As Jesus connected with Zacchaeus, he was transformed by thankfulness for his experience of God’s love. We, too, having experienced the transformative power of meeting the Son of God, can put our thanksgiving out there through tangible expressions of loving kindness, justice, and live into a future of possibilities. We, like Zacchaeus, can choose to express the joy that comes in recognizing our mutual dependence and God-created connections in community. Gratitude fuels our mission as we invite others to participate in genuine reconciliation, restoration, and renewal.
Spiritual experiences, like religion, can be both private and communal. In Jesus’ life, you see private expressions of faith (Luke 5:16, Matthew 6:5-6), but there are decidedly more public expressions of faith, faith in action, obvious, measurable, and expressed in justice and mercy.
For many of us, calling religion private is convenient. Easy. We can put faith into a box or a small compartment in our life and no one pays attention to it. Including us. It is not challenged, exercised, or strengthened. While a solely private faith can bring personal comfort, its impact is limited. A so-called private faith can may result in unwanted behaviors like pride, hypocrisy, judgement, and a kind of spiritual phoniness that becomes boring and unremarkable. We can do better.
God created us to live an authentic, amazing life. Pastor Kevin’s message this week about Jesus and his new friend Zacchaeus describes what happen when faith becomes public, obvious, and community-facing. While everyone else saw a “sinner,” a corrupt tax collector in a tree, Jesus saw an incredible person who could experience God’s grace, give thanks, and actually do good! An entire community was transformed. That’s transformation!
We should expect others to notice our faith in action and want to join in. When we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God in obvious, public, ways, all of us can live authentic, amazing lives.
How was your Halloween?! Sure. Lots of. Let me guess… candy? Getting candy, receiving gifts, is super great. Did you happen to give any candy away this Halloween? How was you All Saints Day? The day after Halloween is special , too, like we spoke about last week. We are part of a band of believers past, present, and future who belong to God. Reminding us that we have an awesome purpose. Yesterday, Melissa and I were invited to Justin Connolly’s Eagle Scout Court of Honor. He and his family worship with us during the Summer and live in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania. It was great celebrating such an important day. The Boy Scouts, and Girl Scouts, are very cool organizations and share something in common with Cold Spring Church. Do you know what that is? Our purpose. Part of the Boy Scout purpose is helping others, and a core value in our church’s purpose is serving others. That’s how we follow Jesus, by serving. So this week, let’s think of one way we will serve others, give of our time, energy, and attention in ways that show of love for them, and our love for God, too. Help classmates in school. Help at home or in the community. Be kind to one another. Like Jesus, who came not to be served, but to servewe can do the same… getting is good. Giving is better. Giving because of Jesus is best of all! You Have A Purpose!
Who am I? This week, Jesus asks his disciples who others say he is. Our identity, sense of self, is something that is uniquely ours, yet also something that others influence and may even have opinions about. Many of us struggle as we attempt to deal with the opinions of others, or we seem to invest a lot of energy in trying to live up to the unrealistic or artificial expectations of others. We also take steps to “protect our identity” whether it is the password on our bank account or smart phone, the key code on our garage door, or the safe keeping of our wallet. Some aspects of our identity can be “stolen” but our true self is not only safe in God’s hands, it is not static either because as we learn and grow, our sense of self grows, as well. Our text this week from Mark 7:27-38 invites us into a dramatic encounter with Jesus who gives a rather shocking answer regarding his identity. His messianic identity of suffering, rejection, death, and resurrection is hard for the disciples to comprehend, and Peter tries to dissuade Jesus from his mission. Jesus’ disciples must see themselves as “followers” more than
Our message this week from Mark 6 and John 6 tells the story of Jesus feeding the multitudes. They were so impressed with his powers to fill their tummies, they wanted to make Jesus King! But Jesus wants to feed our spirits so we can be sent as messengers of the Mess-iah. We will learn that Jesus takes our messes and turns us into messengers of hope and healing.