This story, often called the story of the Syrophoenician woman, is one of the many stories told in the Gospels, which are repeated in more than one Gospel.

In this case, we have a version in Mark 7:24-30, which is brief. There’s another version of this story in Matthew. Both Mark and Matthew put this story in a similar context.

But what is this story about? Is it a story of a casting out of a demon? Is it a story of a non-Jewish woman talking with the Jewish rabbi and coming away looking smart and victorious, where his disciples look like fools? Not right in that story, but in the larger context, they certainly do not seem terribly competent.

Is this a story about demons, children, bread, and dogs? Is this a story about a mother’s love for her daughter? Is this a story about faith? Matthew says so. Mark never uses the word. Is it about bread and leftovers? Is it about having a place at the table and greater sharing?

I think that it’s all of these things. And I think that it is also a cue for us not to take no as an answer, even when we’re talking with God. Also, it alerts us to seek God’s abundance wherever it may be found. I think of the words in the song “Oh, I Know the Lord’s Laid His Hands on Me”, some seek the Lord, but don’t seek him right.

This story is placed in a context, in both Matthew and Mark, between a feeding of 5,000 people with 12 baskets left over and a feeding of 4,000 people with seven baskets left over.

At the end of both Matthew’s version and Mark’s version, Jesus tweaks his disciples, saying, Don’t you understand? Didn’t you get this? We fed 5,000 people and had 12 baskets left over. We fed 4,000 people and had 7 baskets left over. Don’t you get it? First of all, it’s not about bread.

This is the context between these two stories about bread is a story, of all things, about bread, about demons, children, bread, dogs. This is a story about a feast. It’s a little bit disguised.

We have several words in this story about the Syrophoenician woman that point to banqueting. One is that the master’s table from which the crumbs slip down to the dogs. In Greek, that’s the very word that’s used of a banqueting table. It’s a specialty word in Greek. It refers to a banqueting table.

When the girl is recovered from the demon, she’s placed, in some translations, a bed, some say a couch, and the word in Greek is the word that’s used for the couch upon which people recline at a feast. What has happened is that at the end, the healing is not just that the demon has left, but that the daughter is placed reclining for the feast.

This story is also preceded in both Matthew and Mark by a curious debate.

Jesus is in Galilee, which is north of Israel. It’s in the modern country of Israel near to the border with Lebanon. Jerusalem is far south, but some elders and Pharisees have come out from Jerusalem to meet Jesus, specifically to grill him on the way that his disciples eat with, it’s often translated as, unclean or defiled hands.

Now, the word in Greek is “Koinon”, which means common or shared. The problem with the disciples is that they’re eating with just anybody. They’re not eating like good Jews are supposed to eat. Separating themselves from everybody else. Cleaning themselves of the common dirt of the world. Blessing the food at the beginning. Blessing the food at the end. Following a careful protocol. Jesus’ disciples don’t do that.

Now here’s Jesus in immediately the next little section of text. Meeting with a woman who is not a Jew. She’s a single woman. She’s a single mom. She’s got a problem. Her daughter has a demon. She comes to Jesus because she figures that he can help. He’s been helping all kinds of people with problems. So she comes to him. She doesn’t get someone as a middle person. She doesn’t have a male relative who comes to him. This means basically that she’s living on her own. She is isolated. Possibly by her daughter’s affliction.

She has a real problem. She has a real need. At first, Jesus response to her seems kind of strange. Because he says you don’t need help with the demon. There is no demon. He doesn’t dismiss her. He says it’s not right to give the children’s bread to the dogs.

It sounds like Jesus is being a little mean. I have heard in the past year, like four sermons on this, that really dwell on Jesus use of the word dogs. As though he is accusing this woman of being a dog. Which, maybe he is. But it’s also quite possible that just having come from this debate with the Pharisees about defilement and what makes one clean or unclean, which he says is what comes out of you and not what goes into you that makes you clean.

If you remember that from a couple of weeks ago, now he’s faced with this woman and he says this thing, and I think that we could interpret this as being a bit of irony. Matthew reports that Jesus is with his disciples and they play kind of gatekeeper role. But in Mark, it’s just the woman and Jesus. Still, I think that we can imagine that his disciples are with him when Jesus says it’s not right to throw the food of the children to the dogs. With maybe a little sly look at his disciples to see whether they got the message which is to share with everyone.

The woman at any rate does get it. She sees this as a riddle and she answers it in a riddle fashion. She says, even the dogs get crumbs. Just maybe, she understands what the disciples don’t. Which is that Jesus is talking about sharing and he is talking about food, but he’s also talking about bread in a cosmic sort of way, in a, you might say philosophic sense, that it is that which gives one life, and that is the abundance of God. Amen.

It is the property of God that God is abundant, but one of the things that is difficult to grasp is that God’s abundance is not everywhere and in all places at all times.

I think of one of those nature documentaries, you know with David Attenborough, maybe. Here, the fig tree has come into its full ripeness, and now the monkeys feast for the day. But, when the figs have all gone, the monkeys are left with nothing, and they must go to the next fig tree, which is ten kilometers away. And how do they find it? By the smell of it.

Well, what is the smell of it, but the wind, the breath, the spirit in the same way we need to be directed to God’s abundance wherever we can smell it out and be guided to it by the Holy Spirit reaching to us. If you ever remember those cartoons where the odor of the pie would come to the person and draw them away, we should be drawn by the Holy Spirit to God’s abundance.

This woman has recognized that, she gives a proper answer. If you are receiving the bread of life, what’s the difference between a big slice and a crumb? It’s infinite. It’s God’s eternity. You can’t break it down into pieces. The crumb will be enough.

Now, let me say that there is an abundance of riches in these five verses, which I am not plumbing here.

I would be delighted to discuss this at much greater length with anyone who was interested. But now, I want to come back to the basic point. We are called to change our minds. That’s the meaning of repentance.

It is, in Greek, it is “Metanoia”, to change the mind. We are called to change our mind. God’s rule is all around us. We do not need to fear scarcity. If we seek God’s abundance, we will find it. We must find ways to seek God’s abundance and support others in their search.

Those who have ears, let them hear.

This Sermon given by Mark Achtermann

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All will be well.

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

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

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

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

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Today begins with this very uncomfortable scene.

The women go to the tomb with expectations. They expect to find a dead body. They expect to do what they feel called to do. They want to anoint this body. This is a gift that they want to give to Jesus. To have his body anointed, even though we know he was anointed. We had that scripture a couple weeks ago. With the woman who broke the bottle and poured the gnar all over his head. He was anointed for burial, but they needed to do something. So they go to the tomb and they have expectations.

They’re already thinking, how are we going to move the stone? But interestingly, they don’t bring anyone with them to do that. Probably because the ones that they know best are hiding, remember? Because they didn’t want to be picked up by the Romans. They didn’t want this to end the same way for them. So those guys are in a locked room, but they go because the Romans aren’t looking at them, and what they find does not meet their expectations.

Have you ever had one of those moments when you expected something to play out a certain way, and it didn’t?

It can be frustrating and confusing. Especially when you meet someone that you don’t know who they are or what they are. Maybe they’re an angel.

Somebody dressed in a white robe sitting in a cave by themselves saying his body was there but not anymore. The grave was not robbed. He has been raised. Can you imagine how scared they probably were?

But, I wonder if it isn’t in those moments when our expectations are thrown off, that we actually can have a God moment. A moment where we realize that God is present.

Then he says something very interesting, He says, Jesus goes ahead of you to Galilee. I think that that’s important because the Bible gives us little phrases and asks us to think deeper about them.

“He goes ahead of you.” It’s like a throwaway phrase. But it also means that he has already done everything that we would do. He has lived this life. He was born as a human. He experienced birth, growing up in this world, in his world, not ours. It’d be interesting to see what he would be like today, but he grew up in that world, and he experienced all the heartaches.

He knew what it would have been like to cut his finger or to touch something hot. And he has already died. He knows what it’s like.

Even worse, He knows what it’s like to have his best friends betray him, deny him, all of that, be hurt by those closest to us. I’m guessing some of us know what that’s like. But so does Jesus. And Jesus goes ahead.

That’s a clue. Galilee is where Mark’s gospel started with John the Baptizer. It’s like, go back to the beginning. This is typical for the Jewish people. Jewish people read through the Torah, what we call the first five books of the Old Testament, and when they read Deuteronomy, where Moses dies, then they go back to the beginning, and they start with Genesis 1 again.

So Mark is saying to us, it’s time to go back to the beginning and work through the story again, because you’ll hear things differently this time.

We are not the same people that we were last year. We haven’t read Mark since 2021. Are you different than you were on Easter of 2021? Do you remember Easter of 2021? I remember Easter of 2021. We were in the parking lot, and I ordered 200 cupcakes because I said we are going to come together and we are going to eat.

We have changed since 2021. We are a different people. Thanks be to God. Right? I don’t know how many of us want to relive ’20 and ’21.

We are called to be witnesses.

That’s what the people are. That’s what the women are called to be. And yes, Mark’s gospel doesn’t leave us feeling all warm and snuggly because it says they ran home and told no one.

But we know eventually they told somebody. Because we have the stories. We wouldn’t have the stories if they hadn’t. Right? They did eventually tell someone, but they didn’t tell that someone right away, and that’s okay.

If you’ve ever had an experience of a loved one coming back to let you know that they’re okay, most of us don’t talk about it, but you all tell me. So I know lots of those stories. You don’t want to admit it to each other, but I know lots of those stories.

We’re called to be the witnesses.

So how do we witness to Jesus? Life? We live it. We work for justice. We feed the person who’s hungry. We give water to the person who’s thirsty. We visit the person who’s imprisoned and we work to change systems so that when people are sick they don’t go unpaid. When people need medical care they get the care they need. That’s how we witness.

We recognize that we are meant to be the love and mercy of God present in this world.

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This is one of those days that I think everybody really likes. It’s Palm Sunday.

This is the celebration. This is a high point of the church year. Jesus is coming in. He is in charge of this scene. He tells them exactly what to do. He’s not the large and in charge Jesus that we hear in John’s gospel, but he still is orchestrating the events.

He knows, tells them exactly what to do. It appears from the scholar’s point of view, looking back at this, that he’s completing the prophesy from Zechariah 9:9-10.

Jesus is coming in riding a donkey from the east side of Jerusalem from Bethany and Bethesh. At the same time, Pilate and a whole. legion of Roman soldiers are coming into Jerusalem from the west. Because they also know it’s Passover. And there is a history that during Passover there have been riots. So Pilate is bringing extra soldiers in to keep the Roman peace. They don’t want any trouble. They don’t want any uprisings.

So here, you’ve got this humble man coming from the east and you’ve got Pilate and the war horses coming from the west.

If you’ve read Zechariah 9, you’ll understand how that is all part of that scripture. We are called to sit up and take notice. We are called to pay attention to what’s happening in this scene.

Look at the difference, and notice it. Look at where the love and the compassion is.

So, Jesus comes in during the day, and at night, he goes back to Bethany. He goes back to the house of Simon the leper. This story of his anointing, Takes place in all four Gospels. It is worth noting when they happen and how they happen. And who. Because, in some situations it becomes a character. The woman is named as Mary. Most times the woman is not named.

So what I find interesting when I have a passage like this that occurs in four different gospels, number one, sit up and take notice. It must be an important story or it wouldn’t be in all four gospels.

Then I look at what’s different about Mark. What’s different in this story? Matthew and Mark’s versions are the closest. Now, remember, and I actually put them in that order, because Luke’s is so different, and even John’s is different. But Mark’s would have come first. Mark’s gospel was written first. Matthew definitely used Mark when he was writing his gospel. So those are the closest.

Both of those accounts, the woman, it’s an unnamed woman, and she anoints his head. Now, you have to stop and think about what does that mean? What does it mean to be anointed on the head? Well, anointing is an ancient Jewish practice. It was done to the kings. This is also important. It was done to David and to Solomon. They were anointed as the kings of Israel.

So, it’s meant to make us think, is Jesus a king?

It is also done when something is marked for holy purpose or that the holy is there. Think about Jacob anointing a pillar of stones because he encountered God.

So, there’s something holy and divine about Jesus. This is recognizing that also. She breaks open this jar, Mark is the only one in which she breaks the jar.

It is Nard, and Mark has Jesus tell us it’s because she’s anointing me for burial, which also is foreshadowing that he knows he’s going to die, according to Mark. He knows he’s going to die, and I even think you could go as far as to say she’s anointing him because she knows they’re not going to be able to anoint his body after his death.

But I kept sitting with this, but why did she break the bottle?

It only happens in Mark. I went looking for other scholars to say something about that, and I didn’t find them. Not that they’re not out there, but I didn’t find them. So I had to sit with it myself. Why was it important?

Because that’s the thing about Mark. Mark uses the least number of words he has to. It’s the shortest gospel. Things are explained briefly. So for him to use that word, and it’s the same word that they use in the story about the Gerasean, sometimes they call him the demoniac in different versions. The crazy man who’s out and he breaks his chains. There is this breaking. It’s definitely breaking. She specifically breaks the bottle.

But what I came up with were two things. If you break the bottle, that means you’re using all of it. You’re going to use the whole bottle at once. Which means Jesus is going to be overwhelmed by that oil and that smell. Both for himself, he’s going to smell that for the next few days. Because remember, they didn’t take showers every day like we do. So that smell is going to be with him, reminding him, reminding others as they encounter him. I think it is also part of this foreshadowing that not only was the bottle broken, but he will be broken. His body and his heart will be broken by the events of this week.

We need to sit up and take notice. We need to notice this.

We need to notice where we are in the story. We know this isn’t the end of the story, that we’re coming back next week for an ending that we could not see at this point. But this is the point in the service where we shift from palm to passion. I do hope that some of you come on Thursday and come on Friday to experience the rest of the story before we get to Easter. That I’m giving you a little bit of this passion because we do need to sit up and take notice.

In that scripture, the one that I read, Mark lines out three groups of people. The first group identified are the scribes and the Pharisees who want to get rid of Jesus and Judas Iscariot joins them. There’s the group of people that includes the woman with the ointment who loved Jesus and whose love is extravagant. Right? This was a very expensive ointment. This is an extravagant love of someone. Then there’s a third group that just doesn’t understand. Which is probably where the rest of the disciples are. That’s a running theme in Mark’s gospel. That the disciples don’t get it. And maybe that’s where we are too.

But without saying it, Mark is asking us to think about which group are we in? Do we want to get rid of Jesus too? Will we be the ones part of the crowd yelling for Barabbas on Friday night? Are we part of the group that loves Jesus enough that we will be able to stand and watch and allow our hearts to be broken? Or are we just part of the group that doesn’t understand?

Now, I’m going to say it’s time folks to sit up and take notice what is happening in our community.

This has been a hard week and there are other churches that are celebrating that God’s will was done yesterday. But this week was not about love and was not about compassion. I heard more hate, violent speech, and threats this week than I have in a very long time.

We are called to be about love. I have to find within myself a way to be merciful, because we are to be about compassion, not violence.

Sit up and take notice.

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Today starts A New Time.

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

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

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

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

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

We are never alone.

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

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

Mark’s Gospel

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

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

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

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

We also have to choose to be different.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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