why you should try our church St Peters Esciopal church In St. Peters Episcopal Church, Washington, NJ NJ Speaking of God in the 21st 50 Century Recently, a few of us at St.Peter’s have read the book, Salvation on the Small Screen: 24 hours of Christian Television, by Nadia Bolz-Weber. It presents what is portrayed as the gospel on television and makes the case for why so many of the young and old resist crossing the threshold of a church door. What is presented in the book is a consumerist way of speaking of God as who will give you what you want if only you believe and support the inspirational speaker/preacher. Such a vision has a limited appeal to many of us. Someone once said that her response to such portrayals of God depended on where she sat in the audience. If she sat up front and looked at the choir and the attractive performances going on, she was fine. It all felt great. But if she sat near the wheel chair section with the folks who weren’t getting what anyone would want, she felt very empty and knew this was not the place for her. In the past going to church had come out of our family and ethnic life, it was what we were all about as a local community. It was passed on by your family and your group. But it is now common for many families to be unchurched. The fastest growing response to religious affiliations questionaries is None. How then are we to talk about why St. Peter’s is so important to us? What is that we learn as we participate in this community. How do we now speak of God? Jesus of Nazareth has changed our understanding of the divine. In the stories that we share each week we come to see that not only did Jesus give us a new and shocking concept of love, he gave us the love that formed us into communities such as St. Peter’s. As St. John said, “He who does not love does not know God. For God is love.” It is not about what people say but how they live. But what does love look like? When we cook for those who are sick, when we make colorful pillows for children with cancer, when we serve on the altar or offer up the gift of music, when we put together the Rock or weekly bulletin, when we make possible our coffee hour, when we wait for the birth of a new child or prepare to support someone at the end of life, when we give the gift of our presence each Sunday, we are incarnating the love that we have been given. What will you do with the life that you have been given? As we gather under the stories of the Old and New Testament each week, we come to be shaped by the stories and notions that we receive as “people of the book.” Recently, we have been formed by the powerful stories of Jacob and Moses. St. Peter’s is where we can say with Jacob, “God was in this place and I did not know it.” With Moses we can realize that this sanctuary is holy ground. We come each week to live with God, to learn through the stories of the way Jesus loved, how to respond to the gift of our lives. Life is not a television show with sound bits about God and success. Our lives here at St. Peter’s are about learning to live toward God, about learning to live into love. So come and love. . God Bless and Keep you, Fr. Ed
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 23:53:20 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015