Once Jesus called his disciples away from their daily tasks to ground their identity in Him, he walks up the mountain with them and sits down to teach them. There in the grass, on the mountainside, he gives the most famous sermon of all time – the Sermon on the Mount – and it begins with the Beatitudes. Our worship this Sunday morning will focus in song, word and prayer upon these counter-cultural blessings that Jesus proclaims: blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the peacemakers, etc…. The children will help us offer a blessing to the ingredients for the Outdoor Church and we’ll have a chance to lift up publicly the names of those standing in the need of prayer. We hope you can join us!
Sunday Morning Bible Study
This week we’re reading from Micah, one of the 12 Minor Prophets and a contemporary of Isaiah. We continue to hear the themes of judgment and hope. In Micah, we find the familiar passage: “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God?” What do Micah’s words mean for us? How would God judge us today? What do we hope for?
When: Sunday, January 29 9:00 – 9:45 am
Where: Henry Room
What: Reading from the UCC Lectionary for January in the Season of Epiphany
This week’s reading: Micah 6 : 1-8
Some thoughts on Prophets and Prophecy
The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.
~M. Scott Peck
You may know that the Hebrew word for … mercy is the word for womb with different vowel points. So mercy … is womb-like love. And it is the capacity of a mother to totally give one’s self over to the need and reality and identity of the child. And …mercy is the capacity to give one’s self away for the sake of the neighborhood…. I think that a community or a society finally cannot live without the quality of mercy. The problem for us is what will initiate that? What will break the pattern of self-preoccupation enough to notice that others are out there and that we are attached to them?
~Walter Brueggemann, onbeing.org
But we have only begun
To love the earth.
We have only begun
To imagine the fullness of life.
How could we tire of hope?
-so much is in bud.
How can desire fail?
– we have only begun
to imagine justice and mercy…
We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.
So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,
so much is in bud.
~Denise Levertov, Beginners
