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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May it be so. Amen.

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 Today is Mother’s Day, and as I have talked to many people over the years, that can bring a wealth of emotion.

I want to name that upfront because there are people who specifically stay away from church on Mother’s Day. After all, it’s not easy. Some people have complicated relationships. But today I wanna celebrate with you. All of the people in your life who have nurtured you, who have encouraged you, who have been there and loved you, all of those people who have helped you to have second chances.

I’m going to lean on this idea of second chances because I think that’s what it means to rise again. That’s the theme of today. Let’s celebrate all of those people who’ve helped us over the years, whether they are biological or chosen family. Let’s acknowledge that everyone needs someone who believes in them, who reminds them that they are loved. And someone who encourages them to be all that they were created to be.

This week, the theme is rising again. To do that, though, before you can rise again, you have to admit that you’re not up at the moment.

Life isn’t the way you want it to be. We all experience loss. I think right now we are going through what could be called life-draining times. There seems to be a lot that people are carrying, and I want to read this piece by Cameron Trimble this week that I thought touched on some of the pieces of loss that we may not be thinking about.

“Modernity told us that if we played by the rules, contributed productively, and kept our side of the social contract, then the ledger would stay balanced, that we’d be safe, respected, and protected. But the ledger is burning.” – Cameron Trimble

What’s being revealed is that the system of modernity has never worked for all of us. It was never built to hold everyone equally. This is not just about a collapse. It is about a revelation. It reveals the systems that were never just, never sustainable, and never sacred. Even if we thought that they were. Saying that might sound like I went to a really dark place. But the good news is that it provides us an opportunity to change and to create new systems to work on being different people.

To rise again and create a world where everyone is seen as a child of God, where everyone is encouraged to fully be who they are, and to live into their potential. That is what we have the ability to do. This time, it is an opportunity to look at the potential rather than just wallowing in the sorrow.

That’s where this scripture, Acts 9:36-43, hits us because we meet this group in Joppa that was grieving.

The whole town was grieving the death of this woman because it tells us she was very active in the community. She did a lot of good work for the community and was very charitable. She was generous with her time and her money. She was an important person to the town and they were devastated that she had died.

They heard that Peter was nearby. Now, remember Peter is our one who during the gospels could never get it right, but now that the resurrections happened, he seems to have been able to put it all together. Peter had just been in Lida and had gone to a man who had never walked and commanded him to walk, and he did. Now that’s not about Peter, it’s about Christ working through Peter. But Peter being open to that and being able to have that work through him.

They called for Peter and told him to come to Joppa. What isn’t said is what they think Peter would do? We don’t know that. Did they know that Peter was going to bring her back to life? They might have wished it, knowing that he had just done a miracle in the town over. They may have hoped for a miracle. In this moment, in this story, they receive that miracle.

He goes in and he commands her to rise, and she wakes up and walks out with him like Lazarus coming out of the tomb. Jesus says, get up and she gets up and comes out. The whole town believed because they saw something that is beyond our understanding and imagination. I don’t wanna get caught up in that.

But what I want to focus on is the fact that Tabitha was given a second chance. The whole community was given a second chance to be maybe even more like Tabitha.

Maybe they need more people in the community who operate like Tabitha, people who care about another person and live that out. I think that’s who Christ wants us to be. I think that’s what Christ was trying to teach us in the way he lived. That was part of the whole message, he wanted us to love each other.

One of the ways that we do that is by being there and supporting one another. The smiles that we give to each other. You’re supposed to tell the person who is down that everything’s gonna be all right. That’s not what I think you should say. I think you should say, we’re gonna get through this together. Because we don’t know what the future brings, but we can choose to do it together, to support one another, and to be that positive influence that reminds. Sometimes we need a reminder that there are second chances.

It may be raining today, but the sun will come out tomorrow. We won’t stay in this place. There will be another tomorrow. However you’re feeling right now, know that it won’t last forever. There are always resurrections.

Resurrections are about reawakening to life, to God’s presence, to the life source that is within creation that can energize us as much as it energizes the rest of the world.

The indigenous people call that the grandmother spirit, and I wanna tell you a little bit about the grandmother’s spirit. It is more than a person. It is a presence. It is the wise one who lives within the trees, the ocean, and the moon. It is the ancestral hum that echoes through generations. It is the womb of the earth, the fire of the hearth, and the medicine in our bones. The grandmother’s spirit lives in all who choose to love with depth, nurture with grace, and hold others in sacred remembrance.

To me, that is no different than the Holy Spirit, the Christ spirit that is within each of us. Where each of us can love with depth, nurture with grace, and hold others in sacred remembrance.

Now your challenge, there is someone in this world who needs you to be that person. They need you to believe in them, to love them, to nurture them, to embrace them, and to encourage them with grace and patience.

Because there are a lot of hurting people right now. People who are scared and who need to know that they are valued, that their lives count, that they are seen, heard, and loved as they are for who they are.

So let us go out into the world and make that difference. Help those people to have a second chance.

May it be so. Amen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May it be so. Amen.

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When I approach scripture, I usually look for what is it that catches my eye, or what draws my attention.

That phrase, catching people, was the phrase that stood out for me. I want you to think about, if I ask you to catch a person, think about what your body would do.

Would you be like the rugby player on the left, where you come in like this and take them down? Or are you going to catch them with open arms like the right? Because to me, that is drastically different.

This is my struggle with evangelism because when we talk about evangelism, when I think about evangelism, my experience of evangelicals is it’s the rugby takedown. They’re coming for me and they’re going to grab me and take me down. They remind me that I need to say that prayer or I’m not.

There was a trust exercise that I learned many years ago, I have no idea how many, so we won’t count. But where you stood in front someone with your arms crossed and you were to fall into their arms. It was with open arms that you were caught, not taken down. Can you feel the difference?

This is the grace of love, right?

To me it is. I think that is who we are called to be. We’re called to be people who catch people with open arms. We catch people who are falling, who are struggling, who need a soft lane. We can come in and help them, help them to find, not even just a lane, we can find life, new life, the life giving water that is available through Jesus Christ.

This story is actually the calling of the disciples, even though it comes out of the fifth chapter of Luke.

You think, wow, by this time we ought to be somewhere further along in the story. But, you have got to remember that Luke is the one that gives us the large birth narrative. So the first two chapters are all about his birth. Then the third chapter is getting started in the baptism and the wilderness. The fourth chapter, he starts his ministry.

Luke is different in that respect. In Luke, he is already teaching and healing people before he calls the disciples. So he’s already active in the community. In fact, he’s already been to Simon’s house. He goes to Simon’s house because Simon’s mother-in-law is ill. You might remember that story because it’s also in Mark. But here, he doesn’t know Simon. He goes because the mother-in-law is ill and he heals her. And I guess he gets to know Simon a little bit.

Then he meets him again at the lakeshore. where Simon’s coming in. This Simon is Simon Peter, or who we know better as just Peter. This is the good news for us. We should love Peter because Peter makes all of the mistakes that we would make. He does it for us. And Jesus never once shames him or blames him. He accepts Peter for who Peter is and loves him just the same. Continues to have him right by his side, teaching him.

So here in this moment, they go out deep. Jesus does this wonderful teaching. Out in the boat, Jesus looks at Peter and says, go out into the deep water and put down your nets. This is where, if this was contemporary, at least in my head, I heard Peter saying, they’ve done that, don’t need to do it again. Right now I’m headed in for a good meal, a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow’s another day. Tomorrow will be good. Tomorrow we’ll catch. Are you kidding me? But that’s not it for Jesus. Yes, that’s not actually written in the book. The author is quite kinder to Peter. I hear more of Peter’s staff than the writer did, but they go out again. Peter says, all right, if you say so, but they go to deep water. That means they go to someplace they haven’t gone before. They go and try fishing in a different spot, not their local hole, favorite fishing hole, which brought them nothing. They’re going to go to deeper water. They’re going to go where Jesus wants them to go rather than where they’re comfortable going.

This is a metaphor, people. I want you to be thinking about the fact that that means that we will be called to go where we may not be comfortable.

Instead of going to all the comfortable places, the places that we like to go, because that’s where the fish, the people are. That’s why I chose this picture, that you got to be fishing somewhere deep to find a fish that big. Right? Look how he’s holding the fish.

Yes, I think about all these things when I take pictures, right? He’s holding it with open arms. He’s not just holding it up. That fish has some weight to it, right? Like this will be a strong man pose, but he’s not trying. He’s not even trying a strong man pose. He’s supporting that fish. I don’t know if that fish is gonna become dinner or not. I don’t know what kind of fish it is. That’s my ignorance. Maybe it’s a fish that you would rather put back into the water. But it’s that support.

That’s where I think Paul’s message (1 Corinthians 15:1-11) comes in too. That it’s not about being perfect. In fact, Paul’s story is that he was the worst. Paul is clear, “I was the worst sinner.” Paul specifically attacked the people who believed in Jesus. He was a Pharisee who went after the people who believed in Jesus and harassed them. Even almost to the point of death. He was a horrible person to the Christians, and Christ came even to him and invited him in to know the love and grace, the forgiveness that was available to even him.

I think that we are called to be those who are out catching people, catching people in that supported way.

But I’m afraid that we get caught up thinking about ourselves and what do we need? What’s wrong with our lives when there are others who are struggling? And need us to turn our attention out to them and maybe to look in places we haven’t looked before. Because friends, there are those among us in our community who are unsure of their housing, who are unsure of where their next meal is going to come from, who are unsure if they’re going to pay the rent or the doctor.

Those people need our support. They need the hope that we have based on our faith. They need to know that someone actually cares about them.

There’s also those with the hidden issues that we don’t see. Maybe their sitting down like this person, we might have a clue that there’s issues. They may have experienced a great loss. They may be struggling with how to move forward in life. They may feel like life is just crumbling around them. They don’t have that support system, and that is who I think we are called to be as we catch people and help them have a safe landing.

So I want you this week to pray about this. I want you to pray about who it is that God wants you to help.

Because when we call on God, when we put ourselves out there for Christ, the spirit will show up and you may be surprised by who it is that needs help. Maybe they won’t be in that deep of a water or that far out of their comfort zone because you may find out that someone’s hiding issues because we’re very good at that.

All of our German ancestry helps us to say, that’s my dirty laundry and I’ll keep it to myself. We come in here strong and proud, and sometimes the world’s falling apart. We need somebody to help us, to hear us, to affirm us. To encourage us to remind us that God still loves us.

I was in a hospital room this week and I said, remember, God is here with you. The person shook their head and said, “I don’t know.” I said, well, I’m here to tell you that I think God is here. Maybe you don’t feel that right now, and maybe this illness is in the way, but God still loves you. It doesn’t mean, poof, you’re cured. Doesn’t work that way. It means you will not be alone through whatever you are going through. You will not be alone.

We are called to come together, to be building the community of Christ, to be helping others know that they are not alone because right now life is hard.

I was in a conversation this morning where thinking about the pressures of the world and how they try to run our lives and we have to stand up for ourselves and determine what’s the priority.

Those are the decisions that we make each day, and God wants to be one of those priorities. Right up there with family.

We come together to remind ourselves of that. So that we can go out into the world and invite others to know that love and support that we have found here because Christ comes to bring new life to all by catching all those fish. They brought new life to the fishermen, to the community. It meant People were going to eat. Bills were going to be paid.

We trust and rely on each other. That is how we live. Sometimes our world and our country has us thinking about other priorities, but the reality is we will live and thrive when we are community and we help others in our community.

We need to think about what is the impact that we’re going to make. May it be so.

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