All the Days of Christmas

A sermon for Christmas Day preached as St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.
The lectionary readings for Christmas Day are here.

My sister is an expert gift-wrapper. Under her tree each year are matching presents with pretty paper, bows, and other crafty embellishments, Pinterest perfect. I, however, am not much of a gift-wrapper, my wrapping tends to look more like it came from the butcher shop than Hallmark. I much prefer putting things in bags with a bit of tissue paper and calling it good. Jim doesn’t even worry about the bag, he just puts a bow on the box the item arrived in and puts it under the tree.

Whichever type of ‘wrapper’ you are, I think it’s safe to say we all like to both give and receive things in neat little boxes or bags with pretty bows. During the month of December we like to count down the days until Christmas with the little doors and drawers and boxes of our Advent calendars. We like to consolidate the 12 days of Christmas into a song that we sing faster and faster with each verse until we are laughing so hard we can’t sing any more. We buy special storage containers to hold it all safe until next year. Even our church calendar organized things for us – we do Advent things during Advent, Christmas things during the Christmas season, Easter things at Easter; each year we do the whole of Jesus’ birth, teachings and ministry, death, resurrection and ascension in twelve months, crafting and coordinating all we do with the season.

And yet, I think we are all able to say that God is beyond our human understanding, and organizing what we do in ChurchLand around the life and ministry of Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-us is one of the intentional and real ways we are shaped and transformed by God’s love for us. We have no choice in our human capacity to use words too small for God to talk about our relationship with our Creator, our life as we are created to live it. And, hopefully, we do so with the understanding that God is not contained by our countdown calendars, our songs, our boxes and bows, our tidy storage containers, or even our defined seasons and celebrations.

So, over the next couple of weeks as we begin to pack up all of our tinsel, putting our items of anticipation and celebration into their storage containers, I’m going to suggest that you find something to leave up all year long. But not your outside lights or decorations – that will just make your neighbors talk about you unfavorably.

I know of a family among us who leaves their decorated tree up all year and it brings great delight as you enter their home in April or July or September. Pick something that genuinely enlivens your sense of anticipation when you see it and put it somewhere where it will catch your eye from time to time and surprise and delight you. Even as we count down the next 12 days and our calendars continue to move from day to day through the year, keep your sense of anticipation awake. Be alert to God’s presence with you every day, in all of the ups and downs of our life. Let God delight you all year. Let God amaze you all year. Let Love shape and transform you all year.

In his book, the Mood of Christmas, written in 1973, Howard Thurman wrote “I know that the experiences of unity in human relations are more compelling than the concepts, the fears, the prejudices, which divide. Despite the tendency to feel my race superior, my nation the greatest nation, my faith the true faith, I must beat down the boundaries of my exclusiveness until my sense of separateness is completely enveloped in a sense of fellowship. I will light the candle of fellowship this Christmas, a candle that must burn all the year long.”

This is the same book in which he published the poem most of us are familiar with, titled The Work of Christmas:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.

God’s gift to us didn’t come neatly wrapped in Pinterest perfect bows and embellishments. Even the best wrappers among us can’t make God’s gift any more beautiful or glorious. Even the most organized among us can’t contain the awe and wonder of God. God’s gift to us is God’s self given “In the beginning,” at creation when God spoke us into being with the Divine Image in each of us. In the gift of Jesus, God chose to come among us and show us in flesh and blood what it is to live into the Image within each of us, showing us how this way of being that is beyond our understanding is the truth of who and Whose we are.

In God’s gift of God’s self, we discover hopeful transformation, the peace that comes with justice, the joy of self-fulfillment in fellowship and community, and the love that empowers us to make our own unique contributions to the Kingdom on Earth.  In Jesus we find light and life, and the courage to be like him, answering his call and following in his footsteps every day of the year.

Through the whole of this year to come, rejoice in God’s presence in our lives, anticipate the coming of Jesus in and through us, in all that we think, say, and do. Don’t try to contain what God chooses to do through us.

Come to us, Lord Jesus. Be born in us this day, in our hearts, our minds, our lives. Lead us in the shining truth of God with us, God for us, God in us. Amen

What Day is it?

An Advent sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.
You can find the reading for the Fourth Sunday of Advent here.

Are you just a little perplexed about what day it is? Our calendars tell us it is December 24, what we know as Christmas Eve, yet here we are, with our purple banners, lighting the fourth candle on our Advent Wreath, singing Advent hymns, and talking of the angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary. Sometimes the annual rhythm of our worship is a bit discordant with our calendar. It is still, in ChurchLand, the Fourth Sunday of Advent, at least until we change the altar hangings from purple to white after our morning worship, and then it’s Christmas. Sometimes a little perplexity is good – it makes us stop and pay attention; with unexpected alertness we ask “what’s happening and why?”

We can’t step into Christmas Eve without first wrapping up Advent. The words we have assigned to the first three candles of our wreath – hope, peace, and joy – each describe a way of being, an inner experience of who and Whose we are. And those are not complete, even possible, without Love. It is God’s love – the word assigned to the fourth candle – that enables us to experience the other descriptors.

Hope is our willingness to wait patiently on God to fulfill all of God’s promises, trusting in God because God is faithful.
Pease is our confidence that even in the turmoil of this world, God is with us.
Joy is our awareness of the goodness of God at all times, in all places, and in all people.
Love is the outward and visible behaviors that reveal the hope, peace, and joy of our hearts and souls.

And Jesus is at the center of it all, at the center of our lives, strengthening us with hope, guiding us with peace, energizing us with joy, all flowing from God’s love. So, I’d like to offer, that Advent, as we follow Jesus, is never actually done; we are to live in the anticipation of the Kingdom on earth as in heaven as if it were already so.

As Luke tells us the Christmas Story, he tells of wonder and amazement – from Mary’s “how can this be” to Gabriel’s “nothing is impossible with God.” God chose to come among us through the simple life of a young girl in a world dominated by older men. God chose to come to this world in a way quite discordant with what most expected, not with military or political or economical power, but with a simple family in a nowhere town. In two thousand years, our idea of how God should do things hasn’t changed much. Our world still tries to claim political, economical, and military power as God’s plan even as we look upon our manger scenes and read the stories that tell us differently*.

It is very unlikely that Mary could read or write but she was far from illiterate. She was a young woman well versed in and deeply shaped by her faith in God and she her perplexity at Gabriel’s visit enable her to marvel at God’s love and ask what was happening and why, not out of fear but in awe and wonder – that God would chose to come into this world, nurtured by a mother’s love. Raised by parents who chose to walk in the love they knew would be necessary for the calling they said ‘yes’ to. How often do we stop and let ourselves be amazed at the Love come to us.

I used to talk of unconditional love but I read somewhere recently that unconditional love is redundant because once you add a condition to it, it’s no longer love. Our presiding bishop Michael Curry defines love as ‘other focused’ and says the opposite isn’t hate but self-centeredness. St. Paul says “Love is patient, love is kind, it isn’t jealous, it doesn’t brag, it isn’t arrogant, it isn’t rude, it doesn’t seek its own advantage, it isn’t irritable, it doesn’t keep a record of complaints, it isn’t happy with injustice, but it is happy with the truth.”
(1 Corinthians 13:4-6 CEB). We can do all the good works in the world but if we are doing it for the purpose of making ourselves feel good rather than for the greater good of all, we are not acting out of love.

Yet, we can’t not mention that love as God loves, doesn’t mean we get away with harmful or dangerous behavior. Love isn’t a free-for-all, do-as-we-like-regardless-of-the-impact-on-others way of living. Love always considers the impact of our thoughts, words, and deeds on others, and to ask if what we may tell ourselves is love is actually self-serving rather than other-focused. Love enables us to speak up for those whose voice is not being heard, for those who are not being seen or considered, for those who are being harmed by another’s behavior. To love as God loves does mean we forgive and forgive and forgive, but it doesn’t mean anyone is free from the consequences of chosen behaviors. God’s Love may be boundless but it isn’t without boundaries.

Love enables us to govern our own behaviors by the light of God’s Love for us. We cannot control or change others motivations for their behavior but we can do the internal work of assessing our own motivations so that we can make loving choices about our outward behaviors.

None of us love perfectly as God loves – we are human and not God and God is more aware of our humanness that we are. And, yet, God chooses us, God’s created, God’s children, God’s beloved. In the now-and-not-yet of this world, we do our best with God’s help to love as God loves, in the hope of the Day of the Lord when God’s peace will be ours as we discover the real joy of God’s presence among us.

Mary asks “how can this be” and Gabriel responds “Nothing is impossible with God”. God is love and love is the most powerful force in the universe because God created all in and through and for love. Mary knows the depths of God’s love and accepts the sure and certain hope that Gabriel offers her. Her answer isn’t one of fear or resignation, her ‘let it be’ is a joyful proclamation that she wants to be a part of God’s work of love. She doesn’t fret about how she could get it wrong in so many ways, she trusts that with God nothing is impossible, even with our own human foibles. It brings much peace into my life knowing that when God ponders my work in this world, God knows all of the ways I can mess things up and still wants me to be a part of bringing about the kingdom on earth as in heaven. And he sees and wants each of you to be a part of it as well.

How can this be? Do you hear the wonder and amazement of Mary’s question? How can this be – that God wants to work in me? Do we ask the same wondrous question of our lives? Do we ask how God wants to work in our lives? Are we open to wonder and amazement at what God chooses to do in us and others?

We end our annual Advent season with the ongoing anticipation of the coming of God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven. God comes to each of us, asking if we will be a part of God’s plan, today, tomorrow, and each day in the year to come. Let yourself be amazed. Let yourself wonder at who God is and Whose we are. Let the hope, peace, and joy of God’s love shine with all that you think, say, and do. Nothing is impossible with God. Let it be. Amen.

*https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/advent-week-four-lectionary-commentary

Peace

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.

The part of Peter’s second letter we read today holds a special place for me – this was the passage I was given for my first sermon in preaching class in seminary. As I spent an inordinate amount of time pondering Peter’s words I remember thinking, “why don’t I remember this passage from my childhood?” Peter’s words are in direct opposition to what I was told about Jesus’ ‘second coming’ and it made me wonder why, when given the choice, anyone would prefer to emphasize being set ablaze and dissolved by fire rather than God’s patience and holiness and righteousness and peace? Why would anyone choose to proclaim fear instead of love? How is that Good News for anyone?

Sometimes it seems that our world prefers war to peace, coercion rather than patience, hatred rather than holiness. Proclaiming fear gives the proclaimer power over those who buy into the fear-driven way. God chose to come to us as a human, born and raised in this world to show us what it looks like to choose peace and holiness. Jesus shows in us flesh and blood that we have a choice of how we live in the here and now. If you were here a few weeks ago, you might remember that we talked about eternity not being sometime in the future – Jesus didn’t come to offer us salvation for “some day” – but that eternity has no beginning and no end. Our eternal life is now and we have the choice of living God’s way or not.

We have the choice, as Peter puts it, to strive to be found by him at peace. But just what does that mean?

The Hebrew word shalom and Greek word eirene are often translated as peace but in our English language we tend to define peace simply as an absence of conflict. A better understanding of how both the old and New Testament writers were using the word is ‘complete’ or ‘whole’ – something complex that is in a state of completeness. It has to do with our collective wellbeing. To bring shalom means to make complete or restore to wholeness. To reconcile a relationship is to bring shalom. It is more than just not fighting or arguing but actively and intentionally working toward the wellbeing of each other.

The phrase translated in our New Revised Standard translation as “without spot or blemish” doesn’t mean ‘physically perfect’ but morally without reproach. And just how do we come to be without spot or blemish? By accepting our need to be forgiven for the ways we’ve worked at building our own kingdom on earth rather than God’s; the big and small ways we’ve chosen conflict instead of peace, coercion instead of patience, hatred instead of holiness. Admitting we have relied on our way of doing things rather than God’s Way prepares our hearts and minds to receive the Good News that we are loved and that God’s Kingdom is right here among us.

We prepare the way of the Lord by living the way of the Lord, living the Way of Love. This is what John the Baptizer calls us to when he proclaims repentance. John was a bit of an unconventional priest for his time. But Baptizing people wasn’t the most radical thing he did. Converts to Judaism were baptized as a ritual cleansing of their former ways. What made John’s proclamation radical was that he wanted Jews to be baptized. What did they need to repent from – weren’t they already keeping God’s laws? And there in lies the difference: keeping rather than living. John is calling God’s people out of a transactional way of living into God’s relational way of life.

As we’ve talked about before, the word we translate as repentance means to changes one’s heart and mind. It has no intonation of self-loathing or punishment but it does require self-awareness and understanding. When John proclaims repentance he was talking about seeing a better way and changing our hearts and minds to live God’s way here and now.

The temple priests taught about keeping the law – exchanging sacrifices for forgiveness; John spoke of changed hearts and minds. The temple priests had the reputation of seeking power and prestige; John chose to live in the wilderness without luxuries or comforts. When people sought John, he pointed them toward Jesus, not seeking his own glory but God’s.

Jesus tells us that he came not to condemn us but to show us what it is in flesh and blood to fulfill God’s law, not just keep it but to actually be who and Whose we are created to be, to live in the Way of Love, centering our hearts on God, following Jesus, and staying focused on tending to each other, neither denying or elevating our own needs but trusting that as we tend to each other, all of our needs are satisfied. Love as Jesus shows us how to love is always other-focused with the awareness that everything we think, say, and do has an impact, either good or bad, on others. This God shaped love is knowing we are most complete when we are all living into our gifts for the good of God’s Kingdom, collectively not individualistically. And the more love we share, the more we hasten the day of God.

God isn’t sitting on a cloud somewhere watching and waiting for us to mess up so he can press the divine smite button and do us all in. God is patently waiting for us to all to come to the awareness that our job isn’t to save the world or anyone in it, including ourselves! This is what repentance is – realizing it isn’t our job to fix the world or anyone in it so we are free to discover our purpose as the image bearers we are created to be, honoring each other as fellow image bearers and together “leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for AND hastening the day of God!”

This is our salvation – that God has already forgiven us and adopted us. We don’t have to earn it. We don’t have to be good enough. We don’t have to do everything or save the world or anyone in it. We are created and called to participate with God in bringing about the kingdom on earth as in heaven, living in such a way that honors and points to God’s gracious gift of loving forgiveness.

This is our peace, our completeness, our wholeness – trusting that we will all thrive as we live God’s way, even in the midst of our struggles and grief, just as Jesus shows us, tending to each other, actively and equally seeking each other’s wellbeing.

We simply have to be who God created us to be.

Does it bring you comfort and peace to know that you are not responsible for saving the world? Does it bring you comfort and peace to know that it is God’s greatest desire that all human beings – even you and, yes, even that person you don’t think deserves it – enter into the now-and-not-yet kingdom on earth as in heaven? Does is bring you comfort and peace to know that God sees all people the same, as beloved children?

Someday, God will bring about the new heaven and new earth and righteousness will be at home. In the mean time, we wait patiently and actively, awake and alert to God’s presence among us, honoring the image of God in all people, letting our hearts and minds be shaped by God’s love so that we can proclaim love to the world. Amen.

Eternal Living

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.

Today is the last day of the church year, and it is the last of our 26-or-thereabouts week walk through the telling of the good news by Matthew.

Today is also the day in the church calendar that we dub “Christ the King Sunday”. As Americans I think we struggle with the true meaning of this phrase. What does it mean to say Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords? After all, we threw the monarchy out over 200 years ago and it wasn’t because we were trying to install Jesus on our throne, it was because we didn’t want anyone else having ultimate rule over us, we wanted to rule ourselves.

But even before European colonization came to this land, way, WAY before, from the very beginning of what we know as the history of our faith, God was, and is to be the leader of God’s people. God’s people, however, wanted to be like the other nations, with a human king. When they demanded a king, they were warned that the power of an earthly king almost always corrupts the one who wields it. But the people didn’t care. They were more concerned that they were like the other nations than they were with being God’s people. I don’t think much has changed through the years, we still prefer to rule ourselves, and power, whatever title we give it, tends to corrupt the one who we let wield it.

Matthew is concerned about how the Jewish leaders had been corrupted by power and tells the story of the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry with what we call the sermon on the Mount, the teaching in chapters 5-6 that begins with blessed are the humble, the merciful, the peacemakers and ends with the admonition to both walk the walk and talk the talk as God’s people. Just saying “lord, lord” isn’t enough if we then ignore the needs of others around us. Just giving lip service to God being our King isn’t what our faith is about, it isn’t what following Jesus is about. Following Jesus is about living in the now and not yet of God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

Yes, it is about our eternal life, but eternity has no beginning nor end so our eternal life isn’t something we will enter into someday but already is. Living in God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven is about taking care of each other, it is about taking what we have and working to ensure that everyone has what they need. It is about welcoming others into the Kingdom, not determining the ways we can exclude.

Determining who’s in and who’s out, sorting the sheep and goats, who’s on the right hand or left hand, is God’s job, not ours. And God’s deepest desire is that all are to be part of the Kingdom, here and now and when the time comes for God’s Kingdom to be fully realized in the new heaven and new earth. In our reading from the prophet Ezekiel God’s says, “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.” This has always been God’s word to God’s people.

If we choose to live outside of God’s love and mercy and grace, we are already in the ‘eternal fire’, living in the struggle of thinking we have to prove ourselves or be the best and strongest or believing that we don’t matter at all. And God seeks us there, to bring us back and heal us so that we can live in the love and justice and mercy of God’s Kingdom, so that we can find our infinite value as God’s beloved people.

Entering into the joy of God’s presence isn’t a reward for what we do well. The blessing and joy of God’s Kingdom is always available to us; we ‘claim’ it by living as Jesus, as Moses, and all the prophets who have come to God’s people teach us – living in God’s definition of justice, being kind and compassionate to all, and walking humbly with God. Living God’s way is the blessing not the reward. The sheep in this story don’t even realize the good they are doing. They are just living as God created them to live.

God created us to be people who are enabled by God’s love to love. And when we lose our way and choose to wander outside of God’s love, we are always welcomed back by God’s forgiveness and mercy.

Jesus isn’t seeking to threaten us when he talks about God’s sorting. We don’t learn to love God by being terrified of doing the wrong thing. We learn to love by receiving love from others as God love us. Jesus is showing us, in flesh and blood, what it looks like to be who and Whose we are – tending to the needs of others as a proclamation of God’s reigning love and mercy; walking through our life’s journey following Jesus; choosing God’s Way over any way that may gain us power or control; letting love be the powerful guiding force of our eternal lives here and now.

Our acts of kindness and compassion, mercy and love are the fruits of God’s kingdom, not the currency with which we purchase our entry.

And, just to be clear, serving in God’s Kingdom isn’t about the false humility of saying we don’t need anyone else’s help so that we can prove how helpful or strong we are. Tending to each other’s needs means you tend to me as I tend to you. If I don’t ever ask for help or pretend I don’t ever need help I stand in the way of you doing what you are called to do; it’s a false pride way of excluding you.

Living in God’s Eternal Kingdom means we accept God as our source of life and way of living here and now: loving God, our neighbor, and ourselves not just with our words but with all that we do, and think, and say for and about others because we have received the gift of God’s love. Knowing Jesus as the King of kings and Lord of lords means we let Jesus be the ultimate authority for how we live – welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for each other not because we want a reward but because we want to be who and Whose we are created to be: beloved children of the loving God.

Next Sunday, the church calendar rolls over to a new year with the season of Advent and over the next few weeks, we will prepare ourselves for the coming of God as a vulnerable, human baby in order to turn our ideas of leadership by domination and superiority upside down. Our lives, including the remaining 48 weeks of the year are about two other advents – the coming of Jesus again, when God determines it is time to set all things in God’s proper order with the coming of the new heaven and new earth, and the coming of Jesus each and every day through our words and actions that reveal God to those we encounter.

Look for God, anticipate the arrival of Jesus every moment of every day and together we will discover what it is for Jesus to be the King of kings and Lord of lords so that we can be free to be God’s people here and now. Amen.

Our Wise and Foolish Selves

A sermon preached at the closing of the Diocese of West Texas Silent Retreat, Mustang Island, TX.
The lectionary readings for the twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost are here.

Have you been to a wedding lately? In our modern western world, bridesmaids don’t have a lot of responsibility except to party with the bride before hand and stand and look good at the ceremony. I don’t mean any disrespect, it’s tradition to have bridesmaids and it is the bride’s friends celebrating her marriage in a special way.

Weddings in 1st century Palestine were another matter. The bridesmaids actually had something important to do. After the ceremony, the bride and groom would make their way to the groom’s family home. The bride’s attendants would be waiting and watching for their arrival and announce that the feast could commence. It’s not like the bride and groom could call ahead to say “we’re leaving now”, there were no family tracking apps to see how far away they were, no gps apps to give an exact arrival time.

And so the bridesmaids waited. And waited. And waited. The wise were prepared, the others were not. But before we start thinking about people we know and attempting to do the sorting that isn’t ours to do, let’s just say that instead of two groups of people these 5 and 5 represent two sides of ourselves. Sometimes we are wiser than we are at other times. It’s a story to help us know who we are: humans who sometimes have it all together and sometimes not.

The people who heard Jesus tell this story in person would have heard the echo of the end of what we now call the sermon on the mount when Jesus says there will be those who say Lord, Lord, and I will say I never knew you. Following Jesus is about talking the talk AND walking the walk.

And then there’s the part where the wise women refuse to share their oil. What’s that all about? Aren’t they just being mean and stingy? No, they are being wise. And, just a side note about the word wise here – in his teachings, Jesus uses two words for wisdom, sophia which is divine wisdom and the word he uses here, phronimos which is a more practical type of wisdom, the ability to discern a situation and know what to do, the kind of wisdom that says a tomato may be a fruit but you don’t put it in a fruit salad.

These wise women understand that it’s just not possible to get to God through someone else’s good works. I can’t ride your coattails of goodness into the Kingdom. I have to receive the gift of God’s grace and forgiveness for myself. And if I try to let your relationship with God be mine, I miss out on the joy and celebration of knowing God and knowing I am a beloved child of God. As my very wise husband often says, “God has no grandchildren.”

When Jesus tells parables he’s tapping into the tradition of wisdom teaching. Parables aren’t to be taken as a literal narrative. They are intentionally quirky stories that are supposed to make us take note of the odd details and say, ‘wait, what?’ These stories help us ask the challenging questions – who would I be in this story, what would I do and why, and the most challenging of all – how is this intended to help shape us into who God created and calls us to be in our day and our time?

God is a god of relationship and transformation. God knows us and wants nothing more than for us to know God, for us to know who and Whose we are, and for us to be open to the transforming Kingdom life. We’re never too old to gain wisdom in this life, although sometimes we may be to stubborn or rigid, kind of like the foolish women in this story – they knew the wedding party would arrive at a certain time and they only prepared for a situation in which they would be ‘right’.

This wedding story is also an Advent story – don’t panic, we still have three weeks until the beginning of the Advent season – I’m talking about a different Advent. Bernard of Clairvaux spoke of three advents: the coming of God in Jesus that we celebrate at Christmas, the Second coming of Jesus when God will set all things right in the new heaven and new earth, and the Advent of everyday: our own watching for Jesus to come to us in the ordinary moments of our everyday lives.

Waiting and watching for Jesus isn’t just ‘not sleeping’. It isn’t a simple ‘be prepared’ as if we were a holy scout troop. It’s intentionally preparing ourselves to encounter Jesus at any moment. It’s walking the walk and not just talking the talk. It’s tending to the needs of the ‘least of these’ and understanding that sometimes we are the one who needs others to tend to us. It’s seeking the greater good for everyone and not just ourselves. It’s looking for the image of God in every other human being we encounter. It’s letting the image of God in us shape and form all that we think, say, and do.

I grew up in a denomination that was obsessed with the second coming to the point that we didn’t spend much time talking about how we should live in the here and now.

In the Episcopal church, we don’t talk much at all about the second coming, the fulfillment of God’s purposes in Creation. But I don’t want you to be uninformed, my brothers and sisters. We live today as if that day has already come about AND in the sure and certain hope of God’s promise of a world where there is no hunger or pain or sorrow. And until that day arrives, we do all that we can with God’s help to alleviate the hunger and pain and sorrow caused by all of the ways we distort the image of God in ourselves and in others.

This parable is Jesus teaching us a distinctive way of being in this world – expectant and prepared, mindful, intentional, ready, and awake. We don’t always know when we will have the opportunity to shine God’s light into someone else’s darkness so we must keep our lamps trimmed and filled with oil.

We are to seek continuously to deepen our relationship with God and to be aware of the blessings of grace and forgiveness that we have received so that we can offer God’s love to everyone. We do the hard work of knowing who and Whose we are so that we can clearly reflect God’s life-giving, world changing love. We talk the language of love and walk the way of love as a living invitation to the abundant banquet of God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven. Amen.

Imagine

(I’m not preaching this Sunday but if you want to see the lectionary readings for the twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost they are here. I reference the reading from Matthew.)

I was watching something in the Marvel Universe this past week and one of the characters said, “Imagine a world where information can’t be trusted.” I quit paying attention to the plot of the show for a good while as I pondered this statement.

I don’t have to imagine because we live in such a world. A world where people are willing to both give and receive false information in order to stay stagnant because they think maintaining the status quo is better than living this amazing journey of life.

We have an excess of information at our fingertips, and we must be wary of the source. Anyone can make up anything about any event or any person and post it as if it were true and claim that it is News. The word “news” has lost its credibility. If a news outlet (or any other source of information) tells us who we are to fear, what we are to be angry about, if their facts are interspersed with the mockery of any group, if they say things like “no one else is telling this story” they are not presenting the news. They are attempting to manipulate our emotions for the sole purpose of increasing their ratings and making more money.

And their sole purpose is so very damaging to our souls. Pay attention to what you are feeling and experiencing when you watch your chosen news outlet. Pay attention to your reaction if you don’t get to watch it for an extended period of time. Our emotional and physical reactions to our world are there to tell us something and we need to listen so that we can respond outwardly better.

I’m not being Pollyanna here – I know this world is scary and dangerous. It is also beautiful and wondrous. We live in the tension of this. We live in the tension of human beings who are created in the loving and beautiful image of our Loving God, who also choose to cause harm to their fellow image bearers. I have absolutely no idea how to solve this tension. I do know, however, that it isn’t my job, or your job, or anyone else’s job to fix it. I’m not saying don’t be angry, just to let the anger teach you something and make the choice to focus the energy from it on being and doing good things. I’m saying let God be God and let’s focus on following Jesus.

Jesus gives us the command to love: to love God, our neighbor, and ourselves with our whole being. Love, as Jesus shows us in flesh and blood how to love, is the antidote for the dangers and harm in this world. God has given us the promise that God will set things right in God’s time and in God’s way. We are created and called to parter with God, to live and love on this earth as if God has already restored earth and heaven to be as God intends.

Why are we unable to learn that violence does not end violence. Ever. Not in thousands of years of human history. Why are we not willing to hear Jesus say that love is the greatest power in all of creation.

When I hear of another incident of gun violence, when I see the reports of the wars in this world I feel pain and grief, and yes, even anger. To only react with these emotions will cause harm to my soul and to others. To respond to these emotions by expressing my fear and sadness in prayers of lament and then asking how I can be a part of the antidote and seeking ways to reveal the light of God’s love in the darkness is living into God’s image and that is good for all of our souls.

On November 1, we are having a service of remembrance at St. Francis by the Lake (if you are in the neighborhood come at join us at 6pm, if not, it will be live-streamed on our YouTube channel). Part of the service is a time for folks to light a candle and speak the names of loved ones who have died. I’m preparing special candles for the people who have died in the Palestine-Isreal war, the Ukraine-Russia war, and for the people who have died by gun violence in the US. I wanted some way to be able to speak their names, all of them, but I don’t know how to locate such lists and I realized quickly that the list would be miles long and at the moment I printed it, it would be out of date. My heart and soul ache for the senseless deaths of all of these image-bearing human beings. We must do better. We can be better.

So, lets imagine a world where Love is the guiding power. It’s easy if we try. Jesus shows and tells us what this kind of world is like. God created us to live this way. What if we let the energy spurred in us by anger empower us to live the antidote to harm and violence rather than perpetuate it? More war, more violence, more hatred isn’t solving anything yet we keep trying that. Let’s try something else. Let’s try a revolution of love in our corners of the world, in our circles of influence however small or big. Ponder something this week that you can do to help you focus on loving better as an image bearer of our Loving God. Imagine.

Chosen and called

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The lectionary readings for the twentieth Sunday after Pentecost are here.

Once more, Jesus spoke in parables saying …. Jesus tells the parable we read today in succession with the parables we’ve read the past two weeks. For us it’s taken three Sundays to read them but imagine standing and listening to them all at once in the course of just a few moments. Do you remember the first one? A man asks his two sons to work in a vineyard, one said yes and didn’t go and the other said no and then did go and Jesus asks “which did the will of the father?” And last week’s reading has the people given the responsibility of tending the vineyard brutally treating the vineyard owner’s slaves and killing his son and Jesus wraps it up by saying the rejected one is the key to everything in life.

Jesus’ parables aren’t random stories told to entertain the crowds but intentionally crafted tales designed to intentionally disrupt our thinking and worldview. Jesus wants us to ask questions of ourselves and the world. Parables are one of the ways Jesus tries to open our minds to wonder about possibilities and opportunities to become who we are created to be.

Where Jesus tells the stories and to whom are important for our understanding. And, we must never forget that we are always in the crowd of folks listening in. For this string of parables, Jesus and the disciples are in Jerusalem. He’s been speaking in and around the Temple for a couple of days, upsetting the temple leaders and elders with his “the Kingdom of Heaven is like” tales.

The leaders are stuck between a rock and hard place – they want to silence Jesus because he is threatening their power and control of the people but they also fear the reaction of the people if they do anything to harm Jesus. Their own reaction should clue them in that their perceived power is just a house of cards, but I don’t think that metaphor had been invented yet. In any case, the leaders are in a pickle and Jesus continues with yet another “The Kingdom of Heaven” story, even more outlandish than the others.

A king is hosting a wedding banquet for his son and not a single person whose been invited to celebrate with them shows up. Not one. So the king sends out his slaves to remind the invited guests and they are met with excuses by some and shear violence by others. They are “too busy with their everyday affairs to celebrate with their King but not too busy to abuse and kill the king’s messengers.”*

It is left to our imagination to discern why these folks choose to ignore the King’s invitation with their excuses and why some react so violently: do they have contempt for the king, do they not take the king’s invitation seriously, do they think their work is so important that they can’t take time to participate in the celebration? I wonder, what would be my reason for doing so? What would be yours?

Whatever their reasoning, the King is outraged and sends his soldiers to annihilate them, a bit of an extreme reaction, but no more extreme than beating or killing the one who is delivering the invitation. At first glance, a violent response to violence may seem appropriate, but when in the history of ever has it been proven that violence ends violence? A lesson we need to seriously ponder today … but I digress.

Back to the parable – after his outrageous response, the king doesn’t cancel the wedding banquet. I mean, why should we let a good party go to waste just because of a bit of violent outrage? So the king sends his servants to bring in everyone they can find “both good and bad” to celebrate. And while circulating among his new guests, the king encounters one who isn’t dressed properly.

Let’s step out of the story for a bit to explain the custom of wedding robes: There were specific robes that guests would wear to a wedding banquet, they were simple garments so as not to show off the particular social station of the guests; the focus after all is the bride and groom. A bit like our custom to never out-dress the wedding party. But, since the servants just invited folks off the street, the new invitees wouldn’t have had time to properly dress for a royal wedding so the attendants must have given them the customary clothing as they entered.

So, the king is circulating among his new set of guests and encounters one with no robe. He would have been given a robe as he entered but for some reason he refused to put it on. Did he not take the celebration seriously? Did he harbor contempt for the host? Did he consider himself too important, much like the original invitees? We don’t know because when confronted, he’s speechless. I wonder, what would have been my reason for not putting on the robe? What would be yours?

The king, true to form, has an extreme reaction to this non-compliant guest. And Jesus ends this parable with the statement “many are called, few are chosen.” We must be careful how we hear these words some 2000 years later. The words translated as ‘invited’ and ‘called’ have the same root. And chosen can mean ‘selected’ but it can also mean ‘the best’ which seems to make more sense along with Jesus’ ultimate equalizing proclamation that the first shall be last and the last first. Remember the parable of the workers in the vineyard who showed up at different times and all received the same? How does that disrupt our thinking?

Whatever the specific definition of these words, we can be certain that Jesus is in no way giving us permission to pat ourselves on the back because we made it into the banquet with the right clothes on. Jesus may have started this parable directed at the temple leaders who think more highly of themselves than they should, but he ends it looking at all of us – the “good and the bad” invited into the banquet from the Main Street of our typical, ordinary lives. We’ve done nothing to earn the invitation, yet God chooses us. And that is good news worth celebrating!

Everyone is invited, and in answering the invitation, we are also given the responsibility of being a gracious guest. We don’t get to run the vineyard our own way and we don’t get to rewrite the rules of ‘love God and your neighbor’ to suit ourselves. We are called and chosen and we are given the full abundance of the Kingdom – we are given our true identity as God’s beloved children. But we can never let that go to our heads, we are no better or worse than anyone else at the table. Amen.

The Abundant Kingdom

A Kingdom reflection (aka – what I would have preached if I preached today)
The lectionary readings for the nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost are here.

Today’s parable follows immediately on the heels of the one last week in which the two sons were asked to work in the vineyard – one said yes and didn’t go and one said no and did go. The parable is directed toward the Temple leaders and elders and Jesus ends that parable with the question “who did the will of the father” making the point that they are the ones who say yes to God’s Kingdom and then don’t go. In other words, they are not doing the will of the Father. And to fine tune his point, to help them have eyes to see and ears to hear, Jesus launches into the parable we read today.

A man has a vineyard and entrusted it to others to take care of it – grow the grapes and make the wine. These folks decided that since they did the work the vineyard was theirs, not the owner who hired them to work the vineyard and so they brutally defended what they had stolen, even killing his son.

Jesus turns to the leaders and asks what will the owner do to the tenants? And they answer as they would handle the situation: “he will put those miserable wretches to death” and find others to do the work, as if the first set of workers were as expendable as the servants they beat and killed. Jesus takes their answer and reframes it in scripture, quoting Psalm 118, making the point that these leaders are the ones rejecting the very foundation of God’s Kingdom on earth. They have chosen to build their own kingdom and label it God’s.

From the beginning, God chose to work through the very people God created to establish the Kingdom of heaven on earth. And over and over again, through the course of history we humans have decided we can know better than God what is right and what is wrong, how kingdoms should be run, how this earth should be managed. We forgot our created purpose – participating with God to produce the fruit of the kingdom.

We forgot the image of God within us and decided to create a God in our own image – a god who thinks like we do, who is vengeful and oppressive, stingy and manipulative. And so Jesus offers us, real life, flesh and blood stories of who God really is and who and Whose we are created to be. Jesus tells us these parables of a landowner to remind us that we are created to be in a kingdom of abundance by a loving, compassionate, forgiving, and generous God.

The Kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who is wants everyone to thrive and gives generously of the Kingdom abundance accordingly. The Kingdom of heaven is a place where all are equal and no cry of suffering is silenced. The Kingdom of heaven is a place where God walks among us desiring only a loving relationship with us, where no one manipulates others for their own personal gain, where all who choose this new life are welcomed in forgiveness and reconciliation regardless of their past. The Kingdom of heaven on earth is where we choose to live life producing the fruit of the Kingdom knowing that the abundance of God’s Kingdom is sufficient for all to thrive.

Our baptism is our entry into this Kingdom, our adoption by God. This is the work God does in us. We make vows to be a good citizen of this Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven. This is the work we do to participate with God. If we are baptized as children, our parents and godparents take the vows on our behalf and we take responsibility for the vows when we are mature enough. Our vows aren’t only about what we believe but also who we want to become and how we want to structure our lives because we believe that God created us and loves us and chooses to work out the purpose of all of creation through us.

When we renew these vows as others are baptized or confirmed we remember our own vows, that we are on this Kingdom journey with each other and with God’s help. We remember that God invites us to work in God’s vineyard not to defend it and hoard the abundance for ourselves but to make it welcoming and hospitable because we are shaped by God’s love and compassion so that we can share the abundance of the kingdom with everyone.

The Baptismal Covenant
(From the Book of Common Prayer, page 304-5)
Celebrant: Do you believe in God the Father?
People: I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
Celebrant: Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?
People: I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
Celebrant: Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit?
People: I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.
Celebrant: Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
People: I will, with God’s help.
Celebrant: Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
People: I will, with God’s help.
Celebrant: Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
People: I will, with God’s help.
Celebrant: Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
People: I will, with God’s help.
Celebrant: Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
People: I will, with God’s help.

Hearts and Minds

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The Lectionary readings for the 18th Sunday after Pentecost are here.

The stories we have of Jesus ministry aren’t just a random collection, but an intentionally crafted narrative designed to show us what it looks like to live on earth as in heaven. So, let me fill the gap between what we read last Sunday and today, Jesus has returned to Jerusalem in what we label as the Triumphal Entry: riding on a donkey with the crowds shouting Hosanna, which means “save us, we pray”. It’s a scene that is completely contrary to what the people of 1st century Roman occupied Jerusalem would call triumphant. I doubt we’d call anyone we hope to become our political leader ‘triumphant’ if they entered the scene this way. But, remember, Jesus is here to show us what life in God’s Kingdom on earth is all about and the Kingdom way and this good news that is intended to upset our proverbial apple carts.

Jesus goes straight to the Temple where he clears out those who were exchanging money and selling animals for sacrifice. It isn’t that Jesus is against making sacrifices or even that he’s against people making money, he’s against people cheating others, selling faith and religious acts to manipulate and control. The money exchangers and animal sellers were taking advantage of those coming to make their faithful sacrifices and Jesus was having none of it. He didn’t just proverbially upset the carts.

Jesus then leaves the Temple, has a dispute with a fig tree (we can talk about this offline if you want), and then returns to the Temple, where we enter the scene of today’s reading. The chief priests and elders ask him, “who do you think you are coming in here and disrupting our way of doing things?” They aren’t looking to get to know Jesus better, they are looking for a way to charge him with any crime they can to distract the crowds from seeing the things Jesus is calling them out for. Sounds a bit like our political atmosphere these days, doesn’t it? If I can make you look worse than me, maybe folks won’t realize how bad I am.

But we can’t prove how ‘good’ we are by making others look ‘bad’ and so Jesus turns the table on them and asks them a question he knows they won’t want to answer because they are too concerned with being right than living in God’s righteousness.

Jesus asks them a question that reveals their worldview: their relationship with God and their relationship with people are completely separate. This division is what enables the temple leaders to treat people so badly; they choose to not see the image of God in all people. It’s a heart question along the lines of Solomon wanting to cut the baby in two to settle the dispute between the two women knowing the one with the right heart would object.

The leaders get stuck in their own divisiveness – caught between what they claim to believe about God and the people they manipulate for their own power and control.

Jesus knows they will be just as dishonest and manipulative with him as they were with John and although they may demand unquestioning loyalty from the people, Jesus is making the point that our behavior with other people reveals what we believe about God. How we treat others, for our own personal gain or for the building up of God’s Kingdom, reveals our heart, how we see the world. And he tells them a story about changing our hearts and minds.

Two sons are asked to work in the vineyard – remember the workers and wages story of last week and all being given the same regardless of the time they started working in the vineyard? It’s all connected. One son says no and one says yes. The one who says yes was only telling his father what he thinks he wants to hear, trying to gain favor without actually having to do anything. The one who says no changes his mind and goes to work in the Kingdom, I mean vineyard despite his original objection.

So, who did do the will of the father? The chief priests answer ‘the first’ and instead of congratulating them Jesus makes yet another ‘the first shall be last and the last shall be first’ point. He tells them that the very people they disdain are already entering God’s Kingdom because they understand the difference between being right and living in God’s righteousness.

And let’s be clear here – Jesus is not telling the chief priests and elders they will never be able to enter God’s Kingdom, he says that others, those who already see the Way of Love as God’s way are ahead of them and yet, if they enter, they will receive the same – unconditional love and forgiveness.

A change of mind is always possible, the road into the Kingdom of God is always open. This is what is so radical about the Good News. And what is so difficult about it. It’s what Paul means when he says we must work out our salvation with fear-and-trembling – and idiom Paul uses ‘to describe the anxiety of one who distrusts their own ability completely to meet all requirements, but religiously does their best to do what is right’ (adapted from Strongs). Fear-and-Trembling is the acknowledgement that we are most fully human with God’s help, accepting the image of God in us and all people. Fear-and-trembling is about figuring out what it looks like in our day and time to be image bearers of God, revealing to the world the Kingdom on earth. This is how we have the mind of Christ, the worldview of Jesus because we let God’s love shape our hearts.

When we change our hearts and minds, when we let our worldview be shaped by God’s love, we are living into who and Whose we really are. We learn to see the image of God in other people and realize that the Kingdom of God and this world are not separate. How we move through this world is how we move through God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven. When we see the world as an extension of God’s Kingdom rather than the battle ground on which we must struggle and fight for our own kingdom, our hearts and minds are shaped by God’s love.

And, in light of what we’ve been talking about these past few weeks, I’m want to clear up what Paul says about humility here. The original meaning of Paul’s statement translated as “regard others as better than yourselves” is lost with our limited English pronouns. The word we translate as ‘others’ is a Greek ‘reciprocal plural pronoun’. What Paul is saying is to keep the greater good of all above our individual needs or wants. Paul isn’t telling us to intentionally place ourselves lower than others but to live in the equity of God’s Kingdom, as Jesus shows us over and over again. We are all loved equally by God; there is no ‘first and last” and no way to earn or deserve God’s love or God’s divine blessing. We are not lower than anyone anymore than we are above anyone.

This is what challenged the chief priests and elders the most – they had built their personal kingdoms by dominating and oppressing others, even as they were dominated and oppressed by the Roman authorities. They expected a messiah to come in physical and political power who would maintain their idea of power. Jesus upset their worldview cart. Jesus often upsets our worldview cart. Jesus shows us his heart and mind so that we can choose to let ours be shaped by his as we live into the answer to the prayer we pray: God’s kingdom come on earth as in heaven. Amen.

Eyes

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The Lectionary readings for the seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost are here.

If you were here last week, you may remember that we talked about learning to see forgiveness from God’s point of view, that “earning” and “deserving” are human constructs that we’ve attached to God’s unconditional love and gift of forgiveness.

The same holds true for the parable we are talking about today. Earning and deserving, and perhaps we need to throw in entitled, are not part of the economy of God’s Kingdom.

This parable about working in God’s Kingdom is bookended with Jesus saying that the first shall be last and the last shall be first, although we don’t read the first one because this is one of those moments when the after-market-add-on chapter and verse divisions can cause us to miss important connections in the original narrative. So, if you have a bible app on your phones, take a look at the end of Mathew chapter 19. I also encourage you to read all of chapter 19 of Matthew this coming week and get a full picture of what the lectionary skips over.

But, for, now I’ll just give you a quick synopsis. It’s been a while since I referenced my imaginary flannelgraph, but it share would be helpful today, so just imagine me moving the cutout Jesus, disciples, and other characters on a green flannel board.

Just prior to Jesus telling this parable of the workers, Jesus has spoken with a man who is looking for loopholes in God’s commandments. The man comes to Jesus and asks what good deed must he do to earn eternal life? Jesus paraphrases a bit but gives him the commandments that have to do with how we live with others in community: “Don’t murder. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t steal. Don’t give false testimony. Honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

The man replies, “I’ve kept these. What do I still lack?” We tend to blow this man off as being petty and shallow but this question is deep. He sees the world through a work-and-reward lens and yet he feels a longing deep within that he doesn’t understand because his worldview isn’t filling up – can’t fill up – the God shaped space within him.

Jesus replies, “if you want to be complete, give up your worldview, your work/reward way of seeing everything and everyone, and follow me to learn how to love.” And as you may know, this story ends with the man walking away sad and Jesus saying that it is impossible to enter God’s Kingdom when we insist on hanging onto our human ideas of earning and deserving but when we let God show us how to see the world through God’s eyes, we discover we are in the Kingdom already.

In response to Jesus’ words, Peter, in a bit of panic I think, says to Jesus, “Look, we’ve left everything and followed you. What will we have?” And Jesus assures him hat there will be immeasurable benefits in choosing to follow Jesus into the Kingdom because in God’s Kingdom, everyone is equal. Our human labels of ‘first’ and ‘last’ aren’t reversed, they are done away with.

Which leads us into our story today – Jesus telling this story of workers and wages to help Peter and the others – and us – learn to see the world through the lens of God’s Kingdom. The life God intends for everyone is that we all receive the abundance of God’s grace, forgiveness, and love because the Kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who gives to everyone what they need to flourish in this life, regardless of what time they started work. We can’t earn nor do we deserve any ‘better’ position in the Kingdom on earth than anyone else, regardless of when we make the choice to follow Jesus.

The key point of the work and wages story is the question “are you envious because I am generous?” The original Greek is an idiom for being envious: “is your eye evil” because I am generous? The landowner is asking if we see the world through a lens of scarcity or abundance. Is there only enough for me or is there enough for everyone to flourish?

In God’s Kingdom, everyone gets paid the same – with unconditional love. And we are left asking ourselves if it enough for us, to be the same as others? Are we envious because God loves all the same? Do we feel entitled to be loved more or have more than others? Do we behave as Jonah, getting angry that God is gracious and merciful and generous with love?

OR are we grateful that God loves us? Are we grateful that God forgives us? Are we willing to let God’s equalizing Way of Love be enough?

Perhaps our Jonah style irritation or anger about what others have or what we don’t have is really because we misinterpret our feeling of lacking to be about material things when really it is about our willingness to see the world through God’s eyes.

In the economy of God’s kingdom, there is no waiting in line to “get what is ours”. As you’ve heard me say before – when Jesus says the first will be last and the last will be first, he isn’t reversing the order of things, he’s reordering, reorienting our way of thinking and seeing all together. Jesus is proclaiming the equity of God’s Kingdom. And this is very good news indeed.

The abundance of God’s love is already given us. Divine blessings are not rewards, blessings are freely given gifts. The kingdom economy is based on generosity and gratitude, not a human designed work/reward system. Having the eyes to see the abundance of the kingdom is how we live life worthy of the Good News of Jesus, accepting that we and everyone are worthy of God’s love solely because God loves us.

The point and purpose of all that we do in God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven is to point to God, to reveal God’s love and generosity to those around us, to shine the image of God in each of us into the dark corners of this world so that others are reminded of the image of God in them. This is the life that Jesus shows us in flesh and blood.

What would the world be like if we took the energy we expend trying to earn our way into God’s good graces or being irritated with others who either get what we want or have what we don’t and used our energy to express our gratitude for who God is and who and whose we are? Gratitude is the balm that comforts and heals our wounds – not some artificial or toxic positivity but a deep understanding and trust that God does provide all that we need to be who God created and calls us to be.

What we set our eyes on determines what we see. Look for glimpses of heaven-on-earth this week; the more you look, the more you’ll see the abundance of God’s Kingdom all around us. Amen.