Worship Preview 9.14.25 "How Long Must I...?!"

UPCOMING EVENTS

Wednesday, September 17th, Feeding Families in His Name: A free, no obligation meal is served “to-go” style from underneath our portico from 5:30-6:30pm each Wednesday, prepared each week by our members as well as several area churches and community groups. If you would like to support this ministry, you can make donations online at: www.firstumcfortscott.org/feedingfamiliesdonation. Thank you.

Aging Forward, Friday, September 26^th, 1-4pm. This month is our last meeting for the year. Our featured speakers will be Greg Motley, board member and Anita Walden, chief administrative officer, from Freeman Fort Scott Hospital. They’ll share the latest updates on the process of getting the new facility open and the services the facility now offers to the Fort Scott community! Then we’ll hear from Crystal Stock of Presbyterian Manors of Mid-America for an informative presentation designed to help improve understanding about senior living options. It will be another great time of fellowship and learning!  Light refreshments will be served. No cost to attend. Invite a friend!

Mark Your Calendars – Sunday, October 12^th at 3pm – Gospel Concert with Second Hand Strings! A freewill donation fundraiser for Feeding Families in His Name. Second Hand Strings is an acoustic group whose members enjoy sharing their love of music. The group of friends began playing together a few years ago to share their fondness of folk and classic country music. They will perform a selection of popular old-time gospel songs, adding their bluegrass touch.

Worship This Sunday: 10:30am –  “How Long Must I...?!”   

Scriptures: Psalm 1, Mark 1:1-8, Mark 6:7-13, and Mark 9:9-29. Rev. Christopher Eshelman preaching. Psalm 1 proclaims the value of living according to God’s will, proclaiming the blessings such a life brings and the ultimate futility of other paths. It echoes some of the themes we heard last week in the contrast between Cain’s misplaced anger (and the terrible consequences of it) and Jesus’ call to action in Matthew 25. We talked then about our offerings to, and communion with, God - all hinging the idea that God has given us his “first and best” in Christ, which enables us to respond with our first and best. 

In last week’s Tribune article, I mentioned that in these troubled times, I find it helpful to reflect on the interwoven stories in Mark 9. The mix of “highs and lows” and different perspectives offered by each character, engages and helps shape my faith. This week in worship we’ll delve into that, focusing on the healing story that comes after Jesus, Peter, James, and John come back down the mountain from the Transfiguration. Our Mark 9 reading is not found in the lectionary. We do, over that 3-year cycle, hear Luke’s version of this healing, and at various times we encounter all 3 of Matthew, Mark and Luke’s very similar accounts of the Transfiguration itself, but we don’t hear this account of the healing. I think it is important. While Luke tells the “same” story of a healing,  it leaves out two exchanges that I find worth pondering. First, the interaction with the father is shorter, with no dramatic exchanges of “if you are able?” and “help, thou, my unbelief!” And more crucially, after the boy is healed, the disciples ask Jesus why they couldn’t accomplish it, and he says: “this kind comes out only through prayer.”

Jesus’ response intrigues me. Jesus, the father, the crowds, and the disciples themselves all seem to think that they should have been able to heal the boy. And apparently, they should have! We see in Mark 6, when Jesus had sent them out in pairs, they had “cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.” So, what had been different in this case? Much like the difference between Cain and Abel’s offerings that we discussed last week, it’s subtle. This story invites us to go deeper into our own faith and examine our thoughts, feelings, opinions, and assumptions. To risk opening ourselves to an accountable, responsible, grace-filled way of being that is transformative - for us and for others! Sunday, we’ll explore that. We’ll think about what it means to bear witness and prepare the way. We’ll think about our call as disciples, and seek, with the Psalmist, to be “like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.”

If any of the above intrigues you, we invite you to explore the hope and presence of Christ together with us at 10:30am each Sunday. 301 S. National here in Fort Scott. Blessings on your journey!