​Pastor’s Message

​January 12, 2021

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” That’s our guiding phrase from our gospel text for this week (John 1:43-51, CEV). “Anything good?” Surely you can hear how that sounds. Surely because of our currently contentious society you hear the presupposition behind the sarcasm. You can hear the prejudice tucked away in such an innocuous joke. Yes, because of this reading some of my clergy friends could be choosing to deal with some difficult topics this week. They are not difficult because they are complicated but because they are threatening and personal. Most folk have some pretty entrenched positions on race, gender, politics, etc.


Let’s be clear: I do not believe that worship is the place to have those confrontations, arguments, or even discussions about such topics. Some of my peers from seminary may have bought into the idea that our job is to champion a certain political and/or social agenda. Not I, my friends. I serve only one agenda: the Good News. Furthermore, I have enough experience to realize that there are many different ways to read the Bible and I'm humble enough to realize that my interpretation is not necessarily the correct one.


However, worship should be the place for self-examination of the state of our souls as we bring our all before the Lord. Worship is where we hold up the ideal of the human community and pledge to live into it as we seek union with the God we follow. The difficulty for us is deciding as a family of believers exactly what that ideal is. Regardless of whether we ever reach that consensus or not, worship confronts us with our sinfulness while at the same time offering us grace, healing, and a way forward. May we as a society offer that same compassionate understanding to those who think differently than us.



Your friend in Christ, Rev. Ernest
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