Mirror on the Mountain:
Reflection from the Sermon on the Mount
(Matthew 5:1–7:29)
Topics at Ten • St. John’s MCC, Raleigh NC

Beginning Sunday, April 3rd, Topics at Ten undertook a journey to the Mountain to learn from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as recorded in the Gospel according to St. Matthew. The journey will take 4 months, but over the course of our class, we will examine each of the startling new ways Jesus interpreted the Law of the Prophets known as the “Ten Commandments.”

Since Children’s Church is on hiatus for the summer, we can move out of the downstairs classroom for the rest of our study. From now until the end of July, we will meet in the Friendship Hall at 10:00 every Sunday morning (except July 3rd). Please let everyone know about the change. Bob Young and Jim Manchester will facilitate our discovery. For more information, please contact Jim Manchester.

The Mirror on the Mountain Study Guide is here. If you miss a week or two, you can catch up with what you missed. We invite you to join us anytime.

 

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For people who are interested, we have started a special Topics at Ten mailing list. People on the list get a periodic update about the specific thing we are studying. You can see email messages from previous weeks by clicking here. You can also sign up to receive the no-more-than-once-a-week mailings.

The Fabric of St. John’s: Our Faith Tapestry
Topics at Ten • Progressive Dinners

Do you recognize all the faith traditions represented in this tapestry?

Time and time again, people are amazed with the diversity of faith that comes together at St. John’s MCC. People from many faith traditions come together to worship our Creator every week. We want to know and understand that rich background, because it makes us strong. Through understanding, we find common threads and finds ways to genuinely like each other.

During the first few weeks of 2011, Topics at Ten will feature discussions about those many traditions. You’ll get the opportunity to share your tradition and learn about others. In another part of this project, we will organize Progressive Dinners so that you can spend some quality time with Saints who live near you. We love to eat, and we want to get to know each other better. You don’t have to do Topics to participate in a Progressive Dinner.

Please complete “The Fabric of St. John’s: Our Faith Tapestry” survey during a worship service in December or early January. Put it in the offering basket or give it to a worship leader. If you are interested in this project, we will contact you soon with all the details about when we will discuss your tradition.

We apologize if you don’t see your faith symbol in the Tapestry yet. There were only so many panels in the quilt. We want to add your tradition. Click here to download the PDF wall poster.

A St. John’s MCC Discipleship Ministry project

Raleigh, NC, USA – October 24, 2010 – “Reconciling Sexuality and Spirituality,” the current topic for Topics at Ten, reached around to world today to include one of its participants who is working temporarily on a contract in Korea.

“We’ve videotaped the class before, and we’ve made class materials available on our website,” said Topics at Ten facilitator Jim Manchester, “but we have never had an interactive, real-time experience with anyone who wasn’t in the room. This is an exciting day!”

“Absent members of the St. John’s MCC Board of Directors have met with us via Skype, so we know we can do it from Friendship Hall,” said Scott Driver as he volunteered to use his laptop computer to facilitate the two-way video and audio link.

“During this ‘Learn OUT Loud’ quarter,” said Manchester, “it is particularly appropriate that St. John’s MCC takes a step to make our discipleship experience available in this unique way.”

This Sunday’s discussion centered on “sexism” – the dualism between male and female that shaped the early Christian church and continues to be seen as an evil mark on the Christian message. “We’ve talked about how Church Fathers who feared women and their own loss of power and influence made statements that belittled half of God’s creation,” Manchester explained to the class. “We find those pronouncements to be ludicrous and completely inconsistent with Jesus’ teachings. We want to return to the simple Gospel that Jesus taught.”

“Most caring people in the civilized world reject the notion that women are second-class people,” Manchester continued. “Jesus rejected that idea too. It is time that Christ-followers help spread the word that hatred, prejudice, and bigotry in any form is contrary to Jesus’ teaching. Jesus wants us to love each other. Hatred of any group of people – even if it is sanctioned by a church in the name of God – is violent bullying, and we can’t allow ourselves to participate in that,” he said.

About the technology used to link the Friendship Hall with Korea, Manchester said, “I don’t know how it works. I’m just amazed and am extremely grateful for the people who have provided the time, technology, expertise, and, most especially, the money to make this happen. Perhaps we will be able to Skype others in for upcoming weeks.”

Reconciling Sexuality and Spirituality

“Reconciling Sexuality and Spirituality,” a provacative examination of the reasons many people think that God detests sexual activity, will begin on Pride Sunday morning, September 26th at 10:00 am in the Downstairs Classroom. We will have preliminary discussions on the two previous Sundays, September 12th and 19th, that will help us promote this study prior to Pride Weekend. If you know someone who believes that a person’s Flesh and Spirit are at war with each other, come to either or both weeks of preparation so you can know what the study is all about.

Even though this study has already started, you may join us anytime!
Study Guide available Online!

Take a walk beside a young man as he lives OUT loud on his journey with Jesus through the most important years of his young life.

Watch with John as Jesus care-fronts the woman at the well who had many husbands. Feel John’s wonder as he experiences the healing of a paralyzed man first hand. Feel the fear in the air as Jesus meets an adulterous woman who everyone else would condemn. Experience the amazement on John’s face as he watched a blind man see people for the first time in his life. Understand what John must have felt when the Master Teacher knelt before him to wash his feet.

For the first time in 10 years, we return to the Bible study that marked the founding of St. John’s MCC in 1976. Topics at Ten opened the Gospel of St. John for a series of thirteen lessons that began on Sunday, May 16th. To learn more about the study, you may access the Online Study Guide by clicking here. You do NOT need to print the online pages. We will provide a printed copy when you come to the class.

Each lesson stands on its own, but together, the Gospel of St. John paints a picture of Jesus from a perspective unlike any other.

This study, co-facilitated by Faye Krouse and Jim Manchester, will allow you to look upon the very face of Jesus and see God’s unconditional love pouring through to everyone Jesus met. It begins each Sunday at 10:00 and usually meets in Friendship Hall.

All are welcome. Please bring your Bible. You will need it.

Lessons from the Gospel of Saint John Plan...

Scripture	Date	Title
John 1:1-14	May 16	In the Beginning - Introduction
John 4:1-26	May 23	The Samaritan Woman at Jacob’s Well
John 4:43-54	May 30	The Nobleman’s Son
John 5:1-30	June 6	The Paralyzed Man at the Sheep Gate
John 7:53-8:11	June 13	The Adulterous Woman
John 9:1-41	June 20	The Man Born without Sight
John 10:1-19	June 27	The Shepherd and the Sheep
John 11:1-43	July 11	Lazarus, Mary, and Martha
John 12:1-8	July 18	Mary Anoints Jesus
John 13:1-17	July 25	The Foot Washing
John 14:5-13; 6:28-59	August 1	More Lessons from the Upper Room
John 15:18-27	August 8	Hatred for Jesus & His Followers
John 13:31-38; 18:15-18; 18:25-27; 21:7-17	August 15	The Problem with Simon Peter

As you would expect from a course about homosexuality and the Bible that is taught at St. John’s MCC, Freed from Guilt … Freed from Shame! exposes the Bible passages that are often turned against us, revealing the original meaning and context of the verses without a twisted political agenda.

But this class goes even deeper.

• We will expose the political agenda in organized religion that brought forth a distorted view of God’s word that has been used to put us down.
• We will work through years-old feelings and voices that made us ashamed of our “secret” lives.
• We will begin to understand God’s gift of sexuality to us and how we can honor that gift while being true to ourselves. Instead of being ashamed of it, we will begin to be grateful to God for it.
• We will turn the tide of bitterness and hatred for those who have abused us when they used their twisted brand of “biblical authority” against us. We will find ways to begin loving them in a brand new way.

All of this happens during Topics at Ten continues this Sunday, and new participants are welcome. We normally meet in Friendship Hall. We will provide the study materials for you.

If you have any questions, please contact Jim Manchester or any of the Saints who have taken this course in the past.

I wonder why it is that we, just like Paul did 2000 years ago, always leave the Self-Control aspect of the Fruit of the Spirit until last. Is it because controlling ourselves always seems to be a difficult task? Maybe it is one of the things that we think we can’t do.

In fact, Self-Control IS always a challenge, but that is why God gives us a special gift – a way to empower our self-control using the Fruit of the Spirit. When we use it, controlling ourselves becomes a bit easier to do.

Do you want to find out how it works? That is what we’re talking about as we wrap up our study of the Fruit of the Spirit during Topics at Ten on Sunday morning, December 20th, starting at 10:00. We will meet in Friendship Hall.

Our assignment this week is to read the section of our materials entitled “Self-Control.” If you already have your materials, please bring them. If not, please contact me, Jim Manchester. I will send you a link to them.

Faith comes from within us. We either decide to have it or we don’t. Faithfulness, on the other hand, is a dependable steadfastness that comes from God’s power.

Gentleness can also be quite powerful. An elephant has enough muscle to tear down a tree, but it is also gentle enough to carefully pluck a single leaf from a tall branch.

These attributes of the Fruit of the Spirit already belong to us. We just have to learn how to harness and use them. We will learn how to do that during Topics at Ten on Sunday morning, December 11th at 10:00 am in Friendship Hall as we continue our study of The Fruit of the Spirit.

Our assignment this week is to read two sections of our materials: “Faithfulness” and “Gentleness.” If you already have your materials, please bring them. If not, please contact me, Jim Manchester. I will send you a link to them.

“Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy!” Most of us are afraid that someone will think of us in a way that reminds them of a less-than-strong-enough garbage bag – especially if we seem just too nice.

Yet, we often find ourselves asking God to “create in us clean and pure hearts – to renew a right spirit within us.”

In these two characteristics of the one Fruit of the Spirit, God has given us the ability to change lives. That transformative power is something that we want to cultivate and spread to as many people as we can.

It means that we break some old, tired habits and start practicing some new ones. We will learn how to do that during Topics at Ten on Sunday morning, December 6th at 10:00 am in Friendship Hall as we continue our study of The Fruit of the Spirit.

Our assignment this week is to read two sections of our materials: “Kindness” and “Goodness.” If you already have your materials, please bring them. If not, please contact me, Jim Manchester. I will send you a link to them.

For many of us, “patience” means waiting around for something to happen. The other word used for this characteristic of The Fruit of the Spirit is “Longsuffering,” but that reminds of something else we hate to do: suffer.

Neither of these things is what Paul talked about when he wrote in Galatians 5:22-23, “By contrast, the Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” (NRSV) Instead, Paul wants us to let God empower us in banishing our quick-tempers.

During this holiday season, wouldn’t it be nice if we could find the secret to controlling impulsive anger? God has already given us that power. We will learn those secrets during Topics at Ten on Sunday morning, November 29th at 10:00 am in Friendship Hall as we continue our study of The Fruit of the Spirit.

Our assignment this week is to read the section of our materials that talks about “Longsuffering.” If you already have your materials, please bring them. If not, please contact me, Jim Manchester. I will send you a link to them.

Joy: Foundation for a Positive Life &
Peace: The Hunger of Human Hearts

How do we find “Joy” when there is so much sadness all around us? How do we find “Peace” when everything seems to be in turmoil at home and abroad?

The materials we are studying this week in preparation for our discussion of The Fruit of the Spirit during Topics at Ten help us understand that better. (If you need a copy of our materials, please contact me, Jim Manchester. I will send you a link to them so you can be ready.)

Our assignment this week is to read the two sections of our materials that talk about “Joy” and “Peace.” If you already have your materials, please bring them to Topics at Ten on Sunday morning, November 22nd, beginning at 10:00. If you don’t have them, we will provide them.

We will meet in Friendship Hall this week. Bring your Bible, and we’ll see you there.

We accept the fact that there are many definitions of the word “Love.” And, for many of us, we understand that the characteristic of The Fruit of the Spirit which manifests itself in us as “Love” is somehow different – a special kind of love.

The materials we are studying this week in preparation for our discussion of The Fruit of the Spirit during Topics at Ten help us understand that better. (If you need a copy of our materials, please contact me, Jim Manchester. I will send you a link to them so you can be ready.)

Our assignment this week is to come up with 101 ways that this Fruit that looks like Love can spring up in our daily lives. We probably can’t do it all by ourselves. That’s why we are a team. Bring your list of your “Ways of Love” to Topics at Ten on Sunday morning, November 15th, beginning at 10:00. We will merge them together and learn from each other.

Since volunteers will be preparing Friendship Hall for our Senior Pastor’s 8th Anniversary Celebration Pot Luck Lunch, we will meet in the Downstairs Classroom this week. Bring your Bible and your list, and we’ll see you there.

Perhaps the greatest gift that the Christ-Child ever gave to us is the Fruit of the Spirit. During the eight weeks leading up to Christmas, we hope you will join the Saints for this intriguing study each Sunday at 10:00 in Friendship Hall. If you have any questions, please see Jim Manchester.

Our study of the Book of Revelation has carried us through great dramatic scenes of torment and triumph, but as we finish our examination of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor in chapter 3, we will take time to reflect on what it all means to us at St. John’s MCC.

Join with us on Sunday morning, November 1st, as we conclude our study of The Gospel of the Revelation according to St. John the Divine during Topics at Ten, beginning at 10:00 in Fellowship Hall. In preparation, please read all of chapters 2 and 3. Set your alarm clock back one hour, and bring your Bible. You’ll need it.

We’ve read St. John the Divine’s letters to the Seven Churches of Asia Minor. We can’t help but wonder, “Could John have written any of those letters to us just as well?”

As we continue to look at the first three chapters of the Book of Revelation, we will ask ourselves about the common themes that John communicates to those ancient churches and try to determine if there is any of his advice that could be directed to us at St. John’s MCC.

We will continue this examination on Sunday, October 25th, during Topics at Ten as we wrap up our study of The Gospel of the Revelation according to St. John the Divine in Fellowship Hall. Please read the first three chapters of Revelation in preparation, and then bring your Bible with you. You’ll need it!

St. John the Divine’s letters to the Seven Churches of Asia Minor brought poignant reminders to the early followers of Christ who were scattered around the world. It seemed as if John had his finger on the pulse of those communities – giving just the right advice at just the right time.

As we look at the first three chapters of the Book of Revelation, we will ask ourselves about the common themes that John communicates to those ancient churches and try to determine if there is any of his advice that could be directed to us at St. John’s MCC.

We will start this examination on Sunday, October 18th, during Topics at Ten as we wrap upour study of The Gospel of the Revelation according to St. John the Divine in Fellowship Hall. Please read the first three chapters of Revelation in preparation, and then bring your Bible with you. You’ll need it!

What do YOU think will happen during the Second Coming of Christ? Some say that people will leave this world while their cars continue driving down the road. Others say that angels will come down from the sky and pluck them up into the air.

If we contend that everything written about in the Book of Revelation occurred in the first century after Jesus’ life, then how can it have anything to do with our everyday life today?

Oh, but it does! Just not in the way that popular, pulp horror fiction would portray it.

Find out all about the Rapture during Topics at Ten this Sunday, October 11th in our study of the Gospel of the Revelation according to St. John the Divine which meets in Fellowship Hall at 10:00. (The Rapture is also the scheduled discussion for Tuesday Night Bible Study on Tuesday, October 13th.) In preparation for this Sunday, please read from Revelation 19:11 through the end of the book.

While we will explore the ending of Revelation this Sunday, our study is not quite over. We will return to the first three chapters after we’ve let the Final Celebration settle into our hearts.

So, as usual, please bring your Bible. You will need it.

After the Final Judgment, everything becomes new again in the City of Light. For years, we have feared these closing moments of Revelation. Some people would like to believe that these events are still to come and that we, as God’s Rainbow people will meet the same fate as the Beast.

But, the war is over, and the fight has already been won. If that is true, why do we still call this dramatic scene the “Final Judgment?” Find out during Topics at Ten this Sunday, October 4th in our study of the Gospel of the Revelation according to St. John the Divine which meets in Fellowship Hall at 10:00. In preparation, please read from Revelation 19:11 through the end of the book.

While we will explore the ending of Revelation this Sunday, our study is not quite over. We will return to the first three chapters after we’ve let the Final Celebration settle into our hearts.

So, as usual, please bring your Bible. You will need it.

The drama comes to its climax in Revelation 18. Those who would use fear and hatred to spread guilt and shame over God’s people meet their ultimate reward. Regretfully, some translations use the name “Babylon” to refer the dwelling place of hate mongers, but that only obscures the truth that such people dwell in a “City of Darkness.” They conduct their lives trying to control others and exercise power over them when Jesus taught us to love and empower others to love each other. The difference in the points of view is startling. The result from changing one’s point of view is amazing.

For this Sunday, September 27th, Topics at Ten will meet at 10:00 am in the Downstairs Classroom so preparations for the Pride Lunch on the Grounds can get an early start. Please read all of Chapter 18 and the first 10 verses of Chapter 19 in preparation for The Gospel of the Revelation according to St. John the Divine. As usual, please bring your Bible. You will need it.