2nd Sunday after the Epiphany Year C

2nd Sunday after the Epiphany-Year C January 17, 2016 One of my diocesan responsibilities is to serve on the Presbyter’s Discernment Committee, which is a sub-committee of the Commission on Ministry, who exists to advise the Bishop in different matters of ministry. Last week, the members of the Presbyter’s Discernment committee gathered at Gray Center, and we met with a group of people who had all been through their parish discernment committees because they were discerning a call to the priesthood. I’ve had the privilege of doing this difficult and rewarding work for a number of years now, but this year was the first year that we had several people who were discerning a call to the bi-vocational priesthood. In years past, we have been able to identify what are the gifts of people being called to the priesthood. We want people who are comfortable being in front of other people, some administrative/organizational skills, maybe a little dash of charisma…..But then when we started talking and thinking about the bi-vocational priesthood, a new development in the life of our diocese, we were stumped. We didn’t know what kind of gifts we were looking for because it is a brand new thing, and none of us really knows what it looks like yet. But what we found is that as we interviewed people, we began to discover their own unique giftedness, and we began to imagine how those gifts might fill a need in the church. And then this week, I was privileged to sit with the Bishop as he told the folks whether or not they would get to proceed on toward ordination, and I was given the task of lifting up to each of them the giftedness that we discovered in them (whether they be called to ordained ministry or not). It was a beautiful and life-giving opportunity for me to hold up a mirror and show folks their own giftedness. Our culture lifts up particular gifts and in that lifting up, it shows what that culture values most. An academic culture lifts up intelligence as giftedness. Some business cultures lift up ruthlessness as a gift. Others value charisma. Families do this too. Some value athletic ability; others value kindness. Different groups seek out different types of “giftedness” that they think will support the values of that particular group. But Paul is saying something very different in our epistle for today. He is saying that, in the church at Corinth, which has been arguing about whether or not there is a hierarchy of gifts, and in the Christian church in general, every single person who is baptized is gifted. Every person who has been baptized and who confesses Jesus as Lord, has been brought to that point through the gift of the Holy Spirit. And each person has also been given unique spiritual gifts that are to be used for the good of the whole community, and all the gifts have been equally activated by the grace of God and are equally valued and valuable to the church. On this weekend of our annual parish meeting, this passage offers us an invitation to ask ourselves what are the gifts that are valued in the life of this parish? One that I have encountered is involvement through fellowship. Another is a generosity of spirit to one another. But here’s the flip side of that question. What are gifts that this parish doesn’t always recognize, can’t always see, doesn’t particularly value? What are the gifts of those among us that we might be overlooking because they are not what we expect? And how might we begin to seek out those gifts that don’t look like what we expect but are equally valued and given by God and to be used for the good of this community? We have a responsibility as individuals, through our baptismal covenant, to offer the gifts that God has given us, and we have a responsibility to seek out those gifts in others in our community and invite them to share them. So I invite you to think about these questions this week: “What gifts have been given you by the Holy Spirit that could be used more fully for the common good? Are you offering them already, and if not, why not? Is there a gift or a potential in someone else that you have noticed that you might be able to call attention to and nurture?

First Sunday after the Epiphany Year C--The Baptism of our Lord

The First Sunday after the Epiphany—Year C January 10, 2016 When I was a teenager, one of my younger brothers got a rock tumbler for some Christmas. I had never encountered a rock tumbler before, so I followed the process curiously. My brother added some broken old dull rocks into the compact machine. He added water and some sort of abrasive grit. He plugged it into the wall in the formal living room—the remotest part of the house. He turned it on, and he left it running in there for an entire month. If I was very quiet, I could hear the sound of the machine running and the rocks tumbling from my room. When the month was over, my brother opened the machine and retrieved the rocks, and I was amazed to behold how those broken, old, dull rocks had been transformed into shiny, beautiful polished rocks whose unique character was much more evident. I think about that rock tumbler all the time because I think it is a useful image for what happens in Christian community. Whether it is through the community of church, of households or families, circles of friends or even work communities, we are like those broken old rocks thrown together into a tight space and left to tumble against each other--mixed with a bunch of grit--and knocking off all the sharp edges. It is not an especially comfortable process, but it is effective when the Holy Spirit is in the mix. In our baptism, we make promises to live our lives a certain way. We fall short of those again and again and again, but instead of giving up, we renew our promises (both when new people are being baptized and at other times of the year, like today, when our prayer book encourages us to do so.) Being in that rock tumbler with one another is really hard and sometimes discouraging, and so it is important for us to remember why we do this uncomfortable difficult work and to remember that we really are all in this together. But that is not the end of the good news this Sunday. There is another very important part. When Jesus emerges from the water of his baptism, after all those who were there also had been baptized, the Holy Spirit descended upon him…like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Our baptisms and the renewal of our baptisms all find their meaning in Jesus’s own baptism. God has also claimed each one of us, each and every one of you, as God’s beloved, with whom God is well pleased. We are God’s beloved even when we are old, dull-colored, broken and jagged rocks, thrown together in the rock tumbler; and we are God’s beloved when we are smoothed and polished through our common life together. No matter what, you are God’s beloved. No matter what, the person whom you find to be most infuriating and difficult (in the rock tumbler of Christian community) is God’s beloved. The person who posts the obnoxious things on Facebook is God's beloved. The one whose bumper stickers you don't agree with is God's beloved. The family member who you just can't forgive is God's beloved. The person here in this church who just rubs up against you the wrong way is God's beloved. We accept this about ourselves and each other every time we renew our baptismal vows (which is why we need to do it so frequently)--promising to seek and serve Christ in all persons and love our neighbors as ourselves; promising to respect the dignity of every human being--and we accept this about ourselves every time we celebrate Eucharist. This past week, I was able to be a participant in a Eucharist (with no preaching or sacramental responsibilities which is a rare gift for us). The celebrant, the Very Rev. Billie Abram, told us that she regularly makes retreat at the monastic community of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge, MA, an Episcopal monastery. And Billie told us that in their Eucharistic celebrations, the brothers have added a line that may be included in the next prayer book revision. When the celebrant holds up the consecrated bread and wine in the Eucharist, he says “Behold what you are; become what you receive.” In and through our baptism, we are accepting God’s claim on and of us as God’s beloved. In and through our baptism, we are becoming the body and blood of Christ in this world. In and through our weekly celebrations of Eucharist, we are becoming more and more of what we already are; being transformed more and more into what we have already received—those made worthy of being called God’s beloved. “Behold what you are; become what you receive.”

Christmas Eve 2015

Christmas Eve 2015 There is a characteristic that runs throughout all of our readings for tonight, that I’ve always been intrigued by but never really understood. I’ve always wanted to preach on it, every year as Christmas Eve sermon time comes around, but I’ve never known what to preach. Well, my friends. The year has finally come for me to preach on this rare characteristic, and you all have my first-time viewing of the modern Christmas classic movie Elf to thank for it. Can you guess what the characteristic is? In the movie Elf, Buddy the Elf is actually a human who has been raised by an elf father –Papa Elf—at the North Pole. He learns the truth of his humanity and decides to go in search of his birth father who lives and works in that magical place of New York City, and Santa gives Buddy his blessing and a few tips for the journey. Buddy’s journey is characterized by all sorts of misadventures when he experiences the strangeness of New York with a sense of wonder and awe. At one point in the movie, Buddy is working at a New York department store, appropriately dressed as one of the elves in the Christmas section, and someone makes the announcement to the gathered shoppers that Santa will be arriving first thing in the morning. Buddy hears the announcement and then proceeds to scream: “Santa! Oh my God! Santa here! I know him! I know him!” Santa is someone that Buddy the elf gets to see every day of his life; and still, when he thinks he is going to encounter him in New York, he loses his mind with excitement. When I saw that scene, I finally knew what that elusive characteristic that I had always been curious about looked like. That, my friends, is zeal. We see zeal mentioned overtly in two of our readings for tonight, and it is hinted at in the other two. Titus talks about how the marks of a Christian can be found in our zealous deeds. The gospel reading for tonight shows us how the zeal of the angels in proclaiming the good news of Jesus’s birth is contagious and becomes the zeal of the shepherds to go and see this wondrous event that is unfolding right there before them. And part of the reason that Buddy the elf is so charming is because we as a people have lost this sense of zeal, I think. It’s actually a bad thing, now, to be a zealot. And Buddy shows us that zeal can be a marvelous mixture of hopeful joy mixed with a goodly portion of naiveté. Ok, I can hear you thinking, so we’re supposed to be zealous. How on earth do we accomplish this? We all know it’s not really something that comes naturally to many of us, nor is it something that we can add to our shopping list. And that is why we gather here tonight, my friends. To remember that zeal is not something that originates with us. Zeal originates with God. Even in the midst of all of our misunderstandings, fallings, and failures, God continues to love us with a joyfully optimistic and maybe even a bit naïve zeal. And at one point in history, God whispers to Godself, I know them. I know them. And God sends God’s self to be one of us, so that we might know a taste of God, God’s love, and God’s zeal. The good news this night is that the zeal does not begin with us. It is the zeal of God, that calls forth in us, if we allow it, a joyful, hopeful, naïve response. That is why we gather together tonight. To remember the zeal of God which has given the gift of God’s self, for us, to us, in the person of Jesus. That we might finally say in joyful hope, wonder and a bit naiveté: “I know him. I know him.”

Advent 4C

4th Sunday of Advent Year C December 20, 2015 I want you to take a moment and think about all the different songs that you have sung in your life… The times you have been alone in the car and belting out some song just for the simple joy of being alive. The lullabies and the laments. The school fight songs, the Christmas carols, countless Happy Birthdays… There is something about singing that is both a deeply spiritual and a deeply human act, both primal and transcendent at the same time. There are some who say that God sings at creation, singing the creation into being. C.S. Lewis writes about this in the Chronicles of Narnia book The Magician’s Nephew when he writes about how Aslan creates the land of Narnia: “In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was beyond comparison the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it.” All of our songs of salvation seem to begin in the dark, and Mary’s song for today is no different. But her song begins in the darkness of her womb, in the deep-quiet-fulfillment of God’s promise of salvation. Interestingly enough, Luke’s gospel’s beginning is chock-full of singing. Mary’s song is the first of three songs in the first two chapters, and it is a song of reversal, in which the mighty are cast down and the lowly are lifted up. I can’t hear it without wanting to sing it---my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my savior. For he has looked with favor on his lowly servant!” It is a song of joy that overflows in praise for what God has done for Mary and for all of creation, and the three central parts of Mary’s song are 1. God’s capacity and willingness to act in creation; 2. God’s holiness and 3. God’s mercy. Mary’s song is different from any song that has ever been sung, by us and the rest of humanity, because it is the song of a peasant woman who has been chosen to be “the God-bearer.” Her song is a mixture of both the past and future, just as it is her role as the “God-bearer” to be a part of God’s uniting of the past and the future in and through Jesus. In that way, her song is a song of hopefulness that is completely unique. She witness that God has already acted, God has already saved, and she helps project that salvific action on into the future. So how does this unique song fit in with all of our many and varied songs, especially in these seemingly dark days when it is difficult to find hopeful and joy-filled songs to sing? In his blog post for this week titled, “Standing and Acting in the Tragic Gap,” Parker Palmer speaks to this when he writes about how we are called to stand and act “in the tragic gap if we want to hang in for the long haul with the birthing of a better world. On one side of that gap are the hard and discouraging realities around us. On the other side is the better world we know to be possible-not merely because we wish it were so, but because we have seen it with our own eyes. We’re surrounded by greed, but we’ve seen great acts of generosity. We’re surrounded by violence, but we’ve seen people make peace…” When Mary and Elizabeth meet, this is possibly the first Christian community; they are the first of those who believe in Jesus. And what do they do? They sing together. Their song helps create a sanctuary where Mary is able to prepare and rest for three months. It is what we do. Christians sing (both literally and figuratively), and we help create sanctuary for others. I heard a story on NPR’s morning edition this past week when I was driving back from dropping off Jack at school. It is a story about these two people who saw a need in the depressed town of Saginaw, Michigan, and they started a music ministry called Major Chords for Minors in which they give out free instruments and music lessons to children who need them. They started this program with their own small savings and now it is funded by a number of small grants. The powerful thing that caught my attention in this story (which is part of a series titled “doing a lot with a little”) is how these children from often unstable homes find refuge not only in the music but also in the place where it is created and nurtured. I was struck by how music is transforming the lives of those children and families and by how music there is creating a sanctuary for others. In these waning days of Advent, when our minor songs of waiting shift toward Christmas carols of fulfillment, may we consider: how might the song we are called to sing be a way to create sanctuary for others? http://www.onbeing.org/blog/parker-palmer-standing-and-acting-in-the-tragic-gap/8258 http://www.npr.org/2015/12/16/456533840/free-music-lessons-strike-a-chord-for-at-risk-kids

Last Sunday after Pentecost--Christ the King Sunday

Last Sunday after Pentecost—Christ the King Sunday November 22, 2015 Today I would like to tell you two different tales of two different bunnies. The first bunny is named Barrington Bunny. Barrington is the only bunny in the whole wide forest, and he is sad and lonely because he cannot go to the other animals’ Xmas parties--he cannot climb trees like a squirrel or swim like a beaver. And he doesn't have a bunny family of his own. Barrington is crying alone in the snow on Christmas Eve when the wise wolf whose eyes are like fire appears before him, The wolf tells Barrington that all of the animals of the forest are his family, and that he as a bunny has his own special gifts. He can hop and he is furry and warm. As Barrington is hopping home filled with hope and a plan to help the members of his family (all the different animals of the forest), a blizzard wind begins to blow, and he comes across a young field mouse who is lost from his family. Barrington tells the mouse to not be afraid, that he will stay with him, and because he is a bunny, he can help keep him warm. In the morning, when the young mouse's parents find him, Barrington has died in the night keeping the little mouse warm. And the wolf comes and keeps watch over Barrington's body all Christmas Day. The second bunny is named Foo Foo. You see, Little Bunny Foo Foo was hopping through the forest. And out of nowhere he inexplicably scoops up a field mouse and bops him on the head. Then, down comes the good fairy, and she says, “Little Bunny Foo Foo, I don’t want to see you scooping up the field mice and bopping them on the head. I’ll give you three chances. And if you do, I’m gonna turn you into a goon!” Well, we all know what happens. Whatever inexplicable forces that are at work in Little Bunny Foo Foo’s soul to make him want to bop the innocent field mice on the head do not abate, in spite of the good fairy’s warning, and he burns through his three chances, getting turned into a goon in the end. These two stories of two different bunnies are actually two different pictures of kingship that we need to consider on this Last Sunday after Pentecost which is also known as Christ the King Sunday. The Foo Foo way of kingship is a way of might and violence. Foo Foo is bigger and stronger than the field mice and he exercises his power over them until someone stronger than him comes along and punishes him with more violence. The Barrington way of kingship is a way that knows and experiences suffering and loneliness, a way that reaches out to others out of that shared pain and offers a comforting presence even to the point of sacrificial death. We all know suffering, loneliness, tribulation. And most of the time, we are like the communities who John's gospel and Revelation are being written to. We want a strong, Foo Foo like King who will come in and bop all our enemies on the head and rescue us from our suffering. That is the world's way. But Jesus is not a Foo Foo like King. "My kingdom is not of this world," he says. “The way of using might to bring about victory, the way of violence, the way of ‘bopping the little ones on the head’ (or even turning the bullies into goons) is not my way,” he tells us in that one simple phrase. His is the way of Barrington Bunny: the way of staying beside those who are suffering, the way of sacrifice, the way of peace and a love that eventually conquers everything-even death. If we are to be his followers, the citizens of his kingdom, then that must be our way too. Which kind of bunny will you be? Whose way do you follow?

All Saints' Day--baptismal letter

All Saints’ Day Year B November 1, 2015 A letter to Becky and Matthew upon the occasion of their baptisms. Dear Becky and Matthew, This is an interesting time in the life of the church year. It is the half-way point between Easter of one year and Easter of the next, and it is one of those Christian holidays that has become something entirely different in the culture around us. We see it most prominently in the contrast between Halloween and All Saints’. Every year at Halloween, I am increasingly more astonished (and somewhat dismayed) at the bacchanalia that takes place around us, as people work themselves up into a frenzy over costumes and candy. At the root of this, I recognize what Christian theologians wiser than I have named as being our culture’s fear and denial of death. But today, here in this church, we are going to do the exact opposite. Today, Becky and Matthew, we actually celebrate your death, and we will take with you this first step into a long journey of not only not being afraid of death, but seeing it as a peaceful companion throughout your life. Today we all will relearn and remember with you, that even though the world around us will scramble to deny death, we, as Christians, recognize that death is an important part of faithful living. “…We as Christians know at a deeper level that our society has it all backwards. It is not that life ends and death goes on forever. Death is but a single event that is not itself the last word. At the heart of the Christian faith is the Easter story of the Resurrection revealing that God does not abandon us at death, but raises us to new life.” So, Becky and Matthew, when we baptize you today, we are baptizing you into Jesus’s death, and we are baptizing you into Jesus’s resurrection. From this day forward, you are claiming your place as the beloved of God, who created you good, and you are becoming a part of God’s resurrection people-the body of Christ. As Christians, we also recognize that the awareness of death and mortality is a gift to us, because it then spurs faithful living, and not for the reasons you might think. Awareness of our death does not spur faithful living because we are afraid God is going to send us to hell if we’re not good enough, if we don’t “do right” or if we don’t earn our salvation. The truth is, none of us could ever be good enough to earn our salvation. That is a gift that has been already freely given to us by the God who loves us and who chooses to make God’s own home in and with us. Rather, we long to live faithfully because we are grateful to God; we recognize this mortal life as a beautiful, finite gift, and we long to cherish it and live it to the fullest. We are all here today because in some deep part of our souls, we have realized that our struggle is not to remain alive forever at any cost, but to live and to die faithfully; and we are here today because we have discovered that this living and dying faithfully is work that is more easily and better done when we have companions along the way. We are here today because we have discovered that following the way of Jesus, the way that is articulated in our baptismal covenant, the way of peace, forgiveness, healing, sacrifice, and reconciliation, following the way of Jesus gives our lives meaning; it makes life and our relationships infinitely richer than they would be otherwise, and we are all so much better for having companions to walk with us on this way. That is what we will promise to do for you this day and forward, Becky and Matthew, and you will promise to do it for us as well. And that is where the Saints come into the picture, why we remember them today on this All Saints’ Day, and why it makes today especially appropriate for baptism. The New Testament talks about “saints” 20 times, and it’s not talking about stained-glass people living perfect lives of faithfulness that we could only dream about. Saints, in the New Testament, refer to “God-lovers;” or as one of our old, beloved hymns puts it, “they loved their Lord so dear, so dear, and his love made them strong.” Brother James Koester of the Society of St. John the Evangelist writes about Saints: “The promise of triumph which we celebrate today in the Feast of All Saints’ is for all of us… who have lived lives of hope, or even just attempted to do so. It is for all of us who have lived lives of faith, or even just attempted to.” It is this work of attempting to live lives of faith and attempting to live lives of hope that we do together that forms us (and all those God-lovers who have gone before us) into Resurrection people through the weaving and working, inspiring and initiating of God’s Holy Spirit. We give thanks to God for your presence among us, and we look forward to walking this way with you. Your sister in Christ, Melanie+

20th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 23B

20th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 23 B October 11, 2015 I don’t really give my sermons titles, but I’m going to title this one. It is the top three things I have learned about stewardship or giving. Number 1: I was 22 years old and working at Stewpot in Jackson (back in the days that The Otts and Miss Lib were running around down there). I was working with the senior citizens and adults with mental disabilities, providing them enrichment activities before the noon meal. One day, one of the adults with mental disabilities, a woman named Cheryl, came in. I had often tried to have conversations with Cheryl, but she was so crazy, it was hard to talk to her—most of our conversations ended up going down the rabbit hole of her delusions. On this particular day, she came in wearing a shiny gold, butterfly necklace. I had never seen it before, and I complemented her on it, told her how beautiful it was and asked if it was new. She cocked her head and looked at me curiously for a moment, and then she pulled the necklace off over her head and held it out to me, not saying a word. Well, I was mortified! This woman, who only got a Social Security disability check, most of which was taken for her room and board and care at the group home where she lived, had probably used her measly $10 allowance for the month to buy this thing of beauty. I could not possibly accept it from her! So I said, ‘Oh no, it looks so beautiful on you! You really should keep it. But still, she stood there smiling, not saying a word, and holding the necklace out to me. And in that moment, I realized something. She needed to be able to give me that necklace. I needed to be able to receive it from her. Giving and receiving is an important part of every relationship; and people need to be both receivers and givers. She needed to be able to give. And so I walked over to her and let her place her necklace around my neck. (pull out necklace). I still have this beautiful gift from her, and it is something that will always bind me to her in relationship. 1. In relationship, we need to be able to both receive and to give. Number 2: Our relationship with God is included in this number one. We need to both give to God and receive from God. The former stewardship officer for the Episcopal Church, the late Terry Parsons, came and taught one single class at our seminary for our senior year. In this class, she shared with us her definition of stewardship: Stewardship is all that we do with all that we have, after we say we believe. As a part of a healthy relationship with God, we recognize that all that we have comes from God (that’s the receiving part). We make a grateful response to God for all that we are and all that we have by giving a portion of it back to God. It is said that Jesus talked about money more than he talked about anything else in the gospels except the Kingdom of God. Often when Jesus taught about money, he was teaching about the ways in which our money, our possessions are an impediment in our relationship with God. We see that in our gospel reading for the day. A rich young man comes to Jesus and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus, looking at him and loving him, tells him, Go and sell everything that you own and follow me. And the man leaves sadly. How hard it is for people of wealth to enter the kingdom of heaven, Jesus says. And what if that is more of an observation on his part rather than a judgment. Does it make it a little easier for us to hear? Maybe. When we look at this story in Mark of the encounter with Jesus and the rich young man as a healing story, which is how Mark actually sets it up to be read, mirroring many of the other Marcan healing stories, we see that our money, our stuff does not have to be an impediment in our relationship with God (and each other). But this story of the rich young man and Jesus’s encounter with him also shows us that money can cause “heart-sickness”. Therefore, God cares about what we do with our wealth, because when we don’t have a healthy relationship with money and stuff, it turns into heartsickness which is an impediment in our relationship with God and each other. Wealth can distort our sense of ourselves, our neighbor and God. 2. God cares about our relationship with money because God cares about us. Finally, number three. In that same visit to General Seminary, Terry Parsons answered a question posed to her by one of the cocky seminarians in our class (and let me just say, we were all cocky!). We had been through three years of breaking down the bible, learning how to read it. Most of us didn’t read the bible literally anymore, so someone asked her, “What about the biblical tithe? If we don’t read the bible literally on other things, why should we read the bible literally when it says that we should give 10% to God?” Terry answered, “Well, the Old Testament says to give 10% to God; Jesus tells us to give everything. I don’t know about y’all, but I’m going with the Old Testament!” I had found up to that point in my life that I would give to God whatever I had left-over (and usually, there wasn’t very much left over). Terry taught us that day about how the concept of the tithe or even a different percentage of giving, comes out of the “first fruits” ideology of the Bible, meaning that the children of Israel were encouraged to give the first fruits of the harvest to God, offering the first and the best and not the last and the left-over. When we were first married, my husband said to me, “it’s really important to me that we tithe,” and so we have made it a point in our married life to do that—he to his church and me to mine. But not everyone is going to be able to start our tithing. In fact, every time we move, I have to work on getting back up to 10% over several years. One year, I was giving up as much as I could “off the top.” Then I realized that if I gave up a daily cup of coffee from the coffee store that I drove past every day on my way to work, then I could give that $2.00 a week to add to my pledge. So, I did it. And you know, I thought about God and that gift every single day when I drove past there and didn’t stop for coffee. Number 3: Percentage giving matters. It is the way that we give to God off the top of what we have rather than out of the left-overs. Sometimes we have to make sacrifices to give to God, and that God will accept and use to help us deepen our relationships with God. We have been handing this chart out for the last two Sundays as a part of our fall commitment campaign, the New Consecration Sunday Program. It is a helpful tool, I think, as we look to see where we fall on this set of stairs in the giving in this parish. (Note that 278 people give nothing to this church. 89 of those are children, but you know, children can pledge too. Their relationship with God is just as important as ours is. If you want, parents, I can talk to you about some creative ways to teach children about giving. Just give me a call.) I wonder what would happen if each of us looked at ways that we might move up one step in our giving—wherever you find yourselves on the stair steps. I encourage you to take this home this week and spend some time in prayer with it. Take the time to do the math. Find where you fall on the front and on the back. And ask yourself do you feel good about what you are giving to God? Or is it something you would like to try to change? Next Sunday, we will gather together in worship and we will make our commitment to God for what we hope to give in the coming year as a part of worship. Following the 10:30 service, we will have a catered, celebratory luncheon where we will celebrate the grace of God, all the gifts that God has given us, and our common life here together. I want to leave you with a story to think about this week. I read a story several years ago about a team of researchers that did a study of monkeys. They placed the monkeys’ favorite kind of nuts down in the bottom of a long-skinny necked bottle, and they would leave it anchored there over night. In the morning, they would come back, and they would always find a monkey, with his hand caught in the bottle, gripped around the nut, and trapped there. Scientists were amazed that all the monkey had to do to be free was to let go of the nut. But they never did. When we give to God, that is one way that we are loosening our grip on the nut that keeps us trapped, acknowledging and asking for healing for the ways that money is an impediment in our relationship with God. What might God be calling you to give, to let go of just a little bit this year?