Saint James Messages

When the disciples went to sleep on Saturday night, they were sure death had won, that the Roman Empire and religious authorities had succeeded. Sunday morning offered a new and unexpected response. New life is not limited to an Easter morning two millennia ago; what would new life look like for us today?

Join us as we ponder the meaning of the crucifixion and how we might be impacted by the death of Jesus today.

This Sunday is Palm Sunday. Jesus is headed into Jerusalem and the crowd/mob turns his arrival into a parade, For the moment, they only see Jesus as an answer to their problems, a fulfillment of a promise. They have placed their own expectations on Jesus and those expectations shape the way they receive Jesus. Their assumptions lead to misunderstanding, rejection, and death. How do our conceptions of Jesus lead us to our own misunderstandings? Just who is Jesus and what can we learn from the Palm Sunday parade?

The disciples offer Jesus food. He's been talking to someone next a well. His response is purely Jesus- it becomes a teachable moment. What does food mean for you? Is there another place for us to get our nourishment?

After Jesus's initial encounter with the woman at the well, we discover more about her and she becomes part of the good news. Join us this week as we continue the story of Jesus and the woman who was transformed in meeting him at a well.

Jesus is traveling through town and stops to rest at a well. The disciples head into town to scare up some food to eat. Jesus encounters a woman at the well. She has come for water but can Jesus offer her more?

We turn our attention to a questioner who made his way to visit Jesus under the cover of darkness. Our questioner, Nicodemus, probably had a variety of reasons to show up at night and we'll explore our own propensity to ask questions and sometimes avoid answers as we seek this Path that Jesus laid out for us.

This represents the first message in a three-part series about gratitude as an attitude worth cultivating.

Who really wants to be persecuted? And yet Jesus tells us, Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. What would it look like to be persecuted for the sake of "righteousness?" This week we take a look at this last of the beatitudes and ponder together what it might mean for us in our daily lives now.

This week we turn to the #peacemaker #beatitude: How blest are the peacemakers; God shall call them sons and daughters. Those who bring and make peace are called "God's children" by God!

Hunger and thirst are primal instincts that emerge from deep within. Both #hunger and #thirst are triggered when our bodies want to tell us we need food and hydration, not just want it. Jesus uses this image of hungering and thirsting to describe an attitude for God's Kingdom. The beatitude described is the yearning, the hunger, for "right to prevail" or, in another translation, "righteousness." What is it about this #beatitude evokes the primal instincts in us? Join us at 11AM Eastern on Sunday in-person or online or watch the recording later in the week.

As I sat pondering the passages for this weekend, I could not hope but notice a recurring theme of humility. Honor can only come from the other and not from a false sense of personal value. The passage from Hebrews sums it up as: Let mutual love continue. (NRSV) or Keep loving each other like family. (CEB) Where is it we are meant to find the "grounding," the humility (literally "on the ground" from the Latin; root word hummus meaning "ground, dirt") to be in community with one another? We are meant to find it in mutual love which is always building the other up. The honor is in honoring the other, the love is in loving the other. This Sunday we will take up community, humility, connection, and honor as the foundation for our faith. Join us at 11AM Eastern in person or online.

For a fair portion of my life, I was not a morning person! Even now I suspect I am not a morning person though I get my most focused work done early in the day rather than later. What is this focus that Jesus brings up in Luke 12:35-40 about keeping awake? Join us Sunday in-person or online.

Invest Your Life by Saint James Church Alexandria VA

Busy? Martha gets that. This Sunday, we will look at Luke 10:38-42 and learn how Jesus' visit to Martha's home creates questions for her (and I think us) about life. It isn't always either/or? Or is it? Join us Sunday at 11am in person or online as we see what Jesus, Martha and Mary have to teach us about our own lives.

Presented with the commandments in Deuteronomy, the Israelites struggle to figure out if they can live into those commandments. The commandments seem to them high above them and out-of-reach. The word that comes to the people is one of reassurance and possibility. This Sunday we will look at the words of Deuteronomy and their connection to us today.

The prophet Elisha has taken over in the work of Elijah. A request for healing comes to the king of Israel form a rival king and leads to turmoil that only Elisha in his work for God can solve. Kings and prophets are not roles or people that seem familiar to us and yet as we look closely we may discover something about ourselves. Join us Sunday at 11:00AM in-person or online for worship.

At the height of his work, Elijah runs away into the desert. Sometimes I think I understand where he was coming from. He had given his best and he felt overwhelmed. What good was the work he was doing? What difference did it make? Elijah's answer was to run away. What can we learn from Elijah? Join us Sunday at 11AM Eastern as we study.

Sunday we are exploring Jesus' transition from daily ministry to Jerusalem. While the transition itself is important, on the way out of town Jesus runs into a blind man, Bartimaeus. That encounter is important for Bartimaeus. What might we discover in the story about Jesus and Bartimaeus? Will it matter to us?

This Sunday is a day in the church year called Pentecost, a day to celebrate when the “church” became the church with an outpouring of Spirit. Now two millennia later, we are going to ask what this Pentecost means for us and how Spirit plays in our lives today.

This Sunday is Ascension Sunday in which Jesus was carried up into heaven. And this week we were reminded again of the tragic pain and suffering in the world around us. What does the ascension mean for us today in this stressed out world and in our stressed-out lives. Join us on Sunday, in person or online, as we work to unpack this and look for hope.

In the end of John's gospel, Simon becomes concerned about the disciple Jesus loved. Jesus tells him not to worry about the "beloved disciple." I wonder what it would be like for each of us if we focused on our own spiritual journey instead of that of others.

After breakfast on the beach with Jesus, Simon has a conversation where Jesus asks him about love. "Do you love me more than these?" Why ask this question of Simon now? Since we get to overhear them, what are we meant to learn from the conversation for our lives? J

Jesus appears to the disciples several times, first to Mary in the garden, then to most of the guys that evening, and then a week later to Thomas and others. Some time later, Simon heads out to go fishing with several of the other disciples. Jesus shows up to cook breakfast for them and gives the disciples that nudge to start sharing the message. What were the disciples doing going back to fishing? What might we learn from another story of Jesus showing up?

Is there is such thing as having no doubts? We have a person in Thomas who has been caricatured as "the Doubter." I was raised understanding that this doubting was not a good thing. Don't be a "doubting Thomas." And yet I have found myself befriending doubt. I find my doubting to be an invitation to reflection, to questioning, to wondering, to deepening.

Easter is a central celebration in our life together as Christians. #Death does not get the final word. Still there is no new life without death. And that is where intrigue, joy, and mystery come together to form the Easter story. The women report that the tomb is empty. New life has escaped into the world and Jesus models the hope we can have through him. What does #resurrection mean for you and me? Join us Sunday as we ask this question and celebrate some of our answers.

I often find myself in the seat of judgment, quickly dispensing my own determinations about what is right and wrong with the world and with the people in it. Perhaps you find yourself doing the same thing? This week we are going to take a long and gracious look at our propensity to judge and ways to recognize what is happening as it does so we can be careful about dispensing what is not ours to dispense.

We rarely talk about fasting. I hear about fasting and cleansing among folks interested in their health and not-so-much in church. The exception may be in the lead up to Easter when many folks give something up (a form of fasting). And so here we are and yes, we will talk about fasting as a practice of our faith. This practice may or may not be for you; still I feel it is worth our talking about fasting.

"Show up for prayer; don't make a show out of prayer." Over the years, I have talked about and practiced prayer a lot (sometimes more of the "talking about" and less of the "practicing"). However, I know the word itself is elusive. What does it mean to pray? Sometimes it seems like it is just a list of words strung together; other times, we talk about silent prayer and wonder with all the internal chatter, is it really "silent?" I do not intend to settle it once and for all. I do intend to speak honestly about the challenges of opening ourselves into the Eternal Mystery, pouring ourselves out in and to Love.

Jesus spent a "long time" in the wilderness. What is his next move? Luke tells us his next stop is his home town. Jesus figures out who he is and then heads back to the place he grew up. Mistake?

We are leaping from our study of #stories in the Hebrew Bible to studying some of the stories of #Jesus. This week we take up Jesus in the #wilderness to see what he will teach us about finding "direction" in our lives.

In life change is inevitable. It can be exciting and hopeful but it can also be scary and cause us large amounts of anxiety. Changes in our family, our home, our work, our health, and anything deviating from what can be seen as a comfortable "normal." Change, however, is not only inevitable but also biblical. The Bible also shows us examples of initiating as well as handling change well, and of course some examples of not so well.

Last week we took a glance at the Hebrew people trying to settle into the Promised Land under the perceived leadership of God with the need for an occasional “judge” to pull them all together. Eventually, our Hebrew spiritual ancestors decided they wanted a king, someone to lead them all the time. This is the story we will examine Sunday: wanting a king we can see. What can we learn from a story about wanting a king? After all, the United States was founded, at least in theory, on the the desire for no king.

One set of stories from the Bible includes an early kind of leader called a "judge." The stories of the judges are remembered and told in the book of Judges. The early model of leadership for the Hebrew people was about raising up leaders from among the people almost exclusively when a community crisis was imminent. The model recognized that everyone and everything are ultimately under God's leadership; it further recognized that human self-interest might make a "long-term" human ruler seek selfishly after their own interests at the expense of all else. (Sound familiar?) In any case, this week we will explore the story of the judge Gideon for clues about ourselves and our relationship to all else.

On Sunday we will hear a message from Mark Hayes. Mark has been at Saint James for a number of years and has served as the Chair of Church Council, on the Staff-Parish committee, runs and manages slides and lyrics during worship, and creates Sunday sermon graphics. He will be speaking to us from one of his favorite scripture passages.

Moses said "yes" and so God sent him to Egypt to lead the Hebrew from slavery. Everything about the work was a challenge. Still Moses persevered and, with God's help, the people made it. So what can we learn, what can transfer from this story into our everyday living in the twenty-first century? Join us at 11AM Eastern this Sunday in-person or online.

Moses was minding his own business (really his father-in-law's business) which was tending sheep. Nothing about Moses would give him a sense that he would lead the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt. In fact, from Moses' perspective it was quite the opposite. And yet Moses was called, tapped for leadership. What does this story teach us about ourselves and The Story? Join us on Sunday in-person or online at 11AM Eastern as we continue the #story #series.

Our story for worship on Sunday will focus on Exodus 1, the story of Shiphrah and Puah, two Israelite midwives who changed the world right where they were. Do you ever wonder if God could do that for you? Or me? Join us in person or online to see what these two women and their story can teach us.

In our story there is a repeated call to see our meaning and purpose. Even as we are called and sent, there is an underlying meaning to what we do and how we are meant to do it. Abram's call and response is an invitation to him and to us to consider the meaning of stepping out in faith and finding meaning in being present for others.

The second story has three major characters and a minor one. Adam, Eve, and God play the lead roles and the serpent plays a minor one. It is a story that has been characterized many ways; for instance, it has been described as the entrance of evil into the world, as the end of innocence, the entrance of of "sin," creation of the original wound, another opportunity to blame someone else for our current challenges, and more as well. No matter how you read and receive this story, it is meant to teach us something. This week I will be sharing some ways we might see the Garden story that could help us today.

The Bible is full of stories that are meant to give us hope, teach us who we are, and help us on the path to find meaning in life. We will spend the weeks ahead talking about some of the stories in the Bible that can help clarify our identities and God's as well. Join us Sunday when we begin in the beginning with Genesis.

Growing Up Jesus by Saint James Church Alexandria VA

Saint James is celebrating Christmas Eve online and carefully in-person. We will shorten our worship, wear our masks, and keep the doors open to the worship center in order to facilitate better ventilation.

So what about when you're expecting a place to land when you're in a strange place and that is not what happens? What can we learn from a full inn in the tiny hamlet of Bethlehem?

The shepherds are doing what shepherds do: shepherding. Suddenly, angels appear in the sky and announce a new birth. What can you expect when you weren't really expecting in the first place? Surprise! Still, there are lessons to learn about expecting from the shepherds.

This year we are switching it up. Normally we explore the magi who came from the East after Christmas. This year they are beginning the lead up to Christmas. It is not clear when they saw "the star" but they traveled a distance to get there. How can their story teach us something about our own?

In the end, faith, a relationship, has practical and practicable skills. We close out the #faith series with a reminder that the portable, resilient, and agenda-less faith are meant to be practiced in everyday living. What might it look like to take faith with you wherever you go, even when things get tough, and do so without any predetermined outcomes?

Jesus goes to eat at the home a religious leader. While he is eating there, a woman comes in to wash his feet and anoint him. The religious leader is bothered by it and Jesus sees the gracious gift in it. What are we to make of this story and how will it teach us to be us better?

Sometimes I find myself wondering how to bounce back from living like I had no faith. Simon is well-acquainted with denying his faith. Still, he bounces back. How can each of us learn from the master “deny-er” about how we can recover a sense of faith?

Where is your table? Where do you go to be welcomed, accepted, loved, known, and transformed? God always has a place at the table for you. And God's table is everywhere.

We are close to ending our series on the #table. I have found that being at table with others changes me. Zacchaeus found the same thing. Have you ever experienced the acceptance of table, where your name was known? This Sunday we will explore Jesus made table a place to be transformed.