February 12, 2023

Professor Amy Jill Levine talks about her experience when she was asked by older women in the United Methodist Churches, “When did you have your horns removed?”  You heard it right!  When she told them that the Jews did not have horns, they were delighted!  It’s pretty funny thinking about it!  

Some Christians think Jews had horns and this misunderstanding comes from one of the difficult words of Jesus from the gospel of John.  So this Sunday, we attempt to tackle another heavy theological issue regarding the problematic language about “The Jews” throughout John’s gospel. 

In the gospel of John 8:44, Jesus says, “You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires.”   You are from your father the devil?   Jesus, what were you thinking when you said this to the Jews?  How do we dehorn these difficult verses in the gospel of John which have led to the hatred of Jews even today? 

Join us as we wrestle with these difficult words of Jesus! 

February 5, 2023

AJ Levine shares in her book, “According to the Pew Research center, 58 percent of Americans believe in a literal hell.” (p. 101, The Difficult Words of Jesus”)

In a parable of Jesus in Matthew 25:30, a servant who feared the master because he viewed the master to be judgmental and punitive and therefore played it safe and did not do anything with the master’s entrusted money, the master says, “… throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  Is the “outer darkness” that Jesus refers to in Matthew 25:30 talking about hell?   We wrestle with these difficult words of Jesus.

Join us this Sunday.

January 29, 2023

What do we have to learn from the story of Jesus walking on water, which shows up in 3 out of the 4 Gospels?   And how did Jesus do it?  Exploring the symbolic significance of this supernatural act, I invite our church to consider how this episode helps us understand the mechanics of healing, both in our individual lives and in our world at large. (Matthew 14:22-33)

Join us as Rev. Mi Chun will be preaching this Sunday.  Pray for both Pastor Sunae and all the pastors of Cal-Nev annual conference as they attend the Gathering of Orders.  Keep Rev. Mi in your prayers as well.    Pastor Sunae will be leading worship this Sunday.

January 22, 2023

The term, “doulos” in Greek is translated, as “slave,” and it appears in the New Testament 118 times.  The Gospel of Matthew alone contains thirty references.  These slaves in Matthew are forced to obey their masters (Matthew 8:9) and are fully subordinate to their masters (Matthew 10:24).  Just reading the Gospel gives us a sense of how normative, and how horrific, slavery in the first century was. (The Difficult Words of Jesus, Amy Jill Levine, p. 62)

Today’s verse, Jesus says, “you have to be a slave,” what does that mean to people who have a legacy of slavery?  What does that mean to people who themselves were enslaved because slavery continues to this day?  Is this verse we can accept, “Be a slave to all”, or is this a verse we rebel against and says “no”?  So we must wrestle with this Jesus’ difficult words this week. 

Come and join us as we continue to talk about the discipleship of Jesus Christ. 

January 15, 2023

We are journeying with “The Difficult Words of Jesus”, a book authored by Amy-Jill Levine and our first difficult words we wrestled last Sunday was “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and… then come, follow me.” (Mark 10:21)

It’s hard enough to be told to be generous and then we come to the gospel of Luke this Sunday and it says, “Whoever comes to me, and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26-27)

Really, Jesus?  In order for us to be your disciple, we have to hate – hate our father, hate our mother, hate our wife, and hate our children to follow you?  What were you thinking?

These are difficult words of Jesus!  Come and join us as we wrestle with Jesus’ difficult words.

January 8, 2023

Happy New Year, dear siblings of Lake Merritt and Lake Park United Methodist Church.

 How is your new year going so far?  I wish I could say that all is well with me but it’s been a rough start.  How about you? 

I spent about six hours at the Apple store and my cell provider last night to get my cell phone back so that I could receive and send text messages out but and am still not successful at it.  What do we do without our phone functioning at 100% nowadays?  I know, right?  It’s been difficult but I’ve been telling myself that this is a first-world problem. 

Reading the bible, have you ever asked yourself, “man, what did Jesus mean by that”?  It’s difficult to understand what he meant!   Well, in the new year, we are invited to think about the difficult words of Jesus that we often encounter in the scripture and we are invited to wrestle with the ancient text.

We will be using a book inspired by Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish and a New Testament scholar, In The Difficult Words of Jesus, and she shows how these difficult teachings would have sounded to the people who first heard them, how they been understood over time, and how we might interpret them in the context of the Gospel of love and reconciliation.