Between Sundays for Week of April 15, 2024
Even though our Wandering Heart sermon series has ended, Peter doesn’t just disappear from the Bible at the end of the gospels. Peter’s story didn’t end at the empty tomb when Jesus was raised from the end, in fact, we could say that was just the beginning of his story!
The book of Acts is filled with stories about the birth of the community of those who followed the way of Jesus and the spread of that community throughout the world! Peter, as one of Jesus’ first disciples and the rock of this new community, is an important figure.
Following the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, Peter and the other disciples began to boldly share the good news of Jesus. Acts 3:12-21 recounts a portion of one of Peter’s powerful sermons in which he refers to Jesus as the “Author of life.”
It requires quite a real shift in thinking for those who had heard of the trial, crucifixion and death of Jesus of Nazareth to begin to think of him as the “Author of life,” whose power had defeated death and was now at work writing a new story of life for the world! But Peter understood that his own story – a story of denials, mistakes, and missteps – was being re-written by God’s grace alive in Jesus and he wanted the whole world to know that the risen Jesus, the Author of Life, longs to re-write our stories as well!
When Peter calls on the crowd to “repent” he’s inviting us to adopt a whole new outlook about Jesus. Peter’s “repent” calls us to see Jesus as one who embodies the fullness of God’s power, a power that could not even been stopped by death but continues to live in all who call on him! Peter’s “repent” is an invitation to join him in witnessing to and embodying Jesus’ ministry of restoring, healing, feeding, freeing, and forgiving this world that God so loves! Peter’s “repent” is a call to see our life as one where Jesus, the Author of life, is at work writing a new story of abundant life for us!
The Author of life was alive in Peter and still lives in us! Repent! Notice the story of abundant life Jesus is telling in us and through us for the sake of the world!
P.S. Our staff and livestream volunteers have been working to restore our Facebook connection for several weeks and we will continue or efforts. In the meantime, you can watch the most recent Sunday worship service on our website. From there find links to previous worship videos available on Facebook and YouTube.
Eclipsed by Love . . . Pondering Jesus in the Totality of Life. Abby and Amy reflect on their experiences of the recent solar eclipse, the immensity of God’s creation, and the promise of God’s mindfulness which has captured human imagination for milllennia. Read Psalm 8 in it’s entirety.
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Ponderings
Steven Garnaas-Holmes offers a different reflection on Watching the eclipse on his Unfolding Light website this week. The full poem can be viewed (or listened to) on his website.
A rustle of excitement. It begins.
Glasses come out. A crescent of darkness:
the sun’s eyelid slowly closes.
Sky darkens. The last of the sun’s ring disappears.
Everything changes.
The light is thick, liquid, like mercury.
Waves of light-shadows shimmer across the ground.
In the sky, the pure black pupil of the sun,
surrounded by an iris of glacier-blue light,
on a field of purple sky with stars.
The eye of God.
Conversations break off, only pure utterances.
For two minutes, we stand on a strange planet,
merely beholding, citizens of the kingdom of awe.
