The Grove Charlotte — Podcast

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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Scripture: John 14:15-31

Dear Church,

This Sunday is the most important day in the Christian year–and most of us have never heard of it.  We love to celebrate Christmas and the joy of the birth of our savior.  We love to celebrate Easter and the astonishing triumph of Resurrection.  The goodness and glory of God is certainly on display and worth celebrating on those holy days!

But this Sunday we celebrate Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit into the hearts of all believers!  And Jesus himself says that Pentecost is the reason that he was born and the reason his death is not a loss for the world.  When he sat with his friends the night he was betrayed, he told them that he was ‘going away for a little while.’  That’s an extraordinary way to describe his impending betrayal, condemnation, crucifixion and death! And then he told them something even more astonishing.  He reassured them that it was good for them that he was going.

How could it be good for the people who loved Jesus that he was going to die?

Because–Jesus promises his frightened and confused friends who feel like he’s abandoning them–when he returns to the Father, he will ask God to send them the Holy Spirit.  And then, he will be even closer to them.   Once they are filled with the Holy Spirit, they’ll be even closer to Jesus than when they sit at the same table and share a meal with him. Once they are filled with the Spirit, Jesus will be living within them.

This Sunday, we celebrate the day Jesus kept his promise and poured his Spirit out upon the earth.  Because of Pentecost, we can never be separated from our Savior! 

Come and rejoice, friends! God still pours the Spirit out–

and there is more than enough for everyone!

Come and worship, church! 

This Sunday is literally the day we were made for!

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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