Our Dreams as Christians

            Our present sermon series should best be entitled "Our Dreams as Christians".

These are not our dreams as a Congregation per se, except to acknowledge that our Congregation has dreams of who we hope to be in Christ Jesus.  Rather, these are our dreams as Christians, each of us a person of faith.  That is what the present sermon series is focused on.  Using the Love of God and the Love of Neighbor as our guide, interpreting each through the lens of loving with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, these are, for our Neighborhood in the Kingdom of God, how we seek to come closer to Jesus.

In my mind, I was calling these our ‘aspirations’, what we aspire to be as Christians, which is fine for how far it goes.  It is better than calling these our ‘value statements’, because Value Statements, to me, are benchmarks of behavior for what is important to us.  'Aspirations', things we hope to achieve as people of faith, are better seen as hopes and goals.

Aspiring to be Mystics and Contemplatives and Stewards and Theologians and Pastors and Social Workers…sounds like we need multiple advanced degrees in multiple disciplines to get close to the Lord Jesus.  And 'aspiring' to them, sounds...well...rather highbrow if I stop to think about it.  Because the last thing I want is for these titles to devolve into some kind of sense of how many "Ph.D.’s in Jesus" we need to accumulate to be true imitators of Christ.

Having said that, there are some amazing Christians known for being Mystics and Contemplatives and Theologians and all the rest.  But none of them is a 'one trick' Christian.  Because loving God and loving neighbor with heart, soul, mind, and strength, the Dream, the Greatest Commandment Jesus has given us, that's a package deal to a ‘well rounded’ faith (Sounds like an advertisement, doesn't it?)

Maybe this is a better way to put it.  We are all called upon to be close to God, to pray to God, to give of our gifts to God.  We are all called upon to treat our neighbors in a Godly way, to care for our neighbors, to do for the world in need of justice and support and the basics of every day living.  As we dream of creating a Neighborhood in the Kingdom of God here on Earth in the pattern of the Kingdom in Heaven, these are the things we can do, the skills and attitudes we can build to get there.

God has a Dream for us, one accomplished in the work of Jesus Christ.  So too should we have a dream for God in our lives.  We are Sent, we have a clear statement about that.  As a church, how about a clear statement of who we dream to be in Christ as we are sent as well?

Peace

Pastor Pete

Our Scripture for Sunday, Aug. 9, 2026 is Matthew 10: 5-23. Going a Little Deeper...

To You Who Are Beloved of our Lord Jesus Christ,                

 Our Scripture for this week is Matthew 10: 5-23:

⁵ These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not take a road leading to gentiles, and do not enter a Samaritan town, ⁶ but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ⁷ As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ ⁸ Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. ⁹ Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, ¹⁰ no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff, for laborers deserve their food. ¹¹ Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. ¹² As you enter the house, greet it. ¹³ If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it, but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. ¹⁴ If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. ¹⁵ Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.

¹⁶ “I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. ¹⁷ Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues, ¹⁸ and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them and the gentiles. ¹⁹ When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you at that time, ²⁰ for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. ²¹ Sibling will betray sibling to death and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, ²² and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. ²³ When they persecute you in this town, flee to the next, for truly I tell you, you will not have finished going through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.

          The disciples were stewards of Jesus.  They did as Jesus did. ^7 “As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ ⁸ Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons.”  So, is this a matter, for us, of “go and do likewise”?  The proclamation piece most definitely.  The miracles of verse 8?  Maybe not as obviously, but how many hospitals betray their origins within the church seeking to do just that? 

          New York Presbyterian Hospital jumps to my mind.  There are Baptist and Lutheran Health networks in the nation.  Or closer to home, Our Lady of Lourdes, of Roman Catholic origins, and Jefferson Methodist Hospital in Philadelphia.

          Having said that, there is a rather significant disconnection that has taken place from the times when faith-based healing was a centerpiece of the health care industry. 

          But we are still healers.  We offer that in worship every fourth Sunday.  While the general expectation is that the pastor provides spiritual care, our Deacons are our Care Team, of whom I am privileged to be a member.  It’s the skills Jesus has invested in us that we use to work with others.  We are stewards of those skills, as surely as we are disciples of Jesus just like the Big Twelve in the Gospel. 

          It’s not just our skills-our talents that we have to offer.  We have time, we have treasures.  That is the tag line of our Stewardship Committee, the offering of time, talents, and treasures. 

          It’s not just about being Stewards, it is more than that.  It is showing our love for God with all our Strength according to our Aspirations as a Church.  But each aspiration drives something even more central, how we, by the Holy Spirit, are ever more united with Jesus Christ.  Imitation of Christ is another way the Bible puts it.  But that’s a little more “fake it till you make it” because we are on the way to becoming fully realized and renewed in and as Christ beyond sin and brokenness and death.

          And in so doing, we use our strengths to continue to build the Kingdom of God, and our Neighborhood in it, here in the world.

Pastor Pete

Preparing For Worship, Hearing God's Word in Anticipation of the Lord's Day, Sunday, Aug. 9, 2026 from Matthew 10: 5-23

 https://youtu.be/blyE9zGfV1Q

This coming Sunday, we will be continuing our sermon series on what it means for a Christian to Love God and Love Neighbor "with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength".  This week, we speak of loving God with our whole strength.  

In our verses from Matthew 10, we read the story of Jesus sending His disciples out for a practice run in their own training.  They are limited in their scope, limited to the proclamation of their moment, and the miraculous healing powers that Jesus has expressed.

In their time, the disciples were given the Holy Spirit that Jesus Himself would indwell them when they stood against the world.  It was a promise given to them and one that continues to be given to us as we, too, seek to follow in their footsteps to do the work of Jesus here on the earth.

Peace,
Pastor Pete

https://youtu.be/blyE9zGfV1Q

Our Sunday Scripture, John 17, a Deeper Look

To You Who Are Beloved of our Lord Jesus Christ,                             

Our Scripture for this week is John 17:

After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, ² since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. ³ And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. ⁴ I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. ⁵ So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

⁶ “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. ⁷ Now they know that everything you have given me is from you, ⁸ for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me. ⁹ I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. ¹⁰ All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them. ¹¹ And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. ¹² While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. ¹³ But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. ¹⁴ I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. ¹⁵ I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. ¹⁶ They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. ¹⁷ Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. ¹⁸ As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. ¹⁹ And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.

²⁰ “I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, ²¹ that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²² The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, ²³ I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. ²⁴ Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

²⁵ “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you, and these know that you have sent me. ²⁶ I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.”

          This prayer is shared by Jesus just before His arrest.  In each gospel, before Jesus’ arrest, before the events of Good Friday begin to unfold, Jesus prays.  But the prayer in the Gospel of John, our reading today, is far different from the prayerful sentiments Jesus expresses in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. 

          In our attempts to understand just who the unique figure of Jesus Christ is in our life and history, we have come up with descriptions like “fully human and fully God”.  What does that actually mean?  I believe it means that we are not able so much to define Jesus as to describe how He is presented to us. 

          So, in the first three gospels, the Synoptic gospels (all following more or less the same outline), Jesus is broken and on His knees in the Garden of Gethsemane.  It is the human being attempting to bear up under the weight of divine punishment for all of us.  It drives Him to His knees.  Jesus asks if this weight, if this coming death can be passed from His hands.  This is the prayer that we associate with our Tenebrae services during Holy Week.

          In our Gospel reading today, it is also Jesus, but it is written from the Godly side of Jesus. 

          It begins with “Father, the hour has come…”  But then we do not enter the anguish of Jesus, but the accomplishment.  Yes, Jesus is about to die, horribly.  But it is to achieve something larger, it is to achieve God’s plan.  Jesus will be glorified, He will be raised again.  That is the piece that we see in this prayer in John’s Gospel.

          But then Jesus elaborates.  In prayer, He takes us through the Holy History of what He has done in His ministry.  But it is not about Him.  His time is coming to a conclusion, He is passing the baton to the next generation, to the disciples whom He has called.  It is a prayer for them, to carry on the work.

          Jesus identifies their work with His own.  It is here where Jesus speaks of them being ‘in the world’ but not ‘of the world’.  That they will need protection.  That they were granted to Jesus by God in heaven.  That they will continue to do what Jesus was doing.  As workers in Jesus’ Name, the call of our Savior is not to remove them from the world, but to protect them from the Evil One who runs rampant in the world.

          Now, doubters of the Bible will look at these passages and then at us and tell us that the Word of God has a contradiction in it.  We have the tired and terrified Jesus on the one hand and the chill and confident Jesus on the other.  It’s like we are being challenged to pick one over the other. 

          I would like to suggest another possibility.  The gospels are written for us.  God inspired them to speak to us.  God chose writers who stand as unique witnesses to the plan and history of Christ.  I do not believe they even understood they were writing ‘bible’.  God brought them together, maybe especially for moments like these final hours of Jesus’ life.

          For example, the first three gospels include for us the Last Supper, and Jesus’ call and command that we do this in remembrance of Him (as we will this Sunday).  John does not include that, but assumes it, leading in with the story of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples.  Are they mutually exclusive?  Certainly not. They are of the same story, each told to illustrate God’s point.  Because each Gospel was inspired by God for us.

          So, perhaps a way to read this is to begin in John 14, where Jesus begins to speak of what is next, what is coming, “In my Father’s House there are many dwelling places…and I go and prepare a place for you…and I will come back…” through this prayer in John 17, where Jesus speaks to His Father, asking for the blessings and protection of God upon His disciples.

          Then, to begin chapter 18 in John, ‘after Jesus had spoken these words, He went out with His disciples across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden…”

          If we were to pick up the account in Luke, Luke 22: 39-46, it is Luke’s account of Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, perhaps the most intense of the first three gospels.  As in verse 44, “in his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground.”  Other translations do not assume this is a simile, but that Jesus’ pain was so great, it was physically manifest.  And in verse 43, that God sent an angel to give Jesus strength.

          To begin in bold prayer in the power of God in John to the deeply personal prayers of a man in anguish in Luke, we are given by our Lord a masterclass of what it means to “bring it to the Lord in prayer”.  May we aspire to pray so freely and completely to our God in Heaven.

Pastor Pete

 

Our Scripture for This Coming Sunday, August 2, 2026: John 17: -26

 https://youtu.be/mfAg4xqkIbE

Our Scripture Lesson for this coming Sunday is a prayer offered by Jesus.  He is coming to the end of His ministry here, as He prepared to return to the Father.  In this prayer, this conversation, written for us, we are given the opportunity to see Jesus' expectations, of where He came from, and for those who follow in His Name.  It is not simply the disciples of that first generation, but the generations of disciples that have come down to us today.

The prayer that Jesus lays out is an aspiration, an inspiration for we who are His disciples to follow, to know that we have been given to Jesus by God above.  

https://youtu.be/mfAg4xqkIbE

Pastor Pete

Preparing for Worship: Hearing God's Word for Sunday, July 26, 2026. Mark 1: 32-39

https://youtu.be/jqRMLQKQwH0 

Our passage for this Sunday, our Monthly Healing Service, is Mark 1: 32-39

This is the link to hear our Scripture Lesson for Sunday read in the King James, the Pirate, the New Revised Standard Version, and the Message, a Contemporary version of the Scriptures.  

It seems to surprise people to hear that the passage is read "with funny voices".  Is this somehow unorthodox or, even worse, disorderly?  Maybe.  But they work.  What does that even mean?

I was a lot younger and less foolish than I am now when I stumbled on this.  I was reading the King James Version.  Someone had hooked me with a historic conspiracy that not only does this version come from the time of Shakespeare (and King James), but he-Shakespeare (not King James) actually did the translation.  Which is why the King James Version sounds like Shakespeare... (or the other way around).  

My default "British", more British Isles adjacent, accent comes from Monty Python, the 'pepperpot' accents they would do when they dressed as more mature English ladies of a certain status.  It works way too well to read the King James in that fashion.  I would commend this for you to try.  It brings together two of my favorite things, the Bible and Monty Python.

But we are Presbyterian, so after more than a few really bad attempts at an accent, I won't say that I am any good at it, but I find consistency in attempting a Scottish brogue-adjacent accent.  Thank you Sean Connery and Peter Capaldi for being my vocal inspirations.  Thank you David Tennant for being a spiritual inspiration, being the son of a Scottish clergyman to remind me that the good ones are often Presbyterian.

When I was younger, I was less foolish.  I might 'do an accent' in a moment, but never be the fool to put it up on YouTube forever.  But in our house, you will hear quotes thrown around from our favorite movies and television shows.  And it is not really the line that sticks, it is how it's said.  

I rather enjoy being a fool for Christ.  If doing a 'funny accent' helps one more bit of God's Word to stick with the listener; if simply sharing God's Word for the sake of God's Word brings a little more of the Bible into the heart and mind of the person whose given me their time in watching this bit; if a bit of humor makes God's Word more human, then I have been blessed.

https://youtu.be/jqRMLQKQwH0

Pastor Pete

A First Pass Through Our Passage for Sunday Worship: Mark 12: 28-34

To You Who Are Beloved of our Lord Jesus Christ,                          

Our Scripture for this week is Mark 12: 28-34:

²⁸ One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” ²⁹ Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; ³⁰ you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ ³¹ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” ³² Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; ³³ and ‘to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself’—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” ³⁴ When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question.

One God, two commands.  Our whole faith in a nutshell.  It is fascinating how Jesus cuts off the conversation, isn’t it?  “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”  Why did it shut down the conversation?  Because, in a phrase, Jesus undermined the whole religious-industrial complex of the Law of Moses.  ‘Burnt offerings and sacrifices’, that is the basis of what the Levites-the tribe of priests-do.  It is what the priests do.  It is what the temple’s function is.  It’s what everyone comes to Jerusalem to do. 

And Jesus just told the man who said, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; ³³ and ‘to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself’—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Soooo…what we believe and NOT what we do…

So, here’s the thing, in the gospels, Jesus declares the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven is near.  Then He died and rose again and arose to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit on Pentecost and now the tagline reads, “The Kingdom of God is HERE…”  Not done yet, but begun yet.

And something has shifted from the gospel account to Sunday morning worship…we don’t do much in the way of ‘whole burnt offerings and sacrifices’.  However, we commit ourselves to one God, to loving God and to loving our neighbor.  But we also have one sacrifice we remember…

Here, we remember once a month.  Well, technically, we do this “in remembrance of Jesus”, because He told us to.  It is the sacrament of the Last Supper.  Jesus’ body broken and His blood shed for us.  Put that way, it can sound morbid to the present ear.  But it was Jesus living into ‘all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices’.  He was the final, the full, the complete, the worthy sacrifice. 

Before, the people repeatedly came to God for forgiveness and, with the sacrifice, they were forgiven, till the next time.  But, with Jesus’ sacrifice, we are forgiven.  So, when we confess our sins to the Lord, the forgiveness is taken care of.  We no longer worry about whether things are ‘okay’ with God. 

Rather, we can take everything that stands between us loving God and loving neighbor, lay it down at the cross, and work to make our lives more like that of Jesus.  We are not waiting for the Kingdom, waiting for what Jesus will do next.  We are IN the Kingdom, our Neighborhood is here.  We are free to love God and love neighbor ever more powerfully, in Him.

Pastor pete