MMC: Rain Towards the End of Summer

Good Morning Bethlehem

I hope you are remembering your baptism with all this rain we are having and hopefully not slogging through a flooded basement cursing God  instead.  

A Few Quick Announcements

• Yesterday we raised enough for 426 meals (or $106) for Kids Care Meals of Love.  If you were not able to be at our indoor picnic yesterday or did not have any money on you, we can still collect money this coming week.  All the meals will be packed by our youth and others at Hammonasset with the goal of packaging a minimum of 15,000 meals.
• A special thank you to Victor M. for being our grill chef yesterday and to the rest of the M. family, Karin & Carl R. and Ellen G. for coming early and setting up the basement for our picnic.  And Johnny, Heloisa's grandson who cut his finger yesterday, is doing just fine.  No stitches, no broken bones and as Heloisa has said, he is already on to his next adventure. 
• We are still collecting toiletries of all sizes for Americares in Danbury through the end of the month.  Any toiletry that you use on a daily basis is appreciated.
• Rally Day is September 18 and as part of our Grow 2 Gather kick off we will be making 50 health kits for Lutheran World Relief.  There is a sign up sheet in the community room to bring towels, soap, toothbrushes, nail clippers and combs with specific amounts needed.  Please bring those items to my office so they do not get confused with the items for the giving basket.  

Book of Faith Puzzler

Last week’s  question was: Jesus also performs other miracles on the Sea of Galilee,(the first being walking on water) which of these is not one of them? A) Starts up a storm  B) a miraculous catch of fish C) a coin in a fish’s mouth D) calming a storm.
A miraculous catch of fish occurs in Luke 5:1-11 and John 21:1-14.  A coin appears in a fish’s mouth in Matthew 17:24-27 and Jesus calms a storm in Mark 4:35-41, Matthew 8:23-27 and Luke 8:22-25.  Jesus never starts a storm, at least such an event was never mentioned in the gospels.Congratulations to Susan K for winning this week's puzzler. 

This week’s question: In our gospel, Matthew 15:10-28, was Jesus being rude to the Canaanite woman? A) Yes, B) No C) We really don’t know.  Think you know the answer? Well hopefully you do because it is an opinion based question.  Email me with you opinion by noon on Wednesday to be entered into the drawing. 

Yesterday's sermon

Yesterday's sermon can be found here.  How do you feel unworthy of God's grace and how have you felt unwelcomed in church?  How have you made others feel unworthy and unwelcomed.  

And for those who were in worship, what did you think of our confession yesterday?  Was it a helpful exercise?  I personally saw God in the fact that many people wrote something down to being with and full sentences that were quite honest.  And as long as I'm asking questions, honestly what did you think of the sermon, did I cross any lines for you about being too crude?

Serving this Sunday

Confession time - it is pouring out, I'm at the house and I don't feel like running next door to check the sign up sheet for worship assistants, just to run back to the house, so these is all from memory so I apologize if I forgot that you have signed up to serve this week.

But those who I remember who have signed up to serve in worship this coming Sunday are:

Worship Assistant: Mark H

Reader:: ___________

Communion Assistant: ___________

Ushers: __________ & ___________

Bread baker/bringer: __________

Communion set up & clean up ___________

Offering counter: Nancy B

Coffee Hour Host: ___________

If you would like to sign up in any of the blank spaces, please let me know. 

Sunday's Gospel

This coming Sunday the gospel text is Matthew 16:13-20.  Jesus asks his disciples who people say that the Son of Man is and who they think he is.  He also renames Peter the rock on which the church is built.  If you were to describe Jesus to someone who did not know about him, how would you describe him?  Who would you say that he is?  An how are part of the church that was built upon Peter? 

Hope you all have a great week and stay dry!

Pastor Becca

You are Welcome! You are Worthy!

Today was suppose to be our outdoor worship and picnic.  I say "suppose to" because it started raining at around 11pm/midnight on Saturday and as I write this at 5:30pm on Sunday it has not stopped raining or even let up from a steady downpour.  So we worshiped inside instead and had our picnic in the church basement.  It turned out to be a nice service even if the rain dampened our parade.  


But with an outdoor worship in mind I planned a few things differently than normal and decided not to switch them just because of the weather.  The biggest change was that I decided to base the confession on the sermon.  The sermon, which is below, talks about how we often feel unworthy to Jesus, and we,as Christians, often make others feel unwelcomed and unworthy.  Therefore after the hymn of the day I had people write on two different color slips of paper ways they have felt unworthy and unwelcomed and ways they have made others feel unworthy of God's grace and unwelcomed.  We then used what people wrote as a prayer of confession and asked for forgiveness and guidance as we struggle to change.  


The second thing that I planned differently because it was suppose to be an outdoor worship was I was a little more brash in my sermon than normal.  Now most people who know me, know that I don't have the cleanest language and I'm not afraid to make an off-colored joke or talk about a topic that some people find impolite to talk about in public.  And it is hard to just ignore that fact that Jesus refers to poop in the gospel text (Matthew 15:1-28 BTW I used the Message translation and a longer text than the assigned text for the day which was just verses 10-28).  However most people find hearing such things from a pastor while in the sanctuary a little off putting, but being outside and not in the traditional worship space can open people to hearing things that might seem a little impolite otherwise.  But I liked how my sermon turned out and based on what the message is I wasn't going to not refer to poop or ignore such topics as rape, sex, divorce, homosexuality and murder just because we ended up in the sanctuary due to weather.  So be forewarned - the word poop and vomit is coming.  Multiple times in fact.  And so is words like rape and incest.  But if you can get past that, which I hope you aren't that easily offended, I think you will enjoy the sermon and get a bit out of the message.  

Excuse me but was Jesus talking about poop and vomit?!   

This isn’t a text that we like to hear.  In fact it is one that we often want to ignore.  First we get this fairly graphic, at least by biblical standards, depiction about the digestion process, but also because we then hear about Jesus being out-right rude to this poor Canaanite woman. 

This doesn't mesh with our picture perfect Jesus. The Jesus who welcomed the little children and carried cute little cotton ball sheep.  The Jesus who’s picture hung in our Sunday School classroom, with a well groomed beard and mustache who looks freshly bathed.  The Jesus who we worship, the Jesus who we learned about as children didn’t talk about poop and was intentionally rude to someone.

I hate to break it to you but this is the same Jesus.  Jesus who healed the sick and multiplied loaves and fishes and walked on water is also the same Jesus who talked about poop.  Jesus of Nazareth, who died on a cross to save us from our sins is also the same Jesus who was intentionally rude to a woman who came to him begging for mercy. 

We often want to sugar coat the Bible.  Many pastors today will be ignoring the first part of this text today when Jesus talked about what defiles a person and focusing on only Jesus’ interaction with the Canaanite woman, and then they will say things like Jesus was just testing the woman or explain that he really wasn’t being rude.  Others will ignore this text completely and instead focus on a more Sunday School appropriate text.  But I think that is a shame. 

It is a shame to ignore the parts of the bible that we find to uncouth, too crude, or brash or vulgar for our taste.  It is a shame to do this because when we do we are subtlety and not so subtlety making a statement about who we want to be part of our worshipping community.  If you really dig into certain parts of the bible there is a lot that would not be accepted actions in our modern society, incest, rape, genocide, adultery, pre-meditated murder, stealing and the list goes on.  Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery and then told their father that he was mauled by a wild animal and died.  Abraham passed his wife Sarah off as his sister not once but twice in order to save his own sink, but as a result she was probably raped, not that it is ever referred to as rape in the Bible.  The people in the Bible are not always upstanding moral, role-models.  

And yet when we try to make them to be perfect people, or when we ignore those parts of the bible things that we find too vulgar, we are telling people that they are not allowed to be people in this community, this congregation, this church.  Instead in church, in worship, you need to be part of some 1950’s idealized perfect nuclear family, where the husband is the head of the household, the wife balances housework, child rearing and even a job and the children always obey their parents and never say an unkind word other than gee will-i-cers and golly gee.  But that is not who we are and that is not who we should pretend to be. We become no worse than those people Isaiah prophesied about "They worship me with their lips but their heart is not it in, they act like they are worshiping me, but they don't really mean it."  When we put on a facade to worship God, we are not truly worshiping God.  

We should not feel the need to put on a false façade in order to come to church, in order to worship God.  God knows who we are, and what is in our hearts when we are worshipping, working, driving a car, or drinking a beer at the bar.  But we as Christians as a whole do this, and make a statement, often unspoken, but occasionally spoken, that if you are divorced, gay, sexually active before you are married or outside of your marriage, drink, smoke, a drug user, have tattoos, swear or any other modern taboo that you are not welcomed here and Jesus did not come to save you.  And not only do others feel unwelcomed, they also feel unworthy of God’s grace.

And yet that is exactly the opposite of what our gospel message says today.  First Jesus gets questioned about why his disciples eat with unclean hands, a taboo in first century Palestine.  And Jesus response that it is not what goes into a person that defiles it but what comes from the heart.  Breaking taboos will not make you a person unfit for God’s grace, it will not make you a bad person.  However if from your heart you treat others badly, you have evil intentions, murder, commit adultery, fornicate, steal, or lie it is then that you become defiled, unclean.  It is not how you treat yourself that makes you unclean, but how you treat others.  Jesus is saying that taboo breakers are not only welcomed, but wanted!  Jesus is telling others that it is okay to be yourself.  If you get to dinner time and forget to wash your hands first, it will be okay, the world will not end, nor will your salvation be in question.

And then Jesus goes and obeys the laws of the land and as a results treats a Canaanite woman, an outsider, one of those people who would be unwelcomed throughout Israel, as if she is the scum of the earth even though she is begging for mercy.  Jesus calls her a dog and says that he came only for Israel; that their sins are keeping him busy enough as it is.  Now I don’t know if Jesus was intentionally treating her badly in order to make a point or if Jesus was having just a very human moment, but either way the woman, in her great come back “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table” remind Jesus that there is always plenty and that she too is worthy of God’s mercy.  And in doing do Jesus gives her more than she asked and heals her daughter.

See all are welcomed to partake in the Kingdom of God.  All are invited to worship Jesus.  And all should be welcomed here, in this place, in our worshipping space, both out here and inside.  And we are invited to come as we are, to come as who we are, whether we fit in better as an extra in a 1950’s sitcom, at a Harley rally clad in leather, or waving rainbow flags in Greenwich Village.  We are invited to be who God created us to be, and we are all worthy of God’s grace, God’s amazing mercy that is pour out upon all of us, even if we feel unworthy, even if we feel at times like poop or vomit or a dog.  Because we are worthy of God's grace and we are welcomed by God and hopefully we are also able to welcome all of God's children as well.   

MMC: Uncouth

Good morning Bethlehem

I hope you are doing well and enjoying this wonderful humidity that we are having. 

A Few Quick Announcements

• Senior Lunch is Wednesday at noon.  We will be meeting at Heibecks/Blondie's across route 7 from Caraluzi's.  Just a reminder that this is a cash only establishment.  
• Our annual outdoor worship and picnic is Sunday!.  Bring a side dish or dessert to share for the picnic.  Hamburgers, hot dogs and veggie burgers will be provided.  Bring your lawn chairs.
• Check out the Pastor's library.  A few of my favorite or most well known books from my library are on one of the small tables in the community room.  Check them out and feel free to borrow any.  They are all ministry related but range from novels to memoirs to random musings to a summary of a national multi-year study.  

Book of Faith Puzzler

Last week’s  question was: Sunday’s gospel is Jesus feeding a large crowd of 5000 plus people.  This story is heard in multiple gospels, which is it NOT hear in? A) Matthew B) Mark, C) Luke, D) John E) it is in all 4 gospels
The feeding of the 5000 appears in Matthew 14:13-21, Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:10-17, and John 6:5-15.  The feeding of the 4000 also appears in Mark 8:1-9 and Matthew 15:32-39. No one put in there answer for this week, so next week's winner will probably get two goodies. 
This week’s question: Jesus also performs other miracles on the Sea of Galilee,(the first being walking on water) which of these is not one of them? A) Starts up a storm  B) a miraculous catch of fish C) a coin in a fish’s mouth D) calming a storm. If you know the answer or even if you cheat and look it up, get me your answer by noon on Wednesday to be entered into this week's drawing. 

Yesterday's Sermon

Have you heard the rumors?  There was a pool in the sanctuary.  Apparently we shouldn't have gone with the lowest bidder when getting the roof redone two years ago (kidding!) The pool was part of my sermon and can be found here.  In what ways do you want to be like Jesus?  In what ways are you not willing to be like Jesus?  When have you taken your eyes off of him?  When has Jesus saved you, even if you were not looking to him at the moment?

Serving this Sunday

For our outdoor worship, we don't need as many volunteers as a normal Sunday, but we still need a few.  The following people have signed up to serve as follows:

Worship Assistant: Ellen G

Reader: ____________

Greeters (aka hand out bulletins): ____________

Offering Counter: Frank C

If you would like to serve as a reader or greeter, please let me know.  We could also use a few extra hands early to set up chairs, our make/shift altar, as well as set up tables and the tent for the picnic.  

Sunday's Gospel

The gospel on Sunday is Matthew 15:[10-20], 21-28.  (The brackets mean those verses are optional and I'll decide later this week if I'll read the whole gospel or just the last few verses based on what I decide to preach on.)  The bracketed verses are of Jesus discussing that it is not what one consumes that defiles a person but what a person says.  Though through Jesus' sense of humor and blunt way of putting things this can be seen as a conversation that many 8 year old boys would love.  The unbracketed verses are of a Canaanite woman who begs Jesus to heal her daughter saying that even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.  When have you had a conversation that seems a little uncouth or cheeky?  Have you still learned something from those conversations?  Did the fact that they were unexpected in wording help you better understand the point or at least grasp your attention more? 

Hope you all have a great week!
Blessings

Pastor Becca