West Pasco Cohort

Sophia's Portal

1. Sophia's Portal Holiday Meeting... Dec 16, 2007, 6:30 p.m.
   Sophia's Portal Advent/Christmas meeting will be at the home of Max & Joan Adkins in Port Richey, FL. Max & Joan were at our very first meeting and have supported our ministry with love and devotion. Thank you Max & Joan! We welcome newcomers and old friends alike to join us for our holiday meeting. Planning to attend? Email us for directions.
2. 
   Sophia’s Portal is a gathering of people who seek to know and serve God, with confidence that the Way of Jesus is authentic, trustworthy, and true.
   
   · We live in a world gone mad, where wisdom is in short supply. At the same time, we seem to be threatened at every turn. Life seems to get more expensive, complicated, and isolated by the day. But there is a better way to live. That way is God’s way!
   
   · Sophia’s Portal is a “nomadic” church. This type of gathering is sometimes known as a cell group, a house church, or an emerging church. In other words, we don’t own a building!
   
   · Our gatherings serve to bring us together as the Church, The Body of Christ. We pray, read the Bible, offer worship to God, and fellowship with one another. We exercise the spiritual gifts that God has given to each of us. We welcome your gifts, hopes, and dreams. Come share them with us!
   
   · At our meetings you will hear about ways to enter more deeply into meditative Bible reading. You may also learn about various aspects of Christian theology, spirituality, or history. Our emphasis may vary throughout the year as we seek to respond to the needs of the gathering.
   
   · Interested? Come check us out!
3. Sohphia's Portal Holds Its First Meetup!
   
   
   Sophia's Portal: Emerging Churhdc Cohort for the New Port Richey (west Pasco) area of Tampa Bay, FL held its first ever meeting on Sunday, Sept. 16, 2007. Thanks to the 9 folks who attended! We had a good time discussing ideas and making plans for the future. We plan to meet again in one month. The next meeting will be Sunday, Oct. 21, 2007, 6:30 p.m. at the IHOP in New Port Richey. Spread the word. Join us!
4. The Sign of the Cross
   Words often fail where symbolism succeeds, while taken together they frequently make spiritual things more fully grasped. At the center of Christianity are symbols and words that speak to the very essence of what it means to be human. For this reason these symbols and words will persist, even though the glory days of ‘Christendom’ are gone and the church no longer is the purveyor of civil religion.
   
   The most powerful and persistent symbol of Christianity is the cross. It is the universal representation of the ordeal of Jesus and identifying mark of his followers. The cross is the place of cosmic connection. It is the intersection of several dimensions; the meeting place of heaven and earth.
   
   The cross speaks of the union of heaven and earth, spirit and matter. It is a cosmic axis, the cross represents the human form with arms outstretched. The four cardinal points of the cross can be connected the four directions: north, south, east, and west; the four seasons of the yearly cycle; the four elements (fire, water, air, and earth).
   
   As an archetype, the cross stems from the deepest collective levels of the human psyche.It points to a kind of significance that is truly transcendental: because the intersection of its two lines, the cross is a coordinate - used to represent the location of the point in the plane or space. It is a universal symbol of human existence, here and now.
   
   As true as all those aspects of the cross may be, as Christians we see the cross on an intimate spiritual level. It is much more than a memorial. If Jesus had been a human being only, then the cross would be a reminder of a horrible, unjust, untimely death of someone we loved. But that is but one aspect of the cross. The cross is the decisive turning point for humanity. It is the “before and after” point for all of spiritual time.
   
   We make the sign of the cross. We do this in corportate worship and in personal private prayer. With the Sign, we send a visible sign to the world and follow the advice of St. Ephrem of Syria (died A.D. 373):
   
   Mark all your actions with the sign of the life-giving Cross. Do not go out from the door of your house till you have signed yourself with the Cross. Do not neglect that sign whether in eating or drinking or going to sleep, or in the home or going on a journey. There is no habit to be compared with it. Let it be a protecting wall round all your conduct, and teach it to your children that they may earnestly learn the custom.
   
   As you make the sign of the cross, do so with the intention of making these connections to:
   
   God. When we reach up in faith, with hope and trust, we are reaching for God. Like an infant child reaching up with assurance that mom or dad will be there, so we reach out of our selves toward God. The first movement is up toward God, to a higher consciousness, to the source of life and the fount of eternal love. The starting place of the cross is to accept all the love and life that God wants to share with us.
   
   Self. In the spiritual life we must see to our own needs. Unless we first bind our wounds, we cannot be a healer for others. We can only give away what we first possess. No one wants to hear a preacher or teacher words of wisdom unless they have first realized the truth of those words for themselves. To make the second point of the cross is to go deep, to reach into the depths of our human lives and to there understand our own needs, hopes, and desires. Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. We simply cannot hope to love and help others if we have not learned to love and help ourselves. There may be fairies, there may be elves, but God helps those who help themselves.
   
   Others. The first arm of the cross is to reach out in compassion to others. One of the best tools for spiritual growth is service. Most of us have no quarrel with this aspect of the cross. In fact, we sometimes start here, with outreach, when first we need to be converted ourselves. But having had our awareness raised, let us not bypass this clear and obvious mandate of what it means to walk in the way of the cross. Love one another. Break bread together. Make disciples. Preach the Good News of salvation to the brokenhearted. These are not good suggestions. They are the fruit we are to bear for the sake of Christ.
   
   World. The best known verse in the Bible is probably John 3:16, “For God so loved the world...” God loved the world so much that he made the decision to forever become part of it. The incarnation of Jesus means that God is married to creation for all eternity. If God loved the world so much that he sent Jesus to redeem it, then it follows that disciples of Jesus should have a great respect for the world. Not just for the people who live on the planet, for the animals that enrich our lives, for the plant kingdom that gives us oxygen to breathe, and for the oceans and rivers that sustain make life possible.
   
   The Bridgettine Nuns (founded 1370 by St. Birgitta of Sweden to give praise and honor to God) in their Myroure of our Ladye write of the mystical reasons for the practice of making the sign of the cross, and how it summarizes the Incarnation, the Passion, and the Ascension of Jesus:
   
   And then ye bless you with the sygne of the holy crosse, to chase away the fiend with all his deceytes. For, as Chrysostome sayth, wherever the fiends see the signe of the crosse, they flye away, dreading it as a staffe that they are beaten withall. And in thys blessinge ye beginne with youre hande at the hedde downwarde, and then to the lefte side and byleve that our Lord Jesu Christe came down from the head, that is from the Father into erthe by his holy Incarnation, and from the erthe into the left syde, that is hell, by his bitter Passion, and from thence into his Father's righte syde by his glorious Ascension.
   
   Words often fail where symbolism succeeds, while taken together they frequently make spiritual things more fully grasped. May our words and deeds be more than symbolic, may they unite heaven with earth, and bring human hopes and dreams into alignment with the ways and wonders of the risen Christ.
5. Choices and Consequences
   The Sunday Lectionary Meditation
   September 9, 2007
   Lectionary Proper 18, Year C
   
   Deuteronomy 30:15-20
   
   Moses said to all Israel the words which the Lord commanded him, "See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the LORD your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the LORD swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob."
   
   We all have choices. Every day we are faced with a myriad of decisions. Choices carry consequences. Little choices add up to big consequence. Choices have a ripple effect through our lives. Don’t just hear this as a dire warning (eat that one candy bar and there goes your waist line), but as an invitation to do good. You cannot know the power of one blessing, one prayer, or one act of generous kindness. Choices are a matter of the heart. The choices we make reflect the priorities we have set for ourselves. Choices speak to what is going on inside with the ‘inner self.’ Our society likes to promote the idea that we have an unlimited amount of personalized choices (cell phone covers, online avatars, sandwich combinations, colors to paint the house, time of flight departures, etc.). We like the idea of having lots of choices, but the words of Moses cut the options way down. There really is just one choice: do we follow the ways of God or not? The more we follow the ways of God the more life we find. The more we reject the ways of God the more life gets confusing and out of balance.
   
   Philemon 1-20
   
   Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, To Philemon our dear friend and co-worker, to Apphia our sister, to Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the church in your house: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. When I remember you in my prayers, I always thank my God because I hear of your love for all the saints and your faith toward the Lord Jesus. I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective when you perceive all the good that we may do for Christ. I have indeed received much joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, my brother.
   
   For this reason, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love-- and I, Paul, do this as an old man, and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus. I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment. Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful both to you and to me. I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. I wanted to keep him with me, so that he might be of service to me in your place during my imprisonment for the gospel; but I preferred to do nothing without your consent, in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced. Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother-- especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.
   
   So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. If he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything, charge that to my account. I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand: I will repay it. I say nothing about your owing me even your own self. Yes, brother, let me have this benefit from you in the Lord! Refresh my heart in Christ.
   
   Given my interest in the small group ministry of our parish and my work with the emerging church I love the fact this little letter is addressed to a house church! Paul prays that the sharing of their faith might be effective. What a great thing for which to pray. It is not enough to simply have faith, like one might have a savings account, or a stamp collection. But what good is our faith if it is not having an effect on our lives and on others. Any faith worth having is worth sharing. There is no concept in the early (house) church of spirituality in isolation, but rather spirituality in community. The subject of slavery is a prominent theme in this short book. There is a temptation for us to fly over this subject quickly, after all, we are free and enlightened people. Slavery is a thing on the ancient past. Right? While the kind of slavery we saw in Amazing Grace is thankfully a thing of the past, people are still very much in bondage. Most people in the world today have precious little compared to our way of life. We all know about the horrors in Darfur, Iraq, and Palestine. But even in our own hemisphere many people live in fear, hunger, and oppression. The murder rate in Brazil, for instance, is five times that of the US. Consider this bit of information from the ONE Campaign (www.one.org)... “1.8 million children will die from dehydration in 2007 due to diarrhea. In many cases, all it would take is a handful of sugar, a bottle of clean water, and a pinch of salt to re-hydrate these children and save their lives. But something else is missing: the political will to make it happen.” We do not have to accept conditions such as this. We can make a decision today to make our faith effective, and to live – not in isolation – but in community.
   
   Luke 14:25-33
   
   Now large crowds were traveling with Jesus; and he turned and said to them, "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. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, `This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.' Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions."
   
   If we are initiated with the basic idea of choices and consequences in the first lesson, the Gospel lesson “ups the ante” to the extreme! How easy it is to read this Gospel like medieval scholars: this is addressed to monks, friars, priests, and nuns. Surely this cannot be for ordinary folks like me and you!? So, do you see any so called “professional religious” among the followers of Jesus. No. This radical call to kingdom living is for anyone who has ears to hear. In classical oriental style Jesus “afflicts the comfortable” with a saving message. The story begins with ‘large crowds’ traveling with Jesus. I’m sure that after this sermon that the crowd thinned out a bit. How different is the style and content of Jesus’ teaching that what we would likely encounter from a leader today? What person with a large following would offer such a difficult statement. I’m sure that if Jesus would have used a focus group or political consultant they would have advised him to say something quite different from “hate your family… join the disciples” mantra. To seek God via the way of Jesus is no easy enterprise. To choose this path is to forsake all others. This is the way of self-denial and self-sacrifice. But in the end it is the way of self-knowing and God-realization. The cost of discipleship is great, but the value is beyond calculation.
   
   Would you like to help contribute to The Sunday Lectionary Meditation? Here’s how… Read the lessons for an upcoming Sunday (http://www.io.com/~kellywp/index.html). Be sure to select the BCP option. Email Fr. Ernie with your thoughts on any given Sunday passage. Bless you!