Our Life with Jesus 20-21

  "Open my hands, Lord." It is a Lenten prayer, simple and powerful.  We can hang onto many things in life very tightly, including our familiar routines.  Many routines can help us, but when they become rigid, there is little room for anything else. When we are gripping something very tightly our hand is closed.  But if, with God's help, our hand can actually open--particularly if it has been closed, or we  have been closed, for a long time--the shape of our hand changes.  With an open hand, we become prepared to receive, and to be equipped for life that will be open-handed instead of closed-fisted. The season of Lent involves opening our lives to God repentantly, and doing some unpacking, unburdening, in order to move, to make breathing room, to create space for new life that is God's gift to us.  This is what the spiritual discipline of fasting about.  It is typically related to giving up food for a time-limited period, while entering into praye...

artwork by Jan Richardson  

 Below are pictures of different locations in our church sanctuary.  Can you identify each one, and its purpose?  There is great symbolism and history in many of  the images.  What do they represent?  Take a careful look!  Answer the questions as fully as you can.  Don't be afraid to do some research!  

  What Jesus refers to as "the kingdom of God" (in the New Testament basileia: realm or dominion) is also referred to in the Gospel of Matthew as "the kingdom of the heavens."  At the outset of his ministry, Jesus announces, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."  The kingdom of God is the place where God's power of love transforms human lives.  This is a realm that can be "seen" and "entered into" (John 3:3-5).   When we pray the Lord's Prayer, as Jesus has taught us to pray, we pray that God's kingdom will come on earth and God's will be done on earth.  The way we live our lives in faith is an answer to the very prayer that we make.   In a Foundations of Faith Class, people shared some of their understandings of the kingdom of God, which included: --"God-with-us" --anywhere, everywhere that God is --the place where God's will is being done --th...

  --Sabbath is a radical practice. -- Our Worship liturgy is a daring act of imagination. --It manifests our belief in God who is doing "hands-on work"  to make new human futures. --Worship is resistance  to the dominant, life-flattening order. --in Sabbath Worship we explore the experience of covenant community:    (a)   we celebrate a God-ordered life, and (b) we engage in the practice of hope in the face of the world's hopelessness.  -- We celebrate a world that is fruitful and generative, rather than use-ful. -- We embrace God's themes of wholeness and completion in a world that can be half-baked and distorted. --We  are rooted in the peace of Jesus (an antidote to anxiety). --The fabric of our lives depends on fidelity, not "productivity." Liturgy is way of imagining the world differently and acting according to that imagination. (thanks to Walter Brueggemann)

  "And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.  He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels waited on him."  --Mark 1:12-13 In the wake of the story of Jesus's baptism are the two verses above.  Before he can begin his ministry, Jesus is driven by the Spirit of God into the wilderness for forty days, where he is tempted to compromise his identify and purpose, and to misuse his gifts.  While the passages in Mark are brief, both Matthew's gospel (Matthew 4:1-11) and Luke's gospel (Luke 4:1-13) give much more detailed stories that include the nature of the temptations that Jesus faces.  Take time to read them carefully and reflect on them.  He responds to each temptation by rooting himself more deeply in God's Word and God's will.   How do you think that happens in our lives?  What are some of the decisions that we  make in life that clarify our identity as a ...

  "In those days Jesus came from Nazareth and was baptized by John in the Jordan.  And just as he was coming up out of water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.  And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." --Mark 1:9-11 This week we considered the story of Jesus' baptism.  We noted that it was a momentous decision that Jesus was making, leaving Nazareth for the long journey to the Jordan , a passage similar to the one that Mary and Joseph made to Bethlehem three decades before.  Jesus joins the large crowds of people being baptized by John.  His life was taking a powerful turn.  Though he eventually would come back to Galilee, he would return different than he had  left, and his life would embody new mission.   Eighteen years have passed since the twelve-year-old Jesus  sat with the teachers in the Temple.  What has he been doing since them?...