Monthly Archives: August 2015

Unknown's avatar Rev. David J. Schreffler 4:44 am on August 17, 2015
Tags: ,   

Good Managers — Rev. David J. Schreffler

 

image

August 17, 2015

He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.” Mark 4:26-29

“All that we Christians are called upon to do, all we can do, is to be an open watercourse for the divine love. We do not create any part of it; it would be an arrogant illusion to think we did. We must not blockade it; if we did, we would be the adversaries of G*d, not His children. We are simply to reflect it, back to Him and out to His world. Our calling is to give it free flow. That means we are never generous. We never give any gifts. We are merely to be the channel for the good gifts which come in a steady stream from G*d.” Franklin Clark Fry (1900 – 1968) “The Source and the Flow”, a 1967 Stewardship article. “For All The Saints”, volume II, (p. 354)

I am doing a funeral service today for a woman whose life was difficult, her relationships were often tragic, and she ended her life by suicide. She served in the Army during “Desert Storm”, she was a collector of antiques, she hiked the Appalachian trail, she was a generous person, and her husband shared with me that she believed that a person did not need to go to church to be a Christian.

As a pastor I understand what people mean when they say there is no need to attend church to be a Christian. I understand the mental exercise someone is going through to try to make sense of a statement that is full of contradictions. To say we can be a Christian without attending church is like saying “I can love the symphony without ever attending a concert”, or “I can join a fraternity without ever going through the ritual of becoming a member”, or “I can be a member of the Army without ever going through boot camp”. How can one claim to be “in a group” without ever attending any of the meetings.

But, many people believe that if they are loving, if they use G*d’s name once in a while in a sentence, if they read their bibles occasionally, if they are generous to others, and if they believe in Jesus “in their hearts”, then they are a Christian. And I cannot say anything bad about any of those endeavors. But you see, it is in our involvement in the church that we understand what true love is all about, why misusing G*d’s name is more than just swearing, why reading the bible and studying the bible are really different, and what generosity really means. G*d does call us to be generous, just as he was prodigal, and generous to us through the blessings we have received in creation, and in the life and death of Jesus. But being generous does not mean that we give some of what WE have. You see, WE never had the right to call the stuff we have “ours”. It was never ours. G*d has generously lent us all we have, hoping that we will be good Stewards of the blessings G*d has heaped upon us.

Pastor Dave

Unknown's avatar Rev. David J. Schreffler 4:44 am on August 16, 2015
Tags: ,   

Eat His Flesh – Drink His Blood — Rev. David J. Schreffler

 

image

 

August 16, 2015
Sunday

“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.”
John 6:54-55

“No wonder early Christians faced accusations of cannibalism! This is gross. And yet we recall this kind of imagery every time we participate in the Eucharist. As I receive the bread, I hear the words, “the Body of Christ,” and then another phrase, usually, “the bread of heaven.” As I receive the wine, I hear the words, “the Blood of Christ,” and then usually “the cup of salvation.” These four phrases have at least one thing in common:

Their meaning is obscure — unless, minimally, you’ve spent a fair amount of time hanging out with and hearing from Christians. “The bread of heaven”? How would those words be understood by us were it not for their association with Christian liturgy and tradition? Another way to think about it is to ask how a hypothetical tourist from Mars who’d memorized a decent English dictionary but had little other exposure to Earth cultures might hear those words. “Bread from heaven,” our Martian visitor might muse, “it surely can’t be about its origin, as that woman over there bought it from a store called a ‘church supply house,’ and its ingredients — none claimed to be extraterrestrial in origin — are listed on the box. Perhaps they mean ‘heavenly,’ as in very good or pleasant — but this stuff tastes like cardboard!”

Flesh and blood are the seat of life — life belonging only to God, life that can be claimed rightly only by God. And yet in Jesus, God has willingly poured out that life for the sake of the world — not just the good people, the people who try hard to do the right thing, the people who praise and encourage the saints, but as much or more for the people who hate, and who act on their hatred, even to the point of killing a righteous woman or man, an innocent child.” (dylan’s lectionary blog, Sarah Dylan Breuer, saralaughed website)

I am glad that the above blog points out that Jesus poured out his life for all people — both the good and the bad. We all struggle to be good, to do good deeds, to think good thoughts, to be the best “good” people we can be. Still, that doesn’t mean that we are always good. And sometimes we do hateful things, and we encounter hateful people, and we witness the hate of the world, and we need to remember that Jesus died for those people as well. Through Jesus Christ, G*d has acted for the sake of the world — human, animal, vegetable, mineral, and insect. All creation is reconciled to G*d through Jesus Christ, whether we like it or not.

We come to the table of Holy Communion believing that Jesus is present in the meal because Jesus promised to be present. And so no matter who partakes of that meal, whether in the right state of mind or not, in the right state of forgiveness or not, in the right state of peace, love, mercy and Grace or not, Jesus is still there — flesh and blood — poured out for our benefit. Thank G*d that is the kind of G*d that we have……

Pastor Dave