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for the latest information on Sunday services and other activities.

Because of the coronavirus and the need for social distancing, St. Luke will have services online until further notice.

This Sunday, March 22nd, 2020, we will gather through a Zoom call.

You may join the Zoom Meeting at 9:50 am Sunday, by clicking on the Zoom link below or dialing in using the number below and then entering the meeting ID.

Click here for the Zoom Link.

The phone dial in number is 646-558-8656

Meeting ID: 516 003 365#

You have to include the pound sign after you put in the meeting ID.

Password: 298689

   “Don’t think I’ve come to abolish the Law and the Prophets. I have come not to abolish them, but to fulfill them. The truth is, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter of the Law, not even the smallest part of a letter, will be done away with until it is all fulfilled. That’s why whoever breaks the least significant of these commands and teaches others to do the same will be called the least in the kin-dom of heaven. Whoever fulfills and teaches these commands will be called great in the kin-dom of heaven. “I tell you, unless your sense of justice surpasses that of the religious scholars and the Pharisees, you will not enter the kin-dom of heaven.

Let’s take a moment for reflection and prayer as we think about how our faith has evolved over the years and brought us to this place today – with gratitude and grace.

February 9, 2020

Faith, Science, and Climate Change  

Today is the one day a year that we talk about faith and science. We remind ourselves that there is no contradiction between our faith and science and we try to make that true. This year, we are adding climate change as part of this complicated subject, because our faith and our science converge in a call to care for our climate. What a gift this world is! What a treasure that we breathe clean air and enjoy each other’s company in this place! What a gift that we are called to be here for each other and for our world in a time like this.

We’re having kind of a warm winter (I saw crocuses coming up in my neighborhood yesterday) and sometimes on a particularly warm day, people start to comment about climate change. It’s starting to become a regular part of our conversation and reference point. You could say it’s a hot topic worldwide. But I want to caution you right up front. A particularly warm day does not indicate that climate change is happening, any more than a day when it snows or is particularly cold means that climate change is not happening.

We see climate change in the averages, not in any one particularly extreme day or even one season. We only can tell that the climate is getting warmer by looking at data over many years. 2019 was the hottest year on record globally, just shy of the record average temperature set in 2016. The last decade was the hottest decade we have ever recorded. This chart shows average temperatures back through the late 1800’s when this church was founded.

The next question after that is whether this is a natural fluctuation or whether it is somehow caused by human interaction with the environment, overwhelming natural ecosystems by cutting down forests for cattle and agriculture, manufacturing increasing numbers of cars, and generally using up more than our share of natural resources. I think the evidence is convincing, but I’m inclined that way, and I haven’t researched it carefully.

I have to say though, I’m amazed at how cavalierly people dismiss the evidence that we see right in front of us, and how reluctant we are, even when we believe the evidence to make changes in our privileged lives.  It seem likes we’re saying: “Sure, we can do something about climate change now, but if we find out in 50 years that the researchers made a mistake and that climate change doesn’t exist…We would have improved air quality in all major cities, gotten rid of noisy and smelly cars, cleaned up toxic rivers and destroyed dictatorships funded on money from oil for no reason.”

David Letterman joked about it years ago, saying “Experts say this global warming is serious, and they are predicting now that by the year 2050, we will be out of party ice.”

I guess I should not be surprised at how hard it is for us to get our heads around this kind of thing, when we in religious circles are still so reluctant to even admit that evolution is a thing. Really, church people seem to be the strongest block of evolution deniers out there. Even though that argument was settled for all intents and purposes almost 100 years ago.

I know I wouldn’t get a big argument about evolution here, especially when we have so many doctors and scientists in our congregation. But I think a lot of pastors are reluctant to bring up the topic of evolution in their congregations. There’s a raging argument in Texas about whether to teach creationism in public schools as a valid alternative to evolution. I have people in my own family who are big fans of the creation of the world in a literal 7 day period, and they love the big creation museum in Kentucky that shows humans and dinosaurs living at the same time.

Though I know I won’t get a big argument about evolution here, I try to preach on this topic regularly because I personally find the subject surprisingly challenging. I often declare that there is no contradiction between faith and science, but I still think there is room for miracle and for answer to prayer and for mysteries of many kinds that science cannot explain. When religious folks claim that there is a realm that science cannot explain, I sometimes believe it.  And I tell you the truth, I don’t always trust what some people mean by answer to prayer, miracle, and other realms. (this is where I get really nervous.) I joke that I feel like I’m not a very religious person. Really. In the argument between science and religion I take science most of the time.  If we can’t get this basic a discussion right, how can we talk responsibly about climate change?

I go back to our scripture reading for this morning. We hear Jesus in our reading this morning saying that he does not want to change anything in the Hebrew scriptures, “until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter of the Law, not even the smallest part of a letter, will be done away with until it is all fulfilled.” And yet, he is clearly calling people to deepen their understanding of scripture in light of their current circumstances. He is a reformer and evolving the understanding of scripture through his teaching.

Jesus argues with the religious teachers of his time. In this passage he says, “I tell you, unless your sense of justice surpasses that of the religious scholars and the Pharisees, you will not enter the kin-dom of heaven.” At the same time, Jesus had no knowledge of climate change, or evolution, or science – no knowledge of it at all. My friends we have to align ourselves with the best scientific understandings and with the integrity and power of our scripture.

For me that alignment means that I see the power of the divine in evolution, in the beautiful mechanics of nature adapting and improving and moving toward a future. I see the power of God in that not separate from it, not controlling or manipulating it, but right in those natural amazing systems.

And therefore, I believe that we as a people need to live with integrity and respect the beauty of creation and in harmony with that creation. To live with integrity in God’s creation and for the future of our children, we are going to have to make big changes in our lifestyles, cutting back on our use of the world’s resources, finding ways to promote renewable and sustainable ways of living, putting solar panels on the church to promote better energy usage in our community, using less styrofoam and plastic, even when it’s inconvenient.

I’m not going to ask our children to suffer or to depend on a miracle because we didn’t want to be bothered to wash dishes or pay a little extra for sustainable solutions or give up plastic bags or question the jets that get us around quickly, and on and on. We need to listen to the young people. We need to trust what science is telling us. We need to know that God is speaking even today, God is speaking through our children and through the scientists and through the people who can’t afford the conveniences that we use to litter this beautiful world. God is speaking even now, and providing us a way to live in harmony with each other in God’s loving creation. And that is good news we can use.

Responsive hymn   451 Be Thou My Vision

 Changing the Narrative in 2020

Register here: https://tinyurl.com/v2zq3m8

February 23, 2020, 3-5 PM

at St. Luke United Methodist Church, 568 Montgomery Ave. Bryn Mawr

Keynote Speaker: Maghan Keita, PhD

Professor of History and Director of the Institute for Global Interdisciplinary Studies at Villanova University: Dr. Keita’s teaching and research focus on African, African-American, European and World Histories, political economy and Development Studies. He is the author of numerous works in his area of specialty, including Race and the Writing of History: Riddling the Sphinx (Oxford University Press, 2000).

“Through centuries of black resistance and protest, we have helped the country to live up to its founding ideals…without the idealistic, strenuous and patriotic efforts of black Americans, our democracy today would most likely look very different-it might not be a democracy at all.” Nikole Hannah- Jones

Registration is available on Eventbrite.

https://tinyurl.com/v2zq3m8

Sponsors: POWER Main Line, Main Line NAACP, Central Baptist Church, St. Luke United Methodist Church, Standing in the Gap Fellowship of Mt.Calvary Baptist Church, Sisters of SalaamShalom, Beth David Reform Congregation, Gladwyne Presbyterian Church, Baha’i Community of the Main Line, H-CAN,  (and others to come)

Will the CREATOR be placated by thousands of rams or ten thousand rivers of oil?  Should I offer my firstborn for my wrongdoings—the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” Listen here, mortal, God as already made abundantly clear what “good” is and what our GOD needs from you: simply do justice, love kindness, and humbly walk with your God.

1 Corinthians 1:18-31 For the message of the cross is complete absurdity to those who are headed for ruin, but to us who are experiencing salvation, it is the power of God. 19 Scripture says, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and thwart the learning of the learned.” 20 Where are the wise? Where are the scholars? Where are the philosophers of this age? Has not God turned the wisdom of this world into folly? 21 If it was God’s wisdom that the world in its wisdom would not know God, it was because God wanted to save those who have faith through the foolishness of the message we preach.

22 For while the Jews call for miracles and the Greeks look for wisdom, 23 here we are preaching a Messiah nailed to a cross. To the Jews this is an obstacle they cannot get over, and to the Greeks it is madness— 24 but to those who have been called, whether they are Jews or Greeks, Christ is the power and the wisdom of God. 25 For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

Consider your calling, sisters and brothers. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were influential, and surely not many were well-born. God chose those whom the world considers foolish to shame the wise, and singled out the weak of this world to shame the strong. The world’s lowborn and despised, those who count for nothing, were chosen by God to reduce to nothing those who were something. In this way no one should boast before God. God has given you life in Christ Jesus & has made Jesus our wisdom, our justice, our sanctification & our redemption. This is just as it is written, “Let the one who would boast, boast in our God.”

In our moment of reflection today, let’s think about what we are called to be, our cross, how easy it is to fall short, and how powerful God’s forgiving Spirit is to allow us to get back on track.

February 2nd, 2020 – 2-2-20  Click date for audio of sermon

Your Call, Your Shadow

I’ve always wanted to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God. I’ve always wanted to. When I haven’t done it, I’ve mostly assumed forgiveness to tell the truth. Just as Groundhog Day has become shorthand for deja vu and having the same day over and over again, I have sometimes felt like I’m just going around in circles. But I keep hoping that I learn something each time around the circle, and that eventually the simple task of doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly will be clear, and do-able.

It’s Black History Month so let me tell you a story about one of the first times I tried to do something about racism. I’ve told some of you before, but it’s Groundhog Day, so we can go around this circle again. I was in 10th grade and I had a girlfriend. Her name was Kathy, as many of my girlfriends have been named – at least 4 of them, all with a different spelling. Anyway, it was 1969, the height of the civil rights era, and she and I decided to have a party and invite some Black folks. I don’t say Black friends, because we didn’t have any, but we wanted to reach past the barrier, so we invited some Black teenagers to join us in somebody’s basement for a little party.

I cannot tell you how embarrassing this party was. The folks we had invited to the party were perfectly nice, but I didn’t know them and I didn’t really know how to get to know people when I wasn’t nervous and embarrassed. So we fell back on music. The Black guys started looking through the record collection we had there and they dismissed record after record. They either had never heard of them or thought they weren’t worth playing. Finally one guy found the soundtrack from Hair which had a very funky danceable song on it. I don’t know if I should say the name of the song in church, but it was called, “Colored Spade.” and it was designed to make me want to hide under the table. It named every derogatory name for Black people you have ever heard. They played it over and over, since it was the only song they liked. And probably because they wanted to keep me under the table.

I originally titled this sermon “Your Call.” I like double entendres and the passage is about your call and my call to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly. The other lectionary passages relate to your call as well. I was going to use the double meaning of “Your Call” as in it’s your call whether you do what Jesus is calling us to. Then I realized it is also Groundhog Day, and I added, “Your Call, Your Shadow.” Because our call always has a shadow side to it. Punxatawny Phil saw his shadow this morning, predicting an early spring, but we can always see our shadow if we take the time to look.

We don’t notice our shadow very often, but it is always shadowing us, so to speak, even when we’re trying to do the right thing. The shadow keeps us embarrassed, reluctant, wanting to play it safe. The shadow discourages us from acting boldly, or even from realizing what needs to happen. We need to know our shadow to be effective in what we really want to do.

In our passage for today, Micah portrays God as putting the people of Israel on trial, asking why we the people do not respond to God’s call, why we are more responsive to our frightened shadows than to God’s purpose. The jury is the earth itself. And immediately God’s people start to wonder how we can placate God’s anger with outrageous gifts of huge sacrifices, wondering finally – maybe with self-pity if we might have to sacrifice our first born to appease God. We imagine God has the same kind of shadow we have and can be distracted

But God is not distracted, and simply calls us to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God. This is an offer of forgiveness and an expectation that we will not get lost, that we will come back to God’s way every time we become conscious and reconnect with God’s love. This offer is strengthened in the Gospel and by Paul by the power of the cross and Paul’s amazing understanding of the cross as representing our shadow side, our foolishness, our need.

During February/Black History month, particularly this Sunday and the last Sunday of the month, I am focusing on the question of how suburban people understand their spiritual needs and how is that connected with the needs of people in the city. I have found that people, particularly white people in the burbs tend to think a little more individualistically and not as much about the broader community. We who are white want to limit our understanding of what is racism to actions that are personal, deliberate and conscious.

We feel like we should get a pass for anything that is systemic, unintentional, our unconscious. This is our shadow side. How do we help each other to understand that our history is bound up in the history of our neighbors in the city, no matter how far away we live? How do we come to realize that our liberation, our salvation is connected to each other?

If we excuse any racism that is systemic, accidental or unaware, that gives us a pass on most of the problem! This is a matter of deep spiritual importance for those of us who are white. As we become aware of and solve the problems of racism, we will become more whole, we will learn new resiliency, we will have stronger communities and deeper connections with each other.

This is why I am excited to have our community, though it is mostly white, though it may seem like foolishness, celebrate Black History Month. This is why I am energized by the prospect of hosting POWER Main Line’s  1619 Symposium at our church on Feb. 23rd. God has put us on trial to set us free, to call us to live aware of our shadow, to help us to be more conscious, more intentional and to see God’s big picture in our lives. God will help us today to see our shadow and live in God’s light.

This is God’s good news.

January 26, 2020

miracles clothed in the commonplace

We opened our retreat this weekend with this quote. “Prayer is not a request for God’s favors…Genuine prayer is based on recognizing the Origin of all that exists, and opening ourselves to it.” ~Cynthia Bourgeault. If that is true, and I believe it is, then we can find God in a stone. We can recognize the Origin of all that exists at just about any time and any place if we open ourselves to that presence.

We opened ourselves to God’s presence in each other this weekend, as we chose words that we felt would guide us on our journey through 2020, words that might help us on our path with the divine this year. We opened ourselves to God’s presence in good food, in a beautiful place, in glimpses of deer, in acknowledging pain and supporting each other. We could feel it. We noticed.

I asked the participants to bring stones that they painted with a word that they discerned. Do any of you want to say the word that you chose or that God chose with you, and a bit about what it means to you?

Our anthem for this morning came with serendipity for our retreat weekend. Geodes is a song I love from one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Carrie Newcomer. She is a Quaker musician from Indiana – good Midwestern roots like mine, which might be part of what I am drawn to her. The song we sang, you may have noticed, glories in the ordinary rocks you can find in Indiana soil called geodes.

The geodes look totally ordinary on the outside, but when you crack them open, you can find amazing crystal formations, as we are seeing on the screens all through this service. At the retreat we painted God’s message on the outside of the stone. These geodes have God’s message on the inside. Either way, I think the stones fit well with the message of our scripture for this morning.

The scripture from Matthew that Fred Vivino read for us this morning, begins with Jesus following John the Baptist, beginning his ministry echoing the prophet: proclaiming the message, “Change your hearts and minds, for the kin-dom of heaven is at hand!” Do you know why, by the way, Matthew used the phrase “Kingdom of heaven” instead of “Kingdom of God” as the other gospels do? Matthew is the most Jewish of the four gospels and Jewish people do not say the name of God, so saying the kingdom of heaven is not about some other world; its simply a way to not say the name of God.

Anyway Jesus proclaims the kingdom of God – or heaven- is coming true now, in this place, in their presence, if they will pay attention. And then he continues to call disciples to follow him. There’s kind of a big build-up here at the beginning of the gospel of Matthew, light and voices from the sky at Jesus’ baptism and a sense of anticipation that leads to what? a few fisher-folk being called from their work to become followers.

It might be a let down if you don’t have Carrie Newcomer’s sense of God’s magnificence in ordinary things. She sings: and you’ll see if you try,

in the next stranger’s eyes

that God walks ‘round in muddy boots,

sometimes rags and that’s the truth.

You can’t always tell but sometimes you just know.

God’s Incarnation is happening into pain and loss, into the ordinary, into the real, not into the big shots who have all the power, God is with all the regular folks at regular times. And we might see God in these ordinary things, when we are cracked open or when we just quiet ourselves down enough to notice – even with the pain and loss, even within the messiness of ordinary lives.

Last weekend celebration of Martin Luther King’s birthday was a beautiful set of reminders of a vision of what the kingdom of God might look like. In my Bible study on Wednesday, we are blessed to have a participant who is an older man who knew Dr. Martin Luther King. We asked him what it was like to be with him. He said, “Oh, he was a very shy man. He was just an ordinary guy, really.” We had to laugh, just an ordinary guy, called and cracked open to show the crystals inside.

King had a vision of a different kind of community and we sometimes think of that what we are trying to do is to become more diverse. But I heard somebody this week correct that way of thinking. They said, “We are not a homogeneous community struggling to become diverse; we are an incomplete community struggling to become whole.”

We are just an ordinary community striving to become whole, trying to let the cracks shine forth the crystals, the light of God’s new realm from within our ordinary lives. The word I chose for my stone is the word “hungry” because I am hungry for God’s community, for us to become whole, with regular ordinary people of all kinds showing forth the beauty of God’s realm.

In our retreat, we shared some of the cracks in our lives. We noticed the light shining from the crystals inside, some of the God energy that we would never claim, but that God claims and God uses. Our community, our world right now, is full of cracks, that discourage us and make us feel hopeless. We are hungry for an easier time, but this is just the kind of time that God is using for new life and new possibilities. May we be hungry for God’s action, open to God’s call, and hopeful for God’s shining forth. This is God’s good news.

Responsive hymn   148 Many and Great, O God