June 28, 2007
2 Kings 2:1-12a
Last week we heard a story taken from the first book of Kings about the prophet Elijah needing a respite from his work as a prophet. The prophet ran away from his responsibilities to have an encounter with God, only to be sent back after the extraordinary encounter to continue doing the work that he was called to do. The stories of the prophet Elijah are found throughout the first book of Kings starting in the 17th chapter. The miracles surrounding his work and prophecy reached legendary proportions well into the first century of Israel. His successor is the prophet Elisha. In our narrative this Sunday we hear about the passing of the mantle from Elijah to Elisha. In my homily I will explore what it is like to pass the torch from one person to another. In preparation I invite you to read the story in the second chapter of 2 Kings and ponder who has been an inspiration in your life. What mantle has been passed to you? See you Sunday!
The Rev. Marlene W. Pomeroy
The liturgist this Sunday is Nikko Nguyen
The acolyte is Rebecca Rinck
Ushers are Team One
Please note: there is nursery every Sunday in the summer. Church School for combined elementary and middle school will be provided every week except the first Sundays of the month when we observe Communion and have a shorter sermon. Older children will remain in worship on those first Sundays of the month.
Other opportunities coming up in the next few weeks are:
We have been invited to help out with the Habitat House in Glendale on Saturday, July 7 from 8:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. You must be at least 16 years old and sign up in advance. Please call the church office or speak with Nate Lewis if you wish to help out!
FCC Fourth of July celebration at Almansor Park in Alhambra in the afternoon and evening of the holiday. Speak to Regina and Thom Meyers or call the church office for more information.
Please plan to come and hear Cherryl Weaver share her faith in our forum after worship on Sunday, July 8 from 11:30 a.m. -12:30 p.m. Refreshments provided.
I hope you are able to purchase and read the book Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson and David Relin. We will be discussing the book on Sunday, July 29. Please purchase your own book and let the office know in advance if you wish to have lunch provided for a modest fee. We'll be bringing salads from Green Street Restaurant.
June 20, 2007
I Kings 19:1-15
This coming Monday, June 25, our United Church of Christ denomination will celebrate its 50th anniversary in Hartford, Connecticut. Rev. Jake Pomeroy and five others from our church will be in attendance for that grand celebration along with thousands of others. We are an old and a young church simultaneously. We are young in the sense that our tradition spans only fifty years and hardly encompasses more than two generations in the human life span. Yet it is very old in that the roots of our tradition go back for centuries with our individual heritages. The United Church of Christ is an official blend of two American traditions - the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Churches. Yet the many streams that continue to flow into our UCC tradition are even more varied than that. Our motto is "that they may all be one." We know that becoming a truly unified church means that we will have to keep opening our hearts and minds to many different people with different backgrounds, different cultural traditions and different theologies than our own. We will have to constantly find ways to accept and incorporate the traditions of those brothers and sisters in Christ who experience God differently than us. When we look back to our fifty years of history we have not been a stagnant church. We have been a church that takes on new ideas, embraces new movements, and take bold stands to witness to our love of God and God's justice. I am proud to be a UCC pastor and proud of the history that we are writing together as a young denomination. I hope that you can join me in the coming year to learn about our history and to celebrate what we have accomplished so far - and keep finding new ways to be God's loving community for the future. Won't you join me this Sunday in celebrating our heritage?
Our scripture text for this Sunday is a beautiful piece of narrative from I Kings 19. It relates an encounter between Elijah and God that, in my estimation, is unrivaled in its beauty. The text invited us to stand with Elijah as he experiences God. See you in worship!
The Rev. Marlene W. Pomeroy
The acolyte is: Trenten Hart
The ushers are: Avis Hinks, Robert Rinck, Andy Romine and Judi Tyler
The greeters are: Glenn & Daniela McLea
The liturgist is: Cindy Speakman
Other opportunities this weekend:
On Saturday the Halogen Group invites everyone to join them in a horseback ride and picnic!! We are trying to get final numbers so please RSVP to Nina no later than Thursday at 4:00 p.m.! If we have a quorum we will go but you must let us know of your interest for either event! The horseback ride is at 10:30 a.m. and costs $25 per person. The picnic is at 12 noon on the grass between the Griffith Park Carousel and the Adaptive playground. For those who have already RSVP'd, we will be in contact with you! Hope you can join us.
You may watch and hear the UCC General Synod starting on Friday the 22nd at www.ucc.org.
June 13, 2007
Each of us is aware of the ways in which we fall short of being a wonderful human being. Once we get past late adolescence - say age 25 or so - we have a pretty good idea that we are not perfect. If we still hold onto the illusion that we are perfect, at least we are aware of how much harder we have to work to keep that illusion up after our mid-twenties! I am naïve enough to trust that we all know somewhere in our being that we are not "whole" in our current, day to day state.
The text for this Sunday - Luke 7:36-8:3 - is a story of Jesus at a meal as the guest of Simon - a Pharisee - and the difference between the respect offered by the Pharisees and the love offered by a woman, a known sinner, who also is present at the gathering. In a sermon entitled "Come As You Are," we will consider how the divisions of our lives - race, class, education, job, neighborhood - may interfere with our understanding of God's welcome and God's love. Come and join us as we look at what we have learned "at the knee" of these various parts of our lives and how we might re-learn about hospitality and humility from this text. Come join us for worship at 10:00 a.m. in our Chapel!
This Sunday in worship is Choir Appreciation - we celebrate our choirs and our Music Director, Andy Whitenack, with words of thanks and some special musical selections. The choir will be on hiatus until after Labor Day. Connie Washburn will be our summer pianist and will be offering some special music on various Sundays. After worship, please come to the literature table and light a candle for peace, remembering the 3,500 American lives and the tens of thousands of Iraqi lives that have been lost in our current war in Iraq and Afghanistan. You may bring your own votive or use one of the candles available on the Just Peace table.
Later in the week, in Hartford, Connecticut, six of our members will join thousands of other UCC folks for our 50th Anniversary General Synod, beginning June 22nd. Please keep Leo, Nikko, Nate, Varnell, Wes and Jake in your prayers as they participate in this important historical event for our denomination!
Bring your dad to worship this Sunday if he lives nearby and we'll celebrate Father's Day together!
The Rev. John H. Pomeroy
Greeters this Sunday are: TBA
Ushers are: Sandy Biehler, Lurline Brown, Angie Schnapp and Mel Smith.
The acolyte is: Terry Martin
Note: our New Directions group which meets and discusses ideas for the future of our church will meet this Thursday June 14th at 7 p.m. in the parlor. Anyone is invited to this ongoing conversation about renewal and direction for our church community.
June 7, 2007
Stories from the book of Acts
This Sunday we will be treated to a worship service led by our church school children and youth. They will be presenting three stories from Acts through word, images and actions. Like us, they have been reading and reflecting on these early stories of the Church and trying to find ways to connect them to our lives today. This culminates a month of us preaching from the book of Acts. In the past few weeks we have remembered what constituted the early church - which issues were important to them and what characterized the earliest formation of the church of Jesus Christ. We learned that they embraced the wild and disruptive power of the Holy Spirit; we learned that the early church opened itself to diversity in slow and halting stages; we learned of radical transformation through the conversion of Paul; we heard of effusive faith by Peter and others who found in the early church a powerful message of God's love. We saw the devotion of a few which caused the Church to flourish and grow well beyond its initial borders. We are not recipients of a Church which lives in the past. We too are called by God's disruptive Spirit to decide which barriers need to be pushed out in our day. May the children and youth lead us into further reflection of this message in our worship on Sunday.
Also, following worship we will have our Annual Business Meeting and potluck lunch. At this meeting we will hear reports from the staff, members and officers of the church, elect and install new officers and Ministry Members, and hear an update on the church finances and programs. See you in church!
The Rev. Marlene W. Pomeroy
Ushers greeting you this Sunday are: Ron White, Kathie Arscott, Suzanne Burger, Jeff Levison & Jim Maddox
Children & Youth are liturgists and worship leaders
Greeters at the door are: Varnell and Nate Lewis
The acolyte is: Sandy Grant
Other opportunities this weekend:
Saturday
At 9:30 a.m. our Called to Care lay visitation group will meet in the pastor's office.
At 5:00 p.m. our children and youth will meet in the chapel for a rehearsal for Sunday morning worship. Parents, please walk your children in to the chapel and come back by 6:15 to pick them up.
On Saturday evening at 6:30 p.m. our Dinner Club will meet for dinner at O Clube do Jantar, Brazilian Cuisine, 43 East Colorado Blvd. You may call Irene Keller or Nina Kung in the office for details.
Sunday
At 9:00 a.m. Children and Youth will meet in the chapel for a final rehearsal before worship. The Children & Youth Choir will meet directly after this for a final singing rehearsal before worship. Annual Business Meeting and potluck will follow worship in the Chapel.
June 1, 2007
With some of my friends in the past it has been a popular reason for not going to church: that folks outside the church can be just as faithful, caring and compassionate as those in the church. It can be a cause for embarrassment to those in the church that many folks outside the church act better than those of us within the church - making it look as though church is just a shelter for those who want to pretend to be better than others! It is a debate that dates to the founding of the Christian faith and continues to our day: where does faith come from?and does the church nurture such a God-given gift?
Our text this week in worship is Luke 7:1-10 - the story of a centurion who asks Jesus' help in healing his slave. The centurion shows humility and respect in addressing Jesus and in measuring Jesus' authority. Interestingly, the slave is healed at a distance, without touching Jesus, and the story is more about the faith of the centurion, presumably not even a Jew, than it is about healing or about the identity of Jesus as the Messiah. In a brief reflection entitled "Finding Faith" we will consider where faith comes from and whether it is possible to prepare ourselves for such a gift.
In worship this week we celebrate our Special Needs Adult Class and the gift that they offer to our congregation. Founded some 34 years ago by Beth Biery, her husband Ken and others, this class shows our welcome to our community in a unique way, helping remove barriers that often prevent special needs children and adults from participating in the life of the church. Parents and caregivers have received a special invitation to worship in the mail, and we will have additional refreshments at coffee hour to show our appreciation to this class and its teachers.
Directly after worship our children and youth choir will rehearse in the Choir Room, in preparation for worship on June 10. Scripts for skits in worship on June 10th were sent out this week to those children and youth who are participating in worship next week. During the church school hour this Sunday the classes will rehearse their parts and a special rehearsal will be held in the Chapel on Saturday June 9th at 5:00 p.m. Call Caroline Andres with questions and make sure to join us for worship next Sunday, June 10!
At 11:30 a.m. this Sunday, Wes Moore and Marlene Pomeroy will lead a Sunday Forum on the 50th anniversary of the UCC and our upcoming General Synod in Hartford, CT. Part of their presentation will include a 50th anniversary celebration DVD produced by the UCC in honor of this year's celebration. On Sunday evening from 6:00 - 7:30 p.m. in our East Parlor, Carolyn Olney and Marlene Pomeroy will lead another Sharing Circle, a time of sharing and prayer for all who would like to participate. Please make use of this time of confidential sharing and intentional prayer for those concerns and celebrations that are a part of our community life.
The Rev. John H. Pomeroy
Apr. 2008
