Let it shine

“You are the light of the world.  A city built on a hill cannot be hid.
No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket,
but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all the house.
In the same way, let your light shine before others,
so that they may see your good work, and give glory to your Father in heaven.”
                                                     -          Matthew 5:14-16

Friends of Atonement,

            Christ is Risen – Alleluia!!!

            Jesus, the Light of the World has broken through the darkness, and His light shines on us today.  We have come out from under the shadow of death into the warm glow of Easter.  In a world that is so taken with death, we find joy in celebrating life. 

            Jesus is alive and He gives us His light in three ways: we know it through His Word, we experience it in the Sacraments, and we live it in our own relationships.  How amazing to realize that God’s Easter light shines through us!  I see it every day through the privilege of being in ministry – people like you, people who let the light of Christ shine through them in their care and compassion, in their faith and love, and in their generosity and giving to God’s work.

            I want to thank you for being light for the world.  Your care for others brings them hope and joy; your volunteering helps welcome people to the Gospel of Jesus; your financial support touches lives around the community and around the world.  I hope you know what is so clear and obvious to me – that Christ is with you, and you make a difference.

            Keep on shining!

Peace,

Pastor Scott

What we need most...

“Do not worry about anything,
but in everything by prayer and supplication
with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding
will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus."
                           -- Philippians 4:6-7

                We need your prayers.  I don’t know if you’ve ever said that to anyone before.  Maybe you’ve said it to me (I get that a lot!).  But, speaking for your congregation of Atonement I want to be sure you know this: We need your prayers.

                 I’m not saying this because we’re a dying church (we’re not), or because the bills aren’t getting paid (they are), or because there’s some terrible disaster about to happen (if there is, God hasn’t told me about it).  In fact, we are doing better than ever in many respects, thank God!  I’m saying this, or rather reminding you of this in case you’ve forgotten: We need your prayers.  We always need your prayers — because we need to be a praying church.

                Without regular prayer, we get caught up in the swirling waters of the world.  We get sucked into the idea that we never have enough, nothing is ever good enough, and those who think differently are rivals or enemies.  Without prayer, we are easily unsettled, easily frustrated, because instead of keeping an eye on what God is doing, all we see is what’s wrong in the world. 

                In his letter to the Philippians, from the darkness of a cold jail cell, St. Paul tells us to “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say Rejoice.  Let your gentleness be known to everyone.  The Lord is near (Philippians 4:4-5).”  He then goes on to encourage us to pray to God and receive His peace. 

               We need your prayers more than ever because Atonement is entering an important moment in its history.  We have seen this church grow and change and have been fixing things up that have been broken for a long time.  We are coming to a crossroad that opens up many opportunities and directions for us.  We have questions to answer and decisions to make as a congregation.  How are we going to continue reaching out into the community?  What shape will the future of our worship life take?  What new priorities for mission and outreach will we follow?  What about the new building, and other facility needs we already have?  How will we organize our ministries and what kind of support staff will we need as we continue to grow?

              When a period like this crops up in the church, we call it a time of discernment.  Each day God gives us is new.  New opportunities abound, and old ways no longer have to bind us.  Who knows what we can become as we follow the Spirit which blows where it will?  Only God, the God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that are not.  God alone knows just where we are heading as a congregation, and so, like I said, we need your prayers.

              I am very excited by the idea of Atonement becoming known as a praying church.  This is a practice that goes hand in hand with being a disciple, a church member, a Christian, even just a human being.  People pray all the time, without knowing it.  Even so-called atheists, when they express a hope or desire in their heart, unconsciously lift it up to some higher power.  As human beings, we are born connected to God, and as Scripture says, have God’s “law written on our hearts” Romans 2:15. 

                We all pray when we sigh and thank God for life’s blessings.  We pray when we hope for a better world.  We pray when we cry out for a loved one and long for their healing and restoration.  As members of Christ’s church, our lives are as naturally inclined to prayer as our bodies are to breathing.  In this time of discernment for our congregation, I hope you will join me in prayerfully seeking answers to the questions that will determine so much of our future, such as:

Å How can we live more deeply into God’s Word and Sacraments?

 

Å How can we be a more important asset to our community?

Å How should we promote our church and connect with friends and members in this age of social media?
Å How do we stay connected to what Christians are doing globally, ecumenically, and in our synod and conference?

Å What can we do to teach a healthy, holistic Christian spirituality for everyone, including a balance of the seven basic faith practices: worship, prayer, inviting, encouraging, serving, giving, and study?

Å How do we assist young families by helping them connect their children to God?

Å How do we engage each member of Atonement in ministry?

                This month we will be walking again together down the Via Dolorosa with Jesus.  The week before Easter, known as “Holy Week” because it leads us into the mystery and  power of the cross, begins the preceding Sunday with Palm Sunday.  That day we walk with Him through the gates of Jerusalem, and hear the cheers of the crowd there turn to shouts of “Crucify Him!”  On Maundy Thursday we go back to the night He was betrayed and experience the institution of the Lord’s Supper, the washing of the disciples’ feet and the giving of the great commandment to love one another.  Good Friday brings us face to face with the consequences of our own sin and the tremendous sacrifice that God made for us in giving His one and only Son so that we might have life. 

               Soon afterwards, that hard, dark road leads us out into a burst of glorious daylight as we find ourselves in the garden by an empty tomb on Easter morning.  Expecting to see the world as it was, expecting the long hard road to continue, expecting more suffering, Easter crashes into our lives and bursts through our old ways of seeing.  Instead, everything is made anew, transformed and better than ever. 

               What God has in store for His people exceeds their biggest dreams.  It begins from where we are now, with a God who lives beside us, providing our daily bread and calling us to love and care more deeply.  As we respond to the call, follow His lead, walk the paths He shows us, dare to continue even when the way gets hard, even though we stumble and fall, we rise again.  This God of ours does not depart from us.  He is a God of journeys who walks with us, always leading us from darkness to light.  He comes to bring us love, forgiveness, and a new Spirit, and with that new Spirit comes a power that can change the world.  Which is why, by the way, we need your prayers.

Peace,
Pastor Scott                                                                     — Philippians 4:6-7

 

Being the body

“Do you not know that your body

is a temple of the Holy Spirit,

who is in you, whom you have received from God?  

You are not your own; you were bought at a price.  

Therefore honor God with your body."

        — 1 Cor. 6:19-20

                                                        

 

           "This is my body,” Jesus said as he broke the bread  at the Last Supper.  And as he passed around the cup of wine, he told his friends gathered there, “This is my blood.” 

            The disciples who were sharing that meal with their rabbi may not have had any idea what Jesus was trying to tell them, but to us those words are a graphic reminder that Jesus was a human being in a human body at the same time he was God. 

           Because we believe that God took on human flesh, being born of a human mother, issuing from a human womb, growing from crying baby to curious child to active teenager to thoughtful and responsible adulthood, inhabiting a human body subject to hunger, pain, and exhaustion — because our Lord and Savior is literally “God in the flesh,” we see the body as a holy vessel fashioned by God. 
           Jesus told us that our bodies are temples to the Holy Spirit.  A body is therefore a holy place, like a shrine or sanctuary.  When we worship it involves bodily movements, gestures and postures, lifting the eyes to heaven or closing them in prayer, singing hymns in a robust manner, filling and emptying our lungs in succession.  We take in God’s Word through our ears and eyes, we hug and shake hands with our fellow worshippers, we taste bread and wine, we wash bodies both big and little at the baptismal font. A person’s body is tied in with their identity — who we are is expressed in bodily ways.  A smile or frown, a touch, an embrace or a slap — any kind of communication comes from a certain way we use our own bodies.  And what we do with or to other people’s bodies can have a profound spiritual affect on them.  We can use our bodies to heal or to abuse others.   
           Like it or not, we’re stuck with these bodies God has given us, at least for this life.  Though more and more surgeries are available to alter, improve, or maintain our bodies, we know we won’t be here forever because these bodies just weren’t made to last.  And yet, the impermanence of these bodies is also our gateway to eternal life.  And as Jesus shows us in Matthew 25, the compassion and care we show with these bodies determines our fitness for the next world.

           And so it’s no wonder that we Christians pray for healing, set up hospitals, and send missionaries out with medicine.  It’s no wonder we take such care of the bodies of the deceased, and value the physical remains of a loved one’s body.  Bodies are not simply disposable vehicles that a soul tools around in.  Your body is not like your latest car, the one you are planning to replace as soon as you can afford it.  Your body is a definitive part of the you that you are.  The way your brain is physically structured along with the chemical balance your body maintains impacts your personality.  Though we are often at odds with our bodies, especially when they slow down or break down or distract us with urges and cravings we can’t ignore, we admire the harmony we see in a dancer or an athlete whose every move is graceful but deliberate and skilled. 

            This Lent, our series of mid-week worship services begins with Ash Wednesday on March 5, and brings us to reflect upon “The Body of Christ.”  Each Wednesday through April 9 as well as Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, we will meet at 7pm for a short service designed to bring into focus the amazing gift of our bodily existence, and the wondrous mystery that Jesus Christ shared our human existence.  The centerpiece of each service is a dialog focusing on a part of the body of Christ, including:

Å The feet of Christ         March 5 (Ash Wednesday)
Å The hands of Christ     March 12
Å The mouth of Christ    March 19
Å The ears of Christ        March 26
Å The eyes of Christ       April 2
Å The heart of Christ      April 9
Å The blood of Christ     April 17 (Maundy Thursday)
Å The body of Christ      April 18 (Good Friday)

           The series concludes with a final service offered as our early worship option at 8am on Easter Sunday, April 20: “The Risen Christ.”

          Christians who observe Lent traditionally use it as a time of spiritual growth and reflection, and include some sort of discipline related to the body.  Often it is a “giving up” of a certain food or a “taking up” a healthy habit from Ash Wednesday up until Easter, with a view towards strengthening our self-control and overall health.  In their  “Make or Break” program, Thrivent suggests the following possible Lenten disciplines:
 

Add a healthy habit, such as:

Å Eating prayerfully, giving thanks before each meal

Å Fill half your plate with produce, making fruits and vegetables the star of your main meal each day
Å Track what you eat, keeping a record of your calories and nutrition
Å Fuel up with a healthy breakfast, including a variety of grains and lowfat protein and dairy

...or break a habit, such as:

Å Quitting processed foods
Å Going sugar free
Å Ditching unhealthy snacks
Å Skipping unhealthy beverages

More information on Thrivent’s “Make or Break” program, along with some great wellness activities and resource can be found online at:

https://myportico.porticobenefits.org/myPortico/CallToLiveWell/HowPorticoCanHelp/WellnessActivities.aspx

Paul tells us all that, as believers, we are part of the body of Christ.  My prayer for you this Lent is that you experience that reality in worship and in the care and honor you give to your own body. 

 Peace,

Pastor Scott

Coming home

“…Miners hammer away at the rock, they uproot the mountains,  They tunnel through rock and find all kinds of beautiful gems,  They discover the origins of rivers and bring earth’s secrets to life,  But where, oh where will they find Wisdom?..."
         — Job 28:10-12

      Keeping perspective isn’t always easy when you live in Florida.  This cold snap we’re having is a nightmare to citrus growers, but a mere inconvenience to most us who are forced to dig out an old jacket and maybe a scarf or a pair of gloves from somewhere.  And when family from up north call you up and ask how things are “down there,” the last thing you want to tell them is how cold it’s been.  That opens it up to endless stories of school closings, piles of snow and roads iced over, not to mention the latest subzero readings on thermometers.

        The parking lot behind my parents’ house in Columbus, Ohio used to get a heavy blanket of snow each year.  When the trucks came and plowed it up in mini-mountains, my friend Mike and I would get busy.  We’d build snowforts and igloos, and have all kinds of adventures in that newly white wonderland.  One week, we brought shovels over everyday after school and began to dig tunnels through one particularly huge snow mountain.  I started from one end, and he started from the other, and by the end of the week you could crawl all the way through.
       I think of our fabulous snow tunnel when I read Job’s description of miners deep in the earth, searching for precious gems.  Mike and I weren’t looking for anything we could keep or sell — we were just digging for the fun of it.  We weren't exploring a new world so much as exploring ourselves, trying to discover what was possible and how much we could accomplish.  We weren’t trying to make a living, just trying to kill a few afternoons.

              To Job, however, those miners were a perfect example of God’s greatness.  We think we’ve got this world figured out, then one day a farmer stumbles onto a hidden cave in his field.  He goes down into it and sees that it opens up into a beautiful cavern, sparkling with gems, crossed by an underground river.  A whole new world had lain beneath his feet, and he never knew it.  The miners exploring these subterranean spaces may find amazing places and untold wealth, “but where oh where will they find Wisdom?” asks Job. 

             We seek high and low, we read and study and explore, and we spend our lives looking for answers to things only God can explain.  Much of what we seek in life is not hidden, but right in front of us.  Much of what we’re after may be ours already.  This is something I came to realize in college when I began to study different religions.  Some of them seemed to have brilliant insights, but when you broke it down they didn’t fit the human condition.  Some of them were elegantly simple, but really didn’t help my understanding of evil or sin.  Some had all kinds of practical instructions for what to do and how to pray every hour of the day, but who can really keep that up?

                Eventually, I came home.  I saw that the faith of my fathers and mothers was my faith too.  I realized that the stories and teachings of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were mine as well.  I understood that the God who took on flesh and came to live with me here in this confusing and imperfect world — the God who sent His son Jesus to be my Savior and friend — was just the kind of God I needed. 

             This season of Epiphany focuses on how this God reveals Himself in countless ways.  We see him in the starry skies, and we know He’s there in those caverns beneath the  earth, and in the seas with all their creatures.  But the “epiphany” that Epiphany is about is the one that happens when we see Him in our own lives.  We come to the lakeshore, and Jesus is there calling us to fish for people.  We head down the road, and Jesus calls us to stop off and see a sick friend, or pull into the supermarket to buy some groceries for a poor shut-in.  We come to worship and Jesus is calling us to welcome the new people and say a prayer for our recently widowed neighbor.

              We may not find answers to all our questions, but when Jesus meets us, we will always have THE answer.  Despite our plans, it happens God’s way.  Even when we feel tired and our heart is discouraged, our hope and renewal is closer than we imagine.  We don’t need to look into heights of space or the depths of the earth.  We don’t need to take a class or read every word of the Bible or discover some secret code.  For those with faith and a wide open heart, there is an epiphany right around the corner.  Jesus is there now, waiting to be discovered in the face of the next human being you see.

Discover God's Love

“As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another,
as good stewards of God's varied grace:”
-- 1 Peter 4:10

Friends of Atonement,

            Welcome to 2014!  Thank you for your participation and support of our ministries here at Atonement in 2013.  We have experienced another great year of ministry with a record number of new members, record numbers at the food pantry and major facility upgrades, including a new columbarium. In addition, our Laying Foundations for the Children of God Capital Campaign has been blessed with an offer of $25,000 in matching funds. Donations given to the campaign through February will be matched by a generous anonymous donor.
            I’ve been using the phrase “Discover God’s Love” for some time now.  I use it as the title of the newsletter, and today it’s up on our church sign.  To me it expresses a deep need in our world.  For many people, God’s love and care for them is not obvious.  They do not connect their blessings, the successes they have or the good things that happen to them with a loving, caring heavenly Father.  They do not find peace in their hearts from the love of a Savior, or power in their lives through the presence of God’s Holy Spirit.  Many people in our world need to discover God’s love.
            And that’s what God put us here for!  As Peter wrote, our blessings have come to us as gifts from God.  Now let’s use them to serve one another – in and out of the church – to demonstrate God’s love. What gifts do you have that you can put to use to help others “discover God’s love”?  Maybe you have a skill you can share or show off at the upcoming Talent Show on February 23.  Maybe you have a valuable item you no longer need that could be sold in support of a ministry.  Maybe you have a passion to serve on the Stewardship Team, Caring Team, or as a community volunteer.            
             You are part of what makes this congregation so wonderful.  I hope more and more people in and around our community see what I see when they look at Atonement: people gathering together, bringing their unique and irreplaceable gifts, laying them before the Lord, and helping one another discover God’s love.