7th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 10B

7th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 10B July 12, 2015 So here’s something you might not yet know about me. I love the show Game of Thrones. My husband and I watch it (although we haven’t yet finished the current season, so no spoilers, please!). I’ve read all the books that George R.R. Martin has managed to write. I think it’s really a great story, and I enjoy following the trials and tribulations of all the characters. (Although if you haven’t watched it before, I feel I should warn you that the show has lots of violence and also lots of nudity, so consider yourselves warned!) The thing that David and I have talked about most in Game of Thrones is the fact that in that world of the kingdom of Westeros, power is the chief motivator. And any character that acts out of other motivations such as mercy or kindness or just basic humanity often ends up having bad things happen to them. It’s become a bit of a joke for us now, as we watch it. If a character does something that is notably merciful, then we say to each other, “well, that one’s going to die!” and oftentimes, it happens. Early on in the series, maybe the first book and season, one of the main characters says to another, “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.” That sums up that kingdom and that story well, I think. Our gospel reading for today is the story of another kingdom. It is the kingdom of Herod. And our story from Mark’s gospel today is a strange little interlude, a flashback from Herod about the story of John the Baptist’s beheading that is stuck right smack dab in the middle this chapter of Mark. Our story for today is strange because, a) we don’t see Jesus at all and b) when you look at the whole chapter 6 of Mark, this story is stuck in a weird place. Mark has stuck this story of the beheading of John the Baptist in between Jesus’s sending out of the 12 (that we heard last week—where they are sent out vulnerably with nothing except the companionship of one other disciple) and when they all come back together and are reunited, going away to a deserted place for rest and renewal where the crowds find them, and then Jesus feeds them (which is actually left out of our lectionary reading for next week). So it’s a really weird placement of an especially gruesome and grisly story that even gives Game of Thrones a run for their money. In it we see that King Herod has thrown himself a birthday party. His stepdaughter Herodias is dancing at this party and her dancing has so pleased Herod and his guests that he offers to give her anything she asks for. Step-daughter Herodias goes off to ask her mother (who is also named Herodias) what she should ask for, and her mother, who has an ax to grind against John the Baptist who has chastised Herod for marrying her (his brother’s wife), tells daughter to ask for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. When daughter Herodias goes to Herod in front of all his guests and makes her request, the story tells us that “the king was deeply grieved” because he had liked and respected John, but he does what she asks “out of regard for his oaths and his guests”. When we look at how this story is situated in the middle of the sending out and returning of the disciples, it begins to make a little more sense why Mark put it there. Because when we look at it in context, we can see that Mark is telling the tale of two different kingdoms. One is the kingdom of Herod, where people manipulate others for power and position (and maybe even fun), where Herod throws his own birthday banquet that ends with the beheading of a man of God, where Herod refuses to do what his heart tells him is right because of how it would make him look weak. The other is the Kingdom of God, where God’s followers are sent out in weakness so that they may rely on the power of God, where people are healed and demons are cast out, where Jesus throws a banquet of mercy when the crowd has followed him and the disciples to a deserted place. And the contrast between these two kingdoms in Mark’s gospel leaves us with some questions. Which kingdom do you want to live in? Which kingdom will you help create? Which kingdom do you give your allegiance to? Of course we all know the “right answer” the “Sunday School” answer. We should want to live in and help create and give our allegiance to God’s kingdom. But think for a minute about the world that we live in, where competition and productivity is valued above most things, where power and success are held up as the highest good and vulnerability and weakness are frowned upon. In some ways, our world is more like Herod’s kingdom or even the kingdom of Westeros (although with a lot less nudity). Those who show mercy or kindness or compassion or who speak up against injustice often come out the worse for wear, even dead. Just look at what we did to Jesus! I want you to take a moment and imagine the kingdom of God, a kingdom in which there are no winners or losers—all are beloved children of God. And go back and think about those three questions I asked you again: Which kingdom do you want to live in? Which kingdom will you help create? Which kingdom do you give your allegiance to? A few weeks ago, I also preached about the Kingdom of God, and I encouraged you to look for ways that the Kingdom of God might be creeping up in your life and your world. I invited you to post of send me the photos with the #kingdomofgod. I remind you of that and invite you to add this dimension to it. Look for ways in your life and your world that this kingdom of God which is made up of compassion and mercy and vulnerability and speaking love and truth to injustice is cropping up in our world of power and competition and success. And pay attention to that. Nurture it where you can. And share those stories with me and others in this place. Thanks to David Lose for the idea of tying in Game of Thrones with this week’s gospel reading!

4th Sunday after Pentectost-Proper 7B

Proper 7B June 21, 2015 Our country has been reeling this week since a gunman opened fire on a bible study at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. I have seen outbursts of horror, outrage, anger, and fear, as we all seek to find some sort of meaning in such a senseless tragedy and as we as a society yearn for a meaningful conversation on how we might prevent such acts of violence and hatred in the future. One of the gifts of our tradition, I have found, is our lectionary—a systematic process for reading most of the major portions of Bible in a three year period. We are fortunate to have the lectionary because it provides us with a way to have conversations with scripture and our lives and our world that aren’t subject to the whim of the preacher. Our gospel today is not one I would have chosen to give us good news in the light off the Charleston shooting, but in spending some time with it, I believe it has a great deal to offer us in that way. It is a passage that confronts fear, and fear is what is at the heart of such hatred, such tragedy. So I’ll begin our conversation with the gospel today by asking you to think about this question: Do you think the disciples are more afraid before Jesus’ stilling of the storm or after? Think about it for a minute. The gospel clearly indicates that they are terrified during the storm. They are so terrified that they wake the sleeping Jesus with a frantic question: “Do you not care that we are perishing?” And Jesus wakes up and calms the storm, and then he says to the disciples, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” Notice what Jesus does not say here. He does not say, “Do not be afraid,” even though that is a prevalent refrain all throughout scripture, especially when people are encountering God or God’s messengers. In this instance, Jesus is not rebuking the disciples because they are afraid. He knows that there is much in this life to be afraid of: isolation, pain, illness, meaninglessness, rejection, losing one’s job, money problems, failure, illness, natural disasters, senseless acts of hate, and death. “Have you still no faith?” he asks them, because in and through faith we learn and hold fast to the reality that while there is much for us to fear, those things do not have the last word. God is mightier than any of those, even death, and God’s promise through the person of Jesus is that even when we do endure the fearsome things, God does not abandon us to them. God is with us, and God’s power is such that God can redeem even the most horrible, fearsome acts. That’s the disciples fear before the calming of the storm. But what about the question I asked you, “Do you think the disciples are more afraid before Jesus’ stilling of the storm or after?” Did any of you think that they might be more afraid after? Why? What would the disciples have to be afraid of after Jesus’s calming of the storm? I read a book several years ago that I was just reminded of recently. It’s the book Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. In the beginning of this book, the main character and narrator, Reuben Land, tells of the apparent miracle by which his father saved his life when he had just been born. He reflects on how often we tend to domesticate miracles, using the word to describe all manner of things that merit our attention and appreciation but that are not, finally, truly miraculous. He then goes on to press that distinction: “Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature. It’s true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in. Lazarus obeying orders and climbing up out of the grave — now there’s a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time” (Peace Like a River, 3). Then comes the part that is especially pertinent to us today, both in light of our gospel reading and in light of the shootings at Emmanuel. “Quoting his sister, Reuben says, ‘People fear miracles because they fear being changed.’ Which is the source, I think, of this other kind of fear that stands somewhere between a holy awe and mighty terror: the fear of being changed. And make no mistake, Jesus is asking the disciples to change. In this very moment he is drawing them from the familiar territory of Capernaum to the strange and foreign land of the Garasenes. And he is moving them from being fishermen to disciples. And he is preparing them to welcome a kingdom so very different from the one they’d either expected or wanted” (David Lose at www.davidlost.net) When the disciples experience the miracle of Jesus’s calming the storm, they are confronted with a choice. The rest of Reuben’s quotation gets to the heart of this: “People fear miracles because they fear being changed,” he says, and then continues, “though ignoring them will change you also.” The disciples are offered the choice of allowing themselves to be transformed by this new encounter with Jesus, or they can refuse. But they cannot stay the same either way. So, what do you think is the miracle that confronts us in this moment, as individuals? As a congregation? As a society who has witnessed horrible acts of hatred and un-comprehendingly generous forgiveness from some of the families of the victims? How is God encountering you and calling you to the other side of the lake, to change, to a new and different imagination about what it means to be a people of faith in our particular community and circumstances?

3rd Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 6B

3rd Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 6B June 14, 2015 And Jesus also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” We’ve all heard it---the Sunday school lesson where someone brings in a mustard seed and shows us just how small it is and tells us about how our faith is like that—if we have just a little bit of faith then God will take it and use it and transform it into something so much greater: “a new creation,” is what Paul calls it. And I’m not disputing that. But what if…this parable isn’t so much about us and our faith but is about the Kingdom of God, as Jesus suggests. What does that even mean? What might that look like? And how might we participate in a mustard-seed-like Kingdom of God? Y’all remember that sermon I preached about kudzu not too long ago? Well, did you know that the mustard plant was practically the kudzu of Jesus’s time? It was essentially a weed, although it was a weed with a nice smell to it that sometimes could be used as a spice or medicinally. But really it was a crazy-growing weed like our kudzu. Wild mustard is incredibly hard to control, somewhat pesky and even a little bit dangerous, because once it takes root, it can take over an entire planting area. That’s why mustard was very seldom found in a garden in Jesus’s time but was more often found growing wild and overtaking the side of an open hill or abandoned field. “With what can we compare the kingdom of God…? It is like a crazy growing plant that no one would willing plant in their garden, which takes over, supplants, and preempts previous gardening agendas…” Here’s what Biblical scholar John Dominick Crossan has to say about this: “The point, in other words, is not just that the mustard plant starts as a proverbially small seed and grows into a shrub of three of four feet, or even higher. It is that it tends to take over where it is not wanted, that it tends to get out of control, and that it tends to attract birds within cultivated areas where they are not particularly desired. And that, said Jesus, was what the Kingdom of God was like: not like the mighty Cedar of Lebanon and not quite like a common weed, [more] like a pungent shrub with dangerous takeover properties. Something you would want in only small and carefully controlled doses—if you could control it.” (The Historical Jesus pp 278-279) It’s a little bit hard to hear this isn’t it, because we just know it’s going to shake us up too. The Kingdom of God is abundant and verdant; it is wild and uncontrollable; it is unexpected and it is rampant. It is a message of hope that we are invited to share this day and beyond. In the next few months, we are going to be talking about mission. About the mission of St. Columb’s. About the mission of every baptized member here. And this is a great place to start—with this image of the Kingdom of God. Because part of our mission is to participate in this wild, abundant, rampant Kingdom of God that is already at work and growing lusciously all around us. But the first thing we have to do is to pay attention to it. So, I have a challenge for you for this summer. I want you to seek out, to look for those little places in your world where you see the Kingdom of God infiltrating, taking over, bringing hope and abundance. I want you to look for those places where you sense that God is at work, even though it might not be particularly obvious or particularly grand. And I want you to take pictures of it and post them. Post them on our Facebook page with the (hashtag) #kingdomofgod. Email them to the church office so we can post them on our website. Print them out; share them with people and tell the stories of the Kingdom of God that you are encountering. We’ll do this over the whole summer, and then in August, we’ll collect them and display them all together in one place to kick-off our conversations about mission. I challenge you this week and beyond to look for, even anticipate the Kingdom of God in your world. Pay attention to it, seek it out, and pray about how God is calling you to be an active participant in aiding its unexpected growth. (Inspired by David Lose’s reflection “Mission Possible” June 10, 2012 at www.workingpreacher.org)

Pentecost sermon--Baptism letter Year B

A letter to Charlie and Lottie Thompson on the occasion of their baptisms. Dear Charlie and Lottie, Today is the Feast day of Pentecost; the day when we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit to the followers of Jesus and to the church. Today is a wonderful day to be baptized, because today we a remembering who you (and we) already are—beloved children of God who have been called out to do God’s work in this world. And today we are also remembering and celebrating the Holy Spirit. We do this with birthday cake and red balloons (and cake and balloons are awesome things), but the gift of the Holy Spirit is so much more! The word that is translated as Holy Spirit in the gospel reading for today is paraclete. This is often translated as “comforter,” and it’s a lovely thought, isn’t it? Because dear Charlie and Lottie, there will be times in your life when you need the comfort of God’s Holy Spirit; times when you grow weary of doing what is right; times when you feel so heartbroken that you think that you cannot go on. In those times, God’s Holy Spirit will be with you, praying to God within you “with sighs too deep for words,” comforting, aiding, and assisting. But this is not the only work of the Holy Spirit. We see this in our readings for today—the Holy Spirit comes as a rush of deafening wind and tongues of fire. She drives the disciples out into the streets to proclaim the challenging news that this Jesus who the crowd had put to death is alive through the power of God. And the crowds are understandably bewildered and astonished. It is the same Holy Spirit who drives the disciples to testify to the good news of God in Christ, spreading them out across the whole world and leading them into challenges, persecution, and sometimes even death. So yes, it is the work of the Holy Spirit to comfort us. But is also her work to stir us up, to drive us out of our comfortable places, to push us beyond our pre-supposed limits, to send us out into the world the make disciples of all people. Pentecost is the day that we remember that Jesus does not command us to go out and build churches, take care of old buildings, and devote ourselves to crumbling institutions. No, Jesus commands us: “go and make disciples” and “when you care for the least of these you are caring for me” and “love one another as I have loved you.” “And this kind of work is inherently disruptive, difficult, and at times even dangerous. And so Jesus sends the Paraclete, the one who comes along side us to encourage, equip, strengthen, provoke and, yes, at times to comfort us so that we can get out there and do it all again.” “We tend to think of the Holy Spirit as the answer to a problem, but what if the Spirit’s work is to create for us a new problem: that we have a story to tell, mercy to share, love to spread, and we just can’t rest until we’ve done so?” Today, we will renew our baptismal covenant along with you, Charlie and Lottie, so that we may remember the truth of all this as well. And we promise to walk with you along this way and expect you to do the same for us. We will help you remember that it is not the work of the church to be comforted; that is why “the Spirit’s power shakes the church of God”—to stir us up and to send us out into the world to share the good news of God’s love and mercy and redemption through Jesus Christ; and to make disciples of all people. Your sister in Christ, Melanie+ **Some of the ideas and the wording and phrasing of this sermon were inspired by http://www.davidlose.net/2015/05/pentecost-b-come-alongside-holy-spirit/

Ordination to the Priesthood-- Sarah Moses

Sarah Moses ordination to the priesthood May 2, 2015 When I was about to be ordained, I was given this stole. It belonged to my paternal grandfather, a United Methodist elder who died before I went to seminary. This was the last stole the family had left of Pop’s (having already given away all his vestments and library), and it was clearly in a state of disrepair. My grandmother and my aunt apologized as they gave it to me, saying they hoped it could be cleaned or restored so that I could wear it. And I put it in a box in the top of a closet and forgot about it, regretful that I didn’t have a better token of his long, faithful ministry to carry with me into my bright, shiny new one. That was 11 years ago. Today is the first time that I have ever worn my grandfather’s stole. What changed, you may wonder? I’ve been reading a book these past couple of weeks. It’s by Episcopal priest and scholar William Countryman and it’s called, Living on the Border of the Holy: Renewing the Priesthood of All. In this book, Countryman writes about the priesthood of all believers, including both the lay and the ordained in his consideration, and he writes about how all of us are called to live our lives “on the border of the holy.” I want to share with you a couple of paragraphs that Countryman has written. “What, then, is priestly ministry? It is the ministry that introduces us to arcane—hidden things, secrets. In one sense, priestly ministry is the most ordinary thing imaginable. All our lives, we are repeatedly in the position of finding, revealing, explaining, and teaching—or conversely, of being led, taught, and illuminated. Everyone is the priest of a mystery that someone else does not know: how to construct a budget, how to maneuver through the politics of the workplace, how to roast a turkey, how to win the affections of the boy or girl to whom one is attracted. The experience is so common that much of the time, we do not notice it at all. We are all constantly serving others as priests of mysteries known to us and not to them. And we are constantly being served by those who know what we do not. “Some human work is priestly in a very obvious way: teaching, parenting, mentoring, coaching, the performing arts, the arts of statecraft….Other tasks involve a voyage into the unknown in order to bring back news for priestly use. Prayer is like this…Scientific research….so is the work of creative artists and all serious thinkers. But even in the most daily of our daily routines, the process of priestly service never ceases…We are constantly standing alongside someone else, giving or receiving some new understanding of the world before us…To be human means to be engaged in priestly discourse—the unveiling of secrets.” When I think of my own priestly ministry, I think most about the times that the Holy has been revealed to me—through scripture, through prayer, through the sacraments, but also through my husband and children and through glimpses into the lives and stories of others, both inside and outside of the churches I have served. We are all called to this—the paying attention to, being open to the revelation of the Holy in our lives and then sharing that with others, teaching them. That is what we mean when we talk about the priesthood of all believers. That is what we are called to in and through our baptism. We, ordained priests, do this paying attention, being open to the Holy and then sharing and teaching about it in a very specific way, by 1. Doing this more publicly than most people and 2. In and through the sacraments. But none of us does this alone. We all do this priestly work in and through community, something that you, Sarah, have known and understood and experienced for a long time already. We see this in the gospel reading for today—where Jesus is commissioning and empowering his disciples in Matthew’s gospel to be sent out as laborers into God’s harvest. (I can’t help but think about the equivalent of this passage in Luke’s gospel, where Jesus sends out the 70 two by two. None of us is sent out alone. We all have companions on the way.) And that’s why I’m wearing this old, stained, and a little bit tattered stole of my grandfather’s today. It’s because of the way that, over the last 11 years, when I have most needed to hear it, my Dad has told me stories of Pop and his ministry—of the church that was so poor they had to pay him with turnip greens, of the time he testified in court and got the upper hand over the opposing attorney through his salty wit, times when he was successful and effective and thriving, and times when he was faithful, failing, and heartbroken. I wear this stole today in honor and memory and thanksgiving of other priests who have befriended me and taught me, and I wear this stole today in honor and memory and thanksgiving of the lay people who have shared with me and taught me about the holy in and through their lives. We all need to remember this, but you, especially, Sarah need to remember this, as you blaze the trail and help write the script for what it means to be a bi-vocational priest in this diocese and in this (slightly-tattered, old) church in a rapidly changing world. It may, at times be lonely work, and so I encourage you to remember: we are with you—sharing, teaching, learning, and receiving. Always.

7th Sunday after Easter

Easter 7B May 17, 2015 There are lots of things going on in the life of the church today. Today we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the St. Mary’s Chapter of the Daughters of the King here at St. Columb’s. The DOK is an order for women in the Episcopal church and their mission is to be “the extension of Christ's Kingdom through Prayer, Service and Evangelism”. Today is also the 7th Sunday after Easter. What’s so special about the 7th Sunday after Easter, you may wonder? The 7th Sunday of Easter is a sort of liturgical no-man’s land. We celebrated the Feast of the Ascension—when Jesus is lifted bodily up to heaven away from the disciples—this past Thursday. And today, even though we have a glimpse of Jesus in the gospel reading, we are very aware of his absence as we await the fulfillment of his last promise—the gift of the Holy Spirit. And what better way to wait, than with our gospel reading for today! There are some grace-filled times in the life of every preacher when the lectionary crafters and the themes of the day conspire to throw a nice, easy slow pitch. Today, as we are celebrating 50 years of the ministry of prayer of the Daughters of the King in this place, we see Jesus in the upper room with his disciples as he tries to prepare them for his departure/crucifixion. And what is he doing? He’s praying to God on behalf of his disciples and closest friends. There are three parts to Jesus’s prayer that bear mentioning this morning. 1. Jesus acknowledges before God and all of us that the world can be a difficult place. “This life is at turns beautiful and difficult, wonderful and painful.” 2. Christianity does not provide an escape from life’s difficulties, but rather offers support to flourish amid them. We hear this in Jesus’s poignant clarification: “I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them…” His prayer and his promise isn’t that his followers be exempt from struggles. Rather it is the assurance that we are not and will not ever be alone in our struggles. 3. We are here for a purpose: to care for this world God loves so much and to participate in God’s fulfillment of all creation.i This Last Supper section in the gospel of John constitutes a transition in which responsibility for God’s mission in the world is passing from Jesus to the disciples and on to us. And the wisdom of this prayer for us is this: it reminds us that people of faith, followers of Jesus neither retreat from the world nor give in to the pressures of the world. To say that we “do not belong to the world” is to say that the world’s claims and values do not shape our essential identity, faith, value, and mission. And it also means that we are called to stay connected to the world that God loves, that God has created and to be a part of the fulfillment of God’s creation. One way that we do this is in and through prayer. In and through prayer, we are offering ourselves and others to God for hallowing, for setting apart, for being made holy. The word that is translated as “sanctify” in Jesus’s request: “sanctify them in your truth” is the same word that is translated as hallowed in the phrase “hallowed by thy name” in the Lord’s prayer. But you know, praying that takes a great deal of courage. Because when we offer our lives and the lives of those we love to God and ask God to hallow them, then we lose all semblance of control over it all. Because God will take it all and transform it in ways that we could never ask for or even imagine. And if you really think about it, that is terrifying. But the thing is, Jesus has shown us in his prayer, in his presence, in his life, that God is faithful and God is trustworthy. Jesus has shown us that God loves us and that God loves creation, and that God longs to be in relationship with all of it, all of us. I was sitting in on the morning meeting of the DOK last week. We have two groups (a morning and an evening group) and they each meet once a month to pray together, to go over prayer concerns, and to be spiritually nourished. As they went through the prayer list and the many names and cares and burdens represented by those names (and a few thanksgivings as well), I was struck by just how many prayers have been said by the women of this order in and for this place over the last 50 years. I give thanks for their ministry, for their example, and for their faithfulness. I want to close us with a prayer today. It is a prayer that is a paraphrase of the gospel reading for today by seminary dean and preacher David Lose. Let us pray. “Dear God, whose love knows no ending, we know this life is beautiful and difficult and sometimes both at the same time. We do not ask that you take us out of this world, but that you support and protect us while we are in it. We pray that you would set us apart in the truth we have heard here, that your love is for everyone, and we ask that you would send us out from this place to be a witness in word and deed to your grace, goodness and love. May we hear your voice calling us at home and at work, at school, in our social settings, and all places we gather, that we may always feel and share your love. We ask this in the name of Jesus, the one set apart and made holy for us." Amen.ii i. http://www.davidlose.net/2015/05/easter-7-b-called-and-sent/ ii. ibid.

Easter 5B

Easter 5B May 3, 2015 When I was a child, we would make frequent trips back and forth between Jackson to Vicksburg to visit my grandparents who live there. I loved to look out the car window and watch as the beautiful, green colored hills rolled by. I can remember being enthralled by the foliage that grew all over those hills and thinking that it was so beautiful, both because of the way that it looked but also because it signaled that we were getting closer to seeing people who I loved to spend time with. Fast forward to my adulthood, when I learned what that green-leafed foliage on the hills outside of Vicksburg really was. I encountered it up close and personal in the rectory yard in McComb as it sneakily sought to take over my camellia bushes and entire flower beds. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? Kudzu! So I have this weird kind of love/hate relationship with the stuff. And one of the interesting things about kudzu that I found is that the vines would grow incredibly long. As I was pulling one part of the vine off my bushes, I would discover that that single vine was stretched all the way to the other end of the flower bed, entwined with many other plants along the way. It’s also incredibly tenacious, holding onto other plants with a kind of super-strength. Truly, kudzu is the Incredible Hulk of the plant world. In today’s gospel reading, as he is preparing his disciples for his departure, Jesus says to them, “I am the vine, you are the branches.” And I can’t help but think of kudzu when he says this: how even though bad things are coming and are going to happen to all of them, Jesus is making them a promise that he will hold onto them tenaciously; how we as the body of Christ are all inextricably connected with other parts that may be way down at the other end of the flower bed. I had an encounter with this truth a few years ago through Camp Bratton Green, our diocesan camp for young people in Central Mississippi. I had been to Bratton Green for one session as a child (5th grade), and it had been a pretty good camp experience, but I had not felt particularly plugged in to the life there. I had definitely felt like there were insiders and outsiders, and I was one of the outsiders. So I never went back, until I had just graduated from high school and decided I wanted to be a counselor. I was accepted to be on the staff of a priest I had never met, a man named Duncan M. Gray, III. And I made up my mind that as a counselor, I would actively work to make sure that every single one of the girls in my cabin felt a profound sense of belonging. I had a great week at camp that week, and it opened up a new sense of belonging for me in the life of that place. Fast forward ten years, and I had just come back to the diocese from seminary, and I was fulfilling my required two years of service on staff at Camp Bratton Green. On my first day there, one of the permanent staff (the college age kids who run the camp for the entire summer) came up to me, and she reintroduced herself and told me that I had been her camp counselor for her first session ever at Camp Bratton Green. She told me of how that beginning and that sense of belonging had opened the door for her for many happy summers spent out at Bratton Green and how she had come to be on permanent staff to help foster that sense of belonging in the children coming after her. Jesus says, “I am the vine, and you are the branches.” We have no way of knowing how our gifts and our offerings may affect and enrich the life of a member of the vine in another part of the flower bed. And in working with young people, especially, we never know how God will take and use the gifts that we freely offer and how God will multiply those small humble gifts into a radical abundance. But today, we are given the opportunity to do just that. Our entire diocese is marking today as Gray Center Sunday, when we remember and acknowledge the important role that Gray Center and Camp Bratton Green play in the formation of people as followers of Jesus Christ in Mississippi. No other place in this diocese has taught as many young people the beautiful truth of what it means to abide in God, to be a part of the long, snaky, interconnected vine that is life in and through the body of Jesus Christ. Today, we give thanks for that ministry, and we have the opportunity to give money to support all those important ministries that fall under the auspices of Gray Center. If you are able to give thanks for Gray Center and Camp Bratton Green in this way, then you can put cash in the offering plate today (or use one of our new offering envelopes and designate on the front for Gray Center), and it will go directly to Gray Center, or you can make a check to the church and put Gray Center Sunday on the memo line. We have no way of knowing how God will take and use that offering which we make in the life of the children of this diocese and beyond, in the life of Camp Bratton Green, in the life of Gray Center and all who go there for nourishment and retreat, and in the life of this community; but I believe that our small offering will be transformed by God into a radical abundance that will be beyond our wildest imaginings. Kind of like kudzu.