St. Mary’s Episcopal Church

Let us pray: Come Holy Spirit, enliven these words. Help us to live in love and leave the judging to your mercy. In the name of the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sustainer. Amen. 

Last week Sharon talked about the gifts that we’ve been given for the good of all. The gifts of teaching, the gift of generosity, and the gift of compassion that brings joy. Today’s reading from Romans tells us how to use our gifts to live well with others.

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.

An excellent list of how to fashion our lives after Jesus. Genuine love, hate for evil, mutual affection, honoring others, serving God with gusto, rejoicing in hope, finding patience amidst suffering, remembering to always pray and bring our lives to God, sharing and helping others, and welcoming the stranger. These are solid actions for us aspire to as we seek to live out God’s love today, but…but what about when people are stupid, or mean, or judgmental, hateful, or just plain wrong? Then what? 

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good 

Ahh, that, I see. As followers of Jesus, we are called to bless and NOT curse those who do us harm. When others are rejoicing, we join in celebrating with them, and when they are weeping, we weep with them. We are to work to live together in harmony, not thinking we’re better than others, or thinking some are below us, or that we know SO much more than they do, no. We are not to pay anyone back for the bad things they’ve done to us, but we’re called to rise above it, to be noble. If possible, and this is a big if, we are called to live at peace with everyone. We must never seek revenge but leave it up to God. I will repay says the Lord. We are to outdo one another in showing honor and to return hate with love, to offer food and drink to even our enemies. We are to overcome evil with good. 

Hate only breeds more hate, we know that. Violence creates more violence, insults and judgments lead to more and more of the same. But…when we, like Jesus, do NOT return hate but instead counter it with love…watch out! They weren’t expecting that! That can change everything. Leaving people frozen in their tracks. Remember the actions of Jesus and his words as he hung on the cross? Father, forgive them, they know not what they do. In the second chapter of James is a verse that I’ve been remembering and sharing a lot lately: the second half of verse 13 says, Mercy triumphs over judgment. Mercy triumphs over judgment. God’s mercy, God’s grace, God’s desire that ALL should come to know their beloved status, will, in the end, win out. From John 3:16 AND 17: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.” NOT to condemn, but to save. And in psalm 103, verse 8, we are reminded of God’s nature: The Lord is full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger and of great kindness.  

I want to pose a question, one that I have been thinking about and talking to a few of you about this past week. I wonder… I wonder what it would look like for us and for our lives, if we were able to let God do the judging? I wonder what our interactions and relationships would look like if we could let go and let God. Let God handle the actions of others and the outcomes of their lives based on those actions. 

In today’s gospel lesson Peter who just proclaimed Jesus the Messiah gets rebuked. “Get behind me Satan…you are setting your mind on human things, not on divine things.” If we want to follow Jesus, we too need to set our minds of divine things, to try and understand God’s way of doing business. We need to look past ourselves and our own interests and put God first, picking up our crosses, laying down our lives to really find them. Our new, full, abundant lives permeated with the good news of God’s redeeming, transforming love for our world revealed in Jesus on the cross. Did you notice this verse? “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. At first, this verse bothered me and then, it delighted me. We are called to look toward the return of Jesus in glory and then Jesus will repay. Jesus will judge. Jesus will decide, according to what has been done. WE don’t NEED to judge others. It’s not our job! We are free to NOT worry about that! Just imagine how much better our lives would be if we decided to leave judgment up to our just and merciful God? We’d all be so much freer to receive and share God’s love, so much freer to focus on creating loving relationships based on mercy and forgiveness.

Vengeance is mine says the Lord. Jesus will repay. Bless and curse not. Give food and drink to your enemies. We are called to focus on living together in harmony, sharing, loving, and building beloved community. God will judge. And the mercy of God always triumphs over judgment. Amen. 

“Oh that was beautiful! What a gift!” people gasp after a musician concludes a breathtakingly moving performance. “Wow, that was awesome!” spectators exclaim after an athlete executes a seemingly impossible move on the field or on the court. “How can anyone do that?” We’re used to talking about people who live in the spotlight as being extraordinarily gifted, the years of dedicated practice that have gone into developing that gift notwithstanding. However, as we hear in today’s epistle to the Romans, just as a body is made up of many parts each with its own purpose, so as members of one body in Christ, that is as members of a Christian community, we are each blessed with our own particular function, our own particular gifts which we’re called to share in order for the body, the church, to thrive, to grow ever closer to being the community God intended it to be.  

When Paul talks about gifts we realize quickly that these aren’t the ones from which great performances arise, rather they’re the ones that enrich our lives on a day-to-day basis. They’re the gifts that are too often taken for granted rather than as something important to the recipient of that gift as well as everyone around them. Take from the list in today’s Epistle, for example, the gift of teaching to the teacher. I spent 32 years teaching chemistry and physics to teenagers. I treasure my memories of the experiences I had with my students over the years but none of those memories is quite as special as one from about two and half years ago. My seven-year-old friend Connor was four and a half then, and seemed to me, as much as I knew about such things, like he was ready to read. So I bought a box of Bob books and one day asked if he’d like to learn to read. YES! came the reply. So across the cul de sac we went to my house where I pulled out the first book: Matt. Connor sat on my lap as we read the book. Matt sat. Sam sat. Matt and Sam sat. Matt sat on Sam. Uproarious laughter - funniest thing he’d ever heard. Sam sat on Matt. The End. Shall we read it again? Yes. After the second reading, would you like to read it to Mommy? Yes! So back across the cul de sac we ran. We burst in the front door, and not seeing his mother Connor beamed around the corner down the hallway to the bedrooms calling, Mom, I can read! Connor of course had memorized the book that day, but we made our way through nine boxes of Bob books over the next year, which lead to him taking on more and more complicated material so that when he started kindergarten last fall he could read at a level that blew my mind. Teaching is a gift, and it is a gift from God that rewards the teacher, the student, and everyone who cares about them.

That’s how it is, though, with gifts of the spirit. Their effect spreads like ripples in a pond, touching others in an ever widening circle. For example, I’ve always been impressed during my time in Cuernavaca with the patience of the entire diocesan staff with the participants in the language immersion program. Students invariably run the gamut from those who are so impatient to blurt out what they want to say in this language they’re trying to learn that they don’t bother to use any of the grammar they’ve just been studying in class, to those people who are trying so hard to remember everything they’ve been taught that it seems likely the second coming will arrive before the end of their sentence. No matter. The staff does their level best to understand what every person is trying to say every time. Over time, students invariably learn to be more patient too, both with each other and with themselves. The anxiety that is almost palpable the first couple days begins to dissipate. All of this happens I believe because there is a generosity of spirit present in that place that permeates everything that happens there.  

So often in this country we associate generosity with money, and there’s no doubt that money is what makes all sorts of things possible. During our second week Bishop Enrique shared in a small group discussion he was leading that their diocese desperately needs to repair the roof of the diocesan center and also have the building painted, with all the prep work that that would entail, and that the cost for the two projects would be about $45,000 US dollars, an amount completely beyond anything they can afford. I couldn’t help but remember how we, a single congregation, not a diocese, raised a quarter of a million dollars in as I recall about two weeks when word went out during Covid that we needed to put in a new HVAC system in order to be able to worship in this space again. Personally I couldn’t write a check fast enough, given how much time I’d spent in vestments on sweltering summer Sundays over the years longing for the day we might have air conditioning in here. I don’t mention this to in any way imply that I feel guilty about enough of us having resources available to make the HVAC system a reality, but only that I think for a lot of people in this country offering financial support seems like as much as we need to do. It seems like perhaps it takes living in a place where there simply isn’t much money to realize how much we humans have to offer each other that has nothing to do with financial resources.

Going back to my friends in Cuernavaca, they are so inherently generous with their time, their energy, their very selves that they create an environment that changes people. I don’t know how else to say it. People who, yes like me, are used to being responsible for so many things, so many people, suddenly find ourselves as the ones being cared for. Moreover, we’re being cared for by people who unlike those of us attending the school, haven’t left their jobs and day to day responsibilities behind. Rather, they deal with all of that in those moments when they aren’t going out of their way to be hospitable to all of us. They never seem to be too busy to answer a question, to fix something not on the menu of the day for someone having intestinal distress, or to deal with an air conditioner not working properly or to dash out to buy a birthday cake for someone having a birthday. They are just so kind, and to hark back to Paul’s list of gifts, they are unfailingly cheerful. I was struck initially in reading Paul’s list that the gift to those who are compassionate is cheerfulness. I’ve always associated compassion with helping those in need, those who are suffering and for that reason associated compassion with sadness. But thinking about it, who needs someone to bring joy into their lives more than someone who is suffering or in need? I remember vividly three years ago when roles were reversed in Cuernavaca. A beloved older sister of Anita and Ave, a sister who had arrived to help Anita when her first child was born thirty-one years earlier and never left, and Ave’s favorite sister, the one she could always talk to, got up on July 5th, went to the bathroom, came back, turned on her television to watch the news, and died. When I arrived three weeks later both sisters were utterly distraught, yet they had of course done everything that needed to be done to be ready for our group. Still, during those two weeks we were the ones who cared for them. We held a special service where we encircled them and laid hands on them as we prayed for them in their grief. Both sisters told me afterwards that that had been a turning point for them, that somehow a great weight had been lifted off them. Yet even in the midst of pain there was still so much laughter that year too. And when the mariachis came on the last day Anita danced at one point and I knew she was going to be okay. 

So what does all this have to do with life in Eugene? We’re not all going to move to Mexico and the program in Cuernavaca can only handle sixteen people at a time. No, the point is that the gifts of the spirit that Paul wrote about over two thousand years ago are still relevant and are being lived out in the world today. Being able to do that as much as anything comes down to the last thing Paul mentions in today’s reading: cheerfulness. Every day when we wake up we get to choose whether to start the day angry or happy. Heaven knows there are an infinite number of things to be angry about in today’s world: politics, the economy, the lack of firefighters in the forests, the difficulty getting medical care… as I said the list is infinite. We can choose to start the day focusing on our peeve of the day. Or we can wake up grateful. Grateful for another day to live on this earth, grateful for the wellbeing of the people we love, for the extraordinary beauty of the part of the world in which we live, for the opportunity to be part of a community as loving as this church family. This list is infinite also. If our perspective is one of gratitude then we’re going to wake up happy, and heaven knows the world needs more joy. Joy is contagious. Once a community becomes one whose persona is joyful then when tragedy strikes, when someone is diagnosed with a life threatening illness, others will be there, ready to do and be whatever the situation demands.  

The last day in Cuernavaca we always have a fiesta. They set up tables outside, the food is always delicious, and part way through the meal the mariachis show up. It is so much fun. This year after the band had been playing for an hour or so they asked for requests and my Mexican friends called out a song. As soon as the music started something in me said it was time to dance. As soon as I stood up my friend Ave, the diocesan chancellor, and the bishop and his wife stood up as well. Soon, one by one my fellow students began joining us, and we danced. We danced because we were just too full of joy not to. We danced knowing that we would head to the airport in the morning and many of us would never see each other again, but in that moment we could rejoice in being together. We danced til the music stopped. I hope you can find reasons to dance too. Amen.

We have been hearing many parables of Jesus these past few weeks as recorded by the apostle Matthew. Some of the recent Gospel readings have had gaps in what we hear; for example, in chapter 13, the parable came from verses 24 to 30, and then 36 to 43. It makes me wonder: What aren’t we hearing in the gap verses? Sometimes in the missing verses it is just a little bit of repetition: Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables, without a parable he told them nothing. Or, he told the disciples that he would explain the parables to them in order to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah. These omitted verses do not tell us anything more about each of the parables, and so they are set aside for brevity, I suppose. Today’s reading is different. There is no parable, and, as you may have noticed, there are no missing verses from chapter 14, verses 13 to 21. However, to be truly transparent, this should be verse 13b through verse 21. What we have heard today is: Jesus withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. Verse 13 actually begins: Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. Why am I telling you this? I feel like a lawyer on a tv show who is trying to set the scene and explain the witness’s state of mind. And any moment now the judge will say, move along, move along.

What Jesus heard just before he withdrew to be alone, was a report from some disciples who traveled to tell Jesus of the death of John the Baptizer. It wasn’t exhaustion of having told so many parables to the people and needing to withdraw from them to rest his voice, but rather needing time to grieve for his cousin and what he himself was going to face. The disciples, too, many of whom had been followers of John, also had just heard the shocking news of his death. And finally, the people, many of them must have been familiar with John and his ministry and also heard of his terrifying death. They gathered from the towns and gathered to be with Jesus.

Jesus in his compassion spent the day with the people and cured their sick. Sick from physical infirmities, and also sick from grief? When it was evening the disciples came to Jesus and said, “the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” And what follows is the feeding of their bone-weary bodies and the healing of their broken hearts and grieving souls. 

The feeding of the multitudes is important enough to be included in each of the four Gospels of the New Testament. This is true, too, of the feeding of the Israelites with manna from heaven, as they escaped from Egypt and traveled to the Promised Land. Those people suffered from bone-weary bodies, broken hearts, and grieving souls. The story of the manna is important enough to be included in four books of the Old Testament, as well as in two psalms, one of which includes these verses:

He commanded the skies above, and opened the doors of heaven;

He rained down on them manna to eat, and gave them the grain of heaven.

Mortals ate of the bread of angels; he sent them food in abundance.

We have heard that people are fed with manna from heaven. People are fed with two fish and five loaves of bread, blessed and broken. Soon we will come to the communion rail, we people of God, and we will be fed with bread and wine, Christ’s body and blood.

We are fortunate to have a God who understands our need for nourishment. Jesus definitely understands all that comes from food and drink and time around the table. For him such a gathering is a spiritual practice, and an opportunity for teaching and learning. This story today often is given a heading of “Jesus Feeds Five Thousand”. Actually, Jesus gives food only to the disciples; it is they who feed the five thousand.

We also are fortunate to have a God who shows us compassion when we question our ability to feed and help others.  Jesus gives nourishment to the 12 which gives them strength for this ministry of feeding.

Like the disciples who said, we have nothing here but five loaves and two fish, we might wonder what good are our little efforts at feeding others. Certainly, there is some of that sense of powerlessness in the making of sandwiches week after week. After all, the hungry are always with us. I have known of people in the Church who have helped with natural disasters, caring for victims of hurricanes, earthquakes, and wildfires. And yet these disasters are always with us. After one of the funerals this summer, a woman said to me, it must be hard for you church people to be around so much sadness all the time. Yes, being present and supportive to those having to say good-bye to loved ones is always with us.

The compassion and strength we need, we can derive from Jesus. Jesus, grieving for his cousin, still has compassion for the people and spends the day with them. As was commented at Holy Curiosity bible study this past week as we delved into this Gospel reading; “Generosity of Jesus opens the generosity of ourselves.”

The story today is not so much about food for us when we are hungry, but rather nourishment for us to have the strength and confidence to minister to others, whether five times or five thousand times.

I remember when I used to work here at the church every day and often greeted people at the door. So many times, I didn’t know if I helped them or not. But there were two encounters that always give me strength to try again. One was a young couple, she was pregnant, and they were out of resources. After I asked if they had family who could help, and seeing them look down and shake their heads, I referred them to Catholic Community Services. Some days later I received a phone call from them. With the help of CCS and anonymous sponsors, they had gone home to Arizona, they had been welcomed home by her family, and they were in a good place, they said. The other encounter was a single woman who came around in that time of the year when it’s dreary outside and raining off and on. She looked wet and cold and miserable. She had had a fight with her sister and had walked out of the house with nowhere to go. I called the Mission and they took her in. Again, some number of days later she returned to the church. I don’t know if it was a sunny day, or if it was the woman herself who was providing the rays of light. She was back at her sister’s house, she was happy, and she was thankful for the help she had been given.

Going back to Holy Curiosity bible study this past week, we each wrote what delighted us about the passage. Here is one comment that resonated with me. “I am delighted that no matter how little we think we have to offer, it can be multiplied beyond belief.”

God loves us and gives us gifts too numerous to name, more than we can ask for or imagine. It is our responsibility to receive the gifts and pass them on to others. God chose us to be God’s children, and we can live a life where we are ready to respond with generosity and a belief in abundance.

Amen.

Let us pray: Come Holy Spirit and work through these words. Help us to know your kingdom better and help to make it a reality here and now. In the name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, one God. Amen. 

Deacon Nancy told us there were more parables to come and here we are! Today’s parables are all about one thing, The Kingdom of Heaven. Would you be surprised to hear that The Kingdom of Heaven, also known as The Reign of God, is the thing that Jesus talks about more than anything else in the gospels? By some accounts up to 126 times! But what is it? And what do today’s parables have to say about it?

The Kingdom of Heaven is the expression that refers to what things are like when God is in charge. When we are living under God’s reign, God’s control, then we are experiencing the Kingdom. This can be a bit tricky, because the Kingdom is an “already” and “not yet” kind of thing. We are experiencing the Reign of God here and now, in bits and pieces, in glimpses and moments of beauty, shared love and peace, AND we are waiting for God’s Kingdom to be fully realized. That time when God’s dream for all of us and all of creation will finally come true. 

Our first two parables speak to us about WHAT the Kingdom is like.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”

The Kingdom may start small, like the tiniest seed, say mustard or poppy, or a simple bit of yeast, but watch out, it will grow and grow and grow. It has amazing potential. The smallest act of kindness and compassion can flower and grow, working its way through the whole batch of dough, activating, causing it to rise and grow and grow. God’s love is like this. When God’s full love is realized, it will take over everyone and everything. Nothing, nothing will be able to get in its way or stop it from growing and expanding. 

The next two parables speak to us of the VALUE of God’s kingdom. 

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

Once we discover the love that God has for us, for EACH and EVERY one of us. NOTHING can possibly be more valuable. When we enter into a relationship with God with the help of Jesus, who knows us full well, perfectly relating and showing God’s love in human form, then NOTHING, NOTHING can compare in value. When we start to understand just how good, how loving, how caring, how full of mercy and great compassion our God is, then we’re be willing to sell everything to get that treasure, that pearl. It was suggested at this week’s Holy Curiosity bible study that Jesus is the treasure, that Jesus is the pearl. What could possibly be more valuable than to live in relationship with Jesus, by him and with him and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory and VALUE is God’s alone.

Our final parable is a little trickier. It speaks to us of the realization of God’s Kingdom, the “fully present” and realized part.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 

I think our tendency is to hear this and think about God’s judgment at the end of time, good fish people in one basket and bad fish people thrown away into the fire of hell, weeping and gnashing of teeth. But I’d like to offer a different idea for you here, after all, parables have many interpretations, right? What if this sorting of fish and furnace of fire is not about who’s in and who’s out, after all, Jesus set the example of including outsiders, what if this parable is describing the full reality of God’s Kingdom? A Kingdom free of evil, a Kingdom refined, purified by fire, so that all that is left is pure gold, pure love? Isn’t this what Jesus has been talking about, showing and doing throughout his ministry here on earth? Casting out evil, restoring right relationships, healing and transforming lives, purifying people, creating beloved community, bringing pure light and love? 

“Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.” And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

What can we bring out of our treasure, out of our relationship and understanding of God that is an old understanding that has value? And what can we discover and bring out that is new? How can we work together to help usher in God’s Kingdom here and now? All it takes is the tiniest seed. Amen. 

 My first summer in the northwest, back in 1973, the friends I was staying with heard that a strawberry farmer in the area was looking for field bosses for the harvest. Since teachers were highly prized candidates for this role, they suggested I go see Mr. Tsigawa about a job, which I did. After exchanging pleasantries Mr. Tsigawa asked if I’d ever been a field boss. Oh, heavens no I replied. Oh that’s no problem, he said. Have you ever been in a strawberry field? No, I answered, I actually never have. Have you ever seen a strawberry plant? I thought for a minute before shaking me head and replying, No, I never have. To his credit Mr. Tsigawa remained utterly unfazed. Have you ever seen a strawberry? YES!! Have them pick the red ones. I can do that! Now let the record show that part way through the harvest, as one of my young charges - they were mostly kids bussed over to Ridgefield from Portland - looked up from where she was crawling along the row and asked, Do we have to do that field next? I was able to reply with complete confidence, No, that’s corn. I share this story to make clear that as the consummate Sally Suburbia I am clearly not the audience Jesus was targeting with his many agrarian parables like the one in today’s gospel. Nonetheless today’s reading has much to say to me, as is invariably the case with Jesus’ teachings.   

 One important message conveyed by this parable for me is the importance of patience. Being an obsessively neat person I would have been extremely frustrated at finding weeds growing with my wheat and would likely have been more than ready for my workers to pull them up when they came to me to report the surprising mix of plants growing in what was supposed to have been my pristine wheat field. Probably this would have made for a neater looking field, but as the wise landowner in the parable explains, it would likely have also greatly diminished the harvest since at least some of the wheat would have been uprooted with the weeds. No, I would have needed to be patient and allow the weeds to grow right along with the wheat. Wouldn’t that diminish the quantity of nutrients in the soil available to the wheat? Possibly, but that would still be better than inadvertently ripping up at least some of the roots of the wheat while yanking out the weeds, thus leaving the wheat starved not only for nutrients but also for water. And what if the weeds turned out to have some utterly unexpected but perfectly useful properties? After all a stray fungus found in a petri dish in 1928 turned out to be the world’s first true antibiotic - penicillin. If we take a step back and imagine that the landowner or farmer in the parable represents God, the Creator of all there is, then it’s easy to understand the willingness of this landowner/Creator to let everything continue to grow until the harvest.  

 After all, God didn’t create a neatly separated into homogeneous patches world. Rather everything was initially mixed together into an extraordinarily beautiful array of plants and animals that often turned out to have symbiotic relationships at the heart of their survival. It was humans who decided they had to get things organized, to plant specific crops in specific fields in a manner that would yield the best possible harvest. There is value in that of course. As the world’s population has continued to grow, as climate change has made less and less land available for farming, it has become increasingly important to maximize the yield of every acre planted.  

 But getting back to the parable, suppose instead of identifying with the landowner, the farmer, we identify with the wheat. We know we came from good stock, a bag of absolutely pure wheat seed, so what in the world has gone wrong? We expected to grow in a neighborhood of wheat stalks just like us, stalks with the same background, the same outlook, the same prospects for being harvested into a bumper crop of perfect wheat. And now, look at this? Intruders! Totally unexpected, intrusive occupants of our land! We’re supposed to be growing unmolested, able to benefit from all the land has to offer without having to share any of the nutrients with anyone else. Oh sure, word is some of the intruders are clover which actually puts more nitrogen back into the soil than it takes out but that’s not the point. They didn’t come from the same bag that we did, they weren’t sown when we were, they aren’t supposed to be here.

 And what if we identify with the weeds? Nobody wants us. Nobody packages us in nice bags and sells us at the farm store. No, we mostly blow from one place to another on the wind. If we do manage to get incorrectly included in a bag of seeds we just make people mad when we sprout because we aren’t what the sowers had in mind. But we’re not useless. We were created by the same God who created wheat. Given a chance some of us are quite pretty. We’re often terribly popular with bees and other insects. We manage to carry on when the more delicate, carefully cultivated plants shrivel during droughts, and so we’re able to keep the soil in place rather than allowing it to blow away. We enrich the biomes in which we live even when nobody wants us and those who think they’re in charge try their best to eliminate us.  

 When you get down to it, the peoples who inhabited this continent for millennia before white settlers showed up knew that it isn’t always best to plant only one crop at a time. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the native American practice of planting corn, beans, and squash together. The corn provides a stalk around which the bean vines can grow. The beans, as legumes able to fix nitrogen from the air, enrich the soil by adding nitrogen to it, which feeds the corn. The large leaves of the squash help keep the ground from drying out and yes, provide ground cover which keeps weeds from blowing in and growing too close to the corn and beans.  

 Clearly my rather simplistic interpretation of today’s parable doesn’t agree with how Jesus explained it to his disciples, but we live in a different time. While we don’t worry as much about “the evil one” a single sinister force out to oppose the will of God, we live in a time when an extraordinary amount of time, energy, and money is devoted to trying to keep nations, societies, neighborhoods homogeneous if you will. That may refer to race, economic status, ethnic background, country of origin. Whatever the emphasis, to refer back to our wheatfield for a moment, incessant weeding trying to keep things pure can end up doing more harm than good. Indeed it seems as though somewhere along the way “they “has too often replaced “we” in our vocabulary and in the way we view the world. The Declaration of Independence begins We the people. I’ve heard We described as the single most powerful word in a democracy. I’ll admit it’s hard to remember that when everywhere we turn there are forces trying to divide us into us and them but that was not how Jesus viewed the world or taught his followers to view it. Indeed We is just as important to Christianity as it is to democracy. Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners. He didn’t look for ways to set himself apart but rather ways to join in. Furthermore, he wasn’t interested in simply spending his time with the scribes and Pharisees, the intellectual elite, the wealthiest members of Jewish society. While he certainly didn’t exclude them; he was happy to meet with Nicodemus in the night, his message was for everyone and he worked to make it accessible to everyone, not just a select few.

 As Christians, followers of Jesus, we’re called to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ everywhere we go to everyone we encounter. Daunting as that sounds, perhaps if we go back to the patience of the landowner who was willing to let the weeds grow right along with the wheat, we can find what we need to go forward when the task before us feels overwhelming. Rather than endlessly focusing on our differences, what if we simply make a conscious choice to simply focus on being neighborly? What if we simply look for ways to have fun together as a way to shake ourselves loose from the isolation that has so insidiosly crept into so many of our lives. We can remind ourselves that the most meaningful legacy that we can leave behind is not our name on a building but rather the difference we manage to make in each other’s lives. And when we feel overwhelmed we can dare, if you’ll permit me to use a sport’s analogy, to remember the New York Knicks in game four of the NBA finals this year. With nine minutes to go in the fourth quarter the Knicks trailed by 20 points. The analytics people who sort out this sort of stuff, calculated that the San Antonio Spurs had a 99.6% chance of winning the game and reclaiming the momentum of the series as the teams headed back to San Antonio for game five. But the Knicks simply didn’t give up. They took their .4% chance of winning and played on. And they won, the game that night and a few days later, the championship. In comparing the people of New York to their team Mayor Mamdani asked, “And who are New Yorkers, if not people who hear those odds and smile? Who look at a .4% chance of success and ask, ‘Why are you giving me a head start?’”

 That is the attitude we need to carry with us into today’s world. I doubt that the analytics people would have given the ragtag band of scared Jews who were the first Christians even a .4% chance of spreading what Jesus had taught them beyond the bounds of the land where they lived, and yet by word of mouth, over time Christianity spread all the way around the world. We are the representatives of that faith in this time and place. Just as the Knicks didn’t give up, the earliest Christians didn’t give up, we simply can’t give up either. Not only our wellbeing but that of the people we love depends on us refusing to accept anything less than a world in which loving one’s neighbor is the overriding principle upon which decisions are made. It will take time and an unrelenting determination, but in God all things are possible. Amen.

In today’s Gospel of Matthew, we hear the first of three parables about seeds and growth. There will be another parable about seeds next Sunday, and the Sunday after that. The parable for today is filled with so many images that the disciples are quite confused and need Jesus to explain it to them. We, too, can be quite confused, especially because this parable can take on different names and go down different paths. It may be called the Parable of the Sower. But who is the Sower? Is it Jesus, who sows the Word of the kingdom? Is it God the Father, who sows gifts in abundance in a haphazard way, to fall where they may? Are we the Sower, trying new programs and ministries with great hopes that they fall on fertile soil? Perhaps this parable could be called the Parable of the Seeds. The seeds could be the teachings of Jesus, or the gifts of God. Are we the seeds? Are we scattered about, to see where we might grow? It may be called the Parable of the Soil. Are we the soil, receiving these gifts but producing good results only 25 percent of the time? Only 25 percent of the time. That is difficult to hear. For today I would like us to consider the Parable of the Hundredfold Harvest. 

“But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

In first Century Palestine sevenfold meant a good year for a farmer, and tenfold meant true abundance. The words of Jesus use thirtyfold which could feed a village for a year. Imagine when he says sixtyfold or a hundredfold.

If the parable ended with a sevenfold harvest from the good soil, then Dayenu, as our Jewish brothers and sisters would say. It would have been enough. Let me explain.

There is a time during the seder meal on the first night of Passover, while recalling the story of the Exodus, that Dayenu is sung in Hebrew. It is a song of gratitude that recalls in the story of the Exodus from Egypt the kindness of God towards God’s people, and proclaims that each kindness alone, by itself, is enough. Here are some of the verses, translated into English.

If God had brought us out from Egypt, and had not carried out judgments against our captors -Dayenu - it would have been enough.

If God had split the sea for us, and had not led us through it onto dry land - Dayenu - it would have been enough.

If God had led us through it onto dry land, and had not drowned our oppressors in it – Dayenu.

If God had drowned our oppressors in it, and had not supplied our needs in the desert for forty years - Dayenu.

If God had supplied our needs in the desert for forty years, and had not fed us the manna - Dayenu.

If God had brought us into the land of Israel, and had not built us the Holy Temple – Dayenu, it would have been enough.

Even though I have experienced a seder meal, I was not familiar with this song of remembrance and gratitude. It wasn’t until I recently watched a series called The Chosen, available through streaming or on DVD, that I understood this hymn. The series is a depiction of Jesus’ years on Earth, and the call of his disciples. Towards the end he gathers with his twelve apostles for the seder meal, which we know now as the Last Supper. The apostles take turns around the table, telling the story of the Hebrew people in the words of the hymn, Dayenu. In this telling, it ends with James, the brother of John and son of Zebedee, adding one more verse: “If God had only built the Holy Temple and not sent the Messiah in our lifetime, it would have been enough - we would have waited, but You chose us, and it is enough."

The series also has a scene where the women who loved Jesus and followed him recite their own personal Dayenu at their last meal with him. Here are two verses from it. 

Mary the mother of Jesus says to him: “If I had only been given the joy of holding you in my arms and you had not performed signs and wonders, it would have been enough.”

And then Mary Magdalene says to him: “If you had only performed signs and wonders and not called me by name, it would have been enough.”

Even in today’s parable where the seeds do not fall on the best soil, there is enough. It makes me think about a voluntary plum tree in my backyard. It grew up amongst the forsythia and so we didn’t notice it until this year when it got tall enough for us to see it bloom and then produce fruit. If a bird had only found nourishment from a plum, and not dropped the seed in my yard to give me a plum tree, it would have been enough.

Where is Dayenu for us? We look at our church, St. Mary’s, and we find it filled with the gifts of seeds that grow into ministry in God’s name.

If God had only called one young man to be our rector, and not sent another to care for us, our children, and our youth – Dayenu - it would have been enough.

If God had only given us our two priests to visit us when we are sick, and not given us a pastoral care team of loving people – Dayenu - it would have been enough.

If God had only given us a few workers to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for hungry people, and not given us workers in the kitchen to provide hot meals for the hungry – Dayenu - it would have been enough.

If God had only given us workers in the kitchen, and not generous people throughout the parish who give bottles and cans that provide Conestoga huts for those who need housing – Dayenu - it would have been enough.

For me, if God had heard only my request to fill 5 HO! HO! HO! stockings each year, and not given me a parish family that wants to fill twentyfold, it would have been enough. You can see that I can go on and on with the seeds that have been sown here.

Where is Dayenu for you? Where in your life are you so blessed that sevenfold would be enough? Where do you see that instead you have received one hundredfold? 

I would like to end with a portion of a poem that was sent to me this past week. It is by Hafiz, a 14th Century Persian poet.

“Even after all this time, the sun never says to the Earth, 'You owe me.' 

Look what happens with a love like that; it lights the whole sky." 

Even after all this time, God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit never says to us on Earth, “You owe me.”

Look what happens with a Love like that; it lights the whole sky.”

Let us pray: Come Holy Spirit, work through these words. Show us who we are and whose we are. In the name of the Creator, The Redeemer, and The Sustainer. Amen. 

Today’s gospel is composed of two main sections and there is even a third that is omitted from our lectionary for today, verses 20-24. I will quickly address the first section, but where I REALLY want to focus is on the last section, in particular the last few verses. 

In the first section, Jesus compares the generation of his listeners to kids who don’t really know what they want. It seems there’s no pleasing them! There was music, but you didn’t dance. There was wailing and crying, sadness, but you didn’t mourn, you weren’t sad at all. Speaking about his cousin John the Baptist, Jesus says, John didn’t eat or drink, he was fasting and you said he was possessed. And I, the Son of Man, DID eat and drink and you called me a glutton and a drunkard, and you accused me of keeping bad company. Which one is it? What do you want? Make up your minds! Finally, Jesus explains that wisdom is vindicated by her deeds. That’s to say, that we will know and be able to truly see WHO someone is, based on their actions. How do they treat others? This is the end of the first section and then the lectionary skips five verses, for now, and jumps to Jesus praying out loud. 

“I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” I take comfort in this. What is required, what we need, is NOT wisdom, scholarship or a high IQ. What we need is sometimes referred to as “beginner’s mind.” An open mind, and open heart, open to surprise, open to joy, open to new ways of thinking, doing, and being. Recall that Jesus says the kingdom of heaven belongs to children, and unless we can learn to see things through kids’ eyes, we won’t be able to understand the beauty and joy of God? Can we slow down? Can we pause to enjoy, and find joy? Find the awe of God’s creation? Allow for the unconditional love, grace, and forgiveness that God is offering us in Jesus Christ? When we do that, THEN we’ll begin to get it. We’ll begin to see who God really is. 

The last section of this gospel is truly lovely. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Ahhh. Sweet, right? What are you carrying today? What’s weighing on you? Weighing you down? Holding you back? This human life can be SO hard. It’s exhausting at times. Our lives are complicated, they are tough, confusing, stressful, overwhelming. Jesus, the divine human invites us to bring our worries, anxieties, ALL of our burdens TO HIM. Jesus knows. J-E-S-U-S K-N-OW-S. Body, mind, spirit failing you? Body, mind, spirit of a loved one failing? Everything falling apart? Already fallen apart, broken? Job, Marriage, health, relationships, disease, depression, mental illness, cancer, loss of job, partner, home, hope? J-E-S-U-S K-N-OW-S, and he invites us to lay it all on him. Come to me, he says. “Here, let me help you with that, put that on my shoulder, go ahead and lay that down, I’ve got it. I’ve got you.” Jesus offers us rest. Jesus offers us relief. Jesus offers us the best solution to life’s difficulties: companionship. With Christ, and in Christ, and through Christ, we are not alone. We have a God who knows perfectly well just how hard life can be. Jesus suffered, physically, mentally, spiritually. He was mocked, betrayed, beaten, unjustly tried and sentenced, crucified. Jesus was abandoned. He saw people he loved die. He experienced the depths of human hurting, exclusion, desolation and suffering. Think of all of those people he healed and restored to community. Jesus knows. 

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Twice, Jesus offers us rest. He invites us to be linked, to be yoked with him. He chooses to connect himself to us to share the load, to take our burdens on his own shoulders. I picture Jesus right there alongside me, a wooden yoke connecting us, allowing us to share the weight of this human life. Together we are trudging, pushing, making our way through the mud, the uphill, the rocky routes of life’s difficulties. Jesus is there with us, pushing, pulling, providing power and direction. 

This life’s weight, with Jesus at our side, is SO much lighter. Connected, we will find rest. Connected, we will find peace. We’ll find that our burdens HAVE become lighter, bearable. We are NOT alone. We CAN do this. With Jesus. 

From today’s psalm 145, verse 15: The Lord upholds all those who fall; he lifts up those who are bowed down. My siblings in the love of Christ, in this life, we stumble, we fall, are overwhelmed, and bowed down, but take heart, Jesus has overcome this world. Bring your burdens to Jesus, he invites, he WANTS them, he WILL be with us, pulling us through, bringing us rest and peace. And for that, we give thanks to God. Amen. 

Readings: Jeremiah 28:5-9; Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18; Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:40-42

Collect: Almighty God, you have built your Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their teaching, that we may be made a holy temple acceptable to you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

This morning’s Collect alludes to a famous passage from the epistle of Ephesians: “So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone” (Eph 2:19-20). It’s figuratively a Temple that God is building within us, and the temple is built of living people, from the foundation up. The Collect expresses the hope that the Church might be “joined together in unity of spirit” by the teaching of the apostles, the prophets, and of Jesus himself. Unity in the church is a thing fervently to be desired, but it's not always easy to see how to get there. One reason is that the truth is not always clear, God's will is not always revealed, and we nevertheless have to decide what we’re going to do.

The passage in Jeremiah, our first reading this morning, is part of a story about two prophets. In ancient Israel, prophets were poets, historians, political advisors, preachers. They claimed to be mouthpieces for God. The two prophets here are Jeremiah and Hananiah. They each claim to have a message from God, but disagree with one another about what the message is. 

At issue is what the nation should do about the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. In 598 BCE, the Babylonians invaded Jerusalem for the first time. They killed the king, Jehoiachim; they took his son, Jehoiachin, into exile in Babylon; and then they installed a puppet king, named Zedekiah. They plundered the royal palace and the temple. They also took around ten percent of the Judean population — the affluent, the educated, skilled laborers — as exiles to Babylon, leaving Zedekiah and the remaining people to limp along as well as they could. 

In the 11 years that followed, Hananiah and others began to prophesy that God was going to save Jerusalem miraculously from the Babylonian yoke. Jeremiah, conversely, had been telling people to submit to the Babylonians peaceably, not to rebel, because God had called Nebuchadnezzar “my servant” (a title he shares with Moses and King David) and was now fighting on his behalf. In one memorable episode, Jeremiah was walking around with a yoke on his neck, to signify that the remaining people would be put to hard service like oxen. Hananiah saw that, and very dramatically shattered the yoke, proclaiming that God will return the exiles and the treasures from Babylon because God was going to fight for his people. No doubt Hananiah and his audience believed that God spoke through him. 

So that's the background for the text from Jeremiah that we read this morning. Hananiah predicts peace and prosperity. Amen, hallelujah, Jeremiah says; would that it should be so! But he doesn't believe it. Jeremiah castigates the prophets and priests who comfort the people with “peace, peace; when there is no peace” (Jer 6:14; 8:11). So here we’re presented with a story about prophets who predict opposite outcomes. If we grant that God might communicate with people, and if we think that God’s communication might be good to pay attention to, then there’s a problem: to which prophet do we listen?

One answer the Bible gives is: “Problem? There’s no problem”: when a prophet speaks words that don’t come true, of if the prophet leads people to worship false gods, then that’s a false prophet (Deut 13:1-5; 18:19-22). Simple, right? Well, it’s not so simple. For one thing, if a prophet (or let’s say, an investment professional) recommends a course of action — maybe she says buy Bitcoin — you have to make your decision about whether to invest before you can test whether the prophecy is true. Or rather, buying the bitcoin is the test of whether the prophecy is true. The Israelites recognized this problem too. I could show you lots of stories in the Bible that deal with just this problem. There’s a story in 1 Kings chapter 13 in which a prophet lies to another prophet and gets him to disobey God’s command so that he’s eaten by a lion. In the story of Jonah, God gives the prophet a warning for the people of Nineveh, but when the people repent, the prophets’ message proves to be different than his prediction. By Deuteronomy’s rule, Jonah should have been put to death. Ezekiel castigates the prophets for prophesying out of their own imaginations (Ezek 13:2ff). In other words, Jeremiah’s conflict with Hananiah is actually part of a known sub-genre in the Bible. Jeremiah finds himself siding with prophets like Amos who saw nothing but judgment in store; Hananiah sides with prophets like Nahum, who prophesied that God would come — to save Judah, and in judgment on Babylon and its allies.

In our world, too, we are pulled from every side by people who claim that they have divine or arcane knowledge. I guess I am here claiming that God might speak to you from me. Priests and pastors and politicians and pundits all claim that they have special insight into the nature of the universe and of God's involvement with it. But the problem is that they don't agree with one another. One person’s absurdity is another person’s self-evident truth. The way before us is not clear; so what do we do?

Here Matthew’s gospel can provide some guidance: we don’t always know whether the preacher is right, but we can give a warm welcome and a smile. When we reach out in hospitality, we undermine the judgmental feeling that we have to be right and the others have to be wrong. Maybe you don’t feel the need to be right all the time, but I do anyway. Yet, when we reach out to others in love, that doesn’t eliminate the disagreements we have, but it renders them subordinate to the relationship we share. Whenever we welcome someone, we’re welcoming Christ Himself. Whenever we receive a prophet or a righteous person, someone who deserves a reward from God, the reward extends to us. And even if someone gives just a little cold water to the smallest or the least or the outcast, that act is sufficient. Our charity, to use a somewhat archaic but a beautiful word, matters much more than our doctrine.

Now I’m afraid that you’ll hear me saying that beliefs are less important than hospitality and then think that all beliefs are equally subjective and therefore unimportant. Not so. Maybe I can’t decide whether the optimists or the pessimists are right, but so what? Maybe it doesn’t matter so much who gets elected to public office or which religious voices are in power, or what kinds of transportation we use, or who we love, or what foods we eat. As important as those things can be, they are subordinate to the beloved community that God is forming into a temple for God’s true presence. The Collect’s claim is that the teachings of the apostles and prophets are tools to God uses for His building project, so long as the project itself is kept in view. Heed the prophets and learn from the apostles, or argue with them, but do not neglect to be hospitable to everyone who needs it. Because it is this very charity that is the Church’s mission and character, a temple, holy and acceptable to God.

“We are one in the Spirit; we are one in the Lord. And we pray that our unity may one day be restored. And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”

Let us pray: Come Holy Spirit, work through these words. Help us understand your call to follow you and proclaim your Kingdom. In the name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, One God. Amen. 

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. (For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”) 

WHAT? Let me just double check. Is this really Jesus talking here? Because it sure doesn’t sound like the Prince of Peace to me. Is this the time when I start looking around for the rector to come back, or someone, ANYONE else to preach? Anyone? No? Alright, well, here we go together to try and make some sense of this lectionary selection from Matthew for this Sunday.  

WOW! This is a lot, a whole lot. What is going on here? What is Jesus saying? What does he mean? Couldn’t we just skip this one? That’d sure be a lot easier.

No. Whether we like it or not, we’ve got to take everything, the good AND the bad, everything we find in Scriptures and try to understand what the message is for us. 

Let’s start with context, ALL important. Just prior to this section, Jesus has summoned his disciples and sent them out to proclaim the Good News. At the start of chapter 10 he says this: 

“I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues, and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me… Sibling will betray sibling to death and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all because of my name.”

Jesus knows what’s coming for his disciples and he’s trying to prepare them. Jesus’ message is not accepted or welcomed by all, especially not in Jesus’ time. Jesus knew that the disciples would be persecuted, arrested, beaten, spit on, chased out, their lives endangered. Indeed, all of them would be killed for their allegiance to Jesus and their proclamation of his message. The Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaims is a radical, completely new way of living and being, a whole new system that proposes turning everything upside down. People don’t like change. People in power, people with wealth, don’t like to hear about a new system that threatens their position and status. Those who are at the top will go to any lengths to stay there, whatever it takes to stamp out, hold down, and silence any new teaching, teacher, or leader whose message offers equity and dignity, a reordering, equal distribution, sharing and caring, beloved community. The message of Jesus shatters the Roman system of power, it breaks the hold of the emperor, and turns the empire on its head. And for this, Jesus knew that he would eventually be killed. And so, he is sending his disciples out with the harsh reality of what they are going to face. 

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. Swords cut, slice, separate, as a butcher separating meat from the joints of bones. In Paul’ s letter to the Hebrews he tells them: “The word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (4:12).

The Gospel message about the radical love of the Kingdom of God cuts, divides, and separates. Today’s words from Jesus are challenging. What might we need to cut out of our lives? What thoughts, words, or actions do we need to separate from our lives so the Kingdom of God can shine through us? Where are OUR hearts? Where do OUR allegiances lay? Are we denying Jesus by what we have done or left undone? The evil we have committed or the evil done in our name? Are we leaving the cross or Christ, our cross, on the side of the road? 

One of the commentaries I read about this passage asks a sharp question:

If we never upset anyone, never offend, if what we say and do never causes controversy or leads to confrontation, then are we really following Jesus’ lead? If all we ever do is come together and pray and take care of our friends and go about our way, then are we even the church, Christ’s body on this earth? 

Seeking to follow Christ is not easy. It will cause divisions, maybe even within our own families, we certainly see how divided our world is today. AND…with Christ as our priority, our focus, the first and last giver and receiver of our love, we need fear NOTHING this world can throw at us. God knows us. God loves us, right down to the hairs on our heads. God knows exactly when one tiny sparrow falls out of the sky and dies, one little bird, we are worth SO much more than millions of sparrows. God loves us unconditionally, freely offering grace to us all. As our collect says we have been set on the sure foundation of God’s loving kindness. AND…we have to make a choice, we have to decide whether or not to accept this free gift, we have to decide whether or not we want to open that door and see if God really is there waiting, calling us, wanting to come in, to welcome us home. When we decide to live our lives for Jesus, we have to give things us, we have to give up control, in fact, we have to give up our lives. We lose them and at the same time we REALLY gain them back again. Our lives are buried with Christ in death, and our new lives rise with him from the grave, resurrected. IF we want to take seriously the call of the Gospel, we must be prepared for division, discomfort, even death. Where do our values and our hearts lay? NOTHING, NOTHING, is more important than following Jesus working to bring God’s dream for all people and all creation into reality. Amen.

As Aimee concludes her year of deacon training with us, she leaves us with a love letter. Thank you, Aimee, for being a part of our community. May we continue to be the community you found this year. What a blessing you have been.