Methodist Justice Ministry helps children who have been the victims of physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, as well as babies born addicted to drugs.
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The Methodist Justice Ministry empowers women and children to make new lives free of abuse, taking complicated and time-consuming cases that other agencies do not have the resources to address.
The Methodist Justice Ministry goes beyond legal work to also provide financial and material support, as well as professional counseling, personal encouragement, and friendship.
This Sunday, November 22, 2015, is “Methodist Justice Ministry Sunday” in our church. This is the 10th year of the Ministry, and the Church has very generously decided to celebrate us churchwide. We are very grateful.
I am preaching for the last time in DiscipleChurch this coming Sunday. And since it is my last time there, after founding this service and after being privileged to preach in it for almost 9 years, I hope you will indulge me a little. This Sunday, I am going to preach from what has become my very favorite story about Jesus in the gospels. I say that I am asking for your indulgence, because I have preached from this passage once before.
To so many commentators and preachers we have all read and heard over our years in the church, THE point of the story is Jesus’ admonition: “Let anyone who is without sin be the first to cast the first stone.” This is very much like his teaching to “Judge not.” Or his parable of the wheat and the tares. But this ignores the woman whose life was at stake here. If, for the church, the entire point of this story is for Jesus to teach this yet again, then we are using the memory of this woman and the pathos of her life a little bit like the men in this scene were using her just to test Jesus.
Teresa was a true mystic, one of the “Doctors” of the Catholic Church because of her mystical experiences of the Spirit and what she taught us about these experiences. When Teresa experienced God personally in the “principle chamber” of her diamond-like soul, she was in a way a Church of one.
DiscipleChurch Family and Friends:
Question for Sunday: “Does every snowflake share responsibility for the avalanche?”
This Sunday is Father’s Day. I intend for us to have some fun with my sermon. For a change. I am going talk about the wisdom I have learned from my dad. And I will be inviting you to consider and remember the wisdom you have learned from your dad, and from any and every father figure who has ever graced your life. And, brothers, to consider the wisdom you may have imparted to a child.
This Sunday I will be asking you to consider if you are really happy. And if you are really yourself. And I will be asking you where and how we should look for happiness. And ourselves.