forest hill Musings -- weekly reflections on Scripture
Musings -- weekly reflections on Scripture
I began writing these short essays for our weekly e-newsletter. They served two purposes: First, they gave me an initial run at the Scripture that I would be preaching on -- an opportunity to start thinking about the spiritual and life questions that the sermon might address. Second, they serve as advertising; an invitation to folks to join us on Sunday morning and see how my thinking has developed between the first take on my questions and the final sermon that gets delivered.
We've started collecting these at this website so that people who aren't already subscribed to our newsletter can get a sense of what's coming up in worship. Feel free to check back weekly to see the reflection for the week, or click here to subscribe to our email newsletter and have these delivered into your inbox every Friday
Rev. Stephen Fetter
March 30, 2025
Fourth Sunday of Lent
“Daring Questions: 4. End Times”
Our worship themes in these weeks before Easter grow out of the daring questions you sent me last month. Here are this week’s questions:
- Why was book of Revelation written? How should we view it?
- Would be interested in your “take” on these scriptures and if you too see its predictions coming to pass.
We would have a much easier time understanding the Book of Revelation if it weren’t in the Bible!
If we could read the Book of Revelation alongside a dozen other Jewish apocalyptic books written around the same time, it would be so much easier to compare and contrast it to other writings in the same genre. We wouldn’t imagine for a minute that it should be read as predicting the future; we’d see it for what it really is: one more example of a wild and supernatural style of social commentary – exaggerating the evils of the world and their possible consequences in order to make a point. It’s only because this book appears among our holy texts that we imagine it is intended to be taken as a divine prediction, rather than as a human work of imagination.
Read more: Musings March 27, 2025 -- Daring Questions 4 -- End times
March 23, 2025
Third Sunday of Lent
“Daring Questions:
3. Heaven and Hell”
Our worship themes in these weeks before Easter grow out of the daring questions you sent me last month. Here are this week’s questions:
- How should we view heaven and hell? Do they exist?
- Do we believe hell and purgatory exist? if so, who goes there?
- Aren't we all forgiven?
I grew up with a child-like view of heaven and hell. Heaven was the place that “good” people ended up when they died; Hell was a place of torment that none of us ever want to experience. St. Peter’s job was to stand at the Pearly Gates and tell the souls of people who had died which road to take, depending on the things that were recorded in an enormous book in front of him. In that cartoon version of a final judgement there was no appeal, no opportunity even to argue your case, and no mercy. Even as a child I couldn’t reconcile that summary justice with what I was being taught about a God who loves and forgives. But I thought that this was what all church people were supposed to believe, and that God would be mad if I expressed my doubts!
How astonishing, then, to learn as an adult that Christians have never agreed about the nature of Heaven and Hell – especially about Hell! Some Christians think that a final judgment happens the moment we die; others that we need to wait till the end of the world. Some think it will happen when the Messiah comes; some think it’ll happen 1000 years later; some think the Second Coming is itself a myth. Some think Hell is a lake of fire; some think it’s nothing more than a dreary place full of regret and lost hopes. Some think Hell is something to fear; some think it’s no more than a metaphor to scare people into good behaviour. Over the centuries, legends, myths and artwork about the nature of Hell have multiplied to the point that they’d be unrecognizable to Biblical authors. And lots and lots of Christians have rejected the idea of “Hell” altogether, preferring to trust in a God of forgiveness who will ultimately reconcile all sin and repair all hurt.
Read more: Musings March 23, 2025 Daring Questions 3. Heaven and Hell
March 16, 2025
Second Sunday of Lent
“Daring Questions: 2. Evil”
Our worship themes in these weeks before Easter grow out of the daring questions you sent me last month. Here are this week’s questions:
- Why is there evil in the world?
- What about Old Testament violence by the good guys?
- It appears that we live in a world where "cheaters and scumbags" matter; Is the Lord on vacation?
“Evil” is one of those churchy words that you don’t hear much in secular society. I suspect that people who don’t attend our worship services imagine we mean something like you might see in a bad Halloween movie, and they write us off as being superstitious and archaic. Halloween movies may titillate, but most modern people don’t think they describe the real things that have the power to hurt us.
Read more: Musings March 16, 2025 -- Daring Questions 2. Evil
March 9, 2025
First Sunday of Lent
“Daring Questions:
1. Prayer”
Our worship themes in these weeks before Easter grow out of the questions you sent me last month. Here are this week’s questions:
- Why are some prayers unanswered?
- Is there such thing as a proper way to pray - the hows? When? Where?
- Can we just talk to God just like a child to a parent, or like a friend to friend?
- What is the sign of the cross in praying for?
We sometimes imagine that prayer is like going into the Boss’s office. We screw up our courage, put on our best game face, and gird ourselves up to ask for a raise, or a vacation, or job change. If we say the right words, and the Boss is feeling generous, we might come out of the office with at least some of what we hope for. But if the Boss is grumpy or capricious, there’s always the danger of being ejected like the President of Ukraine, with nothing but bad feelings to show for it.
Is that what God is like?
Is that why we pray?
Read more: Musings March 9, 2025 "Daring Questions: 1. Prayer"
March 2, 2025
Transfiguration Sunday
“Finding the Holy”
When I stand at the brink of Niagara Falls and watch water plunge over its rim into the abyss below, I am overcome with awe at my own insignificance beside such power. Here is beauty and raw strength that knows nothing of me, and yet moves me to tears.
Standing at the foot of the Rocky Mountains has done that to me too, marvelling up at crags that have been there for thousands of years, and will outlast me for thousands more. Gaping at the northern lights last Thanksgiving was another experience of wonder that put my life, with all its struggles and striving, into humbling perspective. In the face of that kind of immense and impersonal majesty, my oh-so-human goals are trivial.
Is the awe that rises within us during that kind of encounter with raw power also part of what happens when we find something “holy?”