This Sunday we will have a delicious, mouth-watering, fresh baked-bread, aroma filled service! Even in our carb-conscious culture, this is worth savoring!

There is a two sentence parable in the gospel Luke (and Matthew). It’s one of the few parables that Jesus used in teaching that obviously didn’t need to be interpreted. That’s the reason it’s only two sentences long! It also is not often the focus of a sermon or a service. But it is a powerhouse parable.

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Our Pastor, Dan Smith, is back and will be speaking and leading worship.

It is easy to trust in God, believe in God and follow God when things are going smoothly in our lives. But our lives are not smooth. Like a piece of yarn or string, our lives are often full of knots and tangles.

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I came upon the sweetest video clip on YouTube in which six year old Kole complains to his mom that it is not fair that his nine year old brother is allowed more independence.

Poor little guy, we’ve all been there and as a parent I have had the same conversation countless times with my kids. It’s hard for a six year old to understand that mom is not being fair, but mom is doing the right thing. You cannot give a six year old and a ten year old the same responsibilities, freedom, and privileges. Let’s take the example of cutting meat with a butcher’s knife: It will help the ten year old to gain independence and self confidence, but the six year old? Well, most probably a visit to the Emergency Room! Yet, the six year old will rightly feel that s/he is being treated unfairly like a “baby.” That’s parenting for you! You cannot even deal with your children in the same manner, because they have different personalities, temperaments, strengths, talents, needs, and weaknesses. Instead of trying to treat my kids equally I try to treat them as individuals with their own specific needs. It may not be fair, but it is just.

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This Sunday we will take a closer look at the second topic in our new worship series called “A New Kind of Christianity:” What’s your view of God? In a recent Gallup poll survey researchers found that although 91.8% of people interviewed said they believe in God as a higher power or cosmic force, they had four distinct views of God’s personality and engagement in human affairs. These four views were dubbed by the researches as Authoritarian, Benevolent, Critical or Distant. The Authoritarian God is seen as angry at earthly sin and willing to inflict divine retribution. The Distant God is described as a faceless, cosmic force that launched the world but leaves it alone. Some saw God as a Benevolent God who sets absolute standards for humans, but is also forgiving, while others defined God as a Critical God – the classic bearded old man, judgmental but not intervening or punishing.

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Yesterday (Wednesday) was the funeral of California Highway Patrol Officer Philip Ortiz, who died June 22 from injuries suffered in an accident on the 405 Freeway. Officer Ortiz, 48, was writing a ticket in the emergency lane of the 405 freeway when he was struck by a car and pinned against the sport utility vehicle he had pulled over. At his funeral Mass held at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, one of the speakers said what so many others have said in the midst of tragedy and violent death, “God took Officer Ortiz home.” I thought to myself, “Is God Good? Or Is God violent?”

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A couple weeks ago I was talking with a friend about the proposed legislation for Financial Reform that is being reconciled between the US House of Representatives and the Senate. One of the many issues the Congress is wrestling with is should the families of those who intentionally defraud investors be allowed to keep a portion of the money they’ve “made” or should everything they own be taken and redistributed to those who had been defrauded? In other words, what the government is trying to figure out is, “How can we get people to act ‘more’ morally right?” because what’s out there now doesn’t do it.

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But if you’re content to simply be yourself, you will become more than yourself.

~ Luke 14:11

It used to be if you asked kids what they wanted to be, they invariably said doctors, teachers, or lawyers. But these days the typical answer is: “I want to be famous.” A Pew Research Centre poll in 2007 found that 81 percent of 18 to 25 year-olds surveyed said getting rich was their generation’s most important or second-most important life goal; 51 percent said the same about being famous. This in itself is not news; we all know that we are living in a celebrity-obsessed society.

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We’ve all been in that awkward situation where somebody tells a dramatic story and half the people who have gathered around to listen “get it” and half don’t. Somebody then has to go back and explain the portion that wasn’t understood.

That’s the way it is with this wonderful story of the Baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch. The problem is, for thousands of years, very few people have gone back to explain the portion that wasn’t understood.

As a friend of mine loves to say, “This is as gay as it gets!” Interestingly, many Biblical Scholars are coming to that same conclusion.

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Among pastors, theologians, religious scholars, sociologists and even the great American soothsayers of our contemporary age – Pollsters – everyone is asking the same question: “What in the world is happening to the Christian Church?” Currently, there are two different opinions. One perspective is, as we enter the post-modern world, the very tenets of Christianity and certainly the organizational structure of the Christian Church is no longer relevant. In other words, Christianity and the Church are based on beliefs and experiences that come out of such a radically different world experience (world-view, cosmos) that it just doesn’t make any rational sense to the 21st century mind.

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In Matthew 18:22 Peter asks Jesus how many times we should forgive those who have sinned against us. Maybe seven times? No, answers Jesus, more like seventy times seven.

Jesus calls on us not only to love others but also to forgive those who have hurt us. I understand that it’s possible for love to cover minor grievances, (I’ve been married for 21 years – a lot of love and forgiveness has been done) but what about a serious offense? What if it is something that drives a wedge between two people, causing the relationship to break apart, trust to be destroyed? Will forgiveness resolve the situation or heal the injury? What if the offender does not want to admit his/her guilt? What if the offender doesn’t think he/she has done anything wrong? Sometimes people just feel bad for having been caught or only feel sorry when they are confronted with the hurt they have caused. Tears can be misleading – feeling sorry for what we did is not in itself a sign of real repentance. And it doesn’t help much to restore trust or mend a broken relationship.

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