Who's Better?

When it comes to the Kingdom, no one; since all are equal

In Paul’s day, some thought the answer was to be found in less variety, in exclusion, in isolation and the building of fences. In Martin Luther King Jr.’s day, many felt the same way, and built communities and churches by marking off who was not welcome. And so it is still in our own day.

All gifts are not acknowledged, the body is not complete, and love does not always prevail. 

But in this twenty-first century after Christ, let us live the way suggested by Paul: with diversity, with inclusivity, and with love. Let us ensure that all are welcome in the church, our communities, our neighborhoods and friendships.

Let us remember that all of humanity is made in the image of God. Not just the people who look like us, who think like us or act like us. Let us see the image of God that is in the other - especially the one that is different than us - because when we do so, we embrace God, but when we fail to do so, we reject God.

Embrace God in our Music

Lots of special music this past Sunday, in honor of Dr. King and Human Relations Sunday. The choir (with Kathy Niness on guitar) rocked the house with Garth Brooks' We Shall Be Free, and Janice Conner did a beautiful rendition of Abraham, Martin, and John. Some of the hymns were taken from a special hymnal: Songs for the Holy Other, an all-inclusive hymnal with special music celebrating diversity of all kinds.

The sermon included the song Don't Laugh at Me, an inclusionary anthem with special words written for the occasion by Mary Sugar.

Next week, Kim Trolier will be with us, enhancing the service with her lovely flute music! Don't miss a week!

Teaching Children to be Inclusive

The children spent a little extra time in worship so that they could participate in the litany in remembrance of Dr. King and to also witness our new friends, Erin, Charlie, and Sara join our church family formally.

When it came time to call the children forward, Vica only called the girls forward.  Everyone giggled as Vica extolled that girls rule and boys drool.  The girls thought it was great. However, Vica was quick to say that it was in fact not.

After having the boys finally join the girls, Vica shared that because all people were created in God's image, all people are important. No one is greater than anyone else. We all have a light inside that is the image of God and when someone tries to dampen it within someone else, two lights are dimmed. We are called to love like and because Jesus loves us.

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

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