About 10 minutes after worship ends, we’ll gather together for Aftertalk. We hope you’ll join us! Bring your questions, stories, insights, musings, imaginings and whatever else you need to Aftertalk. Join us for some food, fellowship, laughter and ample space for reflection and real questions to help us make the transition from worship to world.

Themes for this week:
Identity, Resolution, Heart

• What do you want me to do for you? This question shows up for the third time in today's reading from Mark. What does it evoke for you? How would you answer Jesus' question.

​Reflection:
"You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."
    - Mark Twain

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."
    - Antoine de Sait Exupery

"If there is a single definition of healing it is to enter with mery and awareness those pains, mental and physical, from which you have withdrawn in judgement and dismay."
    - Stephen Levine

"Fairy tales are not responsible for producing in children fear... that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit... that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear."
    - George MacDonald​ 

Lectionary Texts:

Jeremiah 37:1-9 | Psalm 126 | Hebrews 7:23-28 | Mark 10:46-52
​
(...for further consideration):

About 10 minutes after worship ends, we’ll gather together for Aftertalk. We hope you’ll join us! Bring your questions, stories, insights, musings, imaginings and whatever else you need to Aftertalk. Join us for some food, fellowship, laughter and ample space for reflection and real questions to help us make the transition from worship to world.

Themes for this week:
Service, The Body of Christ, Sacrifice

• One of the Hymns today says that the church must keep on rising from the dead. This is an evocative claim and likens the Church to Christ’s body in a powerful way. What does it for the church to be Christ’s body today?
• What have you seen in the news this week or experienced this week that speaks to the need for service over greatness and might?

Reflection:
"Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love."
    - Martin Luther King Jr.

"The x-factor of great leadership is not personality, it's humility."
    - Jim Collins

"A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act."
    - Mahatma Gandhi
​

Additional Reading:

Much Ado About Nones? Growing, Diverse Body Offers Few Easy Answers 

Lectionary Texts:

Isaiah 53:4-12 | Psalm 91 | Hebrews 5:1-10 | Mark 10:35-45

(...for further consideration):

About 10 minutes after worship ends, we’ll gather together for Aftertalk. We hope you’ll join us! Bring your questions, stories, insights, musings, imaginings and whatever else you need to Aftertalk. Join us for some food, fellowship, laughter and ample space for reflection and real questions to help us make the transition from worship to world.

​Read
Lectionary Texts: ​Amos 5:6-7, 10-15 |  Psalm 90:12-17 | Hebrews 4:12-16 | Mark 10:17-31

Themes for this week: Security, Goodness, Stewardship

Ask

• Have you noticed moments during your week when you have made connections to our previous worship and discussions?
• We have heard that the Gospel “comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.” What does this mean to you in light of the Mark reading of the man with many possessions?
• For the prophet Amos, the city gate (Amos 5: 10, 12, 15) is a place of judgment: a place to discern and decide between good and evil, justice and injustice, righteousness and sin. Jesus has similar things to say about entrance into the kingdom of God (Mark 10: 23– 25): a difficult choice is required— letting go of privilege, power, and possessions. What have you left behind to follow Jesus? How would you describe what Bonhoeffer calls “the cost of discipleship”?

Explore
Stated Clerk of PCUSA Issues Letter to Donald Trump on refugees, immigrants.


​Didn’t make it onto the yearly roll call of the mega-wealthy? Now’s your chance to find out where you actually sit in comparison to the rest of the world.
​

Median Household Income Worldwide (Gallup)
​
How to Own Land
Morgan Farley (From Sabbath, Wayne Muller)

​​Find a spot and sit there
until the grass begins
to nose between your thighs.
 
Climb to the top
of a pine and drink
the wind’s green breath.
 
Track the stream through alder and scrub,
trade speech
for that cold sweet babble.
 
Gather sticks and spin them into fire.
Watch the smoke spiral into darkness.
Dream that the animals find you.
 
They weave your hair into warm cloths,
string your teeth on necklaces,
wrap your skin soft around their feet.
 
Wake to the silence
of your own scattered bones.
Watch them whiten in the sun.
 
When they have fallen to powder
and blown away,
the land will be yours.


It’s easier for a camel to get on the cover of a lifestyle magazine than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.