“The Bible and the whole history of faith are full of stories and accounts of men and women who have a hard time trusting God – and often with very good reason! The reading from Genesis (22:1-14) is one of the clearest and most dramatic examples in the Bible of how difficult it can be to trust God. The story is known in Hebrew as akedah, the binding of Isaac. Isaac, of course, is the son that was promised to Abraham and Sarah, the child of their old age and God’s goodness, the one through whom all of        God’s blessings to and through Abraham were to come to fruition.  

It is told, like many of the early narratives in Genesis, with very spare details, not much of clue about the characters thoughts or motivations; reading them can be like watching a film where the actors rarely speak or show emotion, and yet very emotional things are happening. And that is true for the Binding of Isaac…  

[After they have journeyed three days] Isaac asks his father where the animal for the sacrifice is – they have the wood and the fire and the knife; I wonder if Isaac was beginning to wonder, to worry, to get scared. Abraham answers simply that God will provide the lamb. Was Abraham as brave and trusting as he sounded?” ~ from my sermon June 29, 2014  

When your emotional/psychological priorities and Biblical stories seem to be at odds with each other, what do you do? How do you understand them?  

Blessings, Vicki+

“Do you ever feel like it’s hard to trust God?   This may not be something that you feel comfortable admitting out loud – at least, not in Church.

I’m not talking about believing, in the sense of believing that God exists, or even believing that God has some kind of call on your life. There are certainly plenty of people in our day and age who give little thought to God, or if they do recognize or acknowledge God’s existence, don’t think there’s any connection to them; to them, God is a remote figure, best left undisturbed by human concerns.  

What I’m asking about is different; I’m talking about trust.  Have you ever felt that God has asked you to do something that seems incredibly difficult, and you didn’t know how you’d be able to manage it, and yet God wouldn’t leave you alone about it? Or have you ever been faced with a situation that seemed to be the end of everything, a dead end, a blind alley, and you could not see how    you could go forward, nor how God was ever going to bring life and joy and hope back into the picture?   Well, you are not alone.” ~ from my sermon June 29, 2014

Blessings,
Vicki+

“We know God calls us into human relationships that bring us love and joy and lifelong commitment; and we know that so often children are the fruit of those relationships – whether by birth or adoption. We see in our families a reflection of God’s parental care for us, and they are so often where we first learn about love and community and faith in God. So to have Jesus say something kind of critical and prickly about families (as he does in today’s Gospel*) may not sound comfortable to us, and may even seem against what we think Christian faith stands for.

I think the key to understanding what is being said here is to be aware of two things. First of all, God made us for relationship – with God’s self and with others; God really doesn’t want us to be alone, and so spouses, families and friendships are all good and important. And second, while our families can be the focal point of God’s love and blessing, they can also get in the way if they become an idol, rather than an icon of God’s presence.

So what’s the balance between serving God and taking care of your family? When are those one and the same and when do they come into conflict? How is our Christian vocation as a parent, a spouse, a sibling, a child to be lived out? I don’t have any cut and dried answer to those questions….

May God the Father, who by Baptism adopts us as his children, grant us grace. 
May God the Son, who sanctified a home at Nazareth, fill us with love. 
May God the Holy Spirit, who has made the Church one family, keep us in peace.  Amen. ~ Book of Common Prayer”
                                        ~ from my sermon June 22, 2014

*[Jesus said:] Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Matthew 10:37-38

Here’s a You Tube link to a modern Gospel song “Take Up Your Cross”, by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq0Z0wPQ4e8

Blessings,
Vicki+

“Beyond our families of birth or marriage or adoption or our own choosing, once we have come to Christ in faith and have been baptized we have been adopted into God’s family, grafted onto that family tree. It changes our whole frame of reference; people who we do not know, and with whom we share no other ties, suddenly become our sisters, our brothers, our church fathers and mothers, a new family of faith, through which we can all our other relationships and attachments. Through the blood of Jesus and the water of baptism we become a new family, one that takes a lifetime of prayer and self-giving for us to know and love.”  ~ from my sermon June 22, 2014

How does being a Christian shape your view of your family and other friendships?

Blessings,
Vicki McGrath+

“We have died to sin and risen with Christ, we share his glory, we are members of his Body; not members like members of a club, but a part of the Body – eyes, hands, lungs, feet – members of the new family that God has called and created through faith and baptism. In fact, when we are baptized we are given a new family name – the name of Christian.” ~ from my sermon June 22, 2014

How is belonging to a spiritual family different from belonging to your physical/emotional family, and how is it the same?

Blessings,
Vicki+

“We go out, not in our own strength or power or wisdom, but in the strength and power and wisdom of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And because we are not being sent out on our own merit, we cannot stay scattered, at least not for very long. We need to come back for worship, for fellowship, to re-connect, to re-fuel. A Lutheran pastor and Bible teacher David Lose says this: ‘We come together each week because, quite frankly, it’s hard to believe the nearly too-good-to-be-true news of the Gospel for more than about seven days in a row.’

So part of our mission as a Church is to be the kind of community and congregation where we do encourage one another in faith; where we do bind up one another’s wounds and bear one another’s burdens; where we practice again and again the art of asking, giving and receiving forgiveness; a community where we can both cry and play, rejoice and sorrow, ask questions and share spiritual insights and deep truth. Because if we don’t learn to do this here, it’s a sure bet that it will be very hard to do it in the other parts and places of our lives.

So worship God, go forth in the name and pattern of Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit to serve and bless and teach those around you; and then come back with all the cares and dents and sorrows and successes of the world to be refilled, renewed and re-formed in the image of God.”

                   ~ from my sermon June 15, 2014 ; Vicki McGrath+
Filling

“Back near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry he had climbed up on a mountain to teach, to set forth his spiritual curriculum; it’s what we call the Sermon on the Mount – and for Matthew this important because it’s an echo of what Moses did, and the authority that Moses had, which has found its fulfillment in Jesus.

So on the mountain in Galilee the disciples gather after the Resurrection, and Jesus appears; they worship him…and they also have their doubts. After everything – healings, teachings, travel, exorcisms, clashes with the religious and civil authorities, after arrest, torture, Crucifixion, death, and resurrection – there are still some doubts, some questions mixed in with the faith and worship; they are of two minds.

Well isn’t that a relief? Because if that is true for the disciples who lived with Jesus for three years, and who were witnesses to all these things, how much more true is that for us?” ~ from sermon June 15, 2014 by Vctoria Geer McGrath

“Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks – seven weeks after the Passover – Pentecost in Greek, was the celebration of the covenant God made at Mount Sinai with the Israelites [thousands of years before]. This covenant is what we usually think as the Ten Commandments. The Lord and Creator of the universe was making a covenant, an agreement of relationship for all time with the whole people if Israel, not just an individual or a single family, so that they would be God’s nation of blessing to the world….

It is in this context that faithful Jews from every part of the empire had streamed into Jerusalem for this very important festival. And it is in this same context that the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the disciples – fire and wind and language.

They understood that the giving of the Spirit was now not just for Jews who believed in Jesus’ messiahship, but for all people; God’s covenant was enlarged, expanded, extended to include all people everywhere – regardless of nationality, race, age, ethnicity, gender….

We need the full power of God to stand up to evil in the world. We also need the power of the Holy Spirit to carry out our mission as God’s People and Jesus’ followers in the world; we can’t do it on our own strength and in our own wisdom.

If we try to do that we will, at the worst, cut ourselves off from the source of our life and strength; and, at the best, we will put God and ourselves in a box of our own making, limitations created by fear and aversion to risk.”
                    ~ from sermon June 8, 2014 by Victoria Geer McGrath

“Many people get nervous when they think about matters of faith and spirituality getting out of control; we don’t want church to be boring, but for the most part we turn to faith for comfort, for strength, for insight and a quiet kind of inspiration.

When people get “fired-up” by God or blown along by the Spirit, we main-line, liturgical Christians often want to run and hide…and for good reason. Fire, wind and water are powerful, they can be all-consuming, dangerous.

So what does it mean that these images that come to us from Scripture about the Holy Spirit and about the Day of Pentecost are so far beyond our comfort level?

What do we do, besides ignoring them or saying to ourselves: well that’s for the Pentecostalists and the fundamentalists?” ~ from sermon by Victoria Geer McGrath, June 8, 2014

How do you experience the Holy Spirit? How you ever felt the Spirit to be “out of control”?

Blessings,

Vicki+

“Pentecost is the great feast of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity, a day of fire and wind and water – all fitting images for the elemental and disruptive nature of the Holy Spirit. “Disruptive” seems at odds with our common use of the word “spirit” or “spiritual”; so often when we describe someone as spiritual we are talking about a person who is kind, gentle, wise, connected to God, peaceful. That would seem to be completely counter to disruptive power and something beyond our control.”
            ~ from sermon June 8, 2014, Victoria Geer McGrath

How would you describe someone who is spiritual?