Seeing The BIG Picture

Dear Friend of Burke UMC,

It’s been hot!  It’s going to be hot today. 

 “How hot is it?”

Farmers are feeding their chickens crushed ice to keep them from laying boiled eggs.
The cows are giving evaporated milk.
The trees are whistling for the dogs.

So stay cool.

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Do you remember those old computer-generated pictures you’d see in the mall?  Colorful canvases of abstract shapes in rows and waves.  Apparently, if you looked at them in a certain way, another shape would emerge – a knight, or a guitar, or Jesus – a vision that you missed at first glance.

Our summer sermon series The BIG Picture is a bit like that. Our familiar picture is of Jesus’ birth, his teaching, his death, his resurrection.  But Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians invites us to see something new about Jesus beneath the familiar picture.

Ephesians gropes for language to covey the immensity of God’s plan – which is to heal and reconcile everyone and everything in all creation.  It’s not about offering personal salvation to one individual after another, so much as bringing everything together in universal wholeness. 

God reconciles us to him through Jesus. God makes us one with every human being; no more “us and them,” friend and enemy.  God heals Planet Earth, Nature itself.  Heaven and earth are united. The Body of Christ fills everything that exists with love – a “fullness” that “fills all in all.”  From the tiniest quarks to the most distant black holes, it’s all saturated with God’s healing energy. 

Immense!

Our sermon series will start as Ephesians does – from a distance – like approaching a painting in the mall.  In chapter 1 Paul first rhapsodizes about the enormity of Christ’s presence.  As he draws closer he starts pointing out the major brushstrokes of God’s masterpiece – Jesus, salvation, the church (he’s quite unapologetic about the cosmic importance of the church). He gets closer still and names your role in all this – your marriage, your relationships, your speech, your emotions, your nightly prayers. 

Along the way we’ll have the opportunity to step back and refocus. Every Monday evening this summer I’ll host a conversation called Re-Focus.  We’ll talk about the sermon; we’ll talk about how God is or isn’t apparent in our lives; we’ll pray for each other.  Join us any Monday evening this summer, 7:30 – 8:45 pm for Re-Focus.   

By summer’s end I hope we’ll have seen new images emerge from the familiar picture.   The masterpiece of God called Jesus Christ will have revealed a new perspective on your everyday life.

This summer, think BIG!

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It’s been hot!  It’s going to be hot today. 

“How hot is it?”

The birds are using potholders to pull worms out of the ground.

 

Stay cool.

Pastor Larry