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Dear Church,
I continue to give thanks to God for our worship together last Sunday as we celebrated a new Explore Together month and really leaned into who we are as radically welcoming people in the name of Christ Jesus. So many of you greeted me this week with the ASL for “Good News” and have started thinking about ways we can expand our welcome here at National City. What a beautiful curiosity and I am so grateful to serve a God that journeys with us all days and in all ways. From our curiosities and growth to the journey we take when returning home to God. We have a God who is abundantly present. Thanks be to God.
Our God of presence models for us our own expectations of presence. We are present in the pews for worship, in prayers for conversation, and in song for the harmonies of life. We are present with God and each other in the moments that make us who we are like the birth of a child, grief filled diagnoses, joyous new beginnings of love, and of course in our transitions back to God. It is in that spirit of presence with God and each other that I remind you that Lauria Carey’s inurnment memorial is this Sunday at 1pm in the columbarium and Emma King’s memorial will be in the sanctuary March 22nd at 2pm.
This season of Lent is about all of our journeys. The ones we take with God and for God’s people. The journeys we take alone and together. The journeys we take which feel impossible but then again maybe possible with the help of God through the love of God’s people. In other words, Lent is a journey of humanness that is only broken with holiness - the holiness of resurrection.
This week, our theme for the Good news is The Good News Is Together the Impossible is Possible. In other words, We Need Each Other! Thanks be to God that we are a community that knows how to walk this journey of our faith. So let us read our scriptures and reflections together and think about the ways we can live out this faithful and sacred call to community.
With love for all that we are and all that we are doing together,
Pastor Stephanie
Weekly Theme:
The Good News Is Together the Impossible is Possible.
Sacred Text:
Mark 6:32-44 (ILB) and Ephesians 3:20-21 (ILB)
So, they went away in a boat to a deserted area.
The people saw them leaving and many recognized them, so they ran together on foot from all the cities and got there ahead of the apostles. When Jesus went ashore, there was a large crowd waiting for him, and he felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So, he began to teach them many things.
By now it was getting very late, and his disciples came up to him and said, “This is a deserted place and it’s very late. Why not dismiss them so they can go to the nearby farms and villages and buy something to eat?”
Jesus replied, “Give them something to eat yourselves.”
They answered, “You want us to spend half a year’s wages on bread for them to eat?”
How many loaves do you have?” Jesus asked. “Go look.”
When they found out they reported back, “Five, and two fish.”
Jesus told them to have the people sit down on the grass in groups of hundreds and fifties. Then Jesus took the five loaves and two fish, raised his eyes to heaven and said the blessing. Jesus broke the loaves and handed them to the disciples to distribute among the people. He also passed out the two fish among them.
They all ate until they had their fill. The disciples gathered up the leftovers and filled twelve baskets of broken bread and fish. In all, five thousand families ate that day.
(Mark 6:32-44, ILB)
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To God—whose power now at work in us can do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine—to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus through all generations, world without end! Amen.”
(Ephesians 3:20-21, ILB)
Reflection:
By Rev. Lizzie McManus-Dail
God Doesn't Start with the Problem
The early days of planting my church, Jubilee, and the early days of motherhood were one and the same for me. They were days when my dreams were coming true-but I wasn't sleeping much.
My call was clear: start a new faith community. In my living room.
With the expectation that we would grow to need a bigger space, soon. (Where would said bigger space be? Yeah, that was the million-dollars-we-didn't-have question). Every little thing felt so impossible because it was so new. I cannot tell you how many late nights I spent fretting, not just about the liturgy, but how I could make a bulletin for the first time... ever... and and how we'd get it printed, and how to know how many we would need, and where I could get affordable altar linens. We were growing too fast for me to keep up—a wonder! A gift! And! It was all so depleting, this dream-come-true business.
I wonder if that's how the disciples felt. The dreams were coming true!
And, a God who makes all things new means... a lot of new. I picture their eyes popping when Jesus tells them to feed the crowd. I feel my stomach curdle on their behalf as they do the mental math for that much food.
But God does not start with the problem: “How do we feed all these people?"
God starts with what God has-which is everything, held in God’s hands.
And God also starts with what God has given us-five loaves, two fish. With God, all things are possible because God knows that God is always... God. It's us who break faith, it's us who listen to scarcity, it's us who fear our own hunger. Our God is a God of abundance. However loud the scarcity of the world grates, God delights in feeding the hungry, in accomplishing what we dare not imagine.
I remember one of the first abundance interruptions that salved my scarcity-frantic brain in those early motherhood-and-church-planter days. My in-laws were moving to town (grace upon grace) and my mother-in-law was a lifelong church pianist. Thus far, as much as l wanted music-music, after all, was what nourished me most in prayer—we had just done some simple, a cappella, Taizé songs for worship. It would be so wonderful to have her play, I thought. If only / had a keyboard.
I kid you not. The moment I said this half-prayer, half-hope, my neighbor posted on our local "Buy Nothing" group that he was getting rid of a keyboard and needed it gone ASAP.
God doesn't start with the problem. God starts with what we all have.
That Sunday, we sang "Amazing Grace" while the rafters shook. Turns out, nothing really is impossible with or for God.
Reflection Questions:
- When was a time God interrupted your life with abundance and how did you react?
- How do you determine if something is impossible and when you name it as such, what do you do next?
- Who in your life taught you how to give?
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