Guest Preacher: Jan Moody -- Scripture: Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Confronting Whiteness as a Spiritual Discipline, June 28, 2020
Guest Preacher: Rev. Jennifer Butler, CEO, Faith in Public Life June 28, 2020 Scripture: Isaiah 49:13
Two Viruses, One Vision: Bethesda Black Lives Matter Rally + Message, June 7, 2020
Scripture: Matthew 28:16-20
Receiving the Holy Spirit from Those Who Cannot Breathe: Message, May 31, 2020
Scripture: John 20:19-23
Learning to Receive the Holy Spirit from Those Who Cannot Breathe
Prayer: Gracious and Longsuffering God, in the midst of all the poignant humanity found among coronavirus sufferers and their loved ones, this past week a horrific display of inhumanity called our attention to another virus.
How long, O Lord … How long? Come the Holy Spirit today, to say for those who dare practice their Christian faith: Not long! Not long!
May it be so. Amen.
“You Will Receive Power!” Message, May 24, 2020
“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” — Jesus parting words to his disciples (Acts 1:8). And do we ever need that power right now!
Love In Action? Love *Is* Action! Video Message, 5/17
Scripture: John 14:15-21. "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." Only then, Jesus adds, will the Advocate -- the Holy Spirit -- make itself known i...
Where Do You Want Our God to Be? Zoom Worship Video Message, May 10, 2020
Scripture: John 14:1-14
The Lord Is My Shepherd ... I Lack Nothing? Zoom Worship Video Message, May 3, 2020
Scripture: Psalm 23
Coming to Belief. Zoom Worship Video Message, April 26, 2020
Scripture Luke 24:13-35
Of Lighthouses, Maps, and American Dirt
Date: February 2, 2020
Scriptures: Micah 6:1-8
A ship is at sea. Suddenly: a light on the horizon. The ship radios to the light, “Turn your course 10 degrees to the north.” Comes the reply: “You turn your course 10 degrees to the south.”
Back-and-forth they go. “Turn your course 10 degrees to the north!” “No, turn yours ten – and to the south!”
The ship draws dangerously close. The captain commandeers the radio, shouting, “I’m the captain of this ship, and I demand that you turn your course 10 degrees to the north.” The reply? “I’m a sailor. You turn your course.”
“Listen, sailor: I’m a captain, and we’re a battleship! We demand you redirect your course ten degrees to the north.”
That “E” Word
Date: January 26, 2020
Scriptures: Matthew 4:12-23
Let me tell you a story. A story of three Bakers.
Not the kind we find in a kitchen. But three people with that surname. Three Bakers. A mother and her two daughters.
As life would have it, I came to know each of these three Bakers in sequential decades: the 1980s … the 1990s … and the “aughts”, the 2000s. All through the church.
My first Baker encounter was in 1989. Susan Baker and I entered seminary together that year.
“Teacher, Where Are You Dwelling?”
Date: January 19, 2020
Scriptures: John 1:35-42
When Jesus turned and saw (John’s two disciples) following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which translated means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’ He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. – John 1:38-39
This Sunday and next in this season of Epiphany, Jesus is revealed to us – ’midst our winter’s darkness – through the unquenchable, incomprehensible, inescapable light of our callings.
And today, the light of our calling is made manifest to us through the simple curiosity of Jesus’ first disciples. Summoning us in the frantic mobility of our daily affairs to discover where Jesus is staying – dwelling – in our midst.
The Personal and Impersonal Meaning of Baptism
Date: January 12, 2020
Scriptures: Matthew 3:13-17
Some of you have heard me share of my experience as a federal prison inmate. I share a piece of that experience again today: a powerful lesson I learned in my first few days in prison of the personal and impersonal meaning of baptism.
A word of context is in order: Based on life-altering experiences working with Central American refugees a quarter century ago, I took a leap of faith in 2001 I had never dreamed of taking. That year, at an annual funeral procession that trespassed onto a U.S. military base – a base that taught Latin American military officers how to “neutralize” their insurgents – I became one of thousands of witnesses to-date who have committed an act of nonviolent civil disobedience.
The Power of Changing Location
Date: January 5, 2020
Scriptures: Matthew 2:1-12
The year was 1998. And I was preparing to leave my first church to serve my second church as an ordained pastor.
I was delighted by the interest a church in Ann Arbor, MI was showing me, a small-town rookie parson in Oklahoma. Everything about the Michigan church seemed aflame with the light of today’s Star of Epiphany. For one, it was a More Light church, as LGBT-inclusive congregations such as this one are called – and we became one here at BPC in 2010. More Light: at that time, that Michigan church was one of about 100 congregations of over 11,000 in our denomination at bound more to its mission to be LGBT-inclusive than to be institutionally exclusive. Bound more to the principles of Jesus, that church believed, than to the powers of Jerusalem.
Faithful Pride: Fifty Years After Stonewall
In Honor of Michael, Lisa, Alan, Brian, Diane, Beth, Kelly, Rose, Jenny, Patrick, Fred, Ed … and countless others who have taught me and those around us, “Just BE the Church”
Date: June 30, 2019
Scriptures: Genesis 3:1-13 | Galatians 3:23-29 | Mark 12:38-42
I have one word of job advice for my son, Andrew, who is present with us this one Sunday before we embark on a two-week excursion together …
Son: Always look for a job from a job. In other words: If at all possible, don’t leave a job without another opportunity in-hand.
Not that I have always followed my own advice. For in 1998, I tendered my resignation from my first pastorate … without a new pastorate in-hand.
For after serving the minimum of three years I had agreed to serve at my first congregational call in rural Oklahoma: I was done.
Dirty Laundry
Date: June 23, 2019
Scriptures: Isaiah 65:1-9 | Luke 8:26-39
Prayer: Lord, save us on one side from our easy comfort – and on the other from any liberal guilt – that we might be aware and assume our share of responsibility of the dirty laundry piled high in the basement of our society. That, in that awareness, we may discover your grace. And in your grace, discover your peace. Amen.
My Ten Years at Bethesda Presbyterian
Date: June 16, 2019 — Trinity Sunday
Scriptures: Romans 5:1-5
“Where my life was broken and healed is the greatest gift I can give anybody.”
These are the words of an old friend of mine named Tom. At the age of 24, in an alcoholic blackout, Tom ran over and killed two young people. In the 50 years since, he became the first ex-con hired by the state of North Carolina to serve in corrections – rising to the top to design programs for rehabilitating youthful offenders like he was. Tom has grown in sobriety for over 50 years into a man of admirable and astonishing wisdom.
The One and The Many
Date: June 9, 2019 — Day of Pentecost
Scriptures: Genesis 11:1-9 | The Acts of the Apostles 2:1-12
For twenty centuries – in all places and spaces – the Christian Church in its life and ministry has struggled with the dilemma of The One and The Many. How to situate our one good news story of Christ that the kin-dom of God is near, in the midst of the many cultural situations we have found ourselves.
The Tower of Babel story today presents us I believe with one response to this One and the Many dilemma – our 20th century response. The Pentecost story, on the other hand, presents us with a vision more compatible with being church in this 21st century.
Goings and Comings
5/26/19: Easter 6
Scriptures: Acts of the Apostles 16:9-15 … John 14:25-29
I would like to begin my message this Memorial Day weekend by honoring the legacy of someone who returned safely from war and knew so many who did not.
His parents allowed him to leave high school to enlist for military duty in World War II – and his formal education ended there. And yet Melvin “Red” Allen, a parishioner in my first pastoral call in rural Oklahoma, possessed a perspicacity for our English language far beyond his knowing what perspicacity means. (It means perceptiveness, by the way.)
One day, while we were fording a swollen stream in his pickup truck, I commiserated with Red how difficult it must be to go back and forth over this brook in wet weather.
Red stroked his chin. “Wellll,” he said, “I wouldn’t say it’s difficult to go back and forth across it. I would say it’s difficult to go forth and back.”
“Forth and back?”
From Temple to Tribe
5/19/19: Easter 5
Scripture : The Acts of the Apostles 11:1-18
If our church were to disappear tomorrow … what would our wider community be missing?
An important question. An essential question. And not a question we might think to ask ourselves.
As you know, following Worship today, we are holding a capital campaign information lunch downstairs in our Fellowship Hall: catered – a taco bar, of sorts! All are welcomed to join us – members and friends alike – free will donations.
It’s our first capital campaign in two decades. And our Session along with our capital campaign leaders – Joan Kloepfer, Paul Dudek, and Brooke Christian – are excited to unveil what this one is all about.
