The Weekly View

The Weekly View - October 8, 2021

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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,

This coming Sunday we’ll explore a well-known passage in Mark’s gospel that is challenging for many reasons.  One of the main reasons it’s challenging is that people misunderstand what Jesus means by the phrase, “the kingdom of God.”  So, this is a quick refresher on “the kingdom of God.”  It might help you this Sunday.  
 
The kingdom of God was Jesus’ primary metaphor for what God wants for God’s world here and now – for what we mean when we say, “God’s will.”  Author Brian McLaren tells a story about how his life and faith were forever changed during a 1994 conference of Christian leaders in Africa.  A Burundi pastor named Claude said he realized his whole life had been lived against the backdrop of genocide and violence, poverty and corruption.  He wondered, “Did God only care about our souls going to heaven after we died?  Were hungry bellies unimportant to God?  Was God unconcerned about our crying sons and our frightened daughters, our mothers hiding under beds, our fathers crouching by windows, unable to sleep because of gunfire?  Or – did God send Jesus to teach us how to avoid genocide by learning to love each other, how to overcome tribalism and poverty by following his path, how to deal with injustice and corruption, how to make a better life here on earth?”          
 
Claude said he’d come to realize, “Something was missing in the version of Christianity we received from the missionaries.  The missionaries told us how to go to heaven.  But they left out an important detail.  They didn’t tell us how the will of God could be done on earth.”
 
Brian McLaren recognized immediately that this is not just an African problem.  Over the course of the conference, the leaders talked about the kingdom of God, and how the message of the kingdom – contrary to popular belief even among many Christians still today – was not focused on how to escape this world and its problems by going to heaven after death, but instead, was focused on how God’s will could be done on earth, during this life.  During a break in the conference, McLaren saw a woman from Burundi sitting at a table, her face hidden in her arms.  He checked to see if she was okay.  “I’m okay,” she said, “but I’m shaken up.  …  Today, for the first time, I see what Jesus meant by the kingdom of God.  I see that it’s about changing this world, not just escaping it and retreating into our churches.  If Jesus’ message about the kingdom of God is true, then everything must change.  Everything must change.”
 
In this Sunday’s passage, we’ll hear Jesus say, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”  He is not saying anything about whether a rich person will or will not go to heaven.  He is saying it is very hard for people who are essentially comfortable to believe that everything must change, and to join in and pray for God’s saving work to create a kingdom, a unity of harmony and shalom for all of God’s creation that’s good for everyone beyond what we can imagine. 
       
But that is what we pray for when we pray the Lord’s Prayer.  We say the Lord’s Prayer so routinely that we might miss how revolutionary and challenging these particular words are.  That’s why the petition about God’s will and about God’s kingdom go together.  Thy kingdom come ON EARTH.  Thy will be done ON EARTH.  When we say the prayer, we usually put a pause in between “thy will be done” and “on earth.”  In fact, our pew Bibles put a comma there.  When we pause like that, it’s easier to imagine, as many folks do, that Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in heaven once we’re dead.”  No.  I checked with my friend the Greek scholar.  There is no comma in the Greek text between “done” and “on earth.”  This is what we should be saying, what Jesus taught us to pray: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth.” 

There is plenty more that is challenging about the camel and the eye of the needle.  Still, it doesn’t say anything about who is going to heaven after they die, and who isn’t.  Stay tuned, and see you on Sunday!


Grace and peace,
Joanne Whitt
Interim Pastor

The Weekly View - October 1, 2021

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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:

We’re celebrating a couple of important family dinners this weekend.  This Saturday is St. Luke’s annual fundraiser dinner.  As it’s my first time attending this dinner, I expect all of you know much more about it than I do.  I’m looking forward to what has been described to me as a festive time when the St. Luke family gathers to enjoy good food, good drink, and good company.  I’m bringing my husband, David Buechner, and our son, Pete, a college sophomore at Contra Costa Community College.  It’s been fun to watch the St. Luke community mobilize to put this together.  I’m grateful to the many people who have contributed to make this a lovely party with food, drink, music, decorations, auction items, set up, bartenders, an M.C., an auctioneer, and all the folks in the background who keep track of numbers, checks, and reservations.  Thank you!

Then this coming Sunday is World Communion Sunday, when our church family all over the world gathers around the communion table to celebrate that we are “one bread, one body.”  With over two-thirds of Christians living in the Global South, Christianity is more truly a world-wide religion than ever.  We speak many languages; we worship in cathedrals and huts and everything in between; we read the bible differently and disagree about theology; we ascribe different meanings to the sacrament we variously call the Lord’s Supper, communion, the Eucharist, or the Mass.  Nevertheless, in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup, we become one with Christ and with all believers of every time and place. 

We’ll celebrate World Communion Sunday with special breads from different cultures, and with music from Christians around the world.  Erich Miller will play steel drums and percussion, and our choir is working on a couple of pieces from Jamaica and South Africa. 

We’ll hear how Jesus welcomed children even though the disciples tried to shoo them away.  Jesus isn’t saying children are special (although of course they are).  As the quotation on your bulletin covers this Sunday puts it, “There is something about children and their place in the kingdom that is simply not reducible to innocence, vulnerability, humility, lowliness, lack of prestige, simplicity, purity, nearness to God, openness to Christ, or any other attribute one may suggest.  It is all of this and more, for their place in the kingdom is by virtue of their being simply children of God.” (Cornelia B. Horn and John W. Martens)

And so is ours.  We join around the table this coming Saturday night, and this coming Sunday morning, because we have been welcomed by Christ and each other, and we are called to welcome others. 

Grace and peace,
Joanne Whitt
Interim Pastor 

The Weekly View - September 24, 2021

Click here for the full NEWSLETTER

In This Issue

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

message from rev.  whitt

Dear St. Luke family,

This Sunday we’ll look at the Book of Esther.  It’s a wonderful story, full of intrigue and humor.  It’s the basis for the late winter/early spring Jewish festival of Purim.  A curious aspect we’ll explore this Sunday is that, in the entire book, God is not mentioned once.  My sermon is entitled, “Was God Involved?”  It’s an important question: Is God involved in the events of our lives, either the small coincidences or the major turns?  If so, how do we know?  
 
So many Bible stories make God’s activity obvious.  God has actual conversations with Abraham telling him to pick up and move his family and everything else to a promised land.  God speaks to Moses through a burning bush and gives him the explicit instruction: “Go tell Pharaoh to let me people go.”  God parts the Red Sea, and then hands Moses the Law on stone tablets.  God speaks through prophets, warning of the consequences of injustice.  Through Jesus, God heals the sick and feeds the multitudes, and finally God raises Jesus from the dead to show dramatically that nothing, not human cruelty or even death, can stop God’s love.
 
Esther, on the other hand, witnesses to the power of a good story to give us hope.  Rather than succumbing to despair, Esther — like the carnival-esque festival of Purim it inspires — encourages us to meet terror with ridicule.  Imagine that: Humor as one of the tools in God’s toolbox!  Former political speech writer John Lovett writes, “If you can make someone laugh about something that your opponent or your opposition thinks, that means you’ve done a really good job of highlighting what’s wrong with their argument or their position.”  
 
Satiric storytelling is not the only response to oppression we can or should muster, but the book of Esther reminds us it is indeed a valid response, one that helps us hold fast to our conviction that the grace-filled power of God ultimately will overcome the destructive powers of this world.  
 
The best line in the book of Esther is the holy challenge Mordecai gives to all of us when he says to his niece, Esther, “Who knows?  Perhaps you are here, at this place and time, for such a time as this.”
 
Perhaps you are here, at this place and time, for such a time as this.
 
Don’t forget to register for the gala dinner on October 2.  Everyone is invited, regardless of what you can or can’t donate.  There will be both indoor and outdoor seating.  
 
See you on Sunday!

Grace and peace,
Joanne Whitt
Interim Pastor