Blessed are the Cheesemakers?

Our church, like many across the nation and world who use the Lectionary, preached on the Beatitudes this past Sunday. While this introduction to the Sermon on the Mount does convey a bizzaro world of blessings - poor, mourning, persecuted...blessed? - it is anything but funny. Yet, when I read Jesus' words in Matthew 5, I can't help but seeing this in my mind:



Beyond being hilarious, it is painfully true to how the Sermon on the Mount has been recieved by those who hear it - going blow-for-blow while Jesus praises meekness and bickering while Jesus lifts up the peacemakers. All the while, his voice is drowned out by the name-calling. Funny stuff, and accurate.

January Newsletter: Christian Astrology?

I’m a Gemini – at least, that is the astrological sign assigned to me. Today, my Daily Horoscope informs me: “You may have been a little difficult to be around lately. You like to treat yourself to a little moodiness from time to time, but the people around you might appreciate a little cooperation.” I have not taken a poll on just how difficult it has been to be around me lately, but I don’t think this celestial wisdom is very applicable to me. Maybe it has to do with the fact that this message applies to anyone and everyone in the entire world who was ever born between May 21 and June 20.

So what would you think if you showed up at worship one Sunday and the guest speaker that day was an astrologer? How would you feel about someone sharing knowledge and direction they gleaned from looking at the stars? Well every year on the Sunday before January 6^th, Epiphany, we invite just those kind of people into our churches and devote an entire service to them – we know them as the Wise Men. Sometimes we refer to them as the Magi, which comes from the Greek word, magoi, which was used to describe priests of a religion (Zoroastrianism) that included looking to stars for divine knowledge and direction.

These were the men who sought the young Jesus, for, as they say, “we observed his star at its rising,^* and have come to pay him homage” (Matt. 2:2). Whatever you may think of astrology and horoscopes and people who follow them, God, at one very important point in the history of humanity, decided to send a message to some folks from a distant land and a foreign religion using a star. It’s a strange story, if you think about it. But in the end, these men end up bowing before Christ, offering their worship and the gifts they brought. It seems that God will do anything to get our attention to lead us Christ, again and again. This year, seek Christ broadly – not just in the officially Christian sectors of life, but in all things, familiar and strange, home and abroad, for “all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in^* him all things hold together” (Col.1:16-17).