12th Day of Lent

There was no Sunday meditation from SSJE...

Day Twelve: What acts of friendship have you initiated or received this week?

            The back and forth expressions of friendship expand through almost every encounter. Whether it be a phone call to check on a friend, smiles/greetings reflected back by strangers I pass on the street, or the ultimate sharing of Christ’s body and blood through the Eucharist, friendship and love are shared throughout my days. What a blessing it is to share this caring for others, as Christ taught us and continues to teach us to spread God’s love in this world. And what a blessing it is to receive that same love from others!

10th Day of Lent

As we continue our Lenten journey with the brothers of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, today's reflection is about laughter and fun in the life of Jesus. Scripture doesn't mention times when Jesus told jokes, or tickled a child. But as a complete human being, surely he did those things. He surely laughed and elicited laughter from his friends. There surely were times of fun together, as with any relationship between friends does. The SSJE brothers asked us today: Is God present to you through joy? 

Now to me, Joy is different from happiness. Joy is a deeper, more complete "knowing", not something that can be fleeting like happiness. The following is my answer to the question:

      I am most aware of God’s presence in my life through the experience of Joy. Joy is that overwhelming sense of wellbeing (of being loved and cared for by God) that brings the certainty that, as St. Julian of Norwich said, “All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well”. And, through her statement, awareness dawns that the “shall be” has become present tense. No matter the circumstances, all things are well as we live into God’s love.

What answer do you have?

Lenten Reflections - 1st 9 days of Lent

Day One: Where can you know abundant life? Where can you still grow?

            I can know abundant life by paying attention. Our Lord has richly blessed me in all ways, and if I am simply aware of what God is doing in my life, the abundance is overwhelming. I can grow my faith and awareness by scripture, prayer time, and sharing God’s blessings with others.

Day Two: What new word is God speaking to you today?

            The word I am hearing is “Less”. Less food, less drink, less noise: Less of all things in which I tend to indulge. I’m also hearing “More”. More quiet, more prayer, more silence with God, more focus on the important things which I have neglected.

Day Three: Write a wish for your journey along the way.

            My wish for this journey is to reclaim my relationship with God. I have abdicated God’s place as first in my heart, mind and most especially, time. I wish to again grow closer, devoted to quiet time with spirit, and give myself to that place of peace and consent, for the Trinity to reign in all areas of my life.

Day Four: Can you allow yourself to be vulnerable and be embraced?

            It is easy to be vulnerable before the presence of God, to allow myself to open before Him, and pour out my frailties and confusion, knowing that God loves me as I am, and frequently feeling His embrace of Love.

            Doing that with other people is very different. I have some difficulty with being vulnerable, but as I have aged and gone through all sorts of difficulties, it is becoming easier to let others see my weaknesses. At the same time, I have always been open to being embraced – at least in the ways of friendship and family. Yet I find myself continuing to strive to be the caregiver, even when I am hurting. The realization dawns upon me that I must allow others to care-give to me: that allowing others to reciprocate is also allowing them the grace to express love. There is a freedom, a relaxation in even the idea of being cared for that allows my shoulders and back to relax. Stoicism is not necessarily a good thing, I realize…

Day Five: What do you understand about who God is?

            I have a unique understanding of God, due to my experience of being “slain in the spirit” in 1992, on a pilgrimage to Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina. I truly believe that God allowed me to feel his unconditional love enveloping me through that experience, and I KNOW, without doubt, of God’s Love and can recall being completely immersed in it. I came out of that with the knowledge that Love encompasses all, and is the ultimate power that moves Creation and everything in it. God’s love is the current that holds creation in place, and it exists in each nano-cell of everything in creation, including the places that we term “void”. God is pure and complete unconditional love that holds the planets in their courses, and even the smallest parts of creation in that love. It is that love that allows “even the rocks to sing” – though we haven’t the ears to hear their singing.

Day Six: How could you be playful in showing love to others today?

            Playfulness is so easy at times, and difficult at others. Today, I will choose to be playful: with my spouse and my friends, as well as those I encounter. How? Well, smiling comes easily to me, and that is a way to impact anyone whose path I cross. Greetings to passersby can perk up their day. Perhaps it is simply an attitude change: deciding to be playful makes me so. I think that works! We’ll see.

Day Seven: What is your reminder that you are loved?

            Again (see Day Five) I KNOW this beyond anything else in my life. Remembering it on a moment-to-moment basis is, however, not where I live. It is my desire to keep this knowledge always in my awareness, for when it is, I am a better person to those around me – more loving, more joyful, more giving. This meditation itself is a reminder that the desire to keep God’s amazing love for all of creation in the forefront of my consciousness will make my life and the world a better place. May it be so.

Day Eight: Where was God for you today?

            God was in the beautiful sunshine and the singing of birds. I found God in nature around me as I walked down to get the paper. I found God in the smiles and waves of people on the street as I drove by. He was in the joy of children in the stores, in the hands of Theresa as she softened my hands and feet and made them prettier, in Amy’s strength as she massaged my aches away. I saw God in my sweetheart’s eyes as he greeted me. And God was in the words of Jessica’s story, which she shared as her Lenten discipline. God’s creation and His love surrounded my day, and I am blessed.

Day Nine: What does God especially cherish about you?

            What immediately popped into my mind was that God cherishes my failings. Now why that occurred makes me pause: I know God loves it when I am “right on” with him – aware and in love with God and all of His people. Yet I have a niggling feeling that He loves me even more when I struggle and fall short, as I do each and every day. In God’s wisdom, She knows that my desire is to be the best person I can be, and it aches God’s heart and God draws even closer to me when I fail to achieve that goal. God’s love is infinite and unconditional, and the cherishing continues without subsidence, even when I am at my weakest in returning that love to God by loving those I encounter.

Life Gets in the Way

I can't believe it has been over a year since I blogged anything here. There have been many changes, and for a while, I was too caught up in what was happening to even consider the thoughtfulness necessary to write about what those changes meant for my life.

From being a very involved (read that over-involved) vicar in a small mission church, to illness and accident, on into "retirement" from St. Paul's, and over six months of recovery from surgery following a fall and concussion, Lent 2014 has finally brought me back into introspection, connection and a sense of moving ahead.

I thank God today for for the Society of St. John the Evangelist for their Lenten videos and questions. This way of listening, meditation and prayer has helped to center me to contemplate my relationship with God and my small understanding of Who God is in my life.

As a way of sharing this with you, I will post my reflections on the questions posed by the brothers.
Since we are already way into Lent, the first posting will be all the questions and reflections thus far, continuing each day from this point on.

May God bless and keep you all,
Judith

The Word Became Flesh

Thanks to Bishop Doyle for his thoughts and words....

"The Word became flesh and lived among us."  

            St. Augustine said that we are Easter people, and that "Alleluia is our song." I believe that we are also Christmas people, and as our altar hanging says, “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” or "Glory to God in the Highest" is also our song. Who am I to amend a statement by the man who laid the foundation of theology in the Middle Ages and forever since?

            Why do I say that we are Christmas people? Well, though the celebration of Easter preceded the celebration of Christmas by centuries, and despite the fact that American Puritans considered it a pagan festival and outlawed it, and in spite of the obvious secularization of this holy day, I suspect that most devout Christians find our hearts strangely warmed by the thought of the babe in the manger, and its message is a very unique one.

            Every religion has had to deal with questions of the relationship between God and creation: Who we are in relation to the Creator? And then there is the big question of what happens after we die. For some religions, it is an escape from the bonds of the flesh, for some it is the Resurrection of the body. Plato thought that disembodied souls lived on. The Christian celebration of Easter says something very specific. And, in my experience and study of other religious traditions, I have never found any other that believed in the Incarnation quite the way Christians do.

            The closest might be the Hindus: their god, Vishnu is believed to have appeared on earth many times, including his incarnations as Prince Rama, and Krishna, of whom you may have heard. But these incarnations, what the Hindus call “avatars” never quite get their feet dusty, they never really leave their divine glory behind. They are never as human as you and me.

            This is one of the places where Christianity goes beyond other traditions:  God is not simply manifest in the natural world, nor simply in the human heart, but, in the words of St. Paul in his letter to the Galatians, we read, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.” And, from the Gospel of John we hear these words: “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God… And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” It is this that makes Christianity so different. It is also something, ironically, that many of us forget when we view Jesus as "just a step above" "real" humans. Our Creeds remind us that Jesus was fully human, as well as fully divine.

            There is really only one thing that we as Christians can never say in prayer. It is: "But God, you don't understand." Because Jesus became a human, God always understands. He’s been here and experienced it. And that, I suspect, is the motivation behind the Lucan story of the stable, the manger, and shepherds: this child was not born as a prince, or as the son of a CEO. Not in a palace, not even in the maternity ward at a good hospital, but in a barn, sleeping in a feeding trough, visited by dirty, smelly common laborers.

            It is that initial coming to live with us, one of us, that we celebrate at this time of year. If not for the Incarnation, the Paschal Mystery could not have taken place: it is the essential condition for Good Friday and Easter Sunday. But it is more. Many of the Church Fathers considered the Incarnation to be the beginning of the defeat of Sin and Death. St. Ignatius said in the 2nd century, "Christ became what we are so we could become what he is." And St. Athanasius in the 4th century made the statement, "God became human so humans could become god." This sounds sacrilegious, but he is only echoing 2 Peter, where it says "we are made partakers in the divine nature." And it is echoed in the Roman Catholic liturgy, when the priest puts the water in the wine, he says, "By the mingling of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of him who humbled himself to share in our humanity."

            But perhaps there is even more to it than that. Some theologians have believed that even had there been no sin, the Incarnation would have taken place, anyway: that God created precisely because God wanted to share in the lives of his creatures as a creature. Karl Rahner, the 20th century Christian scholar, said that when God wishes to express Godself, there must be a structure, a "grammar" if you will, for that expression, the Word, and that the grammar of God's self-communication is humanity. In other words, we don't need to figure out how to get the Word (Christ) "to fit" into a human nature, since human nature was created precisely to hold the Word. Like a shoe is made for a foot, not a hand, and the foot slips easily into the shoe, so does the Word precisely fit into human flesh.

            What does all this mean for us? I believe that the Incarnation is an indication that the Word has been becoming flesh since God said, "Let there be light." It means that for Christians, matter matters. Matter is the beginning of God's self-expression into the world. It means that human beings are truly created according to the Imago Dei, the image of God, and that includes our bodies. The great Protestant theologian Karl Barth said that if we truly understood what it meant for God to become human, we could never again harm another human being. We are, all of us, "mini-incarnations." If the Word had been becoming flesh, the Word is now continuing to become flesh. Or did you not remember that when you were baptized, you were baptized into union with Christ?

            And, as expressions of Christ, individually and corporately (as this church), our place in this world is to be Christ to the world. To take that mental image of our “Christ-ness” and carry it with us, remain in awareness of it, wherever we go. Yes, it’s a constant job to remember, and to act from that place in our daily dealings with others. And it’s very easy to forget.

            I start and end most days in prayer; I wear crosses most all the time, and put up pictures and quotations around our house – not to show off that I’m a Christian, but to remind myself of whom and whose I am – of what I am to strive for. It helps me to pay attention to what is most important in life. Perhaps something similar could help you to daily recall your individual, personal mission in life: which is to share God’s love.

            It’s been quite a while since I mentioned the Millennium Development Goals. Remember those 8 goals put forth by the United Nations back in 1990? We have only 3 more years to meet those goals. Yes, 2015 is the target date. Just to remind you of this effort, here is the list of worldwide goals: To reduce extreme poverty and hunger by half, to provide primary education for all children, to promote gender equality in education and opportunity, to reduce by 2/3s the deaths of children under age 5, to reduce by 3/4s the numbers of mothers who die in childbirth, to halt the spread of HIV/AIDs, to ensure environmental sustainability throughout the world, and to develop policies among nations to further economic progress for all. Perhaps you will be led to become involved in certain portions of this work, or at least add their mission to your daily prayers. And on a corporate, church level, perhaps we should consider becoming more active in helping those less fortunate right here in Pflugerville. We have been doing well with our donations to the Storehouse, but the last few weeks we’ve fallen off. Next week, and every week, let’s make sure that the Storehouse box is overflowing with food (especially peanut butter) for those who don’t have enough to eat. Perhaps this next year we could do more, actually volunteering at the Storehouse, as well as donating food and money.

            For you see, human life, matter itself, is even more than it appears to be, because God has come to Earth as one of us. And Jesus has given to each of us the greatest gift of all, the gift of being a child of God. We have union with Christ through our baptism, and are heirs to the kingdom of God.

            And that seems to me, to be more than enough reason to sing "Glory to God in the highest." Amen.

Advent 3 Response to Sandy Hook

With thanksgiving for the theologians at Working Preacher, and our Bishop Andy Doyle, for many of the thoughts and words in this sermon. Amen.  

       From the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “Again and again, when the people of God are in trouble and distress, tears flow. So it was in the time of Rachel, the mother of the people of Israel, whose grave lies near to Bethlehem, Rachel weeping for all her children. It was in the last days of Jerusalem before it fell to the Babylonians, when the prophet Jeremiah looked down upon the tragedy and wept.” Then Bonhoeffer quotes from Jeremiah, ’A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because her children are no more.’”
  How are we to cope in the midst of tragedy? What are we as Christians called to do when horrible and senseless things assail us? Sandy Hook, Connecticut is a long way across the country from Pflugerville, yet our hearts break for people we don’t even know. There is little we can do to console the families of those 20 innocent, young children and their teachers. We cannot hold those mothers and fathers; we cannot cradle the grandparents, siblings and friends who are living in shock and horror right now. Yet, we can pray. And how frequently in these situations, we add, “That’s the least we can do.” From where I stand, it is one of the most important things we can do. So please, let us join with the country and the rest of the world in prayer:
Lord God: We pray to you for peace to be poured down upon Newtown and the Sandy Hook Elementary School community. As we weep with Rachel we pray for a healing balm to be given to all. For those who have died we pray that they may rest eternally with the saints in light. We pray for the first responders and for our Episcopal clergy who are there offering care and support. O God, hear our lamentation, our intercession, and our hope. Amen.
And now, I am going to preach the sermon I’d already written for today. It has a lot to say about children, so hug your kids, and let’s begin.
Are we there yet? I have no doubt that the children among us are questioning their parents frequently: How many more days is it until Christmas? We all know very well that feeling of excitement and longing that comes from the anticipation of some outstanding event in our lives. Be it a young person’s anticipation of going off to college, or an adult beginning a new career, there is a feeling deep inside that the coming event will change our lives forever.
How many of you here are parents? Perhaps you can dredge back into your memory and conjure up that feeling you had when you announced to the world that your first child was on the way. Oh, the excitement and thanks you gave when all the friends and family, and perhaps even strangers congratulated you on the impending birth! The anticipation and dreams you surely had for that child not yet born!
Now, there is something tricky about great gifts. The lessons we just heard do a marvelous job of pointing to this insight. The first two are all about rejoicing. The prophet Zephaniah sings to the people, "the King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst, you shall fear disaster no more." God is going to do great things for his people. All is well; God is at hand. "Rejoice" is also the first word we hear from Philippians. Again, we are assured that the Lord is at hand, and this is a cause for great joy.
That is part of what it means to prepare for a gift. That is almost always the very first thing you say when you discover someone is expecting a child; you say, "congratulations," -- rejoice, this is wonderful news. We have all heard or said that many times.
Rejoicing is also a big part of what it means to prepare for Christmas. The good news of Advent is that God is coming to God's people -- to you and to me. God's promises are being fulfilled. And we are to wait on that promise, to believe in it, to realize it, and open ourselves fully to it. That is great cause for celebration!
Then we hear the Gospel and the image shifts. God is no longer pictured as a victorious warrior exulting over his people, but as a wrathful judge. We are standing at the River Jordan, face to face with John the Baptist at his most intense.
John doesn't say to rejoice; John calls us to repentance: metanoia is the Greek word. It literally means returning, coming back to the way of life charted by the covenant between God and Israel. Paul told the Philippians not to be anxious about anything; John tells his hearers to flee from the wrath to come. "His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."
Do you know what chaff is? It’s the paper-thin husk that surrounds a kernel of wheat, the edible part of a nut and also coffee beans. John is reminding us that we need to get rid of the chaff in our lives, and focus purely on the nourishing parts of our being. Everyone in the Gospel is asking, "What shall we do? What has to change if we are to survive the great and terrible events that lie ahead?" This is a very different message from "rejoice!"
And if you think about it, that makes sense; too, that anxiety is part of our preparation and of our waiting. And it should be heard, and felt, at exactly the same moment we hear and feel the call to rejoice. For the Lord we await in Advent is a Lord who makes a difference, who changes things.
He is a Lord who offers both new life and new responsibilities, and who offers them simultaneously. If we truly receive the gift of the Christ child, we will change: the direction and the focus of our lives will shift. It just works that way.
Remember the second thing everyone (or at least everyone who has been a parent longer than 20 minutes) says when they learn that you are expecting a child? The first thing said is always, "Congratulations, we're happy for you." The second thing is always one form or another of, "Boy, are you in for it!" We are told often, and in a variety of ways, that things are going to change, that everything will be different.
"Rejoice/repent!" Those are the words that go with all great gifts. Something wonderful is going to happen; and if, after you receive that gift, you try to live the way you are living now, your life just won't work anymore. Life after such a gift is a sort of judgment on life before.
At this place of Advent, it is time to realize, to make real our place within the faith family of Abraham and seek not only to be reconciled with Jesus but also to be reconciled with the notion of right living which is plainly: to give to the poor, and to aid those who go without.
We Americans spent over 8 billion dollars on Halloween. We will spend some $504 billion to celebrate Christmas. Is it possible that the coming of God in the person of Christ might just cause us to pause and realize that "only" $10 billion would ensure clean water for every human being in the world, and $13 billion would keep everyone in the world from going hungry? Yet safety net agencies that do just this work have seen a 10% decrease in funding. Certainly these are numbers to make us pause in the face of Zacchaeus who gave away half of what he possessed to the poor. What if we lived out the charge of living for our neighbor? What if, in our repentance, our choosing to look at the world with new eyes, we saw and befriended those poor tortured souls such as Adam Lanza in Newtown, Erick Harris and Dylan Klebold in Columbine, whose hurts were so deep that they know of nothing to do but destroy others before destroying themselves? John the Baptist offers us not only a vision of a Christmastide incarnation but a transformed world reflecting the kingdom of God.
"Rejoice/repent!" This dual demand in the face of the coming of God is addressed to all of us: it is part of Advent. It is a perfect reflection of the ambiguity that permeates our vision and our experience. We await and try to prepare for the coming of a child, a child who changes everything. So Zephaniah is right: we are to rejoice, give thanks to God, and sing. And, John the Baptist is right: this wonderful gift will also come as judgment, and with a power all its own. If we take seriously the good news of Christmas, then our lives will be very different.
Think of what it would look like to live daily with the child from Bethlehem in our hearts. For both the joy he offers and the demands he makes cannot be truly ours if we remain exactly the people we are today. Think about what repentance, the redirection of our attention looks like. It is not something weird or mysterious. Repentance, generally, looks pretty much like our lives now, but with a difference.
When the crowd at the Jordan River felt this crunch of anticipation and judgment, their cry of "What then shall we do?" was met with responses designed to force them into practical decisions. "Look at who you are," John the Baptist said; "begin there." When it comes to giving, give from what you have. Don't wait until you have more, or until your offering can be of a higher quality. Start now, start with what is already there.
Practice justice where you work; build fairness and mercy into your present dealings, your current life. Don't wait until you have a job where justice is easier.
Don't wait to be somewhere else, to be doing something else, or to be someone else: begin with the road in front of you, walk that road, and so allow God to transform the life you live right now. John did not tell even the despised tax collectors or the hated and feared soldiers that they had to go somewhere else to begin. Just as being a son of Abraham was no exemption from the call to repent, so being a tax collector or a soldier was no barrier to repentance, to change. The business of repenting is much the same as rejoicing. It has to do with transforming the life we are already living.
Repent and rejoice -- in all things, with the real life we live in the real world.
Rejoice, for what is happening is wonderful.
Repent, because from now on, everything will be different. Amen.

Miracles Happen Today

COLLECT: (borrowed from Rick Warren)

“Most Holy Father, We remember right now the gift you have given us in the love of Jesus. Thank you for the miracles you’ve worked in our lives, and down through the ages. Lord God, help us to remember your grace and to be gracious. We remember your generosity to us. We ask you for the strength to be generous toward others. We trust that you will be with us, and we trust that you will finish the good work you have started within us. In the name of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.”

Jeremiah 29:11-14

Psalm 103:1-13

Acts 5: 12, 14-16

Mark 16: 9-17, 18b - 19

            May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, Oh Lord our God, the Three in One: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.        

         Okay. I’m not sure all of you noticed, so I’ll point it out: Today is the very first time I’ve ever gone “off Lectionary”. That means that our Collect and Scriptures were of my choosing: they are not the scriptures chosen by the people who compiled the Revised Common Lectionary, or even the Lectionary in the Book of Common Prayer. I chose them myself. The Collect is simply a prayer I came across last week, and thought appropriate for what I was called to say today.

         It is not against the “rules” to very occasionally stray from the scriptures assigned each week. It is even okay to go “off Lectionary” for a series of sermons on a certain topic. Many other denominations don’t tell their preachers what scriptures to preach upon at all, but let them choose themselves what they are led to in prayer. The reason we even have a Lectionary is to keep us honest, so we don’t consistently ignore the hard things to preach on.

         The reason I have chosen to go “off Lectionary” is to talk to you about what has been happening to me in my prayer time over the last year, and where I believe God is calling me. Now don’t panic, I’m not leaving St. Paul’s. I truly believe that God is calling all of us to a new attitude and relationship with Him. So, here’s what I need and want to say.

         Beginning last year, or even perhaps before that, I felt a pull to investigate what is called “Healing Ministry”. I’ve been reading books, and praying a lot about what this might mean for me, and for us. Week before last, I went to San Antonio for a conference of the Order of St. Luke, the Physician, an ecumenical, but strongly Episcopalian and Anglican Order that focuses on Prayers for Healing: physical, mental and spiritual healing for God’s people.

         I found a widely diverse group of people, all of whom are either searching for healing, or being conduits for God’s love to actually heal people. Miracles happened there. The books I’ve read speak over and over again of God’s healing Grace, of miraculous things occurring in the world today, just as they did in the times of the New Testament.

         There was a time a few months ago when I felt conflicted. I knew I was being called to respond to God by beginning some form of healing ministry, but I didn’t have any idea how that could happen. I even thought that it wasn’t possible to do it here at St. Paul’s, and that I would have to leave and begin again in a new way. But I was shown that this is the perfect place for God’s love to flow and for healing to happen, if at least some of us are willing to open our hearts and lives to God’s grace.

         Here’s what I’ve learned at the OSL conference, and the Forming Disciples Conference at St. David’s yesterday. First and foremost, at the end of the Gospel of Mark, chapter 9, verse 2, when Jesus told the disciples to “Preach the kingdom and heal everyone”, he meant it not only for the 11 disciples who were with him on that day of his ascension, but also for all the disciples who would choose to follow him down through the ages. He meant that statement for us: we are not only to bring others to Christ, but also to heal everyone through the power of God.

         So we pray prayers for our friends and family members, and nothing seems to happen…why is that? I have been told, and I believe, that something happens whenever we pray. We say we are Christian, but powerful miracles don’t seem to show up in our lives. What does that mean? Is it possible that we haven’t understood what the plan is for our lives? Might there be another way Jesus is calling us to live our daily experience? Here is what I have heard: There are a whole lot of people who call themselves Christians, who say they believe that Jesus is the Son of God, yet WE, and yes I’m including myself as well as most of us in this room, we don’t really believe it. We admire Jesus and what he did as he roamed the Israeli countryside two thousand years ago, but rather than being followers of him, truly living his words and believing what he taught, we do little more than come to worship and then somehow put him on a back shelf in our minds during the rest of the week. We come to worship, yet we don’t really follow him with all our hearts. We put our trust and our feelings of worth in other things like our jobs, or families, or what we can accomplish on our own. We have no true concept of how glorious our lives really could be if we would determine to completely turn our lives over to him. If we truly became his followers, rather than admirers, putting Jesus first in our lives, amazing miracles would flow from this place. We would be filled with the Holy Spirit, and empowered to do God’s work right here in Pflugerville.

         And here’s the deal with God, and it’s very important: God wants us to completely give ourselves to him. She wants us to love her first and foremost and trust her to show us the way to live. (Since God has no gender, we can use both to describe God.) The reasons we tend not to trust God are fear and pride. We must take our pride of doing it all ourselves, of being in control of our lives, and our fear of turning over our lives completely to God’s care, and give that very pride and fear away to God. Until we can do that, we will be continue to be caught in ego and mistrust, and we will not be completely open to letting God’s love in.

          It begins with the things expected of every Christian: that we will pray daily, that we will come to church faithfully, on Sundays and other times more often than not, not just when it’s convenient. That we will put learning about God in a place of honor in our lives, being in some sort of Bible study or spiritual discipline, for developing a relationship with God is a lifelong process. We will participate in the work of the church for those less fortunate, and pledge a portion of our income for the maintenance of the church – if not a full tithe at present, that each one of us will consciously work on raising that pledge over time to a full tithe. And perhaps, more important than anything: that we will forgive: forgive ourselves, and forgive all others who have caused us pain throughout our lives. Have you been assaulted? Ridiculed or beaten as a child or molested as an adult? Forgive those persons, let our anger go. Abandoned and unloved as a child? Forgive your parents. Whatever is holding us back from experiencing the complete and full love of God must be let go and given to God.

         Have you ever wondered why I am up here? Has it ever occurred to you to question why I am a priest? I mean, seriously, why would anyone want to do this, especially someone who wasn’t getting paid a single penny, to spend hours and hours each week for St. Paul’s Church? I’ll tell you. I once experienced the overwhelming joy that can come from giving myself away to God, and putting God first in my life. Flawed as I am, God showed me the immensity of His love, and I absolutely have to share it with others, as the joy present in that time is to precious not to share it. That is the main reason I’m here, to convince you that it’s worth the decision and the follow through.

         I’m asking you to join me on a new adventure. I’m not sure what form it will take, or how we as St. Paul’s will do it. I do know it’s not the easiest work in the world, but it is the most rewarding thing we will ever experience. It all has to do with what our real priorities are! Are we willing and ready to really put God first in our lives? Do we want to be transformed into the body of Christ? Would you like to be a part of the healing of the world through Christ Jesus, in this day and time? There is absolutely no doubt in my mind and heart that miracles can happen here at St. Paul’s. I’m putting God (and myself and all of you) on the line here, and I’m asking you, each one of you: Are you ready to make Jesus your only lifeline? If there are even a few who are willing, I’d like you to stay seated here for a few minutes after the service, so that we can pray and plan the beginning of our trans-formation.

Please pray with me:

         Oh Glorious and Gracious God: we come before you this day, bringing our broken hearts and broken lives, telling you that we want to make a new beginning: A new covenant with you that you are first in our lives. That we commit our lives to growing in your love, learning more about you and truly becoming your heart and hands and eyes into the world. We want nothing more than to be your healing hands in this place. Guide us and keep us, and show us Your ways, that we may carry your Love to the world. In the names we are taught, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.