Thoughts on...
May 31, 2009: Pentecost
New Testament Lesson: Acts 2:1-21

A lot of Pentecost is about diversity. Ethnic diversity for sure as the list of all those that were present accounts. Joel prophesies about the last days when young, old, male, female, slave - all prophesy. No shortage of differences in that list either.

What unites them? A wild, amazing, perplexing experience. Something they had never heard, or seen, or experienced. The Holy Spirit draws all from their own experiences together - in their diversity they are unified to prophesy, to challenge the status quo, to speak with one voice. This was not an attention getting device used simply to draw attention but an experience that changed the lives of those who are present.

Isn't that what the church is called to do? To challenge the status quo, to draw attention to the need for changed lives. The church is to be more hodge podge and random rather than structured and comfortable but only if the Holy Spirit is truly moving within the church.

Remember the Sunday School Song? "The church is not the building, the church is not the steeple, the church is not a resting place the church is the people." The church is more than our own little congregation that meets in particular building. When we all get to heaven more than our congregation will be there. All those who call on the name of the Lord will be there. What a hodge podge picture that will be. I for one look forward to it and am afraid of it all at the same time. Amazing and perplexing.

Thoughts on...
May 10: 5th Sunday of Easter
New Testament Lesson: Acts 8:26-40

Our Lesson this week is a message for those who...
believe they are not good enough
have done too many wrongs
ask the question, how can anyone love me?
experience humiliation and who have been ostracized by society.

The Ethiopian Eunuch was beautiful, rich and powerful yet in the eyes of the Jewish tradition he was an outcast and was forbidden to even enter the temple. No one was allowed to talk with him, or have a meal with him, or even touch him.

He had gone to Jerusalem to worship, he knew there was something there that he wanted and yet he did not find the very thing in which he sought. Only in the desert did he find Philip, a deacon walking along the road, who the Spirit of God had placed there for just such a time as the Eunuch's passing.

So it was in this right place, at the right time, reading the right scripture that the Holy Spirit changed the Eunuch's life. All the shame, humiliation, desperation, and rejection was erased and he felt the acceptance of Christ through the words and actions of Philip as he explained the Isaiah passage, (the suffering servant text) to him.

Thank God for Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.