St. Paul's United Church of Christ

November’s Mission Offering Is the Community Thanksgiving Dinner.

This month’s mission offering goes to support our Community Thanksgiving Meal.  Your gifts will help to underwrite this year’s effort to provide approximately 300 meals to our neighbors!  The annual Thanksgiving Meal is offered free of charge to anyone who desires a traditional Thanksgiving meal with members of the wider community.  We could not do the meal without your generous support!    

The Somerset Community Thanksgiving Dinner will be held on Thursday, November 26th at St. Paul’s UCC (202 W. Union St., Somerset).  This year’s dinner will offer dine-in and take-out options between 11:00 am-1:00pm, or until food runs out.  

Thanksgiving Dinner Volunteers Needed…On Thanksgiving Day, with shifts ranging from 6am to 2pm, and on our prep day, Tuesday, November 24^th beginning at 1pm.  Volunteers working with food will need to wear gloves.  We invite all volunteers to pre-register for a time and job prior to the meal by calling our church office at 814-445-4534.

Dear St. Paul’s Friends and Family,

The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.  (Matthew 23:11-12)

The literary proverb, “the clothes make the man” has been around for quite some time.  Mark Twain expanded upon it adding that, “Naked people have little to no influence on society.”  Erasmus, a noted 15^th century priest translated it from ancient Greek sources, thus making the proverb more accessible for modern audiences.  Its meaning is fairly evident.  If you want to be somebody, you’d better look the part.  “Dress for success” as my grandmother would say!  

My initial foray into looking the part happened in seventh grade when I joined the boy’s junior high basketball team.  I was always one of the biggest boys in my class, so the coach was excited to see me join the team.  I started the first three games before he finally figured out that I really wasn’t very good at basketball.  During that time, I also learned that even if you weren’t very good player, you could at least look like you were a serious player.   The addition of Nike socks and Air Jordan shoes could make all the difference in the world.  Unfortunately for me, my parents weren’t as ready as I was to jump on the dress for success bandwagon, so I made do with the off-brand gym shoes from K-Mart whose bold branding stated, “Got it all for basketball!”  In retrospect, I doubt that Air Jordans would have helped me be a better player!  

Jesus was making a similar point in the scripture lesson for this Sunday.  He was referring to devotional apparel that many devout Jewish men in his day wore when he was criticizing the Pharisees for making their phylacteries broad and fringes long.  Prayer shawls with fringes were donned during worship and prayer.  Similarly, phylacteries were also worn and are small leather boxes that contained important passages of scripture which they tied to their foreheads or arms.  The Pharisees were an important group within the ancient Jewish religious community.  They were part of a lay renewal movement whose chief mission was to increase piety among the general population by encouraging more rigorous adherence to religious law.  

The problem was that some Pharisees let their newfound influence go to their heads.  They began to have a following, and before long found out that making a show out of their piety would help them gain more followers.  They dressed for success with more ornate prayer shawls, clothes, and phylacteries!  Jesus wasn’t buying it.  The religious rigors that they were demanding out of others was not being matched by sincere practice on their end.  Jesus’ advice was to listen to their teaching, but to not follow their example.  Instead, Jesus called for a new kind of devotion, one born not out of worship acts, but out of how one lived one’s life.  He counseled an ethic of life based on service and humility.  He said, “The greatest among you will be your servant.”

Jesus’ teachings about faith and devotion are especially pertinent today.  We continue to live in a world where clothes make the man (or woman). There are plenty of folks trying to look the part, but not really delivering the goods when it comes to humbly serving their neighbors.  Leaders and influencers of all stripes think it’s enough to slide on the proverbial Air Jordans of their field with hopes of fooling enough people into following them even if they fail to serve the greater good of those they aspire to lead.  The church is even guilty of such duplicity.  The bitter irony of this type of failure is that not only are we failing to be genuinely ourselves, but we are also failing to model ourselves after the Servant of the Servants, Jesus Christ himself.  

May the Holy Spirit guide us into renewed devotion as we seek to follow Jesus as our most authentic selves.  May the Spirit also remind us that God’s love is not dependent upon our achievements or aspirations, but rather, God loves us without condition.  God loves us for who we are.

Blessings on your journey!

Pastor Matt

St. Paul’s vital ministries would not be possible without your support. Whether we are providing regular religious services, spiritual and emotional care to meet the needs of community members, food and housing assistance, musical opportunities for children, youth, and adults, or offering our building and congregation as a community resource, none of these ministries exist without the support of members and friends of St. Paul’s.

Please consider supporting our community work by giving in person or online.

Online monetary gifts may be given through tithe.ly.  You can make a gift by accessing our website (see the “Give” button on the homepage or the button below), www.stpaulsuccsomerset.org.  You may also download the free tithe.ly app to your smartphone or tablet and customize it to meet your needs.  Although the service is free to the church, credit card and transaction fees are assessed to each gift, so when making an online contribution through tithe.ly, please consider using the bank funds transfer feature, which has the lowest fee of one percent per transaction.  For your convenience, you may also select the reoccurring gift option if you would like to make regular gifts to the church.  If you have any questions or need assistance using this service, please do not hesitate to contact Cindy, our financial secretary.  And as always, we still accept and appreciate your mail-in contributions!

We value your support as we partner to do Christ’s life-giving work! 

Blessings,

Pastor Matt