Ministers Musings

Thank you, friends.  Thank you for four years of good ministry, living out the gospel together as the body of Christ in this place.  What a joy it has been to be your pastor!

We have done good things together since the summer of 2021.  There has been singing and praying, preaching and sharing Christ’s peace, time at the Lord’s Table and time at the fellowship table.  We have shared baptisms, funerals, Bible studies, and great times at Kids’ Club (if you missed the great times, you might want to come by and help out on Wednesdays.)  Families in the community have filled their cupboards at the food pantry and we have filled boxes of cheese and eggs and tuna and apples, and more, for senior citizens in town.  Love among us and love given from us.  I have appreciated your commitment to accepting and welcoming any and all of God’s children.  You offer a powerful witness to God’s love here at the United Ministry of Delhi.  Thank you for that witness.

Every memory brings to mind another.  The Holy Spirit has certainly been with us, and I thank God for bringing me here to be church with you.

I will miss this community of love.  I will miss the mountains on all sides as I ride my bike around town.  I will miss crossing the river regularly and watching it run high and run low, depending on the recent rain and snow.  I will miss the Farmers’ Market and Fair on the Square and all the ways this community comes together to say hello and stay connected.

Mostly, I will miss you.  Each of you and all of you.  Your love, your care, your trust in God’s hand through difficult times, your willingness to enter into friendship and service and ministry with me.  I will miss the joy of passing Christ’s peace with you in worship, the hugs and the smiles, the sharing of joys and concerns through prayers.  Thank you for sharing life in Christ with me.  

Keep sharing your love and life in Christ – with each other, and with Pastor Prem who arrives soon.  God does wonderful things through you.  Stay open to God’s hand.

We’ll have a few more times to be together this month.  I hope to see you then.  

Grace and peace,

Pastor Cathy

Ministers Musings

Just this past week, the Council of Bishops of the United Methodist Church shared a Guiding Vision for the church, a new statement of current understanding of who we are called to be.  

“The United Methodist Church forms disciples of Jesus Christ who, empowered by the Holy Spirit, love boldly, serve joyfully, and lead courageously in local communities and worldwide connections.”  

The video introducing this vision includes these words of explanation:

“Let’s briefly explore what this vision means in action: 

Love Boldly: We passionately love God and, like Jesus, embrace and include people of every age, nation, race, gender, and walk of life.

Serve Joyfully: With the heart of Christ, we journey alongside the most vulnerable, offering care and compassion with joy.

Lead Courageously: And, following Jesus’ example, we resist and dismantle all systems of evil, injustice, and oppression, striving for peace, justice, and reconciliation.   

In this new season, God is calling United Methodists to embody this vision as we form and grow disciples, develop Christ-like leaders, as we stand in solidarity with the poor and the most vulnerable, and seek health and wholeness for all people and creation.”

On Mother’s Day we will use an Affirmation of Faith in worship that was newly approved and endorsed by the Susquehanna Presbytery (that’s our local Presbytery).

Much of what we do and say as The United Ministry is based on old, old words – words of scripture, proclaimed by the prophets, declared by Jesus, explained by gospel writers and authors of letters to old, old churches.  New words, new thoughts, new commitments are a welcome addition to our language and to our witness to God’s grace.   Our shared belonging to both the United Methodist and the Presbyterian traditions brings us in contact with a wealth of wisdom and vision for the days that are to come.  Thanks be to God for fellow disciples willing to put their hope and their faith into new words for us to embrace for our ministry in 2025 and beyond.  

Grace and peace,

Pastor Cathy 

Ministers Musings

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about^[a] these things.  Philippians 4:8

They say that if March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb, or vice-versa.  A prediction about the unpredictability of weather, or a way to say that the transition from winter to spring is seldom directly linear.  Two days of beautiful days in the 60s followed by a week of snow and cold rain. Crocuses peeking out into sunshine and then enough wind to send branches careening across the yard.  Lent is a little like that as well.  It’s offered to us as a solemn and penitential time, an opportunity to sharpen our prayer discipline and to practice self-examination and confession.  Then the lectionary gives us some of scripture’s most wonderful and loving texts, as unpenitential as possible.  Isaiah proclaims, ‘Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price!’  God’s love invites all to come and enjoy!  Jesus tells the story of a man with two sons, both of whom he loves deeply and unconditionally.  Joy and love and grace abound week after week, until we come to Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem.  Then there’s a quick reversal and we hear about confusion and anger and betrayal and torture and pain and death.  All of it grounded in the foundational truth of the Easter joy that’s on the way.

Spring and Lent both, together and separately, are roller coasters of emotion.  Most of us are already dealing with other stressors – family challenges, health challenges, financial uncertainty – and this may well begin to feel utterly overwhelming.   Take an off-ramp from the amusement ride.  Take a walk, wind or no wind, call a friend and laugh with them about their grandchildren, think about the good things Paul recommends to the Philippians – whatever is true and honorable and just, sing yourself a song, come to church.  You don’t have to engage with the uproar around you all the time.   Yes, God’s love invites you to wrestle with troubles you encounter, but not incessantly.  God also offers you green pastures and still waters, rest for your weary soul and balm for your pain. Take God up on the invitation to rest a while.  

I hope you’ll share the story of Holy Week with us in worship.  Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the celebrations of Easter are powerful experiences, always.  There’s a place for you, and we’d love to see you. 

~Pastor Cathy

Ministers Musings

 It’s news I’m most proud to proclaim, this extraordinary Message of God’s powerful plan to rescue everyone who trusts him, starting with Jews and then right on to everyone else!   Romans 1:16, The Message

I just started taking a class on United Methodist Polity and Doctrine.  The class is offered by Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, and I attend on Zoom, as does half of the class of about sixteen people.  We introduced ourselves Tuesday morning, and just meeting all the students did my heart a world of good.  There are students preparing for the United Methodist ministry who come from Lancaster, Pennsylvania and from Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In fact, there are three students from the DRC, three more from Nigeria, and three from South Korea.  And another from China.  Three cheers for Google maps; each student was able to show us where they lived, in their neighborhood, with the help of Google maps.  All the students are part of the United Methodist Church, and a few of them are hoping to eventually be ordained and serve in the New York Annual Conference.  The three hours I drive to see my dad and brother in the home I grew up in doesn’t seem all that far away after all.  And it’s so exciting to be reminded that there are healthy churches all over the world who are proclaiming and living the love and grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Churches that have been open enough to the work of the Holy Spirit that young people there have heard a call to ministry.  Which tells me that the rest of the people in these churches live out Christ’s love in their own work and life, just as people here in Delhi, and across our conference, do.  It’s a powerful thing, this gospel we proclaim.  Jesus’ call to claim the peace and the joy, the justice and the power of the Spirit to transform the world is compelling.  

I can’t invite you to join this class; it’s already pretty full.  But I will ask you to remember the church of Jesus Christ all over the world, thinking about the joy of worship and the friendships and love that our siblings in Christ experience and share.  Pray for the ongoing work of the Spirit here in Delhi, and in Nigeria and China and Australia, too.  Pray for African-American churches here in the U.S. whom we learn new things from, especially in Black History Month.  And pray for the gift of love, that The United Ministry, and every other church that bears the name of Jesus, live out God’s love on Valentine’s Day, and every day.  Amen. Amen. Amen.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Cathy

Ministers Musings

Did you have a perfectly wonderful Christmas?  With candles and chocolate and family and one happy dog?  Or with lots of singing and jolly grandchildren?  Or maybe it was perfectly quiet and relaxed with cheese and puzzles and a small tree with gold garland?  I had a very nice Christmas, but it was not perfect.  There were short tempers and crying cousins mixed in with the laughter and singing; the quiche should have been warmed, the dog jumped too much, and some of the gifts just weren’t quite right.  I’m not complaining at all.  I loved our celebrations.  But I can’t call them close to perfect.  We were all, dog included, going on to perfection.

I have similar expectations for the year 2025.  There will be happy times, I trust, songs to sing, games to play, hills to ride down fast on a bicycle.  There will be opportunities to make a difference in the world, chances to proclaim the gospel, to offer a listening ear, to help feed hungry neighbors, to stand up for truth when lies are seeking the upper hand.  There will be days of sorrow and disappointment, and times when I will be angry and not be able to do anything to solve the problem at hand.   And there will be many moments of nothing all that special at all. Hours of driving, of working at a computer, of almost getting a great idea, but not there yet.  And there will be dinner to think about, to plan and then to cook, every night.  Sometimes it’s a bit overwhelming, considering all that in the first week of January.  How will we get through?

Around here, we say thanks.  Every day.  Sometimes for the dog, sometimes for the love of friends, sometimes for grandchildren, sometimes for an especially fun choir anthem, always for the food, whatever it is.  Saying thanks reminds us that it’s all gift, that God provides for us, even through difficult times.  Saying thanks grounds us in the wonder of each particular day.  Not perfect days, but often quite nice days.  If God is full of grace, loving and giving – and God is – then receiving goodness from God is always at the heart of our lives as God’s people. Gratitude is where we begin.  From gratitude, from acknowledging our dependence on God’s gifts and our joy in receiving them, we can then grow into imitators of that same grace.  From gratitude we move to loving and forgiving and then to standing up for truth.  It’s how we grow in grace and holiness, how we go on to perfection, day by day, year after year.

Blessings to you in the year that lies ahead.  May you be thankful for all of God’s gifts in your life.  And may you grow in love and grace.  

Pastor Cathy

November 2024

⁴ Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; ⁶ it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. ⁷ It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  ⁸ Love never ends.                 

1 Corinthians 13:4-8a

My niece Victoria gets married in Tennessee this month, and I get to officiate at her wedding.  I love performing weddings.  I’m a big fan of love, and weddings are all about love.  That’s why the church is involved with weddings.  We are created in and for love, and love grows and deepens in covenant relationship.  Making a promise to love encourages us to choose to love, each and every day.  We make a covenant to be part of the church as well; we promise to pray for each other and to serve the church and the world in love.  Jesus declares that the greatest commandments are to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself.  It’s good advice for life — important, transformative, and not always simple.  So we practice.  Marriage gives us a chance to practice love daily.  Sometimes it’s joyful and easy; sometimes it’s exhausting.  And our promises mean we’re in it for the long haul.  Marriages don’t always last a lifetime; we mourn when they don’t.  And we forgive ourselves and go back to practicing love where and as we can.  

I have great hopes for Victoria and Garret.  I ask your prayers for them, and while you’re at it, go ahead and pray for other marriages, and others in the church as we forge ahead in love, practicing, getting better at it, enjoying it and working at it.  Thanks be to God for this gift, this challenge, this opportunity we’re given to love.  

Grace and peace,

Pastor Cathy

October 2024

O hope of every contrite heart, O joy of all the meek,

To those who fall, how kind thou art!  How good to those who seek!

But what to those who find?  Ah, this nor tongue nor pen can show;

The love of Jesus, what it is, none but his loved ones know.

     Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee, UMH 175, vv. 2-3

Bernaud of Clairvaux, 12^th century

I was riding my bike along the back river road recently, and was yet again in awe at the beauty that surrounds us here in Delhi.  I stopped to take a picture, but it just can’t capture the entirety of the glory of our mountains in late summer or early fall. When I try to explain to friends the excellence of my surroundings every day, I just can’t find the words.  All I can say is, ‘Come visit.  You won’t really get it until you experience it.’

Bernard of Clairvaux said the same thing about hanging out with Jesus – you can’t grasp its wonderfulness until you claim it, until you experience it.  The joy and peace we find as followers of Jesus Christ is at the heart of the good news we have to share.  The excellence of spending each day offering love and care to the world while resting in that same love in God’s hands is really good.  And it’s not always easy to put into words.  We try. We tell stories and we sing hymns; we offer our presence and our witness, and communication happens.  And that’s good.  But we also sometimes have to encourage others to come and visit, to try it out for themselves in order to really know how good it is to be part of the Jesus project in the world.

Offer Jesus to the world.  Invite neighbors to church.  Let friends see Jesus’ love made real in you.  Let your grandkids see you speak out for justice and compassion for those in need.  Let the reality of God’s love in the world be seen and experienced through you. And enjoy the beauty of autumn in Delhi.  Amen.

September 2024

This is one of my favorite weeks of the year.  Kids go back to school.  Students and teachers may well have mixed feelings about this return to classrooms and being inside while the sun still shines warm, but for those of us who hang out on Facebook, only June graduations rival early September.  All my friends post back-to-school pictures of their kids, and it makes me happy.  So much hope, so many smiles, so much excitement for the newness of the day and of the year.  I have friends online whom I’ve known since our babies were babies.  Now even their youngests are cool juniors and seniors heading to high school. Some of the kids I’ve never met in person, but I’m fond of them even so. I suppose if I were up early enough to see the school bus go by, I could watch the new school year begin in real time, but I slept through that.  So, I see it online, and my hope is renewed that time marches on and the kids are all right.  They’re loved, they’re hopeful, they’re on track, and they’re beautiful.

Newness each day is at the heart of our faith.  ‘God is doing something new,’ says Isaiah, ‘do you perceive it?’ (Isaiah 43:19)  That is, the newness and hope is happening all the time; the challenge is to pay enough attention to see it.  Parents of school kids know that they’re pretty excellent.  Early September reminds me that this world is full of good kids, families who love them, and teachers who share heart and soul, even if I don’t see all that goodness every day.  Paul says, ‘if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.’  (1 Corinthians 5:17)  Let smiling kids and school busses remind you that hope is possible.  God’s grace brings new possibilities into our lives.

A new school year also means a new year of Kids’ Club, which also makes me happy!  If you know any kids in elementary school, encourage them to join us on Wednesday afternoons.  We have a great time!

We’ll celebrate kids in worship on Sunday, September 8^th. 

Grace and peace,

Pastor Cathy

July/August

I spend Wednesday mornings on the Courthouse Square, smack-dab in the middle of the Farmers’ Market.  Lots of people walk by, some take notice of my Pastor with Coffee sign and smile, some stop for a minute and say hello, a few sit down in the empty chair and talk for a while.  I’ve prayed for grandkids, for upcoming medical appointments, and for individuals figuring out what comes next in life.  I get updated on what’s going on in town and often hear historical data on days gone by in Delhi.  I’m always happy to talk theology, but it’s not what most people want to talk about.  Being on the Square is fun, and the welcome and respect I receive from people there reminds me that the presence of the church in general, and of United Ministry in particular, is appreciated in the community.  I’m not there just because I like people, though I do like people; I’m there because I want the church to be known as a welcoming community, available to anyone and everyone.  United Ministry will have a presence – a table with cookies and brochures and friendly faces to talk to – at Fair on the Square for two of the four Fridays in July. The men’s breakfast gathers at the Diner on Wednesday mornings at 10. All of these are opportunities to let the world know that the people of God here at 1 Church St., Delhi, seek to be witnesses of Christ’s love for the world.   We have a great church – you know that at least as well as I know that.  But there are lots of people who don’t quite know what the church is all about – it’s a cool place, sure.  But is it weird?  Scary?  Boring?  Too hard?  We’re not really any of those things, but the way people will know that is through you, through your loving, laughing, caring presence in the world.  And they won’t know that’s Jesus in you if you’re embarrassed to talk about it.  You don’t need to opine on the specifics of atonement or on eschatology.  But a word or two about the peace or joy you felt in worship last Sunday, or an invitation to a friend to join you at the Outdoor service in August could be just what our next new member, whoever he or she is, needs to hear.  Don’t be shy.  You are the witnesses who will make someone feel like this would be a good place to be part of.  

Grace and peace,

Pastor Cathy

June 2024

Rick and I drove to Charlotte, North Carolina at the end of April to be present at the General Conference of the United Methodist Church.  General Conference occurs every four years (or eight when there’s a pandemic) and it gathers United Methodists from all over the globe to make decisions about how the church will witness to the gospel and to the love of Christ for the next four years.  Important decisions were made; love was proclaimed; justice was embraced; joy was experienced.  The most significant decisions made were identified as 3 “R”s.

1. Removal.  Language was eliminated from the Book of Discipline and from the Social Principles of the UMC that said, “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.”   That untruth, and rules based on that untruth, have been taken out of our guiding rules and regulations.  This decision is historic.  It was wonderful to be part of the gathered fellowship celebrating the decision!
2. Regionalization.  The General Conference voted to re-organize the United Methodist Church to enable churches in the United States to make decisions about some aspects of our work with regard to our own ministry and mission, which may be different from the ministry and mission of other churches in other places.  The decision on regionalization is a change in the by-laws of the UMC and has to be ratified by a vote across Annual Conferences over the next quadrennium.
3. Revised Social Principles.  The Board of Church and Society presented the General Conference with a fully updated revision of the Social Principles.  They were slightly amended and then passed with enthusiasm.   The Social Principles had not been significantly updated since 1976.  The new document has a lot to say about creation care, about the ethics of global capitalism and commerce, about how we live together as families, neighbors, and the human family.  It will be available in printed final form in January 2025.

Thanks for supporting me as an observer at General Conference.  It was so good to be part of this new day and new hope for the United Methodist Church.  

Back on the home front, I aim to print a few copies of my sermon each Sunday for those who are interested.  I can email copies out, too; just send me a request at revcathy@gmail.com.

Grace and peace,     

Pastor Cathy