What's Saving Your Life Right Now? I: The Practice of Waking Up to God! Vision

Eastertide

April 7, 2024 • Squire Prince • Genesis 28:10–19

It may seem elementary, but I want to start our reflection today with a question, have you ever wanted more out of God? I mean yes we come here on Sundays, we sing, one of the ministers speaks a few words of hope to us, we rub on Minister Doogie, and then we go home. At some point you have to wonder, is that all there is, God? Isn’t there more? I mean what happened to the God of five loaves and two fish? What about the parting of the waters in Exodus? At Least you can turn this cup of water into wine…. I mean coffee, God!

Barbara Brown Taylor in her book "An Altar in the World" helps to remove the scales from our eyes to the greater dimensions of God’s presence in the world around us. She points out that all of us in a sense, have a longing for an experience with the one we call God, and maybe that experience, that treasure, that Divine Spirit is right under our noses. A priest once asked Barbara to come speak at his church, and when she asked what he wanted her to talk about, he simply said “come tell us what is saving your life right now”[1].

[1]Taylor, B. B. (2010). An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. HarperOne.

God After... III: God After Copernicus

June 9, 2024 • Christine V. Hides • Psalm 8

Psalm 8 is a poem that sings of a relationship with God in which humility and inquiry go hand in hand. Yes, we are lower than God but, also given responsibility for things here on earth. We are given the gift of reason that enables us to ask the question that echoes through history: “What is humanity’s place in the universe?” In the sixteenth century the church said “earth” and therefore humanity is at the center. Don’t you see the sun rising, moving across the sky, and setting each day? Nicolaus Copernicus was a priest who outlined a heliocentric theory of the universe in 1515. Though he was not the first to propose a sun-centered astronomical system, he developed mathematical techniques that made it substantially equivalent to the geocentric model that dated back to Aristotle. Perhaps because he was still working out the math, or perhaps because he feared the church’s response, he delayed publication of his book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres until 1543, which happens to be the year of his death.

God After... II: God After Gutenberg

June 2, 2024 • William A. Evertsberg • Romans 10:13–17, Mark 14:22–25

And that almost instantaneous communication by junk-mail flier was only possible because 60 years before Halloween, 1517 a goldsmith from Mainz, Germany, had come up with a moveable-type printing press capable of mass-producing books and other written communication. Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press enabled the Protestant Reformation.

God After...I: The God Who Is and Who Was and Who Is to Come

May 26, 2024 • William A. Evertsberg • Genesis 1:1–5, Revelation 1:8

It’s Trinity Sunday. It’s not as theatrical as other church holidays—like the fire, wind and ruddy paraments of last week’s Pentecost, for example. It’s the only festival of the Church Year that is devoted to a doctrine, rather than to a person or an event, like Christmas or Easter. But once a year, the Christian Church pauses for a day to remind itself about the nature of our God. And what it says is that God is Three.