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Making Sense of a Changed World

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Politically, we are a purplish church. There’s a mix of red and blue here. I don’t know the shade of purple exactly. I don’t monitor how you vote. I don’t look for red and blue. I look at the Jesus in you. Whatever the makeup, Democrats, Republicans, independents unite in Christ here. This to me is a beautiful thing.  That said, for some this Sunday after the election Tuesday is not so beautiful. For some, this election was especially difficult. Some are heartbroken. Really heartbroken.  However, others are heartened. And some are somewhere in between. Knowing this, how would you as a pastor here approach this meditation? How do I speak to these rather different groups of Christians at Plainville Congregational? It’s not so easy. Well, the idea that makes the most sense to me this morning is to do just that, speak both to those feeling heartbroken and to those feeling heartened.  To the heartbroken – your pain is real and difficult. I have no easy answers to give. I have my thoughts a
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Abraham Buries Sarah (Genesis 23)

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Sarah dies at the age of 127. We read about this at the beginning of Genesis 23. She dies in Canaan, away from home. The loss is profound for Abraham. Genesis 23:2 offers such a tender description. Abraham goes to her to mourn and weep over her. He sits shiva, in other words. This tender picture of individual grief and loss comes amid the often-hard story of Genesis, full of falls, failures, folly, and forsakenness in the wilderness. This kind of grief, it can’t be stopped. Yes, there are different kinds of losses we experience. The loss of a sense of safety, the loss of a job, the loss of hopes coming true, the loss of our preferred political campaign, the loss of a good vacation. But there are levels of grief. Losing a child, losing a parent, losing a spouse – that is next level grief, and it must be especially honored. The rest of the chapter focuses on the task of burying Sarah. A beloved husband, Abraham wants the perfect spot for his wife’s burial land and landscape. He speci
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The Garden of the Church & The Wilderness of Politics

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In 1802, President Thomas Jefferson responded to a question  written to him by the Danbury Baptist Association, asking him why he doesn’t “proclaim national days of fasting and thanksiving, as had been done by Washington and Adams before him.” Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury Baptists wrote this: “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.” In the 1644, more than 160 years before Jefferson, Roger Williams, one of the most important early Americans in U.S. history and America’s first Baptist, wrote this in a letter to John Cotton: “When they [the Church] have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall itself, removed the
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Christian Conscience

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This meditation is going to be heavy on Bible verses. Often, I read the lectionary scriptures and simply go from there, maybe quoting a scripture or two in the process. But this meditation will be quoting scripture a lot. The reason this is true is that we’re looking at a very important topic, and the scripture has a lot to say about it.  The topic is this – Conscience.  In researching this topic last week, I came upon something that’s been going on since 1811 that I’ve only just heard about. The IRS has a fund that folks can donate to. It is called the Conscience fund. It’s meant for those who’ve defrauded the government in some way and because of their guilty conscience want to make it right. Clergy have often been mediators of monies given to the fund. Deathbed confessions to clergy led to donations to the Conscience fund. That said, it isn’t just religious people who are endowed with human conscience. Everyone is endowed with conscience. Yes, that conscience can become broken, but
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Confirmation Class Playlist #1

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Link to Lyrics below 1. Meditation #3: Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-6) 2. The Beginning (Genesis 1-3) 3. They Called Him Laughter   (Genesis 21:1-7) 4. God Will Provide a Lamb   (Genesis 22:1-19) 5. Asleep On Holy Ground (Genesis 32:22-32) 6. Jubilee   (Exodus 13;Leviticus 25–26) 7. A Face That Shone (Moses’ Story) (Exodus 34:29-35) 8. In the Wilderness (Numbers 13-36, etc.) 9. Barocha (Numbers 6:24-26) 10. Lift Up the Suffering Symbol (Numbers 21:4-9) 11. The Word Is So Near (Deuteronomy 30:14) 12. Then They Will Know (Jeremiah 31:33) 13. The Prophet (2 Chronicles 24:19-25) 14. Through the Eye / And a Little Child Shall Lead Them (Isaiah 11:3-6) 21. The Kingdom (Isaiah, Chronicles 28:5; 2 Chronicles 13:8; Daniel 2:44) 15. Will You Not Listen? (Jeremiah 7:13; 16:12; 17:23, etc.) 16. Recapture Me (Ezekial 14:5) 17. Valley of Dry Bones (Ezekial 37:1-14) 18. Song of Gomer (Hosea) 19. I Will Bring You Home (Zephaniah 3:20; Psalm 90:1) 20. Malakai (Malachi) 22. Meditation #4
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