passion for fasting a good thing?

No.  Not like this.

Through Isaiah, God tells us that if fasting, praying or any ‘task’ of faith becomes a substitute for justice–something we do instead of living faithfully towards our neighbors–it’s anti-faith:

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?  Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

The truth is–there is a kind of fasting that delights God and makes us more faithful. And there is a kind of fasting (and praying and worshipping) that actually separates us from God.  God sent the prophet Isaiah to us because we have got to learn the difference!  The awe-full good news is that even and especially when we become obsessed with the wrong thing, God send the prophets to wake us up and lead us back home!

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture: Ezekiel 10:9-22

Dear Church,

In his sermon on the mount, Jesus says, ‘blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.’  In the very next breath, he says people should be encouraged and rejoice when they are persecuted and insulted and lied about, because this is what has always happened and what always will happen to the prophets.

Because peacemakers are prophets.

And prophets are troublemakers. 

They don’t predict the future–they speak for God when God’s people have stopped listening.  God fills the mouths of the prophets to speak behalf of the poor and powerless and vulnerable, because these lives reveal the health and holiness of our communities.

Philip Berrigan, a prophet if there ever was one, wrote, ‘the poor show us who we are.  The prophets tell us who we could be.  So we hide the poor and kill the prophets.’

We launch into a new worship series on the prophets this Sunday.  Expect to be uncomfortable.  Expect to be challenged.  Expect to be blessed.  First up–Ezekiel.  Eat your spiritual Wheaties friends.  These are the searing words of truth that sanctify us.

Ezekiel will tell us the truth that will set us free.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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