Posts from July 2011 (Page 2)

Yesterday’s Worship at The Table invited reflection on reaching in love in Samaria, among the people we see as “enemy.”  We began with prayer stations and this clip from a documentary called My So-Called Enemy: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kKOLI4t2XE&feature=player_embedded] A recording of Sunday’s message is on our Podcast.  Listen here. May God’s peace bring healing and reconciliation in our broken relationships and communities.  We pray for those who grieve over the loss of loved ones.  We pray for those discerning how to do…

Worship has been rooted in the music of Agape (Dave Scherer) throughout our Reaching in Love worship series.  We’ll have more Agape and Michael Franti in worship this Sunday as we reflect on what it means to reach in love in “Samaria.” Here is Agape’s All Are Welcome: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pV99LuyB0c&feature=related]

Sam Keen writes: In all propaganda, the face of the enemy is designed to provide a focus for our hatred.  He is the other.  The outsider.  The alien.  The enemy is not human.  If we can only kill him, we will be rid of all within and without ourselves that is evil.  How are these faces of the enemy created?  Why is the repertoire of images so universal? (Faces of the Enemy: Reflections of the Hostile Imagination, 16). What “enemies”…

Barbara Brown Taylor writes, Watch how Jesus practices what he preaches and you will note that his teaching is not limited to people who look, act, or think like him.  He does the same eye-to-eye thing with Roman centurions, Samaritan lepers, Syro-Phoenician women, and hostile Judeans that he does with his own Galilean disciples……With the possible exception of his own family, no one is dismissed from his circle of concern, for no one made in God’s image is negligible in…

We continue our reflection on Acts 1.8 in worship this coming Sunday with emphasis on what it means to reach in love in Samaria.  Acts 1.8 states: But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Hostility defined the relationship between the Samaritans and the Judean Jews.  Samaria was seen by most of Jesus’ community as “the…