The Messenger

I’ve never been known as a man of few words.  I didn’t realize how many words until I ran the numbers.  This is my 182nd lead piece!  I began writing these lead pieces to Immanuel’s Messenger in 1994, and the February issue addressed the same Scriptures then as now.  Worship in the Church in February completes the Epiphany season of “discoveries,” of revelations about the great God we serve, celebrates the Transfiguration of Our Lord and ends on Ash Wednesday, first day of Lent.   I’m ending where I began.  So have I come full circle?  Did I really “go” anywhere?  Did we make any “progress” over all these years and all these issues? 

We go though the same Scriptures every three years.  What’s the point of that?  In so doing, don’t we deny the freedom of the Holy Spirit to influence the mind and heart of the worship leader?  That’s not been my experience.  For faithful who attend worship every Sunday through the three-year cycle, they hear most of God’s Holy Word read aloud.  That’s the point of our three-year Lectionary of Scripture readings.  God’s holy word comes fresh to us in this Year of Mark.  The readings are as they were three years ago.  The “revelations,” the Epiphany insights to which the Holy Spirit leads us, are fresh and poignant for today. 

“Have you not heard?” the prophet Isaiah asks us February 8th.  “Has it not been told you from the beginning?”  Probing questions connect God’s people through the millennia.  Is it possible that we can be in God’s presence in worship week after week, while our minds and hearts are elsewhere?  Can it be possible that we go through the demands that consume our every waking moment every day, every week with seldom a conscious sense of God’s holy presence with us?  Is this a symptom of our ill-health, not our strength?  Can this be part of the Spirit-led wisdom of the early Church to put God’s people in the presence of God’s Word regularly?  What can we learn about the nature of Almighty God?  What can we learn about ourselves in need of God as Epiphany flows into Lent?
Listen carefully.  Look closely.  God does extraordinary things in this world week after week in the lives of most-unlikely candidates for divine intervention.  The whole city of Capernaum was deposited at the door to Peter’s house, Mark tells us February 8th.  Is this a microcosmic glimpse of humanity’s need for healing?  February 15th you’ll see the unthinkable happen.  Jesus, God-in-the-flesh, touches one of society’s untouchables.  “If you choose,” the man says, “you can make me clean.”  Do you remember the touch of the Master’s hand that restored you, brought healing and wholeness to you?  Maybe you didn’t know how fractured and fragmented in body, mind and soul you were until healing came into your being.  I have some stories to tell that day.

February 22nd celebrates the mighty and marvelous ways God’s power is “transferred” from one to another.  Elisha inherits a double portion of Elijah’s spirit.  Three disciples are engulfed in Jesus’ glory on the mountain.  Peter’s babblings betray his inner turmoil.  How do you respond to such a transformational moment?

Ashen crosses smeared on the foreheads of present-day disciples gathered at God’s invitation to the Holy Supper signal movement for the Church February 25th.  It’s Wednesday, not Sunday.  Ashes, symbols of our mortality, and the bread and wine, symbols of divine forgiveness, combine to take Immanuel’s people with all God’s people forward in this faith journey.  By God’s grace we really are moving forward, you and I, on a journey known only to God.

I have been blessed by the opportunity to journey with you through God’s Word these many years.  The words that frame the lead piece here will now, as will their writer, change.   And God’s Holy Word will come new and fresh to each of us.  That’s a promise.  “Have you not known?  Have you not heard?”  (Isa. 40:21)
Brother in Christ,
                                                   Pastor Jan