Saturday evening Bible study
July 1, 2011
A new Bible study group is meeting Saturday at 5 pm in the church basement conference room. This is part of our ministry to the South Asian community – but you don’t have to be South Asian to participate. Join us every Saturday at 5 pm.
Kitchen renovation
July 1, 2011
We’ll be renovating the kitchen in our parish hall soon! We are excited to be able to add a handicapped-accessible bathroom as well as state-of-the-art appliances that will make our space more hospitable. All this is possible because of a Community Development Block Grant administered by Hudson County.
Apologies to our web subscribers
May 24, 2011
If you’ve signed up for email updates from St. Paul Lutheran Church, you have received a couple of messages in the past few weeks that included old, old posts from our website. We apologize for the annoyance. We’re working to find the problem and fix it. Please be patient with us–and please keep opening your email from the church. Most of the time it really is new news!
Christ is risen!
April 29, 2011
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
With this cry, we welcome our risen Lord who comes to save us from sin and death. Easter is not just a single day, but a season of seven Sundays (the great “Week of Weeks” according to ancient tradition). Joyous worship with Holy Communion continues throughout this blessed season at 10 am every Sunday. We also gather for a less formal celebration of the Eucharist on Wednesdays at 7 pm. Please join us!
Light and salt
February 21, 2011
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
You are the salt of the earth…. You are the light of the world. Matthew 5:13, 14
These words come from the mouth of Jesus Christ to his disciples. We have spent this long season of Epiphany hearing about the revelation of God’s light and life in the person of Jesus – in his teaching and in the way some people could see who he really was, and really would be, even when others could only see a little baby, or, when he was older, an annoying rebel. We have been shown his glorious light in the last eight weeks, over and over again, and we have grown in that light like flowers in the warm sun. Toward the end of this Epiphany journey, Jesus turns to his disciples – to us – and calls us light and salt.
Light and salt are two things the world cannot live without, ordinary as they might seem. Without light, we cannot see or grow or have a sense of time. Without light, we, and all living things, would die. Without salt, there is no taste. Salt is also used to cleanse, to purify, to preserve and to blend things together that otherwise would not come together. Without salt, we, and all living things, would die. And Jesus says that light and salt are good ways to describe you.
Have you experienced yourself this way? If not, that’s okay, and probably good. Being salt and light for the world has absolutely nothing to do with being self-aware, or nice, or friendly, or helpful – doing good deeds. Being salt and light has everything to do with being in Christ. Living in Christ. Being fed and nourished in and by Christ. We are salt and light because we are his. All his. We are baptized. We receive all our light and saltiness from God.
“Yes,” you might say, “but salt and light do things, they actually make things happen, or stop things from happening. They change whatever they touch upon.” That is certainly true. So when Jesus tells his disciples – and us – that we are salt and light, he may be inviting us into an awareness of what that might mean. As salt and light – as people who belong wholly to God – how are we called to live and love? How are we called to treat children? How are we called to manage our money as people who belong to God? How are we called to respond to a deeply divided government, declarations of war, rampant poverty that co-exists with excessive wealth? How are we called to respond to the needs that present themselves right here in Five Corners? To each other’s pain? To technology? Where do you see God’s people being salt and light in our world? We can and should explore these questions.
So let’s do that, together. And let’s do it with the help of our book of faith, the Bible. I invite you to participate in our adult Bible study classes on Sunday and Wednesday mornings. And on Wednesday nights in Lent, we’ll look to some of our forebears in the faith who had to wrestle with what it means to belong to God. Liturgies of Holy Communion on Wednesdays at 7 pm, will give us a chance to reflect on the faith of Noah, Abraham, Moses, the Israelite people, and Jesus Christ. Each week we will hear words from the book of Hebrews, chapters 11 and 12, which are a beautiful testimony to the nature and power of faith. I invite you to read these chapters in preparation. See the worship schedule for Lent.
On the five Sundays in Lent, we will return again and again to the meaning of our baptism. We will walk with Jesus as he makes his way to the cross, and, as we go, many gifts will be revealed to us. As baptized children of God, we are given new life, a new name, and new identity. We are given faith and rebirth, love for our neighbor, the Holy Spirit, and eternal life. This Lent, I hope you will put these Sunday and Wednesday worship services at the heart of your prayer life and Lenten practice. This worship is the center of our common life. From our worship flows everything else we do as a church, including the Sharing Place food pantry.
In Christ,
Pastor Jessica