Author: admin

Welcome Sunday Poetry Edition 139 Volumes 1-24
“To be sure of you.” Pastor Yoshioka Kyosei
I’m sorry to all of you who gathered this morning expecting a message from Mr. Akashi, but since Mr. Akashi was unable to come to Sendai in a hurry, I’ll tell you a Welcome Sunday message instead this morning. Dr. Akashi will come to this church next time, so I would like to look forward to that time.
So this morning, Mr. Akashi came all the way up to the theme of “To be a sure person,” so I would like to share this with you while talking about it in my way.

I think this theme, “To be a sure person,” which Mr. Akashi mentioned, is very interesting because behind this theme setting, there is a premise that we are not used to being a sure person, and we sympathize with this theme in terms of our uncertain self.

Gospel according to Matthew, Chapters 1, 18-25
“Father who will take care of me.” Pastor Yoshioka Kyoten
Last week, an article in a magazine said, “I will ask you the word ‘self-responsibility’ again.” Here’s what happened. “Where on earth are we going? Is it all self-responsibility? Is it the ‘self-responsibility’ of the workers to cancel the contract until next year and to deprive them of their jobs, housing and living from tomorrow? Is it all self-responsibility that old people need nursing care? I don’t remember ‘drinking and eating,’ but getting sick at a certain age is all ‘self-responsibility’?”
I think the world is getting harder and harder these days. The word self-responsibility is used as an excuse to cut people off, and it is used as a word to help them give up responsibility and pass on responsibility. In this context, I feel that our own minds are being dragged in that direction. People who seem to have made some kind of mistake can be hit coldly. We find it difficult to look at people from a perspective that cares about their body temperature, such as whether they are in trouble or not. You can judge right from wrong and look at people with cold eyes that impose such tests on them whether they failed or succeeded. It is easy to judge a person unilaterally from that perspective and to judge that you are wrong and that it is your own responsibility. However, it is a little different from the self-responsibility of those who have been judged. I don’t think that applies to self-responsibility.
But in such a world of cut-and-cut, human-to-human injury and division, we can see a beautiful sense of responsibility working at Christmas, not in such a cold sense, based on love.

The Gospel according to John, Chapters 4, 1–26
Pastor Yoshioka Kyosei, “To satisfy my thirst.”
Welcome to the church service at Sendai Canaan this morning. We welcome you from the bottom of our hearts.
The theme of this morning’s worship message is “Filling Thirst”. September is already over, and it’s almost cold these days, so we may not be aware of the thirst for this morning’s theme from this climate, but what I would like to think with you here this morning is this thirst for our hearts. I don’t usually think much about whether my heart is thirsty or not, but this morning I want to put my hand on it again and stop and think about what kind of thirst I have and what kind of moisture I need.

Gospel according to Matthew, Chapter 25, 31-40
Pastor Yoshioka Kyosei, “Becoming a Neighbor ~ Adjacent to People”
The theme of this morning’s service is “neighborhood.” I think this is a idiom that we don’t usually use, but how do we usually view it when we think of the word “neighborhood” and when we think about “neighborhood” as this word suggests?
The famous Mother Teresa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize, repeatedly said, “Christ is among the poorest” and “God is in the shape of the suffering,” and actively entered the poor people of India and devoted her life to support them. Mother Teresa said that when she first saw a dying man on the road in Calcutta, India, she sincerely wished to be with them. Do we have eyes that look at our neighbors like that?

Gospel according to Matthew, Chapter 27, 45-56
Pastor Yoshioka Koten, “Living a Life That Does Not Have to Hurt You”
Everyone has a scar. This is not a cut on the body or an injury, but a wound in the sense of a mental injury. Everyone we know is a hurtful person. You’re all hurt, and I’m hurt, too. Everyone has a scar. And for us, I don’t think there’s a word that’s as close to us as the word wound. In fact, I think many parts of what we talk about, think about, and act on a daily basis are related to the wounds we have ourselves. All kinds of wounds make me what I am. I think that the various wounds I have are guiding and directing my current way of thinking and behavior.