Who's in the Details?

SERMON

We don't know who the magi were. We know they were seekers and we know they were Gentiles. They were not Jews.

Matthew wants us to know in the second chapter of his book that this Gospel is for everybody. It is not just for a select group. It is not just for the "in" crowd. It is not just for those who think and have all the answers. It is not just for the religious elite.

CHILDREN’S MOMENT

This past Sunday, Vica focused our children on the necessity of smaller details. She asked about the new addition we made to the nativity. It was a small detail of three new figurines that needed their attention. Some of them already knew what it was: the Wise Men come to visit Jesus. She shared about her own childhood tradition of placing their Wise Men in another room, on the top shelf in the far back corner. Do the math, and you figure it would take them at least 2-3 years to get to the nativity in the living room.

She pointed out how, before they arrive, noone ever seems to notice the missing figures from the nativity scene, despite their importance.

This is similar to the importance of the details in the Christmas story. It is a small passage that we read every year, but that doesn’t mean the details lose their importance. If we aren’t paying attention to the words, we’d miss that when the Wise Men. arrived Jesus is no longer a baby but a child and they are in a house. She stressed the hope that we all take time to pay attention to the small things. God does amazing miraculous huge things like what happens in the Christmas story, but so much of God happens in the small moments.

MUSIC

Coming up in the next few weeks, we've got special music for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day/Human Relations Sunday, and we're getting ready for Black History Month in February, where all the choral and bell anthems will be Spirituals. There'll also be guests galore in February! Don't miss a Sunday!

You Missed . . . A Very Disturbing Parable

And Mary played Santana in Worship!

With September as Hispanic Heritage Month, St. Matthew's hosted the talented Steven Kendikian, a double-major of Spanish and Voice at West Chester University, to sing during service. He did it all! from singing a verse of each of the hymns in Spanish, to teaching the kids Spanish "This Little Light of Mine." Our own Mary Sugar, played vibrant instrumentals as well to accompany our services:  Eres Tu, Amigos Para Siempre, El Condor Pasa, and Oye Como Va. To quote the pastor, "Really? Santana? In church?? COOL!!"

To paraphrase Pastor John, he preached on a disturbing parable of Jesus (Luke 16: 1-13) about a dishonest manager whose master commends him for his shrewd business dealings. Is Jesus commending dishonesty? However, as is often the case with Jesus' parables, more is going on here than meets the eye. Instead of celebrating the manager's dishonesty, Jesus is suggesting that his disciples take action for the sake of God's Kingdom rather than sitting back and wringing their hands when things get rough. Even if it means being smart once and a while.

With so many committed staff-members, you never know what you might miss on a Sunday at St. Matthew's!

What’s missing this Fall?

Don't Forget this Important Back to School Item

Unfortunately, a new item has been on more and more parents’ shopping lists this year: bulletproof backpacks. The too-numerous school shootings in recent years punctuated by the recent shootings in Dayton and El Paso have only reinforced demand for child-sized body armor. It is a sad commentary on American life that we would rather use active shooter drills to teach our children how to minimize casualties or equip our children with body armor than to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines and/or institute universal and comprehensive background checks. 

The reality is that our children are facing issues we didn’t while we were growing up. In addition to the proliferation of gun violence driven by domestic terrorism, they face a planet increasingly destabilized by climate change, skyrocketing costs for the higher education that they require to enter an uncertain economy, and a healthcare system that is almost unaffordable to all but the wealthiest. 

Parents want to prepare their children as best they can for this rapidly changing and increasingly hostile world. We sign them up for and encourage their participation in organized sports to teach them the value of physical exercise and teamwork. We push them to participate in extracurricular activities like Boy and Girl Scouts, music and art lessons, school clubs, and community service organizations to help them round out their personalities and college applications. We want them to have friends, so we set up playdates and drive them to meet their friends for movies and games. We do this because we want them to be prepared and healthy individuals. 

All of this is important to our children's development but a key question we need to ask during this back to school season is this: What are we doing to nurture our children’s souls and teach them how to care for the part of themselves that endures to eternity? The truth is that their soul is the one constant that stays with them as they grow up, graduate high school, go to college, enter the workforce, meet their spouse, start a family, and change jobs several times. It will be with them as they experience their own healthcare crises and care for their parents (us) in their old age. It will be with them as they take leadership of our economy’s businesses, our society’s institutions, try to solve the problems that prior generations bequeathed to them, and tackle the new issues that will emerge in their lifetimes.

At some point, their education will become dated and, unless they have learned how to teach themselves new skills and knowledge, it will begin to fail them. Their bodies will get older and will no longer perform with the peak athletic performance that allows them to dazzle their peers. The hard truth is that some of things that we consider most important deteriorate over time, and the best we can do is slow that decline. Our children may not yet realize this, but one day will hit them. Life is hard and it will batter and bruise us and wear us down. 

However, their soul and their relationship with the God is what abides throughout all these changes. Indeed, it is their spirituality and relationship with God that can best sustain them as they endure the storms and crises of this life. So what are we doing to promote the spiritual development of our children? What are we doing to connect them with a strength and love that can help them survive all the challenges of life and thrive in the midst of it all? 

As we enter the hectic pace of the fall school schedule, let us not only worry about school supplies and clothes, practices schedules and club meetings. Let us also encourage our children to invest their time and energy into a relationship with a God whose love can sustain them through the best and worst that this life will throw at them. We can give them no better gift than a deep and abiding relationship with the God who loves them and will always be with them. 

Grace and Peace,

Pastor John

St. Matthew’s Welcomes Everyone

Pastoral Response to the Special Session of General Conference

As you have likely heard, the special session of our denomination’s General Conference met this week to address several options to address our differences as United Methodists with regards to the full inclusion of LGBTQ members - specifically in the areas of marriage and ordination.

We are a global church and we are not of the same mind when it comes to this so many expected this special session of General Conference to be a difficult one. And it was. After a narrow vote, the option known as the Traditional Plan passed even though some of its components had been ruled unconstitutional by our judicial council. Other parts of this plan are still under review and what is ruled constitutional will go into effect in January of 2020. The Traditional Plan maintains our current restrictions on same sex marriage and ordination and adds enforcement measures for pastors, district superintendents and bishops who do not honor these restrictions.

For our LGBTQ members and our members who have family and friends who identify as LGBTQ this vote was incredibly hurtful. For United Methodists who believe our Book of Discipline when it says that the church should fully welcome and embrace all persons because all people are made in the image of God and have sacred worth - this vote was disheartening. They find it hard to understand why some are denied access to marriage or ordination of everyone is made in the image of God and has sacred worth. And even some who voted for the Traditional Plan are dismayed at the pain this vote caused so many. This has been a difficult and challenging week for United Methodists.

To help us understand in detail what occurred at General Conference and to address any questions you might have, we offered a forum on Sunday during our Sunday school hour. Our bishop and district superintendent will also be here on March 27 at 6:30 pm to provide more information and address questions.

At this point, I want to pause and affirm a fundamental truth about this congregation - we have always welcomed everyone and we will continue to do so. That is who we are here at St Matthew’s. As a pastor, I have always welcomed everyone and I will continue to do so. As United Methodists we affirm that all persons (regardless of their ethnicity, religious background or sexual orientation) are made in the image or God and have sacred worth. We will continue to be a church for all people and welcome everyone who comes through the doors. We will continue to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

There won't be any major changes right away. We will keep everyone posted and plan for the future together. In the meantime, don't let anything get in the way of loving your neighbor. Pray for our church and our denomination. Pray for all those who are in pain or feeling anger or grief at the moment. Be kind and loving toward those with whom you may disagree.

I suggest that we follow the General Rules that the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, set down for us:

Do no harm: Avoid speaking ill of anyone and treat everyone with compassion and empathy.

Do good: See who is hurting or troubled in your midst and offer them comfort. Actively look for opportunities to help others.

Stay in love with God: No matter our differences, the one thing that holds us together as a church is Christ. When we come together to worship and serve God we are brought closer together. Come to worship, take Communion, pray and study the Bible together. Let God be at work among us!

In Christ,
John

Patience in Advent

Not Everything has to be Instant

The season of Advent is all about patience as we prepare to celebrate the Christ’s entry into our world so long ago in Bethlehem and anticipate his coming in final glory at the end of the age when God establishes his Kingdom. The problem is that most of us (including myself) are not very patient. We live in the instant age where we can pull our smartphones out of our pockets and look anything up, anywhere and anytime. We can order something from Amazon and have it delivered the next day for $3.99 (if you are an Amazon Prime member). Amazon and Google have even rolled out same day delivery to select cities in the country so lucky customers only have to wait a few hours to receive their purchase. We can stream millions of songs instantly via Apple Music or Spotify and get sneak peaks at unreleased albums that the artist has just finished recording.   We can download a movie from the internet to watch in just a few seconds. No more driving to the video rental store and waiting in line to check it out. We can choose from a smorgasbord of pre-prepared meals from the the grocery store and pop them in the oven instead of diligently gathering the necessary ingredients and following the step by step instructions of a recipe and then waiting for it to finish cooking. For these and so many other reasons we are terrible at waiting and have become extremely impatient as a society.

Nowhere is this impatience more on display than the Christmas season for which retailers now start decorating the week before Halloween. My boys didn’t have a chance to collect their candy and come down from the resulting sugar buzz before Santa, Christmas lights and holiday music appeared in stores. Churches start singing Christmas carols on the first Sunday of Advent rather than dwell for a time in the slower, less joyful hymns of Advent. And so we rush around in a constant state of stress because we can’t and won’t slow down. Indeed some of us have forgotten how to do so.

However, we must recover the art of waiting and cultivate patience in this season of Advent if we are to truly experience the joy of Christmas and the birth of our Savior. The ancient Hebrews waited for centuries before the Messiah appeared. Surely we can wait a few weeks to bask in the joy of Christmas. Join me in trying to slow down this month and work to linger more in the moment. Let us try to recover what it was like to wait for something we knew we wanted and deeply needed. If we can do it we will find that Christmas is even more joyful and our shouts of praise will be even more exuberant when the Christ child is born into our hearts once again.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor John

Priorities

We make time in our lives for what is important

Several years ago I decided to become a runner. I needed a way to improve my cardiovascular health and relieve the stress that comes with being a pastor. The decision to take up running was easy. Actually becoming a runner and putting in the miles to see the benefits that come from running was not nearly so easy. Over and above the fact that my body was not conditioned to run distances, I faced the challenge of finding the time to run in my hectic schedule. Like almost everyone else these days, I didn’t have a lot of free time on my calendar. My schedule was already full of important events and tasks and it took an iPhone and Google Calendar to keep track of it all. Running was going to be one more thing to try and squeeze in.

At first, I tried to find the time in my schedule to run. The truth is that finding the time to run didn’t work so well. My days and weeks were already filled with things to do and places to be. I didn’t have any empty slots in my calendar where I could just lace up my running shoes and run. When a time slot did occasionally open up in my schedule, the circumstances were always less than ideal to run. I was too tired or I only had a short period of time before I had to be doing something else. Consequently, my runs were sporadic and I couldn’t make significant progress towards my fitness goals.

After a month of struggling to find the time to run, I realized what the problem was: I was trying to find the time to run and I wasn’t making the time to run. If this was going to be a priority in my life I had to treat it as a priority and not an afterthought. That meant scheduling the time to run before I filled my schedule with other things. From that point on, I decided to schedule time to run before I scheduled other things. Of course, some things - like Sunday morning worship and my prayer time - are inviolable and I would have to schedule around them but the truth is that I usually have some say in the rest of my schedule. Instead of being the last thing to go on my calendar, running became one of the first things to get scheduled. It should come as no surprise that this worked. Before long, running was a regular part of my weekly schedule. I started accruing the necessary mileage to see improvements to my cardiovascular health. As the weeks passed, I started could farther and faster. My ability to handle stress also improved. The more I ran, the more stress I could handle.

For this to happen I had to make running a priority. When we make something I priority it shapes the way we use our time and resources. We allow it to claim our time and attention. The good news is that often we see a return on our investment of time and dedication.

In Matthew 6:25-33 Jesus asks us to examine our priorities:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is  thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ … 33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

There are a lot of things that consume our focus, energy and resources. There are many things that compete for our time and money. Some of them are important. However, Jesus is saying that the most important is the Kingdom of God. He reminds us that God’s Kingdom should be our priority. He is also saying that a paradoxical things happens when we prioritize God’s Kingdom: we end up receiving all the other things about which we normally worry. So as we engage in our stewardship campaign at St. Matthew’s, I invite you to ask yourself, “How am I using my time, talent and financial resources in service to God’s Kingdom? Is God’s Kingdom the top priority in your life? I invite you to answer those questions as you prayerfully consider the gifts and talents survey and financial pledge card for the coming year.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor John