Tag: The Grove Charlotte

Scripture: Luke 7:36-50

Dear Church,

A lot of people were too holy for Jesus.

People found plenty of things to dislike about Jesus, but his habit of sharing meals with people really triggered them.  In all four gospels, critics accused Jesus of being a glutton, a drunkard, unrighteous and unworthy. 

And they really didn’t like who he ate with. When the teachers of the law saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Mark 2:16)

Religious experts understood holiness as limited, something to be reserved for a sacred few. They expected the messiah to be too holy to eat at all, much less to eat with sinners and gentiles.

They were wrong.

Jesus had nothing more important to do than be with people. He wasn’t too busy. He wasn’t too holy. Sharing meals with people wasn’t a distraction from his ministry, that was his ministry.

Jesus made himself known to people over the breaking of the bread–he still does.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture: John 6:1-15 (NIV)

Dear Church,

Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?”  But it was a trick question  (It really says that in the scripture–click the link. Verse 6. You’ll see!)

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%206%3A1-15&version=NIV

Often, we believe that Jesus’s ability to provide is limited by how much money his followers have.

I can imagine poor Philip, head on a swivel, looking at the crowd, looking at Jesus, feverishly searching the pockets of his robe and spiraling out, thinking, ‘what is he talking about? We don’t have enough money to feed them! How can he expect me to buy bread for all of these people?’

But of course, Jesus doesn’t expect Philip–or us–to finance the Kingdom of God. God’s abundance can’t be purchased in the marketplace. We don’t have enough money, but that doesn’t mean God’s will can’t be done.

I’ll tell you what I think Jesus does expect of us.

I think he does expect us to recognize the sacred needs around us. The people do need bread. It’s not faithful to deny the brokenness of creation or pass judgment on those who are suffering. We aren’t to explain away empty stomachs.

And I think Jesus expects us to follow the example of the boy in this passage and offer up the little we have to him for his kingdom.

Because when we give what we have in faith, we will make an astonishing discovery:

In the Kingdom of God, we already have more than enough.

We need this word in these days. It is our truth to share–it is our truth to live. I hope you will join me for worship this Sunday at 10am–in the sanctuary or on the live-stream.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture: Galatians 2:1-21

Dear Church,

You know what I thought we’d leave behind in the empty tomb?

Conflict.

I used to think that all the misunderstandings and mistakes and tension and emotional pain of community would disappear in the lives and churches of people who really love and follow the Lord. 

Like…in the really, really, really sanctified saints and sanctuaries. I thought the presence of conflict in the church signaled the absence of the Holy Spirit.

Sigh.

Turns out conflict, like the Lord, will be with us always. As we’ll see this Sunday, it was there from the beginning in the early church.

So maybe we’ve been thinking about it all wrong?

Maybe the presence of conflict isn’t a sign that we are in the wrong place with the wrong people. Maybe it isn’t a reason to shut down or run. Maybe conflict isn’t a sign of God’s absence, but instead a sign of God’s active loving resurrecting presence? 

Conflict itself has never been a sin or a curse, but we have been wounded and separated from God and one another by our unredeemed expectations around conflict and our inability and unwillingness to seek Christ in our conflicts. 

We can’t not do conflict; but we can learn to do conflict well. We flourish and cultivate shalom, not by avoiding conflict, but by entering into it with humility, faith and love.

I hope you’ll join me as we learn that conflict will always be part of the resurrection life we share here and now–and that is both a gift and a good thing. The Lord is faithful to bless us, grow us, heal us and save us through conflict.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:17, 1 Peter 1:3, Acts 4:23-37

Dear Church,

What do you pray for on the other side of resurrection?  When the risen Lord shows us that none of the powers and principalities that threaten to destroy us have the power to do so, when we see the empty tomb and know that we no longer have anything to fear, when we have seen the eternal victory of love and mercy and grace–what is left to ask God for?

According to the witness of the early church, you pray to be bold and ask the Holy Spirit to make you generous.

Because it’s not all beach breakfast parties with Jesus, the early church faced every kind of persecution, oppression and loss.  Every disciple heard the dangerous and costly call to pick up their cross and follow Jesus. We know that nothing can prevail over the glory of God, we know that love has the final victory, but threats and trials still come.

Here and now, on the other side of resurrection, there is real work to do, and real opposition to that work.

And there is the real presence of Jesus with us, showing us, empowering us and making a way for us to overcome it.

I hope you will join me for worship this Sunday at 10am–in the sanctuary or on the live-stream. We will learn from the Spirit and the saints who have gone before us why we are called to live boldly and generously in times like these.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture: Ephesians 1:3-14 (NRSV)

Dear Church,

I’m thrilled to share that we are welcoming Cedric Lundy to the pulpit this Sunday. He’ll be preaching from Ephesians 1:4-11–sharing his deep conviction, formed by his own family experience and study of scripture that our resurrection life is an adoption story.  Each one of us is a beloved and chosen child, fully and forever part of the family of God. 

I am eager to hear that message, because my soul can never hear it enough. I hope you’ll join me as we hear our brother Cedric pour into us.

Now and forever, we belong to God. In Christ, we are forever family!

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture: John 21:1-19

Dear Church,

But these words are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.  (John 20:31)

These are the last words of the twentieth chapter of the Gospel of John. They sound like an ending, don’t they? But they aren’t.  Belief in the Risen Lord isn’t the finish line.  It’s the starting line.

So–what happened next? Well, Peter invited his friends to go fishing and they didn’t catch anything. Because there’s no turning back.

Once we ‘believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God’ we get ‘life in his name.’

Life in his name.

And life in his name will be different than the life we had before belief. You might even say it’s like being…born again. Which is why Jesus shows up on the beach and gives Peter (and all of us) a rapid orientation into our new life.

I hope you will join me as together we’ll learn how Jesus is calling us into something new–and nourishing us for the journey.

Peace,

Pastor Kate

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Scripture: John 20:1-18 & John 21:25

HE IS RISEN!

Easter Worship at the Grove

Pastor Kate Murphy
The Grove Presbyterian Church

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Scripture: Matthew 20:29 to 21:11

Dear Church,

Throughout this sacred season of Lent, we’ve been walking towards the glorious revelation of the cross and empty tomb which forms the heart of our faith and hope in Jesus. Now we are only a few steps away.

But first, a parade. A strange, but joyous parade. And at the center of that parade–not foliage, but foal. The revelation IS the donkey.

Because one sacrifice acceptable in God’s sight is to give up what appears to be good but isn’t, to not reach for what impresses and controls when you could grasp it, to set aside what is comfortable and safe, and commit instead to what is good, what is hard and apt to be misunderstood and costly.

This is the glory of the way of Jesus–all revealed in the donkey.

And friends–I really hope you will worship with me throughout this holiest of weeks. There is much the Spirit wants to show us in the final triumphant moments of the life of Jesus. Some of what we will see is astonishingly beautiful. And much of what we will behold is almost unbearable horror.

All of it is true. The beauty and the horror. And in Christ, God provides beautiful transcendent life for us in all of it.

Sooner or later, we will all experience the reality of these days in our own lives. We need to see how Jesus is with us in it all, is faithful to us in it all.

Peace,
Pastor Kate

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Scripture: Romans 3:19-26

Dear Church,

Early in the first century a man newly named Paul wrote a letter to a struggling church in the capitol city of the Roman Empire. These days we call that letter ‘the Book of Romans,’ and we read it as if it were the raw material for a volume of systematic theology (looking at you Karl Barth!).

But it wasn’t. It was a letter. To a real church–a struggling church–a small church. A church made up of different groups of people with very different life experiences and conflicting understandings of how to live as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

And Paul, who wasn’t their pastor, was trying to help them come to a common understanding of how the death and resurrection of Jesus was a spiritual revolution that changed everything–not just their future eternal destinies, but how they would live together righteously and courageously in their current lives.

Too often, we turn the death of Jesus into an abstract theological equation. Since ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,’ ‘God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement,’ therefore ‘all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.’ For too long, we’ve understood that to mean that the cross was a ‘one and done’ sacrifice by Jesus for God and now we are all justified and empowered to live however we like with no consequences.

Beloved–that’s not true.

And, more importantly, if it were true–if the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross meant that we are justified to live however we choose to live–that wouldn’t be grace, that wouldn’t be good news, that would be a curse.

Paul is writing to people just like us, trying to help them understand how what Jesus did on the cross opens up a new way for us to be human and gives us a new way to live as children of salt and light in a brutal and violent world. Those of us who believe in the righteousness of Jesus Christ that we see on the cross, will joyfully pick up our own crosses and follow him–ready and eager to make acceptable sacrifices that glorify God every day of our lives.

I hope you’ll join me as we unpack Paul’s teaching and receive a vision for the kinds of life-giving atoning sacrifices we who believe in Jesus gladly make each day of our lives.

Peace,
Pastor Kate

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Scripture: Mark 10:32-45

Dear Church,

Jesus turned to his friends and said, ‘We are going to Jerusalem, and when we get there, everyone is going to turn on me. I’m going to be arrested and tortured and humiliated and killed.’ And James & John said, ‘Cool, cool. Hey–give us whatever we ask for!’ And Jesus replied, ‘Nice try–what do you want?’ And they said, ‘We want to sit at your right and left hand when you come into your power.’ And Jesus said to them, ‘You really, really don’t want that. Yet.’ And then all the other disciples got really pissed at James and John, and Jesus tried to teach them about the nature of power and glory in his Kingdom, but nobody was listening.’

That’s my very unofficial paraphrase of Mark 10:32-45.

We still don’t want to listen to Jesus when he teaches us about power, authority and greatness in his Kingdom. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jesus–whatever you say. Hey! Give us whatever we ask for in your name!”

When Jesus shows us his glory and power on the cross, we definitely look away as quickly as possible.

The plain truth is, if we want to be saved by the power of Jesus, we will have to lay down our corrupted desires, and our natural understanding of authority and greatness must be transformed. And like our spiritual cousins, James & John, we fight that transformation every step of the way. Just let us use your name to get where we want to be, Jesus!

We may not yet understand or even desire the new life Jesus has for us, we may be committed to who we think Jesus is instead of who he actually is, we may, like James & John, be following Jesus because we want him to do what appears good to our eyes–but the good news of the gospel is we aren’t saved by our understanding or by the integrity of our faith. Rather, we are being saved by the power and glory of God. And we can trust in that glory and power, even as we struggle to surrender to it.

Peace,
Pastor Kate

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