Need something to snack on while you watch the big game?!
To raise funds for Youth Mission trips, Nassau’s youth are selling hoagies which will be assembled here at the church on the morning of Sunday, February 5!
The varieties available:
Italian
Turkey and American Cheese
Ham and Swiss
Roast Beef and Cheddar
Prices: $6 for one six-inch hoagie or $20 for a family four pack.
Customization can be made for allergies, and with all toppings. Each hoagie will include a quarter pound of meat and cheese, and can be ordered already assembled or unassembled. We will proudly make our hoagies using bread from Italian People’s Bakery baked the morning of February 5th.
Orders will be taken during coffee hour on 1/29 or email your order to Amy Olsen at by Thursday, February 2nd.
Pickup your hoagie the morning of February 5th anytime from 10:30-12:30 in the Assembly Room. Thank you for your support!
“Rabbi, where are you staying?” Where are you staying? It’s an odd question right there at the start. “Where are you staying?” Jesus notices the two disciples of John are following him. Jesus speaks first. “What are you looking for?” One doesn’t have to be a theologian or a literary critic to pretty quickly conclude that Jesus wasn’t just asking “What’s up?” or “How’s it going” or “Where are you headed? or “What are you doing?” A careful reader discovers these are the first words spoken by Jesus on John’s gospel stage. The first lines given to Jesus in John’s passion play. Jesus’ first, deep, searching, meaningful question. “What are you looking for?”
“We are looking for the Messiah, the one of whom the prophets foretold… We are looking for the Lamb of God, the one to whom John testified… We are looking for the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit… We are looking for the holy one, full of grace and full of truth.” No, according to John they said “Rabbi, where are you staying.” It sounds more like alums who arrive at a reunion and want to find the best place to hang out: “So where are you staying?” Or friends who run in to each other over the summer on the boardwalk: “Where are you staying?” Or college students comparing notes after the room lottery: “How did you do?” Or high school youth rushing to read the call sheet for the next play: “Did you get a part?” Or young kids getting together during Christmas break: “What did you get?” Or someone arriving home after a long day at school, or practice, or work, and asking to anyone within ear shot: “So what’s for dinner?” One of our kids growing up had a friend who would arrive at our house often unannounced, walk right in, and within a few minutes was opening the fridge or looking for snacks in the pantry. It was a nonverbal question often repeated with action in our kitchen over the years: “Have anything to eat?”
“When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him, ‘Rabbi, where are you staying?’” It is as if they want to check out his digs. Or see who hangs out at his place. Or find out if his house was clean. Or whether he was just renting a room. Or whether he had any place to lay his head. Or find out his economic status. Or ask after his family. Something about the expression must be lost in translation here. Maybe it is something cultural about hospitality. Maybe it is more of an expression or an idiom. Because there is more going on here than domestic exploration when Jesus responds with “Come and see.” And as the gospel writer tells it, “They came and saw where he was staying.”
You will remember that the Gospel of John is so full of details that sort of leap off the page. Just here in the text for this morning John provides a language lesson: Rabbi, which translated means Teacher; Messiah, which is translated Anointed; Cephas, which is translated Peter. And the narrator mentions out of nowhere that it was about four o’clock in the afternoon.
John always seem to pair detail with memorable image, language, and symbolism. At the wedding in Cana when Jesus turned water into wine, the Gospel describes the jars in detail: six stone water jars each holding twenty to thirty gallons. But as for that miracle, that’s when Jesus said to his mother “My hour has not yet come” and John sums up the scene by describing it as the “first of his signs in Cana of Galilee” that revealed his glory. Details paired with symbol.
When Jesus healed the blind man on the Sabbath at Beth-zatha, the text describes the scene: in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is pool which has five porticoes in which many of the blind, lame, and paralyzed lay. One man was sick for 38 years. By the end of the scene after the man took up his mat and walked, Jesus said to those who were questioning him, “Very truly I tell you the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing, and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished.” Details paired with deeper theological imagery.
All through John. That breakfast scene on the beach with the Risen Christ. When the disciples caught the fish they were only about a hundred yards from shore; there were 153 fish in the net and on the charcoal fire was some fish and some bread. And that’s when Jesus and Peter had that three times repeated interchange: do you love me, yes, Lord, you know I love you, feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep. “When you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you are grow old, you will stretch our your hands and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go (Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God).” John’s gospel putting that kind of complexity together with 153 fish and a boat about 100 yards off shore.
Which is all to say that Jesus’ invitation for the two to “come and see” had to be about a whole lot more than where he was hanging his hat, or taking off his cloak, or putting up his feet, or resting his head, or hanging his shingle, or taking his meals. “They came and saw where he was staying.” Staying. That’s a loaded term in John, used three times here in these few verses. Teacher, where are you staying? Jesus said to them Come and See. They came and saw where he was staying and they remained (or “stayed” — same word in Greek). They stayed with him that day. The language lessons, the details of the time and day, all of it paired here with “staying.” The symbol, the deeper image, the theological fencepost from John is “It is in the staying.” “They came and saw where he was staying.”
Staying. John 6:56: Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.” Abide. Same word as “stay.” John 15: Jesus said, “Abide in me as I abide in you.” Stay in me as I stay in you. And “if you keep my commandments, you will abide, you will stay in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and stay in his love.” The two came and saw where Jesus was abiding. It’s not a domestic inquiry. It has everything to do with Jesus and God and humankind and the most profound imagery, symbolism, theology we can muster.
It’s interesting that the Christmas memory verse from the Prologue to John, “the Word became flesh and lived among us,” lived among us, dwelt among us is a different word in Greek. After all the poetry and the beauty of that Prologue to John, Christmas in John, that word, that “lived-among-us” word in Greek pretty much doesn’t come back. Once Jesus gets going in John with ministry, once he calls the disciples, once he starts teaching and healing and loving, for John, in John, it’s all abiding, staying. That’s the word. It’s the word that shouts incarnation. It’s all incarnation. God with us. Christ with us. Christ for us. Yes, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and he stayed. They came and saw where he was staying. They came and saw him in the flesh. Hair, teeth, bones, eyes. They came and saw that he was staying. God was staying. The Messiah. Emmanuel. God with us. Staying. Abiding with us.
Christ the Lord came to live among us that night and he stayed. Which means he cried, he soiled his diaper, kept his mother up, rolled over, crawled, took first steps. He had growing pains and his voice changed and he worried his parents. He had friends. He had a favorite meal. He played games. He went to work. He had teachers and mentors and awkward family moments. He saw the sunrise and the sunset. He knew what it meant to be cold and hot and tired and disappointed and joyful and tempted and angry and scared. He laughed. He cried. His heart was broken. He grieved. He hurt. He bled. He died. He stayed the whole time. Messiah. Emmanuel. God with us. God for us. From birth to death. He stayed the whole time. “They came and saw where he was staying”.
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and he stayed. And in the staying, in the abiding, Christ Jesus made what it means to be human holy. He made our ordinariness sacred. Yes, the most profound parts of being human, that we are created in God’s image and created to give God praise, that matters to him. And the most mundane parts of being human, loving and laughing and growing and learning and sharing and caring, it all matters to him. To abide in Christ, as Christ abides in us, it means that loving one another and loving your neighbor and forgiving as you have been forgiven and caring for the sick and comforting the grieving and welcoming the children and embracing the outcast, all of it is a sacred task. When you come to see that he stayed.
He stayed. Jesus came all the way down that holy night and he stayed. It is one more reminder, one more affirmation of God’s love. That God loves all of you. I don’t mean all (collective of you) which is indeed true. I mean God loves all (every part) of you. In his collection of sermons entitled Strength to Love, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. tells of a woman that everyone called Mother Pollard. “Although poverty stricken and uneducated,” King describes her, “she was amazingly intelligent and possessed a deep understanding of the meaning of the [civil rights] movement.” One evening after Dr. King spoke at a large meeting in a church, Mother Pollard came up to him after the meeting at the front of the church. Sensing that something was wrong, that he wasn’t feeling strong. He tried to reassure her that he was fine and deflect her concerns. “You can’t fool me,” she said, “I know something is wrong.” Before Dr. King could respond, Mother Pollard looked into his eyes and said, “I told you we are with you all the way.” Then as King describes it, “Her face became radiant and she said in words of quiet certainty, ‘But even if we aren’t with you, God’s gonna take care of you.’” Dr. King finishes that sermon by telling how Mother Pollard’s eloquent simple words came back to him again and again to give light and peace and guidance. “God’s gonna take care of you.”
Mother Pollard must have known what the Gospel of John wants you know. Jesus stayed. And that makes it all matter. All of it, all of this being human stuff, matters. Because in Christ Jesus, we know God so loved all of us.
Assembly Room at 12:15 PM
Nassau Presbyterian Church
Since 2002, members of the Nassau Church community have found a variety of ways to help the children who attend New Dawn Trilingual Educational Center in Parramos, Guatemala. One is the program that provides nutritious daily breakfasts for approximately 250 primary students.
On January 29, we will once again host an authentic Guatemalan brunch in the Assembly Room after the 11 o’clock service. The menu includes fresh hand-made corn tortillas, fried ripe plantains, black beans, scrambled eggs with Guatemalan “chirmol” sauce, tropical-fruit salad, and Guatemalan sweet bread. Please join us!
Tickets at $15 per person or $40 per family will be available during the January fellowship hours and at the door to the Assembly Room before the breakfast. Checks may be made payable to Nassau Presbyterian Church, memo Guatemala Breakfast Fund.
For a donation of $80 you can become a Breakfast Patron and feed an entire class for a month. And for a donation of $500 you can become a Breakfast Angel, providing every primary student with breakfast for one month.
Our mothers told us that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Let’s give the Parramos students the benefit of a hot morning meal! For more information contact Jonathan Holmquist ()
Conservatory Noontime Recitals Resume on January 19 with the Volanti Flute Quartet
On Thursday, January 19 at 12:15 p.m. Westminster Conservatory at Nassau recitals will resume with a performance by the Volanti Flute Quartet. Jill Crawford, Ellen Fisher Deerberg, Katherine McClure, and Barbara Highton Williams are all members of the Westminster Conservatory faculty. The recital will take place in Niles Chapel and is open to the public free of charge.
The program on January 19 comprises Paule Maurice’s Suite, Echoes of the Ancients by Sarah Bassingthwaighte, Cecilia McDowall’s Hotfoot, Variations on Tutú Marambá by Osvaldo Lacerda, and Faustin Jeanjean’s Ski-Symphonie.
On February 16 Westminster Conservatory at Nassau will present Dezheng Ping, violin, and Phyllis Lehrer, piano who will perform music of Johannes Brahms.
You can’t understand most of the important things from a distance. You have to get close. — Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
At the urging of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, on Sunday, January 22, Presbyterians across the country will focus on the topic of criminal justice. Nassau Church’s Mass Incarceration Task Force has answered the call by inviting Andre Thomas, a local Trenton resident, to share his story of incarceration and new beginnings. He will be preaching during both services of Sunday worship.
There will be a time for Q&A with Mr. Thomas following the services at 12:15 PM in Niles Chapel.
Andre J. Thomas, Sr., lives in Trenton with his wife Angie and children Andre Jr. and Drea. Mr. Thomas was released from prison in 1997 after serving five years of a 15-year sentence. He is the Training Manager for Isles’ Center for Energy and Environmental Training and a member of the Princeton/Trenton chapter of the Campaign to End the New Jim Crow.
This weekend join us for a number of exciting opportunities as we focus on missions.
Mission Fair, January 15
Come to the annual Mission Fair in celebration of the ministries and missions of Nassau Church at 10:15 AM in the Assembly Room. Hosted the Membership Committee, the Fair is an opportunity to learn more about our myriad outreach programs and become involved. Join us and enjoy the next step in your journey of faith.
At Morning of Mission we remind ourselves of our Christian commitment to human flourishing in all places. Come and join the effort. All hands are needed and welcome.
Hands-on projects at the church
10:30 AM to 12:00 PM
We will be making pet blankets for orphaned animals, putting together sack lunches for the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen (TASK), assembling Creativity Kits for HomeFront, collecting personal care products for Crisis Ministry clients, packaging pillowcases for pediatric patients, and making calendars for ABC Literacy.
Below are a list of items that can be brought to the Morning of Mission or dropped off earlier in the church office.
Morning of Mission Donation List
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Creativity Kits for HomeFront:
individual pkgs. of crayons (24-48 ct.)
individual pkgs. of colored pencils (24-28 ct.)
individual pkgs. of markers (10-12 ct.)
coloring books
coloring pads/sketch pads
individual packages of stickers
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Personal Care products for Crisis Ministry:
toothbrushes & toothpaste
shampoo & conditioner
razors & shaving cream
soaps & lotion
feminine products
Full- and travel-size donations are both appreciated.
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Community clean-up in Trenton
8:00 AM to 1:30 PM
Meet at church parking lot and carpool to Bethany House in Trenton
You are also invited to head to Trenton for a community clean-up and trash collection project on Hamilton Ave. Meet in the church parking lot at 8:00 AM to carpool or go directly to Bethany House of Hospitality, 426 Hamilton Ave. Bring gloves. Snacks and restrooms will be provided.
Community Events, January 16
Community Breakfast
Princeton University will commemorate the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., with a Community Breakfast in the Carl Fields Center Multipurpose Room. The event is free and open to the public and will begin at 8:30 AM. More details are available at princeton.edu/mlk.
Interfaith Community Worship Service
The Princeton Clergy Association will host its annual Interfaith Service in honor of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King at 7:00 PM. The service will be at Princeton United Methodist Church, located at the corner of Vandeventer Avenue and Nassau Street. The service is free and open to the public.
The preacher will be Minister William D. Carter III. Diverse faith leaders in the Princeton area will co-lead the liturgy, and area choirs and musicians will also participate. A free-will offering will be split equally between the United Negro College Fund and the Princeton-based Coalition for Peace Action.
On Sunday, February 5, Nassau Church’s Adult Choir will join forces with the choir of Trinity Episcopal Church for a performance of Benjamin Britten’s “Rejoice in the Lamb” at Trinity Church’s choral evensong. In preparation for this special event, Noel Werner presents an introduction to this inspiring and delightful choral masterwork.
Using the poetry of the 18th-century metaphysical poet Christopher Smart, Britten wrote “Rejoice in the Lamb” as an extended paean, or song of praise. Though he suffered from mental illness, Smart’s poetic genius nonetheless shines through with flashes of mystical insight, and Britten proved to be the ideal composer for integrating Smart’s poetry into a coherent and compelling whole.
Come learn more about this 20th-century choral work, and then join the choirs of Nassau and Trinity on February 5 at 5:00 pm at Trinity Church to enjoy the work during evensong.
The Bible is full of embarrassing, offensive, problematic texts that present serious interpretive challenges for contemporary Christian faith and practice. Should they be repudiated? Discarded? Silenced? Or are there perhaps more effective and faithful ways of handling them?
Come and tackle the importance of engaging them directly and publicly, with the expectation that we may encounter the living God in our conversation with them. Passages in Paul’s letters that have proved oppressive in the lives of many Christian women will serve as test cases. Join us as we wrestle with them, consider strategies for engaging them with integrity, and reflect on our understandings of biblical authority.
Registration
The brochure and registration form is available in the literature rack outside the church office or via pdf. Forms are due to Derry Presbyterian Church by January 29.
Questions? Contact Joyce MacKichan Walker ().
About the Speaker
Frances Taylor Gench is Herbert Worth and Annie H. Jackson Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. Prior to joining the faculty of her alma mater in 1999, she taught for 13 years at Gettysburg Lutheran Seminary. She is the author of Encountering God in Tyrannical Texts: Reflections on Paul, Women, and the Authority of Scripture (WJKP, 2015), Faithful Disagreement: Wrestling with Scripture in the Midst of Church Conflict (WJKP, 2009); Encounters with Jesus: Studies in the Gospel of John (WJKP, 2007); Back to the Well: Women’s Encounters with Jesus in the Gospels (WJKP, 2004); and Hebrews and James (WJKP, 1996). She is a parish associate at The New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., where her husband, Roger J. Gench, is the pastor.
something to snack on while you watch the big game?!