As I was considering our theme of “Cultivating a Life of Delight”, I was curious about the difference between delight and joy.

I Googled it and AI says that delight is a more intense, often short-lived, feeling of pleasure. Where joy is a deeper, more intent, sustained state of happiness or contentment. Joy is knowing this is as good as it gets.

That’s a picture of both of my dogs. Tina made an appearance during COVID and I did a sermon with Tina. Tina stayed home today. Tina is not all about love. Tina has different ideas, but Molly is.

I was wondering when have you experienced delight? If you think about your life when did you last experience delight?

Was it seeing fireworks? Or maybe just sunrise or sunset, something very simple. Or the geese that have been moving through in the past month?

I know I get a sense of delight when either Carl runs up to me and gives me a hug, or Frankie, who’s our granddaughter, who somehow is 10 months old already. I can hardly believe that, but when I walk into the room, she gets so excited because I need to take her. She needs me to hold her. That gives me delight. Molly gives me delight because Molly wakes me up every morning. When she is ready to go for a walk, when she thinks it’s light enough for us to get up, she puts her paws on the bed. There are friends out there waiting for us. We need to go see friends.

I toyed with the idea of bringing Molly today, and then I was listening to one of the podcasts I listen to called “The One You Feed”. They had a guest by the name of Mark Rolands who wrote a book called The Word of Dog: What Our Canine Companions Can Teach Us about Living a Good Life. His theory is that dogs do not reflect on their lives. Molly had a stick this morning, so he argues that Molly didn’t pick up that stick and think “yesterday’s stick was better than this one. I’ll put this down and go look for another one.” Molly instead would think, “I got a stick!” She was loving it and she was in her glory. Then she found a friend, and she just had a walk which is why she’s calm now. I made sure we went to the field and saw as many friends as we could find this morning.

Then, she got to run and chase the ball with her friends, so she could come and be mellow now because she got all that energy out of her system. Now she’s ready for her morning nap. But what is it about a dog? I mean, I’ve had cats too. I was told that my cat acted like a dog, so maybe I’m not a good cat owner, because she came when I called. But with Molly, it doesn’t matter if I go away for seven hours or 15 minutes. When I walk in the house, I get the same greeting and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to her for that moment.

She lives in the moment, so I kind of want to push back on his idea that they don’t reflect. No, I don’t think that they reflect, but even more. I don’t think that they judge. Like when I’m gone seven hours and I open the door, she doesn’t think, “Do you see what time it is? Where have you been?” She’s just excited that I am home. She doesn’t judge me or anyone else. I’ve never even heard her growl. She just doesn’t have it in her. Even when her friends are chewing on her, she just lays down. That’s not her nature, but I think she has a lot to teach us about how to live in the moment and just be so happy for what is.

I think that is the point of the Lord’s Prayer. ’cause this does all tie together. In case you thought I was like way down that rabbit hole.

I think that the point of the Lord’s Prayer is to remind us about how simple life can be. You know this scripture started with, don’t be like those people that have these long run on prayers that fill them with words. The point is just to say what you need to say, because God knows what you need to say anyway.

I think it’s also important or worth mentioning that the fact that Jesus said, this is how you pray in Matthew. Jesus says this is how I want you to pray in Luke because this also appears in Luke. The disciples ask Jesus, how are we to pray? And he gives them this. I think that’s a little different. That’s worth thinking about.

Did we need the prayer because we felt like we didn’t know how to pray, or did Jesus think that we needed the prayer because we weren’t doing it right? There are all these people, and Jesus wants to make it very simple and there’s more than three lines, but it comes down to three things.

The first part, our Father in Heaven is the contemporary English version because I wanted you to hear it a little differently. Help us honor your name. So it’s about acknowledging that God is God and we are not. We need to acknowledge where we are in this relationship. We are in a relationship with God, but we are not God. God can do things and will give us things that we may not have the ability to give each other. Let’s lift up God first. Personally, I always try to start every prayer with a thank you. Thank you God. Remembering that God is God and I am not.

Then “thy come and set up your kingdom. So that everyone on earth will obey you as you are obeyed in heaven.” That would be the perfect world. If everyone was able to operate as God operates, we would be in utopia. We would be giving each other good gifts. We would be caring for each other. There would be justice for the poor and the oppressed. The prisoner would be released and this blind would see. It would be all for everyone. I’m going to remind you that I don’t like the kingdom language because it’s being used for a different purpose now that has nothing to do with justice and peace. I’m instead trying to use the language of God’s beloved community. So we pray that God set up God’s beloved community. That’s also who we are trying to be together as a congregation, we are trying to be God’s beloved community with each other and with the greater community. Loving each other is challenging because we have a lot of fundamental differences, but trying to bridge that with love.

Lastly, we’re able to ask for what we need. “Give us our food for today”, we’re used to saying, give us our daily bread. Give us our food for today. Do you notice that? That doesn’t say, give us a fridge full. Make sure my pantry’s full. It gives us what we need to eat today. My guess is most of us don’t live that way. I know I don’t live that way. I’ve got enough food in my house for more than today, but I think this is reminding us that all we need is food for today because we are to trust God will also give us food tomorrow. Tomorrow we will ask for food for that day and God will make sure that we have the food that we need. So it’s a reliance on God. I think it also reminds us of the Israelites in the wilderness who were given Naan every day to sustain them. But if they collected more than they needed for one day. Do you remember what happened? It spoiled. God had a plan because he wanted to make sure that they were relying on God. So there’s something to that, we live our lives relying on God’s gifts.

The English contemporary version says, “Forgive us for doing wrong as we forgive others.” Before Covid, we had a conversation where we looked at this and we said debt means financial. Trespasses are something when somebody walks on my property. We don’t use those ancient understandings of those words. We took both of those out and we simplified the version it to “forgive us as we forgive others.” It doesn’t matter what the issue was. It doesn’t matter what the hurt or the pain was. We know that we have hurt someone else and we have been hurt. We need forgiveness for the pain and the hurt that we have caused. We are willing to extend forgiveness to those who hurt us, and that’s not easy. It is our challenge.

Then “to keep us from being tempted and protect us from evil”, it used to say, “lead us not into temptation.” We changed it to be,” Let us not fall into temptation again, looking for God’s protection.” Which I think is closer to this version than the older version.

Our Lord’s Prayer lacks the ending and the blessing, the glory, and the power. It’s not there because it wasn’t there initially. That was the early church that added it. It should be a mirror for me. I like circular things, so for me it takes me back around to the beginning. “Blessing and honor, glory and power be unto you, oh God, like holy is your name, you are God and I am not.” It’s just that reminder.

But in the scripture that I read today, after this, Jesus uses two more verses to make sure that we understand that the forgiveness verse is really important. That’s where he says if you don’t forgive others, you will not be forgiven.

That’s hard. Some people are hard to forgive depending on how badly they’ve hurt us. That’s the challenge of being a Christian, is to forgive.

So where does this leave us? Well, I think this leaves us in a place that reminds us that we need to pray. We need to pray and we need to pray every day. Jesus expects that we pray every day,

I’m going to give you the challenge to pray the Lord’s prayer, every time, whether you use the version that you’ve always known. Or whether you go to the Matthew Scripture and look it up, or you look up other versions. Try out some different ones. See how it changes it for you. Pray it for the rest of Lent and see what happens. See how your life changes.

What does it do by saying that every day that you pray, you’re praying for the world. For justice to prevail in the world, for you to have enough food for the day and that you will be forgiven as you are willing to forgive. It puts God in charge, not us. It reminds us. To look for the gifts of God.

Now, I said that I was going to end every sermon this season with these words that remind us that it matters how we are living right now because the children are watching.

We can experience delight every day if we are looking to be delighted by God, if we are looking for the spirit to show up, we will see it. But if you’re not looking for it. You’re gonna pass it by and miss it.

So each day I hope that you ask, how may I delight in you? Oh, God. We can add that to the prayer. How may I delight in you?

Now the words from Steven Sondheim’s Into the Woods. “Careful the things you say, children will listen. Careful the things you do, children will see and learn. Children may not obey, but children will listen. Children will look to you for which way to turn, to learn. Be careful before you say, listen to me, children will listen.”

May it be so. Amen.

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Today, we’re going to do something a little bit different, and I’m going to start the sermon with a guided meditation.

I want you to have an experience as best we are able of the transfiguration. I invite you to get yourself into a comfortable position. You can focus on the picture, or you can just close your eyes and listen to my words. As I recount some of the scripture and invite you into some questions.

Recently, Jesus had called the disciples together and given them the power to cast out demons and heal the sick. Then he sent them out and they had been so successful as they came back. You were standing nearby within listening range and you heard Jesus ask them, “who did they think he was?” Peter said “he was the Messiah of God.” But then Jesus got very stern with them and told them that they needed to pick up their cross and follow him. What do you make of this scene? Do you think Peter was right?

About a week later, you see Jesus and his disciples talking again. But this time, he walks away from the group with Peter, James, and John. You decide to follow them and they start going up a mountain. So you go too, but at a distance, so as not to be noticed. You’ve heard that Jesus often goes up into the mountains to pray, but you wonder why they didn’t all go. How do you feel while you watch them? Do you wish you were closer, or are you glad you’re further away?

Then they stop, and Jesus begins to pray. Peter, James, and John are praying too, but they could be sleeping. It’s hard to tell. So you sit quietly when you notice something odd about Jesus’ face and clothes. It is as if light is coming from within him. Not just having the sun shine on him, but he is becoming so brilliant that you can hardly look at him. So, you look at the disciples. They’re awake now, for sure. On each side of Jesus, there’s a figure. The one on the left appears to be Moses, and the one on the right looks like Elijah. How do you feel in this moment? What are you thinking?

Peter must feel like it’s another Exodus moment, as he suggests that they build booths, like they do at Sukkah and celebrate. But Jesus dismisses this idea quickly. Poor Peter. He’s wrong again. You know how that feels. You think of the times when you have misunderstood a situation and you wish you could go back and change what you said.

Then a cloud moved across the mountain and covered everyone. You are in the thickest fog you have ever seen. You cannot see anything else. And then you hear a voice. A voice that says, “This is my son, the beloved. Listen to him.” Whose voice is that? Could it be God’s? Did you just hear God’s voice speaking? How do you feel? Are you scared, questioning, or excited?

When the clouds pass by, you realize it is only Jesus and the disciples. Now Moses and Elijah are gone and they begin wandering down the mountain silently. You are wondering how this will change them. How has it changed you? Are you inclined to tell anyone about this? Does anything in your life need to be different?

As you are able and ready, I invite you to open your eyes and come back to the present. Because that mountaintop experience has ended. And now, the work begins.

When they came down from the mountain, they were encountered by this family. This family that is hurting. This family that needs help. What the Father says to Jesus is that I brought my son to your disciples, and they could not help him. This story follows the transfiguration in all three of the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. That means this was a significant event, and these two stories have to be together.

We get the transfiguration and then we get this healing story. It doesn’t say that the disciples wouldn’t help or didn’t want to help. It says that they couldn’t. I had to sit all week with why not? Why couldn’t they help? If you remember, or if you heard it at the beginning of the meditation, I reminded us that Jesus had given them the power to heal, to heal illnesses and to cast out demons. So they have the ability. But why couldn’t they do it now?

The answer that I came up with is that they were unsure of themselves. They didn’t have the confidence that they initially had when Jesus sent them out because nothing else had changed except Jesus had gone away for a day, but that wasn’t unusual for him to go away and pray. They still should have had that ability. But I wonder if they were scared, and they didn’t have the confidence that they could still do all these amazing things.

Actually, I found myself almost beating up the disciples this week. I was getting pretty judgmental about them. What else do they need? What more do they need from Jesus? He already gave them the power to do this, and now they can’t? But then I had an experience on Friday morning.

Some of you know that there’s a group of us that walk dogs and we were at a field and from a distance, we saw this black thing at the edge of the field by the forest.

Didn’t know what it was. It was hard to tell. Another friend, her dogs were there, and they were barking like crazy at this thing. The dogs tend to get upset when something is out of place. Even a snowman they’ll rush up and bark at a snowman because it’s out of place. Or if somebody moves something, if the school puts something new on the field, they’re barking at it because that’s not where it belongs. They were barking like crazy at this black thing that kind of looked like a log, but we were unsure.

As we were approaching and passing, it began to move. And I realized what it had been, it was a person in a sleeping bag who had slept there. They were coming out of the bag, and they just started screaming at me. I don’t know if it was a different language, but it scared me.

After that, I thought maybe that’s what it was for the disciples, that they were just scared. They knew what Jesus had given them. They knew the power that they had, but they became scared because sometimes life frightens us and we want to retreat. We want to say there’s too many bad things going on, and I just want to crawl in my hole. Let me have the sleeping bag. Let me go in this sleeping bag and put the rest of the world out and shut everything else out, because that’s the only place that I’m safe.

But that’s not who we’re called to be.

We’re called to be the light. That shines in the darkness. We are called to be the voice of love and compassion. We are called to be helpful, thoughtful, and kind. Not just our kids. That goes for us, too. Right now, there’s not a lot of helpful, thoughtful, and kindness going around. We see a lot of other things.

There was an 11-year-old girl in Texas who took her life this week because her friends at school were telling her that ICE was coming to take her parents away from her, and she couldn’t deal with the possibility. She thought it was better for her to take her life.

It’s time for us to think about what we are saying to the children about the messages we are sending. Are we about love and compassion and grace? That’s who Jesus asks us to be. That’s, that’s the call on our lives.

The children are watching. What are we saying to them? What are we teaching them by our actions and our words?

May it be so. Amen.

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We needed to begin by defining what we mean by Forgiveness, Mercy and Grace.

We may not all understand these concepts in the same way.

Forgiveness is the act of releasing and dismissing something, such as sins or grudges, it is a choice. Forgiveness is a choice. It’s a choice about letting go of the resentment and the anger so that we know and no longer hold a grudge against someone who has hurt us. That is what I mean when I say forgive or forgiveness.

Mercy and Grace are God’s work and God expects us to also extend those. Mercy is God’s compassionate response to human suffering. It’s a combination of kindness, forgiveness, love, and grace. God’s favor kindness and mercy are freely given to all people regardless of their sins. That is a fundamental concept of Christianity. We extend grace.

This past week I was in a conversation where someone said, “but forgiveness doesn’t hold people accountable.”

I disagree with that. I disagree with that comment. But, there is within our culture a saying that goes, forgive and forget. I think that is bad theology. It’s a harmful saying. That’s like saying God doesn’t give you anything more than you can handle. That’s bad theology.

People say it thinking they’re being kind, and it’s cruel. There’s bad theology that goes with our scripture today too. But, forgiveness means that we can let go of our anger while we still hold people accountable. We still believe in consequences for cruelty and hateful actions.

So what is Jesus trying to say to us today?

Last week we had the passage right before Luke 6:27-28 which introduced the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes, last week was Luke’s version of the Beatitudes. We like Matthew’s better, but it was Luke’s version. We have a few more pieces of that, but we have Luke’s version now.

Let’s look at Matthew and Luke’s version of love your enemies.

“Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you.” – Luke 6:27-28

“But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” – Matthew 5:44

They pretty much say the same thing. It’s still very clear. We are supposed to love the people who we perceive as enemies. It’s not what we want to hear. What that says to me is that revenge is not part of this equation. We’re not supposed to take revenge on people who hurt us. We are called to love and that’s hard work and the only way I can get there is by extending grace. That’s why I wanted you to know what grace is. Grace is loving people who don’t deserve to be loved.

It is not trying to tell us we need to be doormats. It is not saying that the abuser is correct. It is saying that we love them and we hold them accountable for their actions. Because I believe that God believes in justice too. God always stands up for the poor, the orphan, the widow, the oppressed, and the marginalized. God is not looking for us to take revenge or to be hurtful. Instead, we have to forgive, let go of the anger. But don’t forget that’s where I am. Maybe that’s because of my past, but I believe that God is merciful.

So these verses in Matthew and Luke also line up, but with a little bit of difference.

“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” – Luke 6:36

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” – Matthew 5:48

Where Matthew says we are to be perfect, Luke says Merciful. The actual Greek word for Merciful is oiktirmón, which also means compassionate. Compassion as I look at this is that Luke is encouraging us to remember the goodness of even the person who is being cruel and hateful.

What we say is that we are all created in the image of God. We say every person is a child of God. So then, we’re not going to dehumanize anyone.

No one becomes an object that we can inflict cruelty, pain, or injustice upon. That’s not the way of God. It is about compassion. It is about recognizing our shared humanity.

“Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.” – Luke 6:37-38

“For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you” – Matthew 6:14-15

For Matthew, the forgiveness part, he puts that right in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer. Whereas Luke’s Lord’s Prayer comes later. It’s actually in chapter 11, verses 1 to 4. Luke says, forgive and you will be forgiven. This is the reason our version of the Lord’s Prayer is a little different. Matthew uses trespasses in his Lord’s prayer. Luke uses debts in his, and we have simplified that to just say, forgive, so that we forgive.

We will forgive as you have forgiven.

It doesn’t matter if it’s sin or debt, because when we hear debts, we think money. We don’t think sins or cruelties are other things. Where culture is very much about debts being money.

So what does this have to do with the economy of Jesus?

Well, in the economy of Jesus, remember, it’s a gifting economy. It’s not a transactional economy like we have. It’s not the quid pro quo. We don’t give so that we receive. We give because we are called to give. God wants us to give because God has given to us.

We have all this love, compassion, mercy, and grace that we can then share and we are called to share it. Now I say that if you think back at what I had just said a few minutes ago, that doesn’t mean that we allow injustice to continue.

Think of Martin Luther when he hung the 95 Theses on the door. It was a non-violent action. He held up to the Catholic Church the things they were doing wrong. Non-violent, direct action that says the truth, speaks truth to power. I think about Rosa Parks, whose non-violent direct action was sitting down on the bus. Not in the seat she was supposed to sit, but in the open seat. She spoke truth to power. In 1965, John Lewis and 600 other people walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge as a non-violent action to speak the truth. The rest of the country saw the racism when they were attacked and they realized why we needed the Civil Rights Act.

This picture is from yesterday, where some of us gathered on Penn Square to tell Lloyd Schmucker that we are not happy with his actions. When people are doing things that are cruel and hateful, we have the responsibility to stand up and tell them so.

This season, I’ve been telling you to be the light. We need to be the light in the world.

I hear a lot of people talk about the darkness that they feel like we are in. But God calls us to be the light. By being loving, forgiving, merciful, and full of grace by extending that grace.

This week I read a piece by a colleague, Cameron Trimble. I wanted to share it with you. Because I think it’s profound. She wrote, that we are all called to be mystics and prophets. The mystic in us is the lover who says yes to life, goodness, and what is sacred. The prophet is the guardian, the one who says no, no to what threatens love and justice. A life of faith requires both prophet and mystic. Without love, our resistance turns brittle. Without resistance, our love becomes shallow.

The world will always make courage costly. It will reward silence and punish truth telling. It will tempt us with the false security of compliance. But Thomas Aquinas reminds us that some things are worth the risk. Justice, the common good, and the secret.

So how will we be light in this world? Will we be mystics? Will we be prophets? Will we be both?

May it be so. Amen.

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In the last months, but particularly the last several weeks, I’ve heard a real sense of overwhelming.

Things are changing and we don’t like change to begin with. It is an inevitable, change. The one constant of life. But they’re changing at a pace that just feels exhausting right now. I want to name that because that ties into our story. I think that helps us relate to Peter in this story.

I also want to say that I think that things are happening to us that are meant to confuse us and overwhelm us so that we will submit and go along with what’s happening. That’s a tactic that has been used in the past and will probably be used more in the future. I ran across this excerpt from a fictional novel, “Autumn” by author Ali Smith, that I almost felt was meant for us.

“All across the country, people felt it was the wrong thing. All across the country, people felt it was the right thing. All across the country, people felt they’d really lost. All across the country, people felt they’d really won. All across the country, people felt they’d done the right thing and other people had done the wrong thing. All across the country, people looked up Google: what is EU? All across the country, people looked up Google: move to Scotland. All across the country, people looked up Google: Irish Passport Applications.”

Autumn was published four weeks after the Brexit vote. Brits are still thinking, was that a good idea? Change. We don’t like it, but it is.

I’m going to change the way Luke 5:1-11 is preached. Yes, one more change for you.

But I’m doing this because I think It opens possibilities. Normally this scripture is preached by saying, look how persuasive Jesus was in getting Peter, James, and John to leave everything they knew. Their family, their vocation, their livelihood, all of their security and follow him to the unknown. And I’ve preached that. How powerful would his message have had to be for you to give up everything you know and follow him?

But instead of that, as I was reading and researching for this sermon. I found out a lot about first-century fishing and that’s what I want to talk to you about because I think it changes the story. Remember, context matters. What I found out is that first-century fishing was really hard.

First of all, if you go to the shore, you might see the boats with the drag nets. I lived in South Carolina, shrimp boats do that, but we catch all kinds of other things that way too. Then, you press a button and it reels it in, well they didn’t have any of that. Those big nets were thrown by people and pulled in by people. They didn’t have that kind of mechanics. Fishermen didn’t work for corporations with guaranteed income, benefits, or retirement. Benefits and retirement were not a first-century thing. We need those wake-up calls sometimes. We need to remind ourselves of what life was like.

If the Roman Empire had not been involved, fishing was probably a half-decent way to make a living. You had a way to provide food for your family and had a commodity that you could trade for what you didn’t have. But the empire was involved, and that made all the difference. You see, the Roman Empire imposed what it called licenses or leases. I think, for us, license might be a better word. In order to fish, you had to pay for a license. Then, when you caught, they taxed you on every fish you caught. They taxed you on transporting the fish, they taxed you on whatever byproducts could come from the fish, think fish sauce or fish oil, and once all of that was taken, you got what was left. It’s not nearly as exciting.

Jesus met Peter, James, and John after they had been out all night fishing and caught nothing.

Overwhelmed, frustrated, exhausted. Those are the men that Jesus met. To them he says, “but just go out again.” You can imagine Peter thinking, Is this guy nuts or what? Does he not see that we are tired? We just want to go home to see if we can find something to eat. Maybe get warm.

But, they’re willing and Jesus says go out in the deeper water and pull a catch. They pull in this great catch. It’s Peter’s dream catch. More fish than he can handle in his boat. They’ve got to bring all the boats to get all the fish back to shore.

Then, Jesus says, “Leave the fish and follow me.” At that moment, I think Jesus offered them a different possibility to see the abundance that exists, but for all of those fish they’re not going to pay tax on them. They’re going to leave them right there at the edge. They’re going to walk away. Let Rome figure out how they’re going to make money on those fish. Let Rome figure out how they’re going to move those fish. I think this was an act of liberation. It was saying, you don’t have to work in this way, what Jesus says is, “I will help you fish for people.”

I think that there’s something there for us about how do we go to that deeper water?

For us to go to the deeper water, we need to know our stories, so that we can tell our stories. That’s how we fish for people, by telling our stories. In a few minutes, you’re going to hear the story about our Saturday Morning Breakfast Ministry and how that feeds people, probably in more ways than just their stomachs.

But we need to think about the abundance that we have together. We need to look into our hearts. I think that’s where our deep water is. Think about the abundance that we have, no matter what. This morning, the kids showed us about an abundance of love. There’s no tax on that. There’s no tax on care. Nobody else can affect our level of compassion and empathy.

I do think that we need to work on how we are a community together, how we support one another, and the difference we can make together. That’s our challenge. Each one of us has the ability to make a difference.

How will we be light to the world by using our voices?

May it be so. Amen.

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What brought you to church today?

And I don’t mean your car or your spouse. You had a lot of other choices this morning and maybe going out for breakfast sounded better. But you came here instead. I want you to think about why you came. Why did you make this choice? I’m asking you because that’s where I get into a bit of it in the scripture.

This scripture, Luke 4:21-30, is the rest of the story from last week. If you were here last week, you know Jesus has come back to his hometown of Nazareth, he’s gone into the temple, and they handed him a scroll.

He read from Isaiah. He essentially announced his ministry is going to be about bringing good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed. This has been fulfilled in your hearing. Last week I argued that that’s what they were supposed to be doing anyway.

Not everybody in that picture is happy. Jesus is the one reading the scrolls, but the other people are not necessarily happy about what he’s saying. But they are amazed that he had the gall, that might be the church’s word for it, to say that he’s going to fulfill all of this.

But he didn’t stop there. They’re excited and they know this guy, Jesus grew up here. This is Joseph’s son. So, they have some expectations of him that play into this. But then what happens is he tells them this story.

He gives them an example of two healings that took place. The widow of Zarephath and Naaman. Now, for those of you who don’t recognize those stories, let me give you the backstory.

The Widow of Zarephath was someone that Elijah came across, she and her son were starving, there had been no water, they were at the last of their oil and flour, and she was about to make the last loaf of bread so they could eat. When Elijah shows up and says, Make that big enough so I can have some. And he says, don’t worry about the rest. She does it. She trusts. And indeed, they never run out of food until it rains again.

Naaman is a Syrian commander who had conquered Israel as part of the spoil, he took an Israeli girl as a prisoner to work in his house. He had sores on his body and she says, if you go and talk to the Jewish prophet, he will tell you how to get rid of that. He listens to the girl and he does what the prophet tells him.

So it sounds like two good stories, right? Here’s where I sat with my wonderment and I invite you into my wonderment. Why did they go from, “wow, this guy’s something”, to the rage where they wanted to drive him off the cliff? After he tells those stories, they drive him out to the cliff. Just think about that. I sat with that question. I thought, well, he had to of pushed their buttons. So, what buttons did he push?

I think we can tell in what he said, he talked about healing to others, to people who weren’t part of the Jewish faith. That’s part of it, but I don’t know that that would put them into a rage. He had to have said something that hurt them personally, and you can get a mob to rage easier than an individual because they get that mob energy. But where I landed on this is wondering if he didn’t.

The way they understood what he said if it didn’t tell them the healing they were seeking, the reason they showed up at the synagogue. He didn’t come for them. He came to take care of others. This is where my mama bear could get mad enough to drive someone off a cliff. If I was there seeking healing for my daughter and you told me that my daughter doesn’t count, that would drive me. Then I will find rage.

That’s why I called this sermon “Not What We Want to Hear”, because we think we’re doing it right.

We think we’re doing all this stuff the way we’re supposed to, and I have empathy for those who were in the synagogue. I mean, there were certainly some Jewish leaders there or religious leaders there, but there were also probably others who were coming and looking for something from God of which it could have been healing. I’m going to come with my wounds, my baggage, my hurts, and my cares. I want God to do something with my stuff. But, Jesus just said, my stuff isn’t it. He’s going to take care of other people. Wow.

Can you feel that? I don’t say that because I think Jesus doesn’t care about us. Because I think Jesus does. I think God cares about all of that. I think Jesus was trying to get their attention because they were only focused on their needs and what they wanted.

Jesus is saying, you need to look around. You need to see the hurt and the pain in other people.

Right now, the price of eggs is in the news. I went to Stouffer’s and I don’t usually buy my eggs at Stouffer’s, but I checked the price of eggs.

Well, that made my jaw drop. Then, I went to buy them at the central market. I saved money by going to the market. Because Levi looked at me and said, “I don’t care what the market does. The price of grain didn’t go up. The price of chickens didn’t go up. My price of eggs doesn’t go up.”

How many people do we recognize or see among us who are trying to decide if they’re going to pay their rent or get their medication? How many people at the grocery store do we see who are not even going to the egg aisle? They’re buying mac and cheese because you can live on that. Been there, done that. You can live on cans of beans. It’s not the most nutritious diet, but you can afford it if you don’t have much to spend.

How do we see those people? Do we acknowledge those people? Because there’s something that I’ve learned in ministry. It’s that when we stop worrying about ourselves and start thinking about how we’re doing things for others, we can be healed in the process. Our stuff gets healed. We find healing that we may not even know we need in the process of caring for others.

This is a communion picture. It’s about that invitation to say, I see your pain and there are choices. There are options. There’s hope. There’s hope in our faith. There’s hope because every person that comes to this table gets a piece of bread and a cup of juice. You don’t have to pay. We don’t have indulgences anymore. We got rid of them. You don’t have to prove your worthiness to come forward. You just come forward and you will receive the bread and the cup that we believe brings about forgiveness and wholeness and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

That’s what we can offer and we can choose to be people who listen to each other.

Sometimes that makes a world of difference. If someone just gets heard, if we are willing to listen to somebody else’s pain, that’s the point of the Compassion Team, they’re there to listen to our pain, anything you want to share, anything that you need to talk to somebody else about, they’re there to listen.

Hopefully, we can ask some good questions because I’ve also learned that it’s not about telling people how to get better. We all have to find the answers within us. So it’s about asking good questions. We can do that. We can be people of empathy and compassion for others. We can be people who want to make a difference in the environment. We can be people who want to make a difference with people who feel victimized right now, LGBTQ+, people of color, and immigrants. We can be a source of safety, and of peace. Of maybe even love and acceptance that they haven’t found anywhere else.

So the question is, who will we be?

How will we respond to Jesus’ call to say, it’s not about our healing, it’s about the healing of others? We’ll receive healing in the process. I do believe that. But it’s not about doing it for us. It’s about doing it because other people need us. Other people need to know the love and compassion we have found, the forgiveness we have found, and the grace. It is about mercy.

So, is that who we’re willing to be? Are we willing to reach out to our siblings and undo the knots of fear? Are we willing to liberate the vulnerable from the prisons of poverty? Are we willing to offer comfort to those who are fearful? Are we willing to step out of the box that we have created as Church of the Apostles because that’s the way we’ve always done it? Are we willing to let those sides down and explore other ways of being?

That’s your decision. That’s for you to seek in your heart.

May it be so. Amen.

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On April 16th of 1963, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in jail in Birmingham, and he wrote a letter to his fellow clergy colleagues, which became famous, in it he wrote that there were words said to him that what he was doing was unwise and untimely. Dr. King argued in his letter that nonviolent direction and direct action were necessary to confront unjust laws and injustice. He also expressed his disappointment with his white friends who seem to be complicit. While others around them, particularly in the black community, were being hurt. He argued that the fight for justice is a moral responsibility.

Now, why am I talking about Dr. King?

Well, I want to argue that this moment that King had with his fellow clergymen was the same kind of moment that Jesus had in the synagogue with those Synagogue leaders.

Let’s set the scene a little bit. Our scripture today, Luke 4:14-21, begins by telling us that Jesus goes back to Nazareth, his hometown, where he’s known. He’s done the wedding at Cana where he changed the six stone jars of water into wine and he’s been teaching at other synagogues in the Galilean region. And now he’s come to Nazareth.

I don’t know what you remember about Nazareth. I’ve talked about it being like the hill country or “out in the sticks”. One of the pieces that came out in my research for this sermon was that Nazareth actually sits on a hill, and it looks out on a plain, and in that plain was the town of Sephoras.

The significance of that is that when Herod the Great was the Roman emperor, that was Herod’s capital city. When Herod died, there was a Jewish revolt and they burned and looted this city, trying to take it into ruins, essentially. With Herod’s death, Herod’s son Antipas came into power and he rounded up all the Jewish people and enslaved them in retribution for what they had done. He then went on to rebuild the city and called it Autocratoris, meaning belonging to the emperor.

These people in Nazareth watched all of this happening. Jesus and his carpenter father, Joseph, may have even been involved in rebuilding the city. But it was very much clear that that was the empire, and that they could see the empire. We have to remember that what the empire did was to look for every means it could to get money from the people.

First of all, I mean that they could live lavishly, but it’s more than that. One of the ways empires do control people is by taking money from them, and by keeping the people poor, they have less ability to rise up against the empire.

With that as a backdrop, today’s scripture, Jesus walks into the synagogue in Nazareth.

He is handed a scroll. I think that’s interesting. He doesn’t ask which scroll he doesn’t ask for Isaiah, but they hand him Isaiah. What he reads is Isaiah 61. What he reads is the first verse and the beginning of the second verse, which is not a lot. So people would have asked, “Why did he stop there? Why didn’t he read the rest of it?”

“The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives. Remember what I told you about the history and recovery of sight to the blind to set free those who are oppressed.” – Isaiah 61

For those of you who were following what did you notice? He added something that’s not in Isaiah. Sight. Recovery of sight to the blind is not in Isaiah. So, then that means we need to ask the question, why did Jesus add that?

It appears that it is a foreshadowing of what’s going to happen and that people are going to see the difference Jesus makes in the town of Nazareth and in other towns. They’re going to see how Jesus has been anointed because Jesus is going to do more than turn water into wine. It’s gonna be a lot more happening.

By what he says, he is also calling out the synagogue leaders. This is where I’m putting it with King’s letter.

He’s calling out the synagogue leaders who were not caring for the poor, who were not working for the release of the imprisoned. Who were not trying to help the oppressed, but who had taken on the Roman system and learned ways to also profit from the people’s thinking of Jesus.

He overturned the tables and the money changers because they were charging an interest. They were taking extra money, their extra cut, just like the tax collectors and all the other ways that Rome could get money out of people. The synagogue had learned it too and Jesus was challenging them. Yes, Jesus was proclaiming what his ministry would be about. But, he’s also saying you need to wake up and pay attention here because stuff’s happening.

Jesus is also going to be talking about the gifts that we can give. There might be a cost, but not a price tag. It’s things that you can’t buy, no matter how much money you have.

These were just some that came to my mind. Amazon might try its best to have everything possible for us to buy with a click. But they don’t sell wisdom or compassion. Energy drinks or energy pills, but not the energy to do good. They don’t sell hope. It can’t be bought in a store. It’s something that comes from within.

As I was thinking about that, I thought about the gifts of the spirit from Galatians. Right after Galatians lines out all the gifts of the spirit, which include patience, kindness, and humility, it says there is no law against such things. There’s no law against them, and there’s no price tag on them.

How might we be about sharing those things? In a couple more weeks, we will be asking you to look in your houses for those things you don’t need anymore, the clothing you don’t wear anymore, and things that you might be willing to let go of for our Annual Garage Sale. That doesn’t cost you money. It might cost you a memory. It might cost you a feeling, but it will not cost you cash to donate it to the yard sale.

In what ways can we be about helping other people and who are those people in our communities now that need help?

I’m not going to answer that question because I want you to sit with that. Who are the people who need help?

Our country’s changing. Our community’s changing. What I asked you on epiphany was about how you will be the light. How will you be a light in the world? How will you be a voice of love, hope, peace, and joy in this world? Because that’s who Jesus is calling us to be.

Jesus told the leaders in the synagogue that’s who he was going to be. He was going to be about making a difference in the lives of people who are hurting. That’s the call on us. The question is, will we have eyes to see? Will we have ears to hear?

May it be so. Amen.

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This is Epiphany Sunday.

Technically tomorrow is Epiphany. It is always on January 6th. It is the 12th day of Christmas. If you know the song, 12 days of Christmas, tomorrow is the 12th day. In the Eastern Christian church, tomorrow is Christmas.

When my seminary class did our cross-cultural to Turkey we got there on January 2nd. On January 6th, when we went to church, we watched their Christmas pageant with their children, because they were celebrating Christmas day.

Not so much in the U.S. But we like to still lift it up. Sometimes it is a Sunday where we talk about the Magi because the Magi did not get there at the same time that the shepherds were there. Things just didn’t work out quite that way. We just like to put it together in a neatly packaged story.

But, today I chose this reading from Luke because we are in the Gospel of Luke for our lectionary this year.

I love this reading about Simeon and Anna. I think it’s a lovely story. So, that’s the one that I thought I wanted to bring up today. And as I was doing my readings recently, a story came up for me about the Maasai people.

The Maasai people are nomadic people who live in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. They are herders, and they have cattle, sheep, and goats, and they move based on feeding their livestock. Because they move around, they meet each other at different times. Other people that are part of their tribe. The greeting that they always do when they meet another person, another messiah is, “How are the children?”

I just want you to sit on that question for a minute. The answer that they’re hoping for is the children are well because the Messiah people understand that the children are the most vulnerable in their society and if the children are being cared for, then everyone is being cared for.

The Maasai tribe understands that even if you don’t have a child, the well-being of the children is your responsibility. Everyone takes responsibility for the well-being of the children.

I just wonder if that’s not something we should think about. As a congregation for 2025, I’m suggesting that we become the beloved community that would be concerned about the well-being of the children.

Think about our community. Think about our country. Could we answer that the children are well?

We don’t know why Simeon and Anna came up to this child when Mary and Joseph brought Jesus into the temple for his dedication. It was part of the law that the firstborn son was to be dedicated to God, to the Lord. So, they did this.

One of the first early ones is in the Bible, and there’s a good bit made about it was when Hannah dedicated Samuel. Hannah also was one who had prayed for a child, and then a child was given to her, and she dedicated Samuel to God. But here, Joseph and Mary come to the temple, they’re following the law.

Luke is reminding us that yes, they are Jewish. They are Jewish and in good order, right? They know the law. They are following the custom, the tradition. They’re bringing this child to be dedicated. It’s also for Mary’s purification. That’s part of it, too, so that she will be considered clean again.

But Simeon and Anna come up to this child and then Simeon sees something in this child. There is something different about this child that we know as Jesus. In their language, it would have been Yeshua, which means the Lord saves. His name means the Lord saves.

And then we have this part, “Now let your servants go in peace for my eyes have seen the salvation” – Luke 2:29.

It’s called the song of Simeon and I read it every at every funeral. It’s the commendation prayer. That’s the song of Simeon. The note de Midas is the Latin for it, meaning it is the dismissing. You are now dismissing that as Simeon’s. Call of liberation, his song of liberation. He no longer feels that he is under Roman at the Roman empire. His soul is at peace because he has met the Lord, the Lord’s salvation. He is just a member of the Lord or a slave to the Lord, not to the Roman empire any longer, and his soul can depart in peace.

It’s quite powerful. I hope the next time you attend a funeral here, which I hope is not anytime soon, you listen for that. Because I almost always do it. I don’t know how many other people do that prayer at funerals, but it’s a beautiful prayer about how God is making the world right. Even if that means that we have lost someone, we are at peace. It’s acknowledging that we are at peace as Simeon was at peace. Now that he has met this baby.

Anna agrees. Anna just supports what Simeon has said. Usually in Luke, he tends to favor the women. Luke tends to give women voices. And in this one, Simeon gets the voice. Simeon gets to say everything and Anna just goes along with it and supports it. But it’s a lovely story.

So, if we have been redeemed, if our salvation has come, if the light of the world has come, and now it is our job to carry that light into the world, what does that look like?

How do we carry the light into the world? Well, that’s where I thought Colossians 3:12-17 tied nicely to this. I boiled it down to just a few items.

So being the light of the world means clothing ourselves in compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. What if those were our top virtues? What if that is what we valued? Compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. That to me is being the light of the world.

It’s not easy, and we always fail. Sometimes we’re better than others. But we have the ability to remind ourselves that we also get forgiven. Because God does not expect perfection. God expects that we will try. That we will do it to the best of our ability.

So we are called to be the light. Remember, the light is what all of creation needs. If the sun went away the rest of us would wither. Everything needs light to grow and to be healthy. However, if we have too much light, we’re blinded, right? Too much light is blinding. We can’t see anything. So we have to be enough light without being overpowering.

But the light that we are to be is to be a light that attracts others to shine.

We want them to say, “I want to know what they know. I want to live like that. I want that peace. I want that love. I want to be that compassionate and kind. That patient.” I know that’s one of my challenges. I could always be more patient with myself and others.

So how will you be the light of the world in your place? We can’t affect the whole world, but you can affect the people around you.

How will you be the light of the world in 2025? And how are the children? Are they well?

May it be so. Amen.

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What do you think joy is?

We heard from the kids. It was pretty clear that joy was connected to happiness for them. Is there anything that you could add to that?

I think joy is more than happiness. I think it’s different, even, than happiness. It’s connection, love, being home, a big smile, something that can be found, the feeling after helping someone and the absence of fear.

I don’t know how many of you have seen Inside Out. Inside Out’s a cute Pixar movie about the emotions that go on within us. They’re animated and that is a picture of Joy. Joy is just happiness on steroids. And part of the storyline is that Joy tries to run this little girl’s life, and she finds that the little girl is absolutely miserable because Joy won’t let her experience anything else except ultimate joy.

That’s not the way life is. You know, when someone hurts you, your feeling is not joy like that. The little girl on the right also can have joy, but is expressing it very differently.

When I think about joy, joy is a deeper emotion for me. It’s not just about being happy.

There’s connection and it involves doing something for someone else. It involves something that makes us feel like home. Something that is deeper, that we can find within us. Not something exterior, but something interior. Happiness is a feeling about us. You can be happy because you have a bowl of ice cream, but that’s not this deeper joy.

The deeper joy often comes from doing something selfless. Something that’s directed towards someone else. You can be grateful because you can help someone and it’s not all about us. Whereas, I think happiness is very self driven. Very, “this is what makes me happy.” But, this is what gives me joy, when I’m doing things for others, and when I’m focused on somebody other than myself.

I think that’s how Joy ties in to Philippians 4:4-7. Think about how is this directing us?

“Love one another with mutual affection; Outdo one another in showing honor. Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; practice hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you. Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.” – Philippians 4:4-7 Abbreviated.

Is that about us or is that about others? To me, that’s about others. It’s about the experience of others. Although prayer could be about us too, right?

Now I want to talk about Luke 1:26-38 which sets us up for Mary and trying to understand who Mary was. That’s part of our challenge today.

If we look at the scripture, it doesn’t really give us a lot. It tells us that she was young, but young was of marrying age at that time. It tells us that she was engaged or promised. I almost hate using the word engaged, because when we think about engagement, we think about two people who have found each other and love each other and whereas promised, I think gets a little bit closer to what relationships were still like at that time. Marriages were still more contractual. Love probably wasn’t involved. But at that time, that wasn’t as important as having a male heir to inherit what one has, leave one’s legacy, one’s name, those kind of things.

We know also that Mary has a cousin, Elizabeth. Elizabeth is the one that she runs to after this encounter with the angel Gabriel. Whether that’s because she wants to have somebody to talk about this experience with, someone that might understand. But, it also raises questions because there’s an absence of information.

Quite a few years ago, I did a sermon from Mary’s perspective, and I wrote it that Mary’s parents were not pleased. They were not keen on this whole, “I’m pregnant by the Holy Spirit” piece. But, this week I heard two ideas. They’re just things to help us open our minds.

One said that Mary was an orphan. I never thought about that. But, maybe that’s why there’s no mention of Mary’s parents. Maybe Mary didn’t have parents. We don’t know that. We don’t know why Mary was alone and went only to her cousin. We don’t know.

It was an imperfect situation with Mary. She’s young. She’s not married. This could really mess her up. But, she also is a person of faith. So, she does say yes. That was the other piece that I read, was that it had to be a woman who wasn’t married yet, unlike Elizabeth. Because a woman who’s married at that time would have had to ask her husband for permission before she said yes.

I think that’s a powerful piece that we don’t think about. A woman at that time would not have been able to make that decision on her own. But Mary was. And Mary did have faith in God. Mary did believe. And if Mary was alone in the world, I could see where wanting to be loved and needing someone to love is a strong reason to say yes to something that others would say is crazy.

Would you say yes if an angel came to you tonight and told you that you could become pregnant? Males, how would you feel if your wife came to you and said, “the spirit has come to me and told me that I’m going to bear a child.” That’s not an easy thing to put your mind around.

But I remember being a teenager who felt alone, who needed to be loved, who needed someone to love. When we look at our teenagers, we need to be thinking that way, too.

We need to make sure that they feel loved. That they feel accepted for who they are and remind them that they are children of God. That God loves them just as much as God loves everyone else.

So, Mary said yes. Mary said yes to living because living doesn’t mean it’s going to be all happy and joyful. The joy of living means going through the hard stuff, but knowing that you don’t go through it alone. Even if you physically appear to be alone, God is with you. The spirit is with you and it takes an inner sense of knowing. Looking deeper than the physical circumstances around us to know that, but it is in knowing that where we can find joy.

We’re living through an interesting time where there’s a lot of people who are not feeling joy right now. There is a lot of fear, a lot of worry and anxiety about the future on many levels in many different ways.

We are called to be that light and to share that joy that we know that comes from our relationship with Christ. We are called to be the light in the darkness right now.

I was in two rooms with people near death, and I was in conversation with someone. Who is telling me that if this one thing doesn’t happen, then life isn’t worth living. I’m trying to say, there is more to living.

This one thing may not work out, no matter how hard you pray. And they are praying with all their might. But sometimes we have to just rest in the joy of knowing that we are loved because life has hard spots and we are called to be the light in the darkness.

May it be so. Amen.

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This is our week to begin this period of waiting and watching.

This period is where we look for what new thing is God doing in this world. How is God breaking into our world today? What hope, peace, love, and joy is God bringing?

The thing I was sitting with was this idea of what are we longing for right now? And as I was writing this sermon, my dog came up and pestered me. I thought, I know what she wants. She wants fewer people. It’s been a busy week. She wants fewer people in the house, fewer dogs in the house, and a little bit less noise. Let’s go back to normal, right? Let’s have that normal life again, that simpler life.

But the reality of normal is that we’re using those rose-colored glasses. What we think is normal is more of a dream that probably never existed anyway. We paint everything and smooth out all the edges so that we only remember the good parts and forget all the hard parts. But life is hard. That’s a reality.

We need to remember that the point of coming together is so that we support one another in all of the hard stuff. It can be nice to support one another in the fun stuff and the good stuff. We all like that. But we need one another in the hard stuff and when life gets real.

So, I was thinking about, based on our vision and mission, what are we longing for?

What came to me was compassionate care for creation. Our scripture today (Luke 2:1-3 & Romans 8:18-25) is about creation, and we’re looking to give that compassionate care and to share that with one another, with the world, and with our community.

To try to be there for one another. What does that look like? Well, back in early November, I read this article by Guy Sayles, who is a pastor in Western North Carolina. He wrote about the experience of Hurricane Helene, where the mountains of North Carolina never experienced anything like that before.

What he talked about first was a quote from Mr. Rogers that Mr. Roger’s mother always told him when things were going wrong, “Look for the helpers. There are always helpers.”

Who are the helpers and what are they doing? He started looking around at what was happening in his community, which was devastated. Hurricane Helene was a leveler or an equalizer of sorts. I don’t mean that in a good way. But, it brought the helpers. It brought the religious and the other non-profit volunteers to help. It brought FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers. It brought the North Carolina National Guard and the state and local agencies.

But more than that. It brought neighbors out to help one another. A woman who had rain barrels started tapping off the water so that people had water to flush their toilets. Another neighbor who had a generator put it in their driveway and set it up as a charging station so everybody could come and charge their phones or other devices. Neighbors who had freezers that no longer had electricity started handing out the food because it was going to thaw and go bad.

Guy said people would sit around the generator as their devices were charging and they got to know one another. They learned to trust one another. They became a community. They gave each other hope in the middle of this disaster. They were there for each other. That’s where our hope can come from.

So today we have this letter from Paul.

If you are a regular attendee, you know that I struggle with Paul because he has this circular logic that he uses and you can get very confused. But before I get to that, I do want to talk about the fact that this is Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome. I usually say to the churches in Rome, and I’m afraid that I might be misrepresenting that to you. They didn’t have cathedrals and the Vatican didn’t exist, this was before that.

At the time of Paul’s letters people were gathered in homes and they were of all ages and all economic groups. They were the merchants, the slaves, and even the destitute. They all came together, just like in Acts. They talk about everyone came together and shared as there was need. Kind of like that story about the hurricane. Same idea. These communities would come together and the message of Jesus’s love, the available salvation, and this equalizing love. Everybody was included. It was this inclusiveness that attracted the people and the reason Christianity grew.

So to them, Paul is saying the difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. Some of us know what it’s like to be pregnant. It’s uncomfortable and it’s challenging, but it’s not only around us, it’s within us. I think right now, when I look at the world and I look at us, we want something new. We want something new to come out. We want more justice for people. Not less. We want more inclusivity. We want more freedom, not less. We want more liberty, not less.

Imagine a pregnant person, how we get larger. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us, but that is our hope. That is this thing that God is building among us. But, the longer we wait, the larger we become and the more joyful our expectancy. So something is coming. A real justice with peace that we don’t know what that looks like yet.

But it’s going to be hard to get there. It’s going to involve pain and it’s going to mean that we have to come together and work together to survive it.

As I was walking the dogs yesterday morning, another dog walker had lost his gentle leader.

So this morning I brought him a gentle leader and handed it to him. He said I feel like other dog owners are supporting me. And I said, well, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? That’s being community. I have something that I no longer need and you need it. Why would I not give it to you? I don’t need anything. You don’t need to buy it from me. I can just give it to you.

Our materialistic consumeristic culture starts to program us where we think that we have to pay for everything and we think that if we own it then it’s worth something and we ought to get something for it. Maybe we can just share this idea of justice.

So do we really long for a better world? Do we really want to figure out more of what this hope that’s coming is about?

Advent is a reflective season where we’re called to think. It’s not by chance that this hits in December as the trees have now let go of their leaves. They’re going into this dormant time. The nights are getting longer. We’re to rest more and take more time to slow down.

And what do we do instead? Fill everything with lights, loud music, and bright colors as we try to ward off the darkness. But if we can accept some of the darkness, we can light a candle. We don’t have to be in the pitch dark, but if we can take the time to stop and to give thanks to God, then to think, to reflect on our days.

Where was I merciful? Where was I loving and where did I fail? Because we all have those moments that aren’t our best.

It’s good for us to think about these and then to listen to our hearts because that’s where the still small voice of God is speaking. That’s where Christ meets us, in the quiet and the listening.

Can we give ourselves some time to do that? To listen deeply for what Christ is calling us to hope and long for. Then watch and wait with patience.

May it be so. Amen.

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As I said our theme for Advent will be “Through the Eyes of a Child”, where we’ll focus on the awe and the wonder.

Because as I listen, I hear a lot of people who are still really struggling in life. We have a lot of grief, whether from a multitude of losses, even just the changes within the church, there’s still this grieving. The way to work with the grief is not to ignore it, but to also focus our minds and our hearts on awe and wonder.

So I wanted to start by getting you to think about the beauty of children. It might be a little easier today since our children’s choir got up for the first time in a long time and sang for us. But before you go to any kind of sentimental thoughts about the children, I want to emphasize a child’s ability to stay in that place of expectation, especially the younger ones, they wake up expecting to have a good day. For the most part, they’re expecting good things to happen, surprises, because they may learn something new that they didn’t know before. They may have an experience they’ve never done before. They live in this perpetual awe and wonder.

But I think as we get older, we lose track of that. And in the NRSV, more than in Peterson’s, what wasn’t there was this word, worry.

The NRSV focuses on our worry and letting go of our worry because that worry gets in the way of seeing the things that God is doing around us. It stops us from being amazed at the wildflowers, as Peterson puts it. Or at the traditional language that you might be used to is “consider the lilies and how they grow” – Luke 12:27

When we’re worrying about whatever, then we miss all the rest. We miss that other part. It gets in the way of our ability to be grateful, to give thanks. So trying to turn our minds maybe a bit towards gratitude, towards what we already have.

So like this person, sitting at their computer and they can’t figure out their password. Sitting with that aggravation. Whereas we should just be grateful that there are such things as computers. Or maybe we should be grateful for ways to communicate other than computers, right? The computer doesn’t have to be the be-all and end-all of our lives.

I read a story this week about a man who came into church and during the songs he got up and started dancing and clapping and singing.

Then during the sermon he continued and during the prayers. People were looking at him because that’s not the way we behave in church. The ushers tried to escort him kindly out of the room. And after church, they did like all good church people do. They had a meeting, a committee. A committee got together and said, “What do we need to do about this man who was dancing and singing during worship?” They decided they would go out and visit him and help him to understand.

When they got there, he was plowing his field. They said to him, “you know, that thing you did on Sunday?” And he said, “Absolutely!” He said, “Look at this land. God gave me all this land to work and provide food for my family and income to help provide for us. I am so grateful. I have so much to be grateful for. Look at my family. God gave me this family and they are wonderful. I am so proud of them. They share so much love with me and I’m able to share with them. I’m just bursting with thanks for God. Where else should I go with that? But to church on Sunday.”

I wonder how we would react if someone started dancing and singing through worship. I’m afraid we might act more like the ushers and elders in the story, more like the Pharisees, maybe of the stories of Jesus saying, “You don’t do that on Sunday.” We want you to be grateful, but not that grateful.

Do we stop people in there having some awe and wonder at the grace, love, and provision of God?

Something to think about, because this scripture (Matthew 6:25-34) was meant to be a blueprint. It was meant to say enjoy life.

This particular little piece is about relaxing and appreciating what you have. Notice it. Maybe even have some fun with it. When was the last time you played dress-up? I don’t do that anymore, except maybe with my grandkids. They’ll get me to act goofy. But we have to remember how to have fun, to relax, and to give thanks.

I learned this week that there is this whole thing called FOMO. I didn’t know that was a thing. That shows my age. So FOMO is the fear of missing out. People have a fear that they’re missing something in life. That might be who we are. We just didn’t know it. We didn’t know it was called FOMO.

But when Jesus was talking to these people, he knew that they lived under the oppression of Rome. He knew that they didn’t have a lot of clothing or food, but they also probably weren’t starving. They knew how to be a community. They knew how to come together and share. So that everyone would have what they needed. That’s what Acts tells us they did in the beginning. So they came together and they shared as every one had needs.

Today, I want to invite you to become like children. And there are two verses that stuck out for me.

In this one from Matthew 5:44, Jesus says, “But I say to you, love your enemies.” This is a really hard one. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. So that you may be children of your father in heaven.”

God wants us to be like children. In Matthew 18:3, Jesus said, “Truly, I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom.”

So an invitation as we get ready to start the advent season, I know. 30 days till Christmas. Today’s the 24th. It did dawn on me that we are a month ahead in planning because we already are planning the music for Christmas Eve this week because we try to stay a month ahead with the bulletins. It is a month from today that will be here for Christmas Eve and that month will go very quickly. This is that time of year when we start focusing on all of the other things, the clothing, the packages, and the food.

I’m going to invite you to stop at least once a day and be grateful. Just stop and take time to breathe and be grateful. All that you already have, all that you already are, and all that we can do together.

This is how I learned about FOMO. This came in my calm app. There’s only one reason why you’re not experiencing bliss in this present moment. And it’s because you’re thinking or focusing on what you don’t have.

So know that here, no one is bad, no matter what. That’s the things that we tell ourselves, or that we tell each other. We have differences of opinions, but All Are Welcome. All are part of us, and we will work through the differences. That’s life. Life never goes the way everybody wants it to. Joys and sorrows are part of life, but we are here so that we can do this together. This thing called life to support one another, to encourage one another, and to remind one another of the love and the grace that we have through Jesus Christ. Our savior. Amen.

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