Last weekend I graduated from the Foundations Training Course for Gestalt Pastoral Care that I have been taking this past year, and as part of that work we looked at our ancestry.

Many of my ancestors, both Celtic and German, were farmers. So, I shouldn’t be surprised that working the land, getting my fingers in the dirt and watching things grow, is “in my blood.” I know that both sets of my grandparents always had gardens and fresh produce was a normal part of life with them.

Today, I want to focus on the soil and what it means to work with it. Our scriptures for today reminded us that God created the earth.

This means it is sacred! It is holy! And when I work the earth, particularly when my hands are in the soil, I recognize that I am just a small piece in the ongoing story of God, the land, and humanity.

The Bible is rich with agricultural stories as the first peoples relied on the ground for all their food. Even in Jesus’ time, he used so many agricultural metaphors because that was what the people knew –that was what made sense to them.

When I work the land, I am also often barefoot. Yes, it means my feet get dirty – but there is something about being that close – that close to what is real and that close to what touches the inner parts of my being. You see, I am a panentheist, which is a big word that means that I believe God is in or with everything.

The land is not God, and God is not the land, but God is with the land, and the land is with God.

So when we work with the land, when we touch the ground with any part of our body, we are connecting with God through our bodies and the land.

A farmer, Forrest Pritchard, in his book Gaining Ground¹, described it this way: The soil…was soft and dark. I slid my fingers into the dirt, cupping a handful of earth to my nose. The aroma of the broken ground was profoundly rich, at once mysterious and inviting. In the depths of winter – with the pastures grazed low, the sycamores stark and leafless, the creek banks rimmed with ice, and the sky a gray blanket spread from mountaintop to mountaintop – here the earth abided. The soft warmth spoke to me saying, “I’m waiting now, but I will be ready. We are mutual participants, you and I, intertwined.” Indeed, the ground was waiting and now it is beginning to share it bounty.

The definition of soil is: the loose, dynamic layer of Earth’s surface consisting of a living, complex mixture of minerals, organic matter, gases, water, and microorganisms.

The living matter is a combination of worms and bacteria decaying plant and animal matter or humus – “of the ground or lowly.” Humus is where we get our spiritual discipline of humility – not thinking more highly of ourselves – recognizing that we are a small part in God’s great creation.

Humility is also a trait exhibited and valued by Jesus, who was known to lift up those considered to be “lowly” – who said, “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” (Mark 10:31) He also said, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5)

Humility is not self-deprecation, but rather it is acknowledging what is real and true – as human beings, we are selfish and make many mistakes. In Paul’s words, “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (Romans 7:15) So we acknowledge this and ask for God to remove our failings. Because the reality is: “It’s not about me!”

In April, the Board invited the Rev. Dr. Matt Lenahan to speak with us from The Wittel Farm Project in Elizabethtown which is part of The Lutheran Camping Corporation.

In his presentation, he encouraged us to create a land management program for Rader Park and the area around the main building. He also asked us a profound question: What does the land need? Which changes the conversation.

We have been looking at the ground, the land, and what could happen here as if it were ours. And yes, from a political position, we own the deed to it. But this is bigger than that conversation. This is about remembering that the land is God’s – it always has been and always will be – it is just ours to care for during this time. Before us the Brubaker family tended it. Before them, Native Americans tended it. And someone will tend it after us as those of us in the room will not be here forever.

So what does the “long view” look like? Remembering what it has been over the last centuries and what it could be over the next century. What does the land need so that it not only meets our needs but will meet the needs of generations to come?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who comes looking for a relationship with Jesus?

May it be so. Amen.

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 It is my intent every Sunday morning to give you the best information I have. And last Sunday morning, I talked about the historical markers, and today I have more information.

Or we’ll say better information. I found out that the Stephen Smith marker is that it was erected as part of the Civil War Trails, where markers were installed specifically for the150th anniversary of the Civil War. That’s when the Stephen Smith marker was put on the building beside Mount Zion, since then, that marker had been vandalized and was worn. What I learned from one of our members who contacted the Pennsylvania Historical Marker Program, is that they are in the process of refurbishing markers for our 250th anniversary of the country. They have also taken some down that have to do with race and black history because there was some racist language on some of them. So, some of the language needed to be updated, and they are working on all of that.

It is not my intent to create any ill will with the Pennsylvania Historical Marker program, and I wanna make sure that you have accurate information. So I wanted to start with that.

But in preparing this sermon, I ran across that phrase with malice towards none, and learned that that was the beginning of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, which I wanna read to you.

He wrote this in March of 1865, and the Battle of Appomattox was in April of 1865. So, this was written before that battle and before Lee surrendered. He wrote “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the rights, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. That sounds profound right now. So at a time when the battle was still raging, when the war was still raging. Lincoln asked specifically the people of the North who were listening to him to have charity, and that charity is based on the Latin form of the verb, which is caritas, which is a concern for others.

Not charity as in just give them something. It’s not about a handout. It is about having love for neighbor. It is caring about the other. That’s what Lincoln was calling us to be about, and I think it’s who we need to call ourselves to be. It’s not easy right now.

Our scripture today is Matthew’s Gospel, and it was written to a Jewish audience.

As far as chronological order in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has come into Jerusalem for his final stand. He knows that he has come to Jerusalem and he will not leave alive, and he’s running into the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians. Because they’re all looking for something they can use as a reason to arrest him.

The lawyer says to him, what is the greatest commandment? It’s a trap. Jesus knows it’s a trap. It sets up the same piece that, in Luke’s gospel, leads us into the Parable of the Good Samaritan. But this is Matthew’s piece, and if you read the next chapter, you’ll find out that Jesus is not in a particularly charitable mood with the Pharisees and Sadducees. He’s about to put them in their place.

But for this moment in time, Jesus gives them the right answer. It’s simple, “Love God with all of your being and love your neighbor as yourself” – Mark 12:30-31.

I think we tend to think about the Pharisees and assume they’re always saying inappropriate things and are always challenging Jesus. We never would’ve done that, but I really wonder if we aren’t closer to the Pharisees than we realize. Because if Jesus were here, we might also say, “But Jesus, what is the one thing that I need to do? What’s the one thing that I need to do to be faithful? What’s the one thing that I need to do to secure eternal life?”

And Jesus’s answer is simple: love God and love your neighbor. If you can’t love God with all of your being, then love your neighbor.

The Pharisee was probably saying the same thing because Pharisees are Jewish. It was like, what is the one thing that I need to do to be a good Jew? How can I be a good Jew? Love God. If you can’t do that, then love your neighbor because in Matthew 25, we’re gonna get the parable of the sheep and the goats.

That one always takes us because we so wanna be sheep. If everybody’s gonna get divided into sheep and goats, we wanna be sheep, because it doesn’t go well for the goats, and we don’t wanna be on that side. So what do we have to do to be sheep? In that parable, the king says, “When you do it to the least of these, you have done it to me” -Matthew 25:40.

By loving your neighbor, you are loving God.

It’s that simple, and it’s that hard because we don’t always love our neighbor. We don’t know how to love God. With all of our being, we struggle. We can’t love God with all our being, and God knows that. We can’t love our neighbor as ourselves, because God’s watched us do that. I don’t think we trust in God’s mercy.

I think that’s a problem. If we can’t make all of our lives about loving God, then God wants us to try and love our neighbor, and if we still fail at that, then the Apostle Paul reminds us that Christ said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” – 2 Corinthians 12:9. We have a hard time with that power being perfect in weakness. That is not the way our society is set up. That is not what we’ve been taught. That’s not how we function. That turns us around

Power in weakness. How much do we trust God to be God?

I said this was a hard week, and I’ve been talking about the fact that I’ve been asking what the world is that we are trying to create.

It matters; our energy that we put out into the world makes a difference. I believe that. I think that’s part of prayer. I was really struck by two people. I don’t know what all you heard around the shooting, but I heard the mayor say, I don’t want your thoughts and prayers. I want something to change. Then, I heard Fletcher’s father. If you didn’t hear his piece, that will take you down. It took me down because he said, I don’t want you to remember my son as a victim of a mass shooting. I want you to remember him for who he was.

What kind of world do we want? What kind of country do we want to raise our children in? Because we have a chance to make a difference. Right now we are living in a time where everything, all the systems are being broken, and we have a chance to build it better. We have a chance to make it just, where every kid has the right and the ability to achieve and become who God created them to be.

I also wrote down in my notes, Jeremiah 31:15, maybe this is a good time, while I might not make it to the end of this sermon. The prophet Jeremiah reminded the people in exile, “This is what the Lord says: A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more” – Jeremiah 31:15.

As of Friday, it was day 241 in 2025. There had been 286 mass shootings, 1,180 injured.

“How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? How many times must the cannonballs fly before they’re forever banned? They’re allowed to be free. Yes. And how many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see? Yes. And how many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry? How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?” – Blowin’ in the Wind, Bob Dylan.

That song is one year younger than me, written in 1963, and the sentiment hasn’t changed. How Long, oh Lord, How Long?

May it be so. Amen.

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 Today is the beginning of a new season. We are now in what is called ordinary time or the season after Pentecost.

This is the longest season of the year. Today is Trinity Sunday. Trinity is when we celebrate God, the traditional language is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or Holy Spirit. We also say Creator, Redeemer, & Sustainer to identify their roles.

I change things a little bit every season. Like the call, the prayer of confession is now silent, and we added the prayer of illumination. That’s not a piece we usually do. I gave that to the reader, which is different. We also have this table, because we’re going to talk about who Christ welcomes to the table.

Specifically, at this point, we’re talking about the people who would have been considered by everyone else to be outsiders, like a Roman centurion.

The Roman centurion in our scripture for today was the enemy.

He represented the empire that was taking the people’s money, taxing them to the point of poverty, and was a huge military presence that intimidated the people to make sure that they didn’t rise against the empire. All of that, and yet Jesus welcomes and heals him. I want to try to unpack all of that.

I was also at Penn Central Conferences’ annual meeting on Friday and Saturday.

It was an emotional time because we believed this was the last annual conference meeting of the Penn Central Conference. We believe that and hope that at the General Senate in July, they will agree to let us become one Keystone Conference.

So, the four conferences in Pennsylvania will become one conference, and then the State of Pennsylvania will be divided into three regions. We will be in region one, going towards Philadelphia. Berks County is with us, Lebanon County is coming with us, and York County is coming with us. We’re joining essentially the Pennsylvania Southeast Conference. It will not be called that. We’re all gonna be the Keystone conference.

There were a lot of mixed emotions in that. The keynote speaker was Rev. Dr. Courtney Stange-Tregear from the Cornerstone Fund, which is the investment and loan branch of the United Church of Christ. Telling you that, you might be surprised to know that her specialty is in storytelling. She tells the stories of the loans that they have made and the work that has been done for Christ, and she reminded all of us of the importance of storytelling.

I’m still figuring out how we’re gonna do more storytelling together. But I will tell you as an exercise, she had us at our tables tell a true, personal story.

I think this story fits all of her criteria.

While I was sitting there, I was also thinking about my sermon. I think about it all week. This sermon was called Who Is Worthy. And I realized that when I go to the conference, I want to be viewed as worthy by the rest of the conference. I want them to acknowledge and respect who I am as your pastor. There are a whole lot of other pastors. Not that I would be special, but that we would all be valued.

I have learned in my life that a way in which I feel worthy is by pleasing others, but when I please others, I don’t take care of myself, and I also end up hurting relationships. That was my takeaway from that presentation. And I think that was what I was supposed to be focusing on, because on my phone, I have a little app that sends me positive messages. When I flipped over my phone after thinking about that, my phone said this, “I love myself too much to question my worth.”

If that’s something that you needed to hear today, that you should love yourself enough that you don’t need to question your worth. I want you to take that with you.

This whole idea of worthy and of who’s worthy or who’s not, that’s what I’ve been sitting with.

I did what I call a deep dive. I went through this scripture, and it’s a Jewish leader who goes and says, the centurion is worthy. But the centurion says, “I’m not.”

I looked at how many other scriptures talk about someone being worthy, and there are 78 scriptures in the Bible talking about being worthy or not being worthy. What I noticed is that every single one of them was in the Voice of Humanity. It was a human who was saying about declaring someone’s worth or unworthiness. It was never God or Jesus. And what that tells me is that this isn’t a God issue. This is an us issue. We are the ones who are concerned about who’s worthy and who’s not. God isn’t concerned about that, and I think that’s because to God, we all have worth. After all, we are God’s children. God is that parent who loves us unconditionally. We don’t have to prove that we’re worth loving. God just loves us.

Are we really worthy?

I think we’re pretty darn self-interested. I think we worry about ourselves more than we worry about what we’re supposed to be doing for God. We listen to ourselves and our egos more than what God is calling us to do.

Rather than commenting on this scripture and rather than commenting on the centurion’s worthiness, Jesus doesn’t. He comments on the amount of faith the Centurion has because the centurion asks for healing without knowing Jesus. He’s never met Jesus. They’ve never been in the same room together.

He’s heard the stories of what Jesus has done and he believed and he trusted that Jesus could make a difference in this servant’s life.

He believed without seeing. That’s us. Jesus isn’t here with us walking, talking, and we aren’t able to see his hands, his feet, and his side, but we trust that he is who he is and that he can still help us.

But we are the ones who create this label of worthiness. We’re the ones that create lines in the sand or boundaries that say these people are in and these people are out, and these people are good and these people are bad, and these people are worthy or not worthy. The church has been doing that for a long time. What I hear in this scripture is that that’s not ours to judge. God’s the judge, not us. And it’s not even a thing that God worries about.

We need to look at who we keep outside.

Who do we prevent from coming to the table that is not ours anyway? It belongs to Jesus. We need to invite and welcome all those who feel like they are not worthy to come into this house, because there are so many people who have been told that God does not love them. We need to be a different voice that says that we think God loves you. God wants a relationship with you, and you are welcome here. We want you to come in

Just to drive that point home a little more is the Galatians 3:23-29 scripture, which declares there are no labels. We are all Children of God, there are no longer the labels of Jew, Greek, slave or free, male or female, although we still have that one. It’s not about that. It’s about the fact that we are all children of God and that we are to care about the needs and well-being of others. That’s what God told us. That’s what Jesus said: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself” – Mark 12:30-31. That’s who we are supposed to be.

We are to care for the poor, the homeless, the imprisoned, and those who struggle every day to survive. That is why it is so hard right now, because there are people in power who are not interested in that.

They are interested in making us afraid and telling us who to blame for it. As I was thinking about that, I heard a line from my favorite movie, The American President, where he says, “That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections.”

Let’s go and be present with people. Our God wants to be our ultimate parent, thinking of the Father in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Today is Father’s Day. God wants to be that father figure, that one who encourages us and bodes us through the struggles, and who tells us not to give up. But we have a God who allows us to make choices. Recognizing that we will learn through our mistakes and that there will be comfort and support in our difficult times. Rev. Call said in her sermon, “God is most present in the breaking of our hearts.”

I am heartbroken by the stories that I see on the news.

I’m heartbroken for the people who are guilty until they can prove that they have documentation and that they’re a citizen or that they’re allowed to be here in America. But I’m also worried about the ICE agents and the effect this has on them.

I worry about our LGBTQ+ family and friends who are in Pride Month, the month where they celebrate that they can finally be who God created them to be. Yet, they’re not safe. They don’t feel safe. Not right now.

I grieve for Minnesota and for those senators, the families, the friends, and for the depth of anger and despair that person must have had to do that act.

We have people who are hurting, and they need to hear that God loves them. May this be the work that we do.

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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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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