Rev MaryGean Cope

Tag: service

  • The Heart of Prayer (Psalm 102)

    The Heart of Prayer (Psalm 102)

    We had some kids come forward to commit their lives to Christ, and one of them was our UPS delivery guy. DJ Light. You know him. Probably didn’t know he was wrestling with that until he was ready.

    And I looked at these young people and I thought about what we’re doing here. This church has made a difference in the lives of a lot of young people over the years. A lot. And that matters. It matters right now and it’s going to matter for the rest of their lives.

    When kids are growing up, they’re looking for something real. They’re not looking for adults to be perfect. They’re looking for us to be honest. To actually mean what we say. To show up when it’s inconvenient. To keep showing up.

    These three young people made a choice. They said yes to Jesus. Not because they’re perfect, not because they’ve got it all figured out, but because they saw something here worth saying yes to. And that’s the miracle. Not that they’re suddenly fixed. But that they’re willing to give their lives to something bigger than themselves.

    If you know these kids, love them. Pray for them. That’s not just nice sentiment. That’s them needing to feel that they’re part of something. Because they are. They’re part of the body of Christ, and they’re going to need us to remind them of that when things get hard.

    This is why the church exists. Not to run programs. Not to fill seats. But to help young people see that there’s a God who loves them, and that their lives can mean something. That it’s worth the risk to say yes.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Power of Love

    The Power of Love

    Something shifted for me this week. I was sitting with someone who’s dealing with a genuinely terrible situation. Bad health news. Uncertain future. And instead of offering comfort or advice or theological platitudes, I just sat there. We both just sat there.

    And it hit me that’s what faith is, a lot of the time. Not having answers. Not being able to fix it. Just showing up. Just staying present when everything in you wants to run.

    That’s what the cross is, I think. That’s why Jesus went through with it. Not because he was earning something. Not because God needed payment. But because the only way to show humanity that God is actually committed to us is to die with us. To sit in that worst darkness and say: I’m here too.

    We live in a culture that’s obsessed with fixing everything. Taking control. Managing outcomes. And the cross is the ultimate sign that you can’t. You can’t control suffering. You can’t fix death. You can’t engineer your way to love.

    All you can do is be present. All you can do is choose to love people in their mess instead of waiting for them to clean up their act. All you can do is show up.

    For someone out there, that’s revolutionary. Because you’ve spent your whole life being told you’re not good enough. You have to achieve. You have to perform. You have to become different. And here’s Jesus saying: No. I’m enough. My love is enough. Your presence matters. You matter.

    Just as you are. Especially as you are. All that broken, messy, still-figuring-it-out version of you. That’s the one I came for.

    That’s the gospel. That’s enough.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Gift of Forgiveness (Jeremiah 31)

    The Gift of Forgiveness (Jeremiah 31)

    January. Post-holiday collapse. Which is when I’m most likely to sit down and actually think about something beyond logistics and Christmas decorations.

    I was thinking about New Year’s resolutions, and you know what? They’re mostly about becoming someone different. Better. Less flawed. We want to be the version of ourselves we’d actually be okay with. And there’s something true in that. God does call us to transformation. But we’ve got it backwards somehow.

    We think transformation means becoming someone else. Becoming someone who wouldn’t struggle with the same stuff. Someone who’d already have it figured out. But Scripture keeps pointing to something different. It’s not about becoming a different person. It’s about following Jesus more truly in the body you’re actually in.

    That sounds smaller than we want. But I think it’s bigger. Because it means you don’t have to escape yourself to be redeemed. You just have to start saying yes to God in the middle of who you actually are. With your actual failures and your actual patterns and your actual mess.

    That’s the good news nobody wants to hear on January 7th. You don’t get to start over. You get to start here. True. And somehow that’s actually more hope than the fantasy version we keep reaching for.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • Faithful Stewards

    Faithful Stewards

    Jesus tells this wild story about a manager who gets caught cooking the books. When he’s about to be fired, instead of panicking, the guy just keeps cooking—he cuts his boss’s debtors’ bills in half. And here’s the really confusing part: the boss commends him for it. For being dishonest! And then Jesus uses that story to teach the disciples about money. It makes you go, what in the world?

    John Wesley figured this out centuries ago. He knew Jesus was being practical about how people actually work. Wesley called his most famous sermon “The Use of Money,” and he didn’t get tangled up trying to justify the dishonest part. Instead, he gave us three clear rules: earn all you can, save all you can, spend all you can on what matters. But here’s where it gets serious: give all you can. Give for others. Give for God’s work.

    Wesley lived that way his whole life. Money was just a tool to him, not the point. He took care of what he needed, sure, and his wife did too. But they were always asking, what does God need us to do with what we have? There’s a story about a kid who knew Fred—one of his youth—who remembered Fred saying that money was only good for what it could do for other people. That stuck with him years later. That’s the kind of life that matters.

    So the lesson isn’t about being clever like that dishonest steward. It’s about being clever like Jesus—figuring out how to use what you have to actually love people. You’re not serving money. You’re serving God. And that changes everything about the decisions you make.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • The Heart of Prayer

    The Heart of Prayer

    You know this story. A guy’s beaten up on the side of the road. Priest comes by. Crosses to the other side. Doesn’t stop. Levite comes by. Same thing. Crosses over. Keeps going. Then a Samaritan comes by.

    Now here’s the thing. For Jesus’ audience, “good” and “Samaritan” did not go together. These were people they didn’t associate with. People they thought were wrong about basically everything. Wrong about where to worship. Wrong about scripture. Just wrong.

    And yet this Samaritan sees the beaten man and he’s moved with compassion. He goes to him. Bandages his wounds. Puts him on his own donkey. Takes him to an inn. Pays the innkeeper to take care of him. Says come back and I’ll pay for any extra cost.

    Over and beyond what’s required.

    So Jesus asks: which one was a neighbor? And everyone has to say: the one who showed mercy.

    Here’s what I need to ask you though. Who is the person or group you have a thing against? And I mean honestly. Not just Samaritans. What group do you think is wrong? What group makes you angry? What group do you put outside of God’s love?

    Because that’s what this story is asking. It’s asking us to retell it with our own enemies in it. Our own people we don’t like. The people we’re sure don’t deserve God’s mercy.

    I want you to know they do. I know that’s unsettling. I don’t want that either sometimes. But Jesus is pretty clear about this. There is no one outside of God’s redemption. No one outside of God’s mercy. No matter what they believe. No matter what they do.

    Now they can reject it. They can say no. They can push it away. But that’s their choice. Not ours.

    The Samaritan didn’t need to help. He had resources but he needed those resources for his own life, his own business. But he helped anyway. He had things he could lose. But he chose to love.

    So what do we have? Time. Money. Ability. Smiles. Prayers. Whatever it is we have that could help someone. Can we be neighbor to the person who doesn’t fit? The person we don’t like? The person we think is wrong?

    Can we see them as a full human being? With all the grace God gives to God’s people? Because that’s what it means to follow Jesus. It means we do that.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • Called to Serve

    Called to Serve

    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

  • 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

  • The Family of God

    The Family of God

    You know the hymn, ‘How Great Thou Art.’ Everybody knows it. It was written by a guy named Carl Boberg in Sweden. He was coming home after some kind of service, and there was a thunderstorm. The kind we’ve had the last few days. And when it passed over, he looked out at everything being fresh and green and alive, and he wrote a poem.

    That poem got translated. Sweden to German. German to Russian. Russian to English. It traveled around the world. Billy Graham used it. And now you sing it on Sunday.

    What strikes me is that somebody in Sweden looked at a thunderstorm and felt awe. And somebody else said, I know what that means. I know how to say that. And they translated it. And it kept traveling. Each person who touched it added something. Their language. Their voice. And it still said the same thing: when you really look at the world, when you really see creation, you can’t help but see God in it.

    That’s what I want for us. Not to be original. But to be faithful. To see what God’s doing and then to say it in our language, in our lives, so somebody else can understand.

    A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope

  • Called to Serve

    Called to Serve

    There’s a difference between being invited to serve and actually serving. One is a nice feeling. The other is showing up on the day it’s inconvenient.

    We talk about being Christ’s hands and feet, but we Methodists—I mean, we had to work for weeks to change the color on the bulletin. Weeks. So actually going out and doing the work? That takes something. It takes deciding that your comfort matters less than somebody else’s need.

    What I see happening is people finding out that when they actually do the work, something shifts. You start seeing people differently. You can’t serve someone and hate them. You can’t feed someone and dismiss them. The work changes you. And that’s God working. That’s the gospel actually moving through your hands.

    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