Exciting News and a Call to Prayer

Hello Friends! With great joy I can share with you the news that Dr. Tom Tropp will be joining us as our Music Director effective January 15! Tom comes to us from the First Presbyterian Church of Lake Forest, where he served for a number of years, and North Park University, where he continues his work as a choral director and music professor. Tom, Wife Anne, and daughter Katie (7th grade) live in Lake Forest. Welcome to Tom and the whole Tropp family!

This would be a wonderful time to consider joining the choir!

Tom takes the baton from our dear friend Mary Gingrich, who has served us in an interim capacity since Dimitri German’s leaving. She has led us through this past season with boundless energy, passion, and grace, and brought renewed life to our choir, corporate worship, and music ministry. She now looks forward to taking her place once again in the choir’s alto section.

Just now, though, we pray for Mary, who has recently been diagnosed with cancer and is having surgery tomorrow. Pray for Mary, and Dan, and Dawn during this time a deep sense of God’s peace and presence.

Love From Here

Peter Hawkinson

Week 4: Abraham and His Descendants

(Our Guest blogger through advent is Rev. Hannah Hawkinson, child of the church and pastor of St. Timothy Lutheran Church in Skokie. These reflections appear in the November/December issue of the Gather magazine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America).

Read: Luke 1:54-55; Matthew 1:1-17

As a child, I couldn’t stand reading the genealogies throughout the scriptures. “I wasn’t there!” I would say to my parents and Sunday school teachers. “And I’m not a part of this old-timey Bible family! Why should this even matter to me?” While the genealogies are certainly not the most thrilling or action-packed scriptural passages, as I’ve grown older, I’ve discovered that they’re included for a reason. They have a whole lot of good news to share with us, if we read them with open hearts.

In this final week of Advent, with Christmas on the horizon, we come to the very beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, which outlines Jesus’s ancestry, all the way back to Abraham. Some names may be familiar– Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Boaz, David, Solomon– but for most of us, many names may be new. And it’s easy to get lost in the monotonous rhythm, isn’t it? “So and so was the father of so and so, and him the father of him, and this guy the father of this guy…”

Now read the passage again. This time, focus on which women are mentioned and named in Jesus’s genealogy. Did you notice their names? Five women are mentioned in Jesus’s genealogy: Tamar is a woman whose livelihood is carelessly tossed about by her father-in-law Judah, until she secures her place in his family through trickery and deceit (Genesis 38). Rahab is a Canaanite prostitute who helped the Israelites capture her own home city of Jericho (Joshua 2). Ruth is a Moabite woman and immigrant to Judah who becomes the great-grandmother of King David (Ruth). Bathsheba, the “wife of Uriah,” is a woman repeatedly objectified by King David and forced by him into adultery, widowhood, and second marriage (2 Samuel 11-12, 1 Kings 1-2). Mary, the mother of Jesus, is a young girl, likely no older than 13 or 14, who is pregnant out of wedlock (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John).

What a motley crew! All these women are outsiders, in more ways than one. Some aren’t even Israelites! We can see that, in one way or another, all are forced to be pawns in men’s games, and all are cast away to the margins of God’s people. Yet each one of these women is central to God’s work in the world. Each one is an essential member of God’s family and the line of David.

So it is that Jesus’ genealogy reveals another way God is turning the world right-side-up. In our life together as God’s people, God not only invites outsiders to join us–God actively weaves those whom we reject into the very fabric of our story. Listen to Mary sing the conclusion of her holy song: “God has come to the aid of God’s child Israel, in remembrance of God’s mercy, according to the promise God made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever” (Luke 1:54-55).

Throughout this season of Advent, we’ve reflected together on the ways that God’s topsy-turvy Gospel is turning the world right-side-up. From generation to generation, our God who sees is keeping up God’s promises to God’s people, looking with favor on those who are oppressed, lifting up the lowly, and sending the mighty away empty.

As we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, may we give thanks for God’s topsy-turvy work. May we rejoice in the ways God continues to turn the world right-side-up through our Lord Jesus, who comes to us, in true topsy-turvy fashion, not as a mighty warrior or powerful king, but as a helpless baby born to a poor family. Thanks be to God!

For Reflection: Take a moment to read the entirety of Mary’s song (Luke 1:46-55). What about the song now stands out for you?

Hannah Hawkinson

Week 4: Abraham and His Descendants

(Our Guest blogger through advent is Rev. Hannah Hawkinson, child of the church and pastor of St. Timothy Lutheran Church in Skokie. These reflections appear in the November/December issue of the Gather magazine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America).

Read: Luke 1:54-55; Matthew 1:1-17

As a child, I couldn’t stand reading the genealogies throughout the scriptures. “I wasn’t there!” I would say to my parents and Sunday school teachers. “And I’m not a part of this old-timey Bible family! Why should this even matter to me?” While the genealogies are certainly not the most thrilling or action-packed scriptural passages, as I’ve grown older, I’ve discovered that they’re included for a reason. They have a whole lot of good news to share with us, if we read them with open hearts.

In this final week of Advent, with Christmas on the horizon, we come to the very beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, which outlines Jesus’s ancestry, all the way back to Abraham. Some names may be familiar– Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Boaz, David, Solomon– but for most of us, many names may be new. And it’s easy to get lost in the monotonous rhythm, isn’t it? “So and so was the father of so and so, and him the father of him, and this guy the father of this guy…”

Now read the passage again. This time, focus on which women are mentioned and named in Jesus’s genealogy. Did you notice their names? Five women are mentioned in Jesus’s genealogy: Tamar is a woman whose livelihood is carelessly tossed about by her father-in-law Judah, until she secures her place in his family through trickery and deceit (Genesis 38). Rahab is a Canaanite prostitute who helped the Israelites capture her own home city of Jericho (Joshua 2). Ruth is a Moabite woman and immigrant to Judah who becomes the great-grandmother of King David (Ruth). Bathsheba, the “wife of Uriah,” is a woman repeatedly objectified by King David and forced by him into adultery, widowhood, and second marriage (2 Samuel 11-12, 1 Kings 1-2). Mary, the mother of Jesus, is a young girl, likely no older than 13 or 14, who is pregnant out of wedlock (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John).

What a motley crew! All these women are outsiders, in more ways than one. Some aren’t even Israelites! We can see that, in one way or another, all are forced to be pawns in men’s games, and all are cast away to the margins of God’s people. Yet each one of these women is central to God’s work in the world. Each one is an essential member of God’s family and the line of David.

So it is that Jesus’ genealogy reveals another way God is turning the world right-side-up. In our life together as God’s people, God not only invites outsiders to join us–God actively weaves those whom we reject into the very fabric of our story. Listen to Mary sing the conclusion of her holy song: “God has come to the aid of God’s child Israel, in remembrance of God’s mercy, according to the promise God made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever” (Luke 1:54-55).

Throughout this season of Advent, we’ve reflected together on the ways that God’s topsy-turvy Gospel is turning the world right-side-up. From generation to generation, our God who sees is keeping up God’s promises to God’s people, looking with favor on those who are oppressed, lifting up the lowly, and sending the mighty away empty.

As we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, may we give thanks for God’s topsy-turvy work. May we rejoice in the ways God continues to turn the world right-side-up through our Lord Jesus, who comes to us, in true topsy-turvy fashion, not as a mighty warrior or powerful king, but as a helpless baby born to a poor family. Thanks be to God!

For Reflection: Take a moment to read the entirety of Mary’s song (Luke 1:46-55). What about the song now stands out for you?

Hannah Hawkinson