The Weekly View

The Weekly View - September 17, 2021

Click here for the full NEWSLETTER

In This Issue

• Weekly Message from Rev. Joanne Whitt
• Weekly Facebook Video
• Announcements & Upcoming Events
• Outreach Opportunities & Updates

message from rev.  whitt

Dear St. Luke family,

Our Homecoming Sunday was a zestful celebration!  We’ll be back on Zoom this Sunday, as well as in person in the sanctuary, to consider doubt as an element of faith.

When you were a child or teenager, did you have questions about faith or beliefs?  Was there anyone to whom you could turn with those questions?  Were your questions encouraged, or discouraged?  

My uncle was a minister in the Presbyterian Church in Canada.  He was a wonderful man, and I have a lot of respect and affection for him.  However, when I approached him with my questions about the traditional beliefs with which I’d been raised, he didn’t help.  I was in my late teens, and I wrote him a long letter that raised many questions.  In a nutshell, I asked, “Can I still be a faithful Christian if I don’t believe these things?”  He never answered my letter.  My mother, who had suggested that I write to him, was as disappointed as I was.  

After that, I left the Christian church for about 16 years, returning only after I had two toddlers, and my older daughter expressed a desire to go to Sunday school (she always was both curious and precocious).  So, you can see why it’s important to me that a church not only tolerates but welcomes and even encourages questions.  But this isn’t just a personal agenda.  Author Brian D. McLaren reports that we actually have a good bit of survey data that shows that one of the real issues that keeps people from giving church a try is “real struggles with professed Christian beliefs.”  Many Christians in our country tend to define faith as an adherence to a set of beliefs instead of a commitment to a way of life that’s centered on faith, hope and love.  A commitment, as St. Luke’s mission statement puts it, “To practice love by following Jesus.”

As Anne Lamott put it, “The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.  Certainty is missing the point entirely.  Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.  Faith also means reaching deeply within, for the sense one was born with, the sense, for example, to go for a walk.”

Join us this Sunday as we explore the adventure of faith that wrestles with hard questions.

As this Sunday is the third Sunday of the month, we’ll hear from the choir, which is preparing a toe-tapping anthem.  Normally, we’ll be hearing Rebecca Viebrock and the choir with traditional church music on first and third Sundays, and from Beth and Erich with alternative music on second and fourth Sundays.  Luckily, our church musicians are flexible enough that when Beth has a commitment on a fourth Sunday, and Becky has a wedding on a first Sunday, they can switch.  I am very grateful for their gifts, their flexibility, and for the variety of worship music that enriches our worship.

Grace and peace,
Joanne Whitt
Interim Pastor

The Weekly View - September 10, 2021

Click here for the full NEWSLETTER

In This Issue

• Weekly Message from Rev. Joanne Whitt
• Weekly Facebook Video
• Announcements & Upcoming Events
• Outreach Opportunities

message from rev.  whitt

Dear St. Luke family,

This coming Sunday is Homecoming Sunday, a festive celebration of the beginning of fall and a new church program year.  We’re welcoming the choir back to the sanctuary and we’re starting a new sequence of traditional worship music alternating Sundays with alternative music.  We’re looking ahead to a stewardship campaign, a gala fundraiser dinner, the election of new deacons, an officers’ retreat, and exciting progress reports from the pastor nominating committee.  We’ll observe Reformation Sunday and All Saints’ Sunday, remembering those resting in God’s care beyond this earthly life.  We’ll celebrate God’s generosity with Thanksgiving, and once again we’ll look forward to God’s coming in the season of Advent.  We’ll celebrate Christmas Eve in the sanctuary, offering our service of candlelight and carols to our friends and neighbors as we have for many years.      
 
When we planned Homecoming a couple of months ago, we were assuming the restrictions of the pandemic would be behind us and we’d be back in the sanctuary after Labor Day without masks.  But then the Delta variant intervened.  Nevertheless, with so much to celebrate, we’re proceeding with Homecoming with our masks in place.  We’ll hear festive music from the choir and from Erich Miller on steel drums.  We’ll celebrate the amazing burrito ministry of church member Michael Baranowski, Kitchen Manager for the Marin Street Chaplaincy.  We’ll celebrate September birthdays and anniversaries, and together we’ll lift up a prayer reminding our school kids that God is with them, even at school.
 
Our Scripture passage from Mark’s gospel this Sunday invites us to think about where the focus of our congregational life and activity is found.  Of course we seek spiritual nourishment for the faithful, but a congregation’s mission cannot end there, within our own church.  Like Jesus himself, his disciples are continually called to a larger vision of mission — one that aims to embrace the outsider, the stranger, even the enemy.  After all, we do know, we really do, just how deeply God loves the whole world – and that is exactly what the whole world needs to hear.
 
Because it’s the second Sunday of the month, we’ll worship only in the sanctuary, with no Zoom or online worship this week.  Our sanctuary is big enough for a good crowd to worship socially distant, and we’ll keep the doors open for increased ventilation.  We’ll all wear masks, including worship leaders except when we are speaking.  We’ll pass the peace observing people’s need for safe distance. 
 
Please join us at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday in the sanctuary for our festive Homecoming Service.  Don’t forget to “like” St. Luke on Facebook, where you can keep up with announcements and see our weekly midweek video.

Grace and peace,
Joanne Whitt
Interim Pastor

The Weekly View - September 3, 2021

Click here for the full NEWSLETTER

In This Issue

• Weekly Message from Rev. Joanne Whitt
• Weekly Facebook Video
• Announcements & Upcoming Events
• Outreach Opportunities

message from rev.  whitt

Dear St. Luke family,

The Sunday before Labor Day is the day set aside to remind us that every Christian is called to service to God, to be part of God’s drama, as one writer puts it, even if we seem only to have a bit part and haven’t read the whole script.  God needs every single one of us.  The word we use to describe this calling is “vocation,” which comes from the Latin for voice or calling, and this Sunday is Christian Vocation Sunday. 
 
Vocation isn’t limited to paid work or even volunteer work.  How we use our time, our resources, our special talents – all these are part of our vocational response to God’s call.  As the apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, “For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.  We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us…”  So, whatever our situation, whatever our gifts, whatever our role or task, we who are part of the body of Christ are to respond accordingly.  That isn’t always easy at work, especially when our culture so often values the bottom line above all else.  But our calling as Christians is to go beyond the question of, “Is it profitable?” and even “Is it legal?”  An article by Christian ethicists includes these questions we might ask ourselves when faced with an ethical dilemma in the workplace: 

• Will my actions show love to the others involved in the situation?
• What answer does my own conscience tell me will bring me inner peace, even though it may also be painful?
• What faith example will I provide to my co-workers and my family by the decision I make? 

This Sunday, we’ll hear from three of you, three members of our community, describing how they work out their Christian discipleship in the workplace or as volunteers.  It might inspire you to consider: What is your calling?  On the one hand, Howard Thurman wrote, “Don’t ask what the world needs.  Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”  On the other hand, Frederick Buechner wrote, “The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done.  If you really get a kick out of your work, you’ve presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing cigarette ads, the chances are you’ve missed requirement (b).  On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you’re bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren’t helping your patients much either. … Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do.  The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”  
 
Join us Sunday as we explore vocation and calling.  We’ll be in the sanctuary and on Zoom at 10:00 a.m.  Don’t forget that a week from Sunday, September 12, is the second Sunday of the month and so there will be no online worship.  It’s also Homecoming Sunday, a very festive day of music and celebration – it will be worth putting on a mask and showing up in person! 

Grace and peace,
Joanne Whitt
Interim Pastor