Rev. Zach

[This meditation was delivered online in lieu of in-person worship due to adverse winter weather. It was preceded by reading the scripture in the form of Lectio Divina .] Whatever gift God has given you through this time of reflection was for you, even if it was only a time of silence. The word that settled on my heart was “follow.” Maybe that’s because it was repeated 3 times. Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people."  And immediately they left their nets and followed him; they left Zebedee and the hired help and they followed him. Maybe I just like the word "follow" because “followers of the way of Jesus” is what the early believers were called well before they were called “Christians.” We usually call these first few “Disciples,” and sometimes we act as though that title, Disciple, only describes 12 men who lived about 2,000 years ago. Maybe that is because there is some shred of humility and dower Calvinism in us that makes us feel unw...

Psalm 19:1-14     James 3:1-12     Mark 8:27-38 Over the last few weeks we have been talking about the importance of actions, and we need to hold that in mind as part of the argument of the scriptures today. When I say argument I don’t mean that the readings are in conflict with one another. I mean that they have a point to prove, a proclamation to offer, and the intent of winning over our lives through their conviction. We have small arguments like these all the time. I say small because – while scripture is concerned with our individual experiences – scripture is ultimately concerned with a greater reality than our personal preferences. One such small argument that happened in our house last week was over mayonnaise.  Yes, I was shocked to find that my daughter – in a blind taste test – had the audacity to prefer a different mayonnaise than the one that I have raised her on. To her credit, I later found that her preferred brand is produced in Louis...

Micah 6:1-8     1 Corinthians 1:18-31     Matthew 5:1-12 Christianity just doesn’t make sense sometimes. You can take that in several ways. The most obvious is to say that what we do does not always match up to what Jesus commands us to do. Abuses of power and privilege are just as evident in the past and present church as they are in any social grouping. We often remain silent on political realities for fear of ripping ourselves apart. When certain groups or denominations within the Body of Christ do take a definitive stance, you can bet they will be excluding some element of society – and it is rarely those with any power to do anything about it. Nope. Christianity just does not make sense. It does not make sense because it is based on a concept that is simply counter productive – at least by all logical means – the concept of grace. Nestled in between the last phrase of the Prophet Micah’s answer from God is the word “hesed,” which we often translate ...

Jeremiah 1:4-10       Psalm 71:1-6        Hebrews 12:18-29        Luke 13:10-17 Well, it’s soccer season again, or it’s about to be. I have been coaching my son’s team for three seasons, and it looks like this is the first season that we will have most of the same players as the previous season – even though the last season was our least successful. I’m hopeful for a good season, and I’m learning a lot from these boys. Mostly I am remembering things that I have forgotten. Not just technical skills, but things like the idea that a great effort is a success. These kids don’t have the technical skills figured out yet, and so a good effort means a good result. It would be nice if more of the world worked that way. I’m not saying that we should not try to achieve results, or that working harder is better than working smarter. I am saying that sometimes we put so much emphasis on results that we forget about the reasons that motiva...