🎲 Second Saturday of Each Month
đź“… January 11th, February 8th, March 8th
đź•• 6 PM
đź“Ť Lobby, Church of the Apostles UCC
Join us for a fun-filled evening of games and fellowship, open to the public! Bring your favorite board or card game, a snack to share, and a friend or two. Drinks will be provided.
No camping for these winter sessions—just warm, cozy fun indoors. We look forward to seeing you there! 🎉
Join Rev. Kathryn Kuhn for a time of reflection and renewal on Saturday, February 8, 2025, from 10 AM to 12 PM at the Youth Center (1899 Apostles Way).
One month into the new year, let’s pause to explore how we see God at work in the world, reflect on our trust in Him, and consider what strengthens that trust.
Light refreshments and coffee will be provided. Don’t miss this opportunity for thoughtful discussion and spiritual connection!
Be sure to register and save your spot, Click Here to Register!
They’re the words of the prophet Micah. When I was thinking about the story of Christmas, I thought, where was humility involved? I decided to start talking about Charles Dicken’s character, Ebenezer Scrooge. Because I think Ebenezer needed to learn a bit about humility. He was one who thought that the be all for him was his money. He put all his faith in his ability to live the way he wanted to live, albeit tightly so that he had more money. Money was going to be his salvation. Think about that.
I think there are some other people who look at money as their salvation. Certainly it helps, but money does not save us. And that was the lesson he learned, that although he could control many things, he could not control in life.
Because if we’re honest we’re a bit like Ebenezer and we want to do our own lives. We love being independent. We don’t want to have to rely on anyone. We want to do it our way. We have our own agendas, time frames, and lists to be checked. It’s Christmas and I found myself obsessing about the food needing to be made and the gifts needing to be wrapped. It’s part of the season and our culture certainly encourages that feeling, but none of that is about God.
God is asking for a very different reaction from us. I often use the 23rd Psalm in funerals to remind us that our God is the one who wants to run our lives. Who will take us to those gentle streams and those, those fields, but will also sit us down at a table with our enemies. It was not meant to be an easy life, but God is looking for our attention.
As I was thinking about this, I thought about the second and third steps of the 12-step program of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), which, Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, created not as a religious organization, but they recognize that part of what we have to do is know that we are not the be all and end all that we think we are. It is not all about us, and there is a higher power to whom we answer. We call that Jesus Christ, God, or the Holy Spirit. Other people might just say the divine, the creator, but there’s someone who is organizing the world and trying to influence the world. It is more than any of us. We have to look at that in our lives and we have to make the decision.
It’s a choice every day. Every moment of every day to stop focusing on ourselves and turn our attention to what God would want for us, what Christ wants for our lives.
What is Christ calling us to do? The wording I’ve been using is, what’s the next most loving thing to do? Because I think that’s what Jesus calls us to. What is the loving decision, the loving choice in each of the moments?
Our scripture today is Matthew 1:18-25 and it’s Matthew’s version of the Christmas story. Remember, Matthew had a very definite goal. Matthew wants to make sure that we know that Jesus is Jewish and is in the line of David.
When you start Matthew 1, the first 17 verses is all of his genealogy, which goes all the way back to Genesis, but connects Jesus to David. Interestingly, through Joseph, but connects the dots for us and then gives us this image of this earthly father. Stepfather is the language we would use today, who will come into Jesus’s life and guide him in a loving way.
It wasn’t the decision he had to make. Divorce was an option. We think of divorce as after people are married and that may not be a good translation either because they weren’t married. She was promised to him. There was a contract. Because that’s how marriage worked at that time. So, he could have said this pregnancy makes it null and void and that would be our language of a contract, right? The contract’s null and void. I don’t need to marry her, I can break this contract and walk away. I don’t need to be part of this.
But had he done that, he would have left Mary in a very desperate position, because at that time you needed to have a male to have any kind of power or money. She would have been destitute and very likely she could have been stoned because they would have thought that she had an affair with a married man, so it could have cost her her life.
But that wasn’t the decision he made. He made the decision for love. He chose life instead of death. And that’s at the heart of this story. I think that God wants us to choose love and to choose life.
The abortion conversation has become politicized and it’s a health decision and they are all individual cases. We don’t know what is going on in the lives of people, but we can still advocate for love and for life. I think we can hold both of those pieces because advocating for life means you advocate for the entire life of the child. Not just it’s birth.
Where did God help you adapt, pivot, or show resilience as you may have met some struggle in your life? What small or big milestone can you honor without ranking or judging? Where did you act with love? Where did you show humility, instead of insisting that it be your way?
Those are big questions for us to sit with. So, I hope that between now and the end of the year, you take some time to consider that. It really does come down to that old Deuteronomy, where Moses looks at the people and he says, “life is laid out before you choose life or choose death.”
The decision is yours. We can’t avoid death. But we can avoid some of the heartache, struggle and the pain. Because we cause a lot of our own issues. We can avoid that by choosing love, choosing humility, and choosing life.
We heard from the kids. It was pretty clear that joy was connected to happiness for them. Is there anything that you could add to that?
I think joy is more than happiness. I think it’s different, even, than happiness. It’s connection, love, being home, a big smile, something that can be found, the feeling after helping someone and the absence of fear.
I don’t know how many of you have seen Inside Out. Inside Out’s a cute Pixar movie about the emotions that go on within us. They’re animated and that is a picture of Joy. Joy is just happiness on steroids. And part of the storyline is that Joy tries to run this little girl’s life, and she finds that the little girl is absolutely miserable because Joy won’t let her experience anything else except ultimate joy.
That’s not the way life is. You know, when someone hurts you, your feeling is not joy like that. The little girl on the right also can have joy, but is expressing it very differently.
There’s connection and it involves doing something for someone else. It involves something that makes us feel like home. Something that is deeper, that we can find within us. Not something exterior, but something interior. Happiness is a feeling about us. You can be happy because you have a bowl of ice cream, but that’s not this deeper joy.
The deeper joy often comes from doing something selfless. Something that’s directed towards someone else. You can be grateful because you can help someone and it’s not all about us. Whereas, I think happiness is very self driven. Very, “this is what makes me happy.” But, this is what gives me joy, when I’m doing things for others, and when I’m focused on somebody other than myself.
“Love one another with mutual affection; Outdo one another in showing honor. Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; practice hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you. Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.” – Philippians 4:4-7 Abbreviated.
Is that about us or is that about others? To me, that’s about others. It’s about the experience of others. Although prayer could be about us too, right?
If we look at the scripture, it doesn’t really give us a lot. It tells us that she was young, but young was of marrying age at that time. It tells us that she was engaged or promised. I almost hate using the word engaged, because when we think about engagement, we think about two people who have found each other and love each other and whereas promised, I think gets a little bit closer to what relationships were still like at that time. Marriages were still more contractual. Love probably wasn’t involved. But at that time, that wasn’t as important as having a male heir to inherit what one has, leave one’s legacy, one’s name, those kind of things.
We know also that Mary has a cousin, Elizabeth. Elizabeth is the one that she runs to after this encounter with the angel Gabriel. Whether that’s because she wants to have somebody to talk about this experience with, someone that might understand. But, it also raises questions because there’s an absence of information.
Quite a few years ago, I did a sermon from Mary’s perspective, and I wrote it that Mary’s parents were not pleased. They were not keen on this whole, “I’m pregnant by the Holy Spirit” piece. But, this week I heard two ideas. They’re just things to help us open our minds.
One said that Mary was an orphan. I never thought about that. But, maybe that’s why there’s no mention of Mary’s parents. Maybe Mary didn’t have parents. We don’t know that. We don’t know why Mary was alone and went only to her cousin. We don’t know.
It was an imperfect situation with Mary. She’s young. She’s not married. This could really mess her up. But, she also is a person of faith. So, she does say yes. That was the other piece that I read, was that it had to be a woman who wasn’t married yet, unlike Elizabeth. Because a woman who’s married at that time would have had to ask her husband for permission before she said yes.
I think that’s a powerful piece that we don’t think about. A woman at that time would not have been able to make that decision on her own. But Mary was. And Mary did have faith in God. Mary did believe. And if Mary was alone in the world, I could see where wanting to be loved and needing someone to love is a strong reason to say yes to something that others would say is crazy.
Would you say yes if an angel came to you tonight and told you that you could become pregnant? Males, how would you feel if your wife came to you and said, “the spirit has come to me and told me that I’m going to bear a child.” That’s not an easy thing to put your mind around.
But I remember being a teenager who felt alone, who needed to be loved, who needed someone to love. When we look at our teenagers, we need to be thinking that way, too.
We need to make sure that they feel loved. That they feel accepted for who they are and remind them that they are children of God. That God loves them just as much as God loves everyone else.
So, Mary said yes. Mary said yes to living because living doesn’t mean it’s going to be all happy and joyful. The joy of living means going through the hard stuff, but knowing that you don’t go through it alone. Even if you physically appear to be alone, God is with you. The spirit is with you and it takes an inner sense of knowing. Looking deeper than the physical circumstances around us to know that, but it is in knowing that where we can find joy.
We are called to be that light and to share that joy that we know that comes from our relationship with Christ. We are called to be the light in the darkness right now.
I was in two rooms with people near death, and I was in conversation with someone. Who is telling me that if this one thing doesn’t happen, then life isn’t worth living. I’m trying to say, there is more to living.
This one thing may not work out, no matter how hard you pray. And they are praying with all their might. But sometimes we have to just rest in the joy of knowing that we are loved because life has hard spots and we are called to be the light in the darkness.
Think of the places and times you’ve had to wait. How good are you at that? At waiting in long lines? Waiting for news about a test? Waiting for something to happen? I know there’s quite a few young people among us who are waiting for a special day this month.
We all wait differently, but I think our ability to wait has a lot to do with how much patience we have. When I was thinking about patience, I realized that patience is directly correlated with peace. It’s very difficult to find peace if one is not patient. They go together.
Because we haven’t as a world found peace. We’re in this in between space. This paradox is actually the tension between Christianity and Judaism, because we say the Messiah has come. They say, if the Messiah had come, there would not be injustice anymore. There would not be hatred. There would be peace on earth. We have this tension there. What does this peace on earth look like? How do we make that come about?
One of the scriptures that is used this Sunday is about John and the Baptist. One of the pieces that he talks about with the messiah coming is that is that “Every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain and hill made low; the uneven ground shall become level and the rough places a plane” – Isaiah 40:4.
It’s this evening out that is supposed to happen with the messianic age. We don’t have that yet. We’re still on our way towards that.
When I think about Zachariah and Elizabeth, for me, it brings up Abraham and Sarah, an older couple who thought that they were beyond childbearing, who suddenly are going to bear a child, because of what God is doing. God is in the midst of this. And he can’t even talk about it. He has to wait in silence, so to speak.
He is able to write, because I wondered about that. I thought, well, can’t he just write this all down? It appears that he doesn’t write anything down until John is born. He writes down his name will be John and then his speech is returned.
But can you imagine having that kind of wonderful news? Maybe a little scary too, right? Could be a little fear in there. Some of us in here are beyond childbearing years. How about if somebody told you you were going to have a child? I enjoy having that grandson that I love to death and then I give him back to his mother.
That’s where they were. They were in this expectancy. Imagine it. This almost but not yet. The paradox.
It’s so important that I would challenge you to read it every single day this week. Just keep reading it every day because it is the heart of Christianity. It’s about focusing on love and how can we love others in a better way.
How do we do that? It starts with let love be genuine. It’s not about putting on a mask and being kind. It’s about really being kind, wanting to do that from your heart and reminding yourself each day, what that’s about.
The part we didn’t read the next verse, Romans 12:19, goes into “vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” God will take care of all the other stuff. Our role is to love others, to not get caught up in our stuff, so that we can see the needs of others.
The words we used in raising our children were helpful, thoughtful, and kind. That was their goal. Every day you needed to be helpful, thoughtful, and kind. If we just took that to heart, we would be closer. But I want to encourage you to sit with that.
RAIN is an acronym and it was created by Tara Brock. These are the four steps.
Recognize: What’s going on? Recognize the situation and how you are reacting to it. Recognize, look at your feelings. When something happens, notice your body. Are you clenching up? Do you feel all jittery? What’s happening? Just notice it because in noticing it, it gives you some space to then allow it.
Allow: This is the let it be and let God by allowing it, noticing it and allowing it. We give room for the spirit and the spirit has space and time to work with us. There’s another phrase that says, what we resist persists. So don’t resist it.
Investigate: Be curious, go for it. That will take you from a place of maybe anger or frustration. Be curious, go into that wonder. What’s this about? Why am I feeling like this? What’s going on here?
Nurture: Be kind to yourself too. Give yourself grace. Forgive yourself. Allow God to speak to your heart. Listen to your heart. Because that divine, I often talk about the little bit of the divine that is in each of us. We can learn to hear it. When we practice listening to it. Let’s practice that. Let’s work on those muscles.
When I was preparing last week’s sermon, there was a lot about the muscle of hope. Well, I think there’s a muscle here too, because we only experience peace when we practice peace. We will only find it elsewhere when we have it first within us. If we go looking for peace outside of us. We’re not going to find it.
It has to start here.
So I encourage you to think about that this week. Pay attention to how you’re feeling in the different situations. Allow God and the spirit within you to take care of you so that you can be there for others.
This period is where we look for what new thing is God doing in this world. How is God breaking into our world today? What hope, peace, love, and joy is God bringing?
The thing I was sitting with was this idea of what are we longing for right now? And as I was writing this sermon, my dog came up and pestered me. I thought, I know what she wants. She wants fewer people. It’s been a busy week. She wants fewer people in the house, fewer dogs in the house, and a little bit less noise. Let’s go back to normal, right? Let’s have that normal life again, that simpler life.
But the reality of normal is that we’re using those rose-colored glasses. What we think is normal is more of a dream that probably never existed anyway. We paint everything and smooth out all the edges so that we only remember the good parts and forget all the hard parts. But life is hard. That’s a reality.
We need to remember that the point of coming together is so that we support one another in all of the hard stuff. It can be nice to support one another in the fun stuff and the good stuff. We all like that. But we need one another in the hard stuff and when life gets real.
What came to me was compassionate care for creation. Our scripture today (Luke 2:1-3 & Romans 8:18-25) is about creation, and we’re looking to give that compassionate care and to share that with one another, with the world, and with our community.
To try to be there for one another. What does that look like? Well, back in early November, I read this article by Guy Sayles, who is a pastor in Western North Carolina. He wrote about the experience of Hurricane Helene, where the mountains of North Carolina never experienced anything like that before.
What he talked about first was a quote from Mr. Rogers that Mr. Roger’s mother always told him when things were going wrong, “Look for the helpers. There are always helpers.”
Who are the helpers and what are they doing? He started looking around at what was happening in his community, which was devastated. Hurricane Helene was a leveler or an equalizer of sorts. I don’t mean that in a good way. But, it brought the helpers. It brought the religious and the other non-profit volunteers to help. It brought FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers. It brought the North Carolina National Guard and the state and local agencies.
But more than that. It brought neighbors out to help one another. A woman who had rain barrels started tapping off the water so that people had water to flush their toilets. Another neighbor who had a generator put it in their driveway and set it up as a charging station so everybody could come and charge their phones or other devices. Neighbors who had freezers that no longer had electricity started handing out the food because it was going to thaw and go bad.
Guy said people would sit around the generator as their devices were charging and they got to know one another. They learned to trust one another. They became a community. They gave each other hope in the middle of this disaster. They were there for each other. That’s where our hope can come from.
If you are a regular attendee, you know that I struggle with Paul because he has this circular logic that he uses and you can get very confused. But before I get to that, I do want to talk about the fact that this is Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome. I usually say to the churches in Rome, and I’m afraid that I might be misrepresenting that to you. They didn’t have cathedrals and the Vatican didn’t exist, this was before that.
At the time of Paul’s letters people were gathered in homes and they were of all ages and all economic groups. They were the merchants, the slaves, and even the destitute. They all came together, just like in Acts. They talk about everyone came together and shared as there was need. Kind of like that story about the hurricane. Same idea. These communities would come together and the message of Jesus’s love, the available salvation, and this equalizing love. Everybody was included. It was this inclusiveness that attracted the people and the reason Christianity grew.
So to them, Paul is saying the difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. Some of us know what it’s like to be pregnant. It’s uncomfortable and it’s challenging, but it’s not only around us, it’s within us. I think right now, when I look at the world and I look at us, we want something new. We want something new to come out. We want more justice for people. Not less. We want more inclusivity. We want more freedom, not less. We want more liberty, not less.
Imagine a pregnant person, how we get larger. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us, but that is our hope. That is this thing that God is building among us. But, the longer we wait, the larger we become and the more joyful our expectancy. So something is coming. A real justice with peace that we don’t know what that looks like yet.
But it’s going to be hard to get there. It’s going to involve pain and it’s going to mean that we have to come together and work together to survive it.
So this morning I brought him a gentle leader and handed it to him. He said I feel like other dog owners are supporting me. And I said, well, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? That’s being community. I have something that I no longer need and you need it. Why would I not give it to you? I don’t need anything. You don’t need to buy it from me. I can just give it to you.
Our materialistic consumeristic culture starts to program us where we think that we have to pay for everything and we think that if we own it then it’s worth something and we ought to get something for it. Maybe we can just share this idea of justice.
Advent is a reflective season where we’re called to think. It’s not by chance that this hits in December as the trees have now let go of their leaves. They’re going into this dormant time. The nights are getting longer. We’re to rest more and take more time to slow down.
And what do we do instead? Fill everything with lights, loud music, and bright colors as we try to ward off the darkness. But if we can accept some of the darkness, we can light a candle. We don’t have to be in the pitch dark, but if we can take the time to stop and to give thanks to God, then to think, to reflect on our days.
Where was I merciful? Where was I loving and where did I fail? Because we all have those moments that aren’t our best.
It’s good for us to think about these and then to listen to our hearts because that’s where the still small voice of God is speaking. That’s where Christ meets us, in the quiet and the listening.