March 30th, 2023

GREETINGS TO THE LIGHT SHINING PEOPLE OF CHRIST THE KING,

This past week, on Tuesday and Wednesday 5 planets lined up in the western sky and could be seen shortly after sunset if the sky was clear.  A waxing moon with Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Uranus and Mars lined up.  I missed it as I was preparing for a different kind of alignment as Lent is coming to a close and Holy Week is on the horizon.

I often wonder what God is up to but not when it comes to Holy Week starting this Sunday with Palm Sunday.  The “planets” are aligned with these Holy Days that mark God’s actions and God’s humility coming to us as one of us and giving his life for us.  God shows us the way to live our lives through servanthood that we participate in on Maundy Thursday, with the command to love like Jesus loved.  You may have your feet or hands washed and anointed to commit yourself to loving servanthood.

Good Friday we hear the Passion, the story of Jesus’ arrest, trial, suffering and death from Matthew’s gospel and we spend more time in prayer and we focus our attention on the cross and pay homage by lighting a candle at the foot of the roughhewn cross as we give thanks to Jesus and the cross on which he gave his life.  It is clear what God is up to as the bridges between us are built upon the cross and through Jesus’ witness.

All through Lent during our mid-week Holden Evening Prayer we have been focused on the lesser known and often omitted vigil readings which tended to be more poetry from our prophets.  Now on Holy Saturday, our Easter Vigil will give us the familiar stories of creation, flood, exodus, Jonah, and the 3 men in the fiery furnace that help us to sit in this time between Jesus’ death and his resurrection.  Along with these familiar stories we renew ourselves in our baptism and celebrate Holy Communion as we look into the empty tomb and begin again to wonder what God is up to now.

On Easter Sunday and for the next 50 days we celebrate in full force and power of the resurrection and look for signs of Jesus’ new life on the lose in our own lives.  This is our story.  This is our God who comes to us and shows us how to live and die and live again.  We start on Palm Sunday, shouting, HOSANNA – SAVE US and God does just that in a way we can truly understand and fully celebrate on the Resurrection of our Lord.  It is such good news! Let’s jump right in to tell God’s great story of love for us as we align ourselves with these Holy Days.

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

March 18th, 2023

GREETINGS TO THE LIGHT SHINING PEOPLE OF CHRIST THE KING,

I wonder what God is up.  People who love Jesus want to help others see Jesus, meet Jesus and experience Jesus’ love and hope for the world.  I wonder what God is up to as I watch the free video series, “The Chosen” and stumble across the Asbury Spiritual Awaking. And listen to “He Gets Us” commercials.  And now the movie, Jesus Revolution.  I am a pastor; how can I not be curious about Jesus in the public sphere.

Jesus Revolution is a movie of gentle broad-brush strokes of a movement that began in southern California and culminated in 1972 tracing the rise of Calvary Chapel,  the leaders, Hippie Lonny Frisbee and Pastor Chuck Smith and the relationship of Greg Lowery and Cathe Martin, the founders of Harvest Christian Fellowship, Riverside, CA.

I wonder what God is up to.  I watched the movie with curiosity.  As I studied John 9, the healing of the blind man within the faith community, scenes from the movie flashed back.  I shared with the staff my experience.

Living in a faith community is difficult when God keeps creating new things and stirs us, who are comfortable out of our complacency and wets our appetite to desire the same things that God desires.  Jesus spits on the ground and places this spit infused mud on the eyes of the blind man and there is a new creation and the community struggles to figure out what God is up to. 

Last Sunday, in my sermon, I asked for your help to join me in conversation to think about what we need from our neighbors.  Maybe it is as simple as we just want to get to know you, neighbor. Let’s keep talking and praying with good listening ears and clumsy conversation.

When Jesus visited the Samaritan Village, he entered an environment of a long stoked  religious history where Jews and Samaritans do not share things in common and go to great lengths to avoid one another.  This history was shattered by a simple need, a request for water and conversation flowed. Not an easy conversation but a necessary conversation that could not be contained and had to be shared.  A woman who avoided her community just had to go to that same community and share this amazing conversation with those she felt outcast from.  And Jesus got to know his neighbors and was welcomed into their community.

At the end of the movie, the Time magazine reporter, Josiah admits to Greg Laurie that he was reluctant to cover the assignment as he usually covered war and protest but admits that there is something here that is bringing people together when so many other things are tearing people apart.  I wonder what God is up to. 

Will you keep wondering with me and share with me what you think God is up to with us, this community of faith at the cross roads of Melrose and Mormon Trek.  What happens when our European faith background birthed of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation meets the American Evangelical Revolution?  What cup of cold water can we share and what conversations can flow from us.  I wonder what God is up to.

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

March 3rd, 2023

GREETINGS TO THE LIGHT SHINING PEOPLE OF CHRIST THE KING,

Eric Vigil is our Maple Syrup Man as he has tapped into the two maple trees in King Park and invited me and the Sunday School students he teaches on an adventure they won’t forget and will love to talk about.  God provides another picture of my Epiphany word, KEFI, Greek for “the spirit of joy”. 

It has been a delight to see empty milk jugs turned into sap collectors and hear and see the process of collecting, boiling down, filtering and of course tasting.  Our kids got to see the process from start to finish and take a jar home as well as baking pannekoeken to sample their syrup on.  The spirit of joy (KEFI) for our kids to see this process and connect it to their faith and how God works in community.  The process of making maple syrup is best done in community, with others.  Exploring and discovering our faith is best done in community where the power of God’s spirit flows among and through us.

I too was gifted with a jar of maple syrup.  The spirit of joy (KEFI) that brought back sweet childhood memories of traipsing through my grandfather’s woods early in the Spring collecting the syrup in pails and pouring into the old milk containers.  Riding on the back of the little wagon with my brothers while grandpa drove the tractor. Stoking the fire, stirring the huge pan of steaming sap, sampling along the way. It was magical.  My grandfather would not use a thermometer but judge by pouring the sap out of the ladle to judge it’s thickness.  It was a three-generation event for us and we enjoyed the syrup through the year.  God’s presence was so interwoven, planting deep seeds of memory and community that bear fruit in the lives of our families and beyond.

You too may have received this spirit of joy in the sweetness of the maple syrup in our communion bread.  Eric is also our communion bread baker and has used CTK maple syrup in our communion bread.  So if you taste hints of maple syrup, you are tasting Jesus, the fruit of King Park maple trees, and the labor of Eric and our Sunday School student’s.  Many hands and much labor gives us a glimpse of God’s handiwork in creation and in and through us.  We have a magnificent God who weaves our lives together in marvelous and mysterious ways.  I am grateful to be on this journey with you, seeing the spirit of joy flow sweetly in our midst.  I’ve had a glimpse of seeing the coming of the glory of the Lord.

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

February 23rd, 2023

GREETINGS TO THE LIGHT SHINING PEOPLE OF CHRIST THE KING,

My Epiphany word is KEFI, Greek for “the spirit of joy” and our congregation's Epiphany word is LIGHT.  These words pair well for me.  KEFI has led me back to the discipline of a gratitude journal where I simply find three things to give thanks to God for each day.  This nurtures a spirit of joy within me.

This word journey has also led me to look for the glory of the coming of the Lord, the bits of God’s glimmering light in our midst.  So when I heard about the Asbury Revival, I was curious to learn more.  Asbury University is a Christian private university in Wilmore, Kentucky.  It is a non-denominational school aligned with Wesleyan-Holiness movement.

A chapel service that began on the morning of February 8 didn’t end with a benediction and the gospel choir’s song but started a prayer and singing service that has continued 24/7, for 12 days, ending on Feb. 19 and news of the event spread through social media.

Thomas H. McCall, Asbury theology professor wrote in Christianity Today, “They were praising and praying earnestly for themselves and their neighbors and our world – expressing repentance and contrition for sin and interceding for healing, wholeness, peace, and justice.  McCall attended the Feb. 8 chapel service.

When you search for more information, you will find loads and there is much to sift through.  You have probably heard your favorite news people or podcasters report on it.  We live in an age where we do not have to listen to someone’s report on an event.  So go and listen.  Listen to the first chapel service that started it.  They were studying Romans.  Listen to them sing and pray.  Form your own analysis of this event that happened among Christians.

I found a Youtube stream and listened for a short time.  I listened to a bit of the chapel sermon/teaching that started it all.  And I saw KEFI, I saw the spirit of joy in that chapel.  I was filled with joy and hope to see a chapel filled with college students singing and praying.  The Wednesday chapel services that I attended both in college and seminary rarely had a packed out attendance.  So for a pastor who has served for 31 years in a long period of decline for Lutherans and Christianity in general, this is hopeful and brings me a spirit of joy and a glimmer of the coming of the glory of the Lord. God is faithful and we get to be a part of what God is up to in this world.

I know enough about the Bible to know that God often shows up in the little places, the outback areas, like a little private college in Wilmore, Kentucky. God is faithful and shows up here too on our little corner of Melrose and Mormon Trek and we get to be a part of it.  Be on the lookout for the coming of the glory of the Lord shining in our midst.

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

February 18th, 2023

GREETINGS TO THE LIGHT SHINING PEOPLE OF CHRIST THE KING,

Reflections on Matthew 17.   

Peter, James and John are called to fish for people and Jesus invites them to the mountain to learn more about this fishing expedition that is moving further away from the place of fish and people to a higher place, a place closer to God.

Up, the highest heavens, symbolically and historically is the place we imagine God residing.   God says yes and God comes to us and hopes that we will see God not only as up, and far removed but also with and along side and through all of life, suffering and death and return to God.  Yes, to up and mountain top experiences and yes to the everyday ordinary places. Yes to suffering and death.  God is here and there.  God is with us and comes to us in ways we can understand.  Easy to see when we hold a newborn baby or when we hold the hand of a loved one as they pass from life to death.  God is with us in our comings and goings.  And God is with us in all the complicated dimensions of our lives.

We might very well need the big, in your face kind of experiences, to wake us up and make us attentive to the smaller, finer, quiet reveals of God’s presence with us. For when we can experience God in the special places, the mountain top places then we may also be able to experience and trust that God is with us in the ordinary everyday places and we will start looking and expecting God there as well and we will fish for people.

The hyperbole of the Sermon on the Mount definitely caught the people’s attention. The one who healed them and welcomed them, also taught them.  These teachings did not drive them away but they recognized the authority of Jesus.  These teachings helped them to draw the connection that Jesus was intimately connected to God and God’s ways.  They recognized God in Jesus on this mount, this higher place.

The Sermon on the Mount teaches us about fishing for people by having stellar relationships with each other and doing the hard work of communicating truthfully.   Where we know ourselves so well and are so honest with ourselves that we get caught up in God’s net, drawing us in and seeing the beautiful body of Christ that we are.  Seeing each of us as a temple of God, where God resides. 

Wide reaching blessings that include those struggling with life, the poor in spirit, mourners, meek, and the ones longing for justice and mercy.  Relationships with a high bar to strive for, a bar so high that we look to God for help to reach these kinds of relationships and where forgiveness is part of our everyday vocabulary with one another so that when we fail, we can name our brokenness and try again with God’s help to repair and restore, creating new and clean hearts. 

This is the strong foundation God wants us to build upon.  The foundation of our relationships that seem like sand, shifting and hard to hold but are the real solid rock foundation of who we are and what we will become as well as what we have been.  This is our God who is beyond us and yet with us.

Peter, James and John meet Moses and Elijah and hear the voice of God and it is magnificent to behold and hang on to this moment building a place here.  And God tells them to listen to Jesus.  They can do that and so can we.  We listen to Jesus.  We listen to what Jesus has said and we develop an ear to hear him still speaking to us today, on the magnificent mountain top and in the deep dark recesses and in the everyday ordinary places.  That is the rock foundation we build upon each and every day and we are transformed.

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack