LIVING WITH DEATH
Acts 6:8-14 and 7:54-60; John 14:1-7
Rev. Dr. Jeanne Knepper
April 24, 2005

Amy, a nurse in her mid-thirties, has spent many years caring for the elderly. One of her favorite jokes when I first met her was a short question: Why did the monkey fall out of the tree? [pause]

Because he was dead.

Have you noticed that people often joke about what worries or disturbs them, about the topics that leave them unsettled in their lives? I’ve found that I can often learn quite a bit about people’s issues, over time, by paying attention to the jokes they tell. Do they revolve around dirt and race [my father’s jokes, when I was young] or religion [my mother’s] or marriage or work or in-laws or politics? Whatever it is, you can bet that it is an issue of some ambivalence and discomfort in their lives. And Amy’s joke? Did you laugh; suck your breath in hard, feel kind of squeamish? It’s all a marker of how uncomfortable we are with the subject of death in our times.

If you live in the United States; if you’ve not been a soldier, police officer, fire fighter or health worker, it’s likely that you’ve had very little experience with the immediate process and reality of death. I know this is true for me. I’m in my late 50s. In my lifetime, I have only been present when two people died, my father and Florence Faust. In each case, the machines that monitored pulse and blood pressure were off. Without them to tell me what was happening, the transition was so gradual, so smooth, that it took a nurse with a stethoscope to tell me that life was gone. And yet, we often fear death. And sometimes, I think, the fear itself makes death harder.

I think the author William Saroyan may have been voicing a secret feeling many of us have when he quipped, near the end of his life, “Everybody has got to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?�

Now what, indeed. We don’t know how to talk about death, these days. Our times and our culture counsel us to never give up hope, to insist, even in the face of the most dire of circumstances, that our eyes are fixed to one goal, that we might still live, that our loved ones might not die. And in the process, I believe that we often leave those who are looking at the impending face of death very, very alone.

It was not always so. Two centuries ago very important aspect of the life of faith was the victorious death.
When I was in graduate school, I did research for my Methodist History professor, Jean Miller Schmidt. She was writing a book on the history of Methodist women, Grace Sufficient. I discovered that the Methodist Magazine published many articles about women’s deaths in the early 1800s.

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CONNECTIONS
UPUMC
• April Forum features Jefferson Smith, founder of the Oregon Bus Project, Sunday, April 24, All-church potluck, 11:30pm, forum at Noon.
• Remembering Stephen Wood, Sunday, May 1, 11:30am, Errol Stephenson Hall.
• Education Committee meets with lunch, Sunday, May 1, 12:45pm.
• Dinner [vegetable beef soup], 6:30pm and movie, Blind Faith, at 7pm, Wednesday, May 4.
• Mother’s Day Breakfast, 8:30am, Sunday, May 8, Errol Stephenson Hall. Please sign up.
• Staff-Parish Relations Committee meets Monday, May 9, 6:30pm, Errol Stephenson Hall.
• Administrative Council meets Monday, May 9, 7:30pm, Errol Stephenson Hall.
• Outreach Committee meets Tuesday, May 10, 7pm, Errol Stephenson Hall.
• United Methodist Women met Wednesday, May 11, 10am, Errol Stephenson Hall.

THE LARGER CHURCH
• Meal and Vigil for Rev. Beth Stroud, 6:30pm, Wednesday, April 27, UPUMC.
• Metro District Gathering for Lay Leadership to prepare for Annual Conference, 111 NE Failing, 9:30am-noon, Saturday, April 30.

THE COMMUNITY
• School Board Candidate Forum jointly sponsored by UPUMC and the Portsmouth Neighborhood Association, 7-8:30pm, Tuesday, April 26, Sanctuary.
• New Columbia Open House, N Alaska and Trenton,10am-noon, Tuesday, May 3.
• St Johns Parade, Noon, Saturday, May 7.

FUTURE EVENTS, FOR YOUR CALENDAR
• Pentecost, Sunday, May 15.
• Memorial Weekend Picnic, Sunday, May 29.
• North Portland Pride Picnic, Noon-4pm,Sunday, June 12, Bell Tower Lawn.
• Plan to be a Family Friend at Creation Vacation, Tuesday-Saturday, July 5-9, 2005.
• All-Church Beach Retreat at Camp Magruder, Friday-Sunday, September 16-18, 2005.

WEEKLY AT UPUMC
• Choir practices Sundays at 9:30am, Tuesdays at 6pm, Sanctuary.
• Men’s Group. Tuesdays, 10am, Narthex.
• Let’s Go Walking, Wednesdays, 1pm, Narthex.
• Morrison Child and Family Services, Errol Stephenson Hall and Nursery, Mondays, 1-4pm.
• Alcoholics Anonymous, Narthex, Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays at 8pm, weekly.
• Overeaters Anonymous, Wednesdays at 7pm, Saturdays at 3pm.

THE NURSERY IS STAFFED DURING WORSHIP

THANKS TO COFFEE STOPPERS
The three coffee stop weekends in April netted the church over $800. Thanks to the volunteers!

PLEASE DON’T GO HUNGRY. WE HAVE FOOD IN OUR PANTRY, LOCATED IN THE HALLWAY LEADING TO ERROL STEPHENSON HALL, TAKE WHAT YOU NEED.

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WITH GLAD AND GENEROUS HEARTS: LIVING ABUNDANTLY IN HARD TIMES
Joel 2:21-29; Psalm 23; John 10:1-10; Acts 2:42-47
By Rev. Dr. Jeanne Knepper
April 17, 2005

We’ve been planning for a long time that today would be a day when we looked at our visions for the program and future of University Park UMC as a part of our worship experience. And so it was with some concern, beyond my feelings of disappointment, outrage, and pastoral concern, that I heard the news that the Oregon Supreme Court had invalidated over three thousand marriages this week. I officiated at six of those marriages and know them to be every bit as much promises of commitment and love as any of the other marriages at which I have been the officiating pastor. I moved between wanting to shout: “How dare you treat people, any people, in this way!� and wanting to weep: “How long, O Lord, how long?� In the midst of all these feelings, I wondered, how do we address the “vision thing� in such a time as this?

And then I read the scriptures again and remembered: the church has always been called on to be itself in the midst of hard times; has always had to speak its words of love, life and justice in the face of hate, death, and injustice. That is part of what has defined us throughout time: church, at its best, is the place, the gathering, where hope and vision of the realm of God live, no matter what manner of cruelty and evil are in vogue in the world. Church is the place where believers live abundantly, with glad and generous hearts, even when the times are hard.

We’ve been learning something of the beginnings of Christianity in the Sunday School class. Sometimes, it’s easy to imagine that the early times of Christianity must have been easier, a time when people were around who had actually known Jesus and had heard him speak. In fact, the times were desperate and deadly serious for followers of “The Way,� as Christians called themselves in the beginning.

Rome reserved crucifixion, its cruelest form of death, for political criminals, for rebels and leaders of revolts against Roman rule. Jesus was executed as a political criminal, as a man who was being called “King of the Jews,� the Messiah, a man anointed to reestablish the Kingdom of David, to drive the Romans out of the land. His followers, scared at first and then emboldened by the presence of the Spirit with them, were Jews. They gathered in the synagogues, they observed the Sabbath, and they told the stories of Jesus and met together, remembering him in a common meal and in a community of believers.

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UPUMC
• Lunch Bunch, McGrath’s Fish House, SE Mill Plain and 126th Avenue, Vancouver, 12:30pm, Tuesday, April 19. Coming? Tell Bev Read, 503-289-6921.
• Dinner and Movie, Wednesday, April 20, 6:30pm spaghetti dinner, 7pm movie, Inherit the Wind.
• April Forum features Jefferson Smith, founder of the Oregon Bus Project, Sunday, April 24, All-church potluck, 11:30pm, forum at noon.
• Remembering Stephen Wood, Sunday, May 1, 11:30am, Errol Stephenson Hall.
• Education Committee meets with lunch, Sunday, May 1, 12:45pm.

THE LARGER CHURCH
• Meal and Vigil for Rev. Beth Stroud, 6:30pm, Wednesday, April 27, UPUMC.
• Metro District Gathering for Lay Leadership to prepare for Annual Conference, 111 NE Failing, 9:30am-noon, Saturday, April 30.

THE COMMUNITY
• Neighborhood Clean-Up Day, April 23 with a junk disposal site at St Johns Lutheran Church.
• School Board Candidate Forum jointly sponsored by UPUMC and the Portsmouth Neighborhood Association, 7-8:30pm, Tuesday, April 26, Sanctuary.
• New Columbia Open House, N Alaska and Trenton,10am-noon, Tuesday, May 3.

FUTURE EVENTS, FOR YOUR CALENDAR
• St Johns Parade, noon, Saturday, May 7.
• Mother’s Day Breakfast, 8:30am, Sunday, May 8, Errol Stephenson Hall. Please sign up.
• Pentecost, Sunday, May 15.
• Memorial Weekend Picnic, Sunday, May 29.
• North Portland Pride Picnic, Noon-4pm,Sunday, June 12, Bell Tower Lawn.
• Plan to be a Family Friend at Creation Vacation, Tuesday-Saturday, July 5-9, 2005.
• All-Church Beach Retreat at Camp Magruder, Friday-Sunday, September 16-18, 2005.

WEEKLY AT UPUMC
• Choir practices Sundays at 9:30am, Tuesdays at 6pm, Sanctuary.
• Men’s Group. Tuesdays, 10am, Narthex.
• Let’s Go Walking, Wednesdays, 1pm, Narthex.
• Morrison Child and Family Services, Errol Stephenson Hall and Nursery, Mondays, 1-4pm.
• Alcoholics Anonymous, Narthex, Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays at 8pm, weekly.
• Overeaters Anonymous, Wednesdays at 7pm, Saturdays at 3pm.

THE NURSERY IS STAFFED DURING WORSHIP

SCHOOL BOARD CANDIDATE FORUM
UPUMC and the Portsmouth Neighborhood Association are jointly sponsoring a moderated school board candidates’ forum Tuesday evening, April 26, 7-8:30pm. Candidates for the North/Northeast School Board position 4 have been invited. Jeanne Knepper will moderate the forum, which will follow the format of the mayoral forum held at UPUMC last October. This event is open to everyone. We will offer refreshments afterwards. Please plan to attend.

PLEASE DON’T GO HUNGRY. WE HAVE FOOD IN OUR PANTRY, LOCATED IN THE HALLWAY LEADING TO ERROL STEPHENSON HALL, TAKE WHAT YOU NEED.

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The Long Journey Home
Psalm 116, Acts 2:14a, 36-41, Luke 24:13-35
April 10, 2005
Rev. Marcia J. Hauer

It was the worst day of our lives. We were there. We saw it all. We saw the Roman soldiers take him away. We saw them beat him. We saw Pontius Pilate condemn him to death, and not just to death, but the most horrible and humiliating death that the Romans had. You knew, didn’t you, that crucifixion was reserved for traitors and people who were likely to undermine the authority of the Emperor? How could they take this gentle, loving man and impose such a horrible, painful punishment? None of us expected it to happen. All of us believed that, somehow, Jesus would be able to continue his preaching and teaching us what God wanted for us and from us. How could they take him away from us when we needed him so badly? At the end of it all, after we saw him die and after we saw him placed in the tomb, we didn’t know what to do except go home. It was the end of the dream, the end of hope.

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