Schadenfreude

"I'll tell you what the problem is. We have all these criminals because the judges are soft on crime. Throw them UNDER the jail and see what happens."

That little thrill you feel as you say this to your friends at McDonald’s, or wherever you hang out, is called schadenfreude. You are justifying yourself by wishing evil upon another, and you are deriving pleasure from imagining that outcome.

Paul reminds us in Romans that we are justified by faith, not by schadenfreude. We are justified by our faith in God, and we then have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace. If we look to the misery of others for our justification, we have turned our back upon God's offer of grace.

Click here to join the congregations of Community Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte Kentucky and the Chapel of St. Starbuck's the Jittery for this week's sermon on how we turn from God's grace in our sermon called Schadenfreude.

Community Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte, Kentucky, was built on the casting floor of a 19th Century iron blast furnace. We use "The Casting Floor" as an image for the power of the Spirit to form us. Visit us at http://communitypresbyterian.org.

Cheap Grace, Lazy Faith

What do the words "saved" and "salvation" mean to you? What do you suppose these words meant to a mentally challenged slave girl or a minimum wage jailer in Europe during the first century? Today the joint congregations of the Chapel of St. Starbuck the Jittery and Community Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte, Kentucky talk about these words and others within the context of the three-fold relationship described by Jesus in John 17 and the stories of the slave girl and the jailer from Acts 16. Click here to join us for this week's sermon, Cheap Grace, Lazy Faith.

Community Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte, Kentucky, was built on the casting floor of a 19th Century iron blast furnace. We use "The Casting Floor" as an image for the power of the Spirit to form us. Visit us at http://communitypresbyterian.org.

Leading Ladies

The Second Testament was written by men about the men's activities in the new church. The activities of the women didn't get nearly enough attention. Mother's Day is a good time to balance the scales a bit by talking about Lydia, the first convert to Christianity in Europe. Lydia was an important person in her community -- a dealer in purple. Her influence in spreading the Gospel isn't documented, but it's unthinkable that someone of her standing would not influence the course of her community, and the church at Philippi which became one of Paul's proudest accomplishments.

Today's service is special in another regard -- a gentleman who rejoices in the name Terwilliger Jones came by and offered to play the Offertory on his Zither.

Click here to join the joint congregations of the Chapel of St. Starbuck's and Community Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte, Kentucky for this week's sermon, Leading Ladies.

Community Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte, Kentucky, was built on the casting floor of a 19th Century iron blast furnace. We use "The Casting Floor" as an image for the power of the Spirit to form us. Visit us at http://communitypresbyterian.org.

Getting Above Your Raisin's

I heard once of a child abuse case in which the child was beaten severely. The defense was that the grandmother was trying to "flop the child's liver" as she had been raised to do. The Lord only knows where this family got the idea that an infant's liver needed to be "flopped" or what that meant, but in practice it injured the child. Here in the hills, we have a saying, "Don't get above your raisin's" meaning not to act above your station in life or deviate from the way you were raised. I'd suggest that there's a better meaning: sometimes the way we were raised gets in the way of our hearing the voice of God. If we are to hear God's sometimes radical message, we must get above our raisin's.

Community Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte, Kentucky, was built on the casting floor of a 19th Century iron blast furnace. We use "The Casting Floor" as an image for the power of the Spirit to form us. Visit us at http://communitypresbyterian.org.