Author: St. John's Episcopal Church

3/8/20

(Genesis 12:1-4a; Ps. 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17)

Our two older children had the same kindergarten teacher. Her name was Blanche Reid, and if you saw the movie “Mrs. Doubtfire”, that was her.  English, in her 60’s, shortish and roundish, hair in a bun, print dress, granny glasses; kind, gentle, and soft-spoken – that was Mrs. Reid. I had many opportunities to see her in a classroom; and I’ve never known any other teacher who so consistently got the kind of instant rapt attention from her students that she did.  Whenever Mrs. Reid had something to say kids stopped what they were doing, turned to her, and listened.

And it was easy to see why: they knew that she loved them. They knew that she knew them, each one of them, and valued each for who they were, and was speaking to each of them where they were, in the course of their education and their growth.  And because of all of that, they knew that whatever she had to say was going to be something they’d want to hear, something that would be good for them:   something new about this world they were growing up in that would be worth knowing, even if they didn’t fully understand it at first. So they listened to her, and tried their best to follow her, and do what she said.

That’s faith.  And it’s no different for us in our lives of faith, in our relationship with God, each one of us.  Gods meets each of us where we are, God values each of us for who we are.  The hard times are when we don’t feel God’s presence; or when we don’t understand what God seems to be asking of us; or don’t understand why.  Those are the times God calls on our faith: calls us to remember to trust God, remember that God keeps God’s promises.

That’s the position Abraham is in, in today’s Old Testament reading.  And in this very brief passage we see why St. Paul holds up Abraham as the supreme example of a person of faith.  These verses are at the very beginning of the story of Abraham, which takes up about a third of the book of Genesis.  We know almost nothing about him at this point.  But evidently God knows something about his faith, because God calls on it right off the bat: asks Abraham to do something most people would reject instantly, or not hear it as the word of God.  As we heard, the first words God says to Abraham are, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” 

So he lets Abraham know how much is being asked of him all at once, right up front: Go from your country: your country that you know: where you are comfortable; where everyone speaks the same language you do, looks and dresses as you do, and behaves according to the same rules.  Go from your country and your kindred – your blood relations, the people to whom you have the strongest kinds of ties, that you’ve always lived among, a group that includes several generations, and cousins and in-laws, who help define who you are, whose births and weddings and funerals have been the milestones of your life.  Go from your country, and your kindred, and your father’s house: the only home you’ve ever known, the one place you’ve always been guaranteed food and shelter; as the poet Robert Frost put it, the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.  Say goodbye to all of that, God says; and go to the land that I will show you.

And God doesn’t say anything at all about this new land: nothing to recommend it, nothing that might make Abraham at all enthusiastic about going there.  God puts it purely on the level of faith: Do this – go to the land that I will show you – and, God says: “I will bless you, and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you,..and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” 

That’s five times that the language of blessing occurs in this passage.    God’s blessing is a gift of God in this world: something through which God creates goodness and well-being.  God says, If you put your trust in me, good things will happen.  And if you put all your trust in me, things will happen that are good beyond your wildest dreams.  We see this in the concluding blessing, which is the most farthest-reaching: “…in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”  So in the very beginning of the story of Abraham, God commissions him as the first and most important step in God’s work of salvation: the redemption of all creation to the peace and joy that were God’s original intent.  

God cannot accomplish God’s purposes in this world without us.  Very few of us have Abraham’s faith.  But we do each have our own.  And God comes to each of us where we are. 

We have an excellent example of this in the story of Nicodemus, in the gospel of John.  And I’m not talking about the famous story from chapter 3 that we heard today.  Nicodemus shows up two more times in this gospel; and taken together, these three appearances fit the classic definition of a story: something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

            In this first appearance, John tells us that Nicodemus is a leader of the Jews – so we know he’s got power – and that he comes to Jesus by night.  So something about Jesus has hooked him – he can feel that God is up to something in this man – but he doesn’t want anyone to know he’s there, he can’t afford being seen consorting with this renegade.   And he shows only befuddlement at what Jesus has to say to him: “How can anyone be born after having grown old?”   “How can these things be?”  Jesus has more to say, but Nicodemus disappears from the story.

            But we know something’s sunk in, and something’s happened in the man, because of the second time we see him near the middle of the gospel.  By this time the chief priests and Pharisees are really fed up with Jesus and want to arrest him; and up pops Nicodemus, who sticks up for Jesus to a point: he says, Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?   So by this point he has come to a place where he feels moved openly to defend Jesus to his class, his peers, all of whom just want to throw Jesus in jail and who have no suspicion that Nicodemus feels any differently.  And we hear that it does cost Nicodemus something to speak as he does, because they answer him, You’re not from Galilee too, are you? They start to turn on him.  We see that Nicodemus has changed: his faith has grown.

            And the third and final appearance of Nicodemus is at the foot of the cross, right after Jesus’ death.  Joseph of Arimathea has taken Jesus’ body down, and it is Nicodemus who appears with a mixture of myrrh and aloes, for embalming and fragrance: this was what was proper at the time of death.  It was also a load which, according to John, weighed about a hundred pounds, which takes some physical effort.  So by this third appearance Nicodemus is treating Jesus like a  member of his family.    And let us not fail to note that, in so doing, Nicodemus plays a pivotal role in the story of the resurrection.  This is how far – through faith – God’s original blessing to Abraham extends: on down to us here, now, and infinitely into the future.

            God comes to each of us where we are. God in Christ says to each of us, Who do you say that I am?  And what are you going to do about that?   May God always increase our faith, that we always be ready to answer.

3/1/20

(Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Ps. 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11)

            Welcome to Lent.   I mean that.  It’s my favorite season of the church year: it feels harsh sometimes, but the light is very bright, and very clear.

            This year at St. John’s we’re not doing a mid-week Lenten program as we have done in the past.  Instead, as a congregation we will be directing our attention in a particular way this season: to the issue of social justice.  We have a social justice committee which has been hard at work on this – in the hallway they’ve put up a whole new bulletin board full of information that’s extremely illuminating, both in general and in specific; and you’ll be hearing more, on a regular basis, as the weeks of Lent go by.

            Starting now.  When the biblical writers talk about justice (plain and simple), they’re talking about God’s justice, which is social justice: people, in community, trying to live with each other in the kingdom of God.  This is at the core of what it means to be Christian, following the way of Jesus.  And it’s particularly appropriate to talk about it today, on the first Sunday of Lent. 

            In Lent, we face our sinfulness.  The reality of sin is fundamental to the Christian understanding of how the world works.  We are all sinners, and we live in a world permeated by sin: a broken world. Please, as we think about these things, let us try to put aside the baggage that these words – sin and sinner – have acquired over the centuries; often, it has to be said, from being used by religious authorities to beat people over the head with in order to maintain themselves in power; and in so doing, betraying the truth those words express.

            That we are sinners does not mean we’re terrible human beings.  It means we’re human beings, who can’t help being sinners.  Jesus understood this: when his disciples asked him, Teach us how to pray, he gave them what we call the Lord’s Prayer, to be used all their lives long: a simple, concise prayer, which covers the essentials; and which includes the words, “forgive us our trespasses”.  Which means Jesus knows we make mistakes, and knows we’re going to keep making mistakes, all our lives.

            The readings today all have to do with this universality of sin among the human race.  The Genesis story is the description from thousands of years ago of how we got this way in the first place, and as far as I’m concerned it’s as good an explanation as any.  The gospel story is of how Jesus, being human, is tempted to sin, and conquers the temptation only through the power of God.

            And Paul, in the passage from his letter to the Romans, writes that we cannot escape sin in this life; but, through God in Christ, we are freed from sin’s terrible power over us.  This is spiritual, psychological, and emotional power so extreme he calls it slavery (Rom. 7:14: “…but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin.”) But  (Gal. 5:1): “…Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”)  Jesus uses this same language in the gospel of John: “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin….[But] if the Son makes you free, you will be free forever.”  

By the grace of God in Christ, we have freedom from the bondage of sin.  This is the good news, the news that liberates us all.  But in the Christian life there’s an important condition involved – a truth expressed by the great German Lutheran Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “There is no freedom from, without freedom for.”  You’re not truly free of something unless you’re living and acting out of that freedom.   And Bonhoeffer says further (it’s gendered language), “Freedom is not something man has for himself, but something he has for others.”  Our life as Christians is inevitably, and always, lived in service to the rest of the human family.  Jesus says this over and over.  And here’s where we see it’s a matter of social justice.

Last fall I became aware of an edition of the Bible, first published about ten years ago, called the Poverty and Justice Bible.  It’s in a translation called the Contemporary English Version, which is slightly different than the one we use in the Episcopal Church; but the main feature of this Bible is that it highlights – in orange – passages that have to do with poverty and justice.  And there’s orange everywhere, many times in places even if you know the Bible you don’t expect it.  I was flipping through and stopped, randomly, at the story of the feeding of the five thousand in Mark chapter 6, a story we don’t normally think of as having anything to do with justice.  But this is what was in orange:  “Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish.  He looked up toward heaven and blessed the food.  Then he broke the bread and handed it to his disciples to give to the people.  He also divided the two fish, so that everyone could have some.”  This is God’s justice at work.  Jesus makes no distinctions about who is to receive food. There’s no question of qualifications, of relative deserving: everyone should have some.

Our attention to God’s justice – our awareness of injustice, and our responsibility as Christians to do something about that – is vital to the life of faith.  The foreword to the Poverty and Justice Bible was written by the Rev. Dr. James Howard Lawson, a major figure in the struggle for civil rights in this country.  In this foreword he talks about the two greatest figures in the Bible, Moses in the Old Testament, Jesus in the New, and says: “In their…encounters with God, they are compelled to take on God’s will for their times which is both extremely personal and therefore social….The God who meets them hears the cries of hurt and pain, sees the sufferings and oppressions of [God’s] people, grieves over the human plight and ‘comes down’ to deliver.”

            When Moses first meets God in Exodus chapter 3, at the burning bush, the first thing God tells him is, “I am the God who was worshiped by your ancestors….I have seen how my people are suffering  as slaves in Egypt, and I have heard them beg for my help because of the way they are being mistreated….I have come down to rescue them from the Egyptians….Now go to the king!  I am sending you to lead my people out of his country.”

             And there’s a big lesson for us in Moses’ response: he says, “Who am I to go to the king and lead your people out of Egypt?”   This is what most of the Old Testament prophets say, when they first hear God’s call: some variation on, Are you kidding?  You want somebody else, I don’t have that kind of faith.  And isn’t that often our response, when we see something of God’s work that needs to be done?  That’s too much for me.  It’ll take a bigger person than I am.

            Well, when Moses says Who am I, Lord, to go to the king, God answers simply, I will be with you.  God does not say, Oh, pshaw.  There’s no need for false humility.  Of course you can do this.  God simply says, I will be with you.  That answers that.  And God says the same thing to each of us.

            And at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, immediately after his temptation by the devil as Luke tells the story in chapter 4, Jesus kicks things off by going to the synagogue, standing up and quoting from Isaiah chapter 58, which says (pertinently, to us in Lent):

Do you think the Lord

      wants you to give up eating

and to act as humble

     as a bent-over bush?

Or to dress in sackcloth

    and sit in ashes?

Is this really what he wants

    On a day of worship?

I’ll tell you

what it really means

      to worship the Lord.

Remove the chains of prisoners

     who are chained unjustly.

Free those who are abused!

Share your food with everyone

     who is hungry;

share your home

     with the poor and homeless.

Give clothes to those in need:

don’t turn away the homeless. 

            We are free from sin, as we are free for God’s justice.  The first step for each of us, as people of faith, is to keep our eyes open to God’s justice that wants to happen, is begging to be done, all around us, in little and big ways.  And the second is, when we see that, prayerfully to consider, What is God calling me to do about this?  We don’t see burning bushes; but we do feel nudges.  So we take one step.  Then another. And we remember that God says to us, as to Moses: I will be with you.   That’s all we need.  Let us keep this in our hearts in this season of Lent; and see what happens.  Thanks be to God.

2/23/20

(Exodus 24:12-18; Ps. 2; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9)

            The confirmation class that I’m teaching this year at St. John’s is organized into eight sessions, each of which focuses on a major area in the Christian life: the Bible; church; prayer; that kind of thing. I do it this way, for one thing, because in a confirmation class there’s a certain amount of factual information that confirmands need to know.

            But I also do it this way because confirmands are almost always adolescents – these guys are in their mid-teens.  And that means, among other things, that they’ve at an age at which learned enough about the world to start making their own decisions about what’s important in life, and not just accept at face value what their parents and their culture have presented to them about that.  So in each of these classes I try to give them something about Christian faith which they can feel is real, is meaningful, has to do with life as we live it; and is not just the product of a closed system, which any church, unfortunately, can be.

            The subject of last Sunday’s class was Jesus; and in the course of preparing for it I came across a quote from a man named Dwight L. Moody, who was one of the great evangelists of the 19^thcentury in America.  This is what he said: “A rule I have had for years is: to treat the Lord Jesus Christ as a personal friend.  He is not a creed, a mere doctrine, but He Himself that we have.”

            Now, this is probably not an unfamiliar idea, many of us know the famous hymn, “What A Friend We Have In Jesus”; but I doubt that very many people are actually in the habit of thinking of Jesus in that way.  The truth of God’s presence among us – that God not only cares about us,, but loves us, all the time – is the basis of our faith, it’s what gives us life. And in thinking of Jesus Christ as our personal friend, we open ourselves to that truth in a uniquely immediate, and joyful, way. 

            But the idea has to be handled with care. It’s not right to think of Jesus as a friend, in the sense of someone we goof around with; or as a casual friend. Rather, Jesus is the kind of friend we seek out in those times in life when we need a friend, high times and low times: when we celebrate, when we mourn; when we’re uncertain about the future, whether that uncertainty makes us anxious and fearful, or excited and eager to explore.  At such times we want, and need, a friend whom we know knows us, and who we know will be our friend no matter what; a friend with whom we can be – and must be – completely honest; and a friend whom we know we can trust to tell us the truth, whether we’ll like it or not.

            Dwight Moody says he “has it as a rule” to treat Jesus Christ as a personal friend.  It’s good to think of it that way; because it is through regular, intentional behavior that we live in the truth, that Christ is alive.  Jesus Christ – in our Christian understanding, the second Person of the Trinity – God, the eternal God, beyond time – that God, in Jesus Christ, is alive, now, with us, here on earth.  Impossible.  But true. That’s what we Christians say.  And I think the gospel story we heard today – the story of the Transfiguration – is both an illustration of this truth, and a lesson about how we are to live with our friend, the Lord Jesus Christ.

            There’s something about why we’re hearing this story today that I think helps us understand all this.  In our church calendar, today is the Last Sunday After the Epiphany.  The lectionary readings for this particular Sunday are on a rotating three-year cycle, like almost all of the lectionary; the selections from the Old Testament, the Psalms, and the New Testament are all different each of those three years. But the gospel reading for this day is always the story of the Transfiguration; but told in one of the three different versions we find in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  So our church wants us to hear this story on this particular day.  And I think that’s because, as we stand here on this day of the church year, on the threshold of Lent, we look ahead of us, across a valley – the hard, gritty, this-world reality of Lent – to a pinnacle – the eternal life of the Resurrection, at Easter.  We stand here and see, in Christian faith, that both are part of God’s creation; and understand that Jesus Christ stands with us in both places: in this broken world, and in eternal life.  On one level, that’s the story of the Transfiguration.  And the story it tells is how Jesus Christ is our friend.

            This year we hear Matthew’s version.  He tells us, “Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves.”  There are a couple of things to note about this. One is that Jesus had his own personal friends among the twelve apostles.  Peter – and the brothers James and John, the sons of Zebedee –  are these friends.  He takes these three apart with him one other time: in the garden of Gethsemane, at a time of deep anguish in his life, when he’s facing death – a time when – like anybody – he needs a friend, to just be there with him.  On this occasion he takes them “by themselves” – just the friends – “up on a high mountain” – a place presented throughout the Bible as the setting for a close encounter with God.  Jesus takes them up there because he wants them to experience something – something big, and important – and, as their friend, he wants to be there to live through it with them.

            And suddenly, “before them” (Matthew tells us) – right before their eyes – something happens to Jesus: “…he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.”  Mathew’s description is as hard for us to understand as we hear it as it must have been hard for the disciples to understand as they saw it, because it was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before: their friend Jesus was still recognizably himself, but also somehow – plainly -an entirely different kind of being. They are seeing Jesus Christ.

            And then: “Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.”  The language suggests that this is a conversation between Jesus, Moses, and Elijah which has already been going on, and of which the disciples have all of a sudden become aware.  So out of the blue, they find themselves in a completely different world.

            And Peter – good old Peter – tries to show that he’s not thrown by this, tries to show that he’s on top of the situation, by pronouncing that it’s good they’re all there, and he’ll make three dwellings, for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah; and it feels like he could keep on babbling until someone stops hm.. 

            And someone does.  Suddenly they all hear the voice of God, coming from a cloud; and Matthew tells us that this happens before Peter has finished speaking.  God is saying: Peter: stop.  Just stop.  There’s something completely new going on here, and don’t try to pretend that you’ve seen it before.  Just behold. This is my Son; listen to him!

            This is the lesson in this story. There are plenty of things about God that, in this life, we don’t understand. But Jesus Christ does; and Jesus Christ is our friend – and we listen to him.  We can trust him.  Because we can trust God.  

All this is too much for the disciples – as it’s too much for us, the reality of God’s presence in our lives is way too much for most of us most of the time – and the disciples fall to the ground, paralyzed with fear.  (Think about how much of the time we shut God out.)  And Jesus comes over, and touches them – reminding them, I’m still me; and I’m still your friend – and says, Get up and do not be afraid.

            Get up: do not be afraid: trust God.  Live life as the unique human being God created you to be.   As we listen to Jesus Christ – who is not a creed, a mere doctrine, but he himself, that we have, our personal friend – we live in the truth; to the glory of God. Thanks be to God.

2/16/20

(Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Ps. 119:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37

            I have a friend who’s a long-time parishioner at a local church; she’s in her 70’s, and not long ago her two grown children, and their families, were visiting her for the weekend; and on Sunday morning, as she was getting ready to go to church – by herself, the others weren’t in the habit – one of her kids said, Mom, why do you go to church?

             Knowing her, and the kind of children she would have brought up, I’m sure it was a sincere question.  And I think she was probably glad of the chance to answer it; and not just because it was her kids and she wants them to understand her; but because it’s part of our life as Christians, to ask ourselves that question.  It’s healthy, and it’s necessary, because life is always new, and the answer is always evolving.  Why do I go to church?  Why am I here?

            There are two ways to answer that question. One is short-range, and specific: what am I doing here today?  What’s going on in my life that I want to work on here, now, in this worship service; rather than just sit here and watch it happen?  What’s on my mind, and my heart?  Who do I need to pray for?  What am I anxious, or angry, or fearful, about, that I need to offer up to God? What am I thankful for today?  Is there something I need to confess, to face the truth about?  Am I really present here today?  Lord, help me to be present today.

And there’s the question in its larger context: Why do I come to church in the first place?  Why do I come here for all of that?  Of course, there are many ways to answer that question.  But for me, one of them would be: we come to church, on a regular basis, because we want to live truthful, honest lives, in a world that’s noisy and confusing, and in which we are pulled, powerfully, in many directions. And here, in church, we’re not going to allow ourselves to be pulled: there is one God, one source of truth, who governs our lives, and whom we strive to recognize; and we’re going to be intentional about that.   We want to see, speak, and do the truth.  And we come here to learn about that because we can feel that the truth is here, uniquely, in this Christian story that we soak ourselves in; that we explore together, that we celebrate together, that we work on together, week in and week out.  That’s why we come to church. 

I’m thinking about this because the lectionary readings for today, the sixth Sunday in Epiphany, all seem to point toward an answer to this question. 

            On first hearing, these three readings don’t appear to have anything in common, other than the fact that all of the people we hear from in them – Moses, Paul, and Jesus – all sound just a bit like they got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning.  Because – each in his own way – they’re all three responding to the same truth about us humans (about all of us together, and each one of us individually), which is: how easy it is for us to go wrong; and, at the same time, how simple it is to go right.  (Notice that “easy” and “simple” are not the same thing: something may be simple, and still be very hard to do.)

            The sayings of Jesus in the gospel passage sound like a grab-bag of judgments on various points of the Law, which seem unrelated, except to say that we’re not nearly as hard on ourselves as we should be, and shame on us.  But if we look at them a little more closely, a common theme emerges.  Jesus mentions a bunch of things that the Law prohibits: you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not swear falsely; you shall divorce only in the proper manner as prescribed by law.  But Jesus goes further: he says, forget murder: if you’re angry with someone, if you call someone a fool, you’re just as liable to judgment.  Forget adultery: if you look at someone with lust in your heart, you’re just as liable to judgment; forget swearing falsely: if you swear at all – if you use an oath of any kind – you’re just as liable to judgment; and so on.  Sounds crabby, doesn’t it?

            But it’s not that.  In each of these comparisons– as different as they appear to be: murder and casual insult, the act of adultery and a lustful glance, swearing falsely and swearing at all – what we’re actually doing, in both cases, Jesus sees, is putting ourselves in place of God.  We’re shoving God out of the way, ignoring God’s presence in our lives. The degree of the offense may be different, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves, Jesus says: in both, the movement of the spirit is in essentially the same direction.  Even when the offense seems small – is small – we’re bypassing God, shutting God out; and we need to be aware of that; because when we do that, we cut ourselves off from the one true source of love and peace and joy.  That’s why Jesus cares about this. It’s not about punishment: not about making sure the guilty get their just deserts.  It’s about staying awake to the life of God that is right there waiting for us: God in Christ, who tells us, I have come that you might have life, and have it in abundance.  How easy it is to forget that; how easy it is to go wrong.

            And in today’s reading from First Corinthians, Paul points us toward how simple it is to go right.  As in most of his letters, Paul is here writing back to a church he founded and has moved on from, but with whom he stays in touch, to make sure they stay on track.  And the message has gotten to Paul that there’s a problem: the church in Corinth has split into rival factions.  One of the leaders there is a man named Apollos, and some church members have been saying, we need to follow what this guy is teaching; and others saying, no, Paul’s the man; and that’s what they’re squabbling about.

            Now, Paul writes nothing here about the substance of what Apollos is saying; nor, whatever that might be, does Paul say, he’s wrong.  In fact, he actually endorses Apollos, on a level with himself: Paul writes, I planted, Apollos watered; but this is what’s important: God gave the growth.  So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.  And this is not an idea, for Paul, it’s not a theory he’s proposing, or something which he hopes is true: it’s a description of reality, of the way things actually work, in life.   And that’s what we need to focus on.  The way to go right is simple: turn to God: keep our eyes on God: only God gives the growth.

            Only God gives the growth. That same truth is expressed beautifully, and powerfully, in words of Moses that we heard in the first lesson today.  This reading is from very near the end of the book of Deuteronomy, very near the end of the long, long story of Moses (four whole books of the Bible.)  He’s led the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, over many miles, many years; and they’re now at the very edge of the Promised Land, finally, on the bank of the River Jordan.  Moses also led them through the wilderness of the spirit, to a relationship with God; and now he gives them the Law (that’s the book of Deuteronomy), to guide them forward, after he’s gone, which is going to happen very soon (Moses dies four chapters later.).  And at the very end, as we heard today, Moses says, “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity“ (that is, according to the Law, things to do, and things to avoid.)  And having put those two before them, his final word to his people is this: “Choose life…, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you….”

            Choose life.  It’s no different for us.  I think that’s a pretty darn good capsule description of what we do here: of why we come to church: we are here to choose life.  However imperfectly, however messily we do it, we choose to open our eyes to God’s new creation that is going on around us all the time.  We choose continually to face in that direction, to join in that work: we plant, and we water, knowing that God will give the growth.  So we give thanks to God.  We give thanks for this life that we have here together, and for the new life that we see is forever springing up around us.  Thanks be to God.