A Message from Pastor Kaji

February 23rd,2023 Categories: Weekly Letter

Dear Ones,

Thank you for joining us as we invited each other into the disciplines of Lent: prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Thank you to the Elders for their leadership in worship on Sunday and for imposing ashes for our neighbors.

This Sunday will be the first in Lent, and we’ll begin at the beginning: in Genesis. We’re going to focus on looking to the trees! I’m taking a read on this text I hadn’t before, but God had something new to say, I guess!

I can’t wait to see you on Sunday.

Pax Christi,
Pastor Kaji

Scripture: Genesis 2:7–9, 15–17, 21–25; 3:1–7 (Year A, p. 157):

7 The SOVEREIGN God crafted the human from the dust of the humus and breathed into its nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living soul. 8 And the SOVEREIGN God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there placed the human whom God had formed. 9 Out of the ground the SOVEREIGN God made grow every tree pleasant to the sight and good for food, and the tree of life in the middle of the garden, along with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

15 The SOVEREIGN God took the human and settled it in the garden of Eden to till and tend it. 16 Then the SOVEREIGN God commanded the human, “From every tree of the garden you may eat freely, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat from it you shall surely die.”

21 The SOVEREIGN God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the human, and it slept; then took one of its sides and closed up its place with flesh in place of it. 22 And the SOVEREIGN God built the side that had been taken from the human into a woman and brought her to the human. 23 Then the human said,

“This time, this one is bone
of my bones and flesh of my flesh;
this one shall be called a woman,
for out of a man this one was taken.”

24 Therefore a man leaves his mother and his father and clings to his woman, and they become one flesh. 25 And they were, the two of them, naked, the man and his woman [or the woman and her man] and were not ashamed.

3:1 Now the serpent had more naked intelligence than any other animal of the field that the SOVEREIGN God had made. And it said to the woman, “Indeed, did God say, ‘You two shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of any tree in the garden we may eat, 3 though of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden God said, ‘You two shall not eat and shall not touch it lest you two die.’ ” 4 Then the serpent said to the woman, “You two will certainly not die, 5 for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you two will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her man, who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.