February 28, 2016

Lent 3

Exodus 3: 1-15; Psalm 63: 1-8; 1 Corinthians 10: 1-13; Luke 13: 1-9

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THE REV. JAMES M.L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

Pontius Pilate is a name familiar to many of us, he is mentioned in the Nicene Creed which we say every Sunday. But who was Pontius Pilate, and what did he do?  Pilate was a prefect, which is a Roman word that simply means governor. He governed over the area of Judea for ten years, from 26 – 36 CE.  Judea was an area in Israel that included the cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and covered about 1,300 square miles.  To put that in some perspective, Judea during the time of Pontius Pilate was smaller than Harris County, which is over 1,700 square miles.  

Pilate served under the Emperor Tiberius, and what Pilate is most known for was his involvement with the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. His reputation as a governor was that he was fierce and not benevolent. As is true of many who held power in those days, Pilate’s power came at the expense of many. The Gospel of John paints Pontius Pilate in somewhat of a more favorable light, as Pilate engages in dialogue with Jesus before his trial, asking Jesus “What is truth?” For some, this seems to be a misread of Pilate’s true character. History reveals Pilate to be a person who seemed more bloodthirsty, more interested in brutal reprisals and suppressing local religious practices than have any interest in philosophical dialogue over whatever “truth” was.  

This morning we get an example of this sinister side of Pontius Pilate. As the story goes, some people from the region of Galilee whom Pontius Pilate believed were rebels against his authority had come to the temple in Jerusalem to present their sacrifices. In this case the sacrifice these Galileans presented at the temple was some sort of animal sacrifice. Pilate was enraged at their audacity to enter into the very seat of his power – Jerusalem – and so ordered his troops to murder all of the Galilean visitors, while the blood of their sacrificial animals was still flowing in the temple’s courtyard. Thus we encounter the graphic phrase in v.1 of Luke’s Gospel that Pilate mingled the blood of the Galileans with their sacrifices.

The sin was Pilate’s cruelty and the sacrilege of murder in the temple, to say nothing of the blatant disregard of the need to prove the victim’s guilt.  After discussing this event which took place, Jesus asks this provocative question to those around him: “do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all the other Galileans?”  

His answer is clear: no, they were not.  Jesus then brings up another case of undeserving victims, in this case a story of eighteen people who died in a construction accident involving the collapse of a tower near Siloam in Jerusalem. Again, Jesus asks the question: “do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?” His answer again, clearly, is no.  

It is not difficult for us today to find our own modern versions of the tower collapse at Siloam, or Pilate’s murdering of the Galileans. Several years ago our nation grieved as a gunman murdered six Sikhs worshiping at their temple near Milwaukee, Michigan. The Old Order Amish School children in their classroom in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Newtown, Aurora, Columbine, Paris, Charleston, Rwanda. And then there are the natural disasters. Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina. The Japanese tsunami and earthquake of 2011, the tornados that struck Joplin, Missouri. The list goes on and on and on. Were the victims of these disasters worse sinners than anyone else?  Did they deserve what happened to them? I believe not.  

In Jerusalem then, and for us today, the challenge is to believe in God in spite of tragedy and disaster, to believe that the hand of God, and the love of God, are at work in the world today. Because it is. Are we able to credibly explain unjust suffering? I can’t, and I would never try. But instead of trying to explain unjust suffering, instead of looking for an answer, I bring my questions here. I bring them to God’s altar, and I leave it there. I bring all my incomprehension, all my fear, all my temptation to believe God is absent in the world – it comes here. It is not a pretty gift to give to God, but I believe God always welcomes it.

The world might be powerful in hate, but that does not make the world God. To the Pontius Pilates of our time, who espouse hate, we respond with love – not ours, but God’s. And we courageously proclaim to our Pontius Pilates that even in the midst of tragedy and disaster, the kingdom of God is at work, and we are never forsaken. AMEN.

February 14, 2016

Lent 1

Deuteronomy 26: 1-11; Psalm 91: 1-2, 9-16; Romans 10: 8b - 13; Luke 4: 1 - 13

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THE REV. JAMES M.L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

I want to talk today about the wilderness. Not the wilderness that come to our mind when we think of our national parks – snow-capped mountain peaks, clear lakes and streams, pine trees. I want to speak about the wilderness in the Bible, the place Jesus finds himself for forty days and forty nights. This is a very different kind of wilderness, it is a wilderness the book of Deuteronomy describes as a “a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste.” It’s not a pleasant place to visit, there are no snow-capped peaks, no pine trees, no clear mountain streams. It is a place of devils, dust, and death. I’m doing a good job selling its appeal aren’t I?  

This is where Jesus is today, and you have been there, too. Maybe it just looked like a drab hospital waiting room where the doctor confirmed the tumor was malignant and inoperable. Or maybe your wilderness appeared like the cheap sheets of a hotel bed after you got kicked out of your house. Maybe your wilderness looked more like the parking lot where you couldn’t find your car the day you were fired from your job.  

For 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians on Febraury 15, 2015, one year ago, their wilderness was a beach in northern Libya, where all of them were executed by the Islamic State for no other reason than their faith in Jesus Christ.  Their execution was seen worldwide in a video released by ISIS entitled “A Message signed with Blood to the Nations of the Cross.” All of them were native Egyptians except one – a young African man described as coming from Chad or Ghana. This man was not a Christian when he was captured, but when challenged by terrorists to declare his faith, he reportedly replied, referring to the Christian faith of the Coptic Christians captured alongside him, “Their God is my God.”

Twelve years ago my wife and I unknowingly stepped into a wilderness during a twenty-week ultrasound on our oldest son, who was yet to be born. We were anticipating a joyful experience, learning the gender, counting fingers and toes. Instead our initial joyfulness was met with silence from the technician who kept looking at the image of the brain of our child on the screen, measuring it quietly, saying nothing to us. It turns out a portion of his brain was not developing correctly, it wasn’t large enough. Later doctors expressed concern that our oldest son might not walk, could be blind or deaf, and may never be able to communicate. I remember one awful day when a doctor told us to consider abortion.  Today James is ten years old. He talks, a lot. He is my greatest teacher, teaching me more about the heart-wrenching beauty of the wilderness, than any bishop, priest, or professor.    

See, the wilderness comes in so many shapes and sizes that the only way you can really tell if you are in one is if you look around for what you normally count on to sustain you and you come up empty. No power.  No autonomy. No special protection. Jesus had nothing in his wilderness except a Bible- quoting devil and a whole lot of sand.

None of us seek this place. We go to great length, spending time and money to avoid it, but it is always there.  We cannot hide from it.  

Maybe this is bad news. That is for you to judge. What I can say about the wilderness, though, is that the wilderness is the most reality-based, spirit filled, life-changing places that a person can be.  

Jesus ends up in the wilderness after his baptism because the Holy Spirit literally drives him into it, living on nothing for weeks, and what does all that time, all that sand, all that temptation get him in the end?

It gets him the thing all of us so desperately hunger for: freedom. The wilderness freed Jesus from all devilish attempts to distract him from his true purpose. The wilderness freed Jesus from any craving for things with no power to give him life. The wilderness freed Jesus from any illusion he might have had that God would make choices for him or make his life easy.

After his time in the wilderness, Jesus learned to trust that the Spirit of God that led him into the wilderness would also lead him out, returning to the world with a kind of clarity and true grit he would not have been able to find anywhere else.  

We also learn something about temptation in the wilderness. In Jesus’ encounters with the devil, the astute observer realizes that the things the devil uses to tempt Jesus are things that Jesus already possesses. The temptation is not the stuff the devil offers. Rather the temptation for Jesus is the improper use of the power, and the improper use of ambition.

The value of the wilderness is mostly lost to our culture, and ironically, also largely lost to the church that is charged with preserving it. Author and theologian Henri Nouwen writes that “The long painful history of the church is the history of a people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, and control over the cross.” Our journey through the wilderness is what enables us to choose love over power, to choose the cross over control. It is the Libyan beach, it is the lonely hotel room, it is the doctor’s office, it is here. And once again, the Spirit calls us to be courageous and faithful.  

This is our time, our moment, our wilderness. Will you step into it? AMEN.

February 7, 2016

Last Epiphany

Exodus 34: 29-35; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3: 12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36

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THE REV. JAMES M.L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

The other day I was visiting someone in a hospital. As I customarily do on such visits, I brought with me a communion kit. After a visit with this person, they indicated that they would like to receive communion, and so I opened the kit and began unpacking its contents, setting up a small altar upon one of those rolling hospital carts.  

The items inside a communion kit are intentionally small – the paten upon which the bread is placed is smaller than a saucer, and the chalice into which the wine is poured is several inches tall. I confess that in the presence of such small dishes I sometimes feel as if I am playing with a child’s tea set.  

The time came for us to say the Lord’s prayer together, and as we prayed those words together, I began to hear another voice join us. The voice came from across the room, from the other side of a curtain which separated one patient from another.  On the other side of that curtain was another patient, their voice joined with ours to the final “amen.”  

Although the room were in was an ordinary hospital room, I felt I was elsewhere – drawn closely into the warm embrace of God who joins friend and stranger together. As I reflect back on that experience, I now feel regret that I did not ask the person on the other side if we could pull back the curtain, and invite him to share in our communion together. So conditioned am I to respect patient anonymity that I neglected to even consider this a possibility. I will think differently in the future.  

Nevertheless, it did feel like a holy moment to me. It felt like being on top of a mountain.  

The Bible is full of these moments, telling us again and again the stories of people who encountered the holy and sacred in mystical and powerful moments. We hear this morning about one such person – Moses – who found his way to the top of a mountain and there encountered the terrifying direct presence of God that profoundly changed his countenance. The Bible says “the skin of his face was shining.”  People were afraid to approach Moses because they believed that the only outcome of a person’s direct encounter with the majesterial presence of God, was death. No one could see God and live, they believed. Except Moses did. When Moses realized the source of the people’s fear, he covered his face with a veil, and like that curtain in the hospital room, the veil Moses wore had the unfortunate result of separating him from his community.  Moses had seen God, and the outcome of that moment, holy though it was, was a veil, a curtain, that isolated him from the community he no doubt loved.      

Centuries later the Apostle Paul wrote about the problem this veil of Moses presents. The point Paul makes in 2 Corinthians about the veil is that Jesus removes it. That was the point of Jesus’ life, to remove disconnection, to deal end separation between people and their God. That’s what Jesus’ whole life was about. There is no need for a curtain or veil. God is amongst and we are invited to look directly into God and our countenance will shine as a result.  And that countenance, our bright shining faces that have seen the living God never need to be covered.

The very real point of our unity with God, a kind of unity that implies no separation, no curtain, no veil, is the heart of the Gospel we hear this morning. In the Gospel, Jesus takes Peter, John, and James to the top of a mountain and atop the mountain and there the entire countenance of Jesus changes. Reminiscent of the shining of Moses’ face this change in Jesus’ appearance indicates a holy moment, a moment of transcendence. Moses and Elijah appear next to Jesus, in a way I imagine Obi Wan Kenobi, Yoda, and Anakin Skywalker do at the end of Return of the Jedi.  

The shift in the story of Jesus on the mountain from the earlier story of Moses is simple: Jesus upon the mountain is God upon the mountain, a God to whom all can look and for whom all are changed.  

Because a part of God is within each of us, and when we look at each other, I believe we are gazing at a part of God. If this is true, then when we look at each other, the countenance of our faces changes, because in seeing God in another person, we realize we are not strangers, but friends. The person in line standing in front of you at the grocery store? That’s God. The person who cuts you off on the freeway, that irritates you to no end?  Perhaps that is God, too. The person in your family you wouldn’t ever want to have a conversation with but you have to because you are family, and you see each other at family gathering, and you disagree with them completely about politics, religion? That’s God. And the same God calls us to cast off our veils, to pull back the curtains that divide us and really look into the face of another, because God is as close to you as the person sitting next to you now. AMEN.

January 31, 2016

The Epiphany IV

Jeremiah 1:4-10; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30; Psalm 71:1-6

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THE REV. JAMES M.L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

The world was not ready. The people were not ready, they were not willing to hear the local hometown boy stand beside his neighbors with the temerity to teach based on the confidence of his own experience with God – and nothing else. But that’s what Jesus did, anyway. 

Jesus walked into his hometown of Nazareth, and in the synagogue there courageously proclaimed that God’s love has no limits. What Jesus said was unacceptable to the people of Nazareth – they were offended by the idea that they, as people of Israel, did not have exclusive status with God, that were not God’s favorite. How could God love a Gentile as much as God loved a child of Israel? They closed their ears to the message of this prophet who proclaimed just this.

To restate that this has always been God’s plan from the beginning, Jesus reminds them of his prophetic ancestors, Elijah and Elisha, greatly revered prophets amongst the people of Nazareth.  Elijah was a prophet from Israel’s past who lived during a time of great famine in the land.  During this famine, God sent Elijah to care for a woman, a widow, who was a foreigner, not a daughter of Israel.

When he arrived, Elijah discovered she had no food, and only a meager amount of meal to make bread. Elijah instructed her to make bread, and with God’s blessing, the bread she made, she was able to make again and again, it was never depleted. She could eat.  She was restored.

Again God sent Elisha, Elijah’s successor, to heal Naaman, a Syrian military commander, and enemy of Israel.  Naaman was afflicted with a disease, and Elisha instructed him to go wash in the Jordan River seven times and he would be healed. Naaman followed Elisha’s instruction and he was healed. This Syrian warmonger – an enemy of Israel, God healed.  The love and mercy of God are without limit.

When Jesus reminded the people of Nazareth of this fact, they were not very enthusiastic to hear the message that the limitless mercy and love of God are present to all people, regardless of race, class, or gender. So enraged were they when they heard this message they tried to kill Jesus by driving him out of town and throwing him off a cliff.  But Jesus does this cool thing and just passes through them and walks away.

The crowd was angry because Jesus turned their idea of a God as Santa Claus upside down.  “Santa Clause” God is a kind of God who rewards the good kids with toys and punishes the bad kids with lumps of coal. God isn’t Santa Claus! If you don't have a mature spirituality or an honest inner prayer life, you'll end up thinking God is Santa Claus, and the Gospel becomes a cheap novel of reward and punishment.

This has been a hard lesson for the church to learn. After Christianity became the established religion of the Roman Empire, the great biblical concepts of mercy, forgiveness, and God’s love gradually were controlled by formulas. Soon the Church created equations: this much sin results in this many years in purgatory or hell; this much penance results in this much time released from purgatory. Grace and forgiveness became juridical concepts instead of deep spiritual realizations.

The work of the priesthood became sin management and the church largely became a "worthiness attainment system" managed from clergy, instead of a transformational system awakening us from within. When forgiveness becomes a weighing and judging process, then those who are in charge can measure it, define who is in and who is out, find ways to earn it, and exclude the unworthy. But the church, thank God, is not how God works, because God is mercy, and God’s mercy is poured out upon everyone. 

A priest recently wrote of his visit to the 9/11 Memorial at the site of the Twin Towers in New York City.  He described the memorial - a huge waterfall drops down into the darkness of a lower pool the depth of which appears invisible to the human eye. For this priest, the 9/11 Memorial became a metaphor for God’s love: mercy eternally pouring into darkness, never stopping, always filling an empty space. That is exactly what God does, God pours out mercy upon us. The mercy and love of God is not contingent upon our fidelity, our good taste or even our common sense. The widow received it, Naaman received it, and today, that mercy flows to you.  It is God’s gift, a gift that cannot be measured or compared, more valuable than any prized possession, and it is yours. Who will you share that mercy with today? AMEN.

January 10, 2016

The Epiphany

Isaiah 43: 1-7; Psalm 29; Acts 8: 14 - 17, Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22

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THE REV. JAMES M.L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

Almost twenty years ago, my brother Randall and I travelled to the Middle East.  Our trip took about a month, and along the way we visited Athens, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Amman, Petra, and Jericho. With only a few days of our trip left, we crossed the border from Israel into Egypt.  

Once in Egypt, we found someone willing to drive us and several other travelers across the Sinai peninsula to Cairo. At some point during our journey, the car broke down. We all climbed out of it, and I scanned the desert horizon around me, and it was miles and miles of endless desert – for a self-confessed Star Wars nerd, the landscape looked like the desert planet of Tatooine.  As the deep red sun began to set in the west, I knew that as long as we followed the sun west, we would eventually arrive at Cairo.  So we began walking, following the setting sun, until a kind person driving along the road picked us up and brought us to our destination in Cairo.   

Thousands of years before, a group of travelers also came from the east, following a star in the nighttime sky. These travelers were presumably astrologers, people who studied the stars. The stars have helped people travel for centuries, whether a sailor at sea, or those who travelled the Undeground Railroad alongside Harriet Tubman. Today, we don’t know what star these astrologers followed, or what it looked like. Some think it was a comet, or maybe the joining of two planets in the sky, or even a supernova. We don’t know.

We do know that they left their homeland because they believed that astrological phenomena, like a bright star, indicated that something important had happened on earth. We know the star, whatever it was, lead them to meet God’s child, Jesus of Nazareth.  

That story marks the beginning of the season Epiphany, which we are in now. The word “epiphany” simply means an event that reveals something about who God is and who we are in relation to God. This morning we hear another story of an Epiphany - the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River. He is an infant no longer, the visiting astrologers have long since left. Jesus is now a man, and his baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist is one of the few moments in the entire Bible where all three persons of the Trinity are present: God the Son, emerging from the waters, God the Father, whose voice proclaims “this is my son, with whom I am well pleased” and God the Holy Spirit, who rests upon Christ as a dove.

Today at St. Andrew’s is a day for baptism. It is a day of Epiphany for us as well. Today we will baptize Fiona Berlanta Kirk, Claire Evelyn Woodruff, Robin Michelle Thelen, and Ella Victoria Major. These four beautiful girls are epiphanies to us, they are our teachers about God and about what God is doing in our midst. Each of these young girls come to us with a timeless, ancient message they proclaim in their squeels, their crying, their laughter, and their sleep. The message is this: God is here, present amongst us and through us in our humanity and in our divinity.    

The message of Epiphany is not just Christ’s manifestation to the world through miracles, but the fact that we are God’s Epiphany – we are God’s miracle, we make God manifest in the world today. That is the proclamation of Baptism - it is the voice of God speaking to you now, saying: “You are my child, and with you, I am pleased.” AMEN.

January 3, 2016

Christmas 1

Isaiah 61: 10-62:3; Psalm 147; Galatians 3: 23-25, 4: 4-7; John 1: 1-18

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THE REV. JAMES M.L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

Traditionally, the Sunday that follows Christmas is called a “low Sunday.” A “low Sunday” means that people who attended one of the “big” Christmas services earlier in the week are somewhat churched-out by the time Sunday rolls around again, and so we call a day like today a “low Sunday” because the attendance tends to be “lower” than usual.  

Another thing to know about “low Sunday.”  It is almost universal that the Rector is typically on vacation that day, and therefore doesn’t preach. As an associate Rector for almost nine years, I have plenty of old “first Sunday after Christmas” sermons in my folder.  Nine, to be exact!

Even though we are coming down from the proverbial mountain top of Christmas Eve and day, we are still in the midst of the Christmas season. We are actually only on the third day of the season, a day heralded in the song “Twelve Days of Christmas” as an appropriate occasion to give three French hens.  So be sure to pick up your French hens from the ushers as you leave today!

I get that even though we are only on Day 3 of Christmas, the world is ready to move on to the next lucrative, greeting card selling holiday – Valentine’s day.  But while the world is finished with Christmas, with all its “after Christmas sales,” Christmas is not finished with us. We still have nine days left.  And, low Sunday or not, today is Christmas.  So, Merry Christmas everybody!

This morning we hear the prophet Isaiah proclaim these words: “I shall rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God.” These are important words for us low Sunday Christians. We are here today to rejoice in what God has done in the miraculous birth of an infant boy long ago whose life changed the world and is still changing the world today. It is this child for whom the author of Galatians writes that we are all children of God through our faith.

It is this child for whom the author of John’s Gospel calls the very word of God. Another translation of these first few passages of John’s Gospel read as follows: “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.” That is Jesus, God’s clearest indication of God’s love for all humanity, and the extreme extent to which God is willing to join us and be with us and to live among us, in our neighborhood.

There are some who smugly say that if Jesus actually turned up at one of our churches, he would very likely be quietly and inconspicuously asked to leave by an usher or a priest. As much as we want to pay lip service to our love for a God who put on flesh to be with us and to know us, we are – if we are honest – often uncomfortable with such an idea.

We are afraid of God knowing us, because if God truly knew us, if Jesus really moved into our neighborhood, then he would know what we are really like. Do we really want to invite God into those places we don’t allow anyone else? Do we really want God moving into that neighborhood?

And yet – this is what Christmas is all about!  God moving in with us – living with us – knowing us for who we really are. Twenty-three years ago, when I was in high school,  I suffered a deep and debilitating depression of which I could see no end. I literally felt that I wanted to end my life. At the end of my rope, and by the grace of God alone, I was checked into a psychiatric hospital where for two weeks I looked very closely at landscapes of my psyche I had never examined before. Until that point, I believed a lie – a lie which stated I needed to be perfect in order to be loved by God. Which I could never be, and thus my depression.

In that hospital one Sunday night, I felt alone, scared, and afraid that my life had no purpose. In a room by myself, closed off from the world, something happened and God met me in that place. God set up camp in my dark and ugly neighborhood, and met me in my pain in a way I had never experienced before or ever expected God to do. Although this happened sometime in March, it was a Christmas moment, because God became incarnate – real – to me that day.

On that day God stopped being something superficial, something I associated with saccharine expressions of false happiness and joy. God took on skin, and met me in a place I didn’t allow anybody access to. Somehow God found it. For some reason God wanted to meet me there, perhaps because I needed to be broken before being made whole through the love of God.  Somehow God redeemed my low Sunday, and it became not a day of fear or shame, but a day that cast an indelible impression upon my spiritual journey.  Who knew!

So I rejoice this Sunday, whether low or not, that today is Christmas, meaning God will meet us where we are now, not where we think we need to be. Are we willing to trust that? I am trying, every day.  I hope you join me. AMEN.

December 25, 2015

Christmas Day

Isaiah 9: 2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-20

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THE REV. JAMES M.L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

I would first like to welcome all of you here on this holy day. If you are a member of this parish – welcome, we are glad you are here. If you are visitor – welcome, and thank you for being here this morning. This church is blessed by your presence.

One of the things that I love about Christmas Day service is that it kind of feels like you  are letting your hair down and putting your feet on up on the couch after all the pageantry of Christmas Eve services, which are beautiful and grand, but Christmas Day service is kind of like the party that happens after the party, the one where all your close friends stay after others have gone home.

If your house is anything like mine this morning, the presents have been unwrapped from under the Christmas tree, and the Christmas tree looks a little bare with nothing under it anymore (except a bunch of dry pine needles if the tree is real!).  For many of us, Christmas trees are one of the real icons of the Christmas holiday. Whether it is a noble fir, or one made of plastic, metal, or with the fake spray on snow – all Christmas trees kindle in me that feeling of Christmas.  

Some time ago I saw a Christmas tree unlike any other I had ever seen. It looked somewhat like the Christmas tree from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” with its bare branches and one or two bare ornaments hanging from it. There were no presents underneath this tree.  It appeared to be in a room surrounded by rubble – broken concrete and steel rebar. The tree, I later learned was in the destroyed home of a Palestinian Christian family living in Bethlehem, the traditional city of Jesus’ birth.

The ornaments hanging from this tree were not what you or I would expect. We have Darth Vader hanging on our tree at home, but on this tree, the ornaments were all constructed out of spent rifle casings the family had found around the ruin of what used to be their home. Bullets as ornaments.  

There it was for all to see – a Christmas tree, a symbol of hope and light, decorated with the spent instruments of violence. This Palestinian family, whoever they were, used bullet casings for ornaments to create something that resembled hope. They used what they had. It was not a fancy tree. But it was one of the most beautiful Christmas trees I have ever seen.

Like the owners of that tree, God also used what was available to create hope: a small, non-descript, unimportant backwoods region of the Roman Empire, a young woman and her husband, and a baby.  A baby born in a manger, a cave or stable, with a feeding trough for a crib.  

And this baby, the Christ child, born of Mary, the God-bearer, is our hope.  

There were no guarantees of this child’s safety, or that of his family. Early on in their life together, they would become refugees, fleeing King Herod’s violent campaign to slaughter the innocents. They would find safety in neighboring Egypt, for a time. This is the Christmas Story: a God willing to risk everything to get to know us, to be with us, to walk beside us in our pain, in our joy, in our complexity, and in our sorrow.

Why? Because of love. God loves you. We aren’t promised security or prosperity – we are promised something far greater – God’s love that spans the entire universe to meet you here this Christmas morning.  

We create hope out of whatever we can. The broken pieces of dreams shattered by the harsh reality of our lives. The irony is that often hope only emerges when things are broken. Whatever it is – spent bullet casings, memories of a broken child hood, the failure of a fractured dream. All of those pieces God is holding and with God’s mercy and grace God is giving the pieces to you, to build what you will – to create hope.

This is what God does – it’s called grace. And it is what Christmas is all about: the risk of love, the promise of grace, the creation of hope. What will you build? AMEN.

December 24, 2015

Christmas Eve

Isaiah 9: 2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-20

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THE REV. JAMES M.L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

I would first like to welcome all of you here on this holy night. If you are a member of this parish – welcome. If you are visitor – welcome, and thank you for being here on this holy night. This church is blessed by your presence.

There’s too much going on. Too much to do, people to see, gifts to buy, and it doesn’t even feel like Christmas outside!  80 degrees with humidity!  I was sweating outside today. There is too much to do, and there is never enough time.  When I turn my eyes to the concerns of the world at large, they are met with the plight of refugees, of violence, and of pain. There seems to be no end and no answer. I confess this is no time for Christmas. There is no time for stockings, wrapped presents and the pleasantries of family and friends when the world is facing problems so large and resolve so small. And yet this is what Christmas does to us every year – we are never ready, the world is never ready, and often are caught unprepared to welcome God into our messy, complicated, and beautiful world.   

Our global unpreparedness, our countries entrenched in geopolitical conflict, our cities broken and homes split – none of this seems to bother God. Christmas comes every year; Christ enters our world in spite of its brokenness, in spite of its pain.  Staring fearlessly into the abyss of political and social division, inequality, and injustice, Jesus proclaims this: God loves you.   

Several weeks ago Pope Francis visited Bangui, the capital city of the Central African Republic. The Central African Republic is one of the world’s poorest nations, and one of the places in the capital city Francis visited was the Muslim quarter, called PK5. Since 2012, the Central African Republic has been locked in a civil war that that has strong religious motivations. According to the Human Rights Watch, about 122,000 Muslims lived in Bangui before the start of this civil war.  But attacks by Christian militia groups have driven tens of thousands of Muslims from the country, and there are now about 15,000 Muslims remaining in Bangui, mostly in PK5.   

Pope Francis was determined to visit the Central African Republic, a country devastated by violence and poverty, telling the pilot of his airplane, “I want to go to Central Africa, and if you can’t manage it, give me a parachute.” Thousands stood in the sun along the dusty airport road to greet the pope, many waving palms in his honor. He rode most of the way in an open pope mobile.  

His visit to PK5 culminated in a visit to a mosque, where he sat down on a threadbare rug, next to many imams and other leaders of the Islamic community.  And it was here, that Francis, the head of the entire Roman Catholic Church said the following: “Religiously motivated violence disfigures the face of God. Christians and Muslims are brothers and sisters.” Francis took this trip at great risk. Many warned him not to go because the region was too unstable. The Islamic State had publicly announced a death threat on his life. Francis’ response to the Islamic State was that he we would be willing to speak to them in the name of peace.  

Francis proclaimed the radical love of God for all people, not in a gilded church in Europe, not amongst the political elite, not in the White House, but upon a threadbare carpet in a mosque in a country few know exists.  

Nearly two thousand years ago, the word of God became incarnate in an unimportant, ordinary city on the outer rim of the Roman Empire. Jesus was born not during a time of peace, but of great instability and in the midst of great political conflict between the Jews and the Roman Empire. The timing of the first Christmas was far from ideal. This is why the timing of Christ’s birth was so critical – because God didn’t wait for some ideal time, when things were perfect and peaceful, for Jesus to be born. Because in God’s wisdom, God knew that time would never come! Jesus entered the world as it is now and was then – broken.  

So don’t feel everything has to be perfect at Christmas. The first Christmas was far from it.  As one theologian says, “it doesn’t matter that our lives, or our families or world are not perfect. What matters is that we make a space, no matter how small, for God in our hearts. When we do that, God will do the rest, and Christ will once more be born in the Bethlehem of our lives and the mangers of our hearts.”

When Christ is born in our heart, then we are able to proclaim the message of Christmas which is simple: “God loves you, always, no matter what.” Whether that message is proclaimed in the city of Bethlehem or the Muslim quarter of Bangui, it makes no difference. God is with you, God is with us, God is living and active in the world.  

I believe with all my heart that when God looks at you, God sees the Greatest Miracle in the World.  I believe God looks at you with the same eyes of adoration and praise God glanced at the newborn Christ child years ago. Because just like Jesus, you are the incarnation of God’s love in the world. You are the resurrected Christ to the world, and in you, Christ is born, again and again.   

And that is the miracle of Christmas – you. You are, and will always be, God’s greatest gift. Merry Christmas! AMEN.

December 6, 2015

Advent 2

Malachi 3:1-4; Canticle 4; Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6

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THE REV. CARISSA BALDWIN-MCGINNIS

People of Advent!

People of an Onset!

People in Waiting!

Our job is this.

It is suspense.

It is only suspense.

And I dare say we likely know little of how to go about it.

For,

When was the last time we upheld great expectation?

When last were we privileged to await something marvelous?

When had we the time to await any thing?

How long since we deferred a single action or gratification?

How many years since we looked out, just looked out?

When did we last feel our desire?

When last did we give Hope the chance to breathe?

These are questions for a people said to be in waiting. These questions are for the children of prophets in a modern, post-modern, east vs. west, Islam vs. Christianity, the people vs. the environment, the integrated vs. the isolated, Shia vs. Sunni, Republican vs. Democrat, capital vs. labor, warming, global culture in which:

We people of faith crave our senses as we overdrive our cognition.

We wish to anticipate anything, because we seem often forced to respond to everything.

We would likely trade food and drink for time to simply look at a baby, a river, even a rock,

given that all our days and into our nights we study primarily highways, bus stops, electronics screens and frozen foods.

We want to recollect our children, as scripture says.

We want to nurse our parents.

We people of faith want desperately to gather at the word of the Holy One.

We desire to embody suspense as the answer to everything, yet the weapons and images of apocalypse overwhelm us.

How then to anticipate new life?

We want to await you, Lord.  We want to await you.

We want to expect you, O Great One, and to prepare non-anxiously for your arrival without needing you to text us about your every stop and updated arrival time. We want to receive you anew just as for the first time and without presuming to tell you who you are.

We understand that our job is suspense, but to undertake this goes against everything we know and may ask more of us than we can possibly imagine.

So, help us, Great Creator. Empower us to discard our sorrow and to don your beauty. Assist us in setting the dark of winter in lights of promise and mercy. Even the score between violence and splendor. Refresh us with your peace. Relieve us of our fears.

Where there is infertility, may we grow family.

Where there is abandonment, let us make claims to one another.

Where there is violation, lead us to wholeness.

If there is failure, show us a new start.

We, O God, sit in your church endangered, silly and in need of you. Help us to feel you are on your way. Help us to wait and to watch and to forget that we think we know anything about who you are.

November 15, 2015

Pentecost – Proper 28

Daniel 12: 1-3, 14-25; Psalm 16; Hebrews 10: 11-14, 19 -25; Mark 13: 1-8

THE REV. JAMES M.L. GRACE

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In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

So I typically write my Sunday sermon on Mondays. Mondays tend to be rather quiet days at the church, and they are a perfect time at least for me to thing and reflect upon the scriptures that are appointed for this day. This, by the way, is a peak behind the curtain for any of you who might lose sleep over such things as when I find time to write these things. I am spilling all my secrets now! I didn't write my sermon on Monday of this week however because of a funeral that was here that took up much of the day.  

So I instead wrote this morning’s sermon on Friday of this last week. I was happy with it because it tied into this morning’s Gospel about Jesus predicting the destruction of the temple, and it gave me a chance to offer an alternative interpretation to last week's Gospel about the poor widow offering her two copper coins to this temple that would be destroyed.

I left town Friday evening to go on a Cub Scout camp out and all seemed right at least with my small insignificant world until a news update on my phone pinged, and I read in my tent next to my sleeping son the horror that befall nightclub in Paris in which over one hundred and twenty people were murdered in the name of religion - the most violent act in Paris since World War II. This came one day after another attack in Beirut where two suicide bombers killed 43 people and wounded more than 200.

Whatever meaning the sermon I wrote two days ago had, it washed away like a current drifting from the shore into a sea of helpless darkness. So I started again, typing out new words – these words -  on my phone yesterday afternoon, a small attempt to shine a light in a world that has grown dark once again.

Friday morning I attended a breakfast for the Monarch School, where my oldest son James attends. It is a school for children with neurological differences. A teacher spoke that morning about a field trip she took with her class room to the Rothko Chapel in Montrose. The chapel is a dramatic building, featuring many dark paintings of black landscapes created by the abstract expressionist painter and Russian born Jew, Mark Rothko. The effect these dark monolithic paintings create when you walk into this space is overwhelming. It is like walking into a universe, and as you stand in the midst of that darkness, you are meant to feel small. The teacher recalled how that day one of her students, a boy, stood before the dark painting as something about it captured his curiosity. After a while, his back toward his teacher, the boy turned around, looked at his teacher, and smiled. His teacher shed a tear watching this young boy with so many challenges stand in front of the darkness and smile into it.  

We are to do the same. The Christian life is defined by being ashamed or afraid of the darkness which surrounds us. In two weeks we will begin the season of Advent where our response to the gathering darkness of the winter solstice is to create light. Two weeks from today we will make advent wreathes for our homes so that we can remember that Christ, the true light of the world, is coming into it. The collect we will pray together the first Sunday of Advent will remind us to put on the armor of light so that we might go into a world darkened by hatred and violence and transform it.

In spite of our ability to do the worst, God refuses to give up on us. God stubbornly refuses to let go of Paris, Beirut, and any other place on the world where the tragedy of violence and life lost has occurred again.

God is living and active in Paris, in Beirut, and in every place darkened by human violence. The darkness is real, but it is nothing more than a speck in the light. Theologian and author Anne Lamott asks us, “What are we to do now? We are to do the next right thing.”

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminds us to take courage during times like these, writing  “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid.  Follow God into the darkness, and you will redeem it.  AMEN.

November 1, 2015

All Saints Day

Isaiah 25:6-9; Psalm 24; Revelation 21:1-6a; John 11:32-44

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THE REV. CARISSA BALDWIN-MCGINNIS

When we hear the tale of Jesus weeping over the death of Lazarus, our own irreversible losses reverberate in our hearts. Of the many stories of Jesus’ healing and death-reversing power, the story of Jesus reviving Lazarus is one uniquely colored by the intimacy and loyalty of friendship.  If only we could revive our most beloved friends who are no longer with us in this life. And, why does it feel in times of loss as though the death of a beloved friend or family member would threaten our own lives? Why does it feel as though grief wants to become our undertaker? We can’t move. We can’t work. We can hardly speak.  Loss can literally be life breaking. We see this in the numerous cases of the elderly lover who dies just days or weeks after a beloved spouse.

Yet story - myth - can help us to cope with the complexity of such pain.  Jesus raising Lazarus is one. Another is the Sumerian myth of the Goddess Inanna. Inanna was known in Ancient Iraq as the Queen of Heaven and Earth, and she chose do descend to the underworld after the death of her sister’s husband. Entering the underworld required of Inanna to surrender every aspect of herself and her status.  She was made to enter seven portals. At the first they demanded her crown. At the second they took her lapis beads. By the seventh portal she was literally stripped naked and made to surrender her royal robe.  Inanna was then judged harshly, killed and reduced to a piece of raw meat. Isn’t that how we feel in times of deep grief; raw in every fiber of our being?

And yet, there are people who know us well and can reach into our isolation and sorrow. The effort of these companions can inspire the reassembly of our lives. Jesus entered a cave filled with the four-day old stench of death and yet came out with his friend newly revived. In Inanna’s case it was her servant - a woman who knew Inanna’s every move - who instigated Inanna’s return from the underworld. Thanks to the efforts of this loyal friend and servant, two genderless beings were said to have travelled to the underworld and found Inanna’s corpse. One sprinkled upon it the bread of life and the other the water of life. The Queen of Heaven was restored and began her return.

Sometimes we grieve and need the assistance of others. Sometimes it is we who must be watchful for those we know well. If we find them down, depressed or isolated we need not diagnose or attempt to fix them. Instead let us invite them anywhere that is outside their place of pain.

The baptism of new saints into our church fold, a liturgical act that we do today, is a commitment from us to them, that we will be the church of revival. When they turn 50, are depressed by their age, and are paralyzed by thoughts of the future, we will force their removal from the couch and take them to lunch. We will hold their hand when they grieve.  We will look for them when they are lost. We promise to not bee too demanding, judgmental or creepy, and pledge to instead be intimate, safe, strong, helpful and constant. I invite us to pray for each other as we strive to be these latter things, remembering honestly our saints of old and welcoming joyfully our saints of new.

October 18, 2015

Pentecost – Proper 24

Isaiah 53: 4-12; Psalm 91: 9-16; Hebrews 5: 1-10; Mark 10: 35-45

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THE REV. JAMES M.L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

Several days ago a friend of mine from seminary posted an article about Pope Francis on Facebook.  The article was from the Washington Post and it was about the arrival of Pope Francis to Philadelphia, one of several stops on his recent visit to the United States. Included with the article was a video that showed Francis as he walked down from the American Airlines jet at the Philadelphia airport, and stepped into the back seat of a small black Fiat. The backseat windows were rolled down, and Francis waved as the car drove away.  

As the Fiat passed a group of people, all of a sudden, it stopped. Francis opened the door, got out from the back of the car, and walked over to a crowd of people where he embraced a young man with cerebral palsy who was confined to a wheel chair. The name of the young man was Michael, and Francis blessed him, and then kissed his forehead in a gesture of honest and sincere compassion and love. 

The image of Francis embracing Michael in his arms was a complete and perfect summary of the Pope’s theology of disability and inclusion in the kingdom of God. That image, of the Pope embracing Michael, says more about the Pope’s love of God than any amount of words or concepts ever could. Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, understood images have the power to awake within us an epiphany, an awareness, that often words fail to do.    

So I want to give you an image. I want you to think about a person who consistently has irritated you, someone who has violated your trust, someone you disagree completely with, a person who you are envious of, someone for whom you have no room in your life for. Do you have that person in your mind? Now I want you to imagine Jesus, holding that person who has done you wrong somehow, in his arms. I want you to imagine Jesus embracing that person, kissing their forehead, blessing them. That person is in need of God’s love and forgiveness as much as you are.  God, I believe, has forgiven that person. Have you?

Jesus said, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.” That means that Jesus came to serve not only you, not only the poor or disenfranchised. Jesus came to serve your own enemy, because as hard as it might be to imagine, your enemy is God's friend. If Jesus came to us as one who serves, then our work is to do the same. Our work is to bless and love others, especially if you disagree with them!  

Several weeks ago at Rhythms of Grace, a weekly service for children with special needs, a ten year old boy with Autism received his first communion. His mother was in tears. The other day a man living on the streets in this neighborhood came to our front door because he was hungry, and had nothing nothing to eat. He was greeted with a smile and called by his name, and a lunch and bottle of water were handed to him. These are simple acts that will never attract the publicity of the Washington Post, but they are just as significant, just as holy.  

To love God means that we affirm the worth and dignity of every human being we come in contact with.  To love God means that we do to label others, we do not dismiss them with a category and demean their humanity. Loving God also means loving, and blessing, our enemies. Who is in the crowd today waiting for you to pass by, who is that person waiting, in need of your healing, compassionate embrace? Pray that God will help you find that person, and love them. AMEN.

October 11, 2015

Pentecost – Proper 23

Amos 5:6-7, 10-15; Psalm 90: 12-17; Hebrews 4: 12-16; Mark 10: 17-31

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THE REV. JAMES M.L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

When the rich young man approached Jesus and asked Jesus what he needed to do to obtain eternal life, I don’t think he was asking Jesus how to get to heaven. That is the way I have understood the story for years, and that is probably the way you all have understood the story as well.  I was surprised to learn that the words “eternal life” in scripture do not necessarily mean “life after death” or even heaven, as some biblical scholars argue that the idea of heaven or even the concept of life after death was still early in its development during the time of Jesus. If those scholars are correct, then what does the phrase “eternal life” mean?

The phrase “eternal life” as it is used in the New Testament has less to do with the life after death, than it does with the quality of life that we live right now. In other words, perhaps the rich young man was asking Jesus not “what do I have to do to get into heaven” but rather “how can I live the kind of life that you and your disciples live? How do I get in on the joy and the love you guys obviously have so much of?”

The answer that Jesus offers the rich young man is simple – you give. You give to God in faith, trusting that whatever it is you give, God gives back, as God always does. That’s the way Jesus lived his life, and that is the way he encouraged others to live. And there must have been something about that life that the rich young man wanted, this person who had so many things, except what Jesus had.

Some think that what Jesus said to the young man was an impossible demand for any person to consider, young or old. Who can give away all their things and give their money to the poor?  I think it is safe to say that no one here this morning after hearing this Gospel is going to walk out the door, sell all their possessions, and give their money to the poor. If you all did,  we’d have to shut down St. Andrew’s Church because no one would be able to pledge money for our annual stewardship campaign (So perhaps this is not a very good reading for our stewardship season!).

I want to encourage you to think differently about this story. It’s helpful here to look at the language the New Testament was written in – Greek, because what Jesus says in the original Greek is different than what he says in our English version. In the English version, we have Jesus telling the young man to “sell what you own, and give the money to the poor.” That’s different than the original Greek, in which Jesus says “sell what you own, and give to the poor.” Did you catch the difference?  In the original Greek Jesus doesn’t say “sell what you have and give the money to the poor.” He’s not absolute in saying give everything you own away. Instead, he simply says “give.”  

However you choose to interpret this story, the point is simple: when we give, we are being most like God, because giving is a blessing to us and to the person who receives. That’s what Jesus is saying – if you want eternal life, if you most want to be like God?  Give.

I recall an old story of a priest who called a member of his church who had not attended services in several months. The church member told the priest, “I haven’t been coming to church because when I do, all I hear is “give, give, give.” The priest was silent for a moment, and then responded, “Well, I cannot think of a better definition of Christianity than that.” And there isn’t one. As Christians we give, because God gives to us. And my gift to you is that this sermon is over! AMEN

October 4, 2015

Pentecost – Proper 22

Genesis 2:18-24, Psalm 8, Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12, Mark 10: 2-16

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HEAD OF SCHOOL, NANCY SIMPSON

Today is officially Episcopal School Sunday. This means people in Episcopal churches all over are celebrating the rich history of education in the Episcopal Church. Here are some fun facts to know and tell:

• There are 577 Episcopal Early Childhood programs
• Texas has 121 Episcopal Schools and Early Childhood Education programs in 6 dioceses
• Episcopal Schools and Early Childhood education programs serve over 160,000 students from diverse religions, ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds
• Trinity School, NYC, founded 1709, is the oldest continually operating Episcopal School
• Our own school is starting it’s fifteenth year and thankfully we are at capacity and have a waiting list twice the size of our current enrollment
• You might be wondering, “What does this have to do with the readings today?”. There is actually a direct reflection of today’s Gospel in our school here at St. Andrew’s

Let me explain:

In the Gospel story we just heard, the Pharisees were testing Jesus.  In modern Christian thinking, we tend to paint a picture of the Pharisees as bullies. In fact, we often demonize them. Other than Satan, they were the only ones who tested Jesus in the Gospel of Mark. The truth is, they were really devout, pious Jews who wanted to follow the law. In this case, their question to Jesus about divorce was to see if he could reconcile his message to the law.  The Pharisees were great rule followers, of course. Jesus’ answer is, as always, tremendous; tremendous because he points them away from rules, and directs them into their own hearts.  

In many ways, we really aren’t very different from the Pharisees. All parents want to know the right rules, the right formula to raise their children safely, to give them a secure environment and the opportunity to have a good life. We want to make sure they not only stay out of any kind of danger and have the essentials of food and shelter, but we also want them to be comfortable: to have joyful experiences, to laugh and play, a good education and ultimately to have someone to love and, someone who loves them.  Parenting is the hardest job in the world. We tend to want it to be a recipe that has rigid guidelines - - something with rules that we can follow - - so we can ensure a positive outcome.

Frequently good parenting is easier said than done.  The best parenting is accomplished when we opt for inspiration instead of coercion. We do this by discovering the child’s natural desires and unique abilities and by encouraging the behavior that will allow him or her to develop accordingly.  It starts at the infant stage when we work hard to encourage babies to sleep on their own, and as they develop, to eat on their own.

Think about long ago and the custom of a midwife using crushed dates in order to massage the palate and gums of a newborn. This encouraged the baby’s natural instinct so that nursing could begin as soon as possible. In other words, she stimulated the baby’s gums in order to encourage the kind of behavior that would benefit the child. She wisely and deftly utilized the baby’s natural instinct to guide him toward what is best.

This is not to say that as they grow up we should allow children to do as they please or that we should avoid correction. Think about the training of a horse. Imagine a horse’s bridle, which is used to subdue a horse for the purpose of directing its natural energies without breaking its spirit. In this image, note that the bridle isn’t a yoke; a yoke is for pulling heavy loads; a bridle is for guiding. Only a novice puts a bit in a horse’s mouth to dominate it. Experienced riders know that the horse’s bit is a point of contact in a relationship with the animal. Horses want to run because God gave them a desire to fulfill their created purpose. A wise, caring rider uses the bit and the reins to help the horse achieve its purpose safely and effectively.

Episcopal schooling and a Montessori environment both value the uniqueness and talents of each child.  The whole purpose behind Montessori philosophy is to:  

• Foster each child’s individual identity
• Encourage independent thinking and problem solving
• Create a sense of community
• Demonstrate compassion and kindness

If you walk into our classrooms you will see children:

• Working independently on language or math skills
• Problem solving
• Using the democratic process to decide what to name the class pet
• Being kind to one another, saying “please and thank you” without prompts
• Inquiring and searching
• Taking ownership of their work
• Sorting to create a sense of order
• Older children will be sharing work

Pedagogy, psychology, and theology all suggest that these qualities that make us who we are as human beings and are already in us. We don’t have to make or create these traits, we just have to recognize, nurture and support them.  

The real message of today's gospel isn’t about divorce or, defining the law. The real message is that God looks upon our hearts, not the ledgers of our wrongdoings.

Maybe we should think of rules as landmarks, helping us see the road; but the rules are not the road itself. The road is our day-to-day experience in the mystery. Our daily walk is jumbled with all our responsibilities:  getting to work on time, juggling carpool and errands, completing a project, interacting with our boss or, peers or, spouse, managing all the thoughts and emotions that go along with each interaction, much of which we is unconscious.  

We talk a lot about Mystery in the Episcopal Church. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines mystery as “something that has not been or cannot be explained”. The reading from Genesis this morning is one of two stories in Genesis about the beginning of time and mankind.  In many ways, it is a mystery, too.  Children are much more comfortable with this notion than most adults. Children always ask “why”.  They might ask, “why is the door shut” or, “why are you wearing a dress today” or, “why does that lady have only one arm”.  It might seem easiest to try and answer the question.  But, instead of coming up with the answer yourself, try reflecting the question back, and ask “why do you think the door is shut?”, “why do you think I am wearing a tie today”, and “what do you think about the lady who has only one arm”? If you allow them enough time and space, children will typically come up with several ideas of “why” Some of the ideas will be outrageous and imaginary; some ideas will be very interesting; some will be truthful; all will be their wondering. The wondering isn’t about the right or wrong answer.

Unsatisfied with Jesus, the text says that the Pharisees ask Jesus AGAIN to answer the question about divorce and the law - they just won't let it go. He responds with:

"Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it." And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

Sometimes our adult rules and guidelines get in the way of our child-like understanding and our wondering. I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t have rules. Rules are what keep us together as a society, and they are important.  Sometimes the rules we live by can keep us from accepting the mystery. When the Holy Spirit enters into us, it doesn't come in as a rulebook. It comes in as Spirit. Grace. Mercy. Truth. Joy. Mystery.

Look at the way a child is perfectly at home in the Mystery. That's where Episcopal Schools and Montessori environments do more than teach - they preserve the mystery in the hearts of their students.

September 27, 2015

Pentecost – Proper 21

Numbers 11: 4-6, 10-16, 24-29; Psalm 19: 7-14; James 5: 13 - 20; Mark 9: 38 - 50

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THE REV. JAMES M.L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

Psalm 19 is a bold, thoughtful and provocative psalm, that meets us with these words today: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, my rock and my redeemer.” If you have been going to church for a long time, you may have heard a clergy person say those words before preaching a sermon.

They are a way of the preacher saying, with great hope, that the words they are about to say are not their own, but somehow mysteriously become the words God intends for the congregation to hear that day. What is interesting to me is that the most clergy use this verse of the psalm to introduce and begin their sermon, whereas in Psalm 19, as you can see, the verse comes at the very end of the psalm. Why? The author of the psalm petitions God, prays to God with her or his deepest thoughts and prayers, concluding with that verse, the effect of which is to say: “I have just said a lot of things, but I don’t know if they were the right things, and I pray to you God that whatever it was that I just said in this psalm be acceptable to you.”

Clergy, on the other hand, often use the psalm in reverse, by including it at the beginning, rather than the end of their sermon, in effect saying “God I already know what I am going to say, because I have either memorized it or have printed it out on paper and I sure hope what I want to say is what I think you think the congregation should hear.” And this is a big problem with sermons in the traditional sense.

You all need someone in a white polyester robe telling you about God like you need a hole in your head. And that’s often what preaching is in many churches, although the color of the robe might be different. The priest goes into the pulpit, and stands, looking down at the congregation, almost creating an image of false authority, and the priest pontificates on things that most of the congregation either will not remember in fifteen minutes. And this happens in churches week after week after week – the same thing, the same message, dressed up a little differently – fitting hook line and sinker with Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity as “doing the same thing again and again expecting different results.”

By the way, I will admit to you this morning that I am really bad at listening to most sermons. I’ll be honest with you – most of the time if I go to a service, and I am sitting in the pew, and the sermon begins, I can usually listen for about two minutes, and then I am gone, and my face starts to look like this (point to parishioner). I freely admit to having minimal attention span which over the years proportionately has become smaller and smaller, at the same rate as the screens on our smart phones have become larger and larger.  

The reason I feel this happens to me, and to many people sitting in church pews on Sunday mornings is because too often sermons lack heart, they lack honesty, they lack truth-telling, and they lack vulnerability.  I didn’t go to church often as a child, and so Sunday mornings were often spent flipping through television channels to see what cartoons were on. Sometimes, when no cartoon was on, I ended up watching the televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, no joke. I didn’t pay much attention, and honestly I don’t remember a word he said – except when he admitted to having an affair. The tears running down his face, as he said on national television “I have sinned.” I remember it clear as day – why? Because it was honest.

If I have learned anything about preaching since seminary, it is this. It is not the priest who preaches. It is the congregation – it is all of us. We are writing a living sermon with every breath we take. We are writing a living sermon in how we choose to live our lives, how we spend our money, how we treat those less fortunate than ourselves.

You might not do this, but whether or not you know it, your life is a sermon you preach every day. And the more honest you are, the more authentic you are, the more the words you preach through your actions, the more the meditations of your heart are acceptable to God.  

This – being up here – saying these words – it’s easy, because it’s not the true sermon. The true sermon is not one that sounds great coming off paper, the true sermon is what you do when the public eyes aren’t watching. When the doors are closed. That’s when the sermon becomes real, because then there is no posturing, there is only you and God, and the meditation of your heart.

The sermon you preach in your home, in your place of work, in your prayers, in your exercise, and in your leisure – are those words just something you want to say and you hope God blesses them beforehand? Or has God already blessed your sermon, your life as a preacher, with words that are blessed and ordained by your Redeemer?

Comedian George Burns once said a good sermon should have a good beginning and a good ending, and as little as possible in between. I disagree. Your sermon, which is your life, had a wonderful beginning in your birth, and will come to a holy end at your death. What is in the middle is up to you – what you preach, using words only if necessary, is the gift of your life, your sermon. And the sermon of your life, if it is real and woven into the heart of God, will never put anyone in a pew to sleep. AMEN.

September 20, 2015

Pentecost – Proper 20

Wisdom of Solomon 1:16-2:1, 12-22; Psalm 54; James 3: 13- 4:3, 7 – 8a; Mark 9: 30-37

THE REV. JAMES M.L. GRACE

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In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

In several weeks Episcopal clergy from all around the Diocese of Texas will gather at our Diocesan camp, Camp Allen, for an annual event called “clergy conference.” I have now been to  about ten of these clergy conferences, and one of the things that I have noticed about them is the natural, and very human tendency clergy have in comparing themselves to one another. There is a lot of talk about successful parishes, lot of talk about church growth, growing budgets, new staff members. Those are the stories clergy seem to want to share. But there is not much talk about failure, churches that are struggling, and certainly rare is the occasion when a priest would admit to buckling under the pressures of leading a congregation.

This is sad to me, for many reasons. It is sad that clergy feel the need to compare themselves and the churches they serve to other churches. It is sad that clergy sometimes confuse their relationship with their church with their relationship with God. They are not the same thing!

And finally, it is sad that we, as clergy, struggle to admit our own inadequacies, our own mistakes, our own brokenness, failures, and instead choose talk about safer, more comfortable things, like church attendance, curriculums, or programs. It’s much easier, and safer, to compare yourself to another person on superficial matters, like church size, than it is to confront your own brokenness. And so clergy conference is sometimes the forum where priests argue over who is the greatest, the most successful, the best.  

These arguments are not new – the disciples had them long ago as they were walking along the coast of the Sea of Galilee. They were doing just what many at clergy conference do – arguing over who was the best, the greatest. I guess they needed something to pass the time – they were probably bored, and arguing is something people certainly do to avoid boredom, strange as that sounds. Once they get to where they were going Jesus asks them, “what were you all arguing about?” and the disciples were embarrassed that Jesus heard them, and they said nothing. They were ashamed, I imagine, of their selfish ambition.

Ambition alone is fine and good, but selfish ambition, a desire to be greater than others, does nothing but create chaos. Our lesson from James this morning reminds us that “where there is selfish ambition, there will be disorder of every kind.” The reason why James says that putting yourself above others breeds disorder is because if you say that you are better, more important, that your needs matter more, then you are going to live a very lonely life, because in your own imaginary world with your self-inflated importance, no one is allowed to come close.

Theologians have a word for this kind of living where your selfish ambition constantly supersedes the needs of others, where your ongoing desire for recognition and importance is all that feeds you. The word they use to describe this kind of life is simple – hell.  

There is a way out, by the way. Jesus shares this way out with his disciples, when he says to them “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” In other words, greatness doesn’t come from ambition. It comes from humility.  

Mark’s Gospel never says if the disciples understood what Jesus said to them, or if they just kept on bickering amongst each other about who was the greatest. But in the Gospel of our lives, in the story we tell about who we are as God’s people, we get to say how we understand the words of Jesus. We get to say – we understand.

We don’t need to be ashamed of who we are. We don’t need to lie about our story. We are free to be imperfect, as God created us to be. We are released from the prison of comparing ourselves to others, and are empowered by the Holy Spirit to just be, and to be grateful.  

When I interviewed with the search committee of this parish, I was asked by one of the members that if I was called here, would I use St. Andrew’s as a stepping stone to get to some flashier, glitzy, high rolling church in a few years.  What they were really trying to find out is if I was some selfishly ambitious little twerp.  My answer to them was no. I envision a lot of ministry for us to do together for an abundant chapter in the history of St. Andrew’s.  

Pray for those clergy going to clergy conference this year, stuffing their insecurities, failures, and shame into their suitcases too small to carry such burdens. I wish I could say it was only clergy that do this, but the truth is – we all do. And all of us have been given a way out, thanks be to God. AMEN.

September 13, 2015

Pentecost – Proper 19

Isaiah 50: 4 – 9a; Psalm 116: 1-8; James 3: 1-12; Mark 8: 27 - 38

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THE REV. JAMES M.L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

On September 10, 2001, St. Andrew’s Episcopal School opened its doors for the first time, welcoming new students, parents and families. I imagine that it was a day of celebration as the church welcomed students into the renovated Montessori classrooms for the first time where they met their teachers. It was a good day. It was a day to celebrate all the tremendous work it had taken to start a school at St. Andrew’s.  

The morning of the next day, September 11, 2001, while students returned to St. Andrew’s School, much of the country watched in horror and shock as a United Airlines and American Airlines passenger jet collided into the World Trade Center towers. Moments later a third jet, American Airlines flight 77, crashed into the Pentagon, and a fourth airplane, United Airlines Flight 93, set on a course to crash into our nation’s capital, was bravely diverted and crashed in rural Pennsylvania. 

One year later, on Wednesday, September 11, 2002, I attended an interfaith service of remembrance in recognition of the first anniversary of the attacks on September 11 at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.  I was in my first year of seminary at Virginia Theological Seminary across the Potomac River in Alexandria. I remember driving to the National Cathedral, passing the Pentagon, and seeing armed troops and large 30 MM artillery cannons poised to retaliate if such an attack occurred again.  

The Cathedral itself was full, standing room only, and I watched as dignitaries, clergy from every denomination, rabbis, imams, hindu and buddhist leaders all process and take their place near the altar. The Most Reverend Desmond Tutu, former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Africa, delivered an impassioned homily that encouraged those gathered to hear the words of the prophet Isaiah, who wrote in chapter 2 of his hope that one day war would cease. The prophet write “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

The worship service was a sacred and holy space where for a moment, it felt as if every person inside was united, regardless of race or religion. The sense that we were united in our commitment to work for peace, to distill hope from the tragedy of the events a year ago was palpable in the room. I left the National Cathedral that day feeling hopeful about the future, empowered by the experience of shared unity, and committed to work for the cause of peace. 

As you might expect, this feeling of unity I felt in many ways contradicted the thoughts and feelings of others.  In the days following I heard rhetoric of hate and retaliation from amongst my pears, people who called themselves Christian, and were studying to become priests. I remember walking into the restroom of a restaurant one evening. I passed by one of the stalls and what I saw written on the toilet seat lid immediately grabbed my attention. It was just one word, and beside it was an arrow pointing to the bottom of the toilet bowl. The word read “Muslims” and my assumed implication was that this was a reflection of the author’s disdain and hatred for this religious group. I wondered if he, too, was a Christian.

I don’t ask that you agree with the religion of Islam, but I firmly believe that such a statement of hatred as I saw that day was, in my opinion, not one that Jesus himself would make. This is but one example of how throughout our human history, incendiary comments have started and perpetuated systems of war, prejudice, bigotry, and hatred.

The author of the letter of James, whom we hear today, cautiously warns us about the power of our words. James writes that “the tongue is a fire, it stains the whole body, it sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.”

What power we have in what we say or choose not to say.  It is easy to harbor prejudice against a group of people as long as we generalize them. All Muslims are violent fundamentalists. All drug addicts have no self control. All politicians are corrupt, all Christians are hypocrites. These prejudices work as long as we never meet an educated and devout Muslim, an addict in recovery, a politician with integrity, or a Christian who however imperfect, seeks to pattern their life the best they can on the teachings of rarely, if ever, survives our experience.

Author Stephen Covey in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People book presents a simple way to guard one’s tongue, and it is this: don’t say something about someone not present that you wouldn’t say directly to their face.  If we do that, if we speak with integrity and not judgment or hate, then we beat the sword of gossip into a plowshare of love. We transform the spear of hate into a pruning hook of peace.  This, my friends,  is how we change the world. AMEN.

September 6, 2015

Proper 18

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23; PSALM 25: 1 - 12; James 2:1-10, (11-13), 14-17; Mark 7:24-37

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THE REV. CARISSA BALDWIN-MCGINNIS

Before I became a parent to human children, I was a dog mom. I dutifully walked my dogs daily and took them to the dog park in order that they could run and recreate and generally pretend to be wild animals. This sometimes included early morning trips. The upside for me of arriving just after daybreak was that no one was there. It was a time of stillness, contemplation and quiet in the heart of the city. The downside for the dogs was that few - or no - dogs were there with whom they could act out their wildness.

Nonetheless, there we were one morning as the only ones in the park, until a woman came along walking her bicycle. She had no pet, but she did have an animal carrier wired the back of her bike.  It seemed from her cargo that the bicycle might have been her mobile home. We did not exchange words or even glances. Yet, I had the feeling she was there for the same thing I was; a moment of quiet in the heart of the city on a rare expanses of park green.

My new companion in silence took a restful seat on one of the park benches and seemed to be soaking up the morning’s peace. While my stomach grumbled, she had brought herself breakfast. As a life-long fan of the Egg McMuffin, I knew exactly the pleasure she was savoring with her eyes. It was like she was going to make the goodness last as long as possible, soaking in every morsel through every possible sense with taste to be the last. The sandwich finally made a move toward her mouth when out of nowhere lumbered a slobbering Great Dane who literally snatched the sandwich from the woman’s lips. Without even a sound the breakfast had vanished, been ingested, dematerialized and was gone. What had started as a day break with the promise of so much goodness suddenly turned into a moment of seeming mercilessness.

What the readings from today - specifically the letter of James - want us to hear, is that faith is brought to life in contexts injustice and moments of mercilessness. James asks, “What good is it to say you have faith if you do not do good works?” James’ letter rewritten the context of the dog park might read, “If a woman has only enough money for one egg sandwich per day, and you say to her, ‘Don’t worry about the dog, go buy another muffin!’ without providing for funds for the purchase, what is the good of that?!” Faith stands on the legs of mercy which can only manifest through acts and can only manifest by way of actors.

The psalm for today assures that God is the greatest of all actors of mercy, bringing not only justice to the oppressed also food to the hungry. The gospel read today tells of Jesus being convinced to heal a child who was considered irrelevant to him by way of her tribe. It was an act of mercy not required of him by the culture, and yet in the end mercy was not withheld.  Similarly, there is a story in the Islamic tradition that the Prophet Muhammad kissed his grandson and an onlooker remarked, “I swear by Allah, I have ten children and I never kissed any one of them!”  to which the Prophet is said to have replied, “He who does not show mercy to others will not be shown mercy by God.” These words appear in almost identical form in the portion of James read today. The prophetic tradition, whether expressed through Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, instructs us in the way of a faith built upon mercy and justice.

Mercy, unlike justice, does not necessarily require great courage of us. It can be a practical matter. Even cold stone can be put to merciful use. Some grand scale churches in medieval times lent their covered, exterior walkways to serve as overnight shelter for the poor and the dying. Where practiced, this was a merciful use of architectural grandeur.  Mercy may not require great sacrifice, though it may require us at times to be willing to look a fool. Befuddling examples can be found in the animal world such as the chimpanzee who helps to raise a tiny puma orphan, or the leopardess who after killing an adult baboon for supper subsequently cuddled and protected overnight the dead prey’s one-day-old infant.

Sometimes we hear the letters of Paul or we read the letter of James and we think there is a great Christian debate or conflict between faith and acts. Cynthia Bourgault, an Episcopal priest and leading teacher of spirituality, reminds us that if we hear the Bible telling us that faith and works, or grace and works, are separate and at odds, then we are mistaken. To hear it that way would be to accept a false dichotomy.  Rather, she instructs us that the two are a single, unitive and divine portal through which flows into us the divine mercy of the great Creator. We are to understand that acts and mercy, acts of mercy, grace and acts are how God gets into the actor’s soul. Be we rich or poor, committing acts of mercy is - to quote Leonard Cohen - how the light gets in.

Mercy is never guaranteed. Mercy is not a birthright even for the faithful. And yet, when it comes, it comes in divine forms through divine portals to people like you and me through other people like you and like me.

August 30, 2015

Pentecost – Proper 17

Song of Solomon 2: 8-13; Psalm 45:1-2, 7-10; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

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THE REV. JAMES M.L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

One day when I was in high school, my anatomy and physiology class took a field trip to the Texas Heart Institute in the Medical Center. The tour included a visit to an observation area where we watched open heart surgery being performed. I am sure the technology has changed a lot since that time, but I recall looking down into the operating room through a window and seeing this massive heart and lung machine that was pumping in and out of the patient. It took a giant and sophisticated machine to handle the physiological work of the human heart.  

On the surgical table, and completely covered in sheets, was the patient. The only part of the patient that was visible was the opening in the chest where the doctors were working on the heart. It was beautiful.

In the Bible, it was the heart, rather than the brain, that was considered the center of a person’s life and emotions. But this kind of thinking pre-dates the Bible. Ancient Egyptian belief in the afterlife involved the weighing of a person’s physical heart after they died. This was like their last judgment. A person’s heart was placed on a scale, and on the other side of the scale was placed a feather. If the heart weighed more than the feather, then the person to whom the heart belonged was punished. The heavy heart was a sign of a life lived with sinister intentions. It was more preferable in this scenario to have a light heart, one lighter than a feather, because that represented an unburdened conscience, a life lived that was moral and right.

While some may scoff at a rather binary understanding of judgment, the story of the Egyptian afterlife nevertheless makes an important point: heavy hearts burden us and they bring us down. I am sure in your life you encounter people with heavy hearts. Maybe their hearts are weighed down by guilt, remorse, shame, embarrassment. People who have expected to be more than they are by now. But let’s be fair and acknowledge that what we say about others is also true for us: many of us have heavy hearts, hearts burdened by too much responsibility, too many commitments, too many expectations – all impossible to meet if we try.

Though not a cardiologist, Jesus nevertheless understood a lot about the human heart and the weight it can carry. He had such an opportunity to do so in the story we hear this morning from the Gospel of Mark, in which Jesus is confronted by a group of people judging him and his followers because they weren’t following the rules. Specifically, they weren’t following the expected customs and rules regarding eating, which involved eating with clean hands.  

Now before you write these accusations off as silly and having no point, think about how you would feel if you were eating a meal served to you by a waiter with dirty hands and you watched the water let the food slip off the plate, fall onto the floor, and then you saw the waiter pick the food of the floor, put it back onto your plate with their dirty hands, and then brought it to you saying “Bon Appetit!” Cleanliness matters. Rules matter.

But for Jesus, what mattered was not following the rules, which probably upset a lot of people. His point was that the rules became like a God to worship. So that what mattered wasn’t loving God, but loving God in the right way, in a rule-following kind of way. Okay so you are thinking “What’s wrong with that?” For Jesus, the problem is us. We’re just not very good at following rules all the time. And when we break the rules, our hearts get heavier and heavier and heavier.

That’s a problem because a heavy heart, a heart weighted down by resentment, anger, and bitterness, becomes a toxic place that produces envy, slander, pride, and all the other things Jesus mentions today. A heavy heart is in need of a spiritual angioplasty, a heavy heart is desperately in need of hope to lighten it.

When our hearts are focused on the right thing, I believe that that our hearts will be light. And a light heart is a joyful heart – a heart that espouses hope. We make our hearts light by practicing gratitude, by honoring the people in our presence, and by being grounded where God has placed us. By being humble.  By not making rule-following a higher priority than following God.   

The human heart, on average, will beat 2.5 billion times in one lifetime. To put that into some context, during the time that you have been in church this morning, your heart has already beat some two thousand times. Remarkable, isn’t it?  With every beat, is your heart growing lighter or heavier? Is your heart growing kinder or colder? With God’s help, may your heart and your burdens, be always light.  AMEN.

August 23, 2015

Pentecost – Proper 16

Joshua 24: 1-2a, 14-18; Psalm 34: 15-22; Ephesians 6: 10 – 20; John 6: 56- 69

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THE REV. JAMES M.L. GRACE

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

Who do we serve?

That’s not meant to be a rhetorical question.  Really, who or what things do people serve?

As the variety of the answers suggests, we serve many different things. There is a lot out there in the world that is competing for our time, for our allegiance, for our service.

And in the midst of all those things (our families, our relationships, our obligations, our guilt, our addictions) – in the midst of all that, we find God. Does God demand that we be obedient and serve? Does God say to us “you owe me twenty hours this week!” I don’t believe God does.

But there is clearly a choice we make everyday about our priorities, what we will serve. This is a timeless part of the human condition. The story we hear in the book of Joshua this morning, is the story of a line being drawn in the sand, where a decision needs to be made. Joshua asks the Hebrew people, “who are you going to serve? Are you going to serve God? OR are you going to serve something else?” Joshua asks this question as he is nearing the end of his life.

He grew up following Moses’ leadership, helping to deliver the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt. As Moses grew older, and eventually died himself, Joshua was the heir, the next leader of the Hebrews, who would lead them into Israel. Today, we draw near to the end of the story, and Joshua, near death, tells the people “Hey you have a really important choice to make. If you are unwilling to serve God, then you need to figure out who you are going to serve, and then Joshua quoted the ancient Hebrew prophet Bob Dylan, who said “you gotta serve somebody.” You have to serve something.

This is a choice we all make – but it’s not a choice that we make once in our lives and then it’s like (phew!) “glad we got that over with – now we can go back to living our regular lives.” This question Joshua asks – that is a question we answer every day. Sometimes we are aware we are answering it, other times I think we answer it unconsciously. But it doesn’t matter, because either way – this question – who are we going to serve – is at the center of who we are. 

For a long time if I were asked that question, the answer I would give is “God, of course!” But the reality was that was mostly a lie, because what I was really interested in serving was my own ego. That’s what I wanted to serve because I wanted to be liked, I wanted people to think I was successful, funny, that I had it all together. Which of course was a lie.  I did not then, and do not now, have everything together.  

I learned that if my answer to Joshua’s question was “myself” meaning I am going to go out today and look out for myself first, others second, and God last, then that is a very effective recipe for a spiritual nightmare. I believe that deep down inside a person who serves themselves first (and regrettably, I can speak from personal experience) there is a deep sadness that is cleverly hidden by false happiness, and by silent shame. Conversely, the person who answers “I will serve God” alternatively, is not promised an easy life, or a life of comfort. But they are promised a life of integrity, a life that is spiritually uplifted and strong.  

In the mean time, as you consider Joshua’s question of “who are you going to serve: God, self, paycheck, stock market, fear…” what will help you most is your prayers. Pray to God everyday asking for God’s direction. Ask God to help you answer that question everyday with the answer that brings life and vitality and wholeness and health, and that is answer is God.  

To choose to serve God means offering ourselves to other people in ways that sometimes feel uncomfortable, are sometimes inconvenient, and to be vulnerable in wondering if we are even doing the right thing.  In spite of all that, think in your own lives, you own families, your own jobs, how would they be different if you choose God’s service instead of serving selfish ambition, comparing yourself to others, or just acquiring more things?  That’s not easy to do – but make no mistake, nowhere in the Bible does it ever say serving God is easy or convenient.  But honestly, what is worth having that comes easy or conveniently?

Take a Post It note, write on it this question: “Who am I going to serve today?”  Put it somewhere – your car, your wallet, a mirror, refrigerator. Anywhere you will see it.  This is the most important question in our lives, and how we answer it determines not only our quality of life, but also our capacity to love and be loved. AMEN.