The Work of Christmas

A reflection on the readings for Christmas 1: Luke 2:41-52 by the Rev. Margaret Rose    

                   

By the time Christmas 1 rolls around, I confess that I am ready for something new.

 This year, especially, at least on the East Coast of the US, it was a year of trying to make sense of all that has happened, of trying to see where our faith fits, where God engages, and where the incarnation makes sense.  Over the email airwaves there were multitudes of sermons about Hurricane Sandy and most especially about the killings at Sandy Hook School in Newtown Connecticut.  Where was God?  How could God let this happen?  All the questions which return  to us in the face of evil or tragedy or the incomprehensibly destruction of too many lives.  There were wonderful reflections from across the religious spectrum.   And one of the best came from Maureen Dowd in an  editorial in the New York Times on December 26.   ( You can find it on line, called Why, God?)    A priest friend of hers suggested that the meaning of the incarnation really has to do with human beings’  call to be love’s presence in the world.  That is who Jesus was and that is who we are called to be.  My own thoughts on Christmas Eve were similar.  That is, that in the face of life’s joys and sufferings, good and evil, what we have is the promise of God’s presence with us—Emmanuelle.  It is not a zapper God who fixes things, or who holds the puppet strings of the world, or who rewards us when we are “good” or punishes us when we are bad.  God is a god of presence.  And as the priest said, often experienced through other people.   God’s promise is “I will be with you, even to the end of time.”   

Often we know this and have glimpses of that promise, especially  when we are most in need, when there is only God to cling to.  And  those who reach out to us  in our circle of love and community.  Or even strangers as has been the case this year with Sandy and Newtown.   

  

My wish for something new was really a desire to move out of my thoughts,out of trying to make sense of everything, away from words or even the  deep spiritual work that is this season.  I am ready to get back to the routine, I suppose, back to the work of everyday.  In fact to the business that the incarnation calls us toward.  

In Luke’s  Gospel we have the wonderful story of Mary and Joseph heading to Jerusalem for the Passover. Upon their return,  traveling with many from Nazareth, Mary and Joseph  lose Jesus in the  crowd and discover that he has stayed behind. They go back to the city and find him  teaching in the temple.  Luke’s version has Jesus say that he must be in his father’s house.  Others, and the one I remember from childhood,  was Jesus replying to his parents,  “Don’t you know I must be  about my Father’s business.”   Such a response would be no surprise to any parent of an adolescent today.  And I certainly wonder how Joseph must have felt.  But for us perhaps it is the message of what is next. 

 As I think about this text assigned for Christmas 1, it seems that this is the “something new”.   It is time now to get back to business.  Not  perhaps the routine of life, but rather the business that God has called us to as we live into the reality of the Incarnation, of God with us.   It is, as Dr.  Howard Thurman wrote in his familiar poem which I leave with you as the reflection for this Sunday: 

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 flock,
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 brothers,
To make music in the heart.

May we look with hope toward 2013 with God ‘s promise of Emmanuelle and the work of Christmas before us.  

Advent's Invitation: A reflection for Advent 4C

 A reflection on Advent 4C by the Rev. Dr. Katherine Godby

Advent this year has been a special time for me.  I’ve had a year of change—moving to a new job at a new church, and a year of dealing with health problems—provoking a rethinking of my identity as an embodied being with significant human limits.  So I found myself wondering these weeks of Advent: what exactly is Advent’s invitation?

 

In this season of honest reflection, I love the idea that Advent offers us yet another opportunity to give birth to the Christ within us. We’ve been created in the image of God, or Christ, but as we grow up, that divine image gets tarnished, diminished, or deadened by various fears. Giving birth to the Christ within us means allowing that divine image to once again flourish, and as I know from experience, it is a never-ending process.

Allowing the divine image within us to really flourish in our lives is, I think, intricately tied to Advent as the anticipation of the Incarnation, the coming of God into this world in human form. Can we see that God continues coming into the world, even now, through each of us? We are called to carry forward the Incarnation, to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world, to allow the image of Christ to shape how we live, how we care and relate, and how we love.

How ironic that the season of the year in which we’re called to contemplative reflection, asking ourselves important questions, is the same season that makes that calling difficult. Advent asks us to make contact with our need for salvation. But the culture of Santa Claus tells us that buying this and that will save us. Advent wants to know: What is that emptiness I keep trying to feed—with food, or fantasy, or excitement, or busyness? The culture of Santa Claus has the answer: stay busy with a million distractions and you won’t even know that you’re restless and empty!

But thanks be to God, that denial doesn’t have to last forever. The Holy Spirit keeps sending us two vital things: signals that we’re not being honest with ourselves and impulses toward the courage we need to face that dishonesty.

We have no need to fear Advent’s invitation. The prophet Isaiah writes: “A voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God”—we prepare for God by being honest about the desert of our own hearts . . . “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that she has served her term, her penalty is paid”—a message of reassurance and forgiveness.

Whatever we find when we honestly look inside our hearts is simply part of our life’s experience, not the totality of who we are. And in itself this act of honest reflection begins the birth of forgiveness, regained strength, healing grief—it begins over and over again this miraculous process of transformation toward which God calls us. Advent reminds us that our Savior is coming, and is already here, and the joy that is our birthright lies just beneath the surface of whatever concerns us.

So that’s a bit of what I’ve concluded about Advent’s invitation to me this year – what about you? 

 

Advent 3C, what can we say?

I have nothing to say today. Do you? Let us all know.

This is all I know. A friend from my seminary class is the rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Newton, Connecticut. Another friend told us that the child of a college classmate of hers was one of the children killed. Knowing those people, even distantly, brings me, all of us, close to that terrible day and time and place.

I found these things on Facebook:

Steve Charleston, wise elder, spiritual leader, Episcopal bishop, posted this on Thursday night:

Standing alone at night, beneath a curious moon, I searched for that single star, the one that would be my sign of hope. But instead, I saw a field of stars, cast shimmering across the heavens, a countless sweep of stars, more than I could carry. Hope and you do not hope alone. Love and you do not love alone. Like stars our dreams are cast to high heaven, some to lead us to all we imagined, others only to watch over us on our way, but all shine together, all share the same beauty. We do not pass this way alone, but journey in light, beneath a curious moon.

From my friend Joyce, an art history professor:

… these things always seem to happen in northern/capitalist/Protestant countries. I am still waiting to hear about the problem of adolescent mental illness and social marginalization that is at the cause of all these shootings, on top of the easy access to guns. There is something about the loss of community and social support that leads to this level of despair. I also don't think that it's an accident that shooters often target children and/or carry out violence in schools.

A parishioner, T., who is a drama major, performed this semester in a production of A Thousand Cranes, that was performed in all the area school. The play concerns the bombing of Hiroshima, as seen through the eyes of a little girl. T. writes:

Coming off of A Thousand Cranes, I wish everyone would take a moment to contemplate how we treat each other. After the violence that has occurred in the last few weeks and over the course of the year it is clear to me that it is more important now than ever that we all treat each other with respect and dignity. Show others the same amount of love that you expect to be given and where conflict arises take a step back and try to see the problem from other angles so a compromise can be made. Remember, it is not the length of life or number of achievements that make a life rewarding but instead it is in the way we treat others and the world around us. Now go fold some Cranes and have a safe and happy Holiday.

A. is in high school. She wrote:

Let me just ask what the hell has this world come to, where a man can walk into an elementary school. Filled with CHILDREN, each wondering what presents they will get for Christmas, what they ate at snack, things little kids should be concerned about. 18 children as of right now ranging in ages from 5-10 years old have lost their lives. Their friends have lost classmates, and teachers; and in turn their innocence, sense of security and will most likely suffer these effects for the rest of their lives. Their parents have lost the loves of their lives. Horrific. Disgusting. Unbelievable. Those words don't even begin to explain this tragedy. And let me just say, I pray for that THING that caused all of this pain. RIP

C., who is a film company executive, posted:

Within a few days, we will know their names. We will know their faces. We will know what they liked, what they were looking forward to about the holidays, what their favorite subjects were in school, what they wanted to be when they grew up. We will know the twenty names with which, in a normal and sane world, we would not necessarily cross paths - unless they did something truly extraordinary  with their lives. And now, inexplicably, horrifically, they will never get that chance. Now, we must find a way to hold their families, teachers, and friends - in a way that we would want to be held were the tables turned - even if it is only in our hearts. There is no sense to be made of this, but we need to do right by the ones who are left behind, whose lives are forever altered. My hope would be, for this moment and those in the days to come, that these are the people on whom we'll choose to focus.

That is what the people say, full of grief and longing. The challenge to us is, what do we, the preachers, say?

Among Jenee Woodard’s resources, I found this from Diana Butler Bass from nearly two years ago, after the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords. In Speaking for the Soul, she chastised preachers for leaving people hanging, people you are yearning with their very beings for a word of guidance, a way to make sense of the senseless, a hook, a frame, some way to put the unspeakable into the story of God among us.

At their best, American pulpits are not about taking sides and blaming.  Those pulpits should be places to reflect on theology and life, on the Word and our words.  I hope that sermons tomorrow will go beyond expressions of sympathy or calls for civility and niceness.  Right now, we need some sustained spiritual reflection on how badly we have behaved in recent years as Americans–how much we’ve allowed fear to motivate our politics, how cruel we’ve allowed our discourse to become, how little we’ve listened, how much we’ve dehumanized public servants, how much we hate.

Read more: http://blog.beliefnet.com/christianityfortherestofus/2011/01/congresswoman-gabrielle-giffords-speaking-for-the-soul.html#ixzz2F9g8TlWm

Gail Collins wrote this in Saturday’s New York Times, reminding us that despite the remorse surrounding each incidence of gun violence, no one in civic leadership, from President Obama on down, does anything to change the law.

America needs to tackle gun violence because we need to redefine who we are. We have come to regard ourselves — and the world has come to regard us — as a country that’s so gun happy that the right to traffic freely in the most obscene quantities of weapons is regarded as far more precious than an American’s right to health care or a good education. We have to make ourselves better. Otherwise, the story from Connecticut is too unspeakable to bear.

If nothing else, we Christians have at the core of our story another story that is too unspeakable to bear. We are preparing this month to remember the birth of the child who will grow to bear that burden. Surely God, who gave us all, wants us, once we have prayed for the dead and comforted the grieving, to do more.

Advent 2C

Reflection on Luke 3:1-6 by the Rev. Dr. Kate Hennessy-Keimig

Even more than usual, the themes of Advent are striking a particular resonance with me this year.  This time of waiting, of the in-between and the “not-yet” has become very familiar.   The wilderness too, that wild and unfamiliar place that takes us to our edges and, if we let it, to places of transformation and new beginnings, has started to map its landscape onto my heart.

John’s familiar message strikes a ringing chord as well.  While it’s true, as always, that I cannot hear the passage from Isaiah without hearing Handel’s beautiful melody … “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God, every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight, and the rough places plain,” this year I am hearing the words themselves anew, with sharp and clear images about just how much difference we are talking about in this altered landscape, as well as the amount of effort, movement and, yes, probably pain, would be involved in such change.

I’ve been watching the building of a new bridge in my town.  It started a few years before we moved here and it won’t be all done until December of 2014.  It has involved the moving of tons of earth, the removal of buildings, the rerouting of lanes of traffic, and actual changes in where roads come and go. Places that were once flat are now sloped and places that were steeper have been graded down.  Men spend days just grinding on pieces of cement to make them smooth and precise so that things will fit together in just the way they need to for safety and endurance on the new structure.  When the new bridge is all done, the old one, which has been a staple of the town landscape for almost a century, will be demolished, and a new pathway with four wide, smooth lanes of traffic will take us back and forth across the river. The bridge builders are very proud of the fact that there have been no fatalities during the very daunting task of constructing this bridge, but certainly there have been people injured, and there have been accidents as drivers have not adapted to the changes caused by the construction. Traffic has been slow and congested at times and it’s been difficult, irritating, and a general source of frustration for many people for several years as we wait for a new bridge to come.

Personally, too, in the last few years, there have been a lot of changes in the landscape of my life. Since 2010, there has been a wedding, with its combining of households, two more complete moves of house and town, the ends and beginnings between my husband and I of six jobs, and a return to school for him, the aborted attempt to sell a house, and recently the re-start of that effort, the beginning and premature end of a CPE program, a small stint in a parish begun in hope that did not work out, and one that seemed to have much promise that never even got off the ground.  Of late, there have been some of those “close calls” with medical tests.  You know the ones, where you get the call-back, “something is there, and we want another look.”  So you go, and they look, and you wait, and you worry, you hope and you pray.  And, even though, thanks be to God, all has been well in the end, during the waiting, at least if you are me, you go to that wilderness of worst-case scenario, every single time. It seems like it’s been the Advent of my life for quite a while now, and I’m finding myself trying to make some sense of it, and to answer the “God questions” in the midst of it.

Change and transformation do not usually happen without effort and, most often, not without some level of pain and discomfort.  Being in the wilderness, by chance or by choice, often pushes our limits and taxes our endurance.  Sometimes we take it on by choice because we want to grow or change and we know somehow that we need to be in an environment that will enable this.  Sometimes the wilderness seems to find us, and the choice becomes what we will do while we are there.  Because there is always a choice for us.  Unlike the mute dirt and rock of the valleys and mountains, we get to choose whether we will listen to the message of the journey, whether we will allow ourselves to be changed by it. We decide whether we will let the wilderness do its work upon us to straighten out the kinks in our thinking, open our hearts to encompass a wider scope of emotion, smooth the rough places in our souls. We can turn and choose to see how God is present in this time, this moment, or we can hide under a rock, lost in the fear.  We can open ourselves up to a new vision of things, a changed landscape, a different path, or we can cling stubbornly to “how it was, is, or should be.”   We can stretch ourselves a bit to allow space for whatever new thing God might be doing in our corner of the world, or we can curl in and remain small. We can participate and co-create in the process of things being made new, or we can refuse, the choice is ours. 

We are invited into the ongoing process of preparing for the coming always and again into our own wilderness of the One who is ever here/ever new. Sometimes, as my husband reminded me recently, I have to be “encouraged” to do things for my own benefit. I need to be reminded sometimes that just a little effort on that landscape will likely pay off, and might even bring joy! Prepare the way of the Lord, he is coming!

Advent 1

A reflection on the readings for Advent 1C: Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13 and Luke 21:25-36 by Janine A. Goodwin, M.A., M.S. Ed.

There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.

The readings for this week are apocalyptic. We've made that word come to mean the end of the world, and often a violent end at that. Movies and popular culture throw out more apocalypses than cell phone apps. Just off the top of my head, there's the classic war film Apocalypse Now and the increasingly popular idea of the zombie apocalypse. People joke about their post-apocalyptic skill sets--crocheting, knitting, spinning, cooking from scratch, raising chickens, woodworking with hand tools.

But that's not what the word "apocalypse" really means. It means "unveiling." It means finding the hidden meanings and truths that lie behind current events and everyday existence. Apocalyptic writing, like the passage from Luke and the books of Daniel and Revelation, use complex symbolism to try and make sense of the world, and to prophesy--another loaded word: a prophecy is not a fortuneteller's prediction, but a projection forward, a warning of what may come if we don't change direction or a vision of hope and trust in God's ability to save the world from whatever mess we've made of it. The truth of prophecy does not lie in whether it came true the way a weather prediction comes true; it lies in the deeper insight it gives into our existence and God's way of working in the world.

In popular culture, and in too much of Christian history, both apocalypse and prophecy have often gotten warped by triumphalism. Triumphalism is the belief that there is one right interpretation, I've got it, and the rest of you, up to and including everyone in the past several thousand years, are all wrong. There are two large problems with that attitude. The first is that the people with this attitude tend to make rash predictions, which are proven to be wrong. People who set a date for the end of the world end up looking bewildered the day after the world failed to end on schedule. My parents, who seldom bought a book but never got rid of one, owned a book that was published nearly a hundred years ago: that book lined up every single event in Revelation with the early part of the First World War. Its presence in our home and its manifest failure at predicting the end, which should have come sometime in the 1920s, helped me get out of an anxiety attack caused by a similar book that was written in the early 1970s and is similarly obsolete now. The first problem, then, can be simple.

 The second problem is more complex and far more serious: triumphalism is a failure of humility and charity. It has no place in a living faith. It does not bring us closer to God.
Thinking that we, and only we, know what God has said or is saying or is going to do cuts us off from other people of faith, including people of other faiths, just when we need to be talking to them. It gives us a sense of safety, but that safety is spurious. It's not a way of knowing God, but a way of trying to control God and tell God what to do, which, as the history of our faith (and just about anyone else's) tells us, never ends well. Humility before God requires that we do our best to learn and understand Scripture, but can never fully know the mind of God and must not presume to do so. Charity requires that we are always open to the insights of others, past and present. Feminist theology, liberation theology, and new scholarship do not make old work valueless; they enhance it. They add new voices and insights to the rich, long conversation the human race is always having about faith. Even when older work is demonstrably wrong, our corrections of those wrongs do not make us superior to those who came before us; in most cases they, like we, were doing the best they could. If they were dishonest, let us acknowledge it and then look to make our own work and lives as honest as we can. Good scholarship honors the truth and seeks the truth, but does not presume to own it.

The reality of prophecy and apocalyptic is this: the writer had that time, place, and situation in mind, and the writings also have meaning for other people at other times. This is partly because human history does tend to repeat itself. There are always signs in the heavens and distress among nations, and we are always wondering how the story of this world will end. It is also because we look for meaning and hope, turning to ancient writings for insight. It is good to do that as long as we do not ask for, or fabricate, more certainty than there actually is, or force our certainties on others.

Prophecy and apocalyptic, when we don't warp them into ways to make ourselves feel safe or superior, point to trust in God and openness to one another. The fact is that we don't know the future; only God knows when and how the end of our individual lives and the life of the world will end. The good news, which we often forget, is that our redemption, whatever it is, is always drawing near. The apocalypse is, indeed, always now, because the truth is always being unveiled. Thanks be to God.


A footnote: two very good works about the apocalyptic book of Revelation are The Power of the Lamb: Revelation's Theology of Liberation for You, by Ward Ewing, and The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation, by Barbara R. Rossing. If you are inclined to choose a book for Advent reading, I'd strongly recommend either of them.

All Saints' Day

 A reflection by the Rev. Crystal Karr...

Isaiah 25:1-10

O Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you, I will praise your name; for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.  For you have made the city a heap, the fortified city a ruin; the palace of aliens is a city no more, it will never be rebuilt.  Therefore strong peoples will glorify you; cities of ruthless nations will fear you. For you have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat. When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm, t he noise of aliens like heat in a dry place, you subdued the heat with the shade of clouds; the song of the ruthless was stilled.

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.  And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever.  Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.

It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain. The Moabites shall be trodden down in their place as straw is trodden down in a dung-pit.

Many of us will be celebrating All Saints Sunday tomorrow.  It is the day in which we honor our dead—the saints who have lived among us, fellow believers, teachers, leaders, and inspirations of faith.  We share their stories, remembering how their faith touched our lives and helped us to go a bit farther along our faith walk.  It is a time in which the scriptures take the form of flesh and blood as we tell the tales of grace lived out, love taking human form as we remember one of our beloveds who taught us how to live more like Christ—lending a hand, offering a shoulder to cry upon, practicing grace and forgiveness in the most difficult of circumstances.  It is a day in which we practice resurrection as we reflect and remember,  and are inspired  to live out of the hope and love gifted to us by those who have passed on.

I love how on this day, the scriptures we read leave the page and jump into our lives.  My Aunt Susie died last week.  She’s not the average church woman, not a traditional pillar of faith by any means.  She would rather sit in a bar smoking and drinking with the guys than spend any time in church at all.  Yet, she taught me that believing in something didn’t mean a damn thing unless my life reflected what I believed.  My rough spoken, hard living Aunt Susie taught me that the scriptures I study take on flesh and blood in this present life, and if they don’t, well then they don’t mean a damn thing.

Susie lived in my grandparents’ farmhouse on the outskirts of town along a bend in the road.  Between the bend in the road and the steep drive rarely did anyone pull in to turn around or ask for directions.  Yet one day as Susie was at the back of the house, someone knocked on the door.  I nearly jumped out of my skin.  I cautiously approached the door, having learned at school to be afraid of strangers.  I looked through the glass to see a raggedy bearded man standing there.  Just when I turned my head to call for Susie, she was standing there and barking at me to open the damned door.  She invited him in; he wanted a glass of water.  She sent me to get the water.  He drank it and left.

 “Did you know that guy?”

“Nope.”

“Then why did you invite him in?”

“He might have been Jesus.”

            Susie didn’t need someone in robes telling her what was proper.  She didn’t want to hear about sinning and combating evil.  She wanted and needed to live out the Gospel as best she could, without words but with deeds.  I learned from her that day, that I need not be afraid of strangers, they might be Jesus.  As I grew in faith, I discovered that Jesus, the Christ, a spark of divine, lives within each of us, every human being on the face of the planet.  It is my job to recognize that spark and treat each one with the same love and compassion I would offer to Jesus. 

            Like my Aunt Susie, sometimes I do so masterfully while far too often I fail miserably.  Yet, it was Aunt Susie who taught me that living out the Gospel is a must for my faith.  If sitting in a pew on Sunday mornings is where it begins and ends it is worthless.  I worship a God who promises to care for the poor, the needy, the distressed and thus this is part of what I do as well.  I do not honor my God if I turn a blind eye to those in need; offer a cup of water to the Christ before me.

Too often Christianity is presented as a promise of life after death---as in Revelation 21:1-6:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”  And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.

We take courage and assurance with the promise that God will set all things right, that one day our tears and sorrows will be wiped away.  However, that is not all of our Christian faith.  If we look to another of today’s lectionary scriptures, Matthew 5:1-12 we find a blessing on those who are struggling, not just for their afterlife but for their life on earth.  Throughout the New Testament Jesus says, “The Kingdom of God has come near.”  The Kingdom of God is here and now if only we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear, and each day we have the opportunity to participate in making the Kingdom of God present in this life on earth.  We have been invited to participate in creating God’s justice on earth.  We have been invited to offer a cup of water to the Christ before us.  We have been invited to make the scriptures put on flesh and blood.  We have been invited to inspire and lead others who may be younger in the faith and encourage them upon their journey.  Perhaps one day, they will be celebrating and resurrecting you through stories and remembrances of your life, your love, your faith that so embodied and made real the love and grace of God that it helped them to believe, to live as though their faith mattered and made a damn big difference.

            May you be blessed to see, hear, and participate in the Kingdom of God this day and every day.  Amen.