A few years ago, we began hosting “Friday Night Out” during the summer. The idea was simple: The church would host dinner and games for kids so that adults could go to dinner together.
We borrowed the basic concept from another church, but added the idea of encouraging both intergenerational dinners and the inclusion of people who didn’t attend Incarnation. We hoped that friendships would form across generational lines within Incarnation and that people outside the church would become friends with people inside the church.
Over the last few years, Friday Night Out has been a success! There have been a bunch of great moments where new people have been introduced to people at the church and people within the church who didn’t really know each other got better acquainted. But over the last few years, the burden has been on the people of the church (i.e., you!) to make these dinners happen. One piece of feedback that we have heard several times is, “Could you help us by arranging dinners? It is hard to arrange dinners with people we don’t already know!”
There is something practical in that feedback, and so this year, the church is going to arrange dinner parties, so that people who genuinely don’t know each other can enjoy time together. (This is increasingly important as the church grows.) Each dinner will have a “host” who will manage a few details (like picking the restaurant or setting up the potluck), but the church will arrange the groups.
To that end, if you would like to be included in a dinner, let us know by emailing Katherine. If you are interested in being a “host,” make certain that you make that clear in your email. You don’t need to have children at home to be involved, but if you plan to bring children to the church, include that information in the email, as well. (Childcare will run from 5:30pm-8:00pm.)
Friday Night Out is coming up on June 21, and we hope that as many people as possible join in!
Scripture Reflections
For those who were not at church on June 2, the Gospel reading was Mark 2:23-28, where Jesus claims, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” The sermon focused on the idea of Sabbath as a gift, a moment when we are invited to rest in what God has done. The Bible often equates God’s salvation and the Sabbath, because it is in laying down our efforts that we are able to receive all that God has done and will do for us. Those who receive his salvation and provision are the people who are willing to cease striving and to rest in him--in other words, to practice Sabbath. Sabbath is an act of faith, because it demands that we realize that no matter how hard we try, we cannot do or be enough—only God can.
After church, as Courtney and I talked about the Sabbath, she mentioned something that is too good not to pass on! She said to me, “I wish you had talked about Adam and Eve being created on the 6th day…”
She was pointing to something beautiful: Adam and Eve were created on the 6th day, the day before the Sabbath. In other words, the very first full day they were given was rest, not work. What a testimony of the fact that God’s work precedes ours and that our lives are lived in the sufficiency of what he has already done for us! We are created, and the first thing we are invited to do is rest in God’s provision!
Eugene Peterson makes a similar point in Working the Angles. In his meditation on Sabbath and rest, he notes that the Hebrew day began at sunset, not sunrise. In other words, the first portion of each day is rest, not work, and when we arise from sleep to begin our work, we find that God has already been at work all night long. He has been restoring our bodies for a new day, dew has fallen to nourish creation, the earth has cooled and birds and bugs are at work, each performing its purpose in the will of God. We awake to find that it does not depend on us; we are given rest before we are asked to work, and his work begins while we are at rest.
Our work will be what it should be only when we realize that God is already at work, and his work is sufficient. Only then will we step into what he has given us without the anxiety of believing that it all depends on us. We begin in rest, because the affairs of the world are ultimately his, and not ours.
Steven+
Scripture Reflections
Our call to leave our home in Virginia to serve the Lord cross culturally came for me with both a certainty that this was indeed a call from our Lord who loves us and also a springing up of many, many objections and complaints. Someone wise has said that transitioning to cross cultural ministry is akin to pouring fertilizer on your pet sins, and for me that has looked (in part) like my complaints and grumblings growing into a veritable wilderness. January of 2023 was our third month here in Kazakhstan; it was a month marked by sickness, by freezing temperatures and so much snow we actually got sick of it, and by the absence of many of the friends we were so reliant on (in their defense, they all had good reasons to be absent, only my forest of complaints obscured my sight a bit). In the exaggeration of my emotions–as Psalm 25 says, the troubles of my heart were enlarged–I was crying out to God, “have you brought us here to die?!”
The complaint of the Israelites in the wilderness from our reading in Numbers this Trinity Sunday, “We loathe this worthless food,” is perhaps the saddest moment in Scripture. They have been given manna from heaven! Through all their years of wandering in the wilderness they have experienced the faithfulness of the Lord to provide this food for them. Every morning they have woken to find manna abundant, ready to be gathered, with a double share every 6th day so they could rest every Sabbath day. This has been their life—for many (the whole generation that was born during these years), eating food from heaven is all they’ve ever known. And yet here at the end of their wandering time, as they begin the journey back to the Jordan River and the land of Canaan, the food that has day in and day out been provided for them has become worthless in their eyes.
“We loathe this worthless food.” Isn’t this the complaint of each of our hearts as we look at all that seems so desirable around us that the Lord has not given us, and in our discontent turn up our noses at what he has given us—himself? As Jesus makes clear when he was talking with the crowds about manna (John 6) the Israelites were rejecting the Lord their God when they rejected the manna, just as those who rejected Jesus were rejecting his Father. And so of course they (we!) must die—the venomous serpents sent into the midst of the Israelites are an incredibly vivid picture of the Lord giving us over to our sin, to the natural end of what we are desiring whenever that is something other than himself and what he has for us. And yet, and yet! This is not the end of the story.
The Lord God tells Moses to have Aaron make a bronze serpent; unlike his sculpting of the bronze calf at the request of the people so many years before, this is something he makes for the people at the request of God, and rather than bringing death and judgment, this brings life for all who raise their heads to look on it. Can you see them, these our mothers and fathers in the faith, dying in the wilderness on the verge of finally returning to the Promised Land to go in and take it as their inheritance from the Lord? Perhaps some are only able to look up at the bronze serpent because their neighbor is holding their chin. Perhaps some are turning their heads away and choosing death rather than life from the One they’ve grown to loathe and despise in their hearts. Maybe those who have looked and been healed are running around among those still writhing on the ground to make sure they’ve heard the news: ”Just look up! Just look up!”
Just look up! David rejoices in his God as the lifter of his head (Psalm 3), and Peter learns the importance of looking up in the midst of a terrifying storm on the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 14). Whether we are tempted to look around us in discontent and envy, or in fear and anxiety—or both!—our Father’s call to us is the same: “Look at me!” “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18) This is our only hope, the only answer to our grumbling and our fear. Because our Savior came and allowed himself to be lifted up on the cross, the veil was torn and we are able by the Spirit to behold the Father in his Son. And in that beholding, in looking up, we see him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, our only way out of our wilderness of sin and temptation into the presence of our Father who loves us.
One day during that wilderness January, the Lord used the closing prayer of our prayer service from the Daily Office to pierce my soul and lift my head; to begin the sorely needed job of weed whacking at my grumbling spirit:
Almighty God, Father of all mercies,
we your unworthy servants give you humble thanks
for all your goodness and loving-kindness
to us and to all whom you have made.
We bless you for our creation, preservation,
and all the blessings of this life;
but above all for your immeasurable love
in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ;
for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.
And, we pray, give us such an awareness of your mercies,
that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth your praise,
not only with our lips, but in our lives,
by giving up our selves to your service,
and by walking before you
in holiness and righteousness all our days;
Through Jesus Christ our Lord,
to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit,
be honor and glory throughout all ages. Amen.
Hannah