16th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 18B

16th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 18B September 9, 2018 This is a difficult gospel passage for us today. Our lectionary gives us two seemingly unconnected healing stories in Mark’s gospel. First, we have Jesus’s encounter with the Syro-Phoenician woman. Jesus is fresh off a challenging encounter with the Pharisees (which we saw in last week’s gospel reading). They are challenging him because his disciples do not follow the Jewish dietary laws. And Jesus counters with the fact that the Pharisees are a bunch of hypocrites who put more emphasis on following human traditions than having their hearts be aligned with God’s teaching. At this point in Mark’s gospel, Jesus is exhausted, and he goes on retreat to the remote area-the region of Tyre. But his rest and retreat do not last long as word gets out he is there. Mark tells us that the Syro-Phoeneciann woman bursts into the house where Jesus is staying. She is Greek which means that she is both a foreigner and a Gentile. And she has burst uninvited into this houses to confront Jesus and demand healing for her demon-possessed daughter. Commentators on this gospel interpret what happens next in the story in two different ways. Jesus is a real jerk to the woman, calling her a dog and refusing to heal her sick child. One way commentators interpret this is to say that Jesus knew how the woman would react, and so he provokes her with the harsh language and the challenge to her request—pushing her to demonstrate her faith. The other way of interpreting this encounter is that Jesus is tired. He’s digging in and sticking to his guns about what he believes is his mission—to minister to the “lost sheep of Israel.” And he rests in the cultural norms and religious expectations of his day—that he didn’t need to help this woman or her child because they are not Jews. This second interpretation is actually the more challenging (and because of that, I think, the more interesting interpretation) because Jesus seems to be doing to the woman exactly what he criticizes the Pharisees for in the verses just before this encounter. And yet, the woman persists, and Jesus changes his mind and heals her daughter. Just like God changes God’s mind when faced with compelling arguments from Abraham and Moses against God’s chosen course of action against God’s wayward people, Jesus changes his mind, expands or opens his understanding of his mission when faced with the arguments of the foreign, Gentile woman But that’s not all! Our lectionary gives us a second story this week-the story of the deaf man with the speech impediment who is brought to Jesus for healing. Jesus takes the man apart from the others, and he heals the man by touching him, using Jesus’s own saliva, and commanding the man: “Ephaphthah” which means “Be opened” in Aramaic. This story is important to read with the first story because we see Jesus acknowledging how his own faith, his own sense of his mission has changed as a result of his encounter with the woman. Jesus, himself, has been opened. And that’s really the nature of faith, isn’t it? Being opened. None of us, not even Jesus, ever arrives at the fullness of our faith in this life. Our whole life-long, faith journey is the process of being opened by God and to God, through encounters with the sacraments, with God’s grace given through the Holy Spirit, and through encounters with each other. There’s an individualistic component to this. We can ask ourselves this week: “Are there any areas in your life, or in your faith, where you need to allow Jesus to come and open, perhaps areas that you shut long ago?”i But there’s also a corporate (church-wide) component to this being opened as well. I sometimes listen to a lectionary-based preaching podcast called “Pulpit Fiction.” One of the two hosts is a United Methodist minister, and in this week’s episode, he talked about the long-standing Methodist ad campaign: “Open hearts; Open minds; Open doors.” He said that some people in the Methodist church critique this slogan because they say that the church isn’t truly open to all people. And the minister said that he sees Jesus’s words “Open up” or “Be opened” in conjunction with this saying-not so much as adjectives but as verbs—as a prescription of what we are supposed to be doing—working to actively be open. He then shared a prayer for illumination that his church uses prior to the reading of scripture every week: “Holy Spirit, open our hearts to the story of your love. Open our minds to new ways of knowing you. Open our doors to whom all you would welcome. Amen.”ii Now, lest we start thinking too highly of ourselves as Episcopalians in this, let me share with you a couple of details. The first comes from an article that the bishop sent all the clergy of the diocese this week. The article is by Dan Hotchkiss and is titled Five Lies We Like to Tell About Church Growth. The very first “lie” is that friendly churches grow. Here is what Hotchkiss writes about this: “Declining churches often marvel at how many visitors show up once and don’t return. ‘But we’re so friendly!’ Like most lies we tell ourselves, this one has a grain of truth in it: a visitor who gets a friendly greeting is more likely to return. But most church consultants know that the more vehemently leaders say their church is friendly, the more likely it will feel quite cold to visitors. When people say, ‘Our church is friendly,’ generally they mean ‘My friends are here.’ Visitors to ‘friendly’ churches see the backs of people’s heads—heads gathered into tight, impenetrable groups of friends. Churches that excel at hospitality are more apt to give themselves a B+ or C– in the friendliness department—and appreciate that hospitality takes effort.” I’ve heard this described as the difference between being a friendly church and a church of friends. A church of friends is the phenomenon that Hotchkiss writes about, when visitors only see the backs of peoples’ heads. This is something that we need to be attentive to, asking ourselves often if we are truly a friendly church or if we are being, instead, a church of friends. The second detail is a reminder of the Welcome survey I preached about a few months ago. We left copies in the narthex and church office and asked people to fill it out and turn it in, and we gave you a little over a month to do this. We had 13 of those surveys turned in, which tells me either a. we don’t like to fill out surveys or b. we aren’t very interested in assessing how welcoming we are. So how do we as a church live more deeply into this call of Jesus? To “Be opened.” At this beginning of a new program year, what are ways that we as a church can be opened—expanding our understanding of our mission and ministry, growing deeper in our faith together to opening to those who are different than us—different faiths, different socio-economic classes, different skin colors, different political parties? Let us pray. “Holy Spirit, open our hearts to the story of your love. Open our minds to new ways of knowing you. Open our doors to whom all you would welcome. Amen.”iii i. From Pray as you go podcast for September 9, 2018 ii. From Pulpit Fiction episode for September 9, 2018 iii.From Pulpit Fiction episode for September 9, 2018

Funeral Homily for Tina Norris

Funeral homily-Tina Norris September 7, 2018 If there is one single word that keeps coming up as people reflect on the wonderful gifts that Tina Norris had, then if would be “an angel.” An Historic Savannah Newsletter article from July/August of 1983 that was written about Tina as one of the tour guides for the Historic Savannah Foundation begins: “Mrs. Jack Norris-Tina-is one of those perfect sort of guides: knowledgeable, kind, friendly, and understanding-‘an angel’ says one of her colleagues.” And the article concludes with “…we are sure that Tina’s tour recipients hope that Tina will continue tour guiding for at least ten more years. Heaven surely must be missing an angel!” And even before that, Tina was nominated for the Wings in Heaven Award through Woman of the Year in Atlanta. Her family shared with me the delightful nominating form that reads “Why I consider the Candidate worthy of [the] Award: Because she is always pleasant. Because she has a ‘voice with a smile, and a suggestion of daffodils in the springtime.’ Because she is efficient without annoying anyone with her efficiency. Because we need more people like her.” She was an angel. But here’s the thing about angels. We often only think about angels as celestial beings who hang out with God. But the very word angelos is actually a job description. Angel means messenger. Angels are messengers of God. They tell people of God’s favor. They remind people, over and over again, to not be afraid of the work that God is doing in the world. Tina lived her life fully rooted in God’s love, and she loved well. She loved her family. She loved her friends. She loved her church. She loved Savannah. She loved sitting on her screened porch and drinking wine (she loved wine!) with her family and friends. In those ways, Tina was an angel, because she was a messenger to us of God’s love and of how to live this lovely life fully, with joy, delight, and kindness. We are so thankful for her presence in all of our lives. And we will miss her loving, light-filled presence in our lives most dearly. We gather today to mourn her loss, to celebrate her life, and to remind one another that even now, Tina is at home with the God that she loved, and she is feasting at God’s heavenly banquet. (I do hope God got the memo because apparently Tina, as a long-time caterer, had very strong opinions about how cucumber sandwiches should be made…) And we gather today to remember the hope of our faith: that death is not the end but a change; that our Lord Jesus Christ has gone before us, showed us the way to our eternal dwelling place in God’s kingdom, a kingdom where there is no sorrow nor sighing but only life everlasting. We remember that God has shown us, through Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, that God’s love is stronger than absolutely anything-even death. And we give thanks. We give thanks to God for the gift of Tina and for the message that she lived of God’s love for her and for each and every one of us. We will miss her; and we will see her again. (Close with the 2nd collect.)

15th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 17B

15th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 17B September 2, 2018 A couple of weeks ago, I started asking you to begin thinking about how we are going to observe Labor Day as a community today. I invited you to begin thinking about a symbol that you could bring, a symbol of your labor-either how you make your living in the world, how you make money or how you spend your leisure, how you spend your free time. Hopefully, you have remembered and brought this symbol with you because today, at the offertory, after the collection plates have gone past you, I’ll invite you to bring your symbol forward and lay it on the altar or at the foot of the altar. Why, you may wonder, are we doing this today? Or you may even be thinking those five words that are frequently heard together in Episcopal Churches: “We’ve never done this before…..” Our epistle reading for today provides a clue as to why we are doing this today in conjunction with the secular holiday of Labor Day. “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.” All that we are and all that we have comes from God and through God’s generosity. This is what it means when we use the word: Stewardship. You may recall the definition I shared with you last fall that came from Terry Parson’s the former stewardship officer of the Episcopal Church: “Stewardship is all that I do with all that I have after I say, ‘I believe.’” The letter to James also reminds us that we are not just to be recipients of God’s gifts, or as James puts it “not merely hearers” of the word; but that we are to be stewards of God’s gifts, people who use those gifts in the service of God and others—or as James puts it “doers of the word.” What we do with the gifts God gives us matters; it is a part of our discipleship. We already acknowledge this every week, even though you may not think about it directly, during the part of the service known as the offertory: when we bring our gifts of bread, wine, and money to the altar. Liturgical theologians Charles Price and Louis Weil put it this way. “In placing on the altar bread, money and wine, the congregation offers itself and its world. Money represents the work of the congregation. As in every sacrificial act of time immemorial, a part stands for the whole. We give part of what we make. That part stands for ‘ourselves, for our souls, for our bodies.’ Symbolically we offer the bread to be the body of Christ. But the underlying reality of the action is that we offer our lives individually and corporately to become the body of Christ in the world. We acknowledge that what we offer to God is, in a certain sense, but [God’s] all along, given to us in trust as stewards of [God’s] creation.” (Liturgy of Living by Charles P Price and Louis Weil) So, today, we are intentionally offering this aspect of ourselves—the gifts God has given us to make our labor or our leisure. We are thanking God for these gifts, and we are offering them back to God’s service, so that we may become the body of Christ in the world. As we make this offering, this week and every week, we show our gratitude by singing (the doxology: Praise God from who all blessings blow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.) or by quoting scripture (“All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee.” That’s I Chronicles 29:14). We are giving thanks to God, and we are offering to use these gifts in the world to be the body of Christ. So this week, I invite you to lay your symbol on God’s altar in thanksgiving. And then, as you use your gifts, through Labor or leisure in the world this week, remember the doxology, and ask yourself if you are using your gift to be Christ’s body in the world-as a doer of the word, and not merely hearers.

14th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 16B

14th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 16B August 26, 2018 The other day, I was walking back from a service in our chapel, and I listened to the people walking ahead of me talk about difficult topics of faith, like why does God allow sickness. They each talked about ways they had wrestled with this hard topic, and the ways that they had made their peace with it, as a part of engaging their faith. In our gospel reading for today, we have the culmination of the five weeks we have spent in Chapter 6 of John’s gospel. The chapter starts with the feeding of the 5,000, and the people are so impressed with Jesus’s miracle, that they follow him, asking for more. This inspires from Jesus a long chapter’s worth of teachings on how he is the bread of life, much like the manna that was given to their ancestors in the wilderness. And like their ancestors, the people begin to grumble and complain at Jesus’s teachings. As a result, Jesus seems to get more and more graphic in the language he uses, and it is more and more offensive to his hearers. First, it is “the Jews” or the leaders of the religious establishment who take issue with the teachings. And in today’s reading, we see that even Jesus’s disciples are not immune. “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” many of his disciples begin saying, and Jesus says to them: “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe.” The writer of John’s gospel tells us that “because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.” Now, these aren’t just members of the crowd who followed Jesus after they witnessed the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand. These are disciples, who had seen something in Jesus and had already given up much to follow him. They come to a cross roads in their faith, in the face of this hard teaching, and they choose to turn back rather than to go forward. This provokes Jesus to say to the 12, who still remain: “‘Do you also wish to go away?’” And John tells us that “Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’” It is a beautiful sentiment on Peter’s part, and there almost seems to be some sort of redemption in it, that even though Jesus has gone from being so popular and followed by so many to being deserted because of his radical teachings that are hard for people to stomach, at least he still has his 12 most faithful followers. But listen to the last two verses of chapter 6, which our lectionary cuts off for today: “Jesus answered them, ‘Did I not choose you, the twelve? Yet one of you is a devil.’ He was speaking of Judas son of Simon Iscariot, for he, though one of the twelve, was going to betray him.” And we know that not only does Judas, one of the 12 betray him, but also, just about everyone else deserts him, too. This teaching is difficult; who can accept it? In the life of faith, sometimes the way forward is smooth and easy, but at other times, things get difficult. Our lives bump up against the hard teachings of Jesus, and we, like the disciples, find ourselves standing at a crossroads. Do we continue on the way forward and continue to follow Jesus, or do we turn back and seek an easier path? In the gospel of John, the Greek word that our passage for today translates as belief (pisteuo) is used almost 100 times. And this word doesn’t just mean an intellectual sort of belief or thinking. It means placing confidence in, entrusting oneself to, even choosing a path and following it through. C. S. Lewis hints at this in his book Mere Christianity when he writes, “There will come a moment when there is bad news, or he is in trouble, or is living among a lot of other people who do not believe it, and all at once his emotions will rise up and carry out a sort of blitz on his belief… Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience.” Our lives of faith are all made up of times when we felt that the teachings were too difficult, and so we turned away, turned back and of times when we stayed true to the course of belief that we had set to follow. As I look back over my life of following Jesus, I am struck by the fact that it is the difficult times that I remember most, and it is because I followed the path before me, even though I could have turned back. Even though that way led to heartbreak and failure, much like Jesus’s way led to the cross, even in those difficult times, I was sustained by God in ways that were uncommon from other easier times in my life. I invite you this week, to reflect upon the difficult times in the life of your faith, when you chose to follow the path of belief forward rather than turning back. Think about the ways that the Spirit gave you life in those times, or is giving you life now, if you find yourself in a difficult season. Ask yourself, “When, in the life of my faith, have I felt really alive? When have I felt the Spirit giving life to me?

13th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 15B

13th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 15B August 19, 2018 When I was visiting my parents earlier this summer, my mom recommended a book to me. Its sensational title is How Not To Die, and it is written by Michael Greger who is an M.D. Greger starts off by telling the story of his grandmother, who at the age of 65 had been diagnosed with heart disease, suffered multiple heart surgeries until there was no more they could do, was wheel-chair bound in constant excruciating pain and was told that she had about 3 weeks to live. The grandmother managed to get herself across the country to California, where she participated in a new study where the patients were all fed whole-food, plant-based diets and started exercising, and as a result, Greger’s grandmother went on to live 31 more years and die at the age of 96 after living a full and active life. Greger uses a large amount of scientific studies and data to write about how a whole-food, plant-based diet can not only prevent and treat the 15 leading causes of death in our country, but it can also reverse conditions such as heart-disease, cancer, diabetes, strokes, and Alzheimer’s. He also references research that supports the premise that this kind of way of eating can prolong life by repairing parts of our DNA that wear down naturally as we age. In some ways, it’s not exactly revolutionary. Since childhood, many of us have been taught “you are what you eat.” Jesus is essentially telling us the same thing in our gospel reading for today. He’s telling us both “you are what you eat” and “how not to die” spiritually. This is our fourth week in a row (out of 5 total) that our lectionary has given us passages from this particular section of John’s gospel, where Jesus says, again and again, “I am the bread of life.” As we have walked through Chapter 6 over the last few weeks, we have seen Jesus moving to more and more graphic language, culminating in our lesson for today where he says such shocking things as: “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” One thing that is important to remember is that John’s gospel is the latest written gospel of our 4. It is written to a particular Christian community who are struggling with persecution in ways that the earlier gospel writers’ communities were not. And John’s community is also unique in its particular frustration in their expectation that Jesus was coming back sooner rather than later. Finally, John’s gospel is unique in that it does not include the story of the institution of the Last Supper. (We see in Chapter 13 the story of Jesus’s last night, in which he washes his disciples’ feet, but there is no story of the Last Supper.) So, this chapter of John’s gospel, Chapter 6, is essentially John’s way of connecting this struggling, worn-down, and persecuted community and pointing them to the Eucharist. These words would have been as familiar to them of the echoes of their weekly table liturgy as they are to us. John’s Jesus is telling the struggling, suffering community “how not to die,” but instead of talking about physical nourishment, he is talking about spiritual nourishment. I have to confess to you all that I was wonderfully and painfully convicted by a line in Rev. Aimee’s sermon last week. She was talking about the connection between the Jews who were listening to Jesus and the Children of Israel who received manna in the wilderness and how both groups were united in their complaining. And she said, “Complaining wins out over believing.” Ouch! Just before we started the first service, I was talking about how I didn’t think our house sale that was set for that week was going to go through, and boy, was I complaining. But in the midst of that same week, David was called to be the new priest at St. George’s--a huge, exciting thing for him and for our family. But the first thing I did was to complain. How many times in a given week do we choose complaining over faith, consternation over hope? It is a symptom of our heart disease, that only the bread of life can repair. One of my earliest memories of church is being a very young girl, kneeling at the altar rail with my hands outstretched and preparing to receive the bread from the woman priest who was coming down the line of the altar rail. As I watched her approach and looked at the people on either side of me, I became very excited because I was getting something special that was also the exact same thing everyone else around me was getting. I was excited to be both holy-set apart and belonging-exactly like everyone else. I also knew a little girl, who would sneak a piece of her communion wafer back to her pew and nibble on it throughout the rest of the service. When her mother learned what she had done, she would fuss at her, and tell her that she needed to consume it all at the altar rail, but it does seem natural to want to take time and savor the mystery and the gift, even taking it with us when we leave this place. What if, today, you approach the altar with the wonder of those two children, knowing that Jesus is giving you himself, the gift to begin to reverse your spiritual heart disease? What if as you stretched out your hands, you invited faith over complaining, hope over consternation in whatever part of your life feels the most dead or dying to you right now? And then, take a little piece of that life out with you into the world this week, so that everyone you see or encounter, even the ones who make you angry or persecute you, becomes the person kneeling next to you at the altar rail, also offered the gift and the mystery of God’s love in and through Jesus the bread of life. How not to die. It’s actually Jesus’s invitation to us this week and every week.

Funeral Homily for Dick Wilson

Dick Wilson’s funeral homily August 5, 2018 Every week as he was leaving church, Dick Wilson, who would usually be close to the end of what I like to call “the holy handshake line”, would come up to me. He’d take my hand, and I’d lean in and give him a kiss on his cheek. And he’d look at my face with that sweet smile of his and say, “How’s my favorite priest?” And I would smile back and answer, and after a brief conversation, we would both go on our way. My story is hardly unique. Over the last week, I’ve heard so many stories from you all about your friendships with Dick—his special nicknames for you, the many times you played golf or went fishing with him, the times he taught you or your children or grandchildren Sunday School, the times he came to watch you at your swim meet, the times you were touched by one of his impromptu speeches either in church or in social gatherings, the times you spent with him as his family at his and Mary’s home. So, it will come as no surprise to any of you, that Dick’s gift was one that is best articulated in a sort of old-fashioned word, and it’s not accident, I think, that this word is also found in the marriage vows. Dick’s gift was to cherish people. He had a gift not just for loving people, but for also letting them know that they were loved. It will also come as no surprise to you, I think, to learn that Dick planned this service in a very thorough and detailed way. He picked the hymns and the readings, and it is important to note that in his choice of the Lamentations reading, Dick has given us all one last gift. Listen to the beginning of it again: “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The LORD is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’ The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him.” Dick was able to love others, to cherish us, because he had already known love. He knew the steadfast love of the Lord which never ceases. He abided in that, basked in, even, all of his days for 96 years. Dick was able to share God’s love for us because he knew it, tasted its joy afresh every day And so today, even as we mourn the loss of this lovely man in our lives, in our community of faith, we give thanks for Dick’s life and witness. And we remember and hold fast to the faith that Dick Wilson lived: that God’s love is stronger than anything, even death, and that in and through Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, through that gift of God’s love, at death our lives are changed, not ended, and we will all feast together once again at the table for the family of God. We will be reunited once again, all together, in God’s steadfast love which never ceases. So today, let us mourn. Let us give thanks. Let us love and cherish one another. And let us commend Dick to the care and keeping of the Lord he knew and loved.

11th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 13B

11th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 13B August 5th, 2018 There are many things about parish ministry that surprised me in the early days of my ordained life, and there are many things that continue to surprise me, even after 14 years. But one of the ones that fits into both of those categories is the holiness of funerals in the life of a parish. Before I was ordained, I knew intellectually that funerals would be hard for everyone involved, parishioners and preacher alike; but I didn’t understand how hard they would be—burying someone who we all loved and who had been an integral part of the body of Christ in that particular place. But I had no idea about the gift that funerals could give a community. Now, don’t get me wrong, they are still very difficult. I have never had what I would call an “easy” funeral. But there is a certain rightness I feel in being the preacher at the funeral of someone who lived life well in our particular community of faith, someone who contributed his or her gifts to the building up of the kingdom of God in a particular place. I have the privilege of getting to name the gifts of that particular person in the funeral homily and to lift them up on behalf of the gathered church, their faith community, in thanksgiving. It is a huge responsibility and also a huge gift for which I am most grateful. Later today, we will join together for the funeral of Dick Wilson, a faithful member of our church. In that homily, I will talk about Dick’s particular gift. You don’t need me to articulate it; if you knew Dick well, (and even if you didn’t), you probably had the opportunity to see his gift at work in this community. And I’ll give you a spoiler alert for the funeral homily later today: Dick’s gift is that he cherished people. And even if you wouldn’t necessarily articulate it in that way, I suspect that’s what you were thinking as you sat there in your pew, Dick loved well, and in the way that he loved, he made all of us feel loved. I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few days thinking about gifts. I got to participate in a pilot group of a spiritual gifts workshop yesterday with a handful of our parishioners. We learned about a sampling of the variety of gifts that God bestows on people. We uncovered or unwrapped which of those gifts had been bestowed on each of us, and we have been challenged to grow in the ways that we both nurture and offer our gifts to this community and the world. Our epistle reading for today, the portion of the letter to the Ephesians which has echoes of the beginning of our baptism liturgy, is a reminder that, as another writer has put it “our Creator has embedded gifts in each person…and that every person is called to participate in God’s ongoing and creative and healing work on earth…Our deepening relationship with God, both as individuals and as entire communities, is a gradual process of becoming aware of the great gifts we have been given and the tremendous trust that our Creator has placed in us by calling us to be partners in this wondrous work of God.”i The Ephesians passage articulates a list of gifts as a starting point for discernment. (But this list is not, by any means, exhaustive.) It reminds us that all these gifts are a part of Christ’s own onetime and also ongoing gift to the church and to individuals, and that the purpose of these gifts is that they be used “for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.” We are called to use our individual gifts and the gifts of our whole church, so that we all may grow more and more into the image and likeness of Christ. The medieval German mystic Meister Eckhart wrote, “Every creature is a word of God and is a book about God.” What does the book of your life say about God? What are the gifts God has given you specifically, and how have you been using them? Uncovering or unwrapping our spiritual gifts is a lot of work. One member of our group yesterday shared with us this image: imagine that you open your front door to discover a beautifully-wrapped, gigantic present on your door step. Do you think “boy, that’s just too big for me to deal with” and then close the door? Or do you start to unwrap it to see what’s inside, maybe asking for help to drag it inside the house? If you are interested in starting that process as you ask yourself “what does the book of your life say about God?” then I encourage you to talk to one of the participants from this pilot workshop. Rick Lantz was the leader, and those who participated were Margaret Minis, Sandy Champion, Steve Calver, and Charlie Barrow. My prayer for all of us this day is that we may live and use our gifts as fully as Dick Wilson lived and used his, so that everyone in our church may know the taste of our own unique gifts when we, too, pass on into the eternal life that God has waiting for us. i. Trumbauer, Jean Morris. Created and Called: Discovering Our Gifts For Abundant Living. Augsburg: Minneapolis, 1998, p 18.