January 12th, 2024

CTK GREETINGS CHILDREN OF GOD,

This Sunday we celebrate the Baptism of Our Lord.  I wonder what a beautiful question about Jesus’ baptism would sound like?  I immediately go to the tangible and concrete.  Baptism is a sacrament for us demonstrating God’s grace in a tangible way.  Baptism is holy and set apart.   These are foundational and fundamental responses.  An internet search reveals mostly common and doctrinal questions about baptism like why was Jesus baptized? When should someone be baptized?

But what is a beautiful question about baptism?

Where did John the Baptist get the idea of water baptism?

Was Jesus’ baptism an apocalyptic event as the heavens were torn open and God is revealing and making known to us something of God that is hidden from us?

Is Jesus’ baptism a beautiful portrayal of the loving union of the Trinity?

Is Baptism a beautiful picture of our sinful lives dying with Jesus and our new life beginning when we are “raised” from the water?

Does Jesus’ baptism bear witness to us and God?

To celebrate Jesus’ baptism find the beauty of it and maybe some beautiful questions.  Search for those who can speak beautifully about baptism whether it be Jesus’ baptism or baptism in general.  You have your favorites.  Pay them a visit.

In seeking beauty, I was drawn to Walter Wangerin’s children’s book, Water Come Down where Wangerin invites the members of creation into the story of baptism.  Then The Jesus Storybook Bible popped into my head, and I had to read what Sally Lloyd-Jones had to say and how she told the story of Jesus’ baptism.  Then on to music to find beauty in Jesus’ baptism, All Creation Sings give us Susan Briel’s hymn, To Christ Belong, In Christ Behold (958) and Sylvia Dunstan’s Down Galilee’s Slow Roadways (916).  So spend some time thumbing through the hymnal or searching your playlist.

What a wonderful journey.  I think I’m ready to celebrate Jesus’ baptism.  What preparations do you need to make to be ready to celebrate Jesus’ baptism?  What beautiful questions do you need to seek in Jesus’ baptism or your own?  God richly bless you on your journey.

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

January 4th, 2024

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

We may have stopped celebrating Christmas and greeting one another with Christmas wishes but Christians around the world are not and for many Christmas culminates the 12th night, January 5th and the feast of Epiphany, January 6th.  The feast of Epiphany has been celebrated longer than Christmas.  Epiphany from the Greek word, epiphania means manifestation or revelation.  God is with us and revealed in Jesus.  It is a day and season celebrating the incarnation of Jesus, human and divine dwelling together.  Coming into the world for the Jews, the chosen and promised people and for all people.

The arrival of the Magi, the watchers of the stars mark the Feast of Epiphany for us. Following the star, they made their way to Bethlehem to worship and open their treasure before Jesus giving him gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Their searching, worship and gift giving inspire us to keep searching, humbling ourselves before God and living in gratitude for all that God has given us.

In many parts of Europe the family home is blessed with a procession bringing the magi traveling around the home with a star bearer leading the way and all singing, We Three Kings of Orient Are.  The magi find the child in the manger which now has taken on the nature of a throne room with candles and a bit of velvet and a small crown.  Jesus is king for all the world to see and our homes are blessed.

This blessing is from To Dance with God, Gertrude Mueller Nelson.

Leader: Peace be to this house.

All:  And to all who live here.

Leader:  Three magi came to Bethlehem to honor the Lord, and opening their treasure offered precious gifts:  gold to the great king, incense to the true God and myrrh for Christ’s body which would suffer and die like our own.

Let us pray.  O God, you used the light of a star to show all nations and peoples your only-begotten Son.  Allow us also, who know you by faith, to recognize you in the epiphanies of our life experiences.

Be enlightened and shine forth, O Jerusalem, for your light has come and the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ born of Mary shines upon you.

All:  All nations will walk in your light and kings in the brilliance of your splendor.

Leader:  And the glory of the Lord is risen on you.

Bless, O Lord, this household and family and allow all of us who live here to find in it a shelter of peace and health.  Inspire each of us in this family to develop our individual talents and to contribute wisdom and good works for the benefit of the whole.  Make our house a haven for us all and a place of warmth and caring for all our friends who come to visit us.  Enlighten us with the brilliance of your Epiphany star so that, as we leave house and family to go out into the world, we might clearly see our way to you and discover you in our work and play.

This we ask to your glory and in the power of your kingship –

All:  For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory now and forever, Amen.

Over the doorway with chalk 20 C+M+B+24 are written representing the legendary names of the magi – Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar or a more recent suggestion for the CMB, Christe, Mansionem Benedica which means Christ, bless this house.

 After the house blessing there is a special meal that ends with the traditional “King’s Cake”.  Hidden in the cake is a dried lima bean and the one who finds it becomes king with a royal paper crown that is given with great fanfare.  The king rules for the next 24 hours, choosing the menu and creating new rules for the household, effective for 24 hours.  The king must also prepare a small talk for the family on the lessons they can learn from the story of the three holy kings and the dangerous journey reminding them to keep looking up with eyes on the light of lights, Jesus Christ.

On Sunday we will celebrate Epiphany and on January 14 we will celebrate the Baptism of our Lord.  Consider adding a new 12th Night or Epiphany tradition to your home as we welcome the mystery of the incarnation of Jesus.  Or imagine what rules you would make if you were king of your home for 24 hours or what you would say to those in your household about searching, seeking, finding, and offering your gifts.

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

December 22nd, 2023

MERRY CHRISTMAS

PEOPLE OF GOD,

May Christ be born in you as we move on Sunday morning from the keeping awake of our Advent season to the Eve of Christ birth in the evening hours.  This year’s quick movement from one season to another reminds us that when God takes action all things fall into place.  Ready or not, Christ comes to us. Our season of Advent has prepared us by keeping awake as we have lighted the advent candles, welcoming hope, peace, joy, and love.  We have heard beautiful music of our choir and bell choir as well as CentralTime with Charlie Rod and Matt Hibbard.  We sang our Advent hymns, caroled in our community and came together midweek for Holden Evening Prayer to pause and prepare. Our children have proclaimed the good news of Jesus Christ in the telling of the old, old story we love so much. We have made our preparations, and we are soon to celebrate Christ coming to us. 

It is a joyful season. I am so grateful for all God has done and continues to do working through us and Christ continues to come to us.  When I was in the Holy Land, our director, JP kept encouraging us to savor our time as we were trying to pack in as much as we could with the time we had.  It was wise advice that I now pass on to you.  Savor this time as these two seasons meet and greet with one another.

As you read this, stop, take a deep breath, and savor the moment.  Invite and welcome the Holy Spirit to sit with you.  God is here.  Savor the time together being alert to what God is whispering in your ear.  Open your eyes a bit wider because God is here.  Smell the familiar scents of this time.  God is here.  This is a holy time.  Relish it. Savor this holy time.  Jesus is born for you and for me.  Look at a baby and remember that is how God came to us and we delight in his coming as one of us, small, fragile, vulnerable, and wonderfully made.  We can’t help but smile and be filled with joy.  God loves us so much and we get to hold this love like a newborn baby.  That is something awesome to savor. 

Blessed Christmas.  May Christ be born in you.

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

December 15th, 2023

GREETINGS TO THE HOLY PEOPLE OF GOD,

When a man undertakes to repent toward his fellowmen,

it is repenting straight up a precipice;

when he repents toward law,

it is repenting into the crocodile's jaws;

when he repents toward public sentiment,

it is throwing himself into

a thicket of brambles and thorns;

but when he repents toward God,

he repents toward all love and delicacy.

God receives the soul as

the sea the bather,

to return it again,

purer and whiter than he took it.

Henry Ward Beecher

The season of Advent invites us to repent.  John the Baptizer invites us to repent.  Henry Ward Beecher fine tunes repentance and redirects our repentance toward God.  Repentance is a turning again toward God, even changing our mind about God.

As we are immersed in our culture we are tempted to look to the culture and the community for the hope, peace, joy and love we seek and desire.  But we will not find what we are looking for in our relationships or the law or public sentiment. Beecher’s poetic imagery of the unscalable precipice, the crocodile jaws and the thorny brambles help us to see the dead-end of where these repentances lead us.   We want our society, our culture and our relationship to be good, lifegiving, and trustworthy and how we get there is by turning to God, changing our mind about God, looking again at how God is at work in us and all the world, the world God created and deeply loves.

So, we follow the boney pointing finger of John the Baptist, who so faithfully helps us to turn to God and see Jesus and inhale the power of the Holy Spirit.  God is with us.  Wake up!  Repent!  Christ is coming.

God’s peace,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

December 8th, 2023

GREETINGS TO THE CHILDREN OF GOD, WHO BEAR GOD’S IMAGE TO THE WORLD,

On Wednesday night worship, I invited us to imagine our good friend Jesus singing a song in our ear.  A song just for them.  I wonder what songs came to mind for people. Perhaps it was that 250-year-old hymn, Amazing Grace.  God’s grace comes to us in so many ways, through songs, through cherished keepsakes and through little catch phrases that tickle our minds and help us remember. 

Words that are important to us, we often fill them with more words and more meaning to give body and dimension to the word itself.  Take for example the word GRACE, a word that means a gift that is undeserved, an extra abundance and fullness to what is already present.  The website acronymsandslang.com gives these acronym phrases for the term "grace":

· God's Riches/Righteousness At Christ's Expense

· Great Redemption At Christ's Expense

· Grace Rightly Applied Changes 

    Everything

· Glorious Realities As Christ 

   Empowers

You may have one of your own.  Preparing for Christ’s coming we so often respond with gift giving and generosity because we know the great gift we are given as Jesus comes to us.  Many of us have the practice of not only giving gifts to our families and friends but also to strangers in need, especially children.  One of our lecturers from Tantur in Jerusalem, who grew up in the United States in an orthodox Jewish community said that although she rarely came into contact with Christians, she did know about Christmas and the gift giving that surrounds this season. 

It is a beautiful witness of God’s generosity as John 3:16 reminds us. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  God’s generosity inspires our own generosity and gift giving in this Advent season.  We have all been given just the gift we need because Jesus comes to us and that overflows into our lives and relationships.

Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack