Man, it was a welcome change to cancel things for reasons other than the pandemic!

This was a week filled with surprises and adventure for our family, which is another way of saying, inconveniences and extreme discomfort. It’s always both, isn’t it? The thrill and wonder of record-breaking flurries alongside the burdens of heartache and grief. Snow angels and frostbite. Our family lost a dear mentor this week as well as a cousin in his early twenties, just days apart. We were unable to travel and mourn with family and friends the way we wanted to, but we’re also grateful for technology that provided some consolation and connection. We had to change our plans for birthdays and miss out on our Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday plans entirely. But there was sledding and cake! Not a day goes by that we aren't grateful for our whiteboard calendar, so easily amended.

I was reminded of a bit in C.S. Lewis’ fantasy novel Perelandra this week as we once again had the terrible privilege of explaining to children that plans had changed. In the book, Dr. Ransom finds himself a tourist on a beautiful, newly created planet, unburdened by sin. At one point he has a conversation with one of the unfallen humans about how he’s looking for a certain kind of fruit he’d stumbled upon earlier. The alien Eve then responds wisely, “You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; but you would make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other...” Boy, I wish our own Eve and that guy I see in the mirror every day could have learned this lesson the easy way. We ruin the good God has provided for us by insisting in our hearts that we have a right to the good we had expected.

This year, our Lenten season dovetails with a stretch of the New City Catechism focused on the Law. Bummer upon bummer, am I right? Surely, we’ve had a whole Lenten year filled with fasting from our favorite things! Can’t we just take a break from the downers? I’m sympathetic to this view, personally. And yet, I also wonder if there isn’t a deeper kind of joy awaiting us if we can simply receive the given good. Our new series on Galatians is called “Grace Is Everything,” and I can’t wait to begin this conversation about how the Law, like so many other things, can be a good means of grace as long as we don’t try to replace the gospel with it! I truly believe there is genuine, abundant grace hidden just under a layer of soft, powdery inconvenience, if only we would grab some mittens and a shovel and begin to dig.

Speaking of inconvenience, we have some faithful members clearing out the parking lot on Saturday and plan to have it ready for in-person attendees at worship, but we’ll make a final call on Saturday and let you know. Our service this weekend will be livestreamed at the very least. We also get to install two elders to our active Session, so we’re excited to celebrate with you all!

- josh

We are all culture makers, like it or not. To be made in God’s image is to create culture. Culture is literally, “what we make of the world.” We could wax eloquent on this for days but this week we are talking about what culture is, what is wrong with it, and how we might be part of the restoration process. Genesis 3-4 shows the progressive nature of decline because of sin. Sin affects the individual, the family and, as we will see this week, the culture. What is interesting is that, while the fall is bad, it does not destroy humanity’s capacity to create culture and artifacts that serve the common good. Thank God that by his mercy all of us are most likely still alive because of cultural advances that were made by people who wouldn’t darken the door of a church or call on the name of the Lord! The text for Sunday lands us right in the middle of a cultural mess! So, we shouldn’t be surprised at the cultural mess we are in now—it started in Genesis 4.

Also, an important reminder! This coming Wednesday is Ash Wednesday. Lent is upon us and starts with perhaps the most audacious service of the year, a service where we smear death on the faces of everyone in our community. And yes, even in COVID, we have found a way to do this service safely. This year during our Ash Wednesday Service, we will have ashes in the small communion cups, enough for a family. As you come forward, each family will administer ashes to their own family or, if you attend on your own, a minister will administer them to you. Different, yes, but we understand safety is still a primary concern. If you have young children who need to be in the nursery, please sign them up using this link. Bear in mind, the Winter Storm Watch has a forecast of snow and ice for Monday and Wednesday, so stay tuned for updates on the status of the service.

Remember also, we’re having a Congregational Meeting after worship on Sunday to elect Elders. Dan Stimpson and Bob Conrad are both standing and have both served on the Session before. Please try to be present to cast your vote for your leaders.

Have a great weekend and be safe. I hope to see you Sunday, live and in person or via livestream.

Blessings,

Jim

We hear often we are tempted by “the world, the flesh and the devil.” There is warrant for that in the Bible. Jesus’ temptations mirror this and St. Paul uses these categories to talk about our proclivity to sin. Genesis does the same, but inverts the categories—the devil, the flesh, and the world. Eve in the garden is tempted by Satan. This week, Cain’s sin against his brother Abel is the flesh. Then what follows in the next few chapters of Genesis, when men begin to build cities, is obviously the world around us.

The burden of the narratives centered around The First Family are many, and we do see the world getting worse and worse because of the curse of sin. But what you can’t miss is that God is always present, persistently wooing and pursuing. As bleak as chapter 4 of Genesis is, with the story of the first murder, what you can’t miss is God’s grace and forbearance toward Cain. Even his mark is an act of grace. But more on that on Sunday.

As I pondered this narrative I kept coming back to the song that Will sang here some time ago. “Our sins they are many, his mercy is more.” That really is the whole story of the First Family isn’t it? It really is your story and mine, isn’t it? That is, unless we, like Cain, continue to reject the overtures of God’s love and refuse to live under his mercy. We will talk about it Sunday. I hope to see you live and in person or via live stream.

Blessings,

Jim

P.S. I have included three verses of Matt Papa’s song—I hope it will heal your heart a bit, as it has mine.

“His Mercy is More”

What love could remember no wrongs we have done
Omniscient, all-knowing, He counts not their sum
Thrown into a sea without bottom or shore
Our sins, they are many, His mercy is more

What patience would wait as we constantly roam
What Father, so tender, is calling us home
He welcomes the weakest, the vilest, the poor
Our sins, they are many, His mercy is more

What riches of kindness He lavished on us
His blood was the payment, His life was the cost
We stood 'neath a debt we could never afford
Our sins, they are many, His mercy is more

Legend has it that G. K. Chesterton was asked the question, “What's wrong with the world?” Some say it was a newspaper reporter; others, it was an inquiry from Times magazine sent to various writers at that time. Anyway, Chesterton didn’t give the answer one might expect. He didn’t talk about a certain political party, nor did he say it was institutional corruption or class struggles. He didn’t talk about how education is failing us nor the degradation of the earth. Rather, to the question “What’s wrong with the world?” he responded with just two words: “I am.”

Reasons and excuses abound for the epic failures around us. Blame is spread around that our parents failed us and thus we are not the people we ought to be. Others say, no, it is institutions that have failed us. Still others, it is people with power who have failed us. Some materialists are even now saying something went wrong in our evolution. There is a lot of bantering about, and some of these ideas might have a grain of truth in them (any lie worth a grain of salt certainly will).

However, the Bible has a different story. Last week, we saw that what is wrong with the world is us. Our original parents decided to put themselves in the place of God, and we have been living in the fallout of that since time immortal. This week we look at life in the ruins, the ruins of a good creation. Where first there was nothing but blessing, fruitfulness, and delight, now there is curse, shame, thorns, sweat, and death. It is a bleak picture. But lest we despair as we read through the passage of Genesis 3, what you can’t miss—what you dare not miss—is that there is still love in the ruins. That is what we will talk about Sunday.

A few reminders and an announcement—Remember we are live and in-person on Sunday. Of course, there is livestream available if you prefer to view from home. Just a note on the livestream, if something goes wrong on YouTube, try accessing it from the app or website. Our problem last week was with YouTube, and the stream was fine from the website. Also, we have an Inquirer’s Class for people new to St. Patrick, and Sunday School classes for adults and children that start at 9:15a.m. I do hope you will join us!

Finally, please mark your calendars as we will have a brief Congregational meeting on Sunday, February 14, following morning worship for the purpose of electing new elders. You will receive a letter next Tuesday with more detail.

Blessings,
Jim

"What's your problem?" Many of us read that question as more of an accusation than a genuine inquiry. Maybe someone bumps into you forcefully and intentionally, and you whip around and say, “Hey buddy, what’s your problem!?” You don’t think of him as your dear friend, and you’re not sympathetically concerned about the burdens he’s carrying. You’re using that question to demand an accounting of your offender’s motivations, so you and he can both be clear in a few minutes exactly why you’re pummeling an apology out of him. Of all the questions to be asked that could absolutely define a person’s story, "what's your problem?" certainly ranks pretty highly up there. It's such a great question, because it gets right to the heart of things. We have two characters and a conflict: let the story begin!

Now, to be clear, conflict isn’t the first or only thing that drives a person or story – it’s not even the most compelling. If you were to ask most people, they might say that the driving force behind the Bible is finding a solution for sin. Sin is our problem, so sin is the point of the Bible, right? They might start with the Fall in Genesis chapter 3, and maybe end with the Crucifixion in Matthew 27. Yet the Bible’s story doesn’t start with a problem. It begins and ends with a passion project: The Divine Persons of the Trinity pouring out their love into creation, building a garden city out of the world and making creatures in their image to share in that glory.

As James said in the Soul Room this week, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” The sin-riddled desires that God’s image bearers have inherited from their first family certainly stand in direct competition with the driving motivations of God’s creative will. That conflict is important because understanding how the sin in us competes with what God is up to in us is a vital part of the role we play in his greater story. So, what on earth (or in heaven) is driving (and diverting) us? What’s our problem? Well, this week we are in fact going to look at Genesis 3 and end in Matthew 27, seeing where sin muddles up our greater desires, how God has graciously authored his story to point us back toward the true and full consummation of creation, and why our battles with sin can serve a greater story indeed.

We hope you’ll join us for worship, either via live stream or in person this Sunday! Our Sunday School classes are also resuming this week. Registration is required for Sunday School, as well as all of our spring programming, so please sign up using the link below. There is also a link detailing our latest response to COVID-19.

- josh

We are in a series called First Family. We are looking at the first few chapters of Genesis. Last week we looked at the creation account. It is a unique view of creation. It stands in bold relief to all the accounts of origins we read about, first ,the mythological accounts of creation where creation is usually because of a conflict among the gods and the gods and the gods look with disdain on the humans they created and the world that they created. And secondly, it stands against modern views of origins in that matter is not eternal, nor is man the measure of all things. No God stands before creation and orders it, therefore there is a design, an oughtness about the world. We can’t shape it the way we would like, we submit to the givens to find freedom in a created world. And it is the most positive view of the world possible. The creation of the world comes from the loving heart of a God who out of the overflowing joy of his own being creates a home for his image bearers.
Now this week we look at chapter 2 and see this remarkable account of God filling the world with his images—human beings. And as in creation so with humans, to be fully human we can’t make up who we are, our persons, or our sexuality—we too are born with givens. So, let’s look at chapter 2 which is the sixth day of creation looked at in detail.

When you watch sports on TV, you always have a couple of people in the booth commentating the game. One is the play-by-play person who is basically telling what is happening. The other person is called the “color commentator” and it’s their job to fill in details—to give depth, analysis, and make connections that perhaps you wouldn’t catch on your own. It is a good system and does usually make the game more enjoyable (with a few notable exceptions, and most sports fans know of whom I speak!).

This Sunday we are diving into a year-long study built around The New City Catechism. The catechism follows a design of questions and answers which we will go through week by week in our smaller settings. From the pulpit, however, we will be preaching not on the questions themselves, but rather each series will be crafted around the themes that are being looked at on a weekly basis. In other words, our sermons will be more of a “color commentary” on the various questions you have been looking at on your own or in your small groups.

We are starting off with a six-week mini-series called “The First Family,” which is a look at the origins of creation and how it all started. It does answer our first question, “What is our Only Hope in Life and Death?” While the bulk of the series does deal with our first parents, this week deals more with the home God built for them. I have watched many a person design and build a house. During the process, it is usually one of the most stressful things I have ever seen. Often, I have even heard it said, “I will never do that again.” I mean, think about the details! Genesis 1 is nothing like that! Here we see God as artist in a realm, delighting in the home he is building to place his image bearers in.

I was joking with Josh and Will, as we were kicking around ideas, that I had a book I have read to all my children called My Nest is Best. It is about a mother bird, unhappy with her nest as she is about to have a baby bird, and so she sends her husband off to find a new one, only to find out that her original nest is really the best. They didn’t think it a good title for a sermon, but I would hope after Sunday you will marvel at the home God built for us in the created world. But more, I hope you will see a God who delights and glories in the “stuff” he created. So much so that he would come down to save it rather than abandon it. But I perhaps reveal too much!

I will see you Sunday via livestream!

Blessings,

Jim

P.S. One last thing – To go along with our study in the New City Catechism, Josh will be hosting a New City Bible Study, which will begin with the first video this Sunday. We’ll be looking at the memory verse paired with the question of the week and attempting to provide context and interpretative lenses, as well as some practical applications for us. You can use these as a Cyber Sunday School option, or as a Community Group discussion starter, or however else is helpful to you. NC Bible Study episodes drop Sundays at 8:00am on our Youtube channel