Join us as we celebrate Pride Month at Church of the Apostles UCC!

On Sunday, June 30th, we’ll cap off the festivities with a free screening of “The Grove,” a poignant documentary showcasing one church’s journey in embracing love for all. Proudly fostering inclusivity, we invite you to join us for this special film event at noon, following our 10 AM worship service and 11 AM social hour. Light snacks and refreshments will be served before the movie. See you there for a day of community and celebration!

I want to go back to that first scripture (1 John 4:7-13) about love because a lot of times when we talk about love, I think we’re a little confused about what kind of love are we talking about?

It’s not just the feeling that we have. It’s not a romantic type of love. It is a caring type of love. But more importantly, it’s a verb. It’s an action. It’s love. Love is put into action. Loving someone else means you do something about it. Which is why I talked about the caring cart and what we have done in collecting these personal care items. You love somebody by doing something.

I think it is just that easy and that difficult because we don’t always know what loving someone looks like. What action is a loving action? But I’ve said in the past, and I’m going to repeat that. I want us to hold this question.

What is the most loving thing I can do?

If that is the question that we hold in our being every day. Then when we run into a situation or we encounter someone, we can bring that question to mind. What is the most loving thing I can do right now? We will get an answer. We will know what to do. If we listen to our hearts, God will tell us what the most loving thing to do is.

On Thursday, April 18th, the most loving thing I could do was go to this rally called Justice for Education at J. P. McCaskey.

Because the point of the rally was to help show our legislators that we care about this issue. Now I’m going to give you a little bit more information about the issue if you haven’t been following it in the news.

Our system for funding education in Pennsylvania has us ranked 45th out of 50. Even more importantly, last spring a commonwealth court ruled that it is unconstitutional according to the Pennsylvania Constitution. We have to change the way we fund education in Pennsylvania because not every child in Pennsylvania receives the education that they need. That’s has been proven.

So, now it is dependent on our legislators on how to change that. Last summer, there was a Basic Education Funding Commission that had a series of meetings across the state to understand ideas. It was half Republican, half Democrat. This is bipartisan. They went back to Pennsylvania and they have come out with a new plan.

What we are saying is you need to vote for this plan. The plan is in the 2024-25 budget and you need to vote for it. You need to codify it. You need to make it law so they don’t just do it this year, but they continue to do it because it’s a seven year plan. So doing the first year of a seven year plan and not doing any more isn’t really going to get us far. We got to keep doing the plan until we get to where we should be with that. That’s the education justice issue.

Now you might be thinking, social justice. Do you know what my schedule looks like?

I’ve got enough going on in my life right now. I want to affirm that we do have enough going on in our lives right now. I know that. I know that a lot of us are overwhelmed. That we are filled, we feel like we’re pulled in so many different directions by so many different priorities and we don’t know what to do with that.

In the midst of all of that, I want to say, it’s also matters that we pay attention to what’s happening in our world, to how other people are being treated. We need to do whatever we can. Maybe you can’t go to a rally, but you can be kind to the next person you meet, or act in a loving way.

I also want to name that we talked about the fact that social justice and compassionate justice is part of who God is calling us to be.

When we talk about “what does home look like?”, Home is a place that accepts you, that recognizes you and affirms your humanity. Because at the end of the day, that’s what it’s about.

It’s about looking at another person, regardless if they are like you or not. Regardless if they have the same political position as you or not. That’s really big right now. Recognize their humanity. We all still want to be respected. We all still want to belong and feel that we matter. We all want that.

So here comes our story today from Acts. Philip and the eunuch.

This is a social justice story. Did you know that? It’s a huge social justice story. Philip and the eunuch are both in places they don’t belong. Philip and the disciples have been chased out of Jerusalem because the Pharisees are out for them. They want to squash this Christian thing that’s going on and the Romans want to squash it because they thought if they killed the leader the movement would die and it didn’t. So now they got to go after the next level.

The Apostles have left Jerusalem and Philip is going around all different kinds of places. The spirit, which is what happened at the end of this story, the spirit just picks him up and puts him somewhere else. But for this story, he’s on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza.

Now I want everybody to just take a deep breath, because we know something about the road from Jerusalem to Gaza right now, do we not? I hope you do. I hope you’re paying enough attention to know what’s going on in Gaza and Israel. That’s the road they’re on.

Philip hears this eunuch reading. That means he is emasculated. The question can be asked, “Why is that the feature that is brought out in this scripture?” He’s an Ethiopian. It also tells us that he’s the treasurer. He mines the treasury of the queen. He’s in a chariot. That’s why I chose this picture, this image of it, because he’s in a different class than some others. He has privilege. He has a driver because he is in a chariot, and he may even have a bodyguard. Because he’s that important.

The part that they tell us in this story is that he’s a eunuch. He’s been emasculated. To the Hebrews, that means he is not a man. Because he cannot procreate, because his body has been altered, he is not welcome in the temple. So even though he’s been to Jerusalem, he would not have been welcome. He needed to stay out with all the other people, with their leprosy, their bleeding, and the other things that made them unworthy of walking in.

But he wants to learn. The piece that we need to pay attention to is what Philip does. Philip doesn’t care. Philip doesn’t ask about any of that. He doesn’t talk about the fact that he’s a eunuch. He doesn’t say, “Hey, since you couldn’t get into the temple, I’ll help you out.” He just says, Do you know what you’re reading? The guy says, Essentially, no, I need help, and invites him into the carriage, and Philip goes.

Then they find water, and even more than teaching him, oh my gosh, he baptized him. That means he is part of the body of Christ. He is welcome. Room has been made for him. Even though the religious authorities would have shun him, even though he was everything that they said no to, he was welcomed and baptized into the family and God blessed it.

It’s very interesting. Something else I learned when I was doing my research is there is a verse in Matthew 19:12. You want to read it because it never comes in the lectionary. We never read that verse. We read the verses before it and after it, but we never read that verse, and it’s all about eunuchs. Eunuchs that are born as eunuchs. Eunuchs that are emasculated by someone else’s choice and eunuchs who allow it so that they can be part of the kingdom. You need to think about that in all of our things that we do.

Because we are called, as a congregation, to make sure that everyone feels welcome. That’s what we say. Inclusive refuge, Anyone who is powerless or afraid, Anyone who needs refuge is welcome here.

This isn’t easy. We’re going to make mistakes. I picked this picture on purpose because you see what’s going on in this picture? All the white people are making a demand of the black woman and we’re very good at that. We’re very good at expecting them to fill our expectations without finding out what they need or who they are.

But we are called to compassionate justice. So, what I want to suggest is that I think right now with our congregation, we are at a point where it’s time to set up a justice team. This is what I would like the team to do. I would like the team to interview the congregation. Because I want to know. I want us to know. What keeps you up at night? What wakes you up at three o’clock in the morning? Which issue? Because there are a lot of social justice issues on the table right now. The education justice is just one issue, but there are so many. So I want to find out what is the number one issue in our congregation?

Then we’ll decide how best to work in that area. What difference can we make in our Lancaster community? Because I think we can make a difference in our Lancaster community. But we need to do our research first. I’ve learned from the organizers that you start with research meetings. So we need to do an internal research meeting first and find out what our priorities are. Then I have resources that I can connect us to in the community so that we can work. We’re going to work with people who are already doing the work. So that we can make an impact in this community. Because we want to. This is not just about coming in here to serve us. We want to make a difference with people. I heard that during our discernment process for the vision and mission. It matters why we’re here.

Reverend Roland Forbes, some of you may know Rev. Forbes from Ebenezer Baptist, he always says, “What would happen if your church disappeared? If your church disappeared, would the community notice?” And we want the community to say, don’t disappear. We need you. You are vital in this community. That’s our call to action. So, if you are interested in being on a social justice team, then come talk to me and we’ll put that team together because we make the way by walking.

We’ll make mistakes. We’ll fumble, we’ll stumble, but we can make a better community and we can share love with others.

The story of Philip and the eunuch, in several ways, an outsider, expresses the inclusive love of God for all. All are invited to come home to God because love is simply part of our nature. Love is from God. The invitation is as simple as it is every time we make it. When you endeavor to love your neighbor and live in peace with each other, there’s always room for you, no matter who you are or how you think you don’t fit in.

No matter whether you’ve been coming to church a long time or not a long time. Welcome home.

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This image of Jesus as the good Shepherd is one that I think we really love.

I think it’s one of those beloved things. So I did choose a shepherd image that is not maybe as comforting as some. I know in the church up the road at Salem, UCC of Roherstown, they have a Good Shepherd window that is the normal Good Shepherd image with Christ carrying a lamb across his shoulders. My grandparents always sat so that it was directly in front of them. So, that’s where I sat too. That image is comforting to me because we always think that we’re the one sheep that Jesus would leave the 99 to rescue. But maybe that’s not really who we are. Maybe we’re one of the 99 that get left out.

I think there’s a lot that comes into this idea of Jesus as shepherd.

If Jesus is our shepherd, then Jesus is the one who is to be guiding our lives. The one that we look to for answers. The one we listen to, more than our own desires.

That’s where the rub is, isn’t it? Because we want to be independent people. We want to do life our way. That’s the American way, but that’s not the Christian way. The Christian way says we follow Jesus. He’s our guide, He’s our model, and He’s the one directing where we go and what we do.

There’s a couple other points that he makes in this passage and I think we have a tendency to get caught in sort of this nostalgic feel good “We’re special because Jesus would do anything including lay down his life for us.” That’s true and it’s also true that we probably are more in the 99 and we need to think about that one that Jesus will go off to rescue.

Because that one is going to be one of the vulnerable in our society. One of the ones who is shunned or pushed to the edges, marginalized is a word we use a lot today. One who doesn’t have a voice in the public square. One who is discriminated against. So I just want you to stop and think. This is a question for you to contemplate.

Who is that today? Who, who are the vulnerable in our society today? Who are the ones without voice?

Because that’s who Jesus wants to take care of. That’s who Jesus wants us to take care of.

Then we have this other piece, John 10:16 says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.” There will be one flock, one shepherd. What I hear in that is this idea that they’re all welcome to the table. In fact, if there’s not room at the table, then we need to make the table bigger.

But we’ve spent millennia, Big Church has spent millennia deciding who’s really worthy and who’s not. Who’s welcome and who’s not. But that’s not what this says. This is Jesus inviting everybody, looking at us to say, how are you living that out?

I hear that in our Inclusive Refuge and in our Compassionate Justice. But it matters how we’re living. That’s something for us to think about.

Then we have Psalm 23. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.”

I don’t know about you, but this was the first piece of scripture that I memorized. I had the whole thing memorized because when I was a young teenager my mother taught me to be afraid of strangers, particularly the people in our town. Our town wasn’t a safe place to be. It wasn’t a big town. She had me walk to piano lessons for a mile and a half every week by myself. It was a different world. People don’t have kids walk a mile and a half by themselves anymore. Maybe in the city to get to school. But at that time she set up that situation so I would repeat the 23rd Psalm all the way to piano lessons and back because I felt like that kept me safe. It worked for me. Nobody bothered me. They might have thought I was crazy, “Hey, there’s that kid again mumbling to herself.” But they left me alone.

That scripture evokes a sense of comfort within us. But if you read it seriously, there’s hard stuff in that scripture. We love that we’re invited to lay down in green pastures and walk beside still waters. We love that. We love that our cups will runneth over.

But there’s also that whole piece about walking through the valley of the shadow of death and making a place for me at the table of my enemies.

I saw a post this week by our associate conference minister who suggested that this is a psalm that you could take and meditate on every day because every day there’s a piece of it that would work for you. And I would encourage you to do that.

It is about comfort. It is about reminding us that God is with us through everything, through the highs and the lows. Through the good and the bad, the gratitude and the fear.

But then I wonder, do we think about God being with us all the time? Do we think about that? Do we think about God seeing the choices that we make? Monday through Saturday? Or just when we walk in the Sanctuary?

Would you make different choices if you thought about the fact that God was watching you all the time?

I think God is watching us all the time and nudging us, like the shepherd, prodding us in the right direction. Sometimes we go, and sometimes we say, “Nah, not today. I don’t feel like it today. I’d rather binge watch Netflix today. Because that’s all I can manage.” That’s not the end of the world. We’re still forgiven. But it’s not all easy. Right?

A Place at the Table

That’s the theme for today. With this picture, I think any of us would take a place at that table. That looks like they’ve got a wonderful assortment of food. There’s plenty of food, plenty of good fellowship.

But what if it is a table with people that you would consider enemies? This isn’t about us just sitting down with our families on Thanksgiving. This is about us, the Catholics, and the Protestants of Ireland sitting down at a table together back in the 90s. This is about Israelis and Palestinians sitting down at a table now and not talking about all the pain, but just talking more deeply so that they hear the hurt in each other. Because everyone’s hurting.

We have to remember the humanity. That’s the beauty of the table, I think. Is that when we sit down at a meal together, then we start talking about more than the weather and the social pleasantries, and we can really hear what’s on one’s heart. If one feels safe enough to share.

We recognize that we all have essentially the same goals. We all want to be loved and we all want to feel like we belong. We all want to feel like we matter in this world. That it matters that we got up today. That we’re above ground, as I’ve heard people say. We all want that.

The Africans have a word called “Ubuntu”. Which means, “I am because you are.” and “You are because I am.” We are interconnected. And we forget that. We forget that we’re interconnected. We forget that we need one another.

So we need to make a bigger table if there’s not enough room. Because everyone deserves a place at the table with everything that they bring to that.

That can be a challenge because there’s some people I would not want to sit down at a table with. And I bet you have a list too. There’s definitely some people I would be like, “Really? Not that one. Anybody but that person, please.” But sometimes God calls us to those places where we have to sit down with that one.

Our United Church of Christ has called in this season for prayers of peace. There’s actually a place on the website where you can submit your own prayer of peace. I’m going to be sharing one written by the Reverend Dr. Nora Faust this week with the conference. She is our associate conference minister about being a peacemaker.

But there is so much war in our world right now. So much conflict. I feel like our country is headed to the brink of that ourselves. In the way we are divided so deeply. We need to find ways to talk to one another. To see one another and to figure out how we move forward together.

There was a news piece this week about speaker Johnson and the commentators thought it was terrible that as a Republican speaker, he was going to have to rely on Democrats to get a bill through. And I thought, Hallelujah! We have to recognize that it can’t be all just my people. Well, all my people are going to vote for it and we’re going to make you do it. Regardless of what you think. We have to come together and find how to compromise. It’s the only way we go forward. We’ve got to get rid of the sharp lines we have. In our country, in our community, they’re here too.

So, I encourage you, if you’re inclined to write, I encourage you to write. If you’re able to get on the internet, put your prayer in there. There’s not a lot of prayers yet, but it’ll get published. It’ll end up on the UCC website. You can tell us about it. We’ll all go on it and see it and celebrate with you. Doesn’t have to be your best work ever, but it matters that we be involved in bringing about peace. I think that’s who Jesus calls us to be. May it be so.

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What does it mean that we call ourselves family in the church?

I’m wondering what ideas you had. The children said they’re people that you love and care for, and who love and care for you. They’re people that you are related to, and we are related through this common story of the Bible. Family is love.

This ability to be together and to support one another. Because the reality is life is hard. We all have really hard moments, and the way that we get through that, the way we can get through our guilt and our grief is by caring for one another. By talking together and reminding each other of this love that we have.

The presence of Christ, which sometimes we feel it and sometimes not as much. We can feel sometimes like God’s not listening. So we need to remind each other that God is listening, even if our prayers don’t get answered the way we wanted them to be answered, or in the time frame we wanted, right?

The other reality about family is sometimes there’s members that you just want to say, “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” It’s really good when we don’t all think the same, because that’s how we grow in faith. If we all think exactly the same thing, that’s a boring life. We won’t get anywhere. We won’t deepen our faith. We won’t trust more. We need people that challenge our thinking. So it’s good, it’s really good that we don’t all think the same.

But one of the challenges right now of the church is, we have to decide how much of our faith, of the church that we have been, do we want to continue? And how much do we need to break open to be something new?

That’s part of the thing that I think is happening the entire way through the Bible, is that God is inviting us not to have a more closed mind. But to break our hearts open so that we have the ability to love more fully, to love more people, more diverse people, more people that we wouldn’t always love. That’s part of the story.

I do think that, in our culture now, we use that language of “family of origin” and “family of choice.” Because some of us, unfortunately, our families of origin have not always been healthy places. Many of us it was a very healthy place and praise God, but some of us not. So, we can also choose family.

That is what we think we’re doing when we come to the church. Is that this is a family of choice. I want to push us just a little bit to say, “Hey, I wonder how much God influences that choice?” How much are we here because God has called us to be here in this group with these people at this time? We may think that we did wake up and decide to come to church on our own. But I think God is also in there nudging us towards being part of a community of Christ.

These scriptures, when you put John 3:11-19 and Acts 3:1-7 together, it’s a real dichotomy.

Because John’s scripture, the letter of John, is encouraging and it’s about love and light and community. Then you get to hear Peter’s words and Peter feels like he’s shaming us and he wants us to have that guilt.

I want to say, this is Peter. Peter often got it wrong when Jesus was alive. Not to say that this is right or wrong. It’s in the scriptures. It’s there. But I don’t think it’s meant to just guilt us. I think that Peter, at this point in the right, has actually had a come to Jesus moment. He’s had a real one. So in those days leading up to Jesus death, he was the denier. He was the one that said, not me, I don’t know that guy, I’m out. That’s the same guy that we hear today saying, “…but you didn’t stand up for him.” You’re in this too, Peter.

I was frustrated by this text because Peter doesn’t own his own part in it. We all know he had a part. But Peter has also been forgiven. After Jesus’s resurrection, Peter has a meeting with Jesus. Where he has to admit, “Yes, Jesus, I did deny you just like you said I was going to. That was me. And I’m really sorry.” Jesus forgave. Jesus offers all of us forgiveness. That’s why I can say we are all loved and worthy.

This is the picture of the gospel reading today, which is the two men on the road to Emmaus who encounter this stranger and what they do is they bring him home to have dinner with them and in the breaking of the bread they realize that it’s Jesus.

There is something about the breaking that we all need to experience that opens us up to a better encounter of God. To a better understanding of who Jesus really is and who we are called to be. We need to have our hearts broken. That’s a hard message because none of us like pain. Nobody wants to go through the heartbreak.

And yet, it is through the heartbreak that we find life and joy and love and the abundant life that we didn’t know before.

I want to share a clip with you of the miracle club. It is a movie that’s right now, streaming on Netflix for free. It’s a movie about three women who go looking for a miracle at Lourdes. If you don’t know what Lourdes is, Lourdes is a cathedral in France where the Virgin Mary had made an appearance. At Lourdes there are baths that you can go into and people have had miracles. It’s a good family movie. British humor, but a good family movie.

So that is the challenge are we going to get a miracle?

I don’t know, but we can heal together and we are better together than we are apart. So, I encourage you to think about how we are family. To think about what that means to you. And to really make a commitment to that. To make a commitment with your time, your talents, and your gifts.

Because we say that we offer Inclusive Refuge, that everyone is welcome. Especially if you are afraid or powerless. People are walking in our door and we want to show them the love of Christ that we have received.

May it be so. Amen.

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If you came today for a feel good sermon, you picked the wrong day.

If you came hoping that there would be a lot of images, because I usually use a lot of images, there’s only one. This is a very different sermon. It almost looks like it’s very black and white. Because there’s a lot of words, white words on black backgrounds. I don’t mean it to be quite that black and white, because I believe in a lot of grey in this world.

I want to start by defining some terms.

One of the things that we need to know is definitions on what is sin or trespasses.

In the Ephesians text, the word trespasses is used. So sin and trespasses are essentially the same thing, both of which are in opposition to God’s benevolent purposes for the world.

It’s something that opposes God. Not trespasses as in our contemporary, meaning you stepped on my property and I didn’t want you to. Trespasses as in something that is going in against what God wants, or in opposition to God, or even away from God.

Salvation, or being saved, means being reconciled with God again.

That’s the whole journey of the Bible, is that we started with God, somehow we broke off from God, we stopped following God, we tend to follow with our free will, we tend to go our own ways, and we forget about God, and we need to be reconciled with God. That is being saved or that is what salvation is.

Grace is God’s favor that is given to us.

Mercy is also used and mercy means compassion or the word also can mean pity. So God can have compassion on us or grant us favor when we don’t deserve it.

We’ve done nothing to deserve it. Those are important points that you just need to remember when you look at these scriptures.

I’m going to focus on John 3:16-17. Then, a couple verses out of the Ephesians text.

This is probably, at least by John 3:16, the most recognized scripture of all. I don’t know that everybody knows what it says, but we paint it on our barns and we make signs and take them to ball games.

John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

But there’s a piece of that that I think we forget or we gloss over. That is that word “Whoever” or the old language was “Whosoever”. Some of the more contemporary ones use everyone, but that everyone believes in him.

I lift that because that’s not what we’ve practiced. That’s what it says, but then we said, “You don’t look like us, you don’t talk like us and you don’t act like us. So, sorry, that doesn’t apply to you.” How dare we? Who do we think we are?

That’s not me saying that to just you. That is the church, Big C. We’ve been doing this for years. Saying who’s in and who’s out. Who’s really saved and who’s not. Because they don’t follow or believe the way we do or think the way we do or look like us.

Whoever believes in him means we don’t get to choose.

I found a beautiful quote by Mary McLeod Bethune. She was a black woman who grew up in the Jim Crow South. She has been described by Alan Dwight Callahan as an educator, activist, and presidential advisor. She was born in 1875 and died in 1955. Here’s her whole quote:

“….Did you hear that word, ‘whosoever’? That whosoever means you. Not just white people. Not just rich people. You! This is where your human dignity comes from- from God, our creator and savior.” – Mary McLeod Bethune

There are no qualifications. Whosoever. That means inclusiveness that we have been talking about. That everyone is invited in. Everyone is invited to the table. Everyone.

Now, I want to look at John 3:17 because I think we often forget this one too. We stop at 3:16 and we forget to read the rest of it. “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

It’s not about judgment and condemnation.

In fact, we are the ones who by our choices create consequences. God’s not condemning us. We’ve lived with that for a long time.

The church, Big C. has made a lot of money, gained a lot of power and influence over making people feel guilty, feel ashamed, and by scaring them. That’s not what John 3:17 says. What this says is that God loves us first and foremost, and that because of God’s love, we’re not condemned, but saved.

But that didn’t suit us. So we’ve manipulated this. That’s where we’ve been wrong.

Christ is our experience of God. Emmanuel, God with us.

We have had an experience of God in Jesus Christ, and we have been reconciled. That’s the story of the cross.

Our sinfulness, it exists, but it does not define who we are. We are broken and whole at the same time. We hold that. We do not understand it. That is the mystery. We don’t know how we can be broken and whole at the same time. But those are the words. That’s what’s there.

We are created not to be perfect, but to be whole and to have an abundant life. Created to be saved, to be reconciled, in spite of ourselves.

That’s where the Ephesians text comes in.

“But God who is rich in mercy…” Let’s say rich in compassion “…he loved us, that even when we were dead through our trespasses, sins, and transgressions, he made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved.” – Ephesians 2:4-6

I want you to read this and I want you to think about it. When we read these passages, what do we learn? Did you catch anything that was the same out of both John 3:16-17 and Ephesians 2:4-6?

Here are some of the things that I saw. I see that both of those passages lead with God’s love. God’s love is where it starts and ends. That’s the most important thing. We are saved by love. The love that we have, that we did nothing to earn, except that we are God’s creatures. We are part of God’s creation. And we are loved just as we are. We don’t have to prove our worthiness. We all fall short, but God loves us anyway. It’s not about having to be worthy. We are good just as we are, with our brokenness, with our frailties, our sins, our trespasses. We are loved.

Everyone is loved, regardless. Christ came to help us understand that we’ve had this reconciliation.

That was Christ’s message. If you look at the stories over and over, Jesus goes out and meets people where they are, and reminds them that they are loved and forgiven. Their faith is what drives it. Their sins are forgiven. “Your faith has made you well.” – Luke 18:42

Someone asked me, after a sermon the other week, if I believe that everybody’s saved. And I do. Because of these verses. It’s right there. I do believe that everyone’s saved, except that we still have a choice from the very beginning. We have a choice to say, “No thanks, God. I’m doing it on my own.”

Right now the church is frustrated and struggling because so many people are out on their own or asking God, “Where were you? I needed you. You told me I was out. You told me you didn’t have love for me. You’ve already lied to me once, I don’t know if I can trust you again. Even if the world’s falling apart.”

That’s where we are today. That the world is falling apart.

People are looking for where they can find answers. Where are they loved and safe? And the question is, is that us?

Our vision and mission says yes! Our vision and mission that we discerned says that God expects us to love everyone, to welcome everyone, and to help everyone know that they are okay.

That doesn’t mean that everything works out beautifully.

For those who say, “No thanks, don’t need you, God”, there are consequences when we do that. Just as I think that there’s consequences when we look at, look at God and say “You told us that we’re supposed to love everybody, but we’re not.”

When we choose to do that, I think there are consequences.

We have had three people who identified as trans commit suicide in the last three to six months. I think some of that was in the fall of 2023, so I don’t think it was just in 2024. We just had another suicide, Ash Clatterbuck.

In my work in the community, I’ve had several people talk to me about it. Different people in different places that just brought up the subject. What are we doing? Who are we as a community?

Ash was loved and supported fully by their family, was loved and supported fully by the church, and yet they couldn’t handle the pressure of the community.

What does that say about us as a community? That’s bigger, right? That’s Lancaster. Lancaster City and County. What does that say about who we are?

We need to look at who we are, because it matters. It matters a lot.

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Today starts A New Time.

In the church year, it’s the season of Lent, which the church has often made a time of giving up, encouraging us to, to be less selfish, and to let go of some of the pleasures that we enjoy. We’re doing a slightly different take on that right now. What I want to encourage you to do is to let go of the things that get in the way of you being fully who God created you to be. Let go of the past hurts the regrets you might have, the times when you wish you had done something differently. It’s time to let go of those things and no longer be weighed down by them.

Instead, choose to be about something good. Choose to be about something that draws you closer to God.

Something that draws you closer to others, so that you can share the good news with them. I think we live in a world today, where a lot of us are just overwhelmed saddened by the latest news, maybe even a bit afraid. We’re getting to the point where we miss the beauty. We miss the birds, or since we are in Pennsylvania, we miss the Tundra Swans and the geese. Do we see them? Are we missing all of that? Because we’re focused on all of the things that are going wrong in the world?

We’re becoming afraid and we’re isolating, instead of coming together and creating community. Those of you who are here, and those of you at home that we hope will join us at some point, you’ve chosen community today. How can we help others know that this is a safe space? That this is a place where we hear a different message?

Because that message of deprival and all of that giving up? Yes, it’s true. We are mortal and our mortality is right in front of us but in the wilderness is our lives. We learn lessons of life, and this is a time to look at the lessons and recognize that through it all, God is with us.

We are never alone.

It’s interesting that they put the rainbow with us on this first Sunday of Lent. Because you know the rainbow reminds us that God changes God’s mind. God was so frustrated with humanity is the way the story goes right? That God sent the flood.
But God changed God’s mind as if God’s heart was broken by not having that relationship with humanity. So God said, I’m never gonna do that again. There’s never going to be a time when I don’t love you. There’s never going to be a time when I leave you.

It doesn’t matter what we do. I mean, it does matter. Obviously God wants us to be better people but there’s nothing that we can do that will drive God away from us. God is constantly reaching out to be in relationship with us. Love wins. God’s love is eternal forever. And the Rainbow reminds us.

Mark’s Gospel

Mark’s gospel is very interesting in that you might have had a flashback when I read the beginning of that, because you’re like, that’s the baptism text. We read that back in epiphany, because we did. We read that on January 14th. Because it was the baptism, but for Mark, all of this is the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.

He does all of it in six verses, the whole thing. From baptism, Jesus goes down in the water comes up, here’s you are my beloved. And immediately the Scripture says the Spirit drives him to the desert. He has, for some reason, of which we do not know, he has to have that wilderness experience. But he’s not alone in the desert. He’s not alone there, just as we will not be alone.

Yes, he encounters Satan, he encounters all the temptations of our lives. He encounters wild beasts, and the angels wait on him. God is present with him. Just as God will be present with us through all of our wilderness and, and temptations.
We are not alone. God has chosen to give us a new time, a different thing.

Then, as soon as the 40 days are up, Jesus goes to the to Galilee and declares it is a new time. Repent and hear the good news. That also happens just as John is arrested and taken away. John is no longer saying, Repent. So Jesus comes and follows up with this message of repentance. And we’ve made this message of repentance as confession, looking at ourselves, and recognizing what we have done wrong. That is an important piece of it. And there’s more to it.

We also have to choose to be different.

We have to choose to change because it’s a new time. God in Jesus has come close to us. Because God still wants that relationship. God still wants to walk with us, talk with us, share life with us, teach us, model for us, and encourage us to be our best selves.

Will we be? No. But God loves us anyway. But we can be about this idea of repentance.

This quote by Amy Jo Levine really is catching to me. Because it changes that meaning a little bit that repenting means fixing broken relationships, and doing one’s best to restore community that’s coming out of the Jewish perspective. Right? This is Rosh Hashana for them. This is how do we admit that we’re not who God has called us to be. We can be better. We can work on the relationships, our relationship with God, our relationships with one another, and our relationships with the world, and the community. To everyone that we meet, we can be better at those.

We can build community. That’s what I think we need right now, more than ever.

We are living through a new time. We haven’t come out of the pandemic well. There are some people, and I would even say that I’m in that group, that when we get in a large group, we don’t feel right. I don’t like large gatherings anymore. There’s some who don’t. We stay away from large gatherings because they’re afraid of the the germs that are in those gatherings. The pandemic did that for us really well, showed us that those large gatherings are super spreaders.

But now, we also know that large gatherings are targets for people with guns who aren’t stable. You get a large gathering, even the Super Bowl gathering was an opportunity for a man who needs help and a gun. But they do the damage. So we’re like, “I’m not sure if I want to be in a large gathering.” Then you watch the news. There’s a lot of violence in our world right now. How do we counteract that? We have to remind ourselves, that we don’t do it alone.

God is with us. We come together to remind each other that God is here that God is with us wherever we are.

We can encourage one another. We can hold each other up in the hard times. That’s who we are called to be. We are called to create community. To be this inclusive refuge, to serve compassionately, to care about the environment and how everyone is treated. That’s what we’ve said. That’s what God is calling us to be. So can we be about that? Can we be about looking at how we interact with one another and how we greet those who come into our midst to make sure that all feel welcome to experience Christ with us. That’s our challenge.

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