Scripture Reveals Itself

We had a great experience in our Wednesday morning Women's Bible Study this week.  It's a fantastic example of how Scripture speaks to us, revealing God's Spirit in new and interesting ways.  (It's also a fantastic example of why Bible Studies are enriching and irreplaceable.)

We were reading through the 7th chapter of the Gospel of Mark when we came across this story:

31 Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis. 32 There some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged Jesus to place his hand on him.

33 After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man’s ears. Then he spit and touched the man’s tongue. 34 He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, “Ephphatha!” (which means “Be opened!”). 35 At this, the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.

36 Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone. But the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it. 37 People were overwhelmed with amazement. “He has done everything well,” they said. “He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

We had 500 questions about the proceedings here.  Why did Jesus pull the man away privately?  Jesus had performed plenty of miracles in Mark before this.  Some took but a word.  For some the recipient wasn't even present.  What was with the touching and the saliva and the extra words in this miracle?  Was it all a show?  What's up with Jesus commanding the man not to tell anyone and then the man blabbing anyway?

We answered these questions the best we could but we mostly left them with a shrug.  "Oh well.  It was an interesting story.  Maybe we'll never quite 'get it'.  It's nice that the guy was healed, though.  Onward!"

Proceeding onward into Chapter 8 we found a miracle of many people fed, one of several arguments between Jesus and the Pharisees, and then we read this story:

22 They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. 23 He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?”

24 He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”

25 Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 Jesus sent him home, saying, “Don’t even go into the village.”

Wait a minute!  This miracle involves saliva as well.  Plus it took two applications of Jesus' power to get it right!  There's got to be more to this story.  It's too much coincidence for spit to show up twice in a row during miracles.

So we began drawing connections.  The saliva provided the first clue.  These two miracle stories are chained together.  That was the purpose of spitting...not that Jesus needed the saliva to perform the miracle, but to show us that these miracles were linked, two parts of a set.  Cool!

Knowing that the miracles were meant to be compared, we then started to look at details.

Each miracle starts with an important geographical designation.  The first saliva application happened in Decapolis, on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee.  This was Gentile territory.  People here would not have grown up with the Jewish Law and the Jewish faith that Jesus and his disciples shared.  They would not have known about God the same way the Jews did.  To the Jews they were foreigners, heathens, the unfaithful.

The second miracle happened in Bethsaida, among the Jews.  This was home territory compared to Decapolis, Tyre and Sidon.  People here would have been expected to know and accept God's word.

The first saliva miracle happened among outsiders, among people the Jews would have considered the non-dominant, non-favored culture.  The second happened among insiders, the "right" people.

Now consider the affliction in each story.  The Gentile man--the foreigner, the outsider--could not hear and could not speak.  There's a theological component to this physical ailment.  The outside group had never heard God's word.  Obviously they could not be messengers of it either, having not received it.  The "faithful" folks would not have bothered sharing it with them.  They were outsiders, the wrong people!  Ironically the inside group would then blame the outsiders for not being people of God.  It was the religious equivalent of a community denying a person any kind of job and then blaming that person for not having enough money, food to eat, or a roof over his head.  "They're ignorant of scripture because they're Gentiles!"  No, they're ignorant of scripture because you refuse to share it with them, because you make yourselves the privileged, knowledgeable ones by denying everybody who's not you.

But look at the affliction of the faithful, "inside" man.  It's blindness!  His problem isn't that he hasn't heard or can't speak the word.  His problem is that having heard and spoken, he still doesn't get it!  He doesn't see.  He can't make proper use of what he knows.  This is the fault of the dominant group.  They've got the power but they have no idea how to use it for goodness because they assume it exists only to support them, to keep them dominant and privileged.

Look now at the process of each miracle.  How easy was it for Jesus to cure the deaf, mute man?  It happened instantly.  Jesus' presence, a touch, and a word: "Be opened!"  The man's life was opened.  Not only did he hear again, he began to speak and started a tidal wave of acclaim and amazement directed towards Jesus.  He became an evangelist, just like that!  He shared the good news, it couldn't be stopped (even by Jesus himself), and many came to know God's mercy through this "outsider".

How easy was it to heal the blind man?  He had to do it twice.  You never see that happening in scripture.  Having Jesus "redo" the miracle isn't just an indication that it was twice as hard.  It makes this operation uniquely difficult.  Curing the blindness of the inside group is a far greater challenge than rectifying whatever might be wrong with the outside group.  Changing the behavior of the oppressors and setting them on the right track is nigh impossible compared to uplifting the oppressed even though the former are consider the "right" group and the latter the "wrong" one.

You can almost see Jesus looking at the Pharisees with whom he had argued in between these miracles stories and saying, "See?  Here's what all your 'rightness' has gotten you: a blindness that makes it impossible for you to understand me even when 'foreigners' and 'heathens' understand in an instant."

We have to be really careful as followers of Christ today.  In America we've been the "in" group since the founding of the country.  It might be less so in this new millennium than it has been in the past but if you asked people to identify just one religion which typifies and dominates our culture the answer would still be "Christianity" by a mile.  The classic approach is to claim that going to church makes us the wise, knowledgeable, powerful ones...the "right folks".  That's the same blindness the Pharisees had.  God has to work twice as hard to correct somebody who already thinks they've got it right as he does to guide somebody who has no clue.

We have to guard against keeping the Good News to ourselves.  Whatever power or grace or knowledge we've been given is for the purpose of uplifting and healing the world, not just preserving our own power and position.  We have to make sure we're not building walls to define "in" and "out" groups.  Where we see those walls--be they religious, cultural, economic, political, marked by gender or age or race or lifestyle--we have to do what Jesus did: cross through them in order to share love and grace on the other side...miracles more powerful and important than any barrier.  That's the mission, and the warning, spelled out by these two stories.

What a powerful realization!  I'm not sure any of us would have come to it on our own.  Mostly we would have scratched our heads about why Jesus was touching people with spit all of a sudden and moved on.  But together we were more powerful, more perceptive in the Spirit than any of us could have been individually.  What a wonderful revelation!  And that's why we do Bible Study.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Bible Study Reflections: Healing on the Sabbath

We finished our year of Women's Bible Study with a strong May, looking at some of the words and actions of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew.  Among the passages we studied this week:  Matthew 12: 9-14.

9 Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, 10 and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”

11 He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? 12 How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

13 Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. 14 But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.

These verses tell us everything we need to know about how God views the Law.  From the time of Moses these words stood tall:  "You shall do no work on the Sabbath."  The Pharisees understood this, followed it to the letter.  That was God's command.

Then here comes Jesus, who meets a man with a shriveled hand on the Sabbath.  The Pharisees, not his biggest fans anyway, think they have him dead to rights.  They've heard he's a healer.  They ask what he's going to do about this man.  If Jesus refuses to help him then Jesus seems small and petty, his power taken away.  But if Jesus does help him then Jesus has broken God's Law about working on the Sabbath and therefore reveals himself as unfaithful.

You can almost hear the Pharisees gloating about the dilemma Jesus is in.  Except there was no dilemma.  Jesus healed the man.  End of story.  In doing so he invited the people around him to examine not just the letter of the Law, but its purpose.

The Pharisees were using God's Law like a rulebook by which they kept score.  The Law was its own purpose, existing for its own sake, defining who was right and wrong.  By its strictest letter they behaved right and other people behaved wrong, which is why they liked it.

Jesus gave us a different definition.  The Law doesn't exist to separate right people from wrong people.  The Law defines compassion and pushes us towards it.  It's there so we know how to be kind and good to each other.  If we're not showing compassion we're voiding the Law instead of fulfilling it.  When Jesus saw the man with the withered hand, he healed it and thus fulfilled the Law.  This was true even when the healing happened on the Sabbath, the day of holiness.

The Pharisees had the rulebook memorized but didn't act compassionately, so they broke the Law even when they appeared to fulfill it.  Jesus acted compassionately so he fulfilled the Law even when he appeared to break it.

It's easy to flip back to Leviticus, pull out three verses of Law, and say, "This is what God says and I'm right and you're wrong and God's on my side and not on the side of those people who break this law!  God's word say it right there!!!"  That's cheap, immature, thoughtless, and gravely mistaken theology.  Even calling it "theology" is probably a mistake because that word means "study of God" and there's neither study nor much God in that process.  It's all about being right, preserving your prerogatives, justifying your judgments.  The Law doesn't justify any of us.  It shows us where we've fallen short that we might learn to treat each other better.  Using it to treat each other worse is the height of irony.

Jesus didn't do this.  He didn't treat the Law that way nor did he treat his friends and neighbors that way.  Jesus showed the compassion that the Law is supposed to lead us to:  healing the sick, feeding the hungry, sticking up for the poor and oppressed and condemned...especially those oppressed and condemned in the name of God's Law.

Unless you're Jewish, the only way you have access to the Law in the first place is through Christ.  If it wasn't for Jesus bringing you into God's family you'd just be another non-Jewish person to whom the Law was not given.  He makes the Law part of your heritage.  He's the only reason you can call the God of the Law your God as well.  Therefore the only way we, as Christians, are allowed to interpret the Law is as Christ did...as compassionate healers instead of self-righteous judges.

Every time you're faced with a legal/moral matter and you're tempted to say, "But God said..." you should stop, re-read this passage, and then ask yourself if you're trying to follow the letter of the Law into judgment or whether you're following its Spirit into compassion.  Not everything is lawful.  Not all things are good.   But condemnation and an air of righteousness are not faithful responses to sin.  The only truly lawful, truly faithful response to sin is to do as Jesus did, filling the space in question with God's love, compassion, and healing.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Asking the Right Questions

Our Wednesday Morning Women's Bible Study group dipped a toe into the book of Ruth this morning, a short interlude after the relatively long look at Corinthians we've taken.  As we did so, I was reminded again of the importance of knowing what kind of literature you're reading when you take up various parts of the Bible.  We did a whole study on this last fall, for good reason!

The Bible invites you to ask questions.  What is faith but an exploration of the wonderful, mysterious, and very big relationship we have with God?  The Bible is the field on which that exploration takes place.  If we never ask a question while traversing its pathways we miss out on its meaning.  It'd be like visiting a new place, walking right through it, and never bothering to stop, examine, or wonder about anything.  Why did you visit in the first place?

While the potential for questions in the Bible as a whole is limited, each section is set up to answer different sorts of questions.  Careful reading--coupled with a little foreknowledge about what kind of literature you're reading--will reveal what questions each book will answer best.  Questions outside the scope of the story being told will be answered poorly or not at all...usually because the story itself finds them beside the point.

Contrast Ruth with the stories about King David and Solomon that follow immediately after in Chronicles and Kings.  The characters in these books are connected, as Ruth and Naomi end up being related to David and Solomon.  But Ruth is a narrative story, like a play or television show.  Chronicles and Kings are histories, much as you'd find in a school textbook.  The distinction is critical.

In a narrative story events exist to serve the characters.  Think of the Star Trek TV shows, for instance.  Why did that big space creature show up right in front of the ship?  Well, because our good captain and crew needed a peril to work their way out of!  The creature's appearance has little or nothing to do with scientific principles, though some may be used as window dressing to make the story seem more realistic.  But if you start asking questions like, "Hey, there's no air in outer space to conduct sound, so how are the people on the ship hearing that creature threaten them?" you ruin the story.  We're never going to get a good answer to that question.  Events happen to move the narrative and its characters along...telling the greater story.

The opposite is true in a history.  Here the characters only exist to illustrate the events.  Consider the movie "Patton" or a documentary on that fine World War II general.  Yes, we'll see some personality from him in order to make him interesting and relatable, but those personality traits only exist to hold our attention while we're waiting for the parts about the commanding and the battles and the victories.  If Patton--with the same personality and all--had been a dishwasher instead of a general we'd not be seeing this film!  The whole purpose of the movie is to show what he did as a general and how that affected the flow of history around him.  When we ask questions like, "What did this man really feel inside at this moment?  And what was his wife thinking?" we once again divert the story.  We'll never get a good answer to those questions because the people in this story exist only to bring life to the events.

Going back to our Bible books, Ruth is a narrative story like Star Trek and Chronicles/Kings are histories like our Patton documentary.  Knowing this, we also know what kind of questions each book will invite us to ask and what kind of questions each book will fall silent on.

Ruth and Naomi lost all the men of their family to disease, had to go back to Naomi's home town of Bethlehem, and were forced to glean the leavings of grain out of the fields until they were redeemed.  How did Naomi feel about this?  That's a question a narrative story will answer!  In the narrative itself she says, "Don't call me Naomi [pleasant] anymore, call me Mara [bitter]."   The book of Ruth will talk to you about these things all day long and invite you to explore their ramifications.  But the book will fall silent if you start asking, "Which disease was it that killed all the menfolk of that family?  How contagious was it?  How far was the journey back to Bethlehem and how did they provide for themselves along the way?  What type of grain were they gleaning?  How many bushels could be gleaned by the average beggar in a day when you factor in the time to thresh and transport the finished product?"  We may be curious about these things but they're peripheral to the narrative.

David and Solomon, on the other hand, built a powerful kingdom, won many battles, erected a temple, fathered children, battled over a couple of successions.  These histories will be really good at answering all of those questions that Ruth ignored.  "How many men were in this battle?  How far did they have to march from Point A to Point B?  What was the geography like?  What tactics did they use to win?  How many years passed between this event and the next?"  But if you start asking Ruth-like questions of Chronicles--"How did everybody feel about this?  What did this expression of faith mean to King David?"--the book will give you few answers.  Again, these aspects are peripheral to the story the book is trying to tell.

The classic example of this phenomenon comes in the book of Job.  As you know, Job lost all his children in a great disaster, the result of a cosmic contest between God and Satan.  He goes through trials but in the end all of his stuff is restored along with a whole new batch of children and Job lives happily ever after.  The End.

Except that every parent in the audience is screaming, "WHAT?!?"  The restoration at the end is nice and all, but children aren't commodities that can just be replaced.  The book is claiming this resolution as happy but to us it seems hideous.  And hideous it would be if it were meant to be a history.  We'd have to ask questions like, "What were the names of the children and how old were they?"  Then we'd mourn them forever.  The book doesn't do any of that.  We don't get a single name.  It just mentions that they're there, then BOOM!  They're gone along with equally-mourned camels and goats.  Then later a new batch of equally-nameless children and livestock have taken their place and everything's fine.

But Job isn't meant to be a history.  It's a cosmic tale of good and evil, suffering and redemption, played out in the life of our title character.  All the events in the story, including the loss of the children, serve that purpose...to show who Job is and who God is.  It's not a manual for living life.  It's not an attempt to relay historical events.  It's a narrative designed to teach us about our relationship with God.

If we treat Job like a history or a manual for proper living, we end up in odd and horrible positions.  When somebody loses a child we're forced to say, "Well, God decides these things and He is so big and mighty who can understand or argue with him?"  Either that or, "Just be patient and you'll end up with an even better replacement!"  Neither one is very comforting, nor at all appropriate.  But the book doesn't mean these things.  We just asked it the wrong questions and tried to use it in a way it doesn't want to be used.

Every book, every word of scripture, has its time and place.  All questions are explored somewhere.  Discerning the time, place, and which questions are best asked is part of the fun (and discipline) of reading the Bible.  Sometimes it addresses exactly the questions we wanted to ask.  Other times it forces us to ask different ones, to think in a new way.  That's one of its strengths...if we let it be.  When we insist upon only asking one (or one type of) question over and over we end up misreading and misinterpreting scripture.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Two (and a half) Things You Should Know

We've talked a little bit about events coming up in the next month or so.  I want to remind you of one, the last and final Evangelism Workshop for the year.  We'll hold it on September 30th and October 14th following worship.  If you haven't been to one yet, you're going to be light years ahead in understanding our church and its mission when you come.  Evangelism isn't what we think it is.  In fact most of what people have been told about evangelism is backwards.  This is a huge part of the reason we don't do it well.  That's a serious flaw in our lives of faith.  This workshop alone won't correct that but it will provide a start in a new direction.  That's going to become important to us as we move forward through the next year.  So please make your plans to participate.

After the rush of the early fall schedule clears we're going to hold two other slightly more voluntary but just as important courses:

Basics of the Bible

We talk about the Bible plenty and most folks are aware of the major story and themes but many don't know how the Bible fits together, where it came from, why it's central to our life of faith.  This course will look at the various parts of the Bible, their origins, how they fit together into the whole, and how they inform us today.  We're not going to study individual books as much as the flow of the story and its history.

Basics of Lutheranism

This will do the same thing for our denominational history.  We'll talk about Martin Luther, see how the Reformation came about, talk about the radical changes it gave birth to, and look at how its tenets continue today through our church (or sometimes not).  This won't just be a dry history but a look at the origins of many of the things we believe, discussion about the ways our belief has evolved, and a look at the church today and how it's similar or different.

Having been through multiple Bible Studies and a bunch of Theology on Tap meetings, I perceive people crying out for some of these things.  Or if they aren't crying out for them, maybe they should be.  These won't be the typical "here's what you have to believe, now hush up and toe the line" attempts at teaching theology.  Rather they'll be a chance to find common ground and identify which things in our faith life are central and which are more peripheral and malleable.

The phrases that get tossed around over and over again are:

"This is what the Bible says..."  And...

"Lutherans think this!  (Or at least that's what somebody said to me 20 years ago, I think.)"

As it turns out, at least half of the phrases that follow those assertions are, if not strictly untrue, at least pretty far out there.  Coming back to center and orienting ourselves will at least give us a chance to chart our journey instead of walking willy-nilly based on rumor and guesses.  These courses will be a chance to understand ourselves, our church, and our faith life better.

We will probably offer these in multiple years so everybody eventually has a chance to participate in one or both, but I'd love to see a strong showing early to indicate there's interest.  We'll try to schedule them conveniently.  Take advantage of them when they come around!

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

2012-13 Events

Is it too soon to start thinking about fall?

Summer has barely started--at least if you measure by decent weather--but the 2012-13 year will sneak up on us before we even know it.  Planning ahead, here are some of the things I'm excited about.

• Our final Evangelism Workshop will be critical for those who missed the earlier ones.  Just had to throw that in.
• A Bible Basics course which will walk people through the ins and outs of the texts that guide us.  Most people have a pretty good idea of the main stories but don't understand how they fit together, how the Bible itself was formed, and what comes before and after.  Having a little basic knowledge about the Bible helps in your reading.
• A Lutheran Basics course which will do the same for the life and history of Martin Luther and the church his life gave rise to.  Again, most people understand that we do certain things as Lutherans but have no idea why, how, or how all of this got here.  A little knowledge puts everything into perspective and helps us realize which things are critically important and which are convention (or even mistakes sometimes).
• Faith in Movies...a look at God themes in film, understood by actually watching and discussing movies!
• Our always-vibrant Women's Bible Study, a new way of doing Sunday morning Adult Study, and the return of Theology on Tap!

Obviously we won't be doing all of these at once.  In fact already we're spanning much of the 2012-13 year.  If you have ideas you'd like to see, let me know so we can try and work them in too.  Either way, make your plans to get in some extra-curricular learning during the year to come!

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Scripture Study: Colossians 3: 12-15

A little bit of scripture to ponder today, from Colossians 3: 12-15...

12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
15 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. 

I love the way this passage starts.  It's about urging us to be more godly, but the definition of our lives doesn't start with ourselves.  Instead our identity starts with God.  God chose us.  He looked over the world and said, "Aha!  I see [insert your name here].  That's my child.  I will do everything in my power to show them that I love them."  That's why Jesus came.  That's why scripture exists.  That's why we bother with each other day after day, Sunday after Sunday.  It's not because of us--our intrinsic faults and merits--but because of God.  God says we're loved, holy, and beautiful.  Who are we to argue?

Since we ARE holy and beloved, therefore, we should strive to make our lives reflect that.  We clothe ourselves in compassion, making sure others know they are loved too and walking with them through all those situations which make them feel hurt, ashamed, or unloved.  We are kind to each other, uplifting instead of degrading.  We are humble...not with the false humility that says, "I am nothing" but with true humility, saying, "I am beautiful but God has made many beautiful things.  I'm just glad to be a part of it!"  We practice gentleness and patience, not enforcing our will or insisting on our own way but sacrificing our time, emotion, energy, and desire for the sake of the people around us.

Acknowledging that nothing in this world ever goes perfectly, including our own lives, we choose to forgive the ills of the world instead of clinging to them.  Sin touches everything we do.  It only sticks when we fail to forgive.  Following our Lord, we refuse to let evil have the final say.  We cannot defeat it on its own terms, fighting fire with fire.  Instead we defeat it by forgiving, saying, "This will have no hold on me."

We do all this because we're in love with God and he with us.  We embrace each other.  We're bonded together.  Since we're so tightly joined, we learn to love the things that God loves...almost like a parent or spouse learning to love the things their children or fellow spouse have a passion for.  In God's case, the object of love is everyone around us.  We don't love them because we think well of them, agree with them, are comfortable with them, or because they treat us well.  We love them because God loves them.

In doing all this we receive the gift of peace, the inheritance of God's children.  We are one with him.  What more could we need?  What could be taken away from us that he will not restore and multiply a hundredfold?  For this we are thankful.

What beautiful verses these are!  They wash over us, calming fears and calling us to something higher and more noble.  Keep them in your heart today as you live them out!

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

BRILLIANT Inspiration!

Just yesterday I talked about the diversity of faith backgrounds and views in our Wednesday Morning Women's Bible Study and darned if we didn't see the Spirit at work in exactly that way this very morning!

We are studying the Book of James and in this particular passage we considered the role of works in faith, how they were necessary but how they could also become a source of distraction when they became prideful or self-righteous.  We talked about how churches often narrow their ministries by keeping their tasks familiar and withing the purview of 4-5 people instead of letting all the gifts of the people in church flower.  We were just getting into the disguise we put over this process--anointing one thing to do and one way to do it and calling that "right" or "holy"--when one of our brilliant theologians brought up a lesson she had been told in childhood:  "If you want something done right, do it yourself!"

This simple statement dovetailed with everything we had been talking about: work being about the self, limiting the range of our daily tasks to things we agree with or things that cater to our own gifts, defining a single way of doing things that only we know, determining right and wrong by internal bias rather than external effect.  Then the true beauty of the statement came to the fore as we made this connection:

1.  If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

2.  Faith, by definition, can never be done by yourself.  (At a minimum you need a God to believe in, right?)

3.  Therefore by simple A-B-C mathematical logic, faith can never be done "right"!

Whoa!!!

Note that this is different than saying faith can never be done well.  It surely can be.  But it can never be done "right" when "right" is defined as "just one way to do it, the way I say".  Faith is not a "get out of the way and let me show you how it's done" endeavor.  Faith is a, "Let's jump in and do this together" thing.  Every time we posit a single "right" way to do it we are isolating ourselves, cutting off our faith from infinite permutations of God's Spirit and from its relationship to people around us.

In other words, every bit of energy we spend on trying to get faith "right" by that self-centered definition is a waste of time.  Every moment we spend doing faith together with each other and God is a blessing, even if we sometimes do it imperfectly.

Thank goodness for all the people and views at our Bible Study.  They bring out this kind of thing that we'd never think of sitting in a room trying to read scripture on our own.  Who knows if we get it right all the time, but we sure do it well!

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Different Perspectives

Our Wednesday Morning Women's Bible Studies are winding down for another year.  As we meet for the last couple of times until fall I want to point out a facet of our study that's not remarked about much but has provided much joy and interest in the past couple years.  As we've gone on through these studies our group of participants has become more diverse than ever.  We still have Lutheran ladies from here and abroad, of course, but increasingly we're seeing participants from the Catholic Church, the Community Church, and others yet. This makes for a fascinating time!  We're never short of thoughts.  But neither are we fixated on finding THE ANSWER.  In fact it's almost a bummer when we find a satisfactory answer because then the conversation ends!  But oh well...we just move on to the next verse!

Diversity in our outlooks and opinions has made that group vibrant and stronger.  It's so refreshing to be able to gather to ponder and explore our faith instead of gathering to rehearse all the things we think we're expected to say.  It's a little dangerous sometimes but it's also exciting.

We only needed two things in order to increase the actual "study" in our Bible Study:

1.  We had to ask questions and bother to listen for people's responses.  We make plenty of points and carry home plenty of solid things to think about, but we go through the questioning process in order to get there.  We don't come with our points already decided, not needing to hear anyone else.  We ask, we listen, we learn...first from scripture and then from each other.

2.  We take care of each other in this process.  Sometimes we hear things we don't agree with or that challenge us.  Instead of rejecting the people who bring those things to the table, we respect, love, and welcome them.  We may not end up agreeing but we do end up loving.  Love makes the gathering safe, emboldens people to share their thoughts and lessons no matter how wild or speculative.

Asking questions and loving people when they answer are two underrated disciplines of faith.  Thanks to everybody in our Women's Study we now have a living model of how it works and enriches our lives.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Questions of Faith

After a session of Theology on Tap that went on more than two hours and easily could have continued for six more I was reminded of one of the very first lessons I was taught about faith.  Saturday night's topic was wide open:  bring any question you have about faith, God, church, or whatever.  Spill it!  Someone did.  People spoke.  Another question followed, then another, then another.  It was intense, unscripted, and yet very Spirit-filled.  We all marveled about these things that had been bubbling inside us and never found the forum to get out before.  We wondered why our life of faith wasn't more like this all the time.

That made me think back to the first real, live pastor I had a conversation with...a Lutheran guy, in fact.  As I sat in his office across from his desk he looked at me and said, "The questions you ask in your walk of faith are ten times as important as the answers you get."  He was right!  I've since found that a good answer only lasts for a day but a good question can keep you occupied for a lifetime.  All of the greatest leaps and realizations I've had in my own faith life have come from other people asking questions like, "Why do these things happen?" or "Why did God do this?" or "Why did God say that?" or "What in the world does this mean?"  Plenty of those leaps have come from people directly (but usually nicely) probing into church practices and doctrine, questioning why we say or believe certain things.  Those questions are a blessing, as they open up avenues for learning among us all...the person asking the question, the person being asked, and everyone who hears or participates in the conversation.  It's sad that we don't ask more!

I said something on Saturday night that bears repeating in public.  In the course of our discussions quite a few people said they'd been told that Lutherans believe this or that.  It was actually funny, because more than half the time they were wrong.  (That wasn't their fault, mind you.  People say Lutherans believe a lot of things!)  Addressing these assertions I said that Lutheran doctrine, at its heart, proposes three things:

1.  We don't know everything!  In some ways we don't know anything.  We are incapable of perfectly understanding God on our own.  We aren't capable of believing in him on our own either.  We are the lost folks.

2.  The doctrine we teach is designed to point us towards God but also to start us asking questions about him and our faith...a necessary process given Point #1 just stated. At no point is Lutheran doctrine meant to shut down conversation or provide "the answer".  Instead it stands as a road map delineating hazards and marking oases along our journey towards God.  The minute you say, "This is the Final Word and I will hear no more about it" you have stopped taking that journey and thus robbed the doctrine of its reason.

3.  God is the God of the lost, wandering people.  From Adam and Eve to the Israelites to the apostles of Jesus he has always embraced those who didn't know it all but kept seeking anyway.  The key to understanding his salvation isn't getting the right answer but understanding that we'll never have it (short of heaven) and that he's loving us and saving us anyway.  If faith is all about being right we're lost.  Half of us won't get things correct and we'll be lost.  Meanwhile the other half will get it and think they're more special than everybody else because of that and will get trapped in their own pride and self-satisfaction.  If, on the other hand, faith is about the God who calls you to question and discuss even when you're not sure you have the answer then both right and wrong work to his purpose, as they both spur us to seek him more.  Sometimes we walk in an empty wilderness without good answers, sometimes in a lush garden full of them.  Still we soldier on.

How long has it been since you've asked a question about faith in the presence of God's people and thus spurred them to conversation with all their glorious right and mistaken answers, all their interesting theories, and all of the questions of their own that follow?  Might be worth a try sometime...

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Bible Study Reflections: Idolatry

As we continue through the chapters in Isaiah 40-50 our Women's Bible Study participants keep getting confronted with the subject of idolatry...a subject guaranteed to make God a little upset.  When we read about people making statues out of stone and wood in order to worship them we always say, "How in the world could they be so silly and superstitious?"  In doing so we miss the slightly more subtle (and thus more dangerous) forms of idolatry we still practice.

The process of idolatry can be described most simply as taking something made by human hands and equating it with God.  Most of us think we're safe from this, as few of us specialize in graven image making anymore.  But do you remember when we talked about adultery a couple months ago?  We said, in essence, that anything you invest greater time, energy, thought, and love into than you do your spouse becomes your new spouse.  That could be another person, it could be a job, it could be a project.  If you have more devotion to that thing than your marital relationship, you're committing a form of adultery with it.

It's the same way with idolatry and God.  We don't have outright statues, but you can't even begin to count the number of things we depend on for happiness, comfort, safety, and fulfillment more than we depend on God.  How about the things we invest our time, energy, and resources into?  We don't call them gods, but they determine our actions as surely as if they were.  If something bad happens in our spiritual life, like getting too busy to pray, we figure we can make it up next time.  If something bad happens to our checking account we are devastated and go into a panic because that's irreplaceable!  The balance seems off there...tending towards idolatry.  Our true god is that which we depend upon most.  In a practical sense, that's not the God of the Bible for most of us.

In the course of this dependence it's certainly possible to elevate physical things to the level of godhood.  They're not statues but they're every bit as much of an idol as those ancient carvings were.  In Bible Study the ladies mentioned automobiles and houses.  Others have fine material things that they didn't want anybody else to touch or use...like pristine white furniture in a living room that everyone is kept out of, defeating its purpose.  Most of us can get past those things, but the sneaky one is our church.  Faithful people have idols today, they just look like rectangular buildings with steeples on top.  Woe be unto the kids in your church if you get a new carpet.  It will cause everyone to glare at their fruit-punch hands and make them feel unwelcome.  How willing are people in your church to pay for a roof repair versus paying for evangelism ministry?  For many church has taken the place of God...an insidious development as the church technically has God's name on it, making the idolatry seem more real, thus making it a greater betrayal.

But idolatry isn't just about physical things, it's about control.  This aspect brings even more danger to us, as control is precious in our modern society.  Idolatry is another way of saying you choose your god instead of God choosing you.  The allure of the idol is that you know you made it.  You know its shape, its features.  You fashioned it.  You put it up on its pedestal and you can take it down at any time.  You have the ultimate power in the relationship.  Bowing to the idol only makes your own ultimate power greater.  The bigger the thing you can elevate or destroy the bigger you seem.

How many of us were raised with the idea--and how many people across the world are still told--that the most important thing in the world is that you choose Jesus?  I'm not trying to minimize the moments when we commit ourselves to God.  Those are important.  But there's been such a huge emphasis on personal decision in the Christian process that we've lost sight of the fact that God chose us first, forgave us first, put grace in our hearts first and only then could we find anything to commit to.

The distinction is critical.  For the most part people can only choose what they understand and agree with.  When our faith rests on our personal choice the God we "choose" inevitably thinks like us, agrees with us, and is quite grateful that such a right-thinking person would choose him!  Therefore when we're confronted with anything different than we already agree with, by definition that thing is not godly.  When people in church want to change something that we're comfortable with, by definition that's wrong.  If somebody crosses us the natural solution is to change churches, to find one that worships the "real" god who agrees with us.  This isn't faith, it's idolatry...self-worship with God's name stuck on top to legitimize it.  In our own minds we have the power to put up or tear down God himself, just as if he were that wooden statue.  Except we're using the name of the real God for our charade...far worse than subbing in a carved idol.

We've all seen and confronted, and a healthy number of us have even participated in, this kind of idolatry.  It causes us to shout down when we should listen to, to quit when we should stay, to vilify things we don't agree with when we should be seeking to understand them, to shut out people we should welcome, and to betray the God we were meant to serve.  It happens every time we think that we know faith and judge God by our knowledge instead of saying we belong to God and judging faith by that relationship.  That's distressingly common nowadays.

Don't take idolatry lightly.  It lies all around you, waiting to lead you away from the true God.  It's just as prevalent today as it was in Isaiah's time...maybe more so.  It's just as easy to fall into.  Pray for God to lead you today instead of you leading God around the life that he, himself, made for you.  Ask him to help you rely on him for your joy, comfort, and safety.  Tell him he doesn't have to agree with you.  Thank him for choosing you, as mixed up as you are.  Ask him to put the blessings of this world in their proper place, that they might add to your faith instead of taking you away from it.  Pray that he might open your eyes and heart to his will, so that you might be able to serve and love as his child.  There's no greater gift in the world than that.  I pray that his calling might be yours.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Bible Study Reflections: Shunning and Supporting

Once again this week we had a deep discussion in our Wednesday Morning Bible Study.  The topic continues to be Isaiah, this time around Chapter 42 wherein God's wrath and redemption are discussed.

During the course of our conversation the topic of changing societies got brought up.  People noted how different the world is today than it was 50, or even 30, years ago.  Someone cited a statistic from the paper that a large percentage of children are born outside of marriage these days, that single-parent or unmarried families are becoming the norm.

Naturally the group tossed around the ins and outs of that changing reality, but in the end we tried to figure out what a proper response would be.  We found that our feelings had changed on that as well over the years.

Once upon a time the "proper" response of "good" people was to shun and dismiss folks who had violated societal or religious norms.  Somebody cited girls (and a couple boys) being dismissed from school back in the day for unexpected pregnancies.  Another person mentioned that newborn children of unwed mothers were once kept behind a wall in seclusion and rushed out of the maternity ward as quickly as possible.

In 2012 a few high schools in our local area have day care facilities to assist students with babies.  The maternity ward process has changed also.  Is this faithful?  Was it better the other way?

The first question one needs to ask is whether the shunning worked.  I'd argue not.  Unexpected pregnancies are as old as the dawn of time.  They happened thousands, hundreds, and tens of years ago and still happen today.  Rejecting folks who found themselves in this situation only drove them away.  It didn't solve the problem, it created another.

One also needs to ask what God's response would be.  As we talked about last week, we experience both wrath and comfort from God but the former is always subservient to the latter.  Any difficulty or frustration that breaks our relationship with God is merely a prelude to the joy and reconciliation that he chooses as our destiny.  That's why he sent his Son to die for us, after all, not that we might be condemned but that we might be saved.  It's probably OK to be disturbed when you perceive more and more children being born in situations you consider sub-optimal for them.  But that disturbance has to give way to support and love if you really want to reflect God's will.

Too many Christians begin and end with being disturbed and/or complaining.  This is exactly where all that harmful shunning and dismissing took root.  When we do this, we teach an incorrect story about God, equating God's will with condemnation instead of salvation.  It's fine to sigh and even say, "Oh no!" when you find out a 16-year-old is pregnant.  That 16-year-old is probably doing the same and more!  But after the sigh is exhaled, it's time to get to work and figure out how to support that child and the new child that's coming.  That means putting aside the frustration, embracing reconciliation, and figuring out together how to turn this into a gift instead of a tragedy.

We had this exact situation happen in the church I served as youth director long ago. One of our youth group members got pregnant.  In that church everybody who had a child got a baby shower.  That time, though, there was plenty of debate.  "Should the girl get a shower?  Wouldn't that be rewarding her and condoning the act?  Would other kids then want their own babies?"

That last assertion was a little ridiculous.  None of the other kids wanted to be in that girl's shoes no matter how many rattles and little blankies you handed them.  But the first two questions were under serious debate.  To me the answer was clear, though.  Withholding the shower wasn't going to change the circumstance.  It would only bring more difficulty into an already turbulent situation, making the girl feel more alone and less supported.  I'd advise every young girl and guy NOT to get pregnant.  But once a baby is on the way that advice does no good.  The situation has changed.  The proper response now is to make sure as much good comes out of this as possible for the mother and especially for that baby.  That little newborn should not arrive into this world as a problem but as God's gift. In this situation it was up to us to help that change in definition along.

That's exactly what God wants.  He doesn't expect that nothing bad will happen.  He knows the world is imperfect and so are we.  He simply asks us to look at all the circumstances of our lives--those we'd call good and others we'd call bad--as opportunities to make goodness and grace come into the world.  That's the message we're supposed to proclaim no matter how the world changes around us.  In fact that message eases our mind about the world changing, doesn't it?  Those changes don't determine our destiny.  Faith in God and the goodness it brings will always have a place.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Bible Study Reflections: Testing and Suffering

In our Women's Bible Study this week, looking at the book of Isaiah, we got onto the topic of God's role in suffering.  The early parts of Isaiah are full of passages detailing God's frustration with his people and their misguided ways.  The prophet predicts disaster coming upon them as God's hand is stretched out against them.  Granted, they deserved it.  Their behavior included stealing other people's homes and livelihoods, oppressing the poor, passing laws to make themselves rich on the backs of others, following false gods...the list is nearly endless.  You can see why God couldn't support this, why it had to be wiped away.  Still, the idea of God's wrath kindled against us begs the question:  Is all suffering punishment?  Is everything that goes wrong a test, a trial sent by God to teach us something?  Or worse, does God send bad things into our lives as direct retribution for our sins?

At the risk of tipping my hand, the answer to that is no.  Here's why.

God's story always leads to a place beyond suffering.  In the early parts of Isaiah we read about his anger and the impending fall of the people of Judah but the later parts of the book are full of his redemption.  The same hand outstretched against the people early on lifts, comforts, embraces, and redeems at the end of the story.  The bad gets turned to good by God.  THAT is the point of the story...not God following our badness with more of his own.  Suffering exists only for the sake of redemption.

I think we can claim that some suffering in this life is redemptive.  We've all had bad experiences teach us valuable lessons that turned us into better people.  In those cases I believe we can see God's hand in the mix, bringing good from bad.  Even then, though, I'd fall short of saying that God parceled out the bad to us just so we could get to the good.  As a parent I don't intentionally get my kids into bad situations just so I can teach them a lesson.  Rather I walk with them through the bad situations they wander into, trying to make sure they're safe and to make good come of them if I can.  I believe God does this too.

But not all suffering is redemptive.  When you lose a child or when an earthquake kills hundreds...those things are pretty much just bad.  God still works healing in the midst of them, but the idea that God made this tragedy happen so we could learn something from it is abhorrent.  It's a sneaky way of putting ourselves in the center of the universe.  "God killed all those people in that far away country so we could learn!"  Really?  You're really that important? Weren't they important too, those people who lost their lives?

Some suffering happens because the world is broken, period.  It doesn't work like it's supposed to and neither do we.  God could fix this but it would mean wiping out all of the world's imperfections, including us.  That's not an option he'll take, so he lives with the world being broken for a while until the last one of us is born and we're all ready for heaven.  In the meantime, we suffer.  No matter how much we learn or don't learn, no matter how often we proclaim we're Christians or not, whether we're good or bad, whether we're rich or poor...everybody will find life imperfect.  The only differences are occasion and degree.  Nobody escapes unscathed.

More importantly for our purposes, it's not like God is up there with a box full of sufferings handing out misery to people who deserve it.  Nor is he trying to test us by making us hurt.  The world makes us hurt because it's broken.  When we hurt, he hurts along with us.  When we cry, he cries too.  He's not punishing us, he's holding onto us in the midst of evil.  He wants us to hold onto him too, because he saves us.

If every bit of suffering was either punishment or a test of our faith, then as one of our Bible Study members put it, we wouldn't dare to interfere.  Who could stop God's plan?  Helping someone would be akin to sinning, going against God.  But we're not called to look at people who are suffering and say, "God is punishing you" or "God is testing you so I can't interfere".  That would be horrible!  Fortunately that's the opposite of what God calls us to do.  Instead he wants us to do as he does:  reach out, lift up, hold on to his children and walk with them.  If anyone is being tested when the world suffers it's us...not the people suffering but God's followers.  Will we respond with compassion?  Will we give up our time and resources to help?  That's the only test I see.  People affected by tragedy have suffered enough.  They don't need to give any more.  They need to be given to.  They need a chance for the world to be OK.  Will we love them enough to help in that process?  That's what God wants to know.  That should be our first instinct when we encounter suffering in this broken world.

In some ways we shouldn't even ask the questions, "Did God cause this?  Is this punishment?  Is this a test?" when we see someone suffering.  They can ask it, but if we do we're looking the wrong direction.  Instead of looking up and over our shoulders and waiting for an answer we should be looking forward and moving and asking what that person needs.  When we've done everything we can and we've all come through the other side together, maybe then we can ponder on sin and redemption.  But the road to that other side is long and there are plenty of other things to do before we reach the end of it.

I suspect that our only real answer comes through walking it together, helping each other out as we go.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Bible Study Reflections: Sometimes It's How You Explain It

Our reflection this week comes from our High School movie group who kicked off their new season by watching Smoke Signals, a story about two young Native American men from the Coeur d'Alene reservation.  Each has experienced hardship.  Thomas Builds-the-Fire lost his parents in a house fire when he was an infant. His friend Victor Joseph lost his father in a different way.  When Victor was yet a young boy his father Arnold left the family and moved to Phoenix, ending a relationship which was warm and intense but also full of drinking and abuse.  The movie chronicles the journey of the two friends to Phoenix to pick up Arnold Joseph's ashes after Victor gets the news that he has died.

Though the two friends take the same journey and share much in common they couldn't be more different in the way they explain and approach life.  Victor is direct, pragmatic, honest.  He remembers his father as the one who abandoned him.  He counsels his friend Thomas to be cautious of other people, lest they take advantage of him.  Thomas, on the other hand, views the world with wonder shared through his frequent (and often ridiculous) stories.  He sees Victor's father in a different light...regaling his friend about the time Arnold took him to Denny's to get the most glorious breakfast in the world:  two eggs, two links of sausage, two strips of bacon, and two pancakes.  Somehow when Thomas tells it the Grand Slam breakfast becomes a transcendent miracle.

Naturally Victor is annoyed by Thomas' grandiose stories.  He constantly asks his friend to stop talking.  He calls him a fool, a liar, out of touch with the real world.  But a funny thing happens when the two get to Phoenix.  Victor can't manage to take his dad's ashes.  He doesn't have the strength or any solid footing to do so.  Thomas has to hold them for him.  Naturally Thomas continues to tell stories about how amazing Victor's dad was.  Victor just can't reconcile the things he's holding onto with Thomas' perceptions.  So he stands apart from his friend and his dad's remains both.  The whole purpose of the trip was to reclaim his father and put him to rest and he cannot do it.

Oddly enough, Thomas' stories show Victor the way.  When the two of them question a lady in Phoenix who knew Victor's dad in his later days she asks whether they want to hear the truth, or lies.  Thomas, the storyteller, says that he wants to hear both at once.  In other words, sometimes the literal facts of a situation doesn't reveal its true meaning.  You need a new, interpretive story to get at the whole truth.  So she tells them the story of Arnold Joseph.  She tells them some terrible secrets that Arnold revealed to her.  She also tells them that his one, overwhelming desire was to love his son Victor, that as long as he was gone he never considered Phoenix home.  Home was always where his son was.  He never intended to stay away.  No matter what had driven him forth--and the ghosts of his past were substantial--his eyes were always back upon his family.

Hearing this, Victor had a choice.  Did he believe in the father he knew...the abandoner, the one who had let him down?  Or did he believe in the father of this woman's story...a flawed but ultimately loving man caught up in things he couldn't control and wishing only to love his son?  Both explanations of Arnold were accurate.  Which one was more true?

Victor's decision, ultimately to forgive his father and to tell his story in a positive light, allowed him the strength to carry Arnold's ashes and memory himself and also to let go of the resentful, suspicious child he had once been and own the beauty of his new existence.

It's a good movie.  It's also a good message, much along the lines of the devotion on the Eighth Commandment we did a couple weeks ago.  Never forget that how you explain the things of your life affects their ultimate truth and power.  If you look for bad in people or situations you will find it.  Nothing is perfect in this life.  If you explain things kindly, looking through eyes of faith and trust, you will find a kinder and more faithful truth even in the most difficult of circumstances.  Telling a story of an event or person binds the things contained within that explanation to your heart.  If you explain with resentment, fear, jealousy, suspicion, and anger those things will be bound to you.  Maybe there's good reason for that kind of story.  Maybe that is part of the truth of the event.  But be cautious how much or how firmly you rely on those feelings in your interpretation of life.  If, on the other hand, you explain with charity, grace, love, forgiveness, and the best possible construction you will also find those things overflowing your heart.

Even though each event in our lives gives us opportunity for both, we're going to have to choose one or the other of those paths as our strongest truth.  Ultimately you're either going to find your stories bringing good into the world or pain.

Never forget that Jesus died precisely so God could see his children through eyes of forgiveness, charity, and love.  Any halfway serious reading of the Bible will show you that human beings mess up everything they put their mind to, no matter how noble their impulses.  The Bible also tells us that even though God knows this, he ultimately chooses to see us as his own, beloved children.  His purpose is to save us by superseding our imperfect story with an amazing tale of his own...salvation.  We are saved precisely so we can look at a Grand Slam breakfast and be thankful, look at an all-too-human neighbor and be loving, look at the mistakes of our fathers and the ashes of death that consumed them and still be strong and hopeful, look at the oppression of this world and still be free.

What kind of story are you going to tell today?  No doubt it will be laced with sad and happy moments, pain and joy together.  Those words will provide opportunities for both suspicion and trust.  Which one of those is more central to you and your life of faith?  I hope it's the trust.  And I hope all of our stories and words together reflect that.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

You know how every so often planets align with each other, creating all kinds of news stories about how Saturn and Venus and Jupiter are lined up and everybody should get out and watch them?  Well oddly enough, that kind of thing is happening with our Bible Studies.  All four of them are switching subjects in the same week.  We change subjects from time to time in each, but having them all go at the same time is unusual!

Our Wednesday morning Women's Bible Study just made the move from Acts to Isaiah.  There's some amazing synergy going on with the people there.  Our last couple sessions have been evocative and spirited to say the least!

Our Sunday morning group is moving from Genesis to Romans.  Both are classic books that you can never get enough of!  If you've never been through Romans you're missing out on much of the material that defines our modern faith.

Our Thursday night gathering is moving this week from a study of food in the Bible to a short look at Christmas and its traditions, particularly through music.

Theology on Tap, which meets this Saturday at 7:00 at the Parkins residence, changes topics each time.  Maybe it's cheating to count it in this list.  This Saturday's topic is going to be a question we seldom have the courage to ask but should really be asking ourselves every single week at least!

The upshot is, now would be a great time to try out any or all of these groups if you haven't yet.  You can get in on the ground floor of some great discussion!

I hope to see you there.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Theology On Tap Begins Saturday!

Reminder that Theology On Tap, our new study gathering, begins on Saturday at the home of Brent and Verna Studer.  They live on Spruce Street in Genesee.  Turn north from main street, two blocks up on the corner, white house, big yard.  Call if you need the exact address.

Theology On Tap differs from our other studies in four key aspects:

1.  It meets once a month, on the first Saturday, instead of weekly.

2.  Each meeting is self-contained, featuring its own topic.  Instead of reading through a book of the Bible we'll be discussing and debating theological questions in good-natured manner.  It'll be a place to share ideas and experiences and learn from each other.

3.  That good-natured attitude will be helped along by sharing a little beer and wine, including some homemade by the various brewers at our own church.

4.  We'll be hosted in different house each month

In short, this is the perfect study for people who don't get into traditional studies all that much.  Both conversation and friends will be good!  Join us at 7:00 on Saturday for the inaugural edition!

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Food on Thursday Nights!

If you missed the first of our Thursday Night Bible Studies on the significance of food/meals in the Bible, here's what you missed...nothing short of the Garden of Eden!

Yeah, we ate all that.  Between mouthfuls we also talked about eating being one of God's original instructions to humankind, the very first sin coming through the act of eating, and our complex and changing relationship with food in modern times.

You are NOT going to want to miss this Thursday.  Food has done some wonderful things in scripture and you get to sample firsthand!  7:00 at St. John's.  Bring friends!

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)