Your Faith Journey - Finding God Through Words, Song And Praise

“It will not be possible to make me shut up.  I will not stop talking, proclaiming, or preaching…. I will not pause.  I will not rest, for the sake of the precious city God loved and left, and I will keep this up until every nation and king can see that Jerusalem has been declared innocent and lifted up to a place of glory and honor.”  (Working Preacher, Anathea Portier-Young)   It will not be possible to make me shut up!  These are the prophet Isaiah’s words as he boldly acts as intercessor for Jerusalem.  Following the exile, when the Jewish people returned to their land, it was decimated, and it seemed to them like a desert.  The restoration and rebuilding of Jerusalem met countless obstacles and delays. The Jewish people had been full of hope but, upon return to their homeland, they were battling deteriorating morale caused by broken dreams and crumbling faith.  They felt God had turned away in indifference.           So, Isaiah laments and boldly protests, interceding on the people’s behalf, and he holds

I don’t know about you, but I have been quite challenged by the way COVID-19 is constantly causing us to alter our plans and make changes in our daily lives.  Shifting again to online worship only for this Sunday and next Sunday is just one example of this challenge. Throughout these past two years, I have experienced a constant struggle within myself as we routinely must make new decisions while responding to the latest, unexpected challenges COVID-19 creates before us and around us. And, quite frankly, we will not see an end to this struggle and constant state of uncertainty and change until more people are vaccinated! We all struggle with change in one way or another. Some change is helpful and transformative, and some change can be devastating.  One of the greatest challenges for all of us is the change that ensues when unexpected situations arise, and our very world seems to shift on its axis.  Such change is often abrupt, disruptive, life-threatening and life changing. This is the type of change we expe

As we come together on this night, we gather to celebrate what the heart of God is all about. We come to celebrate God’s heart of love for the entire world.  It is all about God’s desire to reach deep into this world, deep into humanity, into our very flesh, touch our hearts, and change them. Christmas is all about God’s love for us. And, quite frankly, love is messy.  Sometimes I think the choice to love others and the work of love could be described and labelled as “Outreach in a state of mess,” because love can be difficult, hard, messy work.  Christmas is about God reaching into the messiness of our lives, into our very flesh, to say, “You are loved. Have a heart of love!” Why heart? Because God knows that logic and reason and might only go so far. If logic, reason and might were all that is necessary, there would be no hatred, no poverty, no violence, no racism, no sexism, no xenophobia, no war, no greed, no selfishness. And with our great military might, we would have everything necessary to enable this

Pastor Ellen: At this time of year, I deeply appreciate the gift of the arts – the performing arts, the visual arts, drama, poetry, music, and song.  I find the arts become a pathway to deeper understanding of the meaning of Christ’s presence in this world. The writer of Luke’s gospel also seemed to appreciate the arts. Luke is an excellent storyteller and he used the gift of poetry and song to capture the meaning of Christ entering this world in the person of Jesus. Today, we hear Mary, her response to God’s call, and her transformational song, one of the most beautiful songs in all of scripture. Today, God speaks to us through the gifts of poetry, song, and drama. So, we invite you to open your hearts and minds to receive that gift and be transformed. St. John of the Cross once wrote: If you want, the Virgin will come walking down the road pregnant with the holy, and say, “I need shelter for the night, please take me inside your heart, my time is so close.” Then, under the roof of your soul, you will wit

It is good to be back with you, even though we gather online. Last week, Pastor John compared the circumstances in which we presently live to a wilderness experience. I will be honest with you, I deeply feel that wilderness experience, and so I need to hear the word God gives us on this day because I have been discouraged. I have been discouraged by living with four weeks of illness, by struggling with Covid-19, by the cavalier and careless attitude people are taking toward this deadly virus, and by the lack of respect, love, and care for neighbor exhibited by far too many. I have also been deeply distraught by the horrific killing that took place at Oxford High School less than two weeks ago. And then, when only days later, some elected leaders posted Christmas messages with pictures showing each member of their family, some children, holding a gun, we saw how deeply the idolatry of gun worship is infecting our culture. Our nation’s worship of guns is dangerous and wrong! Yes, I desperately need to hear the

Notes for Sermon on the Second Sunday of Advent at Faith, Okemos, December 5, 2021 based on Luke 3:1-6 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius…the word of God came to John.  And in this first year of Joseph Biden’s presidency….when Gretchen Whitmer is governor, Elissa Slotkin, our district 8 congressional representative, Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, our senators, Craig Satterlee, our synod bishop, and Elizabeth Eaton, our presiding bishop, the word of God still comes to us:  comes to me, to Deb, to Bruce, to Chris, to Phylis here in this worship space and to all worshiping with us online.  To us now in this still beautiful, but lately too often also dangerous wilderness, in a country deeply divided over masks and vaccinations, in a violent world – filled with tragedies like that at Oxford High School, with unsettling threats of violence from a student at Holt Junior High, in a world infected by a wily, ever mutating virus, in a nation embroiled in heightened tensions over the fate of Roe v.

This is a special musical presentation of Listen Here, Listen Here by soloist Chris Lewis at Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, Michigan.

Over the past week and a half, while struggling to get well after being quite ill, I became increasingly aware of the way we are living in a time of tension between the quarantine lockdown of 2020 and a hopeful future time when we might, just might move beyond Covid-19. This present time is fraught with disease, danger, and chaos. And, what is blatantly and manifestly clear is that full recovery and a return to normal will not come to fruition until more people get vaccinated. So, we indefinitely live in what might be called “in-between times.” Today marks the beginning of a new church year and, on this first Sunday of the new year, we are reminded of the way we live within the tension of yet another form of in-between times. As Christians, we live between the “Already” and “the Not yet” … that is, between “the Kingdom that has come” and the “Kingdom that is yet to fully come.” We live in “in-between times.” As we begin the season of Advent, we are invited to look in two directions – to look back to the birth

This is a special musical presentation of Praise to the Lord, the Almighty by the Faith Bells at Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, Michigan.

This has been an interesting week in our household   My two boys are enrolled in One Wild Life Learning Community for school   They began this school group last year and continue this year   This week their two teachers have been home recovering from covid   All of the kids have remained healthy, and I’ve had an up-close opportunity to observe their learning this week   One Wild Life promotes student-led   And place-based modes of learning   One Wild Life uplifts and respects the kids’ ideas   One Wild Life focuses on discovering and cultivating one’s passion   This week I’ve had seven kids age 9 – 14 continuing their learning in my basement   They connect with their teachers on zoom a few times per day   But mostly, amazingly, they are the drivers of their learning   I’ve served as the adult upstairs if I’m needed,   But I’m not   Except as a privileged witness to this incredible community   Little gems drift up from the basement throughout my day   Celebrations like “We’re so smart!”   Support like “Oh, her

Today’s gospel reading from Mark is guaranteed to raise one’s heart rate a bit as Jesus begins to tell the disciples about signs of the end of the age. This entire chapter in Mark's gospel is called the little apocalypse because it falls into the genre of apocalyptic writing. Apocalyptic literature was a special kind of writing that was very popular during Jesus’ lifetime and in the early church. What “apocalyptic” means is to pull back the veil, to reveal what one might call the underbelly of reality. It uses hyperbolic images like stars falling from the sky, the moon turning to blood, and violent future earthquakes. The closest comparable literature in contemporary 21st century writing would possibly be science fiction, where suddenly you’re placed in an utterly different world, where what you used to call “normal” doesn’t apply anymore. So, as you listen to today’s gospel reading you need to understand it is meant to shock. It is also very important to note, the purpose of apocalyptic literature is not to

This is a special musical presentation of City Called Heaven by the Faith Chorale and a solo by Victoria Waler at Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, Michigan.

Throughout this pandemic, I feel as though we have been living what one theologian calls “the Saturdays of our lives.”  The Saturdays of our lives represent those despairing places in life between the crucifixion of Good Friday and the resurrection of Sunday morning. They represent the stench of death we have experienced and felt throughout this pandemic. They represent the emptiness and longing we may feel in the wilderness of despair. They represent those places in life where what is crystal clear is the suffering and the pain and the agony and the chaos, and where the resurrection of Sunday and the promise of new life seem like a fantasy or fairytale that is certainly nowhere in sight. Living in the Saturdays of our lives is a difficult place to live. And, that place of death and despair is the context for all our readings on this day, readings that are truly life-giving. It is important to note that, when the Bible speaks of death, it does so in terms of the future. Using poetic writings and visions, the

This is a special musical presentation of This Little Light of Mine by the Faith Chorale and a Tamborine solo by Rich Weingartner at Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, Michigan.

It often seems as though we are presently living in a post-truth culture.  Michiko Kakutani is a writer and former chief book critic for The New York Times.  In 2018, she wrote an excellent article titled “The death of truth: how we gave up on facts.”  In that article, Kakutani eloquently describes the disease of “truth decay” and the way it is permeating and dismantling our culture and our society.  Commenting on our present perilous relationship to truth and facts, she writes: The term “truth decay” has joined the post-truth lexicon that includes such now familiar phrases as “fake news” and “alternative facts”. And it’s not just fake news either: it’s also fake science (manufactured by climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers, who oppose vaccination), fake history (promoted by Holocaust revisionists and white supremacists), fake Americans on Facebook (created by Russian trolls), and fake followers and “likes” on social media (generated by bots).   Her article is quite helpful as she articulates the way “trut

This is a special musical presentation of Amazing Grace by the Faith Chorale and a solo by Bob Nelson at Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, Michigan.

The trajectory of Mark’s gospel is so very interesting. The central section of Mark’s gospel focuses on Jesus’ teaching about discipleship, and it is book-ended by two stories of Jesus healing persons who are blind. Today’s story of blind Bartimaeus, is the second of the bookend stories and it marks the end of the discipleship section. It also presents one of the key points in Mark's gospel. This story unlocks the gates to Jerusalem and what is to come as Mark continues the Jesus story.  This book end story of Mark’s discipleship section is the gateway into the last week of Jesus’ life and, the question we are being asked is, “Do you really want to see?”  Jesus asks Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?”  Some commentators say this is a rhetorical question because Bartimaeus is blind and what he wants is obvious. However, it’s not that simple. Jesus is essentially asking Bartimaeus and each one of us, “Do you really want to see?” This passage needs to be read on two levels:  yes, it’s about physical

This is a special musical presentation of When Morning Gilds the Skies by the Faith Bells at Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, Michigan.

I have had the opportunity of traveling to Washington DC numerous times in my life.  And, each time, as I get closer to the city, I feel a certain excitement rise within me as I approach the seat of power in this country.  I feel a sense of reverence as I remember our country’s history.  And, as I see all the monuments, the Capital building, and the White House, I feel and sense the presence of power and authority embodied in that great city.  As I studied today’s reading from Mark’s gospel, I thought of these experiences.  You see, today we find Jesus and the disciples on their way to Jerusalem.  They are nearing the end of their journey to that city which for them represents the ultimate place of power and authority.  Jesus has been attempting to prepare the disciples for what lies ahead.  However, they still seem clueless.  They know Jesus keeps talking about a kingdom.  They know Jesus is bringing change to their world through his proclamation that the kingdom of God is at hand.  So, one can almost sense

As Rich just reminded us this morning, we have come to that time of year when we intentionally place a focus on Stewardship. So, it is fitting that we are given a gospel reading that speaks about wealth, money and all the “stuff” we think we must possess.  I realize money, and the multiple issues, challenges, and questions concerning money, are not going away anytime soon. And, many of these issues center around what we do, and what we need to do, to access our money and our privilege.  Many of these issues center around our captivity to our possessions, and the good life most of us enjoy. However, Jesus offers us the possibility to see past some these issues and challenges, especially when it comes to the things that matter most in life.  As we meet up with Jesus today, we find him telling a young landowner there is freedom in leaving possessions and “stuff” behind. Today, a rich young man kneels before Jesus and asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The focus of this man’s mindset significantly co