March 5, 2014 - Ash Wednesday - A Fast That Lasts

A Fast That Lasts

Isaiah 58:1-12

Ash Wednesday - March 5, 2014

What are you giving up for Lent?

Every year we have conversations like this, whether they happen at home with our families, or around the coffee pot at work, or across the miles with our Facebook friends as we enter into these 40 days, seeking to draw closer to God, to repent, to live lives that better reflect what we believe.

Fasting – giving something up – is one of the ways that we seek to do that. We hope that by giving up something - chocolate or alcohol or meat or Facebook or whatever it is - that we’ll somehow better understand and appreciate the sacrifice Christ made for us on the cross. We want to empty ourselves before God and so remember our dependence on the only One who can truly fill us. We yearn to give something up in recognition of the One who gives everything to us.

That’s fasting at its best, at its most pure, and yet, as I look back on fasts of my past, I wonder how successful I have ever been, how useful this Lenten discipline has been in accomplishing these things. Once in college, I gave up chocolate. Another year I stopped using the internet after a certain hour in the evening. I even did an actual fast from all food one Good Friday – but I have to admit that that was really a desire to get over a dieting plateau dressed up in fancy religious garb; it really had nothing to do with my sense of repentance or longing to be closer to God.

That’s the trouble with fasting. We want our hearts to be in the right place. We want to do the right thing. We want to please God – and yet it’s so easy to get it backwards. Easy for pride to sneak in on the heels of our humility. Easy for our self-interest and our hope for self-improvement to masquerade as repentance.

That’s what is going on in the second reading we hear from the book of Isaiah today. These are folks who have the outward forms down pat. They are religious and community leaders who have experienced what it means to be far from God, led away into captivity and exile in Babylon as a result of their communal sin, their failure to live up to God’s expectations. Now, at long last, they have returned to the Promised Land - their ancestral home - just as God had promised. But this new life is not what they expected. It’s not all sunshine and roses. It’s not been an easy transition. Instead, it’s been hard work, as they seek to rebuild the city of Jerusalem and God’s temple, as they try to restore their relationships with the people the Babylonian forces had left behind – the ones who were too poor and vulnerable to be seen as any kind of threat. They’re struggling, and so they turn again to God, calling for the people to fast, in hopes that this will get God’s attention, that God will turn to them and help them. But their solemn observances and religious rituals go unnoticed by God, and they cry out, "Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?" They are mystified about why God is not responding to them.

But God is not interested in empty ritual that does nothing to transform everyday lives. These people, God says, serve their own interest on their fast day. They oppress their workers, they quarrel and fight, all while they put on a show of humility and repentance. “Is this what you call fasting?” God says. Hear God’s word from the Message version of the Bible: “This is the kind of fast day I’m after: to break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts. What I’m interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families…”

In the words of an article I read this week: “Make your sacrifice meaningful, not miserable.” Choose a fast that will last. Fast in ways that will transform you – and the world around you! Fast from affluence and indifference and privilege, give up judgment and grudges and pride. Leave behind something that is getting in the way of your relationship with God and God’s kingdom coming in your life! Do this, not out of habit or cultural/religious pressure to conform or some misunderstanding that this is what God requires of you, but in order to make room for God to do something new in your life. Enter into the struggle against your own sinful self and find solidarity with the poor and marginalized. Wrestle with your apathy and complacency and find yourself on God’s road to restoration. Break a habit that blocks the way to wholeness and experience God’s healing.

That’s the invitation of Ash Wednesday, and the whole season of Lent – to be real with God about who we are and what we need, to admit that no matter how hard we try, we can’t do any of these things on our own – but then hear God’s promise to us – that our brokenness is where God shows up most powerfully, that when we cry for help, God answers, “Here I am!” And in our trying, imperfect and incomplete as it may be, God uses us – our lives begin to glow in the darkness around us, reflecting God’s own glory and light. Leaning on God, we experience the fullness of God’s life, even in parched, empty places. We become for others like a well-watered garden, a spring that never runs dry – a place of nourishment and refreshment. Then, God says, the rubble of the past will not get in the way of building anew, and we become a place, a people where God is at work to redeem and rebuild and restore. This is the kind of fast God longs for – one that draws us closer to God and opens our heart to our neighbors. This year, may God help us enter into a fast that lasts.

Amen.

February 16, 2014 - Epiphany + 6 - Relationship Above Rules

Relationship Above Rules

Matthew 5:21-37

Epiphany + 6 - February 16, 2014

Watch the sermon here.

Not too long ago, I had a picture come across my Facebook feed. Maybe some of you have seen it too. It’s a photo of a young boy, looks like he’s maybe 4 or 5 years old, and he’s stretched out, laying on his belly on the deck of his house on a beautiful sunny day. All of his body, that is, except his feet, which are still firmly inside the house. The caption on it said, “Future lawyer? He was told not to set foot outside the house.” It’s a classic case of someone who knows and understands the letter of the law but misses the spirit underneath it. Technically, this young boy is obeying what he was told, but of course, we all know that’s not really what his parents meant. He ignored the real intent of what they wanted him to do.

We get a similar picture from the gospel reading for today. Once again, we join Jesus and his listeners as he delivers what we’ve come to know as the Sermon on the Mount, and today we pick up right where we left off last week. Jesus has just finished saying “…unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven,” (Matt. 5:20) and then he goes into this teaching that makes it sound like he’s laying out the way to become more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees. “You have heard it said,” Jesus says, “But I say to you…” Over and over again, Jesus lays out the situations. He talks about what the religious law and commandments say – Don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't abandon your spouse (that's what divorce amounted to back then), don't swear falsely. These are what the rules are, Jesus says. Everybody knows them, and nobody knows them better than the scribes and Pharisees. “But,” Jesus says, “Don't be too sure of yourself.” Don't strain your arm patting yourself on the back because you haven't murdered anyone or because you've been physically faithful to your spouse and have followed through on whatever it is you “swore to God” you'd do. The scribes and the Pharisees – and lots of other people for that matter – manage to follow the letter of the law, but the whole time, they’re really lying on the deck, keeping just feet inside the sliding glass door.

On the surface, it doesn’t look too hard to follow these basic commandments, right? But then Jesus raises the bar. “You have heard it said… But I say to you…” Never murdered anyone? Okay, but I bet you've been angry with them. Never cheated on your spouse, but you've looked at someone with lust, haven't you or given the time & energy that should go to the person you’ve committed your life to to something else – your work, your hobbies, TV, your smart phone? Carried out the vows you made to the Lord, but why is it that your word alone isn't good enough for people to believe you'll do what you say you'll do?

I imagine that some of the people listening that day were shocked and dismayed at what they heard Jesus saying. His words worry us too – because if following the letter of the law isn’t enough, if what we think in our minds and feel in our hearts counts too, if our inner motivation - not just our outward behavior - makes a difference, then what hope do we have? How can we ever measure up? Because these examples Jesus gives us reveal to us in no uncertain terms that none of us is off the hook. None of us can perfectly monitor our actions, let alone our thoughts and emotions! If the scribes and Pharisees, the ones who studied God’s law and taught it to others, weren’t righteous enough to enter the kingdom of heaven, how can we ever expect to be?!

That's because we think that what Jesus says here is all about fulfilling the law. We think that Jesus is mainly concerned with us learning to follow the rules perfectly, inside and out, just for the sake of following the rules. Our main motivation for following the rules is so we can avoid punishment – the judgment or the council or the hell of fire that Jesus talks about – or because we think we can somehow live up to the rules and so earn our place in God's good graces, so we can deserve to enter the kingdom of heaven someday.

But we've got it all wrong. Because even though our main concern may be following the rules so that we can avoid judgment or earn rewards, what Jesus really cares about is our relationships. The rules aren't there simply to give us a moral checklist to follow. They’re not there to keep us trapped in the house instead of running around on the deck enjoying a sunny day. They're there to help us to learn how to live with God and with each other. When Jesus is asked elsewhere in Matthew about what commandment in the law is the greatest or most important (Mt. 22:36), this is what Jesus says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Mt. 22:37-40). (That's in chapter 22, in case you want to look at it later.)

Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself. That's what all the commandments, all the laws boil down to. They're there to show us what it would mean if we really did love God and our neighbor.

But it isn't enough simply to follow the letter of the law. It’s not enough to keep our feet inside the sliding door while the rest of us is outside the house. Because we can technically obey the law, while while the whole time we are neglecting the spirit of what God desires. It's easy enough most of the time to keep the commandments, until we realize that God's law goes much deeper than our outward acts and down into our hearts too. God's will for us extends into the core of who we are. And it's not about the rules so much as it is about the relationships. Underneath these laws Jesus talks about there is a deep concern for community, for how people live with and treat one another.

And so Jesus lays out a vision here, one that reveals something about what it looks like when God's will reigns in our lives, when God's followers live out that prayer for God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven... Because when God's love rules in our lives, we stop worrying so much about obeying the law to keep God happy or avoid making God mad. We start to see ourselves as the beloved, cherished children of God that we are. We start behaving as the salt and light Jesus tells us we are – and we look beyond wooden obedience and slavish rule following to see what God's heart desires for us: a community of people where everyone matters, where we learn to let go of anger and make the first move toward reconciliation, where we stop objectifying others and see them as human beings, where a person's word is good enough and there's no need to swear to God to convince anyone that you can be trusted. It's a community where we seek after health and wholeness and after those things that give life to each other. This is the kingdom Jesus ushers in. It's the kingdom he lives out. It's the kingdom he invites us to enter and live in even now. It's not about rules. It's about relationships. It's not about the law. It's about love – God's love for each of us, the love that then spills over from us to each other. Let's let that love rule.

Amen.

February 2, 2014 - Presentation of our Lord - Revealing Light

Revealing Light

Luke 2:22-40

Presentation of our Lord - February 2, 2014

Watch the sermon here.

On this Groundhog Day, I couldn't help but think of the movie by the same name. You remember that one, right? The one with Bill Murray as Phil Connors, the weatherman from Pittsburgh who is sent to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to cover the hoopla that is Groundhog Day, when everyone gathers and waits with bated breath to see if the long winter is nearly over or if we’ll have to wait 6 more weeks for spring? Phil goes resentfully, hating the assignment, hating the town, hating the whole thing, and just longing for it to be over so he can high tail it out of town, only to be stuck by a huge snowstorm that makes him spend another night there. And so he goes to bed, sets his alarm, and goes to sleep, looking forward to making his escape early the next morning.

Except that when he wakes up, it’s to the same song on the radio, and the same words from the same DJ. At first Phil thinks it’s just a bad case of déjà vu, but gradually it dawns on him that it is Groundhog Day again. Phil is stuck in a never-ending loop, going to bed and waking up every morning to find that he is condemned to live the same lousy day over and over again, with no hope of escape, no matter what he tries.

Sometimes our lives feel like Groundhog Day, don’t they? Sometimes our lives just feel like they’re stuck, that we are caught in a loop that has us reliving the same day over and over again. It could be the mind-numbing job with the irritating co-workers and the demanding boss. Maybe it’s the rounds of chemotherapy and all of the body-wracking side effects that go along with them while we wait to find out if they've killed off the cancer that threatens our lives. Perhaps it’s your battle against the depression that drains you dry and leaves you struggling just to get out of bed and get dressed in the morning. There are fights with parents or children or spouses that feel unresolvable, like we’ll never get to a place of agreement and peace and harmony. It’s the daily grind of caring for our little children or older loved ones who are no longer able to take care of themselves, and though we love them and are happy to do it, my goodness, wouldn't it be nice to get a break from the monotony of it all once in a while?! And we wonder along with Phil if these days will ever end, what we need to do to escape this place where we never really wanted or expected to be in the first place. And perhaps we wonder where God is and why God is taking so long to show up and rescue us!

I suspect that both Simeon and Anna had days like that too. Luke is the only gospel to tell us about them. And from what Luke tells us, we know that Simeon and Anna have been waiting for God’s salvation to show up for a long time. Simeon has probably outlived his wife, his siblings, his friends. He is a righteous and devout man, Luke says, looking forward to God’s coming consolation for his people and nation. He is waiting for God to act, for God to send God’s revealing light into the world, to give him a sign, because it has “been revealed to him that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah” (v 26). And so now, he’s just waiting for that to happen so he can die in peace.

Anna, too, is on in years – 84 years old, to be precise, and I don’t have to tell you that’s a LONG time to live in the ancient world. She’s pretty much taken up residence in the temple, worshiping there with fasting and prayer, night and day. And she is also looking for God’s coming redemption, not knowing when it will come, perhaps beginning to wonder if that redemption will appear in her lifetime, waiting in the darkness for God’s light to dawn.

And suddenly, there he is in the temple, nothing like what they were expecting. He comes carried in the arms of Mary and Joseph, a poor couple who travel to the temple to present their firstborn, to give his life into God’s hands, and to make the required sacrifices for Mary’s purification after childbirth. Jesus – 40 days old, just shy of 6 weeks. Can you imagine? Simeon is drawn to the temple, guided by the Holy Spirit, and seeing them, he knows. This is it. This is God’s salvation, and not just for Simeon longing for the release of death, but the salvation of God prepared in the presence of all peoples, God’s light sent to reveal God’s love and power and mercy, not even just to the people of Israel, but to all nations! And it’s not just Simeon who sees this – Anna, this wise woman of God who has devoted her life to worship, she sees Jesus and Mary and Joseph, and her heart overflows with praise to God who has brought this helpless baby into her presence. She sees Jesus, and she shares the good news with everyone there that Jesus is the one they have been waiting for; he is the one who will bring redemption to Jerusalem. Jesus is the one who will break them out of the cycle of destruction and loneliness and longing and sin that they have been caught in for so long. He is the one who will bring about God’s new day for all the world!

This is such good news to those of us who have been stuck in never-ending Groundhog Days of our own! God doesn't leave us alone to struggle and dig our way out of endless bad days and seasons of life. You know, in the movie, Phil is left to figure out his own means of escape, reliving Groundhog Day after Groundhog Day unable to break free until he learns to move past his own selfishness and impure motives and instead offer himself in service and love to those around him. And that’s a great moral lesson from the movie, but that’s not what God does. Instead, God breaks into our vicious circles, not abandoning us until we learn our lesson, but sending Jesus, suddenly, unexpectedly, to live and walk and work among us, offering us himself in love, revealing God’s new day in our every day. He comes to break us out of our self-destructive patterns, offering hope and love and abundance life. He is God’s revealing light, shining in our darkness, God’s plan of salvation prepared for all people. May God give us eyes to see this salvation breaking in all around us, and voices to sing God’s praises about this child who brings redemption.

Amen.

January 19, 2014 - Epiphany + 2 - Enriched in Every Way

Enriched in Every Way

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

Epiphany + 2 - January 19, 2014

Watch this sermon here.

A long, long time ago (I won't tell you how long!), way back when I was in junior high and high school, I was in the marching band. I started band when I was in 7th grade. (I went to a little school that was a joint junior/senior high, with grades 7-12 all in one building.) And what I remember is that I went in wanting to play the trumpet – a nice loud, familiar, flashy instrument. But they had enough of those at the time, so instead, I got assigned to the baritone horn. How many of you have even heard of that instrument? Yeah. It's not the most well-known or recognizable. It's not even that unique – it looks like a mini-tuba, and it sounds pretty similar to a trombone, so you could almost make the argument that you don't even need the baritone horn really. Color me disappointed at what I was assigned.

You could say that the church in Corinth that Paul is writing to in our (2nd) reading for today was kind of like that marching band. As Paul starts off this letter to a congregation he had founded, he is filled with thanksgiving to God. He reminds the Corinthian Christians of their calling as saints, people set apart to do God's work in the world, and then goes on to thank God for the grace they had been given, the ways God had enriched them in every way, the spiritual gifts that had been lavishly bestowed on them, so they were lacking nothing. And yet, if you were to go and read more of this letter, you'd see Paul was just laying the groundwork for what is to come. See, the church in Corinth is kind of a hot mess. Though God has given them so much, this is a church filled with divisions and competition and arguments. Corinth was an up and coming city, very cosmopolitan, with people from all over – slaves and people who had been freed, the rich and the poor living side by side, and the church reflected the same mix. But all of these differences as well as the different spiritual gifts and roles people had became a source of contention rather than celebration. They threw out their allegiances to different spiritual leaders – “I belong to Paul,” “I belong to Apollos,” “I belong to Peter...” They got drunk around the communion table and gobbled up all the food before some of the members could get there. They argued over which spiritual gift was the most important – speaking in tongues or the gift of interpretation, wisdom versus knowledge, the ability to heal or work miracles and on and on and on, and I imagine that there were some who were jealous of the gifts they hadn't received, who wanted the loud, recognizable, flashy gifts, instead of the ones no one had ever heard of. And not only do these divisions damage their relationships, they distract the Corinthians from carrying out the mission God had given them – to be witnesses to Jesus and reveal his love, grace, and mercy to the world.

Any of this sound familiar? I'm not suggesting that Ascension is a church ripped apart by conflict, or that it has the same exact issues, because I haven't seen that or experienced that here. But that doesn't mean that there aren't things that divide us from one another and distract us from fulfilling God's vision for us as a congregation. Really, hang around any church long enough and you're bound to see some of the tension that naturally happens when people get together. Strong personalities rub each other the wrong way and make it hard to work together. Miscommunication and misunderstandings happen and don't necessarily get worked out right away, so resentment festers, sometimes for months and years! People who have been working hard in a particular ministry for years feel unappreciated or undervalued – or finally move on only to get mad that that person who follows in that role doesn't do things the exact same way they always did. Newer folks look for ways to plug in and use their gifts and feel stymied at every turn, not knowing how to become part of a group that's been together a long time. We've got our annual meeting next week, and there we'll talk about the budget for 2014 and constitutional amendments and the vision and hopes and dreams for the coming years, and if you come (and I hope you will), I'm willing to bet that there will be something that doesn't quite fit with your understanding of how things should be. Again, I'm not saying that Ascension has these issues on a wide scale, but it's just how churches, any groups of people really, tend to be. If you've been a part of this church or any church for a while, you've seen it happen, and you know how much it distracts us. It takes our energy and focus away from the things of God. It damages our witness to those around us.

So maybe my time in band was useful to my participation in a church – because what I learned over the years in that place is that we needed all of the talents and abilities of everyone involved. For the music to be complete, we needed all of the different instruments, from the squeak of the clarinets and saxophones to the blare of the trumpets to the beating of the bass drum. And not only that, we needed the non-musicians – the majorettes and the color guard and the pom-pom squad, the band parents who helped us raise money for trips and walked along the parade route with us to hold the water bottles as we marched in wool uniforms in ridiculous heat, and the fans who stood on the sidelines at halftime at the football games to cheer us on instead of going to get a snack at the concession stand. For us to do what we were supposed to do, we needed all of those people sharing all of their gifts and time and energy and passion in whatever way suited them best. And perhaps most surprising of all to me was the way our band director was able to gather all of these random teenagers and their supporters and help them use their gifts together as one. He didn't have us doing the moonwalk like The Ohio State Marching Band did this past season, but we did alright.

That's the good news for us this morning. That's our encouragement for all of the times when we let our petty differences get in the way of being the people and church God has called us to be. God has already enriched us in every way – not as individuals, but as a community of faith. Together God has given us all that we need to do God's work with our hands. Somehow, when we listen and follow God's direction, God is able to gather us up, differences and all, and use us to do great things together, things we could never dream of accomplishing on our own. God has and is and will continue strengthening us for all God calls us to do. God has called us into fellowship – partnership – with Jesus, and God is faithful to help us in all we do.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

January 5, 2014 - Christmas 2 - Mystery Made Known

Mystery Made Known

Ephesians 1:3-14

Christmas 2 - January 5, 2014

Watch the sermon at YouTube here

Morning Prayer
Dear Lord,
So far I've done all right.
I haven't gossiped,
haven't lost my temper,
haven't been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish, or overindulgent.
I'm really glad about that.

But in a few minutes, God,
I'm going to get out of bed.
And from then on,
I'm going to need a lot more help. Amen.
~Source Unknown

So, here we are. By the church calendar, it's the 12th day of Christmas, but by the calendar the rest of the world lives by, it's the 5th of January. This is the season of new starts, of resolutions made, intended to be kept. This is the chance to start fresh, to make something better of ourselves this year.

And as we gather here on this morning with our bright hopes and promises to ourselves, I suspect that some, if not most of us, really relate to the prayer I just read. So far, so good. We're five days in, and we're doing pretty well. We haven't lost our tempers, or been greedy or grumpy or selfish yet. We haven't overindulged, at least since just after midnight on New Year's Eve, but not since we woke up on New Year's Day. Things are off to a good start. But...

But we know that we're just getting started. Metaphorically, we haven't gotten out of bed yet. But when we do, we know we're gonna need a lot more help. We won't necessarily be able to keep to whatever resolutions we made – to exercise more or eat healthier, to quit smoking, to be more generous with our money or our time, to be more patient with the kids or our spouse – especially as we hurry on the way out the door to church! And some of us, even though we just got started – well, we've already fallen down on the job. Tempers have flared. We've complained about the cold, or our families, or the boss, or our teachers. We've told the dog off for getting under our feet. We've started to worry about how we'll pay off the bills that are starting to come in from our Christmas celebrations. In many and various ways, this fresh start just serves as a reminder of how broken we are, of how flawed we are – that we are not the kind of parents or children or spouses or friends or workers or just plain people that we would like to be. Our misdeeds, as The Message calls them, are all too evident to us, as we realize that we fail to measure up, even to our own standards.

And so, perhaps it is a mystery, as we gather this morning, to hear these words first written to the church in Ephesus. I have to tell you that whenever I prepare to preach, I look for both the law and the gospel in whatever the passage is. And sometimes it's easy to find both, but probably more often than not, it's really easy to find the law, the trouble, the ways people are held to account by God or struggle in their relationships with each other – and it's not always so easy to talk about what the gospel, the grace, the good news about what God is doing is. But this passage from Ephesians, it's the complete opposite of that. It's filled from start to finish with praise for God and excitement and joy over what God has done and is doing. The author just can't contain himself. Listen again to just a snippet, as shared in The Message version of the Bible:

“Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.”

Long ago, before the foundation of the world, God was thinking of us. Long ago, God decided to adopt us as children, as heirs, through Jesus. Not counting our misdeeds against us, God chooses us and sets us free in Jesus. Abundantly free! Despite the fact that none of us measure up, even by our own standards, God has been working out God's divine plan for each of us and for all creation from the beginning, to save us, to reconcile us, to shape and mold and transform us to be the people we were first created to be, way back in the beginning.

Now I know that most of us have already moved past Christmas in our minds and hearts and lives. But since it is the 12th day of Christmas, let me remind you that what we get from this Ephesians reading (and the gospel of John too) is that Christmas isn't just about Jesus being born as a baby 2000+ years ago. No, what this book reminds us is that Christmas is not just about Jesus' birth, but about who we are, and who God claims us to be. In Jesus, we are born into new life. We are adopted into God's family. “It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for.” In Jesus, God takes the mystery of all of this and how it could possibly be true, for me, for you, for creation – God takes this mystery and makes it known to us. God sends Jesus to take on human flesh and blood to make it clear once and for all how deeply we are loved, how much God cherishes us, how utterly God longs to be in relationship with us. So no matter how harshly we judge each other or ourselves, no matter how much we may think we're not worth it, we hear God saying to us in Jesus: “You are my beloved child. You are mine. You are here for a reason. You have a purpose. You are signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit.” Or, to use more traditional, formal language, “You were marked by the seal of the promised Holy Spirit.” And this is just the first step, the down payment of all that God has in mind for us.

So go from this place this morning, knowing that you are cherished. You are beloved. You are set free. And if you see someone else wrestling with the mystery, someone who isn't sure what they're here for or if it could possibly be true that God loves them - remind them of God's ancient plan to make them whole and holy. Invite them to the lavish celebration of our adoption through Jesus. Go – Make the mystery known!

Amen.