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Dear Church,

I really like the lectures of a Bible professor named N.T. Wright.  He ends many of them with the same challenge to his students: inhabit what you’ve heard.  In other words, don’t just think about this, don’t just know it or agree with it–live it.  Ultimately, what we believe only matters if it leads us into a relationship with Jesus that leads us to a life shaped by the cross.

Inhabit what you’ve heard.  But what does that mean when we gather around a passage like the one we’re looking at this Sunday?  We are filled with the same Holy Spirit that filled John and Peter; but (and forgive me for assuming here) we’ve never reached out our hands and instantly supernaturally healed a random stranger.  So, how do we inhabit that?

I think Professor Wright’s invitation is a good one–especially on a Sunday like this one.  We can’t be tricked into thinking these are pretty stories or ‘only’ metaphors.  We need to seek God in this, we need to spend time wondering where the kind of healing power the Holy Spirit manifested in Acts is in our own lives.  One thing I know for sure.  The Spirit’s power in our lives may not look the same as it did in the lives of Jesus’ first disciples, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t available to us.  And we aren’t absolved of our responsibility to wonder in every encounter, as Peter surely did, how can I share what I have in Christ here and now?

We’re in Spirit School this summer because we want to grow in our understanding of a Spirit filled life.  We don’t just want to believe in the Holy Spirit.  We want to inhabit that belief–we want to live it out.  We were made to do this together–with God and one another.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

P.S.  If you haven’t had a chance to hear Nicole’s sermon last week on the Holy Spirit, Justice and Juneteenth, we really should.  It was a powerful gift to us all.  You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9vPvO_b4yY

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

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Scripture: Romans 16:17-20

Dear Church,

This Sunday I am so excited to welcome Elder Nicole Thompson to the pulpit to preach the next lesson in our Spirit School worship series: The Holy Spirit and Justice.  It also happens to be Juneteenth, a holiday many Black Americans have been celebrating for generations. Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865–the  day that enslaved people in Galveston, Texas learned from the officials in the Union Army that the nation had abolished slavery.

Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation almost two and a half years earlier on January 1, 1963.

This isn’t a story of news traveling slowly.  It is a Pharaoh 10th plague kind of story.  It is the story of enslavers holding on to institutional evil for as long as humanly possible.  Humans do hold on to evil–but, by the power of God, the hold can only last so long.

The outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost is the culmination of salvation history.  In that moment–along with reconciling love, grace, wisdom and power–God unleashes God’s restorative justice.  The Holy Spirit is a Spirit of justice.  The work of justice is not optional or supplemental for Spirit filled people.  It is essential.  As the song goes–where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom.  Our God of peace is a God of justice–because without justice there is no peace, only control and oppression.  

On Sunday, we celebrate the fulfillment of God’s promises, we celebrate liberation, we celebrate receiving the Holy Spirit–which not only calls but equips us to follow the Lord Jesus.  Jesus tears down every system that divides, denies and destroys life.  Jesus is the way that restores all people created in God’s image to the mutually flourishing shalom life we were made for.  We can not do the work on our own, but we dare not try to delay or deny it.  I hope to worship with you Sunday at 10am on livestream or in the sanctuary!

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture: Psalm 1

Dear Church,

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked 
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the company of mockers,
but whose delight is in the law of the Lord 
and who mediates on his law day and night

These are the very first words of the Book of Psalms–the prayer book you’ll find in the very center of scripture.  For generations, these prayers–spoken and sung–have been a sort of holy umbilical cord growing God-life in God’s people.  We’re using these words as our jumping off point for our second session of Spirit School ‘How to Cultivate Intimacy with the Holy Spirit’.  Many of us met the Lord in the context of a religion mostly concerned with protecting us from bad things.  But God’s gift of the Spirit is an invitation to so much more–a life centered on and overflowing with the goodness of God.  When we learn to delight in God’s ways we become, in the next words of the psalm– like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.   We were made for so much more than not doing wrong.  Life with God, filled with the Holy Spirit, is the relationship that leads into that more that Jesus called abundant life.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture: Acts 2:1-21

Dear Church–

At the last meal he shared with his disciples before his death, Jesus told them, ‘it is good that I am leaving you.’  Even though no one was brave or foolish enough to say it, I’m sure they were all thinking that was crazy.  How could it be good that Jesus was leaving?  The disciples had incredible intimacy with the Lord, how could it be good for them to lose that?  What could be better than walking around,  sharing meals, talking one-on-one with Jesus?  

Jesus tells them it’s good that he’s leaving them because when he returns to the Father, he will send them the Holy Spirit.  He leaves them physically, so that he can be even more intimate with them spiritually.  And that gift is not just with the people who were in the room that night, but for all who call upon the name of the Lord.  Even us.

So often, we long to have a deeper connection with Jesus–we pray for a word, for a sign, for a feeling.  Friends, we can have all that and more: we can have continual access to the Spirit of God through Christ.  This Sunday, we’ll share the story of the day Jesus kept his promise and poured out his Spirit upon his people.  It’s the day of Pentecost, it’s the birthday of the church, and it’s wildly wonderful good news for all of us.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture: Matthew 28:16-20, 2 Timothy:6-7

Dear Church,

When Sandy Hook happened 9 years ago, I cried for days.  This week, I haven’t shed a single tear.  I am stunned and horrified and afraid but mostly I am numb.

This is the last Sunday of our season celebrating the resurrection of Jesus.  That means next we celebrate Pentecost and the gift of the Holy Spirit, which means this Sunday, traditionally, churches celebrate Ascension–the day Jesus returned to the Father to reign in the Kingdom of Heaven.  That sounds triumphant and holy, but it feels like Jesus is leaving us behind.

Especially this week.

This week, reading the story of the ascension actually makes things make sense.  It seems like it’s saying that Jesus has left us to go be with God in God’s kingdom up there somewhere in heaven, and we are on our own down here with a great commission to take charge and build a satellite campus.  And the reason everything is so brutal and terrible is that we are cosmically bad at our assignment.

But things are not what they seem: in scripture, in the ascension, in the great commission–and in this present moment. Tragedy and loss are brutal and cannot be glossed over, AND violence and injustice are not running the show.  Jesus has not left us; the great commission is not a colonial curse and we are not relegated to despair. The good news is always better than it seems.

I hope you will worship with me, as we seek God, and stand on God’s promises in resistant response to this week’s fresh brutality.  We walk by faith, not by sight and we are called to be salt and light for just such a time as this.

Peace, 

Pastor Kate

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Scripture: Acts 1:12-26

Dear Church,

What does it look like to love the risen Lord?  Sometimes–much more often than we’d like–it looks like waiting.

In the book of Acts, Luke tells us that Jesus spent 40 days with his followers after his resurrection.  It was a season full of meals and ministry and teaching about the Kingdom of God.  And that season culminated in the ascension–Jesus and his disciples climbed the Mount of Olives and returned to the Father, and Jesus’ last words to them were–return to Jerusalem and wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Full of hope, fear and confusion, full of love and full of grief–at first, the disciples did just that.  They returned to the upper room and they waited…for a while.  And when waiting grew too uncomfortable, they quit and did what seemed best in their own eyes.  How often do we do the same? 

As we struggle to grieve and make sense of last week’s horrific terrorist attacks–this is a particularly hard and holy word.  

Beloved ones–sometimes God asks us to wait.  Love for God compels us to act, but also–sometimes–to refrain from acting until we are equipped to move with Jesus and not ahead of him.   The disciples were so eager for the Kingdom of God to come, they couldn’t stand to wait.  Often the most difficult thing God requires of us is nothing–not to rush ahead, not to fill the space, not to make a plan–not to start before we are ready.  Those who love the Holy One must learn how to wait. 

In three Sundays, we will celebrate Pentecost–the day God kept the promise and gave the Holy Spirit to Jesus’ disciples.  It’s coming–but it’s not here yet.  Like the first disciples, we too are in the season between Easter and Pentecost.  We too must learn to listen and wait on the Lord.  

​It’s so much harder than it seems.  The first disciples couldn’t do it.  This Sunday we’re gathering around the story of what they did instead of waiting.  For me, looking into this passage has been like looking into a mirror.  I hope you’ll listen, to learn why and how to wait, and the good news of what God does when we just can’t manage it.

Peace,
Pastor Kate

p.s. Friends–we will be lifting up the names of those lost in last weekend’s mass shootings and addressing this tragedy in the message.  I wanted to let you know so you could make wise decisions about stewarding your mental health. 

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Scripture: Acts 9:18-31

Dear Church,

Last week in our ‘Make Love the Measure’ worship series we shared the story of Ananias, the foolishly faithful believer who trusted the Lord’s call and healed & welcomed a man named Saul.   That seems like a pretty ‘normal’ biblical story until you learn Saul was blinded by the Lord on his way to Damascus (Annanias’ hometown) on a mission to find and arrest all the believers living there.  Saul’s plan was interrupted by God, who came, not to punish Saul, but to transform him into the ‘chosen vessel’ to bring the gospel to Gentiles.

Usually when we tell this story, we skip from the story of Saul’s encounter with Christ to the stories of Paul’s incredible ministry planting churches across the known world.  But this Sunday, we are looking deep into what we normally overlook.  Because it wasn’t just the power of the Lord that changed Paul’s heart–it was the love of a community.

In Acts chapter 9, we catch a glimpse of the way two churches loved, healed, taught, and learned from a man who, in his former life had been responsible for the brutal deaths of their loved ones.  That’s the kind of wondrous love the Spirit empowers and requires of us in the body of Christ.  It’s the kind of love that still redeems and remakes the world–and it is our baptismal birthright.

I hope you’ll join us as we ponder how to be a church full of life-changing, destiny shifting love. 

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture: Acts 9:10-19

Dear Church

Ananias was a brave and faithful man who risked all he had, including his life, to follow Jesus.  One day the Lord called to him in a vision and told him to go and heal a man named Saul who had come to town to arrest and execute Christians.God told Ananias that this man, who was responsible for the deaths of many believers in Jerusalem, who had come to Ananais’ town to arrest and kill even more, this man–not any of the people he persecuted–was God’s ‘chosen instrument’ to carry the gospel to the nations.

The Lord did not promise Ananias he would protect him and keep him safe.

Ananias didn’t ask him to.

The vision Ananias received from the Lord was dangerous and confusing. Honestly–it was offensive. And we who see Jesus’ acceptance of death on a cross as the holiest expression of God’s love for humanity–we must expect to be shocked by the limitlessness of God’s love for all of creation. If your visions from the Lord never challenge you, if they only affirm and encourage–they may not be from Jesus. And if you have no interest in visions at all–your following is limited by your own capacity for love, not expanded by his.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture: John 21:1-25

Why Peter?

This Sunday we read the story of Jesus’ breakfast on the beach with Peter.  Scholars call it the rehabilitation of Peter.  Here we see Jesus re-claiming and re-commissioning Peter as the leader of the church. 

If you take the gospels seriously you ask questions, and sooner or later one of those questions has to be–why Peter?  Why does Jesus choose this arrogant, overconfident, impulsive, brash, cowardly, also-he-has-some-good qualities fisherman in the first place?  Surely there were more gifted, more worthy, more promising people (ahem–women!) around.  Why Peter? Especially after he doesn’t pray in Gethsemane, dices off a guy’s ear, denies  Jesus after his arrest, deserts him during the crucifixion and doesn’t believe at the empty tomb.  Peter doesn’t get it.  There isn’t a mistake Peter doesn’t make.  There isn’t a chance he doesn’t blow.  So, why Peter?   What exactly are Peter’s qualifications? What does he do right that’s so amazing it balances out all of the wrong?

Well, I’ll give you a hint.  We call Jesus’ Kingdom the Upside-down Kingdom, because everything here is exactly the opposite of what we expect.  Peter’s qualifications are his failures. They are the measure of God’s love, and yours are too.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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