I am finding this term’s ABC classes to be an incredible joy with nearly 65 Park people participating as we probe the depths of the incomparable Christ.  I have also been challenged personally with the fact that I am too often content with a very shallow Jesus.  John Stott in his wonderful book The Incomparable Christ uncovers again the Christian tendency to view Jesus through lenses of our own making.  We too often see a Jesus we want to see:  a liberal Jesus or a conservative Jesus; a mystical Jesus or a revolutionary Jesus; a nice-guy Jesus or an angry Jesus; a too-human Jesus or a too-divine Jesus; a capitalist Jesus or a Marxist Jesus; a therapist Jesus or paradigm of human virtue Jesus; a Jesus who is too much servant and not enough King or a Jesus who is too much King and not enough servant.

I have been convicted by the fact that my Jesus can be a very shallow Jesus.  This week’s sermon text and ABC lesson takes us into that magnificent letter to the Hebrews.  As I read the words of Hebrews I find that the wind of the Spirit shatters the lenses that have blurred my view of Jesus and I am confronted again with beauty, depth and majesty of Christ. 

As we anticipate coming before Christ in worship on Sunday, please contemplate these words we will sing as the service closes: 

When Satan tempts me to despair
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look and see Him there
Who made an end of all my sin.
Because the sinless Savior died
My sinful soul is counted free.
For God the just is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me.

And speaking of hymns, perhaps you remember these words:

I love Thy church, O God.
Her walls before Thee stand,
Dear as the apple of Thine eye,
And written on Thy hand. 

Many who love the church are concerned about the troubled waters she is now navigating.  Our Beaver-Butler Presbytery has appointed a Denominational Concerns Task Force to address some of the issues before the PCUSA.  They will make an initial report and receive feed back from Beaver-Butler Presbyterians at a Forum to be held in Portersville on Tuesday, January 30.  More details will be available in Sunday’s bulletin.  Please note the information and perhaps plan on attending.