[Bethany Lutheran Church] Bethany February 2013 Newsletter and Calendar

This announcement is from Bethany Lutheran Church

Bethany February 2013 Newsletter and Calendar

The February 2013 newsletter and calendar are now available for reading on MemberConnect.   A link to the newsletter is on the home page of our MemberConnect site. Simply click on the link and you will be able to read the newsletter WITHOUT logging in.    However, we still encourage you to log in and check out the calendar and other areas of MemberConnect!   Paper copies of the newsletter are also available at the Hospitality Desk in the Gathering Area.

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[Bethany Lutheran Church] Bethany Lenten Education Opportunity

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[Bethany Lutheran Church] Wednesday Words for January 30, 2013

Wednesday Words for January 30, 2013
from Pastor Carrie Smith

Thought for the Day:
“A Christian is one who points at Christ and says, ‘I can’t prove a thing, but there’s something about his eyes and his voice. There’s something about the way he carries his head, his hands, the way he carries his cross—the way he carries me.”
- Frederick Buechner

In our prayers: Carol Stupar, Bruce Johnson, Bill Kohl, those who are preparing for baptism, our new members and their families, our new Council members and other new congregational leaders, missionaries around the world.

Sunday at Bethany: Oh, what a day this will be! We will celebrate our Global Mission work around the world with special music from Bethany Choir and the drumming ministry. Senior seminarian Sarah Rohde, a former ELCA Young Adult in Global Mission, will be here to preach at all three services. Susan Gavle will update us on the ELCA Malaria Campaign. The pews will be decorated with the dozens of gorgeous quilts sewn by the Piecers. New Council members and officers will be installed at the 9 am worship service.

And…we can’t forget that we will welcome a host of new members to our community, at the 9 and 10:45 services. Thanks be to God!

Baptism dates: An extra baptism date has been added to accommodate the many baptism requests we’ve had lately. If you or your child is ready for baptism, please consider these dates: March 30 (7 pm), April 7, May 19, May 26. A summer date will be chosen soon as well. A baptism preparation class will be held on Sunday, March 10th after the 3rd service, and individual classes may be arranged with the pastors as well. Contact me if you have any baptism questions: carrie.smith@bethanylc.com

Where in the world is the pastor’s spouse? For the next few weeks, Robert is traveling. These first few days he is in Jerusalem and Bethlehem for meetings with groups that coordinate the efforts of churches to help the Palestinian people. One of these groups is PIEF (Palestine-Israel Ecumenical Forum), which is a World Council of Churches movement that “rallies churches together enabling them to coordinate their efforts and initiatives for a just peace in Palestine-Israel.” Robert is co-moderator of this group: PIEF Late next week he travels to Geneva, Switzerland to the offices of the Lutheran World Federation:LWF

Theology on Tap! Join Pr. Paul and others as they gather for faith talk and beverages on Thursday, February 7th from 7:30-9 pm at Brink Street Bar and Grill in downtown Crystal Lake. Contact Pr. Paul with questions: paul.cannon@bethanylc.com

 

A Celebration of Life for Alice McDonald: Bethany member Alice McDonald passed away recently, and her family has planned a celebration of her life for Saturday, February 16th at 11 am. This celebration will be at Park Place, 406 W. Woodstock Street, Crystal Lake. A brunch will be served. If you have any memories to share with the family, you may bring them to the office and we’ll make sure they get to Alice’s family. We continue to hold the whole family in prayer.

 

On this day when former Illinois Governor George Ryan was released from prison to a halfway house, I came across this paragraph in one of my favorite books of devotions:
“In 2003, George Ryan, Republican governor of Illinois, called for a moratorium on the death penalty. Persuaded by the work of law students exposing race and class discrimination, he called for a halt on executions. Though his political career was tainted by scandal, the 2003 moratorium affirmed and fueled the fire of many Christians and other abolitionists who are working for restorative justice and for an end to the death penalty.”  (from “Common Prayer: A Book for Ordinary Radicals” by Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Enuma Okoro.)

***
This Week’s Texts: 4th Sunday after Epiphany

Jeremiah 1:4-10
4Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, 5“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” 6Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” 7But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you, 8Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.” 9Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, “Now I have put my words in your mouth. 10See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”

Psalm 71:1-6 (Message Version)
I run for dear life to God, I’ll never live to regret it.
Do what you do so well: get me out of this mess and up on my feet.
Put your ear to the ground and listen, give me space for salvation.
Be a guest room where I can retreat; you said your door was always open!
You’re my salvation—my vast, granite fortress.
My God, free me from the grip of Wicked, from the clutch of Bad and Bully.
You keep me going when times are tough—my bedrock, God, since my childhood.
I’ve hung on you from the day of my birth, the day you took me from the cradle;
I’ll never run out of praise.

 

1 Corinthians 13:1-13
13If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

 

Luke 4:21-30

21Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” 23He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” 24And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. 25But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 26yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 28When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. 30But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

 

Peace,
+ Pastor Carrie Smith
carrie.smith@bethanylc.com

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[Bethany Lutheran Church] By request: the poem from yesterday's sermon

Because many people asked about the poem I read in yesterday's sermon, here it is. Enjoy! And have a great Monday.

Pr. Carrie

 

"One Today" by Richard Blanco

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.

My face, your face, millions of faces in morning's mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—
to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.

All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the "I have a dream" we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won't explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.

One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father's cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.

The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day's gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.

Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,
buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me—in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.

One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.

One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn't give what you wanted.

We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars
hope—a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it—together.

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[Bethany Lutheran Church] Wednesday Words for January 23, 2013

Wednesday Words for January 23, 2013
from Pastor Carrie Smith

Thought for the Day:
Christ has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

— St. Teresa of Ávila

In our prayers: The family of Alice McDonald, who passed away last week; The Buettner family at the death of Grandma Regina Panek, age 102; Carol Stupar; Bill Kohl; Bruce Johnson. We pray for the safety of the middle school students who will be on a ski trip to Lutherdale this weekend. 

This week, churches around the world are participating in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. We join them in praying that we may be one, as God is one.

Saturday at Bethany: A Worship Leaders’ workshop is being held Saturday morning. If you are interested in being a reader, an assisting minister, or a home communion minister, you’re invited to come and learn more! 9 am: Readers; 10 am: Assisting Ministers; 11 am: Home Communion Ministers.

Sunday at Bethany: During worship we will blessed with special music from the Bethany Choir at 9 am and the Sonshine Singers at 10:45 am. We’ll sing some classic hymns (The King of Love My Shepherd Is; O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing) as well as some newer favorites (One Bread, One Body). I will be preaching this week, most likely lifting up the 1 Corinthians text: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.”

Annual Meeting this Sunday! Please come to the annual congregational meeting after the 3rd service (around noon). We will be voting on the year’s budget and approving the annual reports from ministry teams and staff members, as well as approving the slate of new Council members. Copies of the report are still available at the information desk and on the Member Connect website (and were emailed to you as well.)

New Member Class is Sunday from 4-6 pm in Luther Hall. Current members, you are always welcome to attend these classes as well, as a way to welcome our new community members (and perhaps refresh your knowledge off Lutheran theology and church structure!)

Bethany Arts: WOW! Around 200 people came to the organ concert on Sunday to hear Dr. Craig Cramer play our fantastic instrument! Thank you to Bethany member Michelle Damico Raimont, who helped us get the word out in fresh ways.

Did you know? Around 20 Bethany members attended the MLK breakfast on Monday. Yours truly was even quoted in the Northwest Herald the next day—though the reporter quoted me as “moving here from the city.” As one Bethany member put it: “In what alternate universe is Capron considered the city?” Ha! You can check out the article here: http://www.nwherald.com/2013/01/21/many-faiths-one-people-stressed-at-interfaith-breakfast/abmtzek/

 

This Week’s Texts: 3rd Sunday after Epiphany

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10

8all the people gathered together into the square before the Water Gate. They told the scribe Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel. 2Accordingly, the priest Ezra brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding. This was on the first day of the seventh month. 3He read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. 5And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up. 6Then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands. Then they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. 8So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.
9And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, “This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.” For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. 10Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

 

Psalm 19 (Message Version)
19 1-2 God’s glory is on tour in the skies, God-craft on exhibit across the horizon.
Madame Day holds classes every morning, Professor Night lectures each evening.

3-4 Their words aren’t heard, their voices aren’t recorded,
But their silence fills the earth: unspoken truth is spoken everywhere.

4-5 God makes a huge dome for the sun—a superdome!
The morning sun’s a new husband leaping from his honeymoon bed,
The daybreaking sun an athlete racing to the tape.

6 That’s how God’s Word vaults across the skies from sunrise to sunset,
Melting ice, scorching deserts, warming hearts to faith.

7-9 The revelation of God is whole and pulls our lives together.
The signposts of God are clear and point out the right road.
The life-maps of God are right, showing the way to joy.
The directions of God are plain and easy on the eyes.
God’s reputation is twenty-four-carat gold, with a lifetime guarantee.
The decisions of God are accurate down to the nth degree.

10 God’s Word is better than a diamond, better than a diamond set between emeralds.
You’ll like it better than strawberries in spring, better than red, ripe strawberries.

11-14 There’s more: God’s Word warns us of danger and directs us to hidden treasure.
Otherwise how will we find our way? Or know when we play the fool?
Clean the slate, God, so we can start the day fresh!
Keep me from stupid sins, from thinking I can take over your work;
Then I can start this day sun-washed, scrubbed clean of the grime of sin.
These are the words in my mouth; these are what I chew on and pray.
Accept them when I place them on the morning altar,
O God, my Altar-Rock, God, Priest-of-My-Altar. 

 

1 Corinthians 12:12-31

12For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. 14Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? 18But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many members, yet one body. 21The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 22On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; 24whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, 25that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. 26If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.

27Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. 28And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. 29Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? 31But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.

 

Luke 4:14-21

14Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. 15He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. 16When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 18“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 20And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Peace,

+Pastor Carrie Smith
carrie.smith@bethanylc.com

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[Bethany Lutheran Church] Service Opportunity: Home Communion Ministry

Do you have a few hours available each month? Do you enjoy talking with people and have a heart for the sick or homebound?

We are renewing the Home Communion Ministry at Bethany, and we need you! This is a group of specially trained members who carry the sacrament to those parishioners who, by reason of illness or infirmity, are unable to come to church to receive communion. 

A short training session will be held on Saturday morning, January 26 at 11 am. If you have questions about this ministry opportunity, or if you would like to RSVP, please contact Pr. Carrie at carrie.smith@bethanylc.com

 

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[Bethany Lutheran Church] Bethany Member, Alice McDonald

Bethany member, Alice McDonald, passed away on Thursday, January 17 after a long illness. A celebration of life will be held at a later date. 

Please join me in holding Alice's family in your prayers. May God grant her rest eternal. 

Pastor Carrie Smith

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