12th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 16A

12th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 16A August 27, 2017 When I was a little girl, my father would drive me to school every day on his way to work. We were often running late, but my dad developed playful rituals to help manage our worry about my being tardy, and these playful rituals were infused with magic and fun. He convinced my 6-7 year old self that I had the power to change the red light that would slow our progress to school by saying, “Light, Change!” And we were both delighted when it would work (often with cues from him for the timing). When we would finally arrive at school, as I would get out of the car, Dad would usually say to me, “Have a great day today, and pass it on!” I thought about this daily encouragement this week, as I found myself saying these same worlds to my children as they walked out the door one day on the way to school: “have a great day today, and pass it on!” At our best, this is what we, as parents, impart to our children: their belief in themselves that, no matter how little they may feel at times, they have the power to change the world! But many of us lose this confidence as we age (or perhaps we never had it to begin with). Think about it. When was the last time that you thought that you had the power to change the world? As we grow up, the world knocks us down and around, roughs us up a bit, and we may stop believing that we can create any kind of change for the good. But I am here to tell you today that you CAN change the world. In our reading from Exodus today, we get a glimpse of two ordinary women, Shifra and Pua’h. Up until this week, I had never given these women a second thought. But in our story for today, we see that these two women, these two midwives, make a choice to defy the decree of the Pharoah, and by their actions, they changed the world. Because they refused to kill the Hebrew boys when they were born, Moses was able to be born, and he was used as God’s instrument to free God’s people who had become enslaved in Egypt. Shifra and Pua’h, two ordinary women, changed the world. And then there is Peter. In our gospel for this week, we see Peter making his confession before Jesus and all the other disciples that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus calls Peter blessed and tells him and the others that this truth has been revealed to Peter by God, and he tells Peter that he will be the rock upon which Jesus will build his church. In this one moment, Peter sees clearly, and he proclaims boldly who he sees Jesus to be. His confession changes and will continue to change Peter and the world. I remember the first time I heard a person’s confession. Now I’m not talking about a confession of sin, like in our rite for the reconciliation of a penitent. I’m talking about who that person believes Jesus to be and why she follows Jesus. It was in my first parish, in the middle of a Wednesday night Lenten study. I don’t remember all the words that this woman used, but I remember her passion, and it just about brought me to my knees. And I remember that she did say that she chose to follow Jesus because she was a much better person when she was trying to follow Jesus’s teachings than she would be otherwise. Her confession of faith change me, and it helped me to understand that this old church is alive with the power of the Spirit (as one of our hymns puts it—the spirit’s power shakes the church of God) when we are serious in pursuing God as revealed through Jesus “the Messiah, son of the living God.” So, I have an assignment for you all this week. I challenge you to pay attention, to try to find at least one person whose world you can change by your attention or your kindness this week. (For you overachievers out there, like me, you can try this practice daily, if you’d like!) Find one person whose world you can change for the better by your kindness---the grocery store clerk who you actually look in the eye and smile at; the child to whom you offer kindness or forgiveness when you could offer frustration; the person who cut you off in traffic who you could give an angry honk to but choose silence and a forgiving wave instead; praying for the one who has harmed you instead of returning evil for evil….You will know when the opportunities present themselves, if you are looking for them, paying attention. One of my Facebook friends posted a quote this week from Mother Theresa that was an important reminder for me: “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” Friends, we are all a part of God’s family, and our work is loving the world, one family member at a time. So… “Have a great week, and pass it on!”

11th Sunday after Pentecost Proper 15A

11th Sunday after Pentecost—Proper 15A August 20, 2017 I’ve been thinking a lot about belonging this week. The need to belong seems to me to be a basic human need, hardwired into us for our survival in the early years of our existence. Most of us have families in which we belong, communities responsible for our care and our nurture until we are able to take care of ourselves. But beyond this sort of evolutionary requirement, we as humans seem to seek out community in which to belong. Recent studies have shown that belonging is an essential component of our health, our happiness, our interest, and our motivation. Each and every one of us, whether we admit it or not, needs to belong. Our lectionary readings for today seem to be wrestling with this. Joseph, who is the apple of his father’s eye, is torn from his family in which he is secure in his belonging, sold as a slave in Egypt, where God works with him to create a new purpose--a new sort of belonging for him. When given the opportunity to punish his brothers for their horrible treatment of him, Joseph chooses forgiveness, and he invites them and his father into a new way of belonging with him in his new life of power and success in Egypt. In today’s portion from Paul’s letter to the Christian community in Rome, Paul is wrestling with whether or not the Jews, God’s chosen people, belong in God’s new kingdom that is being revealed through the person of Jesus Christ. Paul comes to the conclusion that God stubbornly holds on to all of God’s beloved people, writing that “God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew…for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” (We are reminded of God’s stubbornness in holding fast to each of us every time we have a baptism, and we see the newly baptized being “marked as Christ’s own forever”.) In the gospel reading for today, we see Jesus wrestling with this notion of belonging. He has a very definite understanding of what his mission is and who he is being sent to. When he is approached by the Canaanite woman, he does not mince words. He tells her that she and her people do not have a place in his mission. But the woman is not content with the response, and she stubbornly demands belonging—in the form of healing for her sick child—from Jesus, and he gives it to her, in a manner of speaking. So the good news is that each and every one of us belongs to God. We have been claimed as God’s beloved at our creation, and marked as Christ’s own forever at our baptism. This calling and claiming of each of us as God’s beloved is irrevocable. Nothing that we can do can or will ever change it. But for whatever reason, we don’t always feel like we belong. And much of the heartache in this world happens when we act out of a place of fear—where we don’t feel that we belong. And much heartache and hurt has happened in this world of late because many people do not feel that they belong in the church. (Now please note that I’m not talking about this church specifically. I’m talking about the church with a capital C—the Christian church in general.) People are slipping away from churches and many more people than ever before have no religious affiliation. (There are so many that people who study church demographics have coined a new word for these folks who have no church affiliation. They call them the “nones.”) I believe that you all want to grow and re-energize this church. And we are united together in that mission. But before we begin doing that work, we need to spend some time and some work in looking at how we create a culture of belonging in this place. And to do that, I need to hear from you (because I have only belonged here for such a very short time). So, here’s what we’re going to do. I have a few questions for you about your sense of belonging here. In a couple of minutes, I’m going to ask the ushers to pass these questions out to you. It is totally up to you whether or not you put your name on it; whether or not you even fill them out. Only I will actually see these, although I may share some of the most pertinent points with the vestry when we do our planning retreat—all anonymous. But I encourage you to spend some time reflecting on this, because in order to grow and re-energize, which we all want to do, we need to understand what our special gifts are in cultivating a spirit of belonging here and we also need to understand what our challenges are. Once you fill these out, you can mail them to me; scan and email them to me (my new email address is on the back of the bulletin), drop them in the collection plate, or drop them by the office. Here are the questions I want you to think about and respond to. 1. Do you feel welcome at this church? 2. What makes you feel welcome? 3. What has made you feel not welcome? 4. What do you most love about being here? 5. What's gets in your way?i I’ll give you some time to think, pray about and reflect on these before we move on in the service. i. These questions came from a blog post by David Lose: http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=1598

10th Sunday after Pentecost Proper 14 A

10th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 14A August 13, 2017 ​I have a confession that I need to make because it’s probably only a matter of time before this becomes evident. I am a recovering perfectionist. It’s a characteristic that is common among us first-born children, and something about myself that I never really thought about when I was younger—just how satisfying it was for me to see that perfect score of 100 written in red ink on the top of a school paper. But it wasn’t until I became a parent that I began to realize some of the challenges that my perfectionism creates for me and for people around me. Because nobody and nothing is perfect. And to expect that from people and places and situations is a recipe for frustration and disappointment. ​So it was with mixed emotions that I read this week’s collect: “Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord…” My first emotion was excitement: “Hurray, finally I get to pray for what I have always longed for….perfection!” But then I got a little worried. Do I really want to pray that I will always think and do those things that are right? Is that really what we’re supposed to be praying for? Perfection? Because what I have learned is that while it is a gift to be able to envision things as being perfect, perfectionism can be an impediment to whole-hearted living and is often the close-companion of fear. ​Imagine, if you will, the scene from today’s gospel reading. Jesus has just fed the 5,000, and he sends the disciples on ahead of him so he can pray. In the meantime, the disciples find themselves battling a storm in the middle of the lake. We know some of these folk are seasoned fishermen, but we also know that the wind is against them, so they’re probably getting tired. But they don’t become truly afraid until they see Jesus walking toward them across the water. And he calls out to them: “take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” ​And then, who even knows what that crazy Peter is thinking—as he asks Jesus to invite him to join him in walking on water. (Peter, it is quite clear, is the opposite of a perfectionist.) And Peter is doing ok at first, until he becomes frightened and begins to sink; and Jesus takes him by the hand and lovingly helps him return to the boat. “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” ​Do you want to know why I know that Peter was not a perfectionist? Because he was willing to get out of the boat and to try to walk on water. He was willing to take a risk and to be vulnerable. And those are both ways that Jesus calls his disciples to be in the world over and over again. He himself takes risks and is vulnerable with people, and he calls them and us to that as well. ​For me, perfectionism is a problem because it makes me afraid to take risks and to be vulnerable. ​So what I’ve learned to do is to ask myself questions. What is it that you are afraid of? What’s the worst that could happen? What might Jesus be inviting you to risk to live more fully into God’s love? (repeat) ​And the good news that I have found in that struggle is this. God is often more present to us in the storms and struggles of our lives than even in the good times—maybe because when things are going well we aren’t paying attention but when we start sinking, we look for the hand outstretched to us like the life-line that it is. “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” ​And maybe that is what we are really asking for in the collect. Not to be perfect or to think and ask those things that are always right. But to be confident in God’s abiding love and presence that we can dare to take risks, be vulnerable and know that the one who has experienced the worst that can happen (death), reassures us to take heart and is standing nearby with hand outstretched. ​The world is a scary place this week. But the world has always been a scary place. I believe that the opposite of fear is actually peace, and sometimes in the face of our fears, it is all we can do to just put one foot in front of the other. And that is enough. Sometimes it is a courageous act to continue to pray for peace in the face of all the odds, and yet, that is what we are called to do. We are called to pray for peace for ourselves, for others, and for our world and to be a part of the peace for which we pray. ​Several years ago, when I was going through a difficult time, one of my parishioners told me that his mother was a first-grade teacher. He said that she would often tell her students, “You can do hard things. I know this to be true, and I believe in you.” And then he looked at me and said, “You can do hard things. I know this to be true, and I believe in you.” ​This is what Jesus means by his words “take heart; it is I; do not be afraid.” He is telling us that he knows that this world is scary, but we shouldn’t be paralyzed by our fear (or our perfectionism). We are invited to get out of the boat and walk to him across the water. You can do hard things. I know this to be true, and I believe in you. Amen.

The Feast of the Transfiguration

Feast of the Transfiguration August 6, 2017 Several weeks ago, after we decided that our first Sunday together would be August 6th, I curiously looked to see what the readings for the day would be. I was delighted to discover that today we mark and celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration, which is a significant enough feast in the life of the church that when it happens to fall on a Sunday, like it does this year, it trumps the readings and the collect for that Sunday. The Feast of the Transfiguration is when we hear about how Jesus and his most trusted disciples go up to the top of a mountain to pray, something that was an ordinary occurrence for all of them, but on this particular day, the disciples witness Jesus being ‘transfigured’: his face is changed and his garments are shining. They are given a glimpse of the glory of God shining through Jesus. For the disciples who are with Jesus, the transfiguration ends up being the high point of his earthly ministry. They see the glory of God revealed in him in the midst of ordinary time together, and then they go back down the mountain to begin walking the path with him to his crucifixion. Today we, too, are given a glimpse of glory in our ordinary time here together. We celebrate how God has called us all together here in this place, and we begin the work together of being in community with one another with all its joys and gifts, challenges and heartbreak. This week and (I’m sure in the coming weeks), I have found myself asking many questions about you all, your life here, and the way things work. I find that these questions can really be distilled into two questions. “How do you do that?” And “Why do you do that?” I’ve been thinking about those two questions when it comes to the transfiguration and what it means for all of us. But I’m going to start with the second one first. Why? Why do we gather together here week after week? Why do we celebrate when there are things to celebrate and mourn when there are things to mourn? Why do we continue to gather in Christian community when so many folks are disenchanted with the Church in general and other Christians in particular? Why do we do this? There are a few lines in a sonnet on the Transfiguration that encapsulates the “why” for me. It’s a sonnet by the poet Malcolm Guite and the most potent few lines are these: “The Love that dances at the heart of things Shone out upon us from a human face And to that light the light in us leaped up…”* When we show up, even in the most ordinary of times, when 2 or 3 are gathered together in Jesus’s name, we often see glimpses of “the Love that dances at the heart of things.” We taste it here in the bread and the wine; we touch it here in hands old and young reached out in supplication; we feel it here in heads bowed and hearts lifted; we hear it here in music, in laughter, in open-hearted listening; we see it here—this glimpse of the glory of the Love that dances at the heart of all things—in the faces of each other, and we are sent out into the world to show others what we have seen and known here. That is our why. Now for the “how”. Several years ago, someone shared with me 5 spiritual practices for discipleship—key practices that feed and nurture us as we try to follow Jesus and live into the promises of our baptism—both in this community that is the church and out in our lives in the world—at school, work, home, and at leisure. For me, these 5 practices are how we do this discipleship thing. They are 1. Pray Daily 2. Worship weekly 3. Learn constantly 4. Serve joyfully 5. Give generously I have found it helpful in my own journey to focus on one practice at a time to grow and strengthen rather than trying to work on them all at once (which can seem rather overwhelming to me…). So if that works for you, too, then pick one that you want to try to live more fully into over the next couple of months. Because, in giving ourselves faithfully to these practices of discipleship, we become more open to glimpsing the glory of the “Love that dances at the heart of all things.” I want to close with a blessing. It’s a blessing that is written by the artist and poet Jan Richardson, who is a United Methodist Elder. She has written this blessing titled When Glory: A Blessing for the Transfiguration That when glory comes we will open our eyes to see it. That when glory shows up we will let ourselves be overcome not by fear but by the love it bears. That when glory shines we will bring it back with us all the way all the way all the way down.** Amen. *http://www.malcolmguite.com/ **http://paintedprayerbook.com/2014/02/23/transfiguration-sunday-when-glory/

Easter 6A

Easter 6A May 21, 2017 First of all, let me say how wonderful it is to be back with y’all today! I’d like to take a brief opportunity to thank you; I learned so much from you about how to love and be loved as a priest and her people. I continue to be deeply grateful for my time with you and for the continued friendships that have lasted over the years! Our gospel reading for today picks up right where we left off last week. Jesus is speaking to his disciples over the course of several chapters in John’s gospel that are known as the farewell discourse as Jesus is trying to prepare his disciples for what is to come as they are gathered together in the Upper Room just before the Last Supper. He has just told them to not let their hearts be troubled and that he is going before them to prepare a place for them. In our reading for today, he promises that he will ask God to send them an Advocate who will be with them so that they shall not be orphaned. The King James Version actually translates it as “I will ask the Father to send you a Comforter” and he promises, “I will not leave you comfortless.” And doesn’t that sound lovely? When we, like the disciples, are faced with times of uncertainty and transition in our own lives, it is helpful to remember Jesus’s promised gift of the Holy Spirit to comfort us. I like to think of the Holy Spirit showing up, draping a nice down throw around my shoulders, giving me a cup of chamomile tea and patting me on the head and saying, “There, there, love. Everything’s going to be ok.” (maybe even with a charming British accent?) And sometimes the Holy Spirit does show up and do that. And in those times I am extremely grateful. But I have also learned that I cannot limit myself to that understanding of the Holy Spirit, because sometimes the work of the Holy Spirit in my life and in the life of the church is offered in different and unexpected ways. One of the presenters at the Preaching conference that we went to this past week, a United Methodist Bishop named Will Willimon said it this way: “Jesus promised us the Holy Spirit to teach us lessons we cannot learn on our own.” Three years ago, I was on an 8 week sabbatical in Hawaii where David was working for 10 months. Our family had a wonderful time and experienced so many unique and interesting things. One night, our friend Paul convinced both David and me to go skydiving with him and a group of our friends. (Let me just say I have no idea why I agreed to this! As most of you know, I am one of the least likely people to do agree to go skydiving. But I did.) As we went to bed the night before our skydiving trip, I lay awake for hours absolutely terrified. I lay there imagining what it was going to be like to stand in the doorway of the open side of the plane and to have to jump out into the great wide open. And I thought, “I don’t know how I’m going to do that.” But I had committed to going and didn’t want to back out. When the day finally arrived and we got all suited up for our jump, I was introduced to my tandem jumper, a very large Russian man named Viktor. As Viktor tried to make small talk with me, I think he quickly realized that a). I was absolutely terrified and b). I couldn’t talk much because I was trying not to throw up. We took off in the plane as Viktor wasis religiously checking and re-checking all the buckles and straps of our two harnesses, and all too quickly, it became our turn to go. The moment I had most feared loomed before me. I made my way to stand in the doorway of the plane thinking that there was no way I was going to be able to do this, when Viktor did something that surprised me. He shouted in my ear to sit down on the floor of the plane and dangle my legs out. I felt a certain degree of momentary relief as I followed his instructions, and the next thing I knew, I was out of the plane and hurtling through the great blue sky. Now, what I only realized later after talking to our friends was how Viktor and I actually got out of that plane. Our friends confessed how horrified they were to watch as Viktor actually threw me/us out of the airplane. And you know, as much as I like to see that lovely comforting Holy Spirit show up with a cup of tea and words of comfort, sometimes the Comforter shows up and, like Viktor, throws us out of the airplane because there is just no way we are getting out on our own. And thankfully, the Holy Spirit stays connected as we free fall for what seems like an eternity but is really only seconds and then deploys the parachute with a tremendous jerk that leads us to land (, sometimes softly, sometimes not), at our destination. How has the Holy Spirit has shown up in unexpected ways in your life or in the life of your parish during times of transition? In what ways might God be calling you to trust in the work of the Holy Spirit, as unexpected as it might be? What are the lessons that the Holy Spirit may be trying to teach you right now that you are not able to learn on your own? There are certain seasons in our lives when we are called, as followers of Jesus to wait and to watch, to open ourselves to new life that the Spirit is calling forthfor in us. These can be times of uncertainty and anxiety, but they can also be times when we grow in our faith, trusting in what another writer calls “the slow work of God.” The poet Jane Kenyon captures this openness to the unknown and the unexpected in her lovely poem Let Evening Come that I will share with you in closing. “Let Evening Come” by Jane Kenyon Let the light of late afternoon shine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down. Let the cricket take up chafing as a woman takes up her needles and her yarn. Let evening come. Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned in long grass. Let the stars appear and the moon disclose her silver horn. Let the fox go back to its sandy den. Let the wind die down. Let the shed go black inside. Let evening come. To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop in the oats, to air in the lung let evening come. Let it come, as it will, and don’t be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come.

Easter 5A

Easter 5A-2017 May 14, 2017 “Jesus said, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.’” Our lectionary crafters have given us as a gospel today on this 5th Sunday of Easter, that is the gospel reading that is most often chosen by bewildered and grieving families as they plan a loved one’s funeral. “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” Strangely appropriate today as we mark a very definite ending here. The context of this gospel is also important to us. This portion of John’s gospel is known as “the farewell discourse.” Jesus has told his disciples that he is going to be betrayed and handed over to die. The disciples are understandably bewildered, frightened, shocked, saddened and in denial as they hear Jesus say these words to them all gathered together in the upper room where they are about to eat their Last Supper. “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” Jesus says this to those whom he loves because he knows that things are about to get very much worse for them before they get better. That is the nature of this life of death and resurrection that every follower of Jesus is baptized into. We see this truth writ large in the story of Stephen and the beginning of the early followers of Jesus in Jerusalem that is today’s Acts reading. Again, context is important here. Stephen has been chosen by the community of believers in Jerusalem as one of the first deacons, selected to serve the community to free up the 12 apostles to “focus on prayer and …serving the word.” Stephen and the others are selected because they are “men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom.” And Stephen really lives into this, the writer of Acts tells us: “Stephen, full of grace and power, did great wonders and signs among the people.” But the leaders of the synagogue take issue with Stephen; they argue with him but cannot stand up to him, so they form a plot against Stephen. “They stirred up the people as well as the elders and the scribes; then they suddenly confronted him, seized him, and brought him before the council. They set up false witnesses…” against him. So, standing before the council, Stephen preaches a sermon about the salvation history of the people of Israel: about Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses and the way that God worked through all of them to bring about salvation, now come to fulfillment in the person of Jesus. And Stephen’s preaching enrages the people in the council, and they take him out, and they stone him. And as devastating a blow as that must have been to the early Christians in Jerusalem, it does not end there. Stephen’s death begins a severe persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and all but the apostles become scattered throughout the countryside. Saul begins “ravaging the church” by going into peoples’ houses and dragging men and women off to prison. It definitely gets much worse for the church in Jerusalem. But, history tells us that this moment in time is the real beginning of the spreading of the good news beyond Jerusalem, as “those who were scattered [go about] from place to place, proclaiming the word.” It was the church father Tertullian who named this truth when we wrote, “The blood of the martyrs becomes the seed of the church.” Truly, in the pattern of death and resurrection, it often gets worse before it gets better. There’s a passage of scripture that Bishop Gray quoted at various times over the course of his Episcopate. I was thinking about it last week, and so I went searching for it. It is another way of summing up the heart of this cruciform life that we are called to, the pattern of death and resurrection that is found in all of our lives, whether we embrace it or not. The passage is from the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis. Joseph, as you know, was his father’s favorite, and so his brothers sold him into slavery where all manner of indignities happened to him which culminated in him being falsely imprisoned in a foreign land. But God intervenes and positions Joseph, through the use of his special gift of interpreting dreams, in a position where Joseph is able to save an entire generation of people in Egypt and beyond from famine. At the end of the story, when Joseph and his brothers are re-united, the brothers are concerned that Joseph will enact revenge upon them for their mistreatment of him, and Joseph responds, with a clear statement of resurrection and forgiveness: “What you meant for evil, God meant for good…” We put our hope in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We know, even when things seem to be at their worst that God’s love is stronger than anything, even death. We trust the truth that is found in both Joseph’s and Stephen’s stories: What other people mean for evil, God can and will use for good. And we know that sometimes, things have to get worse before they can get better.

Fourth Sunday of Easter Year A

4th Sunday of Easter-Year A May 7, 2017 “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” In some ways, those 11 words sum up the entirety of the gospel, of Jesus’s ministry, of his crucifixion and resurrection, and how we, his followers are called to be in this world. “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” But what does it mean? For us? For our church? For our lives? For our world? “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” This heart of the good news needs to be set alongside the heart of the human condition for us to be able to understand how and why it is good news. The heart of the human condition is that each of us wants to know and believe and understand that we matter. And Jesus showed us this: We matter to God. Our deepest fear is that we do not matter. But the truth of abundant life is that each of us matters to God. You matter to God. And at some point or another, each and every one of us suffers. In that suffering, we need to know that we matter to God, that our suffering matters—God is not indifferent to it. Our readings today point to this; they reassure us of this truth of abundant life. You and your suffering matter to God: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,/ I shall fear no evil; /for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me./ You spread a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me; / you have anointed my head with oil, and my cup is running over./ Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,/ and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” And in the epistle: “It is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God's approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.” You matter to God. The other piece of Jesus’s promise of having life abundantly is to live out of a place where we know and trust that each and every one of us matters to God. So the flip side of this is really at the heart of all of our sinfulness, isn’t it? Not believing or knowing that each of us matters to God, not living like each of us matters to God, and therefore not treating other people like they matter to God. Most of the time we don’t mean to do this. We get busy. We become too preoccupied with our own lives. We don’t take the time to really listen to other people, to see other people, to try to understand what causes them to do what they do. Most of the time we don’t mean to treat people like they don’t matter. But we do. Each and every one of us. And I know when I reflect back on those times, I am deeply and truly sorry. That’s a part of being human too. Each and every one of us matters to God, and each and every one of us falls short of living into this fully, abundantly. So we forgive one another because each of us matters to God. So, if this abundant life that Jesus offers and promises us comes out of a place of knowing and acting like each of us matters to God, then how do we go about doing this better, more fully, living more abundantly? It is actually more simple that you might think. Back before I went to seminary, when I was working downtown at Stewpot, I was heavily influenced by my time spent in the daily chapel service at there, just before the noon meal. This service was open to anyone (but not required), so it was not uncommon for the congregation to be made up of other Stewpot employees like me, members of the homeless community who were coming to eat their one, sure meal of the day, elderly folk who couldn’t survive on their Social Security and came to eat a free meal to help stretch that money a little farther every month, adults with mental disabilities who lived in the area personal care homes and who were really looking for a safe community, and different members from Jackson-area churches who came to help serve the meal on that particular day—folks from law offices downtown, work-at-home moms who wanted to offer their time while their kids were at school, newly retired folks who were wrestling with finding new meaning and purpose in their lives. That chapel service was the most diverse community I have ever been a part of, truly a cross-section of humanity. And the chapel convener, a man named Don London, had an exercise that he liked to do during chapel (at least once a quarter). He would start chapel by quoting John 3:16 (the King James version): “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” And he would say it again: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” And then he would say, “How many ‘whosoevers’ do I have in here today?” And the regulars, who knew the drill, would raise their hands quickly. But it would take the volunteers a little bit longer to figure it out. I’d see them look around the room, and tentatively raise their own hands, claiming their status as a “whosoever” too, until a hand from every person in the room was raised. And then Don would say, “This is what you need to remember, as you get ready to go out into the world. God loves you, and I love you too. God loves you, and I love you too. Now. Turn around. Shake your neighbor’s hand. Look him or her in the eye, and say it to them. ‘God loves you, and I love you too’.” And then he would wait for us to do it. And pretty soon, it would take on a life of itself. People were not content to just tell it to their immediate neighbors in that chapel, they wanted to say it to every person in that room: “Gove loves you, and I love you too.” And what I learned from Don and those people in that chapel is that it is never too late to claim the abundant life that Jesus offers. It is never too late to begin or to begin again. It is never too late to claim for yourself that you matter to God, and to help each and every person you come into contact know and remember that truth for themselves. “God loves you, and I love you too.” Let’s try it and see what happens. Turn to your neighbor, reach out your hand, look them in the eye and say to them, “God loves you, and I love you too.” Now, get up from your seat. And go find someone who is seated somewhere else in the church. Take their hand, look them in the eye, and tell them “God loves you, and I love you too.” Now do it with five more people. Tell them that they matter to God and to you. “God loves you, and I love you too.” This is what it means to live the good news that is revealed in the Resurrected Christ. It is to live our lives as if each and every one of us matters to God. To proclaim with our very lives the good news of abundant life to a needy world, “God loves you, and I love you too.”