Pastor's E-Letter

Pastor's E-Letter

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Showing items filed under “Annette Stiles Pendergrass”

Choosing to Love

“It (love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” - I Corinthians 13:7-8 
 
There are certain scriptures that are what I call my “go-to” scriptures – words that serve as anchors for me. I return to these words over and over when I’m struggling and when I need to be reminded, grounded, anchored in certain fundamental truths. I Corinthians 13, especially verses 4-8, and even more precisely, the verses above serve as one of those go-to scriptures. I’ve shared before that I came across those words as a young 18-year-old struggling with a painful situation in my life. As I read these words, it was like they leaped off the page and were seared into my heart and my brain. Suddenly it was clear to me that love is a choice – an act of the will. And when we make that choice, when we decide to love, we decide to love no matter what. We decide to bear all things. We choose to believe and hope and endure all things. When we do that, when we choose to love, love indeed never ends. 
 
I signed an anniversary card this week for Bob and Nancy Stair who will celebrate their 73rd wedding anniversary this Sunday, Valentine’s Day.Bob and Nancy didn’t manage to stay married for 73 years without making the intentional choice to love – and, in that love, to bear, believe, hope, and endure all kinds of things! A 73-year marriage is a thing of beauty – a thing to celebrate and marvel over. But such relationships don’t just happen. Relationships endure as a result of choosing to love, and to stay “in love”, day in and day out, in big ways and small ways. 
 
Love is always an intentional choice. That is true whether we are talking about loving relationships in a marriage, in our families, friendships, or our relationships with one another in the church. Loving one another for better or worse, through thick and thin, is never easy. It will always involve choosing to bear with one another – to hang in there when we disappoint one another or let one another down. It will always involve choosing to believe the best about one another, even when we don’t act our best. It will always involve choosing to hope, trusting that our relationships can endure, even when they are tested and strained. 
 
Here at Suntree UMC, our vision is to be a community that seeks to love God, love each other, and love our neighbors in extraordinary ways. It’s a tall order. It is a daunting vision because the kind of extraordinary love we hope to exhibit reflects the extraordinary, unconditional love that God has for us and that we see lived in human flesh and blood in Jesus Christ. As we talked about last week – it reflects the love that exists between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit that we are drawn into and enabled to reflect. It is a love that unites us in relationship with one another and in mission and service to the world in the name of Christ. 
 
But to live out that kind of love, for that vision to be fulfilled in us, we must choose love again, and again, and again. We must choose to bear with one another in love, to believe in one another, to hope and endure together even when it would be easier to walk away. 
 
This Sunday is St. Valentine’s Day. The day takes its name from a saint of the early church, Valentine, that was martyred on February 14, AD 269. There are all kinds of legends about Valentine which make it hard to separate fact from fiction. There may have even been more than one saint by this name. But what is clear is that Valentine is remembered for his love and devotion to God, a love which he refused to renounce, and which led to his execution. Later, St. Valentine came to be associated with romantic love – owing to some of the legends that surround his life. 
 
I know there is so much commercial hype around the day, it can seem ridiculous. But I’m all for anything that reminds us of the beauty and the gift of love in all its forms. (And I’m personally just fine with a box of chocolates and some lovely flowers from my sweetheart. Just saying.) But this week in worship, we will be reflecting on the reality that everything about who we are as a church is “All About Love”, is all about the ways that we are called to reflect the love of God in our relationships with one another and to bear the fruit of love in the world. Sunday, we will dig into Jesus' words in John 15:8-17. There Jesus says to us, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” I hope you will choose to join us for worship, either online or in-person, where we will give thanks for the gift of God’s love in our lives and be challenged to choose love and to bear the fruit of love that makes a lasting difference in the lives of others. 
 
In Christ’s love,  
Pastor Annette  
Posted by Annette Stiles Pendergrass with

Pastors E-Letter 1/29/21

My earliest memory of failure comes from 1st grade. I had been in 1st grade for a few months and was accustomed to getting papers back with a “smiley” face stamped on it – meaning I had done a good job. Up until this point in my educational career – I had only seen “smiley” faces. But this day was different. I remember getting a paperback where I had very carefully practiced writing the letter “N” all the way across and down the paper, on every line. I must say, they were beautiful “N”s. Very neat. Very consistent. But there was one problem. They were all backward. So, instead of seeing the “smiley” face stamp on the paper, there was a “straight face”, meaning it wasn’t a frown face (thank goodness), but it also wasn’t smiley. It was somewhere in between. It was the teacher’s way of acknowledging that though my work was carefully executed, it wasn’t accurate.
 
I took one look at the “straight face” and was crushed. I’ll never forget the feeling of “shame” that rose in me, and no doubt spread across my face. I couldn’t have named the feeling as shame at the time, but I know now that shame is what I felt. In my little first grade mind, I was a complete failure. And I made up my mind, on the spot, that I would never be guilty again of the tragic mistake of making my “N”s backward.
 
You can see from that story that even as I child, I was not wired as one who would easily embrace and endure failure. In fact, that experience of shame in response to failure would become a pattern in my life that for many years drove me to work and work and work in the hope of avoiding failure and the possibility of the shame that might follow in its wake.
 
But somewhere along the way, no doubt due to the work of God’s grace in me, I ever so slowly began to discover that failure could lead to more than just shame. Over time, I began to discover that failure, when viewed through the light and love of God and the grace of Jesus, could be transformative in my life. I might still be embarrassed or feel some shame in the wake of failure. But I also discovered that God could use the experience of failure in my life to teach me things that I needed to learn, to grow my heart, and to enable me to walk alongside others in the wake of their failures.
 
This week in worship, we will continue in our message series, “The Healing Practice of Celebration”, shining the light on the experience of failure and the ways that God is present with us to lead us from shame and regret to growth and even gratitude. We will be using the story of Jesus’ call of Levi, the tax collector, found in Luke 5:27-32. There we discover that Jesus came to call not the righteous, not the folks that have never known failure or regret, not the folks who always have it all together, but sinners, and failures, and misfits. And in the call of Jesus, we can discover the grace that forgives us, heals us, and moves us past our failures and flops and into a life of service, meaning, and purpose where no experience is wasted and where God can work again and again for our good. This is good news! This is news worth celebrating!
 
I pray you will join us in worship this week, either online or in person. And be prepared to make some noise as we celebrate and give thanks to God for the power of Christ to lead us from failure to hope, to life, to joy!
 
Grace and Peace,
Annette
Posted by Annette Stiles Pendergrass with

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