The 5th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 8A

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 8A July 2, 2023 So… nothing like a biblical story about potential child sacrifice to get your week started off right! As you might imagine, we had some spirited discussion about our Old Testament reading from Genesis for today in our Wednesday healing service conversation. Perhaps you’ll be relieved to know that none of us sat easily with this reading for this week, and we raised more questions than answers around it: What is God up to in this story? Does God show change or growth throughout the stories of scripture? What might God ask of us that we treasure? Others spoke knowingly about what it is like to sacrifice something or someone that we love when we feel that is what God is asking of us. We spoke about relationships between children and parents and we talked about what obedience to God looks like in our lives even now. I closed our time with this reflection from Unfolding Light by Steve Garnaas-Holmes, and our Wednesday congregation instructed me to read it to you this morning. Unbinding my Isaac God tested Abraham. and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” God said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” So Abraham went… —Genesis 22.1-3 God, I confess I ask others to be my sacrifice. What I have been given to tend, and those I have been given to love, I have used. Without thought I have ascribed it to you, as if it is how you have arranged the world. I have abused my power and privilege, and neglected how my benefit has caused others to suffer. I have justified it in your name. I repent. Hold my hand. Stay my knife. Open my eyes. Give me grace to unbind my Isaac, to set free what I have intended to use, to renounce my entitlement to comfort that costs others. God, I myself am Isaac, bound by my own self-serving. May my selfishness be my sacrifice. Unbind me, and set me free.i. What are the people, places, things, memories, ideas that you hold more dearly than God? How might God be calling you to hold those more loosely? How might God be inviting you to be unbound and set free? Isaac is the physical embodiment and fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah. He’s what Abraham has longed for and holds most dearly in his life. God tests Abraham’s faithfulness or obedience to God by asking Abraham to give up what has the potential to be an idol for Abraham, an impediment in Abraham’s relationship with God. Can you think of a time when you have been asked to relinquish something that you cherished? That relinquishing feels like a death, like a willing leap off a spiritual cliff. And yet, we experience, again and again, new life on the other side of that letting go. In the Romans reading for today, Paul points out that the choice isn’t between slavery and freedom but the choice is to whom one will be enslaved. Will we be enslaved to that which separates us from God or will we know the freedom that is found in obedience to God through Christ? God offers to Abraham and us a call to risk a change, an invitation to examine our relationships between what we hold most dear, if we have made them into idols, an invitation to examine if what we hold most dear has, in fact, become a stumbling block for us in our relationships with God, an impediment in seeing how the Holy Spirit is calling us into deeper life in God and in each other. Sometimes it can be surprising what we uncover when we imagine how what we hold most dear can be or has become a stumbling block between us and God. Here’s an example. While I was on vacation, I had a dream that I was trying to convince a Dutch billionaire to invest in my new project where I use pickleball to draw people into community and into the church. I’ve started playing pickleball this summer with some local ladies once a week; it’s a group of novice pickleballers who my friend Helen has pulled together, and I love it! I’ve enjoyed learning a new sport and playing the game, and I’ve loved making new friends. In my dream, I was presenting a convincing argument to this Dutch billionaire about how we were using pickleball to create meaningful community and change lives, and that it would be a good tool for the Church to use as well. I was telling the billionaire how the (capital C) Church was struggling with creating authentic and engaging community, and how I worried that the Church was broken. I texted my friend Helen about my dream. (Helen is also a priest.) And I realized in our text conversation that perhaps my dream was pointing out to me how even the church can become an idol, a stumbling block in our relationship with God. How God might be inviting us to relinquish and risk to adopt new ways of being together and carrying out God’s mission in the world. It’s a sobering thought for me. I’ve spent 20 years of my life working to build up God’s church. What might it look like for me to hold it a bit more loosely? God, I confess I ask others to be my sacrifice. What I have been given to tend, and those I have been given to love, I have used. Without thought I have ascribed it to you, as if it is how you have arranged the world. I have abused my power and privilege, and neglected how my benefit has caused others to suffer. I have justified it in your name. I repent. Hold my hand. Stay my knife. Open my eyes. Give me grace to unbind my Isaac, to set free what I have intended to use, to renounce my entitlement to comfort that costs others. God, I myself am Isaac, bound by my own self-serving. May my selfishness be my sacrifice. Unbind me, and set me free.i. What are the people, places, things, memories, ideas that you hold more dearly than God? How might God be calling you to hold those more loosely? How might God be inviting you to be unbound and set free? i. https://unfoldinglight.net/2023/06/27/unbinding-my-isaac/

3rd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 6A

3rd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 6A June 18, 2023 I want to share with you a mediation that I read this week that I’ve been contemplating. After I read it, I’ll share with you some questions to consider and another lens to look through. Sent by Steve Garnaas-Holmes Proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. —Matthew 10.7-8 You are given power and authority and sent, not to proselytize, not to enact “Christian” legislation, but to heal. In your workplace, in your community, in your family. How can you possibly do this? Because you are given power and authority. You are given love, which casts out fear— slowly, to be sure, but it does cast out fear. You won’t cast out all the demons of greed or racism, or cure the whole epidemic of loneliness or despair. But you will love, even one person at a time, and maybe your witness will move crowds. But remember you are an empty vessel; it is not your power but God’s. And though your vessel is small, that power is infinite. Go, then, and peace be with you. i. One of the questions I want you to consider today is where in your life, your world, your family, your work, are you being sent by Jesus to be a messenger of his healing? This week, I read an article from the Barna Research Group that was published this past May. According to their website, Barna’s goal is to “reveal the cultural and religious trends affecting your life everyday.” This article is titled Openness to Jesus Isn’t the Problem—the Church Is. (I know, right?! Ouch!!) Here’s the gist of the article: “When we asked Americans whether they have a positive or negative opinion of Jesus, seven in 10 (71%) say they view him positively…Beyond Jesus, when it comes to views of other Christian groups or entities, positive opinions wane. People of no faith are neutral or leaning negative [when it comes to how they view Christianity as a whole]…Among those of no faith, even Christian individuals are not viewed so favorably. Further, the data… shows why people may be reluctant to hold Christian beliefs, with the top reason today being ‘hypocrisy of religious people.’” According to the data, the biggest divergence in the perceptions around Christianity between Christians and non-Christians is found in three areas. 1. 48% of surveyed Christians say that Christianity is a faith that they respect. When non-religious people were asked if Christianity is a faith they respect, only 15% agreed. 2. When Christians were asked if they considered Christianity to be hypocritical, 23% answered they thought it was. Of the non-religious people, 49% said Christianity was hypocritical. 3. And finally, when Christians were asked if Christianity was judgmental, 22% said they thought it was. Of the non-religious, 48% thought that Christianity was judgmental. ii Wow, that’s depressing! Did y’all know this? Are y’all living with this reality already? What on earth are we supposed to do about this? I think we need to reflect on this again in light of the question I posed earlier: where in your life, your world, your family, your work, are you being sent by Jesus to be a messenger of his healing? Maybe the first healing we need to be attentive to is our own? I was at the gym the other day, and while I didn’t say anything or act on it, I sure was judging the two men I saw who did not wipe down their workout machines. I was judging them in my heart, and you know what else? I was judging their mamas, too! (Why? You can say it with me: “Because they must not have raised them right!”) I can say all day long that I’m not one of “those kind of Christians.” “It’s the evangelicals. They give us all a bad name!” But when I’m being really honest, I know that I am judgmental, that I am hypocritical. And just maybe I need to seek out Jesus’s healing for that in me before I get sent out to offer his healing out in the world? When we’re at our best, it’s what we do here. We gather, we pray, we confess, we receive pardon, we take in the body and blood of Jesus who heals us, and then we are sent out into the world to proclaim the good news of his healing and to be agents of his same healing, not through our own power or gifts or charisma, but through the power of the Holy Spirit, who is with us always. I invite you to think about that as I read the mediation one more time and close with your questions for reflection for this week. Sent by Steve Garnaas-Holmes Proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. —Matthew 10.7-8 You are given power and authority and sent, not to proselytize, not to enact “Christian” legislation, but to heal. In your workplace, in your community, in your family. How can you possibly do this? Because you are given power and authority. You are given love, which casts out fear— slowly, to be sure, but it does cast out fear. You won’t cast out all the demons of greed or racism, or cure the whole epidemic of loneliness or despair. But you will love, even one person at a time, and maybe your witness will move crowds. But remember you are an empty vessel; it is not your power but God’s. And though your vessel is small, that power is infinite. Go, then, and peace be with you. What do you need to ask Jesus for healing for this day in this place? Where in your life, your world, your family, your work, are you being sent by Jesus to be a messenger of his healing? i. https://unfoldinglight.net/2023/06/13/sent/ ii. https://www.barna.com/research/openness-to-jesus/

The Second Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 5 Year A

2nd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 5A June 11, 2023 “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” Jesus is quoting Hosea 6:6 in our gospel reading for today: Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ But I also know this passage as one of Matt Devenney’s favorite bible verses. It’s strange that I know that this is one of Matt Devenney’s favorite bible verses, but I never actually knew Matt Devenney. Matt was the Executive Director of Stewpot years before I got there. By the time I started working at Stewpot in the late 90’s/early 2000’s, the soup kitchen in inner city Jackson had expanded dramatically and had moved from the gas station across the street to the former Presbyterian church whose fellowship hall had been transformed into the heart of the soup kitchen where people from all over Jackson would gather to enjoy a daily, hot meal. Stewpot’s executive director had been a friend of Matt’s, and sometimes he talked about him, while pointing to the photo of Matt holding his young son that watched over us all from a prominent place in the lunchroom. On June 19, 1991, the 33 year old Matt Devenney had confronted a man named John D. Smith who had a gun with him where everyone was gathering outside for lunch. In an effort to protect the community, Matt had told John that he couldn’t be there with a gun. John was not unknown to Matt. Matt had been working with him, trying to help him as John had been discharged from the Army with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, and had received treatment in both a state hospital and a veterans' medical center. After Matt confronted John, John began moving away across the street, and Matt moved toward him. Some of the witnesses suggested that Matt was trying to protect the group of men gathered behind him in case John decided to fire into the crowd. John shouted at Matt that he couldn’t stop him from having a gun because he was the governor of Mississippi, and then he turned and shot Matt in the chest two times at close range. John was arrested later that day. Matt died, leaving behind a wife and a two year old son. Matt was buried wearing a medallion that had been given to him by his sister. On the front is an image of Jesus on the back are the words of Matthew 9:13: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” i I was working at Stewpot 10 years after Matt’s death, and in my three years there, I learned as much or more as I learned in my three years of seminary. Matt’s legacy of tending toward mercy had created a community that was a glimpse into the kingdom of God: a place where all can come to be fed, where all sit together around the table, where people come to serve and be served and where there is mutuality in those relationships. As I would eat lunch with those folks every day, working with them, creating friendships and relationships, I realized that they had so much less than me, and yet that had so much more gratitude for the gift of each new day. I learned that every single one of us is able to give or show mercy and that every single one of us is in need of mercy, from God and from our fellow children of God. We fool ourselves when we think we don’t need mercy, and this is what Jesus is trying to teach us and the Pharisees in today’s gospel: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” We are, each and every one of us, made in the image and likeness of God, and each and every one of us falls short of the glory of God. None of us is truly righteous, and every one of us is in need of mercy—lovingkindness, forgiveness, grace. When we believe that we are not in need of mercy, when we think we have it all together or all figured out is when we harden our hearts like the Pharisees, who were faithful religious people just like us, and we begin to question who deserves mercy and a place at Jesus’s table. So, what does it mean to show or to receive mercy? Many of us think of showing mercy as giving to those who beg from us, and there is certainly mercy wrapped up in that. But what if seeking and showing mercy is broader and wider than giving to beggars? What if showing mercy means inviting the new kid to sit with you at lunch or expanding your circle of friendship beyond its normal or natural bounds? What if mercy means being patient with someone when you are running out of patience to give? What if mercy means putting yourself in someone else’s shoes in daily encounters, or offering someone the benefit of the doubt before rushing to judgement? What if mercy means being honest but tempering that honesty with kindness? What if mercy means looking for the humanity in others and responding to that? Can you think of a time when you felt called to show someone mercy? Can you think of a time when you were in need of mercy or someone gave it to you without you having to ask for it? “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” i. Some of these details are found in the Sojourner’s article titled A Teacher of Mercy by Joyce Hollyday: https://sojo.net/magazine/october-1991/teacher-mercy

First Sunday after Pentecost/Trinity Sunday Year A

First Sunday after Pentecost-Trinity Sunday Year A June 4, 2023 What would you think if I said to you, “Well, bless your heart!?” It can mean any number of things, right?, depending on the context. I could say it to you to comfort you. I can say it to you pitying. I can say it to you as a joke, or even making fun of you. I had a friend in seminary who was Canadian and most recently from Minnesota who found herself befriended by many of the Southerners in our class, and she spent months making a study of “bless your heart,” seeking to understand the myriad of ways that it was used and invoked in conversation by the rest of us. And what she learned is that it’s all about tone. i In the book The Lives We Actually Have (which is actually a book of blessings), Kate Bowler and co-author Jessica Richie write about blessing in the introduction: “The act of blessing is the strange and vital work of noticing what is true about God and ourselves. And sometimes those truths are awful. Like, blessed are those who mourn. I mean scripturally it’s true. Jesus said it. But does any of that feel true when our worlds are ripped to pieces? No. Or, blessed are the poor. Again, it doesn’t feel true at all. But in the act of blessing the world as it is and as it should be, we are starting to reassemble what we know. Maybe, God, you are here in the midst of this grief. Maybe, God, you can provide for this specific problem or be discoverable when I’m buttering this toast.” They continue, “For that reason, [another author] calls the act of blessing a kind of spiritual “placement.” This goes here. That goes there. We are beginning to fit this moment into the larger order of things, the divine story of God’s work and purposes. I find that language of placement and re-placement to be incredibly satisfying. Blessings put our spiritual house in order, even when our circumstances are entirely out of order.” I love that understanding of blessings as something that help us name our realties and help us order or re-order our lives. In our reading from 2nd Corinthians for today, Paul is concluding that letter and he is invoking the power of the divine relationship including the characteristics of the relationship of the Trinity: order, mutual agreement, and peace. And he offers the people of the church of Corinth God’s blessing in a trinitarian blessing that is unique to all of Paul’s letters: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” So what’s really happening here? The church at Corinth is Paul’s “problem children.” He’s already written them one letter where he is letting them have it because he has heard that they are divided up into factions. In first Corinthians, he urges them toward unity and to remember the faith that he taught them when he was with them. In second Corinthians, Paul has gotten wind that these folks known as the “super-apostles” have moved into town and are influencing the Corinthians. The super-apostles are questioning the absent Paul’s credentials, and so he defends himself and reminds the Corinthians to not be led astray by false teachers of the gospel. Perhaps Paul is trying to remind the Corinthians about the nature of God who is social and relational, that we are made in the image of God, so we are social and relational also? Perhaps because he has such difficulties with the Corinthians, Paul is urging them to draw upon the full resources of God for this troubled chapter in their life-reminding them that the love of God is available to them; that the grace of Christ is already theirs, and that the Holy Spirit is actively working to connect them with Paul, with each other and with the followers of Jesus all around the world. There are echoes here of Jesus’ promise in Matthew, that he will be with his disciples and us always, even to the end of the age. The gift of the Trinity, the divine relationship, is that we are all always connected—the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always in relationship with each other and us; we are connected through the Holy Spirit as the body of Christ that transcends time and space, this life and the next. In our Wednesday healing service, we reflected on a time when we received an unexpected blessing from someone. The common threads in those experiences were when a person we encountered (sometimes a stranger, sometimes someone more intimate) named something about us or about the world that helped us re-order our understanding of ourselves or the world, helped connect us deeper to others, and helped us be more at peace. This is the ultimate gift of blessing and it is the ultimate gift of Christian community—why we need each other--to help uncover and discover truths about God and ourselves that we couldn’t find on our own. I invite you to reflect on this notion of blessing this week as well. Think about a time when you received an unexpected blessing and how that changed what you know about yourself or the world around you. And be open to paying attention to ways you might be called to receive or to offer blessings from others this week. Today as we mark the end of Rev Aimee’s time with us, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the unexpected blessing she has been in our lives here in this place over the last five years. Some of my colleagues thought I was crazy hiring a United Methodist deacon, but it worked, so HA!!!! She has freely shared her gifts of ordering things, of creating connections; she has helped us be more aware of pop-culture and the world around us. I mean, let’s be honest….how many of us finally broke down and watched Ted Lasso because Aimee wouldn’t stop asking if we’d watched it yet? She definitely brings the fun, and we are grateful for all the ways that she blessed us and helped us learn more about the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of Holy Spirit as she walked this way with us for a season. i. Here’s an interesting article from Southern Living that helps unpack more the phrase “bless your heart”: https://www.southernliving.com/culture/bless-your-heart-response

Easter 7A

Easter 7A May 21, 2023 One of my friends was talking about a new McDonald’s commercial that she heard this week on one of her podcasts. The commercial was promoting McDonald’s new order from the app and retrieve your order from the counter with no wait service, and one of the voices on the commercial exclaimed, “Waiting is the worst!” My friend said that her initial response to the commercial was to take umbrage that waiting had been so characterized and to lean into her more contemplative side and to think about some of the things that she actually relishes about waiting. So what do you think? Are there benefits to waiting that you have known and tasted, or are you with the McDonald’s ad in thinking that “waiting is the worst!” While I understand the spiritual gifts that are often found in waiting, I will confess that it is lately something that I have been struggling with. I’m finding myself especially impatient these days when folks don’t respond to my emails or texts in what I deem to be a timely enough fashion. I don’t think I had realized just how much of an issue waiting has become for me of late until I started reading a particular book this week. I saw it advertised on Facebook that it was releasing that day and then immediately downloaded it onto my kindle so I could begin reading it. It’s titled When Church Stops Working: A Future for Your Congregation beyond More Money, Programs, and Innovation. It’s co-authored by Andrew Root and Blair Bertrand. It’s been an interesting read for me because the authors suggest that we think that the problems in our churches are the decline (in membership, giving, influence and belief). And that we have bought into the secularized idea that our own innovation is what will save us. The authors suggest that the decline (in membership, giving, influence and belief) isn’t the actual problem but is instead a symptom of the actual problem. They suggest that churches have been infected by the secular age and what it essentially boils down to is that we think that we can save ourselves, but the gospel narrative tells us over and over again that only God can save us. The authors use our Acts and gospel readings for today to point to what the call of the church has been from the beginning. Let’s look at these two readings. In Luke and Acts, we have part one and part two of the same book, so think about it like a book and its sequel, or if you’re like Rev Aimee, you can think of it in movie terms like Star Wars: A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. In the reading from Luke today, we see Jesus giving his disciples his final farewell. He has been eating and drinking with them, teaching them for 40 days since his resurrection; he reminds them what it has all been about saying: “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised.” And then he gives them a command: “Y’all wait here!” [Ok, actually he says, “Stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”] And then he ascends into heaven. We see an elaboration on the story in our reading from Acts today—where the disciples are left gaping up at heaven when two mysterious men appear and shake them out of their reverie, and they head back to Jerusalem where Jesus told them to wait and there they were “constantly devoting themselves to prayer…” And Acts tells us that they do ok at this for a while until Peter decides it is time to do some church administration (showing that Peter is truly a person after my own heart). This book I’m reading suggests that Peter gets antsy with the waiting, so he decides that they need to find a replacement disciple for Judas. (This is the section from Acts that immediately follows our reading for today: Acts 1:15-26.) So left to their own devices while they wait, the book suggests that the disciples elect a new disciples “Vegas-style” by casting lots. The lots fall on Matthias, and he becomes the 12th apostle, and we never hear about him again for the rest of the book of Acts. The authors suggest that after a time, the 12th apostle position is actually filled by God in the person of Saul who becomes Paul who features prominently in the rest of the story of the book of Acts. And in this way, they highlight the difference between when we are supposed to wait but act anyway versus when God acts and how God’s action impacts the world and the church in dramatic and unexpected ways. So, the premise of the part of the book I’ve read so far is that we, like the early disciples, are called to wait—to gather regularly and pray together and tell stories—so that our waiting isn’t inactive but rather our waiting is active and responsive to God. And just like the early church, sometimes our waiting can be scared and anxious, but the crux of our faith is that we will wait and that God will show up. They write, “This is faith: that what God has promised, God will do. This is hope: that the God who began a good work will see it to completion.”i When we wait, we change our stance, from trying to make things happen to being open to what God will make happen and also the connections that we form with one another as we wait together. This is all truly counter-cultural. We are a culture filled with busy-ness. Our calendars are always fully booked. Our children are shuttled from activity to activity. Our church is always looking toward the next event. What might it be like for us to spend this summer waiting to see how God is going to show up in our midst? What might it mean for us to commit to gathering together for prayer and worship and conversation and have that be the main thing that we do? I continue to be blown away by how the Holy Spirit is already showing up in our midst! I wonder what it would be like if we slow down even more? How God might surprise us? This week, I invite you to join me in examining your attitude around waiting and to join me in examining what Jesus’s call to wait for God’s Holy Spirit to show up in our church this summer might look like. i. Root, Andrew and Blair Bertrand. When Church Stops Working: A Future for Your Congregation beyond More Money, Programs, and Innovation. Brazos: 2023, p 23

Easter 6A

Sixth Sunday of Easter Year A May 14, 2023 This week, I celebrated the 19th anniversary of my first ordination—my ordination to the transitional diaconate. (In the Episcopal church, everyone is ordained a deacon first so those of us who go on to other ministries—priest or bishop—always have that ministry of servanthood at our foundation.) So, I’ve been ordained for 19 years as of this past week, and my life as an ordained person started at almost the exact same time as my life as a mother. I was ordained on May 6 and our oldest, Mary Margaret was born less than a month later on June 4. (She likes to tell people that she’s technically an ordained deacon which is what the bishop who ordained me speculated.) This week, I’ve been thinking about all the ways that I’ve learned to love differently over the past 19 years—both as a mother and as a parish priest, about how the ways that I love has expanded more dramatically than I ever could have imagined when I first started on these two side-by-side vocations in my life. In our gospel reading for today, we are transported back in time to Maundy Thursday evening, the evening before Jesus’s death. He and his disciples are gathered in the upper room together, and in John’s gospel, he is giving them a version of what Jane Gilchrist calls “the Southern Long Goodbye.” (We don’t say goodbye quickly, here in the South, she observes, and Jesus truly lives into this in John’s gospel as the section that is known as his “farewell discourse” spans over 5 whole chapters.) In the preceding chapter 13, Jesus has washed his disciples’ feet and has told them about the new commandment that he is giving them: “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (that’s John 13:34-35). In our reading for today, Jesus is expanding on this new commandment and what it means for the disciples to keep it. And he is promising that he will not leave them orphaned, but that God will send the disciples someone else to assist them. The original Greek word, which is paraclete, is translated very differently across the different translations. In our NRSV translation it is “advocate.” Other translations translate the word as any of the following: counselor, companion, helper, friend, or comforter. Jesus is promising his disciples (and us) that this gift of the spirit will be an expansion of the knowing and the loving that the disciples have already had with Jesus, and we get to see the fruits of that expansion in the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles. We see how these confused, frightened, bumbling disciples become expanded in their capacity for love and for faithfulness and for fearlessness and how they spread the good news of Jesus’ resurrection from beyond their small circle of discipleship to the whole world. We see how Saul, who in our reading just last week, was giving his approval for the stoning of Jesus’s disciple Stephen has now become Paul, one of the most ardent and faithful preachers of the good news of the resurrection, risking his own imprisonment and eventually being put to death himself. At its best, the whole Christian story is a story of how love helps us grow and expand beyond what we are comfortable with and even capable of when left to our own devices. And we know this in our life and loves, don’t we? Hopefully, we’ve all felt the way that love can expand us beyond anything we’ve ever imagined. But we also know that there’s always more to learn in how we love. This past week, I read an article that starts with a quote by someone named Alvin Toffler. “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” The article goes on to talk about what churches need to unlearn from the pandemic: “many of us learned that we could change quickly if we really need to. We need to unlearn that ‘quick fixes’ will ever solve our greatest challenges in an enduring way.” Or “we learned we didn’t have to do everything the way we have always done it. [And] we need to unlearn our default behavior of always returning to what is familiar as soon as the crisis is over.” The author goes on to suggest that the step beyond learning and unlearning is relearning and he suggests that “to be a disciple is to be a learner. And the church is meant to be a learning community based on the love we have for each other and for our Lord. Loving relationships don’t just give support, they help us open ourselves to the lessons we are often missing in our anxious moments.”i I love this image of the church as a learning community upheld in the loving relationship that was begun and nurtured in God through Jesus and that is sustained by the gift of the Holy Spirit in our midst! And I’ve been pondering what sorts of things we as a community of faith are being called to unlearn and relearn in this season of life together. As you all probably know, I’ve been interviewing candidates for our position that will be open with Rev Aimee’s departure to Nashville in early June. I’ve talked to a number of people about how this church loves our children and about how it is a community that teaches and supports our children but also that learns from them. (This was illustrated beautifully in Jennifer Calver’s homily last Sunday for Youth Sunday. You can read it on our blog if you didn’t get to hear it.) And I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what we need to unlearn and relearn again as a church from our children and young families and also thinking how we might go about doing that in a deliberate way. I don’t have any answers yet, but I did want to share with y’all some of the things that I’ve been learning/unlearning/relearning about all this that is helping me expand in how I love my children and their peers. Most of this new learning comes from a Continuing Education class I took last month from the center of lifelong learning at Virginia Theological Seminary that was all about what we are learning about Generation Z—that’s people who are ages 3-21 years old right now. There was also a little bit of teaching in there about Generation Alpha, who are 0-3 years olds, and the parents of these two generations which are the generation known as the Millennials. (I’m Gen X, in case you’re wondering, but I’ve got a younger brother who’s a millennial.) What this class taught about Generation Z (ages 3-21) was fascinating! They are a generation who has only ever known life with social media and our current level of technology (virtual world natives whose full life is documented on social media). They are known as the new culture creators, and they are the most diverse generation in history. They are racially diverse (split 50/50 between white people and people of color), and that diversity also is expanded to include sexual orientation. And before I say this next part, I need to appeal to the love I have for you and the trust that I have in y’all. You have helped me expand in my understanding of what it means to love and be loved by a parish, and part of that love means for me to say this out loud here in this place in this moment because I believe that we all need to hear it, even though it may be difficult, as a part of the learning that we do together here as a community of faith. In these interviews I am having to fill our soon-to-be open clergy position, I am being asked if we’d be open to gay or lesbian clergy. I’m being asked how/if we would welcome a clergy person with a non-binary or trans child. And this isn’t surprising given what we are learning about generation z. One of the speakers for that continuing ed training I took said this to those of us who were learning: “Gen Z is looking to see if your ministry values diversity. They want your values to be pronounced. They want to know how we explain our feelings on diversity. Gen Z as a whole doesn’t trust religious institutions, even though they are deeply spiritual and spiritually hungry. They don’t think religious institutions are transparent and they worry that they can’t bring a friend with a minoritized identity to church with them because of how we might treat them.” ii This is talking about the Big C church, and yet, I can’t help but wonder how our children here would answer if we asked them about this? My own children are helping me expand in my understanding of what it means to love as they are moving into upper teens and young adulthood. They each have a very diverse group of friends which includes people from different races and friends who are non-binary and transgendered. I have dear friends who are parenting non-binary and trans kids. It has not been easy for any of us to learn about this, and yet, learning for us has been a form of loving. You know, I really didn’t want to preach this sermon today. I wanted to give y’all something nice to talk about over Mother’s Day brunch. I even asked God to give me something else to preach, and you know what God did. God reminded me of one of our Wednesday healing congregation, who has shared with us how conversations with a young friend who is wrestling with her faith have opened the door for our church member to wrestle with her own faith and to even expand in how she understands love. She’s been so brave, and I am so thankful for how she has shared that with us. I hope I can be so brave. I hope we all can be so brave here together. i. https://pres-outlook.org/2021/11/what-does-the-church-need-to-unlearn-from-the-pandemic/?fbclid=IwAR296B8Ea4uINqu1Ng1IswXCEwPXe2g1HPYkpB9cGZSl5UopclDBjFrTpK4 ii. From my notes from the presentation by Kevin Singer from Springtide Research from the Gens Z and Alpha webinar from TryTank and the Center for Lifelong Formation at Virginia Theological Seminary

3rd Sunday of Easter Year A

3rd Sunday of Easter-Year A April 23, 2023 A letter to Hugh Love McLaurin, III, upon the occasion of your baptism. Dear Hugh, It’s the third Sunday of Easter, which means we are still celebrating, feasting for 50 days, and today we also have the deep joy of celebrating your baptism with you and your family. Easter baptisms are really the best because they are very much buoyed up by the stories of Jesus’s appearances after his resurrection. These stories are filled with the myriad ways that Jesus shows up for his followers after his death and resurrection, and how his appearance never fails to surprise them. Last week, the no-longer-dead Jesus shows up in the locked room with his terrified disciples offering them his peace and the gift of the Holy Spirit. This week, he journeys on the road to Emmaus as a stranger with his weary, confused, and disappointed disciples. They share parts of their faith stories with each other, and when the disciples offer the affable stranger hospitality, they are surprised to discover that it is the Risen Christ who has been walking with them on their journey. The Easter season is chock full of surprises, and it reminds us that the life of faith, the life of the baptized mean that we, too, are to be open to being surprised by the Risen Christ. It reminds us of all the ways that he shows up unexpectedly in our lives, in and through the Church, and in our world. In our reading today from Acts of the Apostles, we see the conclusion of Peter’s moving speech to a crowd in Jerusalem. As a result of the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, Peter has been testifying to them that Jesus is the Messiah; the crowd is moved and ready, and so they ask Peter, “what should we do?” Peter urges them to repent—to “turn from what one has been and done” and to be baptized, and scripture tells us that 3,000 people were baptized that day. In writing about this conversion experience in Acts, another preacher writes, “ ‘What should we do’ (v.37) is exactly the question we should ask, not once or twice over the course of the Christian life, but every single day….What should we do? Perhaps put on a new set of glasses so as to see the world in all its resurrected splendor.” Today, young Hugh, your parents and your godparents are standing before God and saying yes or your behalf. Even before your birth, God has named and claimed you as God’s beloved, and your parents and godparents are accepting your belovedness. They are making promises before God and the Church that they will raise you in the Christian faith, the community that will help you nurture and live into your belovedness. That means that they will teach you how to see the world through these resurrection lenses; they will encourage you to grow into your own unique faith life and invite you to be open to being surprised by the Risen Christ when he shows up in your life. And we, the Church, make a promise to you today, also. We promise that we will walk alongside you, we will gather with you, listening to and sharing the stories of our faith, breaking bread together, encouraging you when you need encouragement, challenging you when you need to be challenged, and comforting you when you are discouraged. We will gather together with you over the years because we know that the Risen Christ shows up when we gather together and share the stories of our faith and break bread together. You are already showing me glimpses of the surprising Risen Christ, sweet Hugh, in your beaming smile when you come forward for communion with your parents every Sunday. I look forward to many more years of walking this way with you, and of us being surprised by the Risen Christ together in this place. Your sister in Christ, Melanie+