I want to begin by celebrating our choice last week.

Last week, you had three large decisions, two of which were significant, and those were on the inclusive church covenant and on the sanctuary remodel project. You overwhelmingly chose to live, and that, my friends, is good news. You said that this “keeping the status quo” is not enough, that it matters that we welcome people. That it matters, even if we don’t understand. We can still love others. We can accept them as they are. We can listen to the things that they need and make accommodations, because they matter.

That is not a message shared in all churches. For a lot of people, their faith is literally the difference between whether they live another day or not. I can’t say that that is how my faith works. I’ve always had faith. I was raised in faith, and so I’m not sure that I’m at that point, but my faith is important to me, and I recognize that some feel like God is not for them. I guess that’s the point. I was always told that God loved me. There was never a time when I was told God didn’t love me, and that makes a big difference in who we are.

The Ephesians text for today, Ephesians 1:11-23, is about this love that God has for us.

The writer is taking this love that we call the blessing of the Jews. You know, the Jews had been the chosen ones, that’s said throughout the older Hebrew testament, in Jesus. This was opened up to those who were not Jewish, and that means us. We didn’t have to become Jewish and follow all the Jewish laws to become Christian. That in Christ we are.

In Roman law, “adopted” meant that you were entitled to everything. The same as one who is physically born, a family heir. An adopted person has all of the privileges and obligations of the family of origin, and so we are given the blessing to be called children of God. That is who we are. We get to claim that, and I hope you can feel that in your bodies. Because that’s an important message. It’s important to know that you belong.

That’s a part of belonging. Again, it’s a part of the love that is available to all without exception. Our problem is that for time and eternity humanity has tried to put restrictions on that and say everybody but these people or everybody but these people, we’ve always tried to make an other that for whom that does not apply.

That’s not the way God looks at it, I don’t think. Not that I know exactly what God thinks, but God and Jesus were very much about sharing God’s love with all people, and many of the religious authorities thought they were not part of or were outside of God’s love. Whether they had a physical ailment or a deformity or some kind of challenge, the religious authorities in Jesus’ day said, “not you. You are not welcome.” And Jesus said, “Yes, yes, you are.”

The good news about this is that we didn’t earn it. We don’t deserve this adoption, and we didn’t earn it. There’s nothing that would make us good enough to earn this. It is a gift freely given because of who God is, not because of who we are. The good news is that we will mess up, but that doesn’t mean that we are then outside of the family of God. God keeps us in that family no matter what, and maybe our greatest sin of all is that we think that who we are and what we have is because of us rather than God. We forget, or we lack gratitude. We forget to be grateful. We forget to come back to God as the source of all that is and will be.

We get into our minds that, “but look what all we have. Look what we’ve done.” No, it’s not about what we’ve done. It’s about what God is doing through us. Just to clarify, I just said about the fact that we chose life. I think we chose life because God was moving in your hearts to choose life. I don’t think it’s that all of a sudden we had this great, well, maybe it is because we had a great epiphany, but that epiphany was put there by God. Our responsibility, our choice is to then become our best selves because of God’s love, and this being part of God’s family, so that we can work to be grateful, generous, and kind to everyone.

The reality is that these woes in Luke 6:25-35 come to us all. None of us will escape life without some type of heartache or suffering.

This verse gives you the blessings first. But when I read it, I started with the woes. You’re probably thinking that was a really odd place to start, you’re right. It was a choice I made, but I made it because I think the “love our enemies” sounds different when we start with the woes.

The other thing I learned as I sat with this scripture is that it matters how we perceive God. How do we see God? Do we see God as this loving, encouraging, and comforting presence? Or do we see Him as the God of wrath?

After David and I were married if I would stub my toe or hurt myself somehow, because I am a little clumsy, I would be like, I’m sorry, God, I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry. I felt like God was getting me for stepping out of line. The hellfire and damnation God that was just waiting for me to step out of line and zap me. That’s the God I grew up with, and I’ve been working really hard for a long time to let go of that God, and I’ve done pretty well on some fronts. But when I read that woes text, I wanna read it with the hellfire and damnation voice.

But why does that matter? I think two truths come into play in this. Hurting people hurt others, and tone matters. I think David told me that all the time we’ve been married, tone matters, and it changes the scripture, doesn’t it? It’s very different if it’s God coming at you or if it is God saying with empathy and compassion, you might be full now, but you will be hungry. Life might be going well now, but there is pain in life. People die, our hearts break, and we have to be prepared for that. That’s very different.

I say all of that because it’s Thanksgiving week, and I don’t know what kind of Thanksgiving gatherings you might be going to, but you might be going to a gathering where there’s someone who’s hard to love.

I hear about how with everything that’s happening in our country, there are a lot of families that are divided and are struggling to sit together at a table. I want you to focus on this scripture, so even if a person that you’re gonna be with this week has a very different position from you, one that even is the opposite or worst case scenario, threatens who you are, then you have some choices of how to love that person. If we can be with that person, then let’s love them. By listening to them, let’s love them by asking, and by being curious and compassionate. Trying to understand what the fear is that they have, because that’s what drives that kind of behavior. Where is their fear?

If you can, do not argue, but if you can say something, make a heartfelt statement about what you see in the world, in our country, and in our community, just name it. “What I see is this … and it breaks my heart.” That kind of statement lands differently. It’s one of the reasons I’ve backed off from some of the groups that I’m in because there is anger and militaristic opposition, and I don’t think that’s it.

I think we are called to be different. I think that’s why the church grew from the beginning, because the disciples and the new Faithful Acts they lived differently. They lived in ways that they could love each other, and those with whom they disagreed, they could love when it made no sense to love; that’s a high calling. That’s not easy. I know that.

I certainly couldn’t have loved, still don’t, but I’m at peace with the person who was the oppressor and abuser in my life. I’ve made peace with them, but they’re dead, so I’m safe. I understand that that’s also part of this. This is not asking for any kind of submission to any abuse; some people make that argument, and I do not believe that. I do not believe that God or Jesus would call us into that. It is about the non-violent non-retaliatory methods and approach, like that which Bayard Rustin did with the Civil Rights movement.

I didn’t even know about Bayard Ruston until Declan introduced me. Everything was going against Bayard. He was African American and he was gay, so even the civil rights movement didn’t know what to do with him, which is why there’s not much written about him. It’s harder to find him among those who are the people we lift up.

As we move into Thanksgiving, I hope that you can look at your life and be grateful.

Make a list of the things for which you are grateful. Share them. Share that at your dinner tables. Help people get in that mindset of gratitude, realizing that it’s not us who accomplished it.

The leading causes of life really boil down to hope, gratitude, belonging, and choice. Those things are not always accessible or reasonable for people who are suffering from poverty, sorrow, hunger, or marginalization, but we are called to help them find that. We are called to help them see how they can have hope because of Jesus. That’s who we are called to be.

My Thanksgiving wish for you is that you can fully embody love and that you can perceive others through love or see them through the lens of love as Jesus sees them.

May it be so. Amen.

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 I was thinking about an example of faith, and I’m a movie person, so this image from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is the image that always comes to mind.

He has to make the leap of the lion’s head, which is he has to walk across that cavern because the room with the chalice is on the other side and it doesn’t look good. It’s not an easy step to take. I have a real fear of ledges. Ledges show up in my dreams. I am so scared of falling from a ledge and it’s tied into my fear of heights.

But, we are called to take that step, realizing that we don’t know where it is. We don’t know how this is gonna work out, but what happens in the movie when he takes that step? He finds out there’s actually a bridge that’s camouflaged into the cavern below. So you can’t see it until you take that step of faith. And that’s who we are called to be.

That is what the Hebrew scripture, Hebrews 11:1-3 & 8-16, is all about.

It’s about encouraging people to continue to take the step of faith. That passage was written by a very educated Jewish person. It’s written in Greek, but it contains so much knowledge of the Hebrews and the Jewish traditions that the icons of the Jewish faith are lifted in it.

It was intended for a Jewish audience and written by someone who knew the story. Someone of Jewish background who has come into the church. Although it’s not stated in the letter, it seems that the people are starting to fall away, and he’s trying to convince them to stay. It’s possible that the people thought Jesus came and he said he was coming again, and that the end of the world was coming, and it hasn’t happened yet. They’re starting to question that, and he’s trying to keep them together by saying, “Don’t give up on the faith. Keep your trust because your faith is what leads you.”

This scripture focuses on Abraham and Sarah. He acted in faith. He followed God in faith. He never got to see what his homeland or that city that was being described to him. “By faith, with Sarah’s involvement, he received power of procreation, even though he was too old, because he considered the one faithful who had promised. Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, “as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.” – Hebrews 11:11-12. He’ll never see that. He sees his children born. He has two sons, but that’s as much as he sees.

But it continues. There is more than we can see. That’s the scripture encouraging us in that light to keep the faith and to trust in God because things are not always what they seem. We can encourage each other and come together to direct the love and mercy so that we all become the people who God intended us to be. Because none of us are complete. None of us are done growing and learning. We’re all in that together.

Then we have this scripture, Mark 4:35-41.

This must have been a really pivotal story for the early church because it is in all three of what we call the synoptic gospels. That’s Matthew, Mark, and Luke because they share a lot of stories. John has a different take on things.

But we even have it in our stained glass windows. The second window has the boat on the stormy waters. Something happened in that boat that was so important that everybody had to know about it. I don’t know about you, but when I have heard this read and preached before, and I have preached it this way too, there’s that line from Jesus to the disciples. I have heard it in an angry or demeaning tone, more of a, why are you afraid? Have you no faith? But I didn’t read it that way today because tone matters. We don’t know how Jesus actually said it, but what if Jesus’s tone was one of love and compassion, which fits how Jesus operated in general?

So instead of coming off being angry and frustrated with these stupid disciples that never got it, even in the end. Because the end is never the end. What if he actually said, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” In an almost pitying and compassionate way?

He didn’t give up on those disciples, and he silenced the waves and the wind to help them have the peace and the assurance that they needed. That left them saying, “Who is this that can silence the waves and the wind? Who is this?”

He could have easily said, “Peace out. I’m done. Let me off the boat.” He could have walked to shore. He walks on water in another gospel, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t give up on them, and he doesn’t give up on us. Are we still willing to put our faith and trust in Jesus to guide us?

I also think that love is the goal because Jesus came trying to help us understand who God really is.

The other scene that came to me was this scene from The Replacements. I’ve said that to a couple of people, and nobody else seems to know this movie. Maybe I’m the only one who watches this movie, but this is a favorite of our family. It is about a Washington football team, it’s near the end of the movie, they’re in the final game of the season, and they’re losing. At halftime, like always happens, the commentator comes over and that’s Coach McGinty. Gene Hackman plays Coach McGinty. He says, coach, what do you gotta do to come back in the second half? And Coach McGinty looks at him a,nd he says “It’s all about heart, miles and miles of heart.”

To me, that’s love. It’s about the love and the person who needs to hear that comes back and saves the day, ’cause it’s a movie. But we have to have heart. We have to use, we have to follow the love in our hearts. Faith doesn’t make sense in our brains, but faith makes sense in our hearts. It’s our hearts that call us to have compassion, to share love, to encourage others. It’s in our hearts that we follow as people of Jesus.

That’s what he was teaching us: to follow our hearts, to be led in love and mercy. I know that we have not always been good at expressing it. We have a lot of German roots, and we’re very stoic. We don’t like to let people see our emotions.

The band and I are up here doing our best to get something out of you. Anybody awake? Some of you are more obvious when you’re sleeping than others, but you know, we try to keep this going and keep you engaged because it matters.

We have to learn to show our hearts. We have to learn how to laugh together, and I’m glad I got you to at least chuckle. We have to be able to express that love and that encouragement with each other. That’s when we will most fully be who God intends us to be. When we share the inclusive love and create a safe space for all.

Who comes looking for a relationship with Jesus?

May it be so. Amen.

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 As I was thinking about these scriptures, Isaiah 41:8-14 & Luke 19:1-10, and thinking about where we are. We have our annual meeting next week, and we have some big decisions to make.

I was struck by this idea of risk and the question of What are we willing to risk? We are living through what I have heard most of this year, called unprecedented times. That seems to be a buzzword this year. Unprecedented. They certainly are challenging, and they can even be scary. When we get scared, we have this tendency to circle the wagons and look inward and only focus on our own needs rather than seeing the needs of others.

I think there’s a really strong temptation right now to do that, but we’re also living through a time where we need, more than any other time, to stand for something. Because if we don’t stand for anything, it’s that quote I’ve repeated the past two weeks, “not speaking is to speak.” If you don’t stand for anything, then you literally stand for nothing.

Phil had colon cancer, which meant he needed to be near his doctors, and he wasn’t willing to just take the treatments and sit and wait it out. He wanted to be active. He wanted to find hope. So, he walked his trail, he walked his Camino in his own way, and he invited others to walk with him. One of the things that people do when they walk the El Camino is that they keep a journal and they write down each day what happened, what they saw, and who they encountered.

Phil journaled about every lap he took around his property, and he invited people to walk with him. In the process of that. He opened himself up to God ’cause he was not a person of faith. But in the process of the walking, which is what often happens to people on the El Camino, through the process of the walking, the showing up and being present to nature and to others, he found God. God touched his heart, moved him, and gave him hope,

He survived. In fact, he hated the phrase fighting or battling cancer. He said he was dancing with cancer. I’m not sure how many of us who would be in that position could say that. But to have that confidence that he would not be alone.

Our first scripture, Isaiah 41:8-14, is considered to be Second Isaiah.

The first 40 chapters are all about everything that Israel’s done wrong. Now this, and I don’t remember where it changes, but this set of chapters was written later to the Jewish people in exile.

This was written after the Babylonians had come in, they had destroyed Jerusalem, and they had taken the Jews away. They’ve taken them off to Babylon. They feel distant. They feel like they’ve lost their God because they thought God was in the temple in Jerusalem. Now, they don’t have God, they don’t have their land. They don’t have their community. They don’t have anything. Yet to those people who thought they had nothing, God sent a prophet. We don’t think this is actually the same person, which is why it’s called Second Isaiah, but it was a person who wrote under Isaiah’s name to bring comfort.

In this scripture, it says, “Do Not Fear” twice. Even though everything looks like it’s going hell in a hand basket, right? That’s our phrase. We think everything’s falling apart, and we don’t know what’s gonna happen, and we’re scared. God comes and says. Do not fear. Do not be afraid. That is the most repeated phrase in the Bible, whether it’s fear not, or do not fear, or do not be afraid.

God wants us to have that hope. It’s not about an easy life. It’s the hope that Phil had while dealing with colon cancer. It’s the hope that we can have as people of faith.

I think it’s a hope that Zacchaeus had. Zacchaeus is an interesting character. We know some things about Zacchaeus. Luke 9:1-10 tells us he was the chief tax collector. That is significant. We know that he was small in stature, so seeing Jesus in the midst of a crowd was problematic for him. He goes up into the tree. But I wanna suggest this isn’t in the text, but I think that there was within Zacchaeus a longing, or maybe there was this sense that he wasn’t living the way he was supposed to live.

I was walking with some friends the other day, and one said, “You know, it’s like there’s this line that we have inside of us that tells us whether we are living with integrity or not. Are we willing to cross that line? And at what point, at what point do we lose our integrity?” I wonder if Zacchaeus was wondering about that.

The fact that he was a tax collector at that time puts him in that category for the Pharisees of tax collectors and sinners. People who are doing everything wrong. The people you do not wanna associate with are tax collectors and sinners. We don’t talk to them. They were ostracized. Nobody wanted to be around them. As a tax collector, Rome told each tax collector how much they wanted from each district. But the tax collector was free to add their percentage on top. Think pyramid scheme, the top tax collector could add his percentage to all of the tax collectors below him. So he was making some money, but there must have been something within him that was unsettled or discontent. Or else he wouldn’t have been curious about who this Jesus is who brings hope, who helps people know that there is such a thing as forgiveness.

So, he came and saw, and Jesus saw him. And just like Jesus reaches out to all of the other people who’ve been pushed aside and told that they are sinners and unwelcome, Jesus goes to him and says, I’m coming to your house. We’re gonna have dinner, because, as the Pharisees often blamed Jesus for, he ate with sinners and tax collectors. That’s who he was. Because he believed in the community. He didn’t believe in shutting people out. He believed in bringing people together, in helping them, healing them, and giving them hope again. He believed in sharing the good news that they don’t need to be afraid because God is with them. The words from Isaiah, “For I am your God; I strengthen you and I help you.”

Zacchaeus has a major transformation. Luke 19:8, “Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” That was the thing about tax collectors, they were known for the percentage they wanted for defrauding people. He was willing to pay back the people because he realized it’s not about him, it’s about the needs of others.

How often do we forget to look out for the needs of others?

We’re scared, and so we turn inward. Because we have to protect ourselves, whereas what Jesus calls us to be is looking out for those who need us to say, “You belong, you are loved, and God is with you too.”

Friday was the National Prayer Breakfast, and they met at Shady Maple, and they talked about how blessed they are, and filled their bellies. It’s all you can eat. But instead, I chose to go to St. John’s, where POWER Interfaith had a simple prayer service where we prayed for the earth and for everyone to have what they needed, that no one would go hungry, that no one would feel left out, and that all would know that they are within the love and forgiveness or mercy of God.

We collected food for 12 hours. It was from 7 AM to 7 PM, and during that time, during my shift, I had two people who showed up with food. This is a picture of all the food that was brought in. Three families came looking for food because they said we don’t have anything, and they all left with a bag of groceries.

At St. John’s, even though their food bank is only open two days a week, if someone comes, they believe in giving everyone food. Which was always our rule, too. If you came when we had our food bank here, you got food. Now we send our food donations to Landisville at the Hempfield Community Food Bank.

Five people handed me cash, and I had $45 in an hour of standing at the corner of Chestnut Mulberry. Some of you brought in food this past week, so we took three bins and a box of food. I parked in the parking lot and said, “Can I get some help? I have bins of food.” Four people showed up, unloaded my bins of food, and gave me my bins back.

That’s what it means to say it’s not just about me. That’s about choosing life. It’s about choosing life in every moment of every day. We have that choice. Do we wanna shut down and isolate? Or do we wanna be part of growing the community, of helping others know about the love and presence of Jesus? Can we bring the light of Christ, which is within each of us, to others so that we can bring light to their darkness? Can we bring light and love everywhere we go?

May it be so. Amen.

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 I want to us to start by thinking about who has blessed us in our lives.

If you haven’t read the November Crown yet, I’m going to give you a heads up that Allison Carr wrote a great article for the board this month about what a blessing is and how if we claim that we are blessed when we have good health, our possessions, and everything that we need. That sends a message, intentionally or not, to those who are struggling that, for some reason, they are not blessed. That’s not the message that we wanna send.

I’m turning it to say that the blessings we receive are the encouragement of others. The encouragement and the affirmations to continue the journey. We’ve all had people in our lives who helped us. It might have been a parent, a friend, or an acquaintance. Someone who helped you to know that it was worth it to continue the journey.

This picture is of my grandmother with my oldest daughter. She’s not in the room today. She would’ve gotten a surprise, but I would’ve had to tell her, just like I told Allison, it’s the people who helped us know who we are and believe in ourselves. Those are the people who blessed us, and that is who we are to be with others. So who are these people in your life?

Today is All Saints Day, November 2nd, or in Mexico, it’s Dia de los Muertos. It’s the remembering of those who have gone before us, and they may even still be alive. Those who have encouraged us or those who helped you to affirm who you are.

I called Milt Gockley this week and asked if he had some wisdom from someone who encouraged him, and he shared with me that his grandmother had told him that time gets shorter, the years go faster as you get older. And he thought, well, that’s silly because there’s always gonna be 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year. Now he knows the wisdom of his grandmother.

But, this is one of those days when we stop and we will remember those who passed in the past year. But it’s that time when we think about who else was important in our lives.

In our scripture today, 1 Peter 3:8-12, it talks about being a blessing. You are blessed to be a blessing. That is who we are to be.

The first letter to Peter was written at a time when there were a lot of Gentiles converting to Christianity, and there was this sense within the Roman culture that there was fear about this foreign religion that we know as Christianity. They were afraid that Christianity was going to challenge their patriarchy and make their women misbehave. It was said that Christianity would bring immorality, insubordination within the household, and sedition against the state. Now, I want you to sit with that a minute. And I want you to think about that.

This letter to Peter was written to help quell the fears of those who were looking at this religion and wondering; it was to remind the new Christians and those who had been converted for a while, that they were to be compassionate. We are to imitate Christ. “Be agreeable, be sympathetic, be loving, be compassionate, be humble.”

But what was Christ really like? When I look at the scriptures, I see someone who was not about picking up the norms of the society and continuing them, but someone who was looking for those who were struggling, who were hurting, and it was to those people that Jesus went, and he offered healing and he offered them community. He helped them to come back to stop being pushed out and ostracized as they had been.

I paired this scripture, 1 Peter, with the first chapter from John’s Gospel, John 1:10-18. I read this scripture twice a year. You may not have picked up on that. I read it on Christmas Eve and I read it on Good Friday because I think we need to remember the circle and it’s John’s creation account that Jesus was with God from the very beginning and came, we call it the incarnation, became one of us so that we could know more about God and helped us to be called children of God and to know that we are blessed.

Just because we are loved by God, it doesn’t give us any other guarantees. Just that you are loved as you are, for who you are, and we are to share that Jesus was trying to have us come alongside him so that we would do the same. God is the word that they use, which means Jesus is the unique Son of God, and through Jesus Christ, we are children of God.

The beauty of that is that as children of God, God helps us in our journeys because life isn’t easy. We don’t need to sugarcoat this. We all have struggles, and they’re different struggles, but we all have struggles, and Jesus wants us to know that first of all, he’s with us to the ends of the earth. We’re never alone. We don’t need to be afraid, and he invites us to create a beloved community so that we have others to help us understand. Sometimes those thoughts are in our heads, and we don’t know if that’s God or us. Community can help affirm the thoughts that are God’s. Because we just naturally wanna take care of ourselves, we wanna protect ourselves and get the most for us because we’re afraid that we won’t have enough.

As we affirm others and encourage others as we bring them into the beloved community, we also have to name when we see things that aren’t. Last week, I shared a quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

We are living in times when there are some who believe they know the will of God. In fact, they’re so sure of it that they are trying to take over all hearts of our society, and they are going to. It can be inviting because they can talk about bringing us back to God and bringing prayer back into school. All of this can sound very romantic until you realize that they have a very definite definition of what this will look like, and it really is about power and control. They’re going to set up the laws so that we have to function in the way they want us to function.

This isn’t about encouraging others or affirming who people are. This is about saying, you have to do it my way. That’s not who I saw Jesus as. Jesus didn’t challenge the Roman Empire. That was Judas’ problem. Jesus didn’t go far enough. Judas wanted Jesus to challenge the empire, and he didn’t. Instead, he continued to help those that hardly anyone knew, to just quietly go about blessing people.

We are in a place where there is a real crisis. Some people rely heavily on their SNAP benefits, who are about to find out that those cards are empty, and they don’t know how they’re gonna feed their families. We have people who haven’t been paid for the past month in their jobs. We have to say this is not it. This is not how we are as people of God. This is not how you bless people by making them struggle harder, and we have to act.

Here are your senators and your representatives’ telephone numbers. Take them down, call them, tell them it’s time to act. People need food, people need funds.

The group that wants to control things is in town. They are the ones behind the national prayer breakfast this week. POWER Interfaith is having a prayer vigil at St. John’s Episcopal in town on Friday. In addition to doing a prayer vigil, we’re doing a 12-hour vigil asking for donations of food for their food pantry because they feed a lot of people.

The other thing that we’re doing, as Church of the Apostles, is that we are giving $5,000 to the FoodHub this week. We’ve had money in the market basket conduit because of the grocery cards that you buy. We have this money, we’re gonna send it to the food hub. That’s what it’s meant for. It’s meant for times like this. We are gonna make a difference.

As always, we are also collecting for the Hempfield Food Pantry. All food pantries need more resources, so we’re gonna try and spread things around. It’s not right what’s happening.

We are a community, and we can make a difference. That is what we are called to do. We are called to bless others, and we are about that work.

May it be so. Amen.

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As we consider how much we live into our vision and mission that God gave to us, I want you to consider for yourselves why you came today.

What brought you here, and the little sarcastic voice in my head says “My car.” But, I mean, why did you come today? Did you come looking for healing, hoping to have a need fulfilled, or did you not have anything better to do? No other better option, so I’ll just go to church. Or is it just what you do on Sundays? I think of my grandfather, I love my grandfather, and I do think he had a good faith, but for my grandfather, Sunday was the day he wound the clock, read the paper, and went to church, and then to lunch. That was Sunday. That’s what you did on Sundays.

So if it’s Sunday, this is what you’re doing, whether you want to or not, but what brought you here? Did you come to receive? Did you come to give or some of both?

Our desire within ourselves to take care of our needs is very strong. It is much easier to only see what we need than to see or think of the needs of others. Did it cross your mind that there may be someone else here who needs you today? Because when given the option of following our best angels or not, we usually don’t. So those questions that I asked, I really want you to think about. I think they’re important questions. We have to get at our own values, and what really drives us.

These scriptures were written as correctives to change our attitudes and our actions. Our gospel reading, Luke 16:19-31, is one of the parables of Jesus.

Jesus wasn’t talking about a specific man as the rich man, and there wasn’t a Lazarus, even though Lazarus is a name that comes up at other times in the Bible, but because it’s a parable, we know that it’s mysterious. It is meant to challenge us to really think about why we do what we do and what we do? Where are our priorities?

I chose this artwork when I was looking for artwork because it came out of a Dickens novel to me, and I want you to read the conversation there. The person on the left would be Lazarus, and the person on the right, who’s being served, is the rich man. So Lazarus in the picture says, “Remember, my Lord Duke, I have a powerful claim upon your charity. My poor family is now reduced to abject want, through your apathy starvation stares us in the face.” And the rich man’s reply, “Starvation, who the devil’s he?”

Do you feel as if starvation were a person? We are living in a period of time where billionaires and millionaires are making decisions that affect the rest of us. They are manipulating the world in ways that benefit them, and they really don’t see our needs. I’m gonna go as far as, I don’t think they care about our needs. I think they care about their needs and what they want.

They have no need to reopen a government. Their pantries are full, their resources are great. What are we crying about? Starvation? Who the devil is he? While there are those among us and around us, our military, our teachers, our educational system, all the people in our educational system, all the people in our social networks, our care networks, are beginning to wonder how they’re gonna continue to feed their families. How are they going to continue to keep shelter, whether they’re gonna be cold this winter because they can’t afford the heat? And for those of us who are not affected, because I’m assuming there are some of us here who are not being affected by this yet. We need to think about what we can do.

I got an email from a preschool parent asking about the food pantries because they want to do something. They want to make sure they’re not having a food shortage, but they wanna make sure that there’s food there for others.

Do we notice the Lazarus on our streets? What’s striking to me in this parable is that the rich man is not condemned in this. Actually, in our other scripture, 1 Timothy 6:13-19, it says, “If you are rich, then be rich in good works, generous, ready to share.” That’s all that’s being asked in this scripture. The man has; there’s no condemnation for the fact that he has the food that he needs. The issue is that he’s not generous or willing to share, and even more than that, in the course of that parable, he still expects to be served. Send Lazarus down here to take care of me because I need to be served.

That’s the attitude we need to be wary of when we think that we are the privileged ones and others should serve us. That’s where we get in trouble. How often do we expect others to serve us as people being manipulated, like pawns on a chessboard?

Behind this scripture is the golden rule. How you treat others is how you will be treated.

We don’t know how that’s gonna play out, but there’s a lot of wisdom in it. The rest of the world calls that karma. I’ve said to my daughter as she’s dealing with her daughter, who doesn’t want to listen to her. I smile and say “Karma. Huh?” Gotta love it, because things come around right.

So it reminds us that it matters how we treat others. There’s a reality that we don’t want to share with others because we’re afraid that if we share with others, we might not have enough. Or we might, God forbid, be dependent on someone else as opposed to recognizing that this was set up as us being interdependent. We are. That is the point that we rely on each other as opposed to thinking we can take hold of those bootstraps and take care of ourselves.

So what are we doing? What are we doing here together? Our vision from God says that we are to be inclusive, generous advocates for social justice, and care of the environment.

A safe space for those who feel afraid or powerless. We are called to create beloved community. I believe that so much.

We are called to be a community that cares for each other and looks at those around us and meets the needs of those around us. Even as I was talking with the kids, if that means maybe given space to somebody when they need it, but also just sitting with someone who’s lonely. Reaching out and knowing, letting them know that someone cares because there may be people even right here this morning who came because they didn’t want to be alone this morning. It’s a time in the week when they can be with others.

Let’s celebrate that and be with them, be with each other. But I think that there’s more than that. It’s not just about being in here. I think we need to be advocating for people. We need to be speaking out against the systems that are trying to bring people down.

I invite you to look at your resources. What are the resources that you have? Do you have time? Is that a resource you have? Is skill a resource you have? Do you have an ability you can share with others? Do you have finances? Can you make a financial gift that will benefit others? We each have different gifts, but we need to look and take stock of our assets and resources and use them. Do the good work, spend the time with someone who needs the attention, give the funds so that they may be shared.

I challenge you to really look at this week and how you are helping to build the beloved community. Individually, we can each do a little bit, but together we can really make a difference.

This is one of the thoughts that I’m gonna read from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The ultimate test of a moral society, the kind of world it leaves for its children.” I’m always gonna bring us back to the kids, because we need to be thinking about the kids.

“Silence in the face of evil is evil itself.” If we’re silent, we’re complicit. We’re going along with it. Not to speak, is to speak. I’ll say that again. Slowly not to speak is to speak. Not to act is an action.

May we recognize what we can do and share and be generous.

May it be so. Amen.

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Sermon by Seminary Intern, Deklan Lewis

 I had to fight the temptation to write an entire sermon out of song lyrics.

There’s no shortage of songs written about love. “I Will Always Love You” by Dolly Parton, “Love Will Keep Us Alive” by Eagles, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” by Queen, “How Deep Is Your Love?” by Bee-Gees, and “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” by The Shirelles. The list goes on and on and on. But, I think that we can agree that one song that seems most relevant right now is “What The World Needs Now Is Love” by Jackie DeShannon.

“What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
No, not just for some but for everyone“

I have a question for you, though: “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” (Tina Turner). That’s the end of the song lyrics, I promise.

In our gospel reading this morning, John 15:9-17, the word love was repeated nine times.

When I shared on Facebook that I was gonna be preaching today, a lot of people reacted with the heart emoji, which means that they loved that I was gonna be preaching this morning. By the estimation of some people, the concept of love, the word loved or loving, shows up in the New Testament 316 times. Do you think that number’s a coincidence?

Especially since the Bible verse that most everyone has memorized and quotes like the ABCs is 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.”

In this week’s scripture, we also find some other pretty heavily quoted verses, one of them being John 15:13. “No greater love than this that, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”, in particular stood out to me as I heard it quoted in a very unlikely place several years ago toward the end of the old animated Disney Jungle book. Baloo dies after defending Mowgli against a vicious tiger, Shere Khan. As Bagheera, the panther, is comforting Mowgli, he quotes this famous scripture. It’s crazy how a Disney movie can still make me choke up.

Love hurts, love scars
Love wounds and marks any heart
“Love Hurts” (Nazareth).

Seriously, love, real love can be super painful.

There’s this 19-year-old kid who lives on campus at the seminary. They are a student at Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, and they share some of our housing.

They’ve adopted me this semester as their college dad, which is a huge honor. The other day, we were talking about all this craziness in the world that we find ourselves in, and they looked at me with a super serious face and said, “Life is not for the faint of heart.”

As painful as it is to hear a 19-year-old who has up to this point lived a semi-charmed life. It also shows me their heart. They aren’t afraid to look at the world without their rose colored glasses. They aren’t afraid to love and care for others, knowing the pain that that may carry. Maybe I should rephrase that. They might be afraid, but they do it anyway.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt said that “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear“. That’s the kind of love Jesus demonstrated through his life on Earth. Love that he called his disciples to in these verses, and it is this very kind of courageous, self-sacrificing love to which we should all aspire.

In Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi, he presents this challenge, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself.” – Philippians 2:5-11. Some translations say exploited, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness, and being found in the appearance of a human. He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. ,If Jesus who was and is God, can love this way, can we as well? His divinity didn’t make him special. In regard to his human relationships, interactions, emotions, or the expression of his emotions through actions, it says that he was sent as a model. I don’t think a loving God would send someone to model our lives after whose example was impossible to follow.

It doesn’t take superhuman abilities to love as we have been loved by God. There’s no Marvel superhero called Love Man or Compassion Girl. But maybe there should be, maybe love like God’s is a superpower, but I don’t think that makes it unattainable. Maybe it just takes the God in all of us to love as only God can.

Jesus was rejected in his own town, argued with, by not only those who were skeptical of him, but also those closest to him. If he could heal the child of a man who represented the very government oppressing Jesus, people dying, sinners, tax collectors, and self-righteous religious people, and then after all that be betrayed by one in his inner circle. But still call them friends worthy of life and death. Maybe we can love a little better too.

We all bear God’s image, and the spirit of the divine lives within all of us, so maybe we aren’t so different from Jesus as we think we are.

Yesterday, millions of Americans turned out to protest around the country.

Sadly, I had to sit this one out because. I’m a retail employee in my other life, and Saturdays are retail days. I was scrolling through social media on Friday, and I saw this post preparing people for the protests. It’s really hard to read them up there. These were just like a bunch of things to think about as you were heading to protests.

One of them was to be mindful of words and tone. Speak with kindness even when disagreeing, avoid insults, screaming, or comments that demean others. Another was to carry joy beyond the rally. Take this feeling of camaraderie with you as you go and remember that we’re all in this together. These are standard operating procedures that have been used by nonviolent movements for decades.

For one of my classes, students have been encouraged to choose a spiritual practice for theological reflection. Initially, I was a little put off by this as my undergraduate studies were done in a rather conservative, legalistic institution, and every semester we had to choose a spiritual discipline from a pre-approved list. This was a graded assignment. We had accountability partners. It was not fun, and about the only thing it formed in me was resentment. This assignment, though, much to my surprise and gratitude, is much more flexible. Our professor encouraged us to find something that really works for us, and to make it personal.

I’m an artist a,nd artistic creation is one of the ways that I feel connected with God. So I chose to engage daily in creating. In addition, I chose to listen to audiobooks or podcasts by and about people whose spirituality and activism I admire and aspire to.

The first book that I began listening to is a collection of writings by Bayard Rustin, while I’m working on a portrait of him. He was a civil rights activist and a friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In fact, it was Rustin’s own spirituality, formed by his Quaker upbringing, that was influential in King’s adoption of a nonviolent approach to protest.

Sadly, most of us have never heard of Rustin because he was largely left out of the history books until very recently, because he was gay. His involvement was scaled back and pushed into the background because of bigotry and fear. Fear that bad press about his personal life would negatively impact the movement. I can relate to that feeling of being a liability. I’ve wondered whether I’ve been left out of things or not invited to the table because of who I am.

It hurts and if I’m honest, it makes me angry. I’m sure that Bayard Rustin was hurt and felt a range of emotions that goes with being betrayed, but he continued. It was Rustin who was largely responsible for organizing the buses from around the country that carried more than a million people to Washington, DC. To me, Bayard Rustin was like, Jesus. Jesus wept over the loss of a friend. He was scared to finish the job his father sent him to do. He got angry about injustice, and was misunderstood by everyone. Yet he chose to live and love anyway.

I’m not saying that we need to ignore the pain or pretend that things aren’t scary or walk around with our hearts on our sleeves for anybody to take it.

I’m not presenting the forgiveness narrative that so many of us have been harmed by, which says, if Jesus forgave Judas, we must forgive our abuser or betrayer, and that if we forgive, we must forget and act as though nothing ever happened. That’s not what this is, and I don’t believe that’s what Jesus did or said when he walked this earth.

What I’m saying is that life is not for the faint of heart. Neither is love. It’s messy, and we get hurt. And when we are hurt, we are scared we will get hurt again. So we build up walls and we put on our armor. We write people off before we even know them, and we try to run as far as we can from the pain.

But I would say to you that a broken heart is better than one that doesn’t feel. That courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something is more important than fear. May we learn to love with broken hearts, with courage and willingness to lay down our lives for others.

Would you pray with me? Creator and Sustainer, Love in its purest and truest form, only you can teach us to love. Thank you for the gift of Jesus and his life of love. Help us to open our hearts and minds so that we may receive your love and allow it to transform us into people who love, of love, who bring your love to the world around us. Spirit moving us as only you can.

May it be so. Amen.

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Yesterday morning, our Compassion Team met so that we could talk about how we could be more helpful to you as a congregation.

We realize that one of the hurdles for you is in trusting us with your stories. Confidentiality is something that this group takes seriously. You may look at these people and think, ‘these people talk to people.” Yes, we do talk to people, but we do not share your story with people. Your story is only for you to share. And yes, I’m saying that, but I know that that’s how the group feels also, and we do have some other ideas that we are praying about that may be helpful to you.

I think that another piece of this is that we as people do not like to allow our needs to be known. We have prided ourselves on being self-dependent, self-reliant, and figuring out things for ourselves. I don’t need any help, but the reality of life is that it is too hard. Things happen that make us realize that we need one another to comfort each other and to hold us accountable to being the people that God has created us to be. That’s the beauty of the community.

That’s where the Compassion team can be a help to you. To both comfort and to hold you accountable. If that’s what you need and if that’s what you want, because we are to forgive.

We talk about forgiveness a lot. That was in today’s scripture, Colossians 3:12-17, but we are not so good at it.

Even though we talk about it, we talk a good game, but we’ve got a lot to practice. As a survivor of abuse, forgiving is not about removing any type of accountability. That is not what forgiving is. Forgiving is letting go of the anger and the hurt, which, as long as we hold that, that person continues to control us. But when we can let go of that, then we are truly free. That’s where we find peace.

That scripture lesson from Paul today reminds us of the important things in life: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. It almost reads like the spiritual gifts that align with Galatians. These are the traits of a Christian. This is who we are to be.

And that phrase “bear with one another” – Colossians 3:13, that means when we don’t agree, we don’t attack each other. We continue to stay in the conversation. We bear with one another, and if one has a complaint against another. We forgive. This is what it means to choose life rather than death.

In our other scripture today, Luke 17:11-19, we read of the 10 lepers.

I know I have heard many sermons on and I have preached many sermons on this, and this time I was surprised. I love it when I get surprised in reading a scripture because I had missed something that I saw this time, and that is that the one who came back.

The first side of this piece of art is them calling to Jesus. The second side is after he has sent them to the priest. You see, most of them are walking away, but one comes back and is on the ground kneeling in front of Jesus, and above it it says Samaritan. And I’ve overlooked that detail in the past.

We’ve always praised the one who came back because he was grateful. But there’s more to it than that. There’s more to that story. Because he was a Samaritan. Jesus told them to go to the priests and, that would be the end; they would be announced as clean so that they could rejoin the community.

He couldn’t go to the priests because he wasn’t welcomed by the priests in the temple. They don’t consider him Jewish, even though by ancestry he was, you see, the Samaritans were in the northern Kingdom of Israel. And when the Babylonians came in, and probably when the Assyrians came in too, when they took away the leaders from Jerusalem, they didn’t take them. They left them and they mixed with the invaders. So they weren’t considered Jewish anymore. They didn’t worship in Jerusalem. They worshiped at Mount Hob, and so they were considered less than. Maybe a contemporary context for our political situation is almost like being an undocumented immigrant in the US right now. Or a Palestinian in Israel. They were not welcome. They were considered other. They were considered an enemy.

So as long as he had his skin disease, which separated him from his people. He had to leave Samaria, and he found this group of other people with the same disease, and so he found community, but when he was healed, he lost his community.

So, where’s the priest that he went to? Show that he was healed. Jesus was the priest who could show himself and be proclaimed clean because Jesus welcomed him. Jesus received him not as a foreigner, not as an outcast, not as an enemy, but as one to welcome. To bring into the kingdom of God. That is not to minimize his gratitude; that is to put context around his gratitude.

But I know that I never looked at it that way. I never saw him as truly a Samaritan with few options looking for community, and we don’t know what happened after this. He may have stayed with Jesus and the disciples from then on out. We don’t know. More people traveled with Jesus than just the disciples.

We are reminded that Jesus wants us to be his hands and feet in this world, and to be the ones who welcome and accept people as they are, and help them have a relationship with Jesus. That’s who we’re called to be.

So today we have communion, and when we come to this table, we come because we’re hoping to meet Christ here. After all, I encounter Christ in the sacrament, in the ritual, in the bread, and in the cup. I hope that you find Christ who is the host of this table, in the bread, placed in your hand, in the cup offered to you, in the eyes of our servers, in the music that will be played, and in the faces of each other. Christ is here. May we see it and be healed?

This week, I was reminded that this year is the 40th anniversary of the We Are the World Campaign. At a time when it feels like we are isolating ourselves from the rest of the world. I’m struck by the way we came together, led by 40 incredible musicians with 40 incredible egos that probably would not have even fit in this room, but they managed to be in a small recording studio from midnight till 7 AM. To do their part, to raise money for starving people in Africa.

And these are the words, “We are the world. We are the children. We are the ones who make a brighter day. So let’s start giving. There’s a choice we are making. We are saving our own lives. It’s true. We’ll make a better day. Just you and me” – We Are the World by U.S.A for Africa (1985).

It wasn’t about saving them. It’s the same concept that I said last week. What hurts you, hurts me. And what blesses me, blesses you. Let us learn to be in the world with compassion and to be in the world with forgiveness.

May it be so. Amen.

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 As I sat with this scripture, 1 Timothy 6:6-12, I thought about the question, what is enough? How do you know when you have enough?

Then on Friday, I was on Route 30. I was coming back from York, and I was doing 75 in a 55 mph zone in the left lane. Don’t ever do that. I got past the on-ramp from Centerville Road and got over, and realized that I had a line behind me, and they went past me, going at least 85-90 and revving the engines. I thought I was already going over what is enough, what’s fast enough, what’s big enough, what’s shiny enough?

It seems that humanity was created with this longing, this hunger within us. But I think God gave us this hungering, hoping that we would hunger for God. I think that’s what that hunger was meant to be about. But God didn’t force us. But we are easily distracted, and we’ve been looking from the very beginning for something else that will fill that hunger. Something shiny or exciting or stimulating, like money, looks, the right body, the right clothes, the right car, or the right house. Do you get the point? We’re very good at trying to fill that hunger with other things. Besides a relationship with God.

So I leave you with the question today. At what point are you content? What does contentment look like for you?

Actually, the book of Genesis, where Genesis 11:1-9 came from, is a collection of origin stories. It’s trying to explain how things became as they are, how we got to where we are, and from the very beginning, we were discontent.

That’s the story of the Garden of Eden. They couldn’t be satisfied until they took from the tree of knowledge, the one that was off limits. The knowledge was too great a temptation.

And then we have Cain and Abel, the two brothers. And Cain couldn’t stand that Abel was favored by God because being favored was too great a temptation not to take.

In our scripture for today, although it seems to be about languages, it’s really about the fact that they weren’t satisfied. They were discontent. When they could make bricks and mortar, then they thought they could be gods, and they built a tower to the heavens. They weren’t looking for a relationship or to get closer to God. They just wanted to be gods to look down on all the other people. That was the problem. That was too tempting.

Yearning, which God placed within humanity, hoping that they would choose a relationship with God, instead became a yearning for power. The yearning for power is too great a temptation. We were created to be content. God wants us to be content with all God’s gifts. With that yearning, being satisfied in our relationship with God, then we can be at peace and it didn’t work.

God came to us in Jesus to show us what this looked like in a human being. And Jesus didn’t chase after money, shiny things, or anything at all. Jesus wanted to make relationships with people and help introduce them to God. Even when he sent out the 72, he said, Take nothing with you. Rely on the hospitality of strangers and as followers of Jesus, that is who we are to be those who extend hospitality to strangers. For we never know when we’re entertaining angels. We can be generous with what we have.

In our scriptures today, the writer said, “Be faithful, loving, dependable, and gentle” – Timothy 6:11.

This was the message that he wanted to get through to the church because obviously they were hung up on money. So he got a little bit more specific. The love of money causes all types of trouble.

Then we have this other sentence, which I think is so good to know, because there are all kinds of sayings that people attribute to the Bible that are not in the Bible. Like God helps those who help themselves. Not in the Bible. It’s Benjamin Franklin.

The other one is God won’t give you more than you can handle. Not in the Bible. It is not biblical. Actually, God shows you that God will be with you through all that life gives you. It does say “We didn’t bring anything into this world, and we won’t take anything with us when we leave” – Timothy 6:7. That is in the Bible, which I hear as a call to a simpler life. Our Amish brothers and sisters practice this. They also stay much more closely tied to the land. That’s a piece that I think we’re forgetting. We’ve got to get closer to the land right now.

We are living in incredible times, scary and yet filled with potential.

The breakage of our systems means we have an opportunity to create more just and caring systems than what we have now. Last Saturday, I caught a few parts of the FarmAid concert, and one of the pieces that I saw was an interview with Dave Matthews that I thought was profound. He essentially said life in this country won’t get better until we value people over profit. We need to see each person as our neighbor. Be willing to help and care for them.

We remember that Jesus gave us two commands. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your strength. That’s who we have to be. We haven’t done it well yet. We need to get better. That’s our challenge. But to do so, first we need to figure out, as a congregation, what is most important to us.

So, I have a challenge for you this week. I want you to think. About the world that you wish existed. What do you want to see in this world? I keep saying we are creating because it’s real. We are creating the world for these babies that we baptized today, and for all the little ones. We are creating the world that they’re gonna live in. What do we want that to look like?

Write it down because we need to start really getting clear on what we want, because if we’re clear on what we want, then we can come together and build it. We can organize and build those systems that we need.

If you tend to be nostalgic, to put on those rose colored glasses and say, “Well, if it just was the way it was when I grew up”, I have a caution for you. It wasn’t good for everyone then. It was good for some, but not for all. And I think our call is, it has to be good for all or it’s not good for any of us. Because what hurts you hurts me. And what hurts me hurts you. Whether you realize it or not.

We are a country with great diversity already. Maybe the best place to start is to write down your favorite Bible verses. What are the verses that that lead your life? What are your guiding verses?

One of mine is “And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” – Micah 6:8.

May it be so. Amen.

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 Last Sunday, Nathan Moore preached as part of our youth Sunday service.

If you were not here and you haven’t either watched it on YouTube or listened to the podcast, I’m gonna encourage you to do so because he did an excellent job. It’s very much worth listening to.

But one of the issues that he brought up was the issue of Satan and demons, and he said that we don’t talk about Satan and demons much. That’s true. He actually told me later that one of his friends had told him that at his church, if that word is in the text, they just skip that word, which I find interesting. I don’t try to skip it. I don’t go into it; I believe in evil. I think we are the ones who want to personify evil and make evil more of a being that we can challenge, or more to the point, someone who we can blame.

I think that is the bigger issue when we start talking about Satan and demons, it’s because we want to take the responsibility of our inappropriate and cruel actions away from ourselves and say that someone else, something else, Satan, demons are to blame. They’re the reason that this happened, not me. Looking around, several of you are as old as I am and may remember. I still have a very vivid memory of Flip Wilson with an angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other, you know, and he had this expression, the devil made me do it. That’s all about not taking responsibility for our own actions, all of it.

Just this week in a family text thread, an unimportant topic came up, but I chose to respond to it with a GIF of Ursula laughing. And I thought if there’s an evil side to me, I believe it might be Ursula, and I apologize to all of you who don’t know who Ursula is. She’s a Disney villain from The Little Mermaid.

Evil is in the world, and there are temptations. Think about the story of Jesus and the temptation of Christ, right? There are temptations around power, greed, and wanting to control others. I think that’s very real right now. I feel like I’m seeing that right now, but we have to accept the responsibility and own the fact that I can be as kind and compassionate as I can be, and I can be Ursula and laugh and do evil, cruel, and hateful things. In every minute of every day, we choose who we’re going to be and we need to think about that.

Who does God want us to be? God wants us to be the kind, compassionate ones. Jesus came so that we would learn and see what that looks like. Jesus said to us, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” – Matthew 16:24. That is a call to risk our lives to risk everything.

Evil wants to say, “Take care of yourself. Be safe. Put up the walls to protect yourself. Build the walls, accumulate your money. Build a bigger barn.” That’s not what Jesus says. Jesus said to the rich man, get rid of it all, and pick up your cross. Be vulnerable. Take risks and follow me. Because Jesus didn’t protect himself. He showed that with his life. He knew what Judas was gonna do, but he didn’t stop Judas. He said, do what you need to do.

That was one lesson. It ties into the rest of it, but now I want to go into this parable of the dishonest manager.

As we get into this, let’s first remind ourselves what a parable is. So first of all, it’s a story. It’s not a true account. This didn’t really happen. Jesus knew that we learned better and we remembered better through stories. So he told stories to teach us things, to teach us about what the kingdom of God would be like.

This scripture I have wrestled with for a lot of my life because it just didn’t make sense. Why is the dishonest manager being praised? Why is he being praised for cheating the employer? I’ve been an employer. I didn’t like it when I got cheated, but that was the first lesson I learned. And this is the beauty of parables.

The first lesson I learned about this parable was, God doesn’t think like me. Imagine that God has bigger thoughts and more compassion and grace than I do. Praise be to God.

Then today I looked at this scripture, and I said, what else happens in this scripture? Let’s go deeper. Well, what the dishonest manager does is he builds community. That’s what Jesus wants us to do. Jesus wants us to build community. I would say he did the right thing for the wrong reason. He built a community to save himself so that when he didn’t have a job, he at least had friends.

Jesus wants us to have friends. Jesus knows that we can’t survive this life without community. But this time I found something else. I realized what the dishonest manager did. He helped those who were struggling. He went to them and reduced their debt for the people at the bottom who were indebted to his employer. He went to these people who owed his employer money and said, “Take half off your bill. We’re just gonna cut your bill in half.” And that’s what never made sense to me. The employer thanked him and praised him for cutting these people’s bills in half, because I was missing the fact that he was helping those who needed it the most.

Again, he did the right thing for the wrong reason, but he still did the right thing because Jesus wants us to go out and help the least of these. To the thirsty one, you gave a cup of water, and to the hungry one you gave food.

It’s about recognizing that there are those who have less than we do, who are in need and helping them in that need.

I was talking about Jesus calling us into risk. There was a risk for the manager in the scripture.

Paul and Barnabas took a big risk. They were in trouble with the Council of Jerusalem because they weren’t following the tradition. After all, the council believed at that time that you had to be fully Jewish to follow Jesus. There are people now who are shocked that Jesus was Jewish, or they don’t know it at all. It’s true. And what Paul and Barnabas went to Jerusalem to say, but the Holy Spirit is working with them, whether they’re circumcised or not.

They went and pleaded their case, and interestingly, Peter sided with them. Now, if you haven’t read the book of Acts, you need to, because in the Book of Acts, it talks about Peter’s ministry. Peter was the rock upon which I will build my church. And then you have Paul, who had this experience on the road to Damascus, and they had different ideas of what Christians were. Although they didn’t call themselves Christians at the time, they were people of the way. How do people of the way live this out? They were actually often in opposition to each other. They essentially decided to go their separate ways, which is why Paul went off into what is now Turkey with Ephesus. And, you know, he planted all these churches in Philippi and Ephesus and Galatia, and he did all of that.

But in here, Peter stands up for Paul and he says he’s right, because Peter had this dream, several chapters before this, where God said to Peter. Do not call anything unclean that I have made. If I have made it, it is clean. It had to do with eating and what they could eat and how they ate it and all that stuff. But it opened Peter’s mind to realize that there were people who were not keeping kosher, and yet they were being welcomed by the spirit to become part of the way.

If God is bringing someone and working with someone to bring them into a closer relationship, it is not our place to deny them or to put a stumbling block in front of them.

We are at that point where we need to decide if we are going to live or die, and that is our choice. We can just drift off into oblivion, and when there aren’t enough people here, sell the assets and close the doors, and go about our business. Or we can decide that there’s something here that is important enough to us that we need to save it.

That’s the wrong word, because we are not saving it; God is. We invite God to do the work. We get out of the way of the spirit and let the spirit bring whomever is coming, and we welcome them. We give them safe refuge here. And we don’t talk about them behind their back, and we don’t snear at them, and we don’t make comments because they don’t dress like us, talk like us, look like us, or act like us. We just accept them for who they are because they want a relationship with Christ. Thanks be to God.

We have to decide, are we all in on this? It’s not about forcing others to do something. It’s not. It’s about owning our responsibility to live with our fears and build a community by being an active part of it.

The United Church of Christ has a motto, and it goes like this, “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, diversity; in all things, charity” And that charity is the Caritas, the agape love the care for others in all things, be compassionate in all things, care for the other, and we have to decide what are the essentials in which we have unity. I think it has to do with the table that we believe this is Christ’s table and you built the sanctuary so that it is accessible to all.

So let us invite all to this table to experience God’s love & God’s grace.

May it be so. Amen.

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 I want you to take a look at this picture and think about what you see. How do you interpret this picture?

What you see and what you feel when you look at this picture is based on your perspective. When you look at these children, do you think that they need anything? Do these children have what they need? Do we need to do anything for these children? Think about what perceptions you have just based on that picture.

You might see children who don’t have a lot and who live in a house that hasn’t been painted lately. We don’t know how well fed they are. They’re all huddled up, so you can’t tell, but they look like they’re thin. They don’t look like they’re overeating.

But if you look carefully at their faces, which are harder to see, they’re actually all smiling, and the dogs look very relaxed beside them. I would actually say that these kids don’t need anything. They’ve got what they need. They have each other, and they have comfort.

I saw another picture this week that I won’t show you, but it was of a person on the street holding a sign. A person on the street with a sign, and this is what the sign said, “Homeless but Hopeful. Broke, not Broken. Everything helps.” That picture was in an email from Cameron Trimble, who’s another UCC pastor that I appreciate and follow. She added these two questions, which are the ones we need to focus on because they are profound for this moment in time in which we’re living. Can we meet this moment with kindness, creativity, and fierce love without pretending that we’re above all the mess of it? Can we stay grounded in the humility that we are not saviors, even as we long to heal what’s breaking?

That’s big. We see things breaking. Things are being broken, and that can be a good thing because if something’s broken, then we have to fix it, and we can do so in a better way. In a more loving way, in a more just way, and in a way that brings more peace in the world. That might be hard to hear, but just sit with it.

The scripture today is Deuteronomy 35:15-20, and it’s Moses talking to the people.

This is a scripture that I love, but this scripture is also problematic. So, let’s take it apart. I don’t want anybody to leave this sanctuary without knowing. Moses did not write this. There’s a stream of thought out there that says Moses wrote it, but Moses did not write it. It includes his death and burial. He couldn’t have written it. Nobody has written about their own funeral yet. Not from an after perspective. We haven’t figured that one out yet.

This scripture is the basis for the prosperity gospel. The idea that if you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, you follow all the laws, you do everything right in your life, then your life will be good. You will have good health and riches, and all the possessions you desire; you’ll have it all.

But if anything in your life goes wrong, that’s because you are not living right. I was raised on that kind of theology, and I will even tell you, I’ve looked at my own life and said, “I wasn’t living right. I needed to get back on track.” There’s some internal stuff with that, but it’s not a God thing.

You know why? Because there’s truth to the statement. Bad things happen to good people. And when that happens, we don’t know what to do. If you are of the Prosperity Gospel, you don’t know what to do with that. What we’ve done, churches, clergy, and congregations have looked at people who are broken or have terrible health issues, and they’ve told them it’s their fault. That’s where we’ve been wrong so many times. Life happens. Accidents happen. Disease happens. It’s not because you’re not following God, nor is it because you’re not faithful enough. We need to feel that in our bodies. We need to know the truth of that.

Now, here’s the good part of this scripture, because I really do love this scripture. This reminds us that God is a covenant maker and a covenant keeper. God made covenants from the very beginning with Abram and God kept those covenants. That did not mean that anybody had an easy life, but it did mean that God was there with them through it. That’s the difference. That’s where the good news is. God, through Moses, lays this out.

What is your choice? Curses and death or blessings in life. The choice is yours. It’s called free will from the beginning because some things are our choice.

What came back to me in my head was a car accident I had years ago, and you know what? It was my fault. I forgot. I was so focused on the traffic coming one way. I forgot to look the other way, and I was close to a light, and I pulled out right into somebody. That was something I could have avoided. That was on me. That’s not on God. That was on me, but God was with me in that moment.

I felt alone. I thought I could have crawled into a hole and covered myself, but God was with me then, just as God was with the people in the car that I hit. We choose blessing or curse.

I’m using this book as the basis for this series, and it’s called Leading Causes of Life. A long, long time ago, I did a series on this, probably longer than you remember, and I knew that I had the book. I don’t know what I said the first time around. This time around, they challenge us. Saying for every issue, there’s a way to look at it as a curse, and there’s a way to look at it as a blessing, and part of what God wants us to do is look more at our blessings than our curses.

So the first issue I put up there is aging. So what are the curses of aging? Yes. I only had room for one, or you wouldn’t have been able to read them. So I put dependency because that’s what I hear. People don’t want to lose their independence. That feels like the curse of aging. But there’s a blessing of aging, and I feel like I’m old enough that I can start claiming some of it. I’m not the same person. I will never pull out without looking the other way again.

I think Crime keeps coming up a lot in the news cycle. The curse of hearing about all the crime in our country is that we wanna isolate, we wanna pull back, when actually the answer to crime is developing community. The places that have lower crime rates have a good sense of community. They have police presence where people know the police, they trust the police, and they know each other.

I remember the day I got a call from my neighbor who said, I just watched a pair of legs go into your house. And I freaked, but my neighbor called me and went and knocked on the door, which made those legs go back out, and I called the police. I wasn’t home, but they saw an opportunity and they took it. They came in through the window. I’ll never open that window again. We learn.

How do we look at money? Do we look at money and say, “We don’t have enough, we’re broke.” Or do we say, “I don’t have a lot, but what I have I can share because it builds community.”

Then I left the last one for you to sit with. If we look at the church from the perspective of death, from all the wrong things, I’m thinking you have a list, but what are the things that are right? What are the blessings the church has, and I’m gonna let you sit with that one. I’m not answering that one. You need to figure that one out.

The other scripture for today was John 6:35-40, where Jesus tells us that he is the bread of life. He is where life comes from.

I’ve been challenging us to think about the world that we are creating because we are creating the world now that our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are going to live in.

So, what do we want that world to be about? What do we want this country to be in the future? This is the time to figure that out because through the choices we make, the energy that we put out into this world, and the environments that we create, affect what this world will become. And I believe that in our country, no one should go hungry, no one should be uneducated, no one should be afraid to be in their own house, which means they have a place to live, and no one should be without access to quality medical care.

How will we move forward in this time? Well, to help us, we have the wisdom, the comfort, and the strength of Jesus, who taught us how to care for other people. This table is Jesus’s table. It’s not my table. It’s not the Church of the Apostles table. This is Jesus’s table, and for Jesus’s table, everyone is welcome. In fact, he reminded the rich that they needed to wait until the people who were struggling, who were at work, who were trying to pay the bills, got to eat first. Because the rich people had plenty of food at their house. They didn’t need to come in and eat all the food at Jesus table, there are no limitations or restrictions on God’s love and mercy.

A broken heart, which is what I believe Jesus’ was, is also open to more possibilities. It can hold more. When our hearts are broken, we can open to love more. We are invited here to meet our savior, the only savior to know that we are still within the covenant, and we have covenanted together to be Christ’s body in this world.

God is here. All we have to do is have the love that I talked about last week, the agape love, the love that has concern for all. No exceptions. That’s who we’re called to be.

May it be so. Amen.

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