Join us on September 29th, 2024, at 3 PM for a free concert by Temple Avenue Jazz, a Lancaster-based jazz group formed in 2011. Initially started by pianist Colin Mekeel and his friends from Temple University’s prestigious jazz program, the band now features professional musicians in their late 20s and early 30s. Known for their unique spin on jazz standards and lesser-known gems, Temple Avenue promises an unforgettable performance. The quartet, led by vocalist Jillian Ashcraft, will also feature Adam Price on clarinet, Colin Mekeel on piano, and Doug Drewes on bass. This free concert is presented by the Apostles Academy of Arts & Science, with a free-will offering in lieu of tickets.

Join us after service on Sunday, October 13th at 11 AM for free flu shots and Pfizer and Moderna COVID boosters with Melissa Koehler from Hillcrest Pharmacy. This event is exclusively for Church of the Apostles UCC members, and you must be in attendance on October 13th to receive your shots—there is no scheduled make-up date.

Registration is mandatory to ensure Melissa brings enough shots for everyone. You can register via Realm, by emailing office@apostlesucc.org, or by calling (717) 392-5718. Registration ends on Thursday, October 10th, so be sure to sign up ASAP!

Thank you for helping us keep our community healthy—don’t forget to register today!

Don’t miss Church of the Apostles UCC’s 3rd Annual Halloween Parade & Party on Saturday, October 19th, 2024, from 1-4 PM! The parade kicks off at 1 PM from the front church parking lot at 1850 Marietta Ave, marching through Homestead Village for residents and staff to enjoy. The parade will end at Rader Park, where every child will receive a candy bag filled with treats—peanut and gluten-free options are available in limited quantities.

Enjoy fun games like pumpkin bowling, ring toss, and crazy cans, with prizes for every child who plays! At 2:30 PM, our costume contest at Schellenberger Pavilion will award scariest, funniest, most creative, best group costumes, and more. Plus, don’t miss the raffle for gift certificates to Laserdome, Goin Bananas, SkyZone, and a special adults-only prize!

The party wraps up with free ice cream treats and tractor rides back to the church parking lot. This event is open to everyone, ages 1-100! To register for this spooktacular day Click Here. We can’t wait to see your best costumes and celebrate with you!

*In the event of rain, the parade will be canceled, but games, prizes, and ice cream will be moved to Fellowship Hall in Church of the Apostles UCC. Please keep an eye on our Facebook page for updates.

As I was sitting down to think about this sermon, the words that came to me were,

“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness. It was the epic of belief. It was the epic of incredulity. It was the season of light. It was the season of darkness. It was the spring of hope. It was the winter of despair.” Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens opening line to the tale of two cities. There’s a truth that is in that that, for most of us, we can find ourselves somewhere in there. When I read the whole piece, it reminded me of the words of Ecclesiastes chapter 3, there is a time for every season under heaven.

I invite you today To think about where you are, what kind of season are you in? Are you in a season of hope? The spring of hope? Are you in the winter of despair? Are you in the best of times? Are you in the worst of times? How is it with your soul?

We just sang “It is well with my soul”, but how is it with your soul? Where are you right now?

As I was was thinking about this scripture and just reflecting on my life, I had a realization this past week that I am my own worst enemy. I am so good at looking at a situation, thinking about how something was going to go and figuring out how it can go wrong in all so many ways and how I’m going to either disappoint myself or someone else.

My brain is so good at creating all of those stories for me that I sometimes fail to act. But what I have found recently is if I can take those stories and set them to the side and choose to move forward anyway. What happened was beyond what I ever imagined. It was better than any of the best scenarios I could have considered because it probably wasn’t my idea to begin with. It was probably that little nudging from the spirit in my brain saying this is what you need to do. But I’m good at figuring out reasons I shouldn’t.

I share that with you because in our gospel reading for today, I think the disciples should be our heroes.

That’s not usually the way we depict the disciples. But the disciples in all of the gospel writings showed us our true humanity and all of the ways we can muck things up.

They did it in the presence of Jesus. So, if they were forgiven, surely we are forgiven. That’s my logic for it. So let’s look at this scene that I just read about from the gospel of Mark.

This is the fourth chapter in Mark, just to set the scene. Remember, mark does not have a birth narrative. Mark’s gospel doesn’t start until Jesus is baptized. It starts with the baptism and goes right into Mark’s ministry. It’s the baptism, it’s the time in the wilderness, he calls his disciples and he gets moving. That’s the thing about Mark’s gospel, Jesus is on the move.

One could even say that he knew he had a short amount of time to get his work done and he was going to be about it. His job was to reach as many people as possible who had been turned away from the faith, who had a different experience, had a different understanding, or let’s be honest, were outright told by the religious people, that they were not welcome within the community of believers.

After that, Jesus was out teaching and healing. In fact, the rest of chapter four is all parables.

Until we hit Mark 4:35-41 and I even sat with it, is this a parable? Is there a parable within this story too? And I think there is.

So I’m going to let you sit with that till I get there. See if you can figure out the parable in this story. Or what I think might be a parable.

But during the night, and that’s a clue. That’s like saying if you were reading a novel that the hero or the main character was going into the deep woods at night. What do you think is going to happen? Something bad. Because that’s what happens in dark places. It gets scary in the middle of the night. When you go out on the water in the middle of the night and it’s dark, you can expect that something is going to happen.

So they go out, but Jesus is like, no, we have to get to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. So, they go and they meet this storm, not unexpected. But in the middle of this storm that comes up, Jesus is asleep.

Here’s where I even thought this morning, even the way I perceived this, when I read this and whether it was just my own reading or whether I was taught to read it this way by anybody else, the disciples sound like they’re helpless when they wake Jesus up. to me. My first reading was, well, the disciples are being helpless and asking, don’t you care? You’ve got to help us.

Well, maybe they weren’t completely helpless because they were fishermen. They’ve been on boats before. They have handled rough seas before. They know how to maneuver a boat in the middle of the storm. When the waves get big. Right? There’s a way to do that. They would have known how to do that.

So maybe they’re not being really helpless and asking what do we do? But more of a, Hey, you know, wake up. We’ve been bailing here for an hour and you’re sitting there sleeping. Come on, we need help here. We can’t tell which version may be closer to what Mark intended.

Let’s also remember that this story is in all three of the synoptic Gospels. So we read them all. So they kind of become one story, even though they’re not. But anyway, they wake Jesus up. They want his help. And he does it, he stops the storm. But that must not have been what they expected him to do because they are frightened.

This version said fear. Some versions say awe, and they think it’s more, “Oh my gosh”, because then they say, Who is this?

Now, they’ve watched this man heal all kinds of people, and he has even given them the power to cast out demons. But, now they’re surprised because he can still the storm.

It’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on in all of them. But what caught me when I put Job 38:1-11 as our reading, was that he was faithful to God and he lost everything. He loses his family, his business, his reputation. He becomes an outcast. Nobody wants to be near Job. I think he even ends up with skin conditions. Job’s got everything going wrong. And most of Job’s is his friends telling him it’s his fault. He’s done something wrong to make God mad, and him saying, but I didn’t.

Finally, Job goes to God and essentially says the question that is always on our lips when life goes wrong. He says, why me, God?

I hear that so often when, when life comes at us hard and fast, we too say, but why me? What we heard today was God’s response. Where were you when I laid the cornerstone? Where were you when I founded the earth?

What struck me in both of these situations was we have humans asking the divine a question, sort of like, you know, where are you God? Are you going to wake up and help us? Are you going to allow us to perish? Or why is this happening to me, God?

In both cases, the divine answers with a question, not an answer. I mean, you could say the stilling of the storms was an answer, but they come back with a question. Jesus says, are you still afraid? Do you still not trust? Do you not have enough faith? The actual words were, why are you afraid? Have you still no faith? According to this version.

Because at the end of the day, this all boils down to how much do we trust God? How much do we trust the mystery that is the three in one Father, Son and Holy Spirit? How much do we trust them to be there? And this is big, Right? This is really big. But I wonder if it is that we don’t trust that they are there because they all ask questions.

But we don’t want them to just be there, we want them to fix it and we want them to fix it the way we want it to be fixed. That’s where the rub comes because we don’t get what we want. There’s some of you in here that are going to know this line because you don’t always get what you want, but you always get what you need. God will be there. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. That’s where I think the story from the gospel is a parable. Because the storms of life do come at us and we may feel like we are drowning. But God is with us. We will not perish, or maybe we will physically perish. But if we physically perish, we will be united with our God.

All will be well.

I want to leave you with the words of Julian of Norwich. Her wisdom says this.

“God did not say you will not be assailed. You will not be belabored. You will not be disquieted. But he said, you will not be overcome.” – Julian of Norwich

There’s a little bit more to this quote. God wants us to pay attention to God’s words. Always to be strong in our certainty in well being. For God loves us and delights in us. God wishes that we would love God and delight in God and trust greatly in God and all will be well.

All matter of things will be well. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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When I approach scripture, I usually look for what is it that catches my eye, or what draws my attention.

That phrase, catching people, was the phrase that stood out for me. I want you to think about, if I ask you to catch a person, think about what your body would do.

Would you be like the rugby player on the left, where you come in like this and take them down? Or are you going to catch them with open arms like the right? Because to me, that is drastically different.

This is my struggle with evangelism because when we talk about evangelism, when I think about evangelism, my experience of evangelicals is it’s the rugby takedown. They’re coming for me and they’re going to grab me and take me down. They remind me that I need to say that prayer or I’m not.

There was a trust exercise that I learned many years ago, I have no idea how many, so we won’t count. But where you stood in front someone with your arms crossed and you were to fall into their arms. It was with open arms that you were caught, not taken down. Can you feel the difference?

This is the grace of love, right?

To me it is. I think that is who we are called to be. We’re called to be people who catch people with open arms. We catch people who are falling, who are struggling, who need a soft lane. We can come in and help them, help them to find, not even just a lane, we can find life, new life, the life giving water that is available through Jesus Christ.

This story is actually the calling of the disciples, even though it comes out of the fifth chapter of Luke.

You think, wow, by this time we ought to be somewhere further along in the story. But, you have got to remember that Luke is the one that gives us the large birth narrative. So the first two chapters are all about his birth. Then the third chapter is getting started in the baptism and the wilderness. The fourth chapter, he starts his ministry.

Luke is different in that respect. In Luke, he is already teaching and healing people before he calls the disciples. So he’s already active in the community. In fact, he’s already been to Simon’s house. He goes to Simon’s house because Simon’s mother-in-law is ill. You might remember that story because it’s also in Mark. But here, he doesn’t know Simon. He goes because the mother-in-law is ill and he heals her. And I guess he gets to know Simon a little bit.

Then he meets him again at the lakeshore. where Simon’s coming in. This Simon is Simon Peter, or who we know better as just Peter. This is the good news for us. We should love Peter because Peter makes all of the mistakes that we would make. He does it for us. And Jesus never once shames him or blames him. He accepts Peter for who Peter is and loves him just the same. Continues to have him right by his side, teaching him.

So here in this moment, they go out deep. Jesus does this wonderful teaching. Out in the boat, Jesus looks at Peter and says, go out into the deep water and put down your nets. This is where, if this was contemporary, at least in my head, I heard Peter saying, they’ve done that, don’t need to do it again. Right now I’m headed in for a good meal, a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow’s another day. Tomorrow will be good. Tomorrow we’ll catch. Are you kidding me? But that’s not it for Jesus. Yes, that’s not actually written in the book. The author is quite kinder to Peter. I hear more of Peter’s staff than the writer did, but they go out again. Peter says, all right, if you say so, but they go to deep water. That means they go to someplace they haven’t gone before. They go and try fishing in a different spot, not their local hole, favorite fishing hole, which brought them nothing. They’re going to go to deeper water. They’re going to go where Jesus wants them to go rather than where they’re comfortable going.

This is a metaphor, people. I want you to be thinking about the fact that that means that we will be called to go where we may not be comfortable.

Instead of going to all the comfortable places, the places that we like to go, because that’s where the fish, the people are. That’s why I chose this picture, that you got to be fishing somewhere deep to find a fish that big. Right? Look how he’s holding the fish.

Yes, I think about all these things when I take pictures, right? He’s holding it with open arms. He’s not just holding it up. That fish has some weight to it, right? Like this will be a strong man pose, but he’s not trying. He’s not even trying a strong man pose. He’s supporting that fish. I don’t know if that fish is gonna become dinner or not. I don’t know what kind of fish it is. That’s my ignorance. Maybe it’s a fish that you would rather put back into the water. But it’s that support.

That’s where I think Paul’s message (1 Corinthians 15:1-11) comes in too. That it’s not about being perfect. In fact, Paul’s story is that he was the worst. Paul is clear, “I was the worst sinner.” Paul specifically attacked the people who believed in Jesus. He was a Pharisee who went after the people who believed in Jesus and harassed them. Even almost to the point of death. He was a horrible person to the Christians, and Christ came even to him and invited him in to know the love and grace, the forgiveness that was available to even him.

I think that we are called to be those who are out catching people, catching people in that supported way.

But I’m afraid that we get caught up thinking about ourselves and what do we need? What’s wrong with our lives when there are others who are struggling? And need us to turn our attention out to them and maybe to look in places we haven’t looked before. Because friends, there are those among us in our community who are unsure of their housing, who are unsure of where their next meal is going to come from, who are unsure if they’re going to pay the rent or the doctor.

Those people need our support. They need the hope that we have based on our faith. They need to know that someone actually cares about them.

There’s also those with the hidden issues that we don’t see. Maybe their sitting down like this person, we might have a clue that there’s issues. They may have experienced a great loss. They may be struggling with how to move forward in life. They may feel like life is just crumbling around them. They don’t have that support system, and that is who I think we are called to be as we catch people and help them have a safe landing.

So I want you this week to pray about this. I want you to pray about who it is that God wants you to help.

Because when we call on God, when we put ourselves out there for Christ, the spirit will show up and you may be surprised by who it is that needs help. Maybe they won’t be in that deep of a water or that far out of their comfort zone because you may find out that someone’s hiding issues because we’re very good at that.

All of our German ancestry helps us to say, that’s my dirty laundry and I’ll keep it to myself. We come in here strong and proud, and sometimes the world’s falling apart. We need somebody to help us, to hear us, to affirm us. To encourage us to remind us that God still loves us.

I was in a hospital room this week and I said, remember, God is here with you. The person shook their head and said, “I don’t know.” I said, well, I’m here to tell you that I think God is here. Maybe you don’t feel that right now, and maybe this illness is in the way, but God still loves you. It doesn’t mean, poof, you’re cured. Doesn’t work that way. It means you will not be alone through whatever you are going through. You will not be alone.

We are called to come together, to be building the community of Christ, to be helping others know that they are not alone because right now life is hard.

I was in a conversation this morning where thinking about the pressures of the world and how they try to run our lives and we have to stand up for ourselves and determine what’s the priority.

Those are the decisions that we make each day, and God wants to be one of those priorities. Right up there with family.

We come together to remind ourselves of that. So that we can go out into the world and invite others to know that love and support that we have found here because Christ comes to bring new life to all by catching all those fish. They brought new life to the fishermen, to the community. It meant People were going to eat. Bills were going to be paid.

We trust and rely on each other. That is how we live. Sometimes our world and our country has us thinking about other priorities, but the reality is we will live and thrive when we are community and we help others in our community.

We need to think about what is the impact that we’re going to make. May it be so.

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In the past two weeks we have had the opportunity to see some of the strongest, fastest and athletes who are at their best as we watch the Olympics. As the culture of our world is sort of on edge. I mean, it’s the culture of the U. S. But I think it’s all over the world. Everyone is anxious. There were some disagreements. There were some heated moments and some judging calls that they didn’t like. But overall, the Olympics reminded us of how community can work, where people who are from different countries can encourage each other, congratulate each other, work together for a common good, for the best in their sport.

There was kindness, there was civility, there was even honor. For me, one of the best moments was when the Brazilian won gold in the gymnastics. Simone Biles and Jordan Childs bowed to her because she fought hard and they fought hard to beat her in the other competitions. But in floor exercise, she won gold. They acknowledged her greatness.

That’s who we’re to be. We’re to be people who see the gifts in others.

Yes, we do our best, but we also want to lift up others because it is together that we rise. Not when we’re separated.

Today, we have this story from Joshua. My guess is that you probably don’t know a lot about Joshua.

We don’t talk about Joshua very often. For our Jewish brothers and sisters, he’s a major prophet. This whole book of Joshua is part of the larger history of how Israel came to be. It was not written as it was happening, it was written centuries or maybe even thousands of years later as the story of the people. It’s a reminder, just like the Exodus story, about how God continues to be present with people. How God keeps promises to God’s people.

So in this one, we have Joshua taking over for Moses. Moses did all of those wonderful things, but Moses doesn’t get to take the people to the promised land. That’s Joshua’s role. So, Joshua comes along, and the first thing Joshua gets to do is here in chapter three, they’re going to cross the River Jordan without getting their feet wet, just like they crossed the Red Sea.

I talked about that last week, that probably when I talk about the Exodus story of Moses you see Charlton Heston in the Ten Commandments with the water going up and him standing there with his arms raised and the people crossing the river. Well, it sort of happens again. We don’t talk about the fact that it happens again when they enter the promised land. It’s not the sea. The water’s probably not as big, but they still send the Ark of the Covenant with the priests into the water. The water recedes, and the people walk across, safely, into the promised land.

That’s a great story. Then it gets messy. Because in the scripture that I read, it said, Joshua tells the people, God will drive out.

There are people that are in this promised land. They’ve been in this promised land. They’re living there. The promised land is Palestine, and we can’t ignore that today. So, what God had said was that God is going to move the people, and the first place that they go is Jericho, and you might know the story of Jericho, or maybe you know the song Joshua fought the battle of Jericho. That might ring a bell.

In that story, they’re able to overwhelm Jericho without any violence. All they do is walk around the castle, the fort. But then, I’m going to say, the human side takes over. The rest of the book is quite a bloody mess. Literally, it is about how they killed the people and burned them out, burned out the villages. All for the sake of the Israelites having the promised land.

It leaves us to struggle. Is this the God that we believe in? Do we believe in a God who would kill a group of people so that his people could have the land?

I don’t think that’s who God is. That doesn’t align with the rest of what I know about God in the Bible. What I see in God is one who is present with us. Who encourages us to work out our differences and to build the beloved community.

That’s what I see. That’s what I hear God doing. That’s what I see in Jesus’ ministry. Jesus doesn’t come in and he doesn’t kill the Pharisees. He doesn’t attack Rome. He builds community. He heals differences. And even the epistles. Paul doesn’t attack anyone. He tries to build groups of people who can work together and live together. Work through their differences. There’s several epistles written on that.

How do we work through the differences we have? Because we will have differences. But differences don’t need to end in violence.

What God said at the end of Joshua 1:1-9, I think is the heart to me of who God is. God says to us, “Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go” – Joshua 1:9.

But as humans, we get scared. When we’re scared we tend to operate under our wisdom, rather than God’s wisdom.

When I think of the people that Joshua would have been leading, they were people who were probably born in the wilderness, raised in the wilderness, with stories of what Egypt was like, and Egypt was a place of cruelty and violence. You either did what the taskmaster said, or you were beaten, maybe even killed.

So, that was the the framework that they had to work from. Going into this promised land, they weren’t people who had been trained to farm the land. or to raise cattle or sheep or goats. They didn’t have that kind of mentality anymore. Because when they were in the wilderness, they were constantly moving.

All they knew is that is the man from heaven, which ends up stopping once during the promised land. Then they have to figure it out.

They could have worked with the people who were there.

Just as Israel could have chosen to look at the Palestinians when the State of Israel was formed and said, “How can we work with these people?” Rather than the choices they made. Even with the West Bank, when the lines were drawn, the West Bank was formed for the Palestinians. Instead of saying, “that’s theirs”, the Israeli government said, “but it’s supposed to be ours.” I haven’t heard that in the news, but they have the ability to say, and this story says, “this is ours. This land belongs to us. Despite what deeds you may have, despite how long your family may have lived there, thousands of years ago, God gave us this earth, this land.”

Instead of trying to work out a compromise, Israel came in with the bulldozers, eliminated the houses. The people had to flea with nothing and we wonder why there’s tension. We wouldn’t be where we are now if other decisions had been made, if other choices had been made, but they weren’t. So here we are.

How do we move forward being strong and creative? Not being frightened or dismayed.

The thing about fear is that when we’re in fear mode, all of the other possibilities go away. We go back to what we knew worked at some point along the way. The psychologist would say, go back to your reptilian brain. You’re not using your higher functions. You’re not using your best thinking. You go back and you become instinctual and it’s about surviving. It’s not about building the beloved community anymore. So how can we stop ourselves from going back in that fear?

The point is we have to trust God. We have to trust that God is in the midst of this, that God is in the midst of the Israel, Palestine, Palestinian, Hamas, Hezbollah situation.

I don’t know about you, but it’s not happening in my country. And I want to cry out to God about that. Let’s go, God. Enough people have died. Enough people have suffered. Make this right. But it’s not my call. It’s God’s. And I have to trust God enough to let go of what I want.

I struggled with this sermon, probably because it was something I didn’t want to hear.

That’s an interesting piece about it. Sermons. The ones you struggle with are the ones that you need the most. And when I think about what I experienced in the last couple days, over and over, the message was, let go and trust.

Whether it was Elsa, trying to control everything in Frozen with my grandson or Dr. Strange trying to come under a circle. You have to let go and trust that God is there. That God will bring us through this. That a way will become known. Even if we don’t know what it is now. We move forward and we work towards whatever builds community.

Because that’s where the love and the peace and the joy of God are. It’s not in the fear. It’s not in the violence, the cruelty, the hate. It’s in the love. We have to lead from our hearts. Because that’s where the love is. May it be so. Amen.

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This is probably one of those stories that almost everyone, whether they’re in church or not, has heard of.

A lot of you may even have that image of Charlton Heston in the Ten Commandments movie. Or you may have seen Sight and Sound’s version of it with the walls of water. Quite something to experience.

This story is meant to help us understand something about God, about who God is. God is one who hears the cries of God’s people. God liberated the Israelites because he heard them cry out in their slavery. God is one who is present with us. In our hard times and throughout our lives, and God is one who sends us freedom, who wants freedom from slavery for us.

I think we have taken this story and we have turned it into a hero story because we like hero stories.

God as a hero, that’s a good thing in and of itself, except when we think that God has to do all the work. God will be with us and God will help us. But when we think that we can’t do anything until God does it all, and I think we’ve missed the point.

That’s where I think God sent Jesus to help us understand that God wasn’t just going to come back and vanquish the Roman Empire. God wasn’t going to take them out of their own type of slavery with Jesus. But again, God intervened. Not in this way that was vanquishing armies, but in this quiet way that was calling us to be about new life, to be about freedom, to let go of the things that have enslaved us.

I’m going to try and make a turn here with you. I want you to think of this as a metaphor. I want you to think of this story metaphorically, and I want us to think about what are the things that enslave us now.

The Exodus story is about liberation, is about freedom. God wants us to be free. God wants us to be able to enjoy this wonderful life that God gave us.

But we are tied to sin and to greed, to power, and to control.

What are the things that are enslaving you?

That’s what I want you to think about. then I want you to think about what it is about the water. The water is significant in this. Yes, the Israelites walked on dry land. The water was moved out of their way. They had to go through the water. Even when they come back from the wilderness, 40 years later, they have to cross the Jordan. You have to go through the water to experience the freedom.

So what does the water of baptism mean to you? These are big things, heavy things. important things. But for me, the water of baptism is the gift of life. It is the gift of forgiveness. The drops of mercy raining down on us.

I don’t think I have ever been as happy to see rain as I was on Friday. I enjoyed it yesterday too. But Friday, I just stopped and went out and sat on the porch and watched it rain. Because we were parched. If you weren’t parched, our earth was parched.

My garden is parched. The corn, the leaves are folded and growing up almost like it’s a yucca plant. They’re pointed instead of being open. Because it’s starved for nourishment, for a drink. Just like we need a drink. We need the water. This is the water of life, water of salvation.

It’s not a surprise that we talk about baptism as a death and then a resurrection. What do you need to be resurrected from?

Or what chains do you need to break? What baggage do you need to let go of?

Our defenses are like the armor and the chariots of the Egyptians. They weigh us down and they get us caught in the mud. Those defenses that have may have worked really well for us at times in our lives, getting in the way of us experiencing true freedom.

Each of us is different. Only you know your path and only you know your burdens. I’ve said it many times that we come to church to lay our roots at the cross. That’s what Jesus wants us to do. And we tend to do that during worship. Then when we worship, we say, “It’s okay, God, I’m all right. I’ll just take it with me,” because we want to trust our own power.

But today we also have the beauty of communion where we are offered the bread of life. We don’t have to go into the water, but we can come to the table and we can remember that this simple loaf becomes more than a simple loaf. This becomes the way forward into real life. It can break the bonds of our slavery.

It can take away all that has us stuck, but we have to let our defenses down when we come to the table.

So the question is yours. What will you do? What are you willing to let go of? What baggage are you willing to leave here? What bonds do you want to break that are no longer healthy for you?

Thank you, gracious God, for all the ways that you come to us to bring a new life, to bring nourishment, to bring encouragement, to bring freedom and justice. May it be so.

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