Month: February 2025

Scripture: Joshua 14:5-15

Dear Church,

The Bible is a dangerous book.

The word of God is power (see Romans 1:16) and power is neutral. As my old New Testament professor used to say, ‘the same electricity that toasts your bread can kill you dead!’ Power itself isn’t inherently good or bad. But the power of the word of God can and has been misused to accomplish (and justify!) great evil in the world.

The right response to this grim reality is not denial or to abandon scripture. The right response is to learn how to use the power of God’s word righteously. And we know what that looks like–because we have the witness of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. AND we have the guiding wisdom and continual presence of the Holy Spirit.

All this to say–this Sunday we are going to look at a tiny piece of scripture you may never have heard before. But it has been twisted into a weapon of destruction and is still used to justify genocide and ethnic cleansing to this day.

I don’t want us to hide from this story. I want us to learn together why it doesn’t mean what many Christians have been taught. But I also want us to learn together what it does mean–because I think we desperately need this truth in these days.

Ultimately, this story is about how we carry the promises of God.

Like all of God’s truth–it is outrageously good news. Not just for us, but for all of creation. Because the power of God is God’s unfailing love–and our hope is in God’s full redemption. Unfailing love. Full redemption. These aren’t our naive wishes–this is the testimony of scripture.

And if the power of God’s word can be misused to do great evil, how much more goodness, healing, love and life will flow out of the righteous use of the promises of God? Beloved–it’s unfathomable.

This is a word that will sustain and inspire us in these days.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

Want to chat about what you have heard? Click here:
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Scripture: Mark 12:41-44

Dear Church,

There is a lot of controversy about the Bible story we’re going to hear today..

A widow goes to the temple and throws two small coins into the treasury. Jesus is watching and commends her. He explains that while other gifts seem larger, she has given all she possesses.

For generations, preachers have told the story of the widow, celebrating her piety and encouraging believers to ‘go and do likewise.’ Give all you have to the church…err–God.

But in recent years, scholars have begun pushing back. They point out that immediately before Jesus talks about the widow, he excoriates scribes and priests, for hypocrisy in general and specifically for ‘devouring widow’s houses.’ Turns out, temple officials were entrusted with overseeing the assets of widows (because #patriarchy) and were entitled to compensation for their labors.  The overseers did their job so well that many widows ended up penniless and homeless.

Kind of casts a different light on the scene doesn’t it?  Perhaps her gift was less piety and more prophecy. Maybe she was throwing in all they’d left her as if to say, ‘you might as well have this too!’

However you read it, this is the story about a powerless woman who had very little to give. And she gave it all to a temple that had betrayed and exploited her. And Jesus saw. And because he told the story, generations later, we still have the opportunity to watch and wonder–what does this mean? How shall we live?

What does it mean to give all you have to a wounded world as it wounds you?  Is it better to withhold gifts from the unworthy? If the widow is a window… what is she showing us?

What I know for sure is that in these days, we must let Jesus and the widow teach us why we give.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

Want to chat about what you have heard? Click here:
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Scripture:  Exodus 3:1-15

Dear Church,

Moses was eighty years old the first time he met the Lord.  He was a failed revolutionary, a fugitive with a violent criminal past who was hiding out in the wilderness tending his father-in-law’s sheep. He had given up his dream of liberating his people from slavery in Egypt.

And then, one day, he saw something strange–a thorn bush wrapped in flames, but still green and whole. It was on fire, but it wasn’t consumed by the blaze. He wondered how this could possibly be. So he paused from his labor, turned aside and went to see. And in that moment, he discovered God; and in that moment he was discovered by God.

It was wonder that led Moses–to God, to his calling, to a life formed by the extraordinary promises of God.

And what I want us to see is that Moses, who had so given up hope that he no longer even despaired for the suffering of his people, Moses who was resigned to the oppression of the weak by the powerful, Moses who knew for a fact that nothing he did could make any difference at all–Moses was led into the work of liberation by his wonder.

Church–even when the world threatens to overwhelm you, even when the powers that surround rage and destroy, even when brutality paralyzes your heart with fear and despair–even then, the whole world is not woe.

Especially now, we must wonder.  We must make space, go out of our way, pause in our labor and take time to wonder. We must wonder like our lives depend upon it. Because they do.

Wonder will lead us to the Lord. And the Lord will show us the way that we can flourish as we wait, walk and work in joyful anticipation of the fulfillment of the promises of God.

Because Moses saw a bush on fire that wasn’t burning. He saw it. It couldn’t be–but it was. And when he turned aside to wonder at it–he discovered not a plant, but the God who does wondrous and impossible things. And he discovered that God was calling and equipping him to be part of the glorious, impossibly good redemption of the world. And the wonder of it all is–God is calling and equipping all of us in that way, for that work, as well.

I hope you will join me for a word of wonder and hope, a story that’s about Moses and also about all of us, a Seed of Faith that will astonish us and equip us to continue to trust the Lord and bear fruits of the Kingdom in this season.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

Want to chat about what you have heard? Click here:
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Scripture:  Genesis 11:30-12:4

Dear Church,

Abram was 75 years old the first time he heard from God.  And that first (tiny) word God said to Abram is a seed out of which the Spirit grew salvation. That word?

GO

Go from your country and your family and your father’s house…to a land that I will show you. Move past all you know, all you understand, toward an unknown future for no other reason than…faith.

We expect our faith to comfort us, soothe us and settle us.  We’ve been told that faith is the way we can ensure that we get what we know we need and deserve.

But faith is what sends us out into the unknown, beyond what we have settled for. We expect faith to make us respected and honored by those around us. But what do you think Abraham’s family and community thought about his choices?

Biblical faith is wild and disruptive. It is God interrupting life, upending comfortable entrenched existence, and leading people beyond their own hopes and dreams. Faith is a seed dropped in our hearts that grows us into the life of Jesus, the living hope through whom God is redeeming and reconciling all creation.

In these tumultuous and uncertain days, we are exploring not the what, but the way faith: how it is like seeds scattered on fertile, fallow ground, how it makes us new in ways we neither seek, nor control, nor comprehend. Faith isn’t doctrine or ritual or assenting to orthodox theology.  Faith is hearing God say ‘go,’ and then deciding how you will respond.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

Want to chat about what you have heard? Click here:
https://www.thegrovecharlotte.org/connect-with-us

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