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8/29/2018 August 29th, 2018 Sunday's Sermon SnippetConflict: The Friend of My Enemy Is... (1 Samuel 20) After the young shepherd David defeated the giant Goliath, his fame spread throughout the land, and King Saul became jealous. Saul appointed David as a commander of troops in hopes that he might die in battle and later concocted a variety of schemes to rid himself of his increasingly popular rival. While Saul hated David and sought to kill him, Saul's daughter Michal fell in love with and married David while Saul's son Jonathan became a close friend - a spiritual friend even - to David. Jonathan intervened with his father on his friend's behalf to try to preserve his life and the peace of the land. This rivalry between Saul and David reaches fever pitch as David and Jonathan hatch a plan to test whether Saul truly wants to kill David, and Jonathan helps David escape Saul's wrath and endures that wrath for himself. Poor Jonathan is caught in between his loyalty to his father and his love for his friend. In a world like his and like ours, that is a hard place to be. When conflict arises and we are in the middle of it, the two sides often demand that we choose a side - one or the other. We operate by the axioms, "The friend of my enemy is my enemy; the enemy of my friend is my enemy." In the entangled web of our relationships, that eventually makes for few friends and many enemies. This is the world of Saul who demanded that Jonathan be loyal to him and him alone and insults him - even throwing a spear at him - over his friendship with David. David, on the other hand, treats Jonathan in an unexpected way. While he expects Jonathan to deal truthfully and openly with him because of the covenant they have with one another, David does not demand that Jonathan renounce his father. David recognizes that even after helping him Jonathan will return to his father. As the story continues onward from this point, we find Jonathan serving his father even as Saul attempts to hunt down David to kill him. Despite this, David still mourns Jonathan upon his death as a dear friend. This is the world of David who does not need absolute loyalty from his friend. He loves Jonathan even when they are on opposite sides of the conflict because he trusts him and knows him to be a good man. The conflict does not change their friendship. Our world often tells us that the way of Saul - you are either for me or against me - is the only way, but we are called to something greater and better. The way of David means that we can remain friends even when we disagree or fight over things. We can love one another and still hold each other in respect even while the world and its conflicts try to tear us apart. In the world of David, in a faithful world, the friend of my enemy is still my friend, because true friendship does not require that we agree on everything. Living in CommunityPrayers of Christian sympathy to Margaret and the entire Chandler family upon Virginia's passing. Thank you to everyone who came out to support them at the family night and the funeral. A special thank you to everyone who helped provide a meal for the family. This Week at Port ChurchWednesday, August 22 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours Thursday, August 23 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours Sunday, August 26 9:30 am - Worship: "Conflict: The Lord's" 11:00 am - Sunday School Looking AheadAdditional Communion Server Training - September 9, following worship
Philippians Bible Study in Sunday School - September 9 Wednesday at the Port - September 12, 6 pm Potato Drop hosted at Grottoes UMC - September 15, 12 noon 225th Anniversary Celebration - September 29, 3 pm - until Nativity Workday - October 6 8/20/2018 August 20th, 2018 Looking Back, Moving ForwardI am excited by our 225th anniversary celebration coming up next month on Saturday, September 29th starting at 3 pm. We have a fun day of events planned at Bradburn Park. We will have games for kids from 3 to 5 pm and hayrides from 4:30 to 5:30 pm. The Ruritans will host a dime toss for all ages starting at 3 pm. Food including chicken, macaroni, and homemade cakes will be served from 5 to 6:30 pm. The youth will host a silent auction to raise money for their missions from 3 to 5 pm. There will be a cornhole tournament in the afternoon (more details to come). We have Big City Band coming out to play from 4 to 6 pm, and we will close with a worship service at 7 pm led by our new District Superintendent, Rev. Victor Gomez. We hope you will be able to join us for the day as we celebrate what God has done and what is still doing here in Port Republic! Invite your family and friends to join us! We ask that if you plan to come you would let us know how many to expect so we can plan for enough food. If you have not already signed the list at church this past Sunday, sign up this Sunday or send an email to the church office of how many people you expect to bring. As we look back at the last 225 years and move forward into the next 225, we invite everyone to participate in our art contest. Simply create a picture of something about Port Church - what it means to you, what you imagine it was like in the past, what you imagine it will look like in another 225 years, or another theme of your liking - and submit it to the church office by September 22. Please put your name only on the back of the artwork. There will be prizes selected for the people's choice in three age groups: child, youth, and adult. Have fun! Blessings on the journey, Jim Sunday's Sermon SnippetConflict: Facing Giants (1 Samuel 17) While there may be those who thrive on conflict, for most of us conflict is something we would rather avoid. There is a reason we have the advice to avoid talking about religion and politics at the dinner table - they are likely to cause conflict, and we would rather not have to deal with that. Yet conflict is a part of life - we cannot avoid it completely. So the question then is how we can live faithfully when we are caught up in conflict. This is an especially important question for us today, as we are living in a particularly divided time in which angry, hatred, and contempt for others abound. We are going to look at the life of King David who lived in constant conflict and highly divided times for lessons of how we can faithfully engage the conflicts of our society and of our lives. Some of these lessons from David will tell us what we ought to do while others will caution us against what we ought not do. To understand the life of King David, we need to take a step back. About 1000 years before the time of Jesus, the people of Israel had no king and everyone did what they felt was right - not a good situation. A man named Saul was anointed as king by the prophet Samuel, and he served faithfully more or less - less over time. The final break came when Saul kept some of the plunder of a war against the Amalekites who harassed others in the wilderness when he had been instructed to wipe them out and not take the plunder. It may be hard for us today to understand the reason God would have for wanting to wipe out the whole group of people. One perspective is that a war based on not taking survivors as slaves or capturing plunder is one that has little or no personal gain for the victor. The only reason to go to war under this restriction is to right a wrong and protect those who are weak from those who would do them harm. Saul failed to do this, and so God sent Samuel to anoint the young David as king - a new king but not quite yet. Saul, not knowing David had been anointed, kept David in his court to play the harp that settled his tormented spirit. When the giant Philistine Goliath defied Saul's army for forty days challenging them to send out a champion to fight him one-on-one to determine the outcome of a war, David arrived in camp bringing his older brothers food from home. David himself was still a young shepherd and not a warrior, but he was willing to take on Goliath in God's name, trusting in the power of God. Like the conflicts we sometimes face, facing Goliath seemed like a hopeless situation to Saul's troops. So David's brother belittled him for his willingness to fight, and even Saul questioned how David could possibly hope to win. When he heard of David's experience of fighting off bears and lions from the flocks and his confidence in God, Saul tried to arm David defensively so that he might survive Goliath's onslaught. David refused and simply took his sling and five stones. The rest, as they say, is history - David defeated Goliath and became the model for the little guy taking on the giant ever since. The things that could have held David back - hopelessness, being belittled and judged by others, feeling defensive, and being laid utterly vulnerable on the battlefield - are the same kinds of things that keep us from engaging in conflicts that are calling for a champion. We are told to pick our battles, often meaning to avoid most conflicts. Yet we forget that this also means there are battles worth fighting for and conflicts worth engaging in despite our feelings of hopelessness, belittlement, defensiveness, and vulnerability. Some battles are certainly worth fighting for, but as Christians it truly matters which ones we fight and how we fight them if we are to be faithful. We start by avoiding unnecessary conflict that would enrich us and by choosing those battles that protect those who are weaker than ourselves. That is difference between the glorious Saul who kept plunder from his war and David the seemingly weak whose faith led him to defend all his people from being oppressed by the Philistines. May God give us the wisdom to pick our battles wisely and the courage to fight them well! In coming weeks, we are going to explore how we can remain faithful to love and grace of God as we fight those battles. Potato DropIt is almost time for us to roll up our sleeves and work with our brothers and sisters to make our truckload of potatoes available to hunger ministries in our area. We will gather on September 15th at 12 noon at Grottoes UMC. Volunteers will be needed to unload the 50 pound sacks from the truck, to organize them for the orders requested by local organizations, to break down some sacks into smaller bags, and possibly to deliver some of the orders. If you would like to help, please let Pastor Jim or Lee know. Living in CommunityThank you, Jason, Jim, Brad, Eddie, and Jason, for bringing the story of David and Goliath to life in our worship on Sunday! Please offer prayers of healing and comfort for Virginia. Remember our confirmation class in your prayers as they learn and grow together! Please pray for all of our teachers, school staff, and students as the new school year starts. This Week at Port ChurchWednesday, August 22 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours Thursday, August 23 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours Saturday, August 25 2:00 pm - Church-wide Clean-up Day Sunday, August 26 9:30 am - Worship: "Conflict: The Friend of My Enemy Is..." Communion Server Training following worship 11:00 am - Sunday School 5:00 pm - Confirmation Class at Ciro's Looking AheadAdditional Communion Server Training - September 9, following worship
Philippians Bible Study in Sunday School - September 9 Wednesday at the Port - September 12, 6 pm Potato Drop hosted at Grottoes UMC - September 15, 12 noon 225th Anniversary Celebration - September 29, 3 pm - until Nativity Workday - October 6 8/13/2018 August 13th, 2018 Living in Divided TimesGrowing up, I remember being told that there were two things that you don't discuss at the dinner table - politics and religion. These two topics have power like few other things to both unite and divide. If we agree on these things, we are united; as soon as we find an area of disagreement, we are divided. Living in such a divided time as we do now, it makes me wonder if we would be better off if we followed this advice not just at the dinner table but also at grocery store, ball field, and on social media. At least then we would not be drawn into the controversial, heated arguments that so often erupt around our beliefs. Yet simply ignoring our differences doesn't do much to bring us real unity as brothers and sisters in Christ. Still, as followers of Jesus, surely we are called to do better than the divisive rhetoric and hateful anger that too often dominates our culture's discussion of these important topics. How can we as Christians living in a divided time engage in these issues embroiled in conflict without losing our way? How can we navigate the conflict of our culture and of our own personal lives in a way that builds up the Body of Christ and creates more unity? Over the next few weeks, we are going to explore how we can deal with conflict constructively in our worship series "Conflict: Lessons on Living in Divided Times from the Life of King David." This is serious and important topic for us to consider. I pray that God will grant us the humility and grace we will need to open our hearts to a new approach to handling conflict, especially on sensitive issues. I hope you will join us as we learn and grow together! Blessings on the journey, Jim Sunday's Sermon SnippetClutter: A New Thing (1 Corinthians 10:23-24, 30-32) We have looked at different kinds of things that clutter our lives - from stuff to worry, from shame to busyness - and we have found teachings in the Bible that directly addressed how we should handle them. Living in the age in which we do, we face another kind of clutter that threatens to overwhelm our lives. As it is a new thing in the world, we find no teachings specifically about it in the Bible. I am talking about digital clutter: the hundreds of pictures that fill our phones and keep us from finding the one we want, the social media feeds dominated by things we do not care about when what we want to see is what is going on with our friends, the email inbox dotted with offers from stores that we have not shopped in years, the notifications that pop up constantly demanding our immediate attention. It is easy to collect a lot of digital clutter because so much of it is free - and that must mean it is good. We can store so many pictures, let emails sit forever, and download any number of apps to do this, that, and the other because the products are free and the space to hold them is largely free. Go over your quota for space, and just get a little bit more for a dollar or five a month. Compared to a storage unit for physical stuff, that is close to free. Digital stuff is largely free, and the clutter it makes is largely hidden from public sight, so we have little incentive to clean it up or try to get it under control. Yet it dominates our lives like few other things. If our landline phones rang as often as our cell phones popped up with notifications, we would leave them off the hook. Yet we tolerate the constant interruption from our cell phones. We scroll through countless pictures, messages, and the like to find what we want, wasting our time and losing focus on what matters to us. The Bible does not give us any commandments on how to deal with this clutter; there is not an eleventh commandment telling us, "Thou shalt not look at your phone at dinner" or "Thou shalt only watch five cute kitten videos a day." So what can we do? We can look at the whole witness of Scripture and think about what God wants for our lives - an abundant life, a life well-lived, a life of giving to others. The technology that drowns us in digital clutter also has the ability to improve our lives, our relationships, and even our faith. The technology itself is not inherently good or bad - it is how we use it that determines that. Paul wrote to the Corinthians that they had been freed by Christ, and so many things had become permissible for them. But not all things were helpful or useful in living a life for God and others. This is a good starting point for us to consider the technology we carry around in our pockets and sit down to at our desks. There is nothing inherently wrong in using them, but that does not mean they are necessarily useful for us in living out our faith. We need to figure out where to draw the line between it being a benefit and a hindrance. We could begin by cleaning up the digital clutter it makes. Just as we clean our homes each week and do some more thorough cleaning every few months, we need to attend to our digital stuff the same way: cleaning up the email inbox, deleting pictures we don't need, filing away what we want where we can find it. We will have to set aside time to do this just as we do for our homes. We need to turn off the unimportant notifications that consume our attention when there are more important things to attend to. We need to set aside the distractions when we are doing things that matter like actually being in relationship with one another. Blessings to you as we figure out how to deal with this new kind of clutter so we can live the abundant lives God wants us to! Potato Drop Coming SoonDo you remember the community potato drop that we raised money for at our Vacation Bible School? It is almost time for us to roll up our sleeves and work with our brothers and sisters to make our truckload of potatoes available to hunger ministries in our area. We will gather on September 15th at 12 noon at Grottoes UMC. Volunteers will be needed to unload the 50 pound sacks from the truck, to organize them for the orders requested by local organizations, to break down some sacks into smaller bags, and possibly to deliver some of the orders. If you would like to help, please let Pastor Jim or Lee know. Living in CommunityThanks to Lauren, Jason, Keith, Baylor, Brad, Becca, Mark, Dave, Linda, Marvin, Zach, Dinah, and Chandler for their work clearing the parking lot to prepare for sealing and painting! This Week at Port ChurchTuesday, August 14 7:00 pm - Administrative Council Meeting Wednesday, August 15 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours Thursday, August 16 9:00 - 11:45 am - Office Hours Sunday, August 19 9:30 am - Worship: "Conflict: Facing Giants" Blessing of Backpacks! 11:00 am - Sunday School 225th Anniversary Planning Meeting Looking AheadChurch Clean-up Workday, August 25 , 2 pm
Communion Server Training - August 26 and September 9, following worship Philippians Bible Study in Sunday School - September 9 Wednesday at the Port - September 12, 6 pm Potato Drop hosted at Grottoes UMC - September 15, 12 noon 225th Anniversary Celebration - September 29, 3 pm - until Nativity Workday - October 6 |
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