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SERMONS:
Pastor Peg posts her sermons from our most recent sermon series on this page. If you are interested in reading more of her sermons you can go to pastorpeg.wordpress.com. Our last series was an examination of how we can cope with change during these times. Our current series examines the baggage that we carry in life and how it hinders us . Enjoy.
Hymn Sing Explanations
August 16, 2026 Psalm 98
I was on vacation so my churches had hymns sings. These are brief summaries that were read about each of the hymns chosen.
HYMN UMH 145 Marning Has Broken
Morning has Broken was first published in 1931. The words are by English author Eleanor Farjeon who was inspired when she viewed the village of Alfriston in east Sussex at sunrise. She wanted to write a hymn that could be sung every day, and she wanted it to be set to a simple tune so that everyone could sing it. She chose a traditional Scottish-Gaelic tune called Bunessan, which people already knew because of a popular Christmas Carol called The Child in the Manger.
In 1971 English pop musician and folk singer Cat Stevens recorded it for his album Teaser and the Fire Cat. When Cat Stevens originally sang the song it was so short that his producer said it couldn't go on the album unless it was closer to 3 minutes. So, Cat Stevens created the version that we hear today on the radio. It reached number six on the US billboard charts and number 4 in Canada.
HYMN UMH 314 In the Garden
In the Garden is a gospel song written in 1912, in America, by C Austin Miles. Miles was a former pharmacist who served as editor and manager at a publishing house. It was written for the Lent-Easter season and reflects on Mary Magdalene's witness at the resurrection of Jesus at the garden tomb; humanity’s communion with God in the Garden of Eden; as well as the arrest of Jesus when he prayed beneath the trees in Gethsemane. Ironically, according to Miles’ great-granddaughter, the song was written in a cold and leaking basement in Pitman, New Jersey, that didn’t even have a window in it, let alone a view of the garden. It quickly became a very popular hymn especially among the traveling evangelism circuit. Many famous artists have sung this song such as Elvis Presley, Ella Fitzgerald, Roy Rogers, and Rosemary Clooney. People seem to connect to this song because it talks about a private time that they have with Jesus.
HYMN UMH 374 Precious Lord, Take My Hand
The words to Precious Lord, Take my Hand were written in 1932 by Thomas A. Dorsey, an African-American blues musician. The words are in response to Dorsey losing both his wife and son in childbirth. Dorsey set the words to the tune Maitland which people knew from an older hymn, but he gave a blues feel to it.
Dorsey’s father was a minister and his mother a musician, so he grew up with church music. When he was eight his family moved to Atlanta, but the move was difficult, and he ended up dropping out of school at age 12. He was fascinated with vaudeville and wanted to be musician, so he worked at the theaters and taught himself how to play the piano and other instruments, and to read music. Eventually he became a paid musician and, in 1919, he moved to Chicago, became immersed in the Jazz-Blues scene, and began to compose and play songs for nightclubs. He had a religious conversion and started to compose church music in the blues style, seeking to convey the emotions of religious experiences.
His music slowly began to catch on, although there was controversy because the older generation wanted to stick to traditional music. But the younger generation found his music to be expressive and exhilarating. Gradually his “gospel music” became accepted and now, with over 1,000 religious songs to his name, Dorsey is considered to be the father of gospel music. The historian Horace Boyer has said, “Dorsey was skilled at writing songs that not only captured the hopes, fears, and aspirations of the poor and disenfranchised African Americans, but also spoke to all people.”
Precious Lord has been sung at the funerals of Martin Luther King Jr. and many other noted activists. It has been translated into 50 languages. It’s included in the list of the essential songs of the 20th century by the National Endowment of the Arts, and in 2026 was listed as one of the 250 essential songs of America over its 250 years.
HYMN UMH 369 Blessed Assurance
Blessed Assurance was written in 1873 by two women of faith, Fanny Crosby and Phoebe Knapp. Fanny was visiting her friend Pheobe at the Knapp home and Pheobe played a new melody that she had just composed. When she was done, she asked Fanny, “What do you think the tune says? Fanny replied, “Blessed Assurance; Jesus is mine.”
Fanny Crosby was a prolific author and hymn writer. During her life it’s believed that she published 8,000 hymns. Back then the publishers of hymn books only liked to include one or two hymns from a person, so she invented 200 pen names so that she could have more hymns included in a book. She also published four books of poetry. The amazing thing about this was that she was blind from about six weeks old when she developed an infection that inflamed her eyes.
Pheobe Knapp was the Sunday School superintendent for the 200 children in her church. She wrote the curriculum and collaborated with Fanny on simple children’s songs to help the students remember their Bible lessons. She wrote over 500 tunes for her church and Sunday school hymns. Both women were members of the John Street Methodist church in New York City, although Fanny didn’t attend regularly because she and her husband moved a lot for his work.
Fanny Crosby said that the song reflected her walk of faith as expressed by the apostle Paul in Philippians 1:21: For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.
HYMN UMH 451 Be Thou My Vision
Be Thou My Vision is one of the oldest hymns in our hymnal. It was originally an Irish hymn dating from around the 10th century, and it is still sung in old Gaelic in Ireland today. The original hymn has about seven verses. These were translated from Old Gaelic into English in 1905. Then in 1912, another more modern translation was made with only five verses. The original five were used in Methodist hymnals in the early 20th century but were then shortened to three in later publications. Today we only sing the 1st, 2nd and 5th verses. (But you can look up the other verses on-line.)
The music we used for the hymn is also an old Gaelic tune. No one knows how old it is and it’s a good bet that it’s probably derived from the original tune. The tune is called Slade because that is the town nearest to where the hymn is believed to originate.
The lyrics follow the structure of an Irish prayer of protection called an Iorica. In the verses we don’t sing, the symbolism talks about God protecting us with His sword and shield. Military symbolism was common in the Middle Ages because of clan warfare. Also, God as the High Chieftain or High King is traditional in Irish medieval poetry, casting God as a heroic protector. So, when we sing this song, we are singing a song that monks and laity sang 1,000 years ago.
Serving With Joy through Change
August 9, 2026 11th Sunday of Pentecost
Psalm 100 John 15:1-11
When I was serving at the Sharon church in Connecticut a vacationing visitor came to a service. After the service she hung around for coffee hour and said to me that she had really enjoyed the service, especially the Joys and Concerns. That caught me up a bit, because while I feel connected to my congregation when we pray, I thought it was a little interesting that a stranger to the community would feel a strong connection. So, I asked her what she liked about the prayers.
She said that we lifted up joys and concerns. We give time to those things that we should celebrate as well as the things that we should be concerned about. And then she said something that surprised me. In her church they only lifted up concerns – never joys – so the pray time was often very depressing and sometimes people left church feeling worse than when they had come in.
Now I am not of the opinion that church should always be an only happy and uplifting place. I know that you all come here for various reasons. Sometimes you might find church to be a calming place where you can recover from a hectic week. Sometimes we come to learn something new in a sermon, a prayer, or a song. Sometimes we look for a connection time with our friends. Sometimes we need a spirit of uplift because things aren’t going well in our lives. Sometimes we need to bring with us a hurt in order to find a way that we can begin to heal. Sometimes we come because we haven’t been able to find God out there and we hope to connect with him in here.
There are hundreds of reasons why people come to church, and often our reasons and motivations for church change, sometimes week-to-week. That’s okay because everyone is on a different journey and this space should reflect that. And part of that journey is our joys as well as our sorrows.
We often view joy through the lense of counting our blessings, and our lives give us things to celebrate. Birthdays, weddings, graduations, sports victories, good catches when fishing, going out for ice cream with friends, county fairs – there is a lot in our lives to be joyous about. There are definite times when it is so easy to be joyful and say: Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth. Worship the LORD with gladness; come into his presence with singing. Know that the LORD is God. It is he that made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name. For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.
That song is a proclamation of all the blessings that we have in our live. We all feel that way sometimes; like we are connected to the greatness and goodness of God because we have so much that is good in our lives. And the psalmist tells us that that we should be singing in praise and thanksgiving. That we should share our joy with those around us.
Well, we don’t always live in those incredible highs that some experiences give us. But we all have little positive things that surround us and that happen to us. Those are little blessings that keep us going. We are told to count our many blessings to keep us positive. It sounds a little trite, but counting our blessings does work to help keep us in a positive frame of mind. I know several people who were in a negative state, and then they started to keep a blessing journal: To write down, at the end of the day, three things that they were blessed with. And this helped to get them out of their funk and into a better place. I offer it to you as one tool in our spiritual toolbox that we all can use.
But when you’re in the midst of radical change, sorrow, or tragedy, joy is a tough thing to find and hold onto. A couple of weeks ago I compared the process of accepting change to the process of grief: Denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance. We feel these emotions during change because we have to let go of something that was, and accept a new condition in our lives that maybe we don’t want or we don’t feel that we’re ready to handle.
And it is so easy when radical change happens to find yourself in a dark place without joy. Sometime the change is so grief-filled that we can’t find joy. Looking around and seeing blessings is a chore that doesn’t seem worth it.
Jesus understood this. You know I’ve read this description of Jesus as the vine many times and I’ve seen it as metaphor of spiritual growth – but this time, through the lense-of-change, I saw it as a process of life in Christ.
We are part of the vine of Christ; everything, not just people, are all branches of the main vine. And Christ says that some branches do die and that God prunes them. And I don’t think he necessarily means people. Sometimes customs or philosophies just don’t work anymore, and we need to get rid of them. We don’t send children off to work at the age of 10 anymore. We don’t have arranged marriages. It is okay for us to get rid of things in our culture that don’t work so that something else can grow in its place. The vine of our life is going to change; somethings will blossom and bear fruit and somethings are not going to work out. And sometimes there is going to be a serious pruning that we’re not going to like. But Jesus says that if we live in God’s Commandments, if we nurture ourselves with the love of God, our neighbors and ourselves, if we love as Jesus taught us how to love, then we will be abiding in God’s love and that God will be with us through all the change in our lives. In our sorrow and our joy God will be with us.
But how can we serve with joy through it all? Well, I want you to use the past, the present, and the future to help you with joy.
Back to the blessing journal. Sometimes it’s hard to find our blessing right here and now when we go through change. But we can remember the joyous times that we’ve had in the past. I urge all of you to write down any blessing and joys that you have had throughout your life in a little book. You don’t have to do this every day, and it doesn’t have to be chronological (our minds don’t always work that way.) But keep plugging away at it because what you are doing is creating a savings account of good memories that you can look at when you feel that you don’t have joys in your life. A bank savings account is your emergency fund for difficult or unexpected events, right? A blessing book is your emergency fund for when times get bad.
Now that’s your past. The present is a bit more active. First of all, in that blessing book write down something good that happened to you today. You can mix it up with the other stuff or divide your book in half, however you want to do it. Second of all, consciously do one thing a day that will give you joy, and for inspiration follow the three Great Commandments while doing this. Maybe your joy today will be praying and connecting with God. Maybe your joy today will be reaching out to a neighbor who needs a phone call. Maybe your joy will be cleaning out a closet. Maybe your joy will be watching a sunset. Maybe your joy will be baking cookies for a birthday girl or boy. Give yourself an assignment every day to do something joyous. Even if it’s a little thing it’s still a joy.
Now I know that if you are in a radical change and the world is dark, it’s hard to go forward and connect with God and do something nice for yourself or another person. But actually, it’s acts of kindness that keep us going and bring us closer to God. I remember reading that the people who made it through the holocaust camps were often the ones who could be kind to others and help others. Finding small moments of joy will get us through dark places.
And then there’s the future. And the future is very scary because we don’t know if there’s going to be joy or sorrow. But when we’re going through change, we have the assurance that God’s Holy Spirit is going before us. God’s plan is already happening in the future, we’re just catching up to it. All we do now, God is taking and using to build the His kingdom. And Jesus tells us that if we abide in his love, we can ask God to show us the way into the future. And maybe the change we fear and think we are not ready for, we’re being made ready for it now.
So find the joy in your life and you will be able to weather and find the joy in change. And we will find that Jesus will have joy in us, and our joy in Him will become complete.
Connecting in Changing Times
August 2, 2026 10th Sunday of Pentecost Communion
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 Romans 12:3-11
May you live in interesting times. That’s an old Arabic saying that can be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, interesting times produce a lot of new things. Often there is new technology that comes out of the necessity to solve problems. Or there’s new art and literature as people work through the failures and triumphs that they’re living with. But interesting times don't promise a lot of stability because they happen in the midst of a lot of change.
I would say that we’re living in interesting times. Just to name a few interesting items: Our technology is changing at a breakneck pace, people are trying to work through our political theories which are in flux, and we are experiencing global climate change. All of this has happened before. When the printing press was invented, it revolutionized the way people exchanged ideas. Instead of painstakingly copying a manuscript by hand, multiple copies of a book could be manufactured in a few days. The issue of slavery rewrote the values of the political parties in the United States. And in 1812, after several volcanos erupted, the world had a yearlong winter in which crops around the world produced lower harvests or failed completely.
Throughout history humanity has had to adjust, whether we like it or not. And yet, we are still here. What keeps us going? It’s our connections and relationships with ourselves, each other, and with God.
Think about what happens when you have a connection with God – a belief that there is a power that is beyond yourself. George Lucas classified this as The Force for his films, but he admitted in an interview that he didn’t make up The Force. It was just the name he gave to the power that humanity has tried to define through every religion on the earth. As Christians we don’t sub-divide that power like the Greeks or Egyptians did; we define it as one entity called God. And the Bible tells us to love God, this creative-generative power of the universe, with all our beings. That’s the first commandment. We are asked to acknowledge the existence of the power, and we are offered a relationship with it.
How we tap into that power is through worship and offerings. I like to think of worship as communicating directly with that power. You can do it through prayer, meditation, journaling, art, music, gardening, or fishing – it doesn’t matter what vehicle you use. When you worship, you’re acknowledging this power outside of you that gives you energy.
Offerings are another way we worship. I don’t just mean giving our offerings on Sunday morning. Those offerings are important because you’re saying that you want this church to continue as an organization that helps people in the community and provides a safe space for people to come together and worship. But offerings are bigger than that.
Think of the second commandment: To love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Every act of help, kindness, mercy, or compassion, is an offering to God. The prophet Micah once said: You know what is good. To do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. Also, every time we are kind to ourselves and take care of ourselves is also an offering to God.
And this is where the third commandment comes in: To love each other as Jesus has loved us. Now I want to think for a minute about how Jesus loved us. First of all, Jesus was kind to everyone. This part has to do with loving our neighbors; He didn’t show partiality to Jewish people or Gentiles. He talked with, listened to and healed women, children, Samaritans, Greek philosophers, Roman Centurions, lepers, Pharisees, Siro-Phoenicians, rich and poor people, along with the regular Jewish population. Can we do the same? Can we be friends with people of other nations and races, and other social-economic groups? Can we speak with the Lepers of our time: people who have substance abuse problems or serious diseases?
Second, Jesus taught us that God loves us and forgives us. This has to do with loving ourselves. Jesus gave us his salvation so that we don’t have to be trapped in cycle of unforgiveness and shame when we make mistakes. We don’t need to be constantly beating ourselves up. When we make a mistake, we can go to God and Jesus and confess what we did, and then, knowing that we are forgiven for messing up, we can ask them to give us the strength to fix things and to try to make things right. Being kind to yourself is understanding that you are going to make mistakes but with Jesus’ help you can find a solution that will repair and lead to your absolution.
But what does that have to do with coping with interesting times? Well, it means that what we need to get through the day is to dedicate ourselves to working on loving relationships. How can we love the people around us? How can we connect with them and let them know that in these times that we are there to help each other. Yes, it helps to bring people a casserole when they need it, but just connecting with people strengthens all of us because then we know that we’re not alone.
Now I know that some people are not lovable and some people are downright annoying. I had a friend who used to say: We are commanded to love everyone; but that doesn’t mean you have to have lunch with them. If you know of a person who you can’t have lunch with you can pray for them. You can pray that they get over whatever hurt or stress is causing them to be mean. You can pray for yourself to realize that they are hurting. You can pray that you don’t contribute to their problems. And you can pray for the realization that their meanness is not about you. (After all, 99% of life is not about us. Yes, 1% is, and that’s the part we should be paying attention to: but reduce your stress and leave the other 99% alone.)
Also, look at our network of connections. Okay, I’m going to diverge here a bit and talk about the connections in the Methodist church. We all know that this single church is connected to 9 others in the Delaware Headwaters charge and Mountain Beacon Parish. And I think that it’s really great that we do stuff together like the Soup’s On, the Mine Kill worship and most recently the Family Fun Day. Maybe each church could do all of that alone, but it’s more fun when all of us work together. If this church has an idea for a new ministry, then all the other churches can help us realize that idea. Our churches are stronger together.
But it’s the same with all of our connections. We can get more done when we band together to support our schools in a positive way. When we reach out to make our community parks better so that we can have a place to gather. When we help out with a local thrift store or our animal shelter. All those connections go into a feedback loop of positivity that strengthens everyone around us.
And we can reach beyond our communities with our love through organizations like UMCOR (the United Methodist Committee on relief) or the Red Cross. We live in a web of connections that give us opportunities to use our talents. And each time we connect with an offering of love we are worshiping and connecting to the divine force of the universe.
All times, in some ways, are interesting. All times, in some ways, carry a certain amount of stress with them. But don’t worry about the 99% of noise. Focus that on that 1% that is yours, and with the connecting power of Jesus’ love for your neighbor and yourself and you will be connecting with The Great Force of the universe.
Adaptability to Change
July 26, 2026 9th Sunday of Pentecost
Ruth 1:1-18 Philippians 4:11-13
Change is inevitable. The world changes whether we want it to or not. Sometimes something cataclysmic happens like a tornado, or earthquake, and sometimes something personal happens to us like a family member dying.
Ruth’s family experienced both. First her future husband’s family moved to Moab (which was located on the eastern side of the dead sea) because of famine, a cataclysmic event. They built a life and the two sons ended up marrying local girls. Unfortunately, after 10 years, a personal tragedy happened and the two sons died. Naomi was left without any family support, and she had to make a tough decision: Would she stay in Moab or go back to her hometown in Israel? Her daughter-in laws, Ruth and Orpah, also had to make the decision to go back to their families or stay with her.
Naomi makes the decision to return to Israel. But the story presents that decision without any of angst that she must have been working through in her mind and heart.
How many of you have heard of the five stages of grief? When we lose something we experience grief in five stages: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. These stages don’t always happen in that order, although acceptance is usually the last one. When we go through an event that forces us to change, or when we experience change in our lives, we can also go through those five stages. Why? Because when something changes, or we have to change our behavior or how we do things, we also lose what was or what was before. Resistance to change often is centered around the grief of that loss.
Let’s take a look at that for a minute: You all fill in a change you’ve had recently into this dialogue. Denial: This isn’t happening; nothing’s changing; and everything will return to normal soon. Anger: Why on earth does this have to change? We were all doing fine with the old system. Bargaining: Maybe if I do X, Y, and Z we can fix things and we won’t have to change anything. Depression: I really like the old way of doing things. I was comfortable with it. I don’t want things to change. Acceptance: Well, I suppose we’ll have to figure out what to do now.
I’m sure that Naomi went through all those stages before she made her decision.
The two daughters in law also had to evaluate their lives. And here’s where we see two different personalities. Ruth was willing to take a risk, and she went with Naomi into a land that she didn’t know. Orpah wanted to play it safe, and she went back to her parents. And that’s okay, because to ask someone to leave their home and culture that they’re comfortable with is tough. The Bible presents Ruth as being the more loving and devoted daughter in law because of that decision, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I think we need to allow that maybe Orpah didn’t have the personality or the courage to take a risk like that. Also, maybe Orpah had a good and loving relationship with her parents that she didn’t want to give up. Maybe Ruth didn’t have a good family to return to. How we accept change and follow through into future actions has as much to do with our personalities and circumstances as it does with our opportunities.
We don’t know what happened to Orpah – did she return to her parents, and find another person to marry and maybe have children? She could have had a very happy life. Ruth though, had adventure. She supported Naomi, which earned her respect among the community that she was adopted into. Ruth also found a husband, Boaz, who saw her devotion and worth, and eventually she became the mother of King David’s grandfather. I’m sure that she was held as a beacon and remembered as a good example to her family and eventually the nation. Because after all she has her own story in the Bible.
Naomi, Ruth, and Orpah all accepted the change that happened to them and they ended up in pretty good places. But they had to get to acceptance before they could move forward.
You all know that I’m taking a class this week and my textbook had a very interesting quote in it that really struck me. Kennon Callah wrote a book in 1997 called Twelve Keys to an Effective Church. (The book is a bit out of date logistically because the world has really changed in 30 years.) But the quote says: The dark malaise of the Christian Church in our time is that so many congregations have developed a preoccupation with their weaknesses, their problems, and their concerns it's as if there were no open tomb or risen Lord. It's as if these congregations preferred to live locked in a closed tomb, focusing on their past and refusing to recognize the strengths God has shared with them, that they might be in ministry in the world.
Wow! He’s talking about churches, but I think you can apply that to any change we go through and our resistance to change. When something changes, we get so preoccupied with our denial, anger, bargaining and depression about the change, that we tend to see our weaknesses that tell us why we can’t change. And while we are sitting in our denial, anger, bargaining and depression, and all the reasons why we can’t change, we close ourselves off to the possible joy of any future possibilities.
What happened when Jesus walked out of the tomb? Jesus showed us that what we think is the end of the story is only the beginning. The disciples believed that Jesus’ movement was done; that the last three years of their lives was over. And Jesus walked into the Upper Room and proved to them that they didn’t have to worry about death because there was a continuation of life.
No matter what the change is that happens in our lives there is a continuation. But how do we adapt to change? Well first of all, we have to get out of a traditional way of thinking and move into an innovative way of thinking.
Before change happens, we are in a place of tradition-slash-comfort. We’re going a long with our lives and they’re okay. But then change happens and we end up in a place that’s uncomfortable, so we try to fix it. And often we try to fix it to get it back to the way it was before. But, we need to acknowledge that nothing ever goes back to the way it was before. We need to be thinking of and allowing ourselves to be moving into what the new normal is going to be.
I once read about a church that had aged and it didn’t have kids anymore and a new pastor came onto the scene. When the pastor asked them: What do you do for Christmas services? the congregation lamented that they could no longer have a pageant because they didn’t have any children. In days past they had wonderful pageants with a full complement of the holy family, angels, shepherds, wise men, and sheep, plus a full chorus to sing the hymns. But now they don’t have that anymore.
Okay – we’ve got grief going here, understandably those sound like they were good times. But then the pastor asked them: Well, why can’t you do a pageant with adults playing the roles, or at least doing the readings of the parts? The congregation is shocked: We can’t do that! Christmas eve pageants are for children.
Maybe eventually that congregation got out of that tomb that they had stuck themselves in. Maybe the congregation will try something different and innovative. When the do they will walk out of that tomb and move into a new version of themselves instead of being stuck.
Where are we stuck? What change in our lives are we not accepting? What version of ourselves are we refusing to allow to adapt to a new reality? And why are we not allowing ourselves to dream of innovation, to try something new? What are we afraid of? Is it failure? That’s a valid fear. Is it that we won’t know how to do the new thing and make mistakes? That could happen.
When you get to that uncertainty you can remember Paul who said: In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
Christ doesn’t want us to stay in our tombs. He’s there to give you strength when you need it. There is a big world out there of possibilities. He wants us to walk out into the newness that life brings us, and we can do all thing with God, Christ and the Holy Spirit who are with us and giving us their strength.
July 19th was our all Parish worship and Picnic at Mine Kill State Park. I did not preach and the laity ran our worship service. A fun time was had by all.
Persevering Through Change
July 12, 2026 7th Sunday in Pentecost
Exodus 16:1-11 Romans 5:1-5
There's the saying that I use to put on my checks attributed to Benjamin Franklin which says: Nothing is certain but death and taxes. I tend to agree with that, except I would have to change it a little to: Nothing is certain but death, taxes, and change.
Change is the natural order of life. We tend to think of stability as being a no-change state of being, but in reality we are changing all the time. Just standing here right now the cells in my body are going through a continual cyclone of change. Cells are dying, cells are being renewed. I have blood cells moving through my system bringing oxygen to various places. I have white blood cells that are out there searching for infections that they can get rid of. Just standing outside and looking out at nature there is constant change happening under the surface of the same view that we see every day from the front door of our homes.
When I studied philosophy, I noticed there was a distinct difference between Western philosophy and Eastern philosophy. Western philosophy looks for the concepts that are consistent and which don't change; then it moves to change. Eastern philosophy, especially Chinese philosophy, is actually based on the fact that life changes, and starts with the question: What is the change and how does one adapt to the changes?
In Chinese philosophy there are three types of change that you used to assess any given situation. The first is the no-change point, the point of consistency that you have at that moment. The second is cyclic change, the change that repeats itself. An example of this would be the seasons: Spring, summer, fall, winter. The third change is evolutionary change. That’s the type of change that is growing into something or even decaying into something. And all this change interacts with each other. A tree can be viewed as all these changes at once. It is the tree that’s always there in your yard. But the tree changes through the seasons in a regular cycle. Yet it’s also growing from a seed, to a full grown tree, to then dying, and becoming dirt again. To assess a situation you examine what the no-change point is, what the cyclic change is, and what the evolutionary change is.
I think that it's part of our human nature to be afraid of change. We don't like it because change means that something new and different is happening and we don't know if we'll be able to handle it. Will our skill sets be applicable to the new job; or the new relationship; or the new place that we're moving to? Are we going to be able to handle the subject in school that we've never done before? I'll be honest I was totally scared when I took geometry. I was pretty good with algebra, but geometry was very different and I didn't know if I could deal with it. But you know, I got through it.
And sometimes we don't believe that we can handle something new. When I went to college in Colorado I had so many friends who said: I can't imagine going that far away to school. You can imagine some of the reactions I got when people found out that I was moving to Japan: I could never do that! I could never go live in a country that didn't speak English. It is amazing the limits we put on our own abilities to grow and change.
A lot of the story of Exodus, when the Israelis are led out of Egypt, is about resistance to change. The Israelites have gotten so used to living in Egypt under the conditions of slavery that they didn't know how to be a people and a nation who could determine their own destiny. They really didn't know how to take care of themselves. They find themselves with a lack of food – which admittedly is a worrying thing – but instead of putting their minds to solving the problem they complained to Moses that it would have been better to die in Egypt than to be hungry now in the desert.
They lament the fact that at least in Egypt they would be sitting by the flesh pots, the household pots that meat was cooked in. The Israelites as slaves probably wouldn't have been allowed to eat the meat; that was reserved for their masters. They would have been stuck with bread and Egyptian beer, and maybe a carrot or two. But at least they would have smelled the meat cooking; a smell which was comforting to them. Moses took them out of their comfort zone in order for them to gain their freedom and self-determination. And they’re frankly very scared because they just don't know how to do and be these new people.
But all during those travels, God shows the Israelites that He is with them, and that He is providing for them. He gives them manna from heaven. (And, yes, I tried to look up what that was and nobody knows what it is.) He provides them water in the desert and meat for them in the form of a quail migration. And most importantly he provides for them commandments and laws that they can live by and build a nation from.
And these commandments are so important, so right, and work so well that they endure down through the ages. Two thousand years later Jesus is challenged by a Pharisee to name the most important commandment and Jesus replies: Love God with your whole being and love your neighbor as you love yourself. On this all the other commandments are based.
And that right there, for us is our no-change-point. Plus we’ve been given a third commandment: To love others as Christ has loved us, to add to our no-change point.
Look, I know that the world is changing very rapidly. When I was a kid, we still had dial phones that were connected to the wall; computers were used only for major things like collecting weather data; and if you wanted to make a copy of a piece of paper you used a carbon copy sheet. Now I have a phone and a computer in my hand, and a printer sitting on a table at home.
When I was young, a woman wasn’t allowed to have a bank account without male permission and people who were not white were often refused spaces at colleges or mortgages to buy houses. There has been progress and change, but sometimes it happens so fast that we feel the ground is shifting beneath us and that the future is unsteady.
But how we get through the change is to evaluate the changes and our actions against the commandments of Christ. Are we using the changes to help us live in the connection of love with God, our neighbors, and ourselves? And are we doing it the way Christ wants us to live it?
This phone can be used to contact me at any time to let me know when one of my parishioners needs me, instead of just leaving me a message and hoping that it will get through. Facebook can help me get the word out about events like a Bible Study or Youth Group, but it can also be a platform of gossip, lies, hateful things and division. We have to ask ourselves when we text or post messages: Are we spreading dignity, respect and love, or are we spreading hate?
Life changes; but being a disciple of Jesus doesn’t. Being kind to others, respecting others, giving people their dignity, showing forgiveness when we make mistakes, and giving grace by helping each other to get out of the messes that we make, is our no-change consistency of action that keeps us grounded. It is who we are, and who we will continue to be, and become better at being, because that’s what following Jesus is all about. And sometimes we have to wrestle with how we’re going to do that in our crazy world. But we are not doing it alone; we’re here to help each other do it right.
When Paul says We are justified by faith, that doesn’t mean we’re right all the time. It means we are made right by God’s grace and forgiveness; and knowing that we can handle anything that the world throws at us.
So embrace change. Embrace the cycles, embrace the evolution of growth and decay, knowing that you are standing on the no-change point of God’s love and Christ’s salvation. And no matter what the world throws at you, you’re going to make it through, because God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are walking with you.
What Ministry are We Supporting?
July 5, 2026 6th Sunday of Pentecost Communion
Acts 16:16-24 Acts 16:25-40
In the Book of Acts, Peter and Paul travel all over the ancient world bringing to people the message of Christ. Chapter 16 focuses mostly on Paul and his adventures in Greece. In the narrative that we read today, Paul is in Phillipi, which is located in the northern part of Greece.
There he meets a woman called Lydia and her husband while he’s preaching, probably in the marketplace. Lydia is a businesswoman, who deals with imported purple cloth, a very luxury item, and she and her husband are so impressed with what Paul has to say that the ask to be baptized. Then Lydia invites Paul and his traveling companions, Luke and Silas, to stay at their home while they’re in town. Everyday Paul and his companions go to the place of prayer, which was probably the synagogue, and were followed by a woman who apparently had the ability to tell fortunes and who would proclaim in a loud voice that they were from the most high God. Paul gets annoyed and orders the woman to stop in Christ’s name, causing the spirit of divination to leave her and causing her owners to lose money.
So, the owners have Paul and Silas arrested and have them put in jail for essentially disturbing the peace, when actually all they were doing was proclaiming Christ. The Bible doesn’t mention who the owners were but they were probably prominent citizens with influence, which is maybe why Paul and Silas are given such harsh sentences. After all, Paul didn’t harm the girl or try to steal her away. The owners don’t even mention the girl in the charges rather they say: These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.
That’s not very specific but somehow the judge decides to not only have them stripped and flogged, but he puts them in the deepest cell in the jail and in shackles. That that kind of treatment was only reserved for really dangerous criminals. The harsh sentence tells me that the judge is trying to appease someone powerful.
Now I’m sure that Paul and Silas didn’t feel very good about being stripped, beaten and thrown into the nastiest part of the jail. But they don’t sit there complaining. They don’t cry and make themselves the victims: Oh, look what they’ve done to us. We’re the unluckiest people in the world. No one else has ever been treated as badly. No, they do not do that. They start praying, and singing hymns, very loudly. Loudly enough that the other prisoners are listening.
That is an act of faith and defiance. And don’t think that it hasn’t been used down through the years. Do you know that when Rosa Parks was arrested for sitting on that bus the cops thought that it would be fun to put her in the cells where all the drunk street walkers were? It was meant as an act of humiliation. Rosa introduced herself, told them why she was there – which won her some sympathy – and then she said she was going to pray, and did they want to join her? They did. She had a prayer meeting in that cell. Not only was she sustaining herself in the midst of injustice, but she also sustained others. Now that’s supporting ministry.
Well, in the middle of the night there’s an earthquake. All the chains fall off and the doors are opened. The jailer wakes up, sees the open doors, and assumes that the prisoners have escaped. This is pretty much a career-ender for him, so he decides to kill himself. But just before he plunges his sword, Paul tells him that they’re still here. Now the miracle is not the earthquake or the doors opening – earthquakes are a dime a dozen in the middle east and doors will open during earthquakes – the miracle is that Paul and Silas’s chains are off. Earthquakes can’t do that. The jailer and his family are converted and baptized.
The next day Paul and Silas are informed that they are free to go. You have to wonder what was going on behind the scenes. Perhaps Lydia, who I am sure was prominent citizen in her own right, got involved. The judge reconsidered his action, but now Paul makes a defiant statement: They have beaten us in public, uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison; and now are they going to discharge us in secret? Certainly not! Let them come and take us out themselves.
Paul is calling out the injustice that he and Silas faced. And he is not willing to sweep it under the rug. This is an act of living as Christ. Christ called out injustice when he saw it. We like to present Jesus as a loving figure, and he is, but he wasn’t a pushover. He calls us to live as loving people to each other. He calls on us to share our blessings and talent to make the world a better place to live for all of us.
Christ stood up against injustice. He stopped the stoning of a woman. He healed people on the sabbath, when authority figures said it wasn’t right to do that. He called out the hypocrisy of Pharisees. He overturned the money tables in the Temple because the lenders, in collusion with the Temple, were running a legal extortion operation on poor people and pilgrims.
Paul has been caught up in an act of injustice. He’s been beaten and imprisoned out of spite, on trumped-up charges. And he is not going to go away quietly; he is going to make the people involved acknowledge and take responsibility for their actions. And they do. The magistrates come and apologize and ask Paul and Silas to leave the city, which they do after they say goodbye to Lydia’s family. And I’m sure they thanked her and her husband for supporting them.
This day, the day after the 250th Birthday of our country, is a good day to ask ourselves if we are supporting justice ministries in our communities.
When Jesus was living people didn’t have power. Christianity was essentially a quiet rebellion for the powerless. By following Christ people built communities where people supported each other to make their worlds better. If you could make a cloak for a poor widow who had nothing, that was a justice ministry. If you helped to feed a family, that was a justice ministry. If you took a child in who had no parents, that was a justice ministry. If you could bring clothing and food to people in prison, that was a justice ministry. Christians lived under a giant, soul-crushing system that favored the rich and powerful, but they knew that if they could treat each other with love, and help each other get through life with dignity, that within the confines of their community they could have a measure of fairness and hope.
We are so blessed to be living in a country that has the value of equality under the law. We are so blessed to not have institutionalized slavery. Yes, it was there at one point, but we got rid of it, mostly because it was recognized as being unchristian. We are blessed to be able to vote for our leaders instead of being subjected to civil wars to decide who is going to sit on the throne. We are blessed to be able to speak our opinions to each other, and to have them corrected by learning new information when they are wrong.
All of these blessings are built on Christian ideals. And I know that some people will discount Christian ideals and say that they are simply humane ideals that all humans have. But if you’ve read history, you know that not all cultures have been very humane. Christ called for us to live in love and respect, and that is the ideal I hope to strive for personally and I want my country to do that too.
But our country is only strong with that when we live and support ministries that bring liberty and justice for all. And isn’t that what Jesus wanted: Freedom from sin in the knowledge that we are loved and forgiven, and justice for all people equally so that we may love each other without fear.
So what ministries are we supporting? You don’t have to make a big contribution. Treat people of other ethnicities as equal and as children of God. Help out your neighbors in need through food or other acts of service. Refrain from the hate that is spewed by those who want to divide us and act in ways that unite us. And speak out when you see someone treated unfairly. And no one ever said it would be easy, but remember, as Paul did in that prison, that God is always there for you to pray to, sing to, and call on for strength. May we all find and live that strength for ourselves, our family, our neighbors, our communities, and our nation.
Mentoring New Leaders
June 28, 2026 5th Sunday of Pentecost
Acts 16:1-5 Philippians 2:19-25
I’m sure you’ve heard me mention before the book called The Peter Principle. It’s a satire which says that within corporations, people rise because of their competency but then eventually they will be promoted to a position where they will be incompetent. When they hit their level of incompetency it becomes a problem because you can’t promote them any further, but you can’t demote them, and eventually their incompetency trickles down to everything beneath them, gradually causing the self-destruction of the company.
It's brilliantly written and I recommend it to anyone who is a part of a profit or nonprofit organization. It doesn’t matter if you have one or multiple tiers of management; an incompetent manager is going to create incompetence underneath them.
Something struck me while I was reading this book: At no time do the authors suggest a solution to this dilemma. I think since the authors wrote it as a satire they weren’t interested in offering a solution. But I thought, maybe because one of my disciplines was as a teacher: Oh my gosh, all you need to do is to train someone coming onto a new position in what the responsibilities are and how they should go about this. A good training program will solve all the problems that the book raises.
Recently my husband and I got into this science fiction drama called The Silo. It's about people in a post-apocalyptic world who reside in giant underground silos, with a complex social structure that’s meant to help them survive. When someone gets old enough, they become a shadow to someone who is an expert in their field. It’s a learn by doing thing. As they work with the expert, the expert passes down all the accumulated knowledge that’s been learned over years and years of time, plus any innovations that the new expert might have made. It’s like an apprentice, journeyman, and master Craftsman relationship. And this goes for everything, from teachers, to policemen, to engineers.
But isn't that what a mentor program is? We pass down our systems to the next generation so that our systems can keep functioning. The problem with our modern culture is that we’ve kind of lost the traditions of personal mentoring. Our systems have become specialized, and we now go to school or special training programs for our jobs. And that’s okay because there is an efficiency in that method. But anyone will tell you whose worked for a while that the best way to get experiential knowledge is to have a mentor connected with a training program. The mentor usually knows the pitfalls and can show you how to avoid them, and the right way to do things so that you can succeed.
Christianity actually grew with mentorship. Early Christians didn’t have seminaries or special classes to take. People came to Christianity and if someone, like Peter or Paul, found someone who was especially good at teaching and preaching the gospel, or organizing a church, then they would take them under their wing and pass on their knowledge to them. One of the first of these disciples was Timothy, who Paul found in Lystra, a town in Southern Turkey. Timothy was very devout, and since he was Greek and Jewish he could speak to both cultures about Jesus.
Timothy is mentioned all through the New Testament. He starts out as a companion of Paul and then becomes a preacher. Soon he’s Paul’s right-hand man, going out and checking up on churches that he and Paul planted. Paul in his letters recommends Timothy to congregations as someone who is faithful, a good speaker, and a problem solver.
When you string the references in Paul’s letters together you see the development of Timothy from apprentice to journeyman, to finally a master disciple and minister. When Paul goes to Rome, Timothy basically takes over Paul’s job in Turkey and Greece. You might say that Timothy was one of the first District Superintendents and eventually one of the first Bishops of the area. But this couldn’t have happened without Paul’s loving mentoring of Timothy. And I have no doubt that it was loving because Timothy and Paul worked together for a long time, and we don’t work with people for a long time unless we really like them.
While I think that many of us do look for mentors in our work and, despite what the Peter Principle says, I do think that there are a lot of jobs out there that provide training and mentorship, I unfortunately think that when it comes to our non-profit organizations, and I include churches in this mix, we don’t mentor or raise up new leaders very well.
I know of one church where the lay-leader of the church (a wonderful person) held that position for about 35 years. Now I know, people get stuck in positions because someone else doesn’t want to step up, or the person in the position doesn’t want to give up control, or they don’t know how to teach, or they feel it’s an imposition to ask for help. There are a lot of reasons to be stuck, and I don’t know what this lay-leader’s reason was. But the point is, they didn’t train anyone to do the job, so when they went into a nursing home there was no one who knew how to do the job. And since the lay-leader had taken on more responsibility to the position than was needed, (like running the fall craft fair, plus lots of other jobs) no-one wanted the job because they were afraid of the amount of work.
The church floundered until the minister divided the work into a proper proportion. And that was almost done with a crowbar because people had been conditioned to believe that only the lay-leader could do all the jobs – not that they could be subdivided. In the end it was the church that was stuck and had to be unstuck to move on. Don’t worry – they’re doing okay now.
Now that’s an extreme example but let me give you another one that’s more common. A husband and wife, who were trustee and treasurer, decided to retire to another state where their grandchildren lived. They went to another younger husband and wife in the church and told them: Now it’s your turn to keep the church going, and they just handed over the reins. There was no shadowing, no mentoring; and the younger husband and wife thought: This is how it’s supposed to be, and there was quite a bit of incompetency for a few years. The sad thing was, when people offered to help, they refused because they thought that by getting help that they would be betraying the system.
I could add some more examples, but I think you all get the picture. If we don’t take people under our wings and teach them how our churches are run, then we won’t keep going once people need to retire.
But also, by having people learn how our church works, we create a culture of awareness and transparency, which fosters a better understanding of the system we’re in.
And one of the ways that we do get stuck is because we don’t ask for help, because we believe that a position, whether it be a treasurer or a recording secretary, can only be done by one person. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Maybe we can have two recording secretaries for meetings who switch off – that way neither one will become burned out. We can think out-side of the box to raise up leaders and to relieve the stress of our current leaders.
And I know, one of the reasons why people hesitate to ask for help is because we don’t know how to teach others our job. But think of this: Often when we teach other people our job (or anything actually) we clarify how we do something and why to ourselves. I always became a better teacher when I taught other teachers how to teach, because I had to first figure out what I was doing.
But this isn’t just confined to how we manage our churches. I really think that one of the ways we can live in Christian fellowship is by being mentors to each other about our Christian journeys. In order for us to be Christian leaders, we need to share how we cope to help each other get through this crazy world that sometimes doesn’t seem to want us to live as disciples of Christ. We need to let go of our fear of asking for help in our journeys when they become difficult, and we shouldn’t be shy about sharing our triumphs either. (That’s something I also need to work on.)
But if we open ourselves up and become a bit more vulnerable and teach, help, and ask for help, in the spirit of love that Jesus teaches us, that will strengthen us and our relationships with each other, and we will become a more connected and more loving church. Like Timothy and Paul, we can do this by acting in the love and name of Jesus.
Welcoming All
June 21, 2026 4th Sunday of Pentecost Father’s Day
Acts 10:1-8 Acts 10:19-35
We all live inside our stories. How does that happen? Well, we all get out into the world, and do things, and then we tell the story of our experience. Our stories are usually from our perspective, because it's the one we have. Although sometimes we do include the perspective of others in our stories. Like we say: She was upset because she was stood up by her boyfriend. We include other’s perspectives because we have empathy and we’re trying to understand where people are coming from. But mostly the stories that we tell articulate what we've been through.
Unfortunately, one type of story that we tell ourselves are stereotypes. Old people can't use computers. They just don't have the training, or they don't want to learn how to do it. Or: Younger people are only interested in what they can learn on their phones, not what they can learn out there in the real world. Maybe in your experience those stories are real or not, but we do classify groups of people according to those stories, and we interact with them according to those stories.
Peter had grown up with the story that the Jewish people were the chosen people of God. Everyone else was classified as a gentile. It didn't matter what their belief system was, gentiles were not holy, couldn't understand holiness, and were unclean people. And if a Jewish person hung around a gentile, they could become unclean as well. Peter lived inside this story. I don't think he hated people who weren't Jewish, he just knew that he had to avoid them and he really wanted nothing to do with them.
And then he met this guy called Jesus who was obviously a holy man, and as a holy man was not supposed to associate with anyone who was unclean in any way. Remember when Peter first met Jesus and he realized how holy Jesus was? He said: Get away from me Lord, for I am a sinner, and therefore unclean, and you should not be anywhere near me. But Jesus, instead of rejecting him, offered to Peter to come and be one of his disciples.
Now while Peter was with Jesus, Jesus was interacting with quite a lot of people who Peter would consider to be unacceptable according to the story in Peter’s head. There was that Samaritan woman at the well; I mean proper Jews were not supposed to associate with Samaritans. And then there was that woman with the open wound; Jesus wasn't supposed to be near anyone who was that kind of sick. And there was that woman who was accused of adultery who Jesus saved; a holy man is not supposed to associate with an adulterous woman. And then there were those Greek philosophers who Jesus talked to; he wasn’t supposed to be talking with gentiles. And there were there was that Siro-Phoenician woman whose son Jesus brought back to life; another gentile who he shouldn't have spoken to.
This is actually a short version of a long list. Peter was exposed to a lot of incidences with Jesus that went against the story that Jews weren't supposed to associate with gentiles. You’ve got to wonder how he processed that. Did his story get changed by those encounters or did he cling to that version of the exclusive Jew for himself?
After Jesus ascended to heaven Peter became the leader of the church in Jerusalem. But Peter was still concentrating his efforts of making disciples of all nations by connecting with Jewish people who were living in other nations. The Jewish population was spread all throughout the Middle East and all around the Mediterranean. Wherever the Romans had established their empire, Jewish people existed. And the phenomenon of the Holy Spirit and the tongues of fire at Pentecost was a Jewish phenomenon because Jews from all of these nations were gathered in Jerusalem on a pilgrimage for the holiday of Shauvot, and they were the ones who were baptized that day.
So, when Peter is told to go talk to the centurion he's going against that story that he's listened to, told to others, and internalized for a greater part of his life. I'm not so sure that even with all of the experiences that he had with Jesus that he had let go of, or changed, that story. And I suspect that because there’s a middle part of this scripture that we're not reading today. You see, before the men arrive to tell Peter that the centurion wanted to talk to him, Peter has a vision of God spreading a table of all these different types of animals that are forbidden for Jewish people to eat. God tells him three times go ahead and eat these animals, and Peter being a good Jew, says: No Lord, I will not eat anything that is unclean. Then God replies that what God has created is not unclean.
Now with that vision in mind, that what God has created is not unclean, Peter goes to meet the centurion Cornelius. Cornilius, who is a devote man, tells Peter his story, that he was praying and God told him that should seek Peter out for guidance, and Peter realizes that this is a man who is not Jewish and yet he’s seeking salvation. So, he tells him the story of Jesus.
It’s at that moment that Peter’s story changed. He stopped telling himself the old story of the unclean gentiles and he started telling himself the new story of the gentiles who are seeking salvation. Paul gets a lot of credit for being the apostle to the gentiles, but, if you look at the scriptures, Peter also opens the door for the Christian religion to become truly a religion of all nations and of all people.
That's the thing about Christianity, it asks us to examine the stories that we’re living and to change them if they’re wrong. Think of the stories that our own culture has told to us throughout the years. The story that black people cannot be as intelligent as white people. The story that women are not as capable as men and that they need to be led and learn how to follow.
Think of the story that we see in the media that all immigrants are criminals and a danger to our society. I remember once I was telling my students that my family had been in this country since before the American Revolution. And they said to me: Oh, you're a real American. And I replied: I am an American, but I know a woman who immigrated from China when China became communist. She wasn't born here and yet she is an American citizen and has contributed greatly to this country. She is just as American as I am.
I hope that on that day I changed the stories that my students were telling themselves in their heads about who an American was.
We walk around like Peter with the assumptions that we and, other people, are a certain way and that they can't change, or grow, or become something different. And unfortunately, we are often telling ourselves a false narrative.
And yet, Jesus asks us to change our stories from ones of condemnation, like Peter had about gentiles, to ones of grace, empathy, and love. Through Christ, Peter rewrote his story about who is clean and who is unclean. We need to be listening to our own stories and examining our own assumptions about people and their worth, and we need to allow grace, empathy, and love, to rewrite those stories of condemnation into stories of acceptance. Because the only way the world is going to change and become better, the only way we work towards the kingdom, is if we operate from stories of hope and love.
So, when you find yourself thinking about those people and what they do ask yourself: Is this story real? Do I know all the facts? Maybe I need to find out if the negative is truly negative, and if it’s not, to let it go and change it into something better. If we upgrade our stories I think we will find ourselves truly living in the story that Jesus and God want us to live in with them.