Happy Mothering Day!  We are glad to have our friend Rev. Dr. Kikanza Nuri-Robins with us today as our guest preacher.  

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Faith shouldn't be so hard.  That's what I said last week.  No let's consider how faith shouldn't always be so easy.  

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If you go into a Starbucks anywhere in the world you will find the same thing.  The same environment, the same service, and the same coffee.   This one-size-fits-all philosophy has been pretty successful, so why not apply it to faith?  Pray and worship and serve in this one right way and you'll feel connected with God!  Sounds good, except there's one important problem.  You are not a franchise.  

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As followers of Jesus, are we allowed to us "religious freedom" as an excuse to harm or exclude others?  Quite simply, "No!"  Wherever there is injustice and inequality, especially within Christianity, Jesus' way of love will call for change and transformation.  

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There once was a man who had two sons...   This is a familiar story about a prodigal son that surprisingly reveals God's wild and irresponsible love for all of creation.  

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Happy Easter!  Christ is Risen!  The lesson of the story of Jonah is that exclusion will swallow us alive.  Love and compassion, however, are experiences and expression of resurrection life.  

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Jonah went too far west and then too far east because he was angry about God being good.  This is the upside-down nature of a Christianity that loves it when God is kind toward us, but angry when God is kind toward "those people."

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Will this great empire turn from its violent ways?  More than that will God repent and turn from God's violent ways?  This week in Jonah chapter 3, both Nineveh and God shows us that change is possible.  

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Shakespeare said in King Lear that “Jesters do oft prove to be prophets.”  If we can see the humor in the story of JONAH getting swallowed by a fish, we are closer to seeing the truth.  This isn't true in the sense of historical accuracy, but true in the deeper sense of revealing what is hidden below the surface.

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The season of LENT is about 6 weeks where we are intentionally invited to lean into the more difficult and complex parts of life.   We lean into the limits of our humanity on Ash Wednesday.  We move toward the darkness in hopes of finding the light.  And the story of JONAH invites us to go beyond the surface to what is more substantial and real.  

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