High Holy Days

Sunday will be a whirl-wind day at Seneca Presbyterian Church - along with all other Christian churches. It is the day we remember the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem - complete with palms and great festivity. I imagine some places can also manage the donkey, too.  Palm Sunday is the event that begins Holy Week - the "high holy days" of the Christian faith. During this week, we remember the final events of the life of Jesus. If we walk them faithfully and spiritually, we re-experience the heart of our faith: the overwhelming, foolishly extravagant love of our amazing God.Our Presbyterian brothers and sisters in Oconee County have a tradition for doing just that. We gather for worship each evening during Holy Week. It is a difficult tradition to keep, but well worth the effort.

The bookend events of Holy Week are the exciting ones - full of celebration and life. The ones in-between are the hard ones, full of betrayal and death. We can celebrate just the "easy" ones - but if you are looking for a faith that works even in the hard days; if you want to marvel at what humanity in all its sin will do to silence even God's love and what God will say in return, then walk the journey of Holy Week. Open up yourself to all it means and allow yourself to be changed.

At Seneca Presbyterian, as we begin Holy Week, we will once again consider the Apostle Paul's understanding of the cross. These past weeks, our texts have come from Paul's correspondence to the Christians in Corinth. Sunday we will look a bit more at the relationship Paul had with them along with the challenges that came with it. We will explore Paul's understanding of power and then contemplate how Jesus used power on Palm Sunday. As it is a first Sunday, we will be blessed with the celebration of the sacrament of communion as we conclude this first opportunity to worship during our "high holy days." Won't you join us?

The Kid Makes Good

Happy Thursday morning! We are back in the Joseph story for this Sunday at Seneca Presbyterian Church - and dreams figure prominently once again. This time they carry an ominous meaning. If not heeded Egypt - and the world around - will experience a famine that would be a threat to life including the lives of God's family and Joseph's. But with  wisdom supplied by God, Joseph is able to interpret the dreams and avert disaster. Read Genesis 41 for the details. Then ponder these questions - and share your reflections, please.

• Who is responsible for averting disaster - Joseph or God? In other words, how do divine revelation and faithful human action combine? 
• How does God reveal God's divine will to those in seats of power and authority, in Joseph's day and in our own? 
• What moral responsibility do those in power have for those they rule - according to the biblical standard? 
• Should we be suspicious of "Pharaohs"? Who are the pharaohs of our world? 
• The seventeen-year-old Joseph has grown and matured. What evidence to you see of that and what experiences do you think had the greatest impact? 
• We have skipped over chapter 40, but you might like to read it through. It provides a scene that sets up Joseph's rise to power. Apparently ancient Israel was fascinated by life in Pharaoh's court.Chapter 40 introduces us to two men with vastly different opinions of life around the seat of power. 

I wonder...

• what Pharaoh thought of Joseph's God? 
• why Pharaoh was willing to share so much power with Joseph? 
• how Joseph's faith was impacted when he married the daughter of an Egyptian priest?
• how God can preserve life in our world by relying on human faithfulness? 

The ancients set great store on the power of dreams to communicate divine will. Have you ever experienced a dream that you believed to be a direct revelation from God?