Pastor's Ponderings: Monday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 7:54 - 8:1 (November 3, 2025)

November 3, 2025:  Monday Bible Study on Acts 7:54 - 8:1

Good morning on yet another lovely autumn day here in Tucson. I pray that your weekend was an opportunity to grow closer to Christ our Lord, and that in that growth, you have become committed to applying the Law of Christ's Love in every circumstance in which you find yourself. I was so happy to see Teri H. back in church on Sunday morning for the first time since her new type of hip replacement surgery nearly a month ago. Her recovery is meeting her doc's expectations. Though our attendance on Sunday was low, we had guests who had just moved to town from Tempe, and they were welcomed with warmth and caring by our members. And our Gospel Music Group did a great job of providing us our music support for Luke's Beatitudes. We also celebrated All Saints and Day of the Dead as well, and we had one pet friend with us, little Cody, a pitty and dachsy mix.  He was well behaved, he only barked before my sermon, and fun to be with. And of course, we had our potluck, which was tough to keep warm because our warming cabinet started blowing switches when we turned it on, and was not available to use. It will be checked out this week to see if there is a fix for its problem.

In our passage for today we discover an age-old issue. We do not like to be reminded of our past failings and sins. The Sanhedrin was no exception to this accusation! But this reminder by Stephen was of historic proportions, including the Old Testament times failures of God's children-elect, from the killing of the prophets whom God had sent to bring them back in line with His hopes and expectations for them, to the much more recent rejection of Jesus himself, the Messiah, God's Son.  The picture which Luke reveals for us about the mind and nature of the men of the Sanhedrin shows them to be totally out of control, filled with rage, and offering verbal assaults at Stephen, while all the while physically and violently removing him to outside of the city to be murdered at their own hands, and obviously with the consent of the Pharisees like Saul. (His future is already determined by the LORD. He will be renamed Paul, and become a stalwart believer in Jesus as his Savior, guiding the early Christians with the fullness of his own understanding of the hope and forgiveness that can only come through a personal relationship and belief in Jesus as the Savior of all of God's creation, especially for the greatest of God's creation, people!)

Luke helps us understand the power and strength of Stephen's person, not only in his witness for Jesus, but also in his strength of spirit in the face of his death.

1. Stephen was filled with the courage of his faith in Jesus. Stephen saw only the Christ of God as he was witnessing to the Sanhedrin, not their brutal words and actions.

2. Stephen's own witness is the example of Christ Himself, seeking forgiveness for those who are murdering him as he holds in his heart and mind the beauty and glory that are his own in Jesus Christ, both before and during his stoning. He is beyond the fear of death and caught up into the glory of the Savior's Heaven.

3. In the face of this horrendous death Stephen falls asleep. Of course, the inference here is that even facing the brutality and pain of such a death, Stephen is completely at peace!

   
   

I have been on the scene of death beds many times for people of faith whose lives have been lived with the peace of God which passes all understanding, filling them with love and forgiveness for all the people who may have done them harm in their lives.  In what we see as the suffering of death, these children of God are at peace, seeing and feeling the reality of the faith, they have lived, now before them, welcoming them Home to God's Heaven. It is so much easier for us to want to harm those who are evil in this world, but we must remember that is the work that can only belong to the sole judge of all things, Our Savior, Jesus. This message is for me and you, we need to let go of our desire for revenge, turning it over to Christ's Grace and Mercy. That kind of thing is rightfully His work, fulfilled on the Cross, and revealed in His Resurrection.

Thanks for being with me this morning. In Christ Love, Pastor Kim

Reminder that this Sunday, November 9th, is our day to bless our pets. Please bring them in person or share a picture of them on the Altar table on the main floor of our worship space.

Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study of Psalm 36 (October 30, 2025)

October 30, 2025:  Friday Bible Study on Old Testament of Psalm 36

May the joy of this cool desert morning fill your heart with wonder at the glory of God's creation.

Good morning my dear friends. Well, for all the children, tomorrow is a big day, parties at school, trunk or treating, costumes, family get-togethers, and CANDY! With all that we make of Halloween, it has become more difficult for us to truly acknowledge the very next day in the life of the Church, and Her Saints. All Saints is the Saturday, and we will honor those who have joined God's triumphant saints in heaven on Sunday at worship and realize that we are saints too. Be sure to bring pictures, and please label them so people will know how they are related to you. There will be a special area set up in front of the church on the main floor. In the traditions of the Day of the Dead this area is called an ofrenda, the place where family can come together to remember and honor family and friends who have moved on to the next life. Remember that we will be blessing the animals on the 9th of November. If your pet cannot attend, please just bring us a picture with your name and your pet's name on it. You will be able to place that picture on the table on the main floor in front of the altar, just like we did for All Saints the week before.

In our Psalm for today, #36, David offers a song about what it means to be a person who worships and honors YHWH with their lives, vs a person who does not believe, or may offer lip service about knowing their God, but whose lives have been lived, and continue to be lived, with that belief making no difference.  Those folks who have had no change of heart because of the benefits that are there just for believing and honoring God. Today I have a small assignment for you. I want you to read the Psalm carefully, because I believe that every one of us can identify people who are in both circumstances, and the ones who are faithless, are definitely the cause for David singing about the need for God's continuing benefits, blessings, and protection, because the others without faith, can act to destroy and damage the people of true faith.  In fact, their intent is to do exactly that. On the other hand, those who have faith, and that includes you and me. are really in a luxurious relationship with God, where His abundance and blessings are always with us, and his provision of Grace is powerful and helpful in every difficult situation that comes to we who are faithful. God will always choose to protect us from the evil doers with whom we must all do battle in this life. When we pray, we are affirming that our relationship with God has been filled with integrity on our part, and, of course, we must remember that no one is perfect in their faith, and that is exactly why God sent His Son Jesus Christ to pay the price for our sins when we slip up.  I know that I can turn to the LORD at any time, and all of the time, to pray and seek His healing and hope for those who are ill, for peace in the world, for my caring for His creation in better and better ways, for my own strength and faith growth, for confession, and when those folks who don't believe, and serve only themselves, wealth, and power, who are willing to deny morality, justice, and love, God will always be our resource no matter how tough those people who are filled only with avarice and self-service make our lives of faith and trust in the truth of God's caring for us, bringing His defense to protect us from  those who only pretend to believe so that they may reap a benefit from those who remain naive in their faith lives.

Please pray for those you identified in your life who are not faithful, and who lack the character of the faithful heart which is pleasing to God. Pray that they have a change of heart at the bidding of the Spirit. And give thanks to God for having that continual change of heart as we go through our lives depending on the goodness of the LORD.

With the Love of Christ, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Tuesday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 7:37-53 (October 28, 2025)

October 28, 2025:  Tuesday Bible Study on Acts 7:37-53

Good morning my dear friends. Please continue to pray for Becky Prasek as she undergoes testing to reach a diagnosis that will help her specialists to plan a course of treatment. It looks now like it may well be a nerve getting too crowded in her spinal column, so pray for great test results for Becky. Please also pray for Mark and Linda Backer who live in Wisconsin. We pray for their health throughout the past six months, and that they will be able to return to Tucson for the winter that can be so brutal up north. Pray too for Liisa and Rudy Mendoza who are helping their friend Itai return to California from the Dakotas where he has been a professor of signing. His brain cancer and its presence in his auditory system cannot tolerate yet another cold winter. We all knew that the peace between Israel and the Gaza Palestinians was tenuous at best. Today Israel will once again break that peace accord and begin bombing in the Gaza Strip. It is interesting how much Stephen's continuing telling of the Hebrews in the wilderness, and how once again their worship of the Temple rather than the LORD whose habitation is beyond human restraints and who has guided them across the ages to the time of Jesus, and then in the time of the new Christian Church in Jerusalem,  and yet through it all the Jews remain disobedient to their God.  We should all note that the tone of Stephen's preaching and revelation of the truth of how the people who God has loved takes a turn in today's passage that becomes aggressive and confrontational with the Sanhedrin. What Stephen comes to at this trial, and because of the leaders' continuing aggression toward those whose faith has been placed in Jesus as the Savior and Messiah, is a place in which the Spirit motivates him to confront the unfaithfulness of these powerful Jews.

Here are the important parts of this rather long continuation of Stephen's homily (message) which ends in his railing against those who have rejected God's only begotten son:

1. Stephen makes it very clear that the Hebrews/Jews have been constantly disobedient and rebellious against the LORD who has blessed them time and again with sheltering and protecting them, even when their very next opportunity to act faithfully is rejected once again for an easier human way to go.

2. The Hebrews/Jews have had the most amazing opportunities to be thankful and joyful in the LORD, and yet even after God's carrying them through the wilderness, and providing the manna and quail and water during their journey, in Moses' absence on Sinai for 40 days they become impatient and insist that Aaron build them an idol of their own making which they are more than prepared to worship. a false god. And here, even though Stephen does not say it directly yet, his inference is that the very same thing has happened with everything the Hebrews/Jews have undertaken to do, including the abject rejection of Jesus Christ, the Messiah of God. As Stephen continues it becomes obvious that the temple itself has become a false god for these people.

3. Stephen strongly insists that the Hebrews/Jews have persistently acted to limit God. And they have come throughout the history of the building of the temple, to worship the temple itself instead of worshiping the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who the temple has been built to honor, rather than contain and restrict God to the Holy of Holies.  The misunderstanding of the Hebrews/Jews about their relationship with God is truly difficult to accept. Of course, the building where we worship, our church at 115 N Tucson Blvd, has, from time to time, been a place where people have treasured the building and faceted glass windows more than the God who they are meant to represent.  The beauty of our worship space, the powerful presence of the temple in Jerusalem, are both meant to draw us close to our God who has done everything for which we could ever have hoped, in this life, and the next! This past Sunday we had the prophetic passage 31:31-34 from the prophet Jeremiah that God would be in our very minds and hearts, and there would no longer be the need for anyone else (human) to teach us the Way. When we worship a thing made of human hands, we are truly limiting our LORD and failing to let His living presence in us take us beyond the things made of human hands. Church buildings are important as we grow and learn and live more deeply in Christ. They are a place which surrounds that learning and growth with the Love of God through the people of faith who surround and encourage our own faith journeys, but as beautiful as our stained glass is, it should never be worshiped as if it is God!  If the day comes to release ourselves from the buildings at American, worship can certainly happen elsewhere, just like the barber shop where American got its start.

4. Stephen charges the leaders of the Sanhedrin of following in the footsteps of their forebears, the people of their heritage, who like them, also rejected, despised, and hated the prophets who the LORD sent to them, and even worse, they arrested, beat, and murdered God's Son who had come to bring Holy Grace and Mercy to God's children AGAIN as a once and for all act of reconciliation!   However, instead of seeing Jesus as the great blessing that he was, they instead saw Him as the enemy of their status, wealth, and power.

Stephen is anger filled as he speaks these words, but he is also filled with grief. What sadness that once again Stephen, an intelligent and compassionate child of Jesus Christ, who is prepared to be servant who would bring timely justice to those who needed food, and whose life was filled with the Spirit and Christ's great Love, and even though it broke Jewish Sabbath Law, what he did never broke the law of God's Love for His children's needs.

With Love in Christ, Pastor Kim        Next Monday the first Martyr.