Pushback: In Reaction to the Holy Spirit

    So, if this were a television program, we would start with the following cold open... (just jumping in)     

    "When Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom.  He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him.  He unrolled the scroll (to chapter 61 in our published versions) and found the place where it was written, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me...""

    As this point, there is a cutaway with the filler card "Some Time Later..."

    "They got up, drove Jesus out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff."

    Then might come the teaser, So what happened?

    The Spirit came down upon Jesus at his baptism, led him back home after a duel with the devil, and now, in his home opener, his sermon is SO successful that the people of the town WHERE HE HAD BEEN BROUGHT UP sought to throw him over a cliff.

    Yah!  Go Go Holy Spirit?

    If we are going to be like Jesus, it strikes me that there are two things going on here.

    The first is that the Holy Spirit, when fully engaged, is going to make us risk-takers.  We are going to speak truth in love to power.  We are going to help those in need, and do so in the name of Jesus (refer to the between verses of our passage in Luke 4, where Jesus' mission statement is laid out from the prophet Isaiah).   We are going to dare to face rejection (although I hope it is not to this level of negativity).  

    There is something else here as well.  The Holy Spirit is going to armor us up to take the backlash.  For Jesus, it was divine level intervention.  "He passed through the midst of them..."   I can hear MC Hammer singing "O Can't Touch This" is the soundtrack.

    Jesus did this FOR us.  We see the Spirit in action, we witness the consequences.  Could be scary on its own.  But Jesus has also prepared us.  He gathered his crew, the apostles.  They, in turn, formed a community.  That community then dispersed, but they always came back to Jerusalem or to Antioch.  Home base.  They set up forward operating bases.  Places like Corinth, Ephesus, and Laodicea, just to mention a few.  These bases are churches, where the faithful gather.  Where the Spirit works through the crowd in support of one another.  Where the Spirit continues to work, in our churches, here and now.

    The strength of the Holy Spirit is measured in the church that surrounds us.  So, when we venture into untested waters, we have support.  We have the Spirit.  We know how the Spirit operates because we see it first in operation in Jesus.  Jesus, who gave us everything, who saved us.  

    So, in the closing scene of our episode, it is not simply Jesus standing there, but a cloud of witnesses, shoulder to shoulder, in the love of the Spirit, to take whatever the sinful world has to push back upon us.

Peace,
Pastor Peter

    

Time, Another One of God's Annoying-But Necessary-Creations

     So I had a debate with a fellow student in Seminary one time about how time might work in heaven.  Might.  We were convinced of our own faithful truthiness, but also grasping for humility.  The image that sticks in my mind is that God "looks down" from heaven and can see the entire history of humanity as a long, temporal measuring tape, beginning to end, because God is outside of time (so no sacred timeline).  I guess, if we wished to enter into the higher realms of nerdity, God might then fold time like a Mobius strip, or like the drug-addled space navigators fold "space" in "Dune".

    Abstracting time is fun, appeals to the sci fi geek within me.  Where it crosses over into my theology (How I Think About God) is where it appeals to attempting to define omnipotence-God the All-Powerful.  We work with the crumbs that God has passed along from God's transcendent perfection.  

    But time is also the most precious, finite resource that we have.  Each of us has a beginning and an end here on the earth.  For us, Jesus worked within those parameters.  We talk about Jesus experiencing everything we have, but without sin.  He experienced a life that was cut off far too soon.  Restored, yes, for us.  But cut down in his prime.

    Time is also a tool of healing.  Yesterday's post, demanding "why" of the Almighty.  In that moment, it feels to me like a weak response to invoke the cliche that "time heals all wounds".  But there is truth there.  Our growing edge may be to more effectively tell that truth in love??

    Time is a resource to be organized, offered, measured, and spent.  We are attempting "A Different" this week, introducing a calendar for the month of February, mechanized and not tracked by Karen's excellent penmanship.  

    As a measure, time can help us realize what our priorities are.  What do we spend our time doing?  How much is given to sleep?  Too much OR too little can impact our health.  How much time to we give to our employment?  There is a bargain in place, so much time and talent for so much recompense.  The age of the computer and internet and personal devices has ushered in the age of a desperate scramble to attract our attention and snag some of our time for an ever changing (yet oddly ever the same) menagerie of diversion.

    Then there is our...Time...for Stewardship, about...Time.  Last Sunday, we looked to Jesus' vision and mission priorities.  This week, we come back to them, but then also to the expectations of what the people wanted Jesus to spend his time doing..."MIRACLE FOR US JESUS! LIKE IN CAPERNAUM!!"  Jesus challenges us on the question of why some seem to get God's time and trouble while others do not.

    The challenge question however, being Stewardship, is the one that asks how we, of the church and of the faith, will invest our time in Jesus.  Is it an hour (okay, a little longer, sorry, preacher's bane...) on Sunday?  On occasional Sundays?  Is it so much more that it feels overwhelming (I see a faithful cadre of people in that space).  How can we offer more?  Is there a learning curve to giving time more fulfillingly?  How does the Lord wish us to spend our time?

How indeed?

Peace,
Pastor Peter

God, Why Did This Happen?

     Maybe the hardest moment for this pastor, for any person of faith, is when someone, in their pain, cries out to God-and to us who represent that God-asking where God was in a moment of personal loss or sudden tragedy or overwhelming disaster.  How do we face that turmoil and rage?  How do we deal with that?  Especially if it is a moment where we too want to know 'why'.  The best we have to offer is that Jesus is ever faithful and God's love is there for the long game.

    It was while preparing for Sunday's sermon that I realized for the first time that Jesus is PROVOKING that response here.

    One of the dangers of 'knowing your Bible' is that we can be too comfortable in assuming we know its stories.  But God always has a way of pushing the envelope.  

    In the passage for this Sunday, the story, as I 'know it', goes like this.  Jesus is in Nazareth and declares himself and his purpose, what he is here for, in fulfillment of a prophecy from Isaiah.  This past Sunday, I called it his vision and mission statements.  Then, because he is in Nazareth, where everybody knew him as a little kid, 'the carpenter's son', their reaction to him is tepid (I like that word better than 'lukewarm') because 'a prophet has no honor in his hometown'.  Hard to see the 'Called of the Lord' in the person whose diapers you used to change.

    But there is a cutting edge here.  Jesus stands up after delivering his mission statement and says, "Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."  The people are initially amazed at the gracious words that come out of his mouth and they spoke well of him.  "This is the son of Joseph", perhaps with the subtext that he has done well for himself.  

    But then Jesus pushes on them.  He expects them to tell him "Doctor, cure yourself!"  The expectation Jesus declares, "Do here what you did in Capernaum."  Do the miracle stuff.  You talked the talk Jesus, now walk the walk.  Impress us son of Joseph.

    Here is where Jesus presses into the space of disaster and God's response.  "Remember Elijah? There was famine in the land, severe famine and God chose to feed only ONE widow, the widow of Zarephath in Sidon (outside the borders of the Promised Land).  Remember Elisha?  There are many people in this nation who were struck with leprosy but God chose to heal only Naaman, the general of the king of Damascus, whose actually been invading and pillaging the Promised Land."  

    Is Jesus actually saying that as God did not feed the starving, that as God did not heal the terminally ill amongst his own people, just those foreigners, so now God will not perform miracles, through Jesus, in his 'hometown' of Nazareth?  God picked them, but not you.  Without explanation.  

    I want to know 'why'.  I want Jesus to tell them (and me) why there was only the widow in Zarephath (yes, another woman unnamed in the Bible) and why only the general from Damascus.  I want to know WHY some but not others receive God's power.  But Jesus declines to elaborate.   

    This angers the crowd to the point of murderous intent.  They take hold of Jesus to throw him over a cliff.  But Jesus, being the Son of God, "passes through their midst" and goes on his way.  Then, as if to add insult to injury, read beyond verse 30 and see that Jesus goes on to Capernaum and continues the miracles the people of Nazareth did not receive.

    So bad things happen.  Sometimes God intervenes, sometimes not.  It can feel personal, selective, maybe even intentional?  To the point that if Jesus were to show his face, we might take a swing at Him?  But the constant is that Jesus is still there with us.  He may not tell us why.  

    But what the bible tells us here is that Jesus is ever faithful and God's love is there for the long game.

  

Pastor Peter

To Be Chosen By God, Where Does That Take Us?

     It is a very powerful thing, to be chosen by God.  Not something to be chased after, to be glorified, at least not in this life.  Jesus was called, chosen by God, and while He was resurrected from the dead, it was a horribly painful death.  Many others have suffered and died for the faith, down to our present age.

    That's why this series of sermons is generally titled "What does God want from us as Christians?"  It began with the second part of Our Story, Jesus was baptized with (in) the Spirit for us.  It presupposes that what Jesus has done for us is what we will receive and move forward to do in turn.  Thus the focus on the Spirit.

    Jesus is baptized in the middle of Luke 3.  Then the gospel writer breaks the narrative to establish Jesus' lineage in his genealogy.  Unlike Matthew however, Luke tracks back to Adam.  Then Chapter 4, first the Spirit drives Jesus to his showdown with Satan (which Jesus wins), then, in verse 14, Jesus, filled with the Spirit, goes back to his home turf, Galilee.  Then, continuing in our passage today, Jesus digs into Isaiah, His bible, to lay out more details.

    Jesus presents this in the synagogue: To be chosen by God, to be anointed by the Spirit, is to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, free the oppressed, and proclaim the year of God's favor.  The poor, the captive, the infirmed, and the oppressed, these are the people on the agenda for those chosen by God.  It is a vision statement for those chosen by God.

    So we began at the baptism of Jesus (Luke 3), with the coming of the Spirit and the recognition of the Father two weeks ago.  Last week, we looked to Paul for a lesson in applying the Spirit, from 1 Corinthians 12.  With that in mind, we return to the story of the Gospel, to where Jesus lays down the foundation of His ministry, drawing from the prophet Isaiah, from God's Word, as the lead in to what will happen next in His work.  

    Where will we be led next?

Peace,

Pastor Peter

Can You Imagine If Any Old Sunday, Anybody Could Wander In and Preach?

     Jesus comes into town, like a gunslinger in the Old West, more a bibleslinger in this horribly overloaded metaphor.  Sunday morning, wanders into church, opens the Bible to some apparently random passage in Isaiah, and tells the people who are gathered.  "See, this is me!"

    Okay, so Jesus doesn't exactly say, "This is me."  Rather, he shares and then tells them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

    Okay, so this is not exactly the old west.  It's not some random church that Jesus picked while cruising along Rt. 130, it is Nazareth, his home town.  And unlike our region, there was the synagogue, not the large number of churches and denominations (or not-denominations) that someone could choose from.  The central religious location was in Jerusalem, and all the communities around it had their satellite synagogues for the folks to meet between festivals in the capital.

    So Jesus was known in town.  This was also his practice.  Jesus was filled with the Spirit, was in the region of Galilee, and building up a fanbase as word got out.  "He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone."

    Jesus is telling them, and us, something amazing.  "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me."  We know this from Our Story, Jesus was baptized FOR US.  "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me."  Pronouns, what is it with the pronouns?  He who?  Me, Jesus...okay. 

    Jesus is reading from Isaiah 61.  In those verses, the prophet is saying that the Lord anointed him with the Spirit.  (So 'he' is the Father, pronounically speaking...)   Again, this is what happened at the Jordan.  God sent the Spirit, anointed Jesus (not literally with oil, but transcendently, as God on high).  But what is written in Isaiah, Jesus is now lifting from that context and placing upon himself.  

    Thus, we have the mission of our Lord Jesus:

    I am "to bring good news to the poor."

    I am "to proclaim release to the captives" (as he has been sent to do).

    I am "(to provide the) recovery of sight to the blind."

    I am "to let the oppressed go free."

    I am ""to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

    Good news, redemption, miracles, salvation, and the Lord's favor.

    This is the agenda of the Spirit-anointed Jesus.  We too are Spirit-anointed, because what Jesus has done is for us and, well, Pentecost.  If Jesus said "This is me" in Nazareth, can we say "This is us" in Merchantville?  Something to pray on.

Peace,
Pastor Pete

The Trickle Down Effect, Well, Waves Washing Over Us

     So in the last post, I talked about the Gospels-Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; as we read and study and contemplate them-being like a major in "Jesus".  The rest of the New Testament, especially the Epistles, are like majoring in "Applied Jesus".  To state it more plainly, what Jesus does applies to us.  In the case of the baptism of Jesus, Jesus receives both the Holy Spirit and the approval of the Father.

    So, if 'what Jesus does applies to us', it will follow that we, in turn, will receive the Holy Spirit. 

    I am NOT going to tackle the topic of the approval of the Father.  To do so feels to me like reading the parts of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, said to written by Moses, where it says that Moses was the humblest man in all the land.  I do not feel the moral capacity to presume God's approval in the context of a blog post.  God loves me, the Bible tells me so, that's good enough.

    In the New Testament, Acts should be attached to the major of "Applied Jesus", because it is there we read of Pentecost, that as Jesus received the Holy Spirit, so did the Church in its first congregation gathered there in Jerusalem.    

    This we get from the ongoing Gospel story, working on our "Jesus" major.  It is in Jesus' life and ministry, His death and resurrection, the plan of God unfolding in the Son for our salvation.  We will consider those in the next chapters of Our Story.  The baptism of Jesus is foreshadowing (a compositional risk) what is to come for us.  

    This Sunday, in this chapter of Our Story, Jesus was baptized for us, we begin a sermon series to explore what that means.  Presupposing our salvation, our guiding question is "What Does God Want From Us as Christians?", we are proceeding from a particular assumption.

    This assumption is that "as Jesus received the Spirit, so too does the Church (us)".  We begin in our study of "Applied Jesus", in Paul's first letter to the church in Corinth.  Paul takes the 'moment', reception of the Holy Spirit, into our lives and work as people of faith.  The word so overworked in sermons is that we 'unpack' what Paul has to tell us.  

    This is personal for me.  Of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the toughest one for me to see purpose in is the Spirit.  The creative power that is at the center of our understanding of the Father, the redemptive power that is at the center of our understanding of the Son, those I get and celebrate.  I understand, as a concept, the instigative power of the Holy Spirit, something that indwells us to push on the path to be more like Jesus.

    But what I invite you to consider with me is that this instigative power is not simply a trickling of the divine into our lives, day by day in every way I am getting more and more like Jesus.  There is a long form effect of the Spirit in our lives.  But there is something more immediate, far more powerful.  Tune into the Spirit and God's power is a wave washing over us, washing out from us to inundate the world around us.

    Inundate?  What's an "inundate"?  A welcome flood.  A what now?  When we read about or experience floods in our day and age, those are objects of disaster and destruction.  But I came to know this term in application to Egypt in times past.  Annually, the Nile would run high, overrunning its banks.  This was not seen a disastrous flood but a blessed inundation that would water and rejuvenate the fields for a full and bountiful harvest.

    That is the Holy Spirit washing over us.  Unleashed.  Exciting, a little frightening, expectations beyond our reckoning.  Inundating.  But it is what happened to Jesus when He received the Spirit.  And my argument is what Jesus does applies to us.  

Peace,
Pastor Peter

Who Does God Want Us To Be?

    We have come through our Blessed Christmas Season.  It is a quick jump in the gospel from there to Jesus' adulthood.  He was baptized, first in water, then in the Spirit.  In Our Story, Jesus was baptized for us, which turns out to mean that the Spirit He received is the Spirit we have received.  

    So this week, we turn to Paul.  Why?  Because Paul had to figure out the very same thing we do.  Who does God want us to be?  Paul recognizes the Spirit, has received the Spirit, and moves things forward.  If we were to compare the New Testament to getting a college degree, the Gospels provide for us a degree in "Jesus".  In the epistles, the letters of Paul being the largest group, we are working toward a degree in "Applied Jesus".

    In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul addresses the question of "Okay, Jesus got the Spirit, we got the Spirit, now what?"  (Let's apply this...)  What came before, as Paul tells us, "You were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak."  Whether that be a statue of Zeus in those days or a misguided commitment to the pursuit of wealth today, we are still led astray.

    But the Spirit redirects our entire religious focus.  In the Spirit, we cannot curse Jesus.  Only in the Holy Spirit can we express that Jesus is Lord.  In our present age, I might add the qualifier "and mean it".   

    So, from the Spirit, gift one is the discernment of the goodness of Jesus.  The Spirit keeps our eye on the prize.  We do not curse Jesus, not in the loving power of the Spirit.  We commit ourselves to the Lordship of Jesus only in the loving power of the Spirit.

    Such goodness is revealed in varieties of gifts, of services, of activities, but it is the same Spirit, the same Lord, the same God, that fires them up in our souls.  It is not diversity for diversity's sake, but diversity that comes together for the common good.  It is a list too big for single blog post.  

   God wants us to have clarity.  God wants us to be clear on the matter that Jesus is Lord.  Only happens in the Spirit.  We must be clear that we are working for the common good.  Lots of ways to do things, but all toward that purpose.  

    To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.

    God wants us to be clear that there is no "one size fits all".  The diversity that God has created into humanity is reflected in the diversity baked into the gifts we receive from the Spirit.  Yet, in the Spirit, we are still knit together into one community.  "All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses."  Each provides for us a degree in "Applied Jesus".

Peace,
Pastor Peter

    

    

Luke Introduces Baptism and Then Introduces...Baptism...

     There is a connection between this day in our Story, Jesus is baptized for us, and when Jesus prays for us (on Pentecost Sunday).  First, Jesus is baptized (in water).  John the Baptizer is there to do it.      This story is across all four gospels.  An interesting counterpoint to this is that there is mention of the other disciples also baptizing, but that Jesus never did.  

    Why did Jesus never baptize?  One reason is addressed by Paul.  It involves factionalism.  Paul addresses it in his first letter to Corinth:

 ¹¹For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. ¹²What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul’, or ‘I belong to Apollos’, or ‘I belong to Cephas’, or ‘I belong to Christ.’ ¹³Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? ¹⁴I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, ¹⁵so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name.

    Bad enough that there are 'ownership issues'.  Can you imagine if Jesus baptized some?  Maybe there would be a faction of 'super-apostles'?  Some would argue that we don't do that today.  Yah.  Used to be the argument of 'best' denomination.  Now it is more an argument between being denominational or nondenominational.

    This first introduction of baptism is by water.  John was doing it before Jesus-or Jesus' disciples-picked up the practice.  But here is more that goes in baptism.  For Jesus, first water and then the Spirit descends upon Him.  It is a process that will be replicated in the church.  At Pentecost, the Spirit descended once again, this time like fire and not a bird, to come to rest upon the disciples and the whole assembly of the people gathered.  

    While not explicitly laid out in the text, I would venture the presupposition that these folks have already been baptized in water, given that Jesus lays out baptism in the Great Commission at the end of the gospel of Matthew.  And the Spirit was not a 'one off' at Pentecost. 

    We read in Acts 8: 14 Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. ¹⁵The two went down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit ¹⁶(for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus). ¹⁷Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

    When we sing about it, we sing 'baptized in water, sealed by the Spirit'.  When Jesus answered Nicodemus, He tells him, and us, ⁵Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.

    I would venture to say that many, most, maybe all of us have been born of water, have been baptized by water, but consider what it means to be baptized in the Spirit as well.  If that has even happened yet for us.  

Food for thought.

Pastor Peter

    

Three for One, Today Only...Well, Not Just Today...

     In the course of Our Story (I would refer you back to the Nov. 19, 2024 for more details), we have come to "Jesus is baptized for us".  This is the kickoff to Jesus' ministry.  What comes before in Luke and Matthew are brought together as the Christmas Season for us, with a few other details for context  What comes in John is Jesus connected to creation itself.  Mark is the one who starts us closest to the baptism, with an introduction from Isaiah and the entry of John the Baptizer.

    Yes, the bible calls him "Baptist" but that is not a denominational thing, it is a theological thing (the way we think about our faith) that is a whole other set of blog posts.

    What struck me about this moment is that it is perhaps the only time when the entire Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, appear on the page together.  Follow me on this.  Jesus is there (obviously), according to the version in Luke (3:21), Jesus had been baptized with water and was praying.  Then comes the Holy Spirit, 'the heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.'  That has been the inspiration for much Christian art and iconography over the centuries.  It concludes with the vocalized presence of God the Faither, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with You I am well pleased."

    It may be that the Trinity is the most often quoted "in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit" piece of theology in the Christian faith while also the most under-understood.  I do not mean "misunderstood", the three fold division is fairly straight forward.  Rather, I mean that we often do not appreciate the nuance, the detail of what the Trinity tells us about God.   

    Consider for a moment 'the tableau' of our Christmas pageant.  That is the final scene of the Pageant, the scene of our creche.  It brings together the elements of Luke and Matthew, shepherds and Magi, around the birth of our Lord, connected by Jesus, the first family, and the angels.  If we use that as a frame of reference, maybe the Baptism of our Lord provides a more intentional tableau for us, the bringing together of a scene.

    The easiest part of this scene to understand is Jesus.  He is God incarnate (made human), our Savior.

    God the Father is present as the Voice (maybe better to write it as THE VOICE to distinguish it from the television program).  He speaks to Jesus so that everyone can hear.  "You are MY Son, the Beloved.  With You I am well pleased..."  Maybe there is something to read between the lines?  I am well pleased with My Son, the Beloved, but the rest of you leave something to be desired...  That all of us NEED Jesus?  

    Remember, God is the Creator.  Made it all in seven days.  Says so in the Scriptures.  All-powerful, but usually speaks through visions, prophets, angels, or other intermediary media.  Not this time.  Perhaps this is how Jesus and the Father speak all the time?

    But before God speaks, the Holy Spirit swoops down in a form 'like a dove'.  And the very text of Luke changes.  Before this moment, Luke sets Jesus into the time line governed by God above.  Isn't it amazing how God moved an empire so that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem?  

    Luke 2:1 "In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus...the first registration while Quirinius was governor of Syria."  The Emperor's first registration (a hint there were more?) and a historic cross reference.  And yet today, scholars still argue over an 8-10 year time frame in which Jesus was born.  Does it feel to anyone that Luke, as inspired by God, anticipated this?  Because the next time frame is far more precise.  

    Luke 3:1 "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius; cross reference, Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea; cross reference, Herod was ruler of Galilee; cross reference, his brother Philip was ruler of Ituraea and Trachonitis; cross reference, Lysanias was ruler of Abilene (NOT Texas); cross reference, Annas and Caiaphas were the high priests in Jerusalem.  Six temporal points brought together, was it for precision?

    After this, it is as though Jesus' time line is suddenly run by the Holy Spirit.    

    Luke 4:1 "Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness..."

    Luke 4:14 "Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee..."  The story goes on from there that Jesus is in Nazareth, where He speaks of the nature of the Spirit according to the prophet Isaiah, concluding with "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing..."  

    From there, there are neither 'secular' time markers nor 'Spirit' markers.  In Jesus, has a plan come together?  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, coming together as Jesus begins his ministry among us.  For us.  Saving us.   A moment that represents so much more.

Peace,
Pastor Peter