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!

Patience is Hard

What the latest Avengers movie can teach us about patience

A couple of weeks ago, the latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe hit theaters. Avengers: Infinity War is the culmination of ten years of movies that began with Iron Man in 2008. For those who are not fans of superheroes and comic books, the Avengers is a team comprised of “Earth’s mightiest heroes” who come together to defend the planet from threats both terrestrial and extraterrestrial. Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Spider Man, Dr. Strange, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Black Widow, War Machine, Falcon and the Black Panther combine their considerable talent and skill to fight the villains that would crush those without super powers.

In Infinity War, the Avengers square off against Thanos, one of the most powerful villains in the galaxy, who is bent on gathering the Infinity Stones and then using them to eradicate half of the universe’s population. From the far reaches of space, to New York City, to the continent of Africa, the Avengers fight to stem the tide of Thanos’ invasion. The movie ends on a cliffhanger and it seems that Thanos (the bad guy) has won the day. Our heroes seem defeated and the forces of evil look ascendant.

After the credits rolled and Marvel gave us the usual post-credit trailer, movie goers silently filed out of the theater and were unsure of what to make of what they had just seen. In all respects, it was an excellent movie but it was a hard one to watch. The good guys didn’t win. Our heroes were vanquished. The good news is that Infinity War is the first of two parts of this chapter in the Avenger’s story. We will get to see if our heroes can reverse their fortunes and defeat Thanos when the next Avengers movie hits theaters next May. The bad news is that we have to wait a year to see what will happen. A whole year!

As I walked out of the theater, I remember feeling the same way back in May 21, 1980 when I went to see Episode 5 of Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back. That movie ended with our hero, Luke Skywalker, defeated by Darth Vader after having learned that the villain was actually his father. The Empire had nearly defeated the struggling Rebel Alliance and everyone’s favorite smuggler-turned hero, Han Solo, was captured by the ruthless bounty hunter Boba Fett. There were so many unanswered questions at the end of that movie and I had to wait three years until Star Wars Episode 6: The Return of the Jedi debuted and I could find out the fate of my favorite characters. Three years!

It about killed me to wait three years to see Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance defeat the evil Galactic Empire and it’s killing me to wait until next May to see if earth’s mightiest heroes can defeat Thanos and somehow undo the terrible destruction that he wrought. Of course, it is hard to be patient when you’re invested in characters and stories like these. However, there is no other choice. The directors and producers will release the movie when it is done. Until then we have to wait.

The pastoral side of me, realizes that this period of waiting is an opportunity to develop my capacity for patience, which is one of the fruits of the Spirit described by Paul in Galatians 5:22. God’s ways are not our ways. God acts in God’s own time. Sometimes God waits to answer our prayers and sometimes we don’t receive the answer for which we hope. We want to know when God will hear our cries for help. We want to know that the results of the biopsy will be OK. We want to know if the surgery will go well. We want to know if God will bring peace to our troubled world. We want to know that things will be OK. And because God is not our genie in a bottle, we have to wait until God reveals his plans. This brings us back to the need for patience. The good news is that God does not leave us alone in our waiting. God is present through it all, even when we don’t feel that presence. God also sends the Spirit to create within us patience. As Paul writes in Galatians, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

It is a good thing that God helps us in this way, because it is not my nature to be patient. I want to know if the Avengers will defeat Thanos. I want to know if our church’s strategic plan will bear the fruit we hope it will. I want to know so many things - right now. But I must wait. And in the meanwhile I am counting the Spirit of God to bring me the fruit of patience.

Grace and Peace,
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