Author: admin_tgc

Scripture: Luke 19:1-10 (NRSV)

This week we are thrilled to welcome the Rev. Daniel Heath to the pulpit! Daniel serves as associate Chaplain at Davidson College and is a long-time friend to the Grove.

Daniel will be sharing a message about Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus, a tree-climbing tax collector despised by his neighbors.  Zacchaeus wasn’t called by Jesus to be a disciple.  He wasn’t sick or demon possessed. He didn’t need to leave home and follow.  He didn’t need to be healed.  He needed to be redeemed.

So Jesus singled him out with a special invitation, telling everyone that he’d come to town specifically to dine at Zacchaeus’ home. This confused and offended the crowd who hated Zacchaeus and held him responsible for much of their suffering.

There’s much more to this story that a ‘wee-little man’ and a sycamore tree.

Then and now, Jesus persists in going out of his way to center and include those we are desperate to leave out.  If the Grove really is a community gathered by Christ, and not by us, you should be prepared.   You’re going to find some folks here you wish weren’t. Our enemies aren’t Jesus’ enemies.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture: Genesis 50:15-21

Dear Church,

There’s a song we sing sometimes at the Grove called “Blessings Everywhere.”  In these days, I am finding solace and rest in the words of the chorus: Blessings in the highs, blessings in the lows, blessings everywhere I go.  Blessings in the yes, blessings in the no, blessings everywhere I go,

Christians like to talk about blessings, but not like this.  We want to believe that because we love Jesus the bad things that happen to other people won’t happen to us.  We hope that blessings everywhere I go means that from the moment we ‘decide’ for Jesus, there will be nothing but pleasure and comfort for us.  We twist the Bible to make it say that our faith in Jesus will shield us from the setbacks, the disappointments, the losses and the injustices other people experience. 

But everything that has ever happened anywhere in the world happened to someone Jesus loves.  When we follow Jesus we will discover blessings everywhere we go–but we will go some places we wouldn’t choose for ourselves.  It’s easy to see and celebrate the goodness of God when things go our way.  It’s obvious to label it a blessing when we get what we want and think we deserve–when we hear ‘yes’ or are on a spiritual ‘high.’

But a deep rich spiritual life on the narrow way shows us that, while not everything is good, God is with us in everything–and wherever God is, there is blessing.  So to our surprise, we find there is also blessing in the ‘no,’ and in the low points of our lives.  There is blessing buried in the grief and losses of our past, especially in the parts that we’d rather leave behind unexamined.

Maybe the song has been on my mind because we’ve been re-learning the story of Joseph along with the children and youth in VBS this week.  If there’s anything we see in Joseph’s story, it’s that God is faithful to us in the midst of horrible circumstances and that we can find blessings–and be blessings–anywhere.

I hope you’ll join me for worship this week.  I especially hope you’ll join us if you’ve had a week full of lows and noes.   That song I was talking about ends with the words Come now Sunrise, open my eyes.  May the Risen Son open our eyes to the blessings around us even now.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture: Genesis 37:1-28

Dear Church,

One of the things I find so comforting about scripture is how much familiarity is there.  Of course, you find the unbelievable miracles–instant healings, never-ending feasts, walking on water.  You find the sublime poetry of the psalms and the prophets.  You find declarations of God’s limitless love and unending mercy. These are all wonder-filled revelations.

But you also open this sacred book and find the all too familiar–stories of funding families, devastating choices with painful consequences, failure, betrayal and tragedy.  And these moments, painful as they are to read, are what make the other moments matter so much.  Finding evidence that the folks we meet in scripture are as flawed and faithless as we are gives me great hope.  It’s what lets me know that the miracles and beautiful promises are for folks like us too.

God works out salvation in the messy lives of real people.  Always has, always will.  And if you need reminding of that, I hope you’ll join us this week, as we begin a two-part worship series on The Life of Joseph–full of promise and problems, set-backs and celebrations, faithfulness and failure.  In other words, a life just like ours.

Peace,
Pastor Kate

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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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Scripture: 2 Corinthians 12:7b-10

Dear Church,

#realtalk: My greatest fear is rejection.  Because I’m afraid of rejection, I really dread conflict.  For years, I avoided it like the plague.  I’d do anything to avoid having a painful conversation with anyone–much less someone I loved.  Maybe this is part of your story too.

But what I’m learning is, we can find deliverance in the very things we ask God to deliver us from.  Conflict isn’t a sin or a burden.  It’s a reality we navigate as humans. For years, my dream was to serve a church without any conflict.  But a church without conflict isn’t possible, and it certainly wouldn’t be healthy.  Now I see that conflict is just another opportunity for God to bless us.  Conflict is something we can get good at!

We need to have right expectations of the role conflict plays in healthy communities. And we need to learn how to participate in conflict in a holy way.  We need to learn how to ‘fight clean,’ trusting and expecting that God’s grace and power will bind us together, even as we seek peace. Conflict can help us grow into a healthy and holy community.

Together, I believe the Holy Spirit will teach us to have difficult, truth-filled and loving conflict that makes us a freer, safer and more joyful community!

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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