Please cover our retreat in prayer and prepare for this Sunday's service. The worship team, vestry and staff will be meeting in Daytona Beach Shores for a time of listening, prayer and worship. Andy Piercy will lead us in the retreat and then again in Sunday worship. He is a world renowned singer/songwriter with a heart for worship.

We all have a set of traditions at Christmas, and changing those traditions is never easy even when it’s for good reason. You see until this year, I have always attended Christmas Eve service; I’ve never attended a Christmas Day service, not as a child, not as a young adult, not even as a chaplain. Rarely had our Christmas morning as a family been interrupted by anything other than family desiring a visit. When I was a chaplain, we would rotate the holidays so that no one person had to work each and every one. To be honest, I had offered to handle the Christmas Day service as a chance to give Father Carl and Father Christopher time with their families. As I was viewing it, it was an obligation that I could take off of their plate. As usual, they had much to teach me!

Dear Friends of New Covenant, Barb and I attended an ornament gift exchange party last week, and I had been thinking a lot about receiving. I thought of Martin Luther suggesting that we dishonor God when we try to earn His free gift of grace. It’s not a gift exchange. It’s a free gift. We are receivers. And here we were at a gift exchange. A fun affair! I had to be near the last to go and get an ornament. I was number 54. You know how it works; everyone brings an ornament that goes into a pile. Then you can take one from the pile, or go take one from someone who already has one you like, and then they get to go again. Anyway, I went to the pile, now down to two gifts, and opened a lovely clear glass ball with some white design circumventing its middle. As I walked to my seat, I remembered one of the guests saying she wanted white because her tree was all white lights and white ornaments. So before I sat down, I said, “Here, would you like this?”

Charles Dickens was paid by the word. This helps explain why his novels are so rich in their detailed description and why the dialogue between characters multiplies from scene to scene. A writer has to pay the bills. Adjectives are cash cows. It is interesting then that when he describes Ebenezer Scrooge’s joy in Christmas past, he describes Fezziwig’s Christmas Ball with such economy of language. He conjures for us an image of a single evening made joyous by the generous hospitality of a happy couple. From first impressions, we may think Scrooge has a low capacity for joy. Perhaps because of his life’s early grief, he has numbed himself to these happy moments. Or it may be that the purity of joy in that moment is so tangible, words are not the main things. Scrooge discerns in hindsight that the generous actions of Fezziwig more than surpass the expenditure of wealth or gold.

Friday Epistle, 12.5.14 Dear Friends at New Covenant, There are several things in this week’s letter to you. One is a wonderful testimony about someone inviting a new friend to church this Sunday. Then, I have included a summary of your answers to the two questions I asked in my sermon a week ago, and a link to the more complete list. Finally, at this point I believe I will be sharing on verses 1 and 8 this coming Sunday from the Gospel reading and have shared a couple thoughts. I hope to see you at Lessons and Carols, Sunday at 7:00. Those who attended last year were deeply touched by the word and worship.

This won’t surprise you. Automated customer service can be tedious. “Press 1 for this. Press 2 for that. Our menu has changed.” I have learned that if you purposefully mumble your responses or just sit quietly, you are transferred to a real person faster.

“It’s my life isn’t it?” Danny and I sat on the front step watching the black line grow on the horizon – a tornado warning had been issued and he wanted to be ready. I had a Bible of some translation in my hand, he a pistol of some caliber in his. Danny had been buried in a basement of a strip center when the last tornado blew through town and that wasn’t going to happen again. He was 16 now but his father’s death of just a couple years before, he jumped off the Ohio River Bridge, was still burning in his heart. Suicide, why not? “It’s my life isn’t it? “Well, actually, no it’s not, Danny,” or something like that, I responded. “You have been bought with a price, it’s not you who live but Christ in you – it’s not your life, like it or not.” I’m pretty sure that is not an exact quote, but it was what was in my mind that spring afternoon. Danny is alive and well today, still living a life, I trust, not his own.

This Sunday, we will celebrate the Feast of All Saints. In preparation, I encourage you to think of at least three persons you can name with thanksgiving who have already entered into eternal life. Perhaps one person from the pages of scripture or church history; one who is a friend; and the one person you most miss this year. All too often, in our broken world, we can name far more than three. Thankfully, in a world charged and changed through Jesus’ resurrection, the days of our separation are irreversibly counting down. This feast of All Saints gives us an opportunity to remember and reorient to the mystery of Christ and his body, the church. Our scriptures for Sunday highlight this good news as well as these holy people that we know by experience and by reputation through the love of God. The Gospel reading originally appointed for Sunday raises a question often asked as we hear Jesus’ words to the scribes and Pharisees. While all of Matthew chapter 23 clarifies Jesus’ intent, you can look into the window of the problem in verse 9, where Jesus says, “And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven.”

Nearly every week, we repeat this Sunday’s Gospel at the 8:00 o’clock service. Rite One states, Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT?” Moses wanted to know God: “If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you...” (Ex 33.13 from the Old Testament reading for this Sunday.) Meditation: (Read the following three times. The first time read it straight through. The second time highlighting or underlining words that speak to you. And the third time just reading the words you highlighted in prayer.) “Those who really do know Christ in the modern world do so by seeking and entering the kingdom of God. To know him in your world now is to live interactively with him right where you are in your daily activities. This is the spiritual life in Christ.