forest hill Musings -- weekly reflections on Scripture
Musings -- weekly reflections on Scripture
I began writing these short essays for our weekly e-newsletter. They served two purposes: First, they gave me an initial run at the Scripture that I would be preaching on -- an opportunity to start thinking about the spiritual and life questions that the sermon might address. Second, they serve as advertising; an invitation to folks to join us on Sunday morning and see how my thinking has developed between the first take on my questions and the final sermon that gets delivered.
We've started collecting these at this website so that people who aren't already subscribed to our newsletter can get a sense of what's coming up in worship. Feel free to check back weekly to see the reflection for the week, or click here to subscribe to our email newsletter and have these delivered into your inbox every Friday
Rev. Stephen Fetter
October 12, 2025
Thanksgiving Sunday
"A Time to Eat"
It’s hard to imagine a festival without food! Every culture does it. We know a day is special because we mark it with a feast – with friends, with family, and with food reserved for the occasion.
September 28, 2025
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
"Hope Beyond Hope"
If you didn’t understand the context for this passage from the prophet Jeremiah, you could imagine it was simply describing a real estate deal. Jeremiah learns he has an option to buy a piece of family-owned land from a relative, and he decides to act on it. The deed is duly executed in all the normal ways, and stored away in a vault for safe-keeping.
September 21, 2025
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
"God's Accounting"
We’re reading about the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin this week. It made me wonder about the cost of that sheep (or that coin), and whether I’d be willing to put the effort into the search that the story presumes.
A quick Google search suggests a sheep today would be somewhere between $300 - $600. The footnote in my Bible suggests that the silver coin the woman lost is worth a day’s wage. In either case, this is not chump change. It’s not like losing a quarter in the couch cushions! But I’m still not sure I’d leave 99 sheep to their own devices while I went and searched for the missing one; what if several others took off while I was away from the herd? I always do a bit of a cost-benefit analysis before I put a lot of energy into a search. Is the thing I’m searching for really worth my energy, or should I just suck it up and take care of what’s left?
August 17, 2025
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
“By Faith …”
“Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.'
'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carrol
Is that what religion is about? Believing six impossible things before breakfast? Because it if is, I don’t want any part of that. Who, in our modern world, would want to be ridiculed for believing in even one impossible thing? Who wants to be a dupe, a naif, a fool? Not me! I’d much rather be Alice than the White Queen!
August 3, 2025
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
“Being Rich”
Jesus had a lot to say about money – most of it quite uncomfortable. He told the rich young ruler to sell everything and give it to the poor; he overturned the tables of the money-changers; he took sides with tenant farmers against absentee landlords; he wanted people paid for a day’s work when they’d only laboured for an hour; he suggested that a beggar like Lazarus would have a better life in the hear-after than the rich man who never threw Lazarus a penny; and he told the story we’re reading this week about the rich man who invested everything he earned into bigger and better warehouses, only to discover that he landed at the Pearly Gates with empty pockets.