Defying the Lines (Sermon)

 

“Defying the Lines”

Mark 9:38-50

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

9/26/21

 

³⁸ John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” ³⁹ But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. ⁴⁰ Whoever is not against us is for us. ⁴¹ For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.

⁴² “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. ⁴³ If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. ⁴⁵ And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. ⁴⁷ And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, ⁴⁸ where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.

⁴⁹ “For everyone will be salted with fire. ⁵⁰ Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” (NRSV)

 

 

         One of the painful realities about living in human community is that at some point, each of us is going to feel left out. Some feel it first at home—thus terms like “black sheep” and “red-headed stepchild.” Virtually everyone feels it during school—especially middle or high school. Some never suffer that loneliness as acutely as others, but feeling pushed to the edge is a universal experience. And no matter where one feels it, the message is pretty much the same: “Go away. You’re not one of us.” And oh, how that hurts! 

         Among the sins of the church, and perhaps chief among them, is its blatant, and often willful, marginalizing of certain human beings. There’s no use denying it, especially in a culture still suffering the effects of human slavery. We say that all are welcome. And perhaps all are welcome—to visit. But are all people truly welcome in the church? In this church?

         Even Jesus’ own disciples draw lines. They boast to Jesus that they muzzled someone who had been casting out demons in Jesus’ name because, they said, He wasn’t one of us.

         Jesus is not impressed. What? You stopped someone from healing people in my name—because he wasn’t one of you?

         Don’t do that again, says Jesus. If folks are helping others in my name, even if they don’t really know me or care much about me, leave them be. There’s no ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Anyone who truly cares for others is one of us.

         The presence of God and of God’s eternal Christ is not limited to professing Christians. If we think we can lay that kind of claim to God, then we’re declaring that God is small enough to fit into our minds, our doctrines, our imaginations. In John, when Nicodemus struggles with the same need for control, Jesus tells him, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.” (John 3:8) God is Creative Love and Redemptive Justice on the deepest, broadest, and most incomprehensibly gracious scale. And it’s a sad irony that Jesus’ disciples—ancient and modern—often have the most trouble understanding and accepting that. 

         Apparently feeling the need to get his disciples’ attention, Jesus launches into a stomach-turning tirade. If you become a stumbling block to others, he says, tie that block around your neck and throw yourself into the sea. If your hand or foot causes you to sin, rip it off. If your eye causes you to sin, yank it out.

The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God?

         In three months, we’re going to get all sentimental and glassy-eyed about the birth of gentle Jesus meek and mild. And here he’s telling us to mutilate ourselves when we’re unfaithful!

         A group of us are reading Richard Rohr’s book, The Universal Christ. And last Monday night we discussed the chapter on the Lord’s Supper. In that chapter Rohr makes a distinction between ceremonies and rituals. “Ceremonies,” says Rohr, “normally confirm and celebrate the status quo and deny the shadow side of things.”¹ That is to say, they artificially comfort and validate us. They make us feel right enough in and of ourselves to draw lines that define who’s in and who’s out. In contrast, says Rohr, a “true ritual offers an alternative universe.”² And that is to say, it transforms us. It gives us new hands, feet, and eyes with which to experience and engage the world.

Rituals have to jolt us, though. They have to shake us up so that we canimagine God differently, and so that we can understand that the possibilities for us far exceed our comfortable but rather inert symbols. Think about it: We’ve not only ceremonialized the images of cross, body, and blood, we have domesticated them into jewelry and tableware engraved with the names of donors. But those same images shocked and offended first-century Jews. Implying uncleanness, they defied the well-defined lines of the Law.

The sacramental images of eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ should unsettle us and make us think. And we tame them when we think only about Jesus “dying for my sins.” When we lift that cup to our lips, though, we are defying lines. We are, says Rohr, acknowledging that all blood that is spilled unjustly is Jesus’ blood.³ The disrupting image of the Eucharist calls us to see Christ’s body and blood in all suffering. We, then, commit to the cause of Creative Love and Redemptive Justice, those gracious new hands, feet, and eyes that have replaced the selfish ones Jesus dares us to get rid of.

         Maybe it helps to read Mark 9 in light of Jesus saying things like let whoever is without sin throw the first stone, and take the log out of your own eye so you can see the speck in your neighbor’s eye. (John 8:7 and Mt. 7:8) In that context, we hear Jesus challenging our rampant theological, social, and political polarization. And honestly, when I’m talking with someone, especially these days, I often catch myself trying to sniff out the things that not only distinguish me from them, but the things which I think grant me a right to judge. If I were to take Jesus’ teaching literally, I should be nothing but a torso tied to a millstone lying at the bottom of the sea.

Following Jesus gives no one authority to judge. Indeed, it calls us to demonstrate the grace and forgiveness that we can access only by the grace and forgiveness of God.

That grace, that forgiveness is the salt of which Jesus speaks. What is saltyabout true disciples is their willingness to live as signs of God’s kingdom on earth. And Christ-like saltiness is costly seasoning. Discipleship is not about engaging the world as ones who enjoy heroic certainty and authority. It’s about loving freely and serving vulnerably as Christ loves and serves.

         This week I came across a quotation by tennis great Arthur Ashe, who was known for his bold advocacy on behalf of those in need. “True heroism,” said Ashe, “is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but to serve others at whatever cost.”⁴

         The heroism of discipleship doesn’t conquer the world. It transforms the world. It heals the world. It salts the world with grace. Autocrats and despots will always wage their wars. They will always draw lines and divide people with fear and hate. Nonetheless, God’s eternal and universal Christ is always padding around the edges, sowing seeds in good soil, kneading in yeast, sprinkling salt, and evoking acts of radical hospitality and non-violent justice by true disciples—whoever they may be.

The job description of the Christ includes defying the lines established by kings, nations, and even religions. And inasmuch as we follow Jesus in defying those lines—in doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God—we will experience “peace with one another.” For we discover the peace of which Jesus speaks when we recognize the deep interdependence within the Creation, and when we embrace one another as fellow laborers in the fields of God’s kingdom.

Indeed, how can we labor effectively (much less enjoyably!) without the peace created by welcoming ALL people—family, friend, enemy, and stranger?

 

¹Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope for, and Believe. Convergent Books, NY, 2019. p. 133.

²Ibid.

³Ibid. p. 134

⁴https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/arthur_ashe_124531

Humility – A Holy Undoing (Sermon)

“Humility – A Holy Undoing”

Mark 9:30-37

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

9/19/21

 

³⁰ They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; ³¹ for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” ³² But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

³³ Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” ³⁴ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. ³⁵ He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” ³⁶ Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ³⁷ “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” (NRSV)

 

Jesus is leading his disciples on a kind of lonely journey through Galilee. He knows that in lonely places, people can either come to fresh new understandings and energies, or they can come undone. The irony is that those fresh, understandings and energies usually require a certain degree of undoing. Tribal elders, therapists, the Holy Spirit, and other teachers often guide individuals or groups into lonely places for coming-undone experiences that lead to transformation or healing.

Jesus seems to know that when his disciples face their rabbi’s death, they will, in some way, come undone. So, as the embodiment of Wisdom, Jesus keeps their lonely-place journey through Galilee a secret. He knows that coming-undone experiences are more effectively and healthfully accomplished beside still waters, and when attended by a patient, compassionate shepherd.

Jesus learns this for himself at his temptation. He enters the wilderness alone and faces all the selfish possibilities lying right at his fingertips. With the Spirit’s help, he pushes through the allure of greed and pride, and his experience becomes a gracious undoing that benefits all of us. And it benefits us because the totality of Jesus’ human experience belongs to more than himself. Jesus is God’s Son because his life represents the archetype of all human experience. So, when the disciples begin to imagine that Jesus may actually die, and when they try to imagine their life after his death, they face temptations similar to those that Jesus overcomes.

“What were you arguing about on the way,” Jesus asks. Their embarrassed silence says it all. Out in that lonely place, confronting the reality of life without Jesus and his shepherding grace, the disciples fall into temptation. They try to intimidate their way into dominance over each other. As Jesus leads his followers through the shadows of a lonely, death-ridden valley, they turn their terrifyingly gracious experience into a childish political primary.

One can almost see Jesus shaking his head as he says, Listen. True greatness requires a willingness to come undone. It’s called humility. And if you really want to lead well, learn to serve well.

Then Jesus, shrewd teacher that he is, picks up a child and says, in effect, Here I am. How you welcome a child reflects how you welcome me—and, thus, how you welcome God.

Because children represent women’s work, this is a scandal. No self-respecting, first-century male gets significantly involved in the lives of children. Jesus is leading his followers into yet another lonely place where accepted arrangements begin to break down. He gives them the chance to realize that the difference between being humiliated and being humbled is the difference between living as hostile competitors who seek power over others and living intentionally and gratefully as cooperating equals—with all people.

“For by the grace given to me,” Paul says to the Romans, “I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think…” (Romans 12:3) Paul goes on to say that we are all members of one body. Only in humility can we truly appreciate and love one another as necessary members of the same body. To live humbly requires an often-painful transformation. Biblical literature uses the stark metaphor of death to describe that transformation. And spiritual deaths always involve some kind of lonely-place experience. Primitive cultures often created that experience.

One day, during my grandfather’s struggle with cancer, he told his daughter, my mother, “Now I understand why the Indians used to take their old people out into the wilderness and leave them.”

Those heart-wrenching words reveal the weight of one man’s physical suffering. They also reveal how burdensome good intentions can be on the one who suffers.

When someone we care about is suffering, it’s who we are not only to bring food, small talk, flowers, and Hallmark cards, but also expectations of a valiant fight against disease or despair. And while we intend such things as expressions of love and offerings of grace, just as often they become attempts to control a situation. They become ways to argue with mortality about who is the greatest. Sometimes the most comforting presence in the face of suffering is that friend who sits silently and patiently with us, that friend who resists the temptation to cloak suffering with platitudes and trinkets, that gifted friend who, like the angels and wild beasts of Jesus’ temptation, simply sits with us while we, as the old spiritual declares, walk that lonesome valley.

Any argument with mortality, like any argument about relative greatness, is the stomachache that follows a feast on the poisonous fruit of pride. Pride may well be the seminal offense from which all other sins arise. Think about it: Is there anytransgression that doesn’t germinate in one person’s assumption of superiority over other human beings, over the earth, and thus over God? The opposing virtue to pride is humility. So, doesn’t it make sense for Jesus to take a child and tell a bunch of prideful men that to be truly great, one must learn true humility first?

In ravenously competitive cultures like ours, humility is often considered a weakness. So, it requires a spiritual death, and nothing can make pride come undone like loneliness—like the experience of desperate need for others. This is exactly what Jesus means when he says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

In foretelling his death, Jesus prepares his disciples for experiences of acute spiritual poverty. They will need each other. And they will not be able to carry on Jesus’ work without humbly depending on fellow servants.

It comes as no surprise, then, that in the very next story in Mark’s gospel, we hear the disciples boast to Jesus that they saw a stranger casting out demons in Jesus’ name, and they silenced him.

He wasn’t one of us, they say.

And Jesus stuns them with a rebuke: Why in God’s name did you do that? Why are you still trying to argue about greatness? Whoever is not against us is for us! Welcome their help!

When confronting our limits as human beings, when realizing that we’re not so great as we’d like to think, the Spirit leads us into a lonely place—into spiritual poverty. And there we die one healing death after another. For as often as we find ourselves striving for superiority and victorious “rightness” over one another, we need to die those deaths.

Our lonely journeys through these transforming spiritual deaths and into humility lead us ever-deeper into experiences of Resurrection. And Resurrection empowers us for living lives of self-emptying service, lives in which we participate in God’s here-and-now kingdom of grace, justice, and peace.

And isn’t that the deeply undoing yet liberating truth of what it means to be saved?

Divine Things/Human Things (Sermon)

 “Divine Things, Human Things”

Mark 8:27-35

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

9/12/21

 

²⁷ Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” ²⁸ And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” ²⁹ He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” ³⁰ And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

³¹ Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. ³² He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ³³ But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

³⁴ He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵ For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. (NRSV)

 

 

         Simon Peter. The Rock. Bold and brash to a fault. And faithful, too—even though when Peter denies Jesus on that dark Thursday night, he denies everything Christ-like in himself.

In Mark 8, Peter steps out in prophetic faith to declare out loud what others have surely begun to hope: Jesus of Nazareth is God’s Messiah. Jesus affirms Peter’s confession, and it seems to embolden the disciple all the more. When Jesus speaks of his suffering, rejection, and death, Peter grants himself authority to scold God’s Anointed One.

         With a blistering rebuke of his own, Jesus refers to Peter as “Satan”—The Adversary—and basically tells him to get lost. Then he says, “You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

         My heart goes out to old Saint Pete. His mouth is not getting all that far ahead of his brain. He has seen Jesus do some pretty crazy things, and by and large, they’ve been human things. Peter has watched as Jesus touched, healed, and fed people. He has listened to Jesus teach through those grounded, earthy stories called parables. If Peter sets his mind on human things, who can blame him?

         Maybe the problem is that, at the moment, human things are all Peter sees. And Jesus is saying that it’s time to understand human things differently, because woven into the DNA of those tangible, earthy realities are strands of eternal holiness. And Jesus is holding his disciples accountable for recognizing divine things within human things. When he speaks of his imminent suffering, Jesus wants his followers to hear more than bad news. He wants them to smell the air, taste the water, and feel the sand beneath their feet in that new realm where Resurrection is reuniting and reconciling divine things and human things. If they fail to experience the eternal wrapped up in the temporal, then Friday may never become Good Friday for them.

         Ironically enough, setting our minds on divine things means looking ever more closely at the Creation around us and opening ourselves to those places where heaven and earth intersect. That place of intersection is what Incarnation is all about. And that means that revelation occurs when we realize that material and spiritual realities have transcended the limits we impose upon them. We watch them meld into one another like lovers. Such holiness is everywhere. There’s very little in God’s Creation which cannot, in some way, convey something of the divine things that Jesus invites us to see.

In her poetry, Mary Oliver captured the magnificent coexistence of Creator and Creation. And she found that beauty in the simplest gifts and experiences. Listen for the holiness in her poem entitled, “The Summer Day.”

 

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?¹

 

         When the poet looks at that grasshopper, and when that grasshopper looks back, when it eats from that human hand, the world’s beauty and wonder become more beautiful and wonderful. The concrete fact of that grasshopper’s existence reveals itself as sacred. Mary Oliver helps us to understand that to separate divine things and human things means denying the Incarnation.

What if we looked at each other that way? What if we made a deliberate effort to look at the holiness in each other? Would we be able to look past not just our differences, but past all those things that make us intolerant of differences? And would we be able to seek understanding and to create new community instead of always trying to win some kind of conquest over those with whom we disagree?

         Perhaps now more than ever, such efforts are crucial. And as disheartening as it can be even to imagine human beings coming together, the Gospel declares that healing is not only possible, it is underway.

Still, complications arise when we discover how threatening it can feel to practice Incarnational hope. The Holy Spirit, divine gadfly that she is, always leads us to live over against those institutions and attitudes we associate with security and even righteousness, but which ultimately hide the fresh workings of the divine within the Creation. And because we have so revered some of those institutions and so nurtured some of those attitudes, the journey of discipleship may feel, at first, like unfaithfulness.

Like Peter, Andrew, James, and John dropping their nets and leaving their families to fend for themselves.

Like the rich young man selling all he has, giving it to the poor, and following Jesus.

Like Ananias going to extend grace to that violent, Christian-persecutor named Saul.

Like God-imaged, white Christians who declare today that it is Jesus not politics who motivates us to affirm, in word and deed, that those specific, God-imaged human lives who live inside black and brown skin matter as much as those who live inside white skin, and that until we can live that affirmation, the phrase “all lives matter” is just a loophole against responsibility.

Jesus calls the burden of such journeys our cross, and taking up our cross necessarily includes dying to whatever separates us from the Divine Presence within us and within our neighbors. And as Richard Rohr often says, discipleship is not about “sin management.” As real and problematic as sin is, it is not our true essence. Sin obscures and distorts our awareness of the divine within us and within the world around us. So discipleship is about much more than avoiding sin—so that we can “go to heaven when we die.” It’s about living into the kingdom of heaven here and now with that person who sits next to you—the one whose perfume or cologne you smell, whose stomach you hear rumbling, and who may vote differently than you.

         A true disciple claims the holiness within herself and holds it up like a mirror so that her neighbor may see it in himself.

May we all, then, shoulder our crosses and die whatever deaths we must in order to see the holiness within ourselves.

May we die that more challenging death through which we see the holiness in others.

And through these gracious deaths, may we live as reflections of God’s eternal and here-and-now realm of Resurrection.

 

¹I searched the internet for Mary Oliver poems and found this one on a random poetry site. This piece appeared in New and Selected Poems – Volume 1, by Mary Oliver. Beacon Press, Boston. 1992.

We Are THEY (Sermon)

 “We Are THEY”

Mark 7:31-37

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

9/5/21

 

³¹ Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. ³² They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. ³³ He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. ³⁴ Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” ³⁵ And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.

³⁶ Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. ³⁷ They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”(NRSV)

 

         One of the terrible but all-too-familiar stories associated with the pandemic—especially during the early days—is of Covid patients suffering in isolation. Many people stricken with the infection, lying unconscious on ventilators, died while family and friends had only phones and face-time apps to communicate with them. I can’t imagine the heartbreak of having to hold a phone rather than the hand of a loved one when the physical presence of those you know, trust, and love is itself the presence of God.

Those stories reminded me of something I witnessed in Malawi. When a Malawian adult or child falls ill, family and friends become the EMTs, ambulance service, food service, social workers, and HMO. Even when hospitalized, patients had to have their community around them to do everything except deliver medical treatment. While a patient lay in a crowded ward, her family and friends lived on the grounds of the hospital, cooking under the tin roof of a dirt-floored lean-to, washing clothes and sheets in a common wash pot, and sleeping under the trees. Only the most destitute in that destitute country received the meager hospital rations.

Without support, few Malawians survive for long. In a place of such acute poverty, every individual needs an attentive community, a responsive They.

         As Jesus returns to Galilee from the north, a proactive They brings to him a deaf man. Later, in Bethsaida, another They brings to Jesus a blind man. I imagine each They feeling as desperately hopeful as a Malawian family. And the Theys who bring the deaf and blind men to Jesus do not come to test him. They’re driven by a desire for healing. They want wholeness restored to the particular individuals. I also think they also desire wholeness for the community. As long as one of them is deaf or blind, there is a deafness or a blindness to the entire They.

         Shared suffering tends to be a difficult concept for people in individualistic cultures to comprehend, much less to embrace. Folks like us have been taught to attach much if not most of our identity to individual achievement, accumulating personal wealth, and avoiding suffering. I have to think, however, that the cultures represented and encouraged in biblical literature have much more in common with places like Malawi than the contemporary western world. Where resources, time, and suffering are shared more freely and generously, the culture itself, even if physically impoverished, experiences a strength and richness that individualistic cultures cannot understand. Indeed, even now, a kind of militant individualism is proving itself intolerant of those who seek to act for the good of the wider community. And isn’t the whole point of the Incarnation to declare that God is with us in our suffering as well as our joy?

Having said that, we all belong to peer groups. We identify with parties and agendas. We brand ourselves with the logos of schools, sports teams, corporations, denominations, and so forth. And yet, to many “first world” dwellers, the idea of being defined by the joys and sorrows, the strengths and weaknesses of some encompassing They seems as confining and anachronistic as a rotary phone. More dangerously, such associations are often despised as threats to individual freedom. It seems to me that, in general, western cultures, obsessed with I, tend to fear, judge, and condemn any true sense of We.

The Church, as an intentional community, is a clear and definite We. As a re-presentation of Christ to the world, we are the They which brings the deafness, blindness, and brokenness of the world to Jesus. We are the They who gives the voiceless a voice. Individualistic religion scorns all of that brokenness. It will say, in disgust, If you had enough faith, or if you were righteous enough, you wouldn’t be in that mess. At its most devilishly heartless, individualistic religion dismisses the world’s brokenness by saying, “Oh, don’t worry. God never gives you more than you can handle.” Like many of you, I’ve heard that phrase in hospital rooms, funeral homes, and from pulpits. Brothers and Sisters, please think carefully before you stab someone with that platitude. Maybe, sometimes, there are “good intentions” behind those words, but the person to whom it is said usually just hears, That’s your problem. Handle it yourself.

It is by grace that God calls us to recognize when one of us has become burdened with more than he or she can handle. God calls us to regard their suffering as our own. If we are part of the great They of faith, our vocation includes bringing individual and collective deafness and blindness to the Christ, and joining our voices in both pleading for help and offering healing. 

Over the years, I’ve heard many people say that they come to worship to recharge their batteries. And I understand that—to a degree. However, if we’re part of God’s created and creative They, then worship does more than recharge our batteries for our sake. Worship is about equipping the saints for tending to our hurting and over-burdened neighbors and environment. The point of worship—the point of praise, confession, prayer, and meditation—is to draw close to God so that we see God in all people, places, and times. Worship draws us closer together in holy community, closer to God for each other’s sake, and closer to each other forGod’s sake. In this renewing communion, our witness to God in Christ can become a magnificent harmony of distinct voices. And in that, our individuality is recognized, celebrated, and offered to God.

Many of us grew up hearing preachers build a verbal fence around the Lord’s Table. The words were exclusive and individualistic: This table is set for “believers” only. Generations ago, many pastors even examined their parishioners before a communion Sunday, and only those who survived his scrutiny were allowed at the table. More and more of us are using our words to build a bridge rather than a fence. There are just too many reasons for a congregation to serve as a holy Theywhich welcomes everyone to the table.

So, you may come in gratitude to praise God.

You may come in penitence to experience forgiveness.

You may come to reclaim your unique gifts and recommit your individuality to loving God, neighbor, and earth.

You may come to feel the embrace of a community of faith.

You may come to identify yourself with that community, with the body of Christ.

You may come to receive a reminder of God’s faithfulness to you in some season of sorrow, illness, loneliness, or grief.

You may come to make peace with God after some painful experience when it seemed that you were, indeed, given more than you could handle.

You may come out of an unbreakable habit.

You may even come out of simple curiosity.

Whatever your reasons, come. Come and find your place in God’s gracious They in and for the world.