Rev MaryGean Cope

Tag: faith

  • Walking by Faith (Isaiah 12)

    Micah asks a question that just haunts you: what should I approach the Lord with? Should I come with burnt offerings? With year-old calves? Will he be pleased with thousands of rams? Should I give my oldest child for my crime?

    And then Micah answers his own question. He’s already been told. God has already told you what’s good. What the Lord actually requires is this: do justice. Embrace faithful love. Walk humbly with your God.

    That’s it. Do justice. Embrace faithful love. Walk humbly with your God.

    Now Micah was talking to a people who’d gotten comfortable. They’d gotten powerful. They had resources and ability and education and all the things that give a person power. And power can be wonderful, but there’s power over—which is oppressive, which controls people—and there’s power to, which means the power to lift people up, to help them, to do positive things.

    Here’s what I need to say: when we get power, we can be dangerous. It goes to our heads. We think it’s about us. Underneath we’re scared we’re going to lose it. So we turn mean. Abusive. Disrespecting. We hold ourselves up by holding others down.

    I’m not preaching to you. I’m preaching to us. When I step on toes, I’m stepping on my own. Because all of us are flawed. All of us need grace. All of us need to repent and turn back.

    So the message here is simple: the compassion of God is for whoever is on the outside. Whoever doesn’t quite fit. Whoever’s new and doesn’t know the rules. Whatever the deficit is, God wants us to help make that up. Help people feel comfortable. Feel safe. Feel good about who they are and where they are.

    Because that’s God’s love flowing through us. And that love has a lot to do with how we use whatever power we’ve got.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer

    The Heart of Prayer

    There was a widow—that’s the only detail we need to know. She was a widow and her only son was dead. And she was carrying his body out of the city for burial.

    Jesus saw her and something moved in him. The Gospel says he had compassion. But compassion doesn’t quite cover it. It’s a gut-level, bone-deep recognition of someone’s suffering. Jesus knows the depth of her loss in a way nobody else can. He stops the funeral procession. He touches the stretcher. He tells the young man: get up.

    And the dead man sits up. He speaks. Jesus gives him back to his mother.

    Now, Jesus didn’t do that for everybody. He didn’t resuscitate everyone who’d died. We still live in a world where people die. Where grief is real. Where loss isn’t magically fixed by faith or prayer or anything else.

    But this story isn’t primarily about the miracle. It’s about Jesus seeing one specific person in one specific moment and meeting her there. Not waiting for her to come to him. Not asking what she’d done to deserve this suffering. Not explaining anything. Just stopping. Looking. Acting.

    We do such damage trying to explain suffering. We tell people it was God’s will. We suggest they must have done something to cause it. We come up with all kinds of theories, like Job’s friends, and we’re usually just wrong. What we know is that Jesus met this woman in her pain. And we can do that for people too. Not fix it. Not explain it. Just stop. See them. Be there.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer

    The Heart of Prayer

    Prayer is not trying to change God’s mind. I think we get that confused sometimes. Like prayer is this negotiation where if we ask hard enough or long enough, God will do what we want.

    Prayer is showing up. It’s saying, I don’t know what to do with this. I’m scared. I’m angry. I’m grateful. I’m broken. I’m here anyway. And then listening. Not even necessarily waiting for words. Just being willing to sit with God in whatever this is.

    We pray for people who are sick. For people dealing with loss. For leaders who have to make impossible decisions. For people threatened by violence. For all the things that break our hearts. We pray and we don’t know if God will do what we’re asking. But we pray anyway because prayer is an act of faith. It’s saying, I believe God hears this. I believe God cares about this. I believe that matters, even when I can’t see how it matters. And showing up—being present to each other, to the world, to God—that’s what prayer is. That’s the hope right there.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • A Living Hope

    A Living Hope

    We call the Sunday before July 4th Freedom Sunday. And I know that can get tangled up—mixing God and country—but here’s what I mean: God is the source of our freedom. Not the nation. God.

    And that matters because when we forget that, we start thinking freedom is something the government gives us. Or takes away. And that’s not all of it. Real freedom? That comes from knowing you belong to God. That nothing can separate you from that. Not success, not failure. Not approval, not shame. You belong to God.

    I think about all the people who came before us who knew that in their bones. Who were locked up or beaten or killed and still knew they belonged to God. Still knew that was the thing that mattered. And they passed that down. They passed down a faith that was bigger than fear. That’s the freedom we’re celebrating. Not fireworks. Not flags. But the God who makes us free.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer (Psalm 34)

    The Heart of Prayer (Psalm 34)

    Psalm 34 says, I sought the Lord and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears. But here’s what I notice: it doesn’t say the fears went away. It doesn’t say suddenly everything was fine. It says I sought. I called out. God heard me.

    And then it says he delivered me from my fears. Not that the scary things stopped happening. But that I stopped being ruled by them. I stopped letting them decide who I am and how I live.

    We’ve got people in our congregation dealing with health scares. Dealing with family stuff that pulls you in a hundred directions. Dealing with uncertainty about jobs, about futures, about whether God’s actually listening. And I want you to know that seeking doesn’t mean you have all the answers. It just means you’re turning toward God instead of away. And God hears that. God meets you there. In the not-knowing. In the fear. In the place where you’re finally willing to admit you can’t do this alone.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • Walking by Faith

    Think about this: What is it about you that is holy? What part of you is set aside, consecrated to God? What is other than the ordinary?

    When we talk about holiness, we’re not talking about being perfect or better than anyone else. And we’re definitely not talking about that snooty piety that says “I’m better than someone else.” That’s not holiness. That’s just religious pride.

    Real holiness is about being set apart for God. It’s about being called out and asking what God wants to do through you. It’s the idea that you’re not just living for yourself, but for something bigger. Not in a weird way. Not in a judgmental way. But in a way that changes how you live, what you prioritize, how you love people.

    Look at your own life. What in you has been consecrated to God? What have you set apart for his purposes? That’s holiness. Not performance. Not judgment. Just your life, deliberately given.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • Walking by Faith

    Walking by Faith

    There’s a difference between knowing something exists and actually believing in it. Let me tell you a story.

    There was a debate about infant baptism, and someone asked a guy: “Do you believe in infant baptism?” And he said, “Believe in it? Heck, I’ve seen it done.” He thought belief meant the same thing as knowledge. But it doesn’t.

    When we say “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church” in the Apostles Creed, we’re not just saying we know it exists. We’re saying we trust it. We’re part of it. We’re committing to it. Belief is about relationship. It’s about being in.

    And when we talk about something being holy—in the biblical sense—we’re talking about something set apart. Consecrated. Different from the everyday. Not in a holier-than-thou way. That’s just snooty piety and that’s not what holiness is about. Real holiness is being set apart to God. Being called to something other than the usual. That’s what the church is. That’s what we are, if we’re willing to be.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer

    The Heart of Prayer

    The church needed a way to sum up what it believed. And there was this guy named Marcian who had completely wrong ideas about God. He thought all matter was evil. So Jesus couldn’t have actually been human, couldn’t have been born, couldn’t have died. He was just some spiritual being delivering nice messages.

    The church said no. That’s not what we believe. So they wrote the Apostles Creed to push back against that heresy. And if you look at the middle part of that creed—the part about Jesus—it’s all about him being real. Conceived. Born. Suffered. Crucified. Dead. Buried. Because if Jesus wasn’t actually human, he couldn’t have suffered. He couldn’t have paid the price for our sins.

    Here’s what matters: Jesus came in flesh. He walked on earth. He bled. He died. And that’s how he saved us. Not as some ghost, not as some idea, but as a person. A real person. That changes everything.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope