In and Out

This weekend we come to an end and a beginning.

Throughout Eastertide we have journeyed with the tribes of Jacob through the wilderness, headed toward Sinai - the mountain of God. What most Christians either don't know or have forgotten is that the ancient festival of Pentecost is the celebration of their arrival at Horeb and God's great gift of the law. The beginning of that great covenant where intentional community was built around how we relate to God and our neighbor.

And as we conclude that journey, the church begins its own odyssey into the unknown with the arrival of the Holy Spirit in a rushing wind of fire at Jerusalem.

As one group is gathered in another is sent out.

Because that is the true meaning of intentional community - it is always intended to grow.

Not with hot lights and flashy music, or the latest and greatest new thing, but with purposeful relationship and deliberate intention as we build a life together.

By the time Christ arrived on the scene, many scribes and rabbis had already begun to come to the conclusion that the Law was never meant to be weilded as a hammer to demolish one another and keep us low. Instead, they found within it a deeper wisdom of how God intends for us to build up one another and the whole world by loving God and one another in ever widening circles.

Jesus was not the first to come to this conclusion, but he was probably the most famous. And also God's own eternal and infallible Word-made-flesh. Adding some pretty strong confirmation to the concept.

The center of our life together is how we build one another up in love. And from there, how we seek out more people to welcome and build a bigger table where every seat is valued.

Because, as Amos once prophesied, God's Spirit comes to all flesh. And we can never be sure from whence God's prophetic voice will come.

See you Sunday.

Blessings,

Rev. Janie