Monday, Jan. 3rd ...
6:3o PM Supper Committee in Parsonage
6:30PM Property Mtg. in Library
7:30 PM in Library
Tuesday, Jan 4th ...
7:oo Bible Study
Wednesday, Jan. 5th ...
7:00 PM Pilgrim Circle in Parsonage
Thursday, Jan 6th ...
7:00 PM Choir Practice
Sunday, Jan. 9 ...
8:00 AM Consistory in Fellowship Hall
9:15 AM Sunday School Opening
9:30 AM Sunday School
10:30 AM Worship Service
After Worship...Consistory Luncheon @ Trish's
Birthdays this week :
Tuesday, Jan. 4th ... Steve Everhart & Lori Ward
Wednesday, Jan 5th ... Rev. George Fidler
Saturday, Jan 8th Kristy Irvin
Don Miller passed away Sunday evening, January 2nd. At the time of this posting his funeral will be on Wednesday, Jan. 5th. The time has not yet been established. Please keep the family in your prayers.
THE PASTOR’S VIEWPOINT
Rev. John H. Bigelow
For the week of January 2, 2011
This is the time of the year when pundits, political, social, and religious, seem to come out of the woodwork. I am always amazed that there are so many points of view on what the new year holds in store for us. There is another group (many are the same “wise” people) who explain to us what happened last year, as if we were off on some foreign planet without our cell phone.
Epiphany, the 12th day after Christmas, which is on Thursday, January 6th this year, is the day we celebrate the coming of the Magi, (the wise men) to visit Jesus. Many of our contemporary “wise men” try to sneak in on their coat tails. You’ve probably heard many of them already.
I was thinking, that since this is my Viewpoint that perhaps I could also lend my accumulated wisdom, small as it may indeed be, to the cacophony of voices telling us what to expect. After all, a viewpoint is, by definition, a place where we can get a good view of what lays before us. Often this viewpoint is a high hill or even a mountaintop where much the world is laid out before us, well, at least some of it.
Unfortunately, neither the clock nor the calendar gives us “high points” with which to see into the future. In reality, we can’t even see with much degree of assurance, the next five minutes, or seconds if you want to get picky about it. September 11, 2001 illustrated this very well, as does any terrorist attack.
What we can do, however, is look ahead through our faith and have the absolute assurance that Christ is with us, that we do not travel the uncharted road of time that lies ahead alone. If we hold to this faith, trust in Christ’s promises and God’s love, we can look ahead to this coming year secure in the knowledge that all will be well.
We may not be able to pass over or around tragedy, loss or sickness, but we can get through them. There is an “other side” to everything and the good news for the Christian is Christ’s promise in Matthew 28:20b (NIV) “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Thus we can sing with assurance that refrain, “It is well, it is well, with my soul.”
Sermon for Sunday, January 2, 2011
HOPE FOR A NEW YEAR
An Upbeat Word for a Downbeat World, #1
Sermon texts: John 1:1-18
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.
3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
6 There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. 9 The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.
10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
15 John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’” 16 From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.
We live in a crazy world. There was an article sometime back in The Smithsonian magazine about Barbie Dolls. How many of you have ever owned a Barbie Doll? What? None of our men?
Ever since Barbie made her debut on toy store shelves, she has been accused of creating self-esteem problems in teenage girls. You might remember one cynic’s estimate that if Barbie were a real woman, she'd have to walk on all fours due to her proportions.
The male equivalent of the Barbie Doll, according to some people, is the gun-toting G.I. Joe action figure. Notice that it is an “action figure” and not a doll. Boys don’t play with dolls, do they? Now for the craziness.
In 1993, a mischievous group called the Barbie Liberation Organization decided to take revenge on these influential dolls. They bought hundreds of talking Barbie Dolls and hundreds of talking G.I. Joes.
Then, the group extracted the voice chips the things that make them talk --from all of the Barbie Dolls and they placed them in the G.I. Joes, and vice versa. Then they repackaged the figures, and replaced them in stores. Can you imagine the chaos that resulted. Can you see young girls’ reactions when their Barbie Dolls announced in a rough voice, “Eat lead, Cobra!” Or when young boys heard their G.I. Joes squeal, “Ken is such a dream.” This is a crazy world. It’s also a very stressful world.
Some years ago Astronaut Susan J. Helms spent almost six months on the International Space Station, where she became acclimated to a different way of living. In an interview after her return to earth, Helms claimed that she missed the peacefulness of living in space. There were no phones, no Internet connections, and no televisions on the International Space Station.
There were no problems with information overload. The lack of stress helped her to sleep “like a baby,” she said.
Well, Susan, I hope when you returned to the real world the world of 24 hour news and unceasing stress you were able to cope. Whether it is war in the Middle East, terrorism, corporate malfeasance, little girls abducted from their homes, snipers, some sort of virus, or whatever it may be, there is plenty in this world to keep you awake.
If you lost money in your pension fund last year in the slump of the stock market, you were probably furious at the actions of many corporate CEOs. It was bad enough that our economy took so many hits with the collapse of some major and seemingly strong companies and banks but what really galled many people was that the CEOs of many of the most culpable corporations seem unfazed by their company’s problems.
What is so galling is the number of CEO’s that left failing companies and took millions in bonuses and lived in what most of us would consider a mansion. Employees in many companies lost all their severance pay when their company went under. In the meantime, the chairman in one case was renovating his $94 million estate.
Why is all this so grievous? It is because of what these same executives did to their employees and stockholders. Do the people at the top of great corporations care at all about people at the bottom? A new term entered our vocabulary a few years back downsizing.
It means “trimming back” primarily at the expense of employees. In a long article some years ago in the Wall Street Journal, Susan Faludi recounted the toll just one downsizing exacted from 63,000 employees when Safeway supermarkets decided to get lean and mean.
Faludi recounted suicides, attempted suicides, divorces, broken families, whole towns devastated economically, children who had to drop out of college, and thousands of people left without jobs, or the hope of finding another one. On the other hand, the few executives at the top of the company shared a personal gain of $800 million after four years.
No wonder some of us have trouble sleeping at night. There’s a lot going on in this world to keep you awake. There’s a lot to both sadden us and infuriate us.
And then, just when we think there is no hope for this world into this world comes God. That’s the good news for this first Sunday in a new year. Just when humanity was on the verge of giving up and giving in, here comes God.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it . . . The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God . . . the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.”
AN UPBEAT WORD FOR A DOWNBEAT WORLD. That’s our theme for the months of January and February.
If you and I want to wallow in despair and gloom we will have to do it somewhere else. In C. S. Lewis’ words, we live in a God-invaded world. --- And where God is, there is hope.
This is not to ignore the realities of our world. This is not a perfect world. Far from it. For example, there is a moral and ethical crisis in our land that cannot be glossed over. It permeates our society from the corporate boardroom all the way down to the community grade school.
A Rutgers University study found that over 75% of college students cheat. And studies of college faculty show that the professors are often aware of the cheating and do nothing about it.
In fact, faculty at Columbia University and Syracuse University two highly regarded schools have published essays suggesting that students shouldn’t be held accountable for their cheating because it would hurt the student-professor relationship.
Hello! Where do these schools find professors like these. There has never been a better time to crack down on student cheating. Not because we wish these students any ill will, but because these young people need to understand what it means to be responsible members of society.
There is a moral and ethical crisis in our land. We would never deny such an obvious reality. But be careful of wringing your hands and declaring that the world is going to the dogs.
Consider another perspective on today’s young people. Did you know that according to a survey in Time magazine compared to teens twenty years ago, today’s young people are less likely to get pregnant, less likely to get an abortion, less likely to drink alcohol, less likely to commit a violent crime, and more likely to do volunteer work.
We live in a God-invaded world. We should never give in to despair and feelings of doom. “The Word has become flesh and dwelt among us . . .”
This does not mean we live in a perfect world, but it does mean that our world is never beyond hope. Where God is, there is the possibility of renewal. But where is hope to be found? Why, it is to be found right here….in this faith community.
Hope is found in the body of Christ. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Why? In order to bring into being a new community of people, the people of the Way, the people of the cross.
St. Paul writes in Ephesians: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love . . .”
In other words, the reason Christ came into the world was to form us into his people, his bride, his body that we might do his work in the world. Where there are people who bow at the name of Jesus, there is hope for the world.
This is not to say that church people are always aware of their calling, of course. Some churches operate more like social clubs than organizations devoted to changing the world.
Author Leonard Sweet was looking for a good place to have lunch in the community of Cannon Beach, Oregon. He approached a quaint café and pulled on the door. It was locked. On the door was a sign: “Out to lunch. Be back at 1:30.” During the noon hour, the owner of the café had gone out to lunch.
Somehow, he didn’t get the fact that it was important for his business, a café, to also be serving lunch. So it was no surprise that under the “Out to lunch” sign was another sign reading “Store for sale.”
There are many churches today that are “out to lunch” when it comes to reaching out to change the world. But fortunately, there are many other churches like Pilgrim and many church members also like Pilgrim --- who are seeking the best they are able, to make a difference in the world.
As long as there are disciples of Christ there is hope for the world. The question you and I need to ask ourselves is, are we doing our part?
This is a crazy world, but it is also a God-invaded world. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us . . .” Christ has redeemed us that we might work in his behalf to redeem the world.
An upbeat Word for a downbeat world.
Amen
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