PASTOR'S MESSAGE

Pastor Amy Beveridge

 A few weeks ago, I told a story about Steve Jobs in my sermon. It was related to his adoption, a story I had heard an NPR interview with his biographer, Walter Isaacson (Fresh Air with Terri Gross on Oct. 25, 2011). In my sermon, I reiterated the story about the conversation Jobs had with his parents on the meaning of being chosen. My sermon was on baptism, on God’s choice for us. But I left something unsaid…on purpose because it seemed like a tangent, but a tangent I’ve been considering since I first heard the interview. As an adopted child, Isaacson reports that Jobs dealt with fundamental questions about his existence: where did he come from? Why was he here? He observed that Jobs always had this underlying sense of being haunted by another world, this even in spite of his devotion to his adopted parents. My mother, who was adopted, has spoken of similar feelings: she has wondered about her origins in a profound way -- of this world, and yet not of this world. In her preteen years, she started reading the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, and other foundational religious works always with this driving question: where did I come from? These are biblical questions. I always think of God approaching Hagar in the wilderness: where did you come from? And where are you going?

While acute for people like Jobs or my mother, I think the experience of faith is like that: this quiet yet persistent sense that there is another place for us, or at least another place that might reveal something of ourselves. We are of this world, but always at the same time, a little exiled from it. We came from somewhere, we turn and return. In the meantime, how do we live?

We are in a liturgical season after Epiphany; we are in days of appearances, when fleeting encounters with stars and voices and miracles entice us to follow this beloved Son named Jesus. How do we live? What does this life look like? All of the scriptural readings in these weeks bring us back to these questions of identity. Who is this Jesus who has called us to follow? What does his world look like?

May scripture prove fruitful in showing us the Kingdom. May our lives be that Kingdom. May we know Christ in our days and Way.

In peace,

Pastor Amy

Updated January 26, 2012


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