scowfer@susumc.org
Cell: +1 814 765 9813
Parsonage: (814) 765-4094
In Honor of Duwayne Guelich
December 15, 1937 -
September 5, 2025
"A Flower Remembered"
by John Rutter
Sung by Pastor Steven Cowfer
Pastor Steve
Message for October!
“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (KJV)
As we prepare to move from summer into fall and from fall into winter, I am reminded that as all things must do, our lives also must change. Change is never an easy thing to deal with, although some find it easier than others. As many wise men and women have said throughout history, the only thing that doesn’t change is change itself.
Unfortunately, though, many times we seem to think that our faith doesn’t change. Or even worse, we seem to think that our faith shouldn’t change. We argue that God is not able to change. This may be correct as we understand it, but in reality it is not the truth. We believe, as have Christians throughout the ages, that God is eternal. Eternal, though, is simply another word for something existing outside of time. To say that God exists outside of time is to say that change doesn’t apply to God. When we use the term ‘change’ we are referring to something or someone or some situation that is altered over time. Change, then, implies that the thing changing exists in time. If God doesn’t exist in time, then God can’t change or not change. God simply is.
Though God simply is, our faith in Him is something that does exist in time and something that also changes over time. If our faith changes, then we have to ask how that change occurs. We come to know God better the more our relationship with Him grows. We find ourselves at a time and place in our world where changes seem to be coming too fast to handle. We see it in our families, we see it in our communities, we see it in our country and the world as a whole. It can just seem to be too much at times. As of late, we have also continued to suffer from the violence that seems to be approaching from every direction. We see the continuing wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. We see it with the conflicts in our own country over issues that always seem to be plaguing us. Be it immigration, poverty, the battle over Second Amendment rights, and the struggle to be able to afford decent housing and health care. Sometimes it is because of this instability that we look for those who we have commonalities with. The divisions grow and the chasms between groups grow bigger.
We humans tend to gravitate to things and situations that help us feel safe and in the case of our faith, we turn to those things that keep us grounded in the larger truth of God that we experience throughout our lives. Things like God’s very Word, the Bible. We turn to the rituals and symbols that give aspects of the Divine resonance in our lives. Maybe the hymns that we have always sung. Maybe it is a certain translation of the Bible. Maybe it is taking communion or participating in small groups. These things serve as testaments to our continually growing and changing faith.
Our God exists outside of time so He can neither change nor not change. However, our faith exists in time and because of that it is subject to the same types of change that we experience in every other aspect of our lives. This is not something to be afraid of, but it is something that provides us with constant opportunities to know and love God in new and exciting ways. The idea of your faith changing is not something to be feared, it is something to embrace fully, because God constantly wants us to know Him better tomorrow than we did today. We don’t know what the future will hold for us, for our congregation, for our denomination and for the world. However, we do know that God has promised to be with us along the way, whatever may come to pass.
Change will happen. Violence, unfortunately, will continue. Wars are nowhere near ceasing, regardless of what the talking heads tell you. Anger is growing and hatred is rampant. However, in all of these difficulties, there is hope. There is the hope that despite our differences and grievances, our God is a God of reconciliation, not of annihilation. Our God is a God of lifting up, not of pushing down. Our God is a God of overcoming fear, not a God that seeks to control us with that fear.
Let’s move forward in this journey knowing God is with us and hoping that God will continue to encourage our changing faith with more challenges and opportunities to live out that faith in our daily lives.
In His Peace, Pastor Steve
Pastor Steve
Message for September!
A Belief in the Preposterous
This month my message goes someplace we don’t often venture to. It has been common practice throughout the history of our tradition to delve into Holy Scripture and imagine other ways that the story could have developed. Doing this, it can help us to see aspects of the story that we otherwise might miss. So, in that spirit, I offer you these words from Genesis:
“After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” (Genesis 22:1-2)
We know the story, don’t we? Abraham takes Isaac to the mountain and prepares to sacrifice him as instructed, when, at the last moment, God stops him and offers a ram for sacrifice to take Isaac’s place. The whole story, it appears, was meant to test the faith of Abraham. Specifically, it was meant to test Abraham’s faith in the promise of God. God promised Abraham many nations through Isaac, yet here Abraham is asked to sacrifice his very son, making the promise of God impossible.
There are many things we can take from this story. Many people have thought about this, prayed about this, and written about this. One individual, in particular, was a man by the name of Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish theologian, who lived in the first half of the 19th century. Kierkegaard imagines many changes to this story.
One possibility is that Abraham goes alone to Moriah and there offers himself as a sacrifice, pleading that God accept him rather than his son. That would make more sense, at least to us, but that isn’t how the story is told. So, what does this have to teach us about faith? Interestingly enough, had Abraham taken his own life, it would show us an example much more like ourselves, because it would be an example of a faith centered only on eternity, completely disregarding the earthly life we have been given. The fact that Abraham did intend to sacrifice Isaac, shows that his concern is doing God’s will, and shows little concern for how Abraham will suffer from such a cruel act. Kierkegaard explains it this way:
“Yet Abraham had faith, and had faith for this life. In fact, if his faith had been only for a life to come, he certainly would have more readily discarded everything in order to rush out of a world to which he did not belong. But Abraham’s faith was not of this sort, if there is such a faith at all, for actually it is not faith but the most remote possibility of faith that faintly sees its object on the most distant horizon but is separated from it by a chasmal abyss in which doubt plays its tricks. But Abraham had faith specifically for this life - faith that he would grow old in THIS life, be honored among THIS people, blessed by posterity, and unforgettable in Isaac, the most precious thing in his life, whom he embraced with a love that in inadequately described by saying he faithfully fulfilled the father’s duty to love the son, which is indeed stated in the command: the son, whom you love. Jacob had twelve sons, one of whom he loved; Abraham had but one, whom he loved. But Abraham had faith and did not doubt; he believed the preposterous. (Eulogy on Abraham, Fear and Trembling)
To sacrifice a beloved son, whose life was necessary to ensure fathering many nations, when God asks you to do so, can only be described as a belief in the preposterous. To any sane individual, it would seem maddening. As I look around at this world we live in, and even in the church we love so much, I have to ask if we still believe in the preposterous? Do we truly take as truth that which seems impossible to the world? Do we believe, with every fiber of our being, that our God has truly beaten death, and that a dark eternity no longer waits? It is one thing to believe, it is another thing to act in that belief. So more importantly, if we believe in the preposterous, do we act as if that impossibility is the only possibility? Do we lead our lives as if that which the world lifts up is truly inconsequential to us? Do our lives speak, in word and in practice, to a faith which lives in the here and now as well as the there and then?
I hope so.
I truly hope so.
Blessings,
Pastor Steve
