"Your Open and Affirming commitment is a clear and present witness to the extravagance of God's love!". This was how our Associate Conference Minister Micheal Jones began his sermon this morning.

“Following a beautiful service that featured the Chancel Choir, a moving solo, and a children's message, we gathered downstairs with Reverend Jones for an insightful town hall. One key takeaway was the recognition of our church's vibrant, engaged, and generous spirit!”

The Prologue

In a time when our collective humanity seems to sadly settle for the bottom rung of least common denominators, we long for even the smallest insights to lift our spirits and inspire us to new heights, empowering us to become our own best selves. The proverbial bottom of the barrel is not where we wish to be! With that sober acknowledgement, Ascension, a liturgical celebration that ends the high and holy season of Eastertide, offers us a springboard from which we can experience the optimistic side of life. In this great mystery, describing the mechanics of a divinely inspired exit strategy for the resurrected Jesus, we are called to look above and beyond ourselves, embracing all that is possible in our world. Literalized as a moment in time, as an historic event, we can quickly dismiss, succinctly dispatch, this strange theological image and not give it a second thought! It is asked and answered! However, if we allow ourselves to understand Ascension as symbolic speak wrapped in deepest metaphor, mythology on steroids, we are freed to explore every possible interpretation and understanding releasing within us profound awe and wonder, all compelled by mysterious transcendence, mystery always veiled, always hidden to divine degree. Perhaps the key to unlocking the secrets of Ascension is the reminder to look above and beyond the shallow surfaces of our limited perceptions and pedestrian perspectives, allowing us to see in this allegorical tableau all the possibility and potential that is ours for the taking, knowing that when we engage these theological conversations we are always grasping at proverbial straws.

JOHN 14:23-29

The Prologue
As the season of Eastertide transitions toward Ascension, the lections for worship today serve as a precursor, texts reflecting the farewell discourses of Jesus as he prepares his disciples for his eventual departure. In both Revelation and John, we read assurances that not only will the Spirit of Christ be with Jesus’ followers, but that a place, a home, is being prepared, constructed for every saint, many of these saintly believers, these early converts who formed and founded the fledgling Church. Today, we ponder transcendence, divine mystery that is Holy Spirit, the illusive gift that keeps on giving!

John 13: 31-35

The Prologue

In the Witness from the Epistles, John the revelator describes a vision of “a new heaven and a new earth!” This writer, purported to be John, but perhaps a literate member of the mysterious Johannine community, portrays a beautiful futuristic city, a new Jerusalem, that pulsates with the prospects of eternal joy, the writer invoking a sacred promise from the Divine, “See, I am making all things new!” In the Witness from the Gospels in John, the writer quotes Jesus who declares with conviction, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another!” So, who is Jesus fooling, just who does he think he is trying to spoof? For this commandment is as old as the ancient Shema found in the book of Deuteronomy in the Hebrew Bible! Yes, what is old is new and what is new is old! Nothing new there!

Psalm 23

The Worship of God

Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by God’s holiness; the nourishment of the mind with God’s truth; the purifying of the imagination by God’s beauty; the opening of the heart to God’s love; the surrender of the will to God’s purpose—all of this gathered up in adoration.

~William Temple

The Prologue

It seems like a harmonic convergence of a divine kind, quite the calendric coincidence. It only seems fitting that at least for this year, the stars have aligned, and the Sunday of the Good Shepherd and Mother's Day collide in a most wonderful way. Mother's Day is a part of the mythological "Hallmark" calendar, a secular observance celebrated nationally, especially emphasized as a priority in many evangelical or non-liturgically inclined churches. Regarding our liturgical theme for today, when we think of Jesus as shepherd, we think of loving and tender, compassionate care, all infused with grace, mercy, and peace. Ditto for most mothers! Today, we bask in all the glorious shepherd images that abound throughout the biblical narrative, Hebrew Bible and Christian scriptures alike. It is a day to rest and relax, to be restored with the pleasant pastoral images of the risen Christ! Today, we look at all things shepherd and sheep.

JOHN 21:1-19

The Prologue

Dale Bishop: On this third Sunday of Eastertide, we hear of what John the Evangelist calls Jesus’ third appearance to his disciples after his resurrection. (The other Gospels have other ideas.) Front and center in this encounter is Peter, whom Jesus, according to Matthew, called “the rock” upon which his church would be founded. We will explore the implications as we await our own encounter with the risen Christ.

Luke 24:1-12

Each of the four Gospels record a story about the empty tomb, each version highlighting different aspects describing resurrection. From the scant information provided by the earliest Gospel in Mark to the most elaborately detailed account given by John, we are gifted with a varied portrait that indicates that something amazing, something truly magnificent, took place following Jesus' burial, editorial enhancements, embellishments, and exaggerations assumed. One thing that all the Gospels have in common, however, is that the women are given star billing, the honor and privilege of being the first on the scene and subsequently, after some understandable disbelief, the first to bear witness to this history altering event. The prominence of the women in the story is a reminder that the story of Jesus continues to reveal that resurrection is a shared experience, that those who are perceived to be the last and the least are raised, that Jesus continues the never ending work of social justice, always lifting up those considered the lowly and downtrodden, advocating for anyone who has been presumed to be relegated to the margins, the fringes of society. In the realm of God there are none who are dispossessed, second class, disenfranchised in any way! That, beloved faith community, is the ongoing power of resurrection, of being raised to new life!

Luke 19: 28-40

The Prologue

The huge contrasts that have defined this Lenten season now come to the forefront, in full view, as we experience the highs and lows, the ecstasy and agony of Palms and Passion. Most churches today will celebrate the intoxicating high of a Palm Sunday parade, mimicking a very temporary triumphal entry, a false positive that purportedly took place more than 2,000 years ago as Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey or a colt! Pick your poison! Is it any wonder the biblical writer chose an ass for this maudlin procession, this most iconic and ironic death march? Oh, how foolish everything appears to be at this moment in time! How quickly the crowd’s incongruous cacophony of “Hosannas” and calls to “Crucify Him” converge, creating a toxic, a muddled, messy mix that can only lead to crucifixion! Many services this morning will play a game of let’s pretend that ends in euphoria, a blatant denial of the horrific events that culminate by the week’s end. Today, we dare celebrate with palms, but we do so with the sobriety that comes with knowing and even remotely experiencing what comes next. We lean into the dynamics, the polarities of Holy Week’s Passion, engaging the full range of every emotion imaginable. The cross looms! Easter beckons! In the end, we know who wins! Yet, our sense of loss should never be so quickly mitigated, so neatly assuaged.

What more can we say about the parable of the prodigal than has already been said? The very title given this story lends itself to a misinterpretation of the story, for the beauty in the story is found in the mystery, the confusion about just who is the real prodigal in the parable. It is a rich text, full of wonderful images revealing the gracious hospitality of God, and also provides quite a telling window into human nature. Greed and jealousy give this tale its fuel! How many times in our lives are we able to see ourselves in this story? We make mistakes. We make poor decisions. And at the end of it all we are invited to a great banquet feast in the realm of God. One of the hidden gems in the story, a caveat that often gets overlooked, is that this tale is part of a trilogy of parables known as the "party parables"! These three vignettes serve as a reminder that our God invites us to one big party!

“Party Like a Prodigal Sermon” PDF coming soon

Enter description here

Scripture References:Luke 3:21-22, Luke 3:15-17, Acts 8:14-17