Wednesday Words for October 1, 2014
From Interim Senior Pastor Len Hoffmann
Please click below to view Bethany Weekly Newsletter
Worship 8:00, 9:00, and 10:30 am with Children’s Church, Sunday School and Adult Education at 9:00 am.
Children are to go to their classrooms and then they will go as classes to Children’s Church. New Coffee 10:00 am.
Adult Classes at 9:00 am: Parenting Class – Bad Girls of the Bible (Men are Welcome!)
New Adult Class October 12 9:30 am in the Community Room –
Stretch and Pray
PADS Ministry begins Sunday, October 5. We will recognize and bless all PADS Ministry Volunteers at worship on that day.
Our next Fanning the Flame event will be held Thursday, October 16.
Please join us! Soup Supper 5:45 -6:15 pm
Purpose and Planning Session 6:30 – 8:30 pm – Developing our Statement of Mission
Thought for the Day:
Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine upon us and we shall be saved. Ps 80:7
Sunday at Bethany:
Our readings for this week focus on God restoring power. Throughout the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament the people of God are seeking God’s help for a variety of things: freedom from bondage; food and water in the desert; protection from enemies; restoration of the temple and Jerusalem; rescue from Roman occupation; the cessation of persecution.
Jesus, himself, spent time in the wilderness and the night before he was betrayed asked God to remove the cup of suffering from him.
We, too, ask to be restored. We desire to be renewed. We want God’s intervention into the struggles of our lives, Sometimes we feel like God is hidden from us and we desire God to be close.
God is close to us. However, God does not take us out of our struggles, nor does God take us around our struggles, but God in Jesus Christ enters our struggles and joins in them.
Our Gospel reminds us that we are grafted into Christ in Baptism and the way we see God most clearly in the midst of our lives is through worship, and scripture and prayer. It is here that Jesus shows up most clearly, where he is present in the tangible presence of bread and wine connecting our body to his body.
It is in worship that we most clearly she God’s face shining upon us and saving us.
Pr. Len
Lectionary 27 - Proper 22
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Prayer of the Day: Beloved God, from you come all things that are good. Lead us by the inspiration of your Spirit
to know those things that are right, and by your merciful guidance, help us to do them, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.
First Reading Isaiah 5:1-7
The prophet sings a sad, parable-like love song about the relationship between God and Israel. In this song Israel is compared to a promising vineyard. Despite God's loving care, the vineyard that is Israel has brought forth "wild grapes" of injustice and distress, when fine grapes of justice and righteousness were expected.
Let me sing for my beloved
my love-song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
2He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.
3And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem
and people of Judah,
judge between me
and my vineyard.
4What more was there to do for my vineyard
that I have not done in it?
When I expected it to yield grapes,
why did it yield wild grapes?
5And now I will tell you
what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
and it shall be trampled down.
6I will make it a waste;
it shall not be pruned or hoed,
and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns;
I will also command the clouds
that they rain no rain upon it.
7For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts
is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah
are his pleasant planting;
he expected justice,
but saw bloodshed;
righteousness,
but heard a cry!
Second Reading Philippians 3:4b-14
Paul reviews some of his supposed credentials, which no longer have any bearing in comparison to the right relationship he has been given through the death of Christ. The power of Christ's resurrection motivates him to press on toward the ultimate goal, eternal life with Christ.
4b
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
7Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. 8More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. 10I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, 11if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
12Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
The Gospel Matthew 21:33-46
Jesus tells a parable to the religious leaders who are plotting his death, revealing that their plans will, ironically, bring about the fulfillment of scripture.33Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. 34When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. 35But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. 36Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. 37Finally he sent his son to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.' 38But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.' 39So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 40Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?" 41They said to him, "He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time."
42Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the scriptures:
'The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord's doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes'?
43Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. 44The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls."
45When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. 46They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.
