tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83000014077976492322024-03-16T11:52:14.740-07:00Abiding in HopeThe collected prayers, sermons, and spiritual musings of an Episcopal priestScoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.comBlogger3221125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-63767125143893865692024-03-10T07:42:00.000-07:002024-03-11T07:58:42.410-07:00The World According to God: Sermon for Lent 4B<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggaNkB4LyBX4gfFLQk96jwAABctAtS6MUI9BIBBga-5OTn5wze6gQ9UZxBbVe8O0ih2_uEszEQA0FI39Qy-LaUxuZ85sLFjzd7Skp6J3BK2KrVTzeJnRic9RFpyWiPZrF1mxV31VOEhO1kRna-s6zL9u653JzNQF_O6rVYigVkaWYAqcWnPTRDPBhJ0IJI/s2048/The%20Blue%20Marble%20Earth%20from%20Apollo%2017.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2047" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggaNkB4LyBX4gfFLQk96jwAABctAtS6MUI9BIBBga-5OTn5wze6gQ9UZxBbVe8O0ih2_uEszEQA0FI39Qy-LaUxuZ85sLFjzd7Skp6J3BK2KrVTzeJnRic9RFpyWiPZrF1mxV31VOEhO1kRna-s6zL9u653JzNQF_O6rVYigVkaWYAqcWnPTRDPBhJ0IJI/w640-h640/The%20Blue%20Marble%20Earth%20from%20Apollo%2017.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: large;">Today’s gospel brings to mind two distinct memories from my childhood. One is seeing somebody sitting in every end zone on Saturday and Sunday and Monday nights, holding up a sign that said simply “John 3:16.” </span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">I am sure it inspired many people to either nod their heads knowingly, or maybe to have enough curiosity to finds out what that sign referred to. Nowadays it would be as simple as pulling out your phone and using a search engine. But certainly some people looked up that verse, and were intrigued. Those that were destined to be Episcopalians would then look over the entire section of at least John 3:1-21, knowing that a few words—in this case 27 words—pulled out of an enormous book will lack a certain contextual depth and precision. Those are OUR PEOPLE!<br /><br />Especially with this famous verse, context is vital. If you just stick with those 27 words, following Jesus is simply a matter of assent, a magical formula like abracadabra, a spiritual get-out-of-jail free card. But it’s not—assent is required, and commitment to not just saying some words, but living and loving like Jesus, who embodied God’s love in human likeness to be a model for our lives.<br /><br />For many, this verse is a full and complete summary of the gospel. Martin Luther summarized this verse like this: “For the world has me; I am its God.”<br /><br />But I think the next verse is just as important. “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”<br /><br />God so loved the world, the world God made through speaking God’s wisdom into the world, that God sent God’s beloved Word to be incarnate—to take on human flesh to show us all how to be fully human and fully God’s children. Jesus is the embodiment of God’s wisdom in the world. Wisdom that can be lived in our own human lives-- if only we choose to follow.<br /><br />That brings me to the second of my childhood memories, in the sweet little Methodist Church in which I was born and baptized, and that we attended until I was five. At Southern Hills Methodist Church, I remember <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3ZVLOLMRMw" target="_blank">singing this lovely hymn</a> that so engaged my heart’s certainties, because it described the world according to God:</span><br /><br /><blockquote><span><span style="font-family: Bellefair; font-size: x-large;">This is my Father's world, and to my listening ears<br />All nature sings, and round me rings the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_the_spheres">music of the spheres</a>.<br />This is my Father's world: I rest me in the thought<br />Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas; His hand the wonders wrought.<br /><br />This is my Father's world; the birds their carols raise,<br />The morning light, the lily white, declare their maker's praise.<br />This is my Father's world, He shines in all that's fair;<br />In the rustling grass I hear Him pass; He speaks to me everywhere.<br /><br />This is my Father's world. O let me ne'er forget<br />That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.<br />This is my Father's world: why should my heart be sad?<br />The Lord is King; let the heavens ring! God reigns; let the earth be glad! </span><span style="font-family: Bellefair; font-size: medium;">(1)</span></span></blockquote><br /><span style="font-size: large;">My own experience even as a very small child resonated so strongly with this hymn. Sharing the same sense of wonder and awe out in nature, delighting in the elephantine clouds slowly processing overhead down to the busy industry of ants moving among the moss on the north side of a tree, a tiny world humming with life beneath our feet, often too small to notice. I knew that God loves this world from clouds to ants to you and me, and made it a source of awe and wonder. I resolved never to lose that wonder—especially when things were hard. The signs of God’s love are shot through creation—and in our yearning hearts.<br /><br />The message we hear in John’s gospel and in our Psalm is one of wonder and awe and gratitude, yes. But it is also a reminder that the Church goes astray when it puts limits on who God loves and who God does not. Our gospel also makes it clear that merely saying you believe in Jesus as a hedge against condemnation means nothing. Believing in Jesus means following Jesus in embodying that love into the world-- each of us.<br /><br />Our first reading can lead us down a rabbit hole, with all its talk about God loosing poisonous snakes upon his maddeningly complaining people during the wanderings and discontent in the desert--unless we know the background behind it. The Priestly writers telling of this event is meant to support their belief that God smites and condemns those whose faith falters. Notice that Jesus does not repeat this belief in his referencing to that same event—he only talks about the cure. This aligns with his claim that God seeks always to save and redeem the world we have mangled through our own short-sightedness. Never to condemn it or all the living things who share this planet with us.<br /><br />Last week we heard Jesus compare his body to the Temple, and we were reminded that God blessed and sanctified us in our bodies, too. In taking on our flesh, our human life, God continues to tear down the walls WE build to separate ourselves from God, and to remind us that God lives and loves within each of us right now, and through Jesus God keeps reaching over those walls and pulling us all over the top and never giving up on us.<br /><br />In today’s readings, we hear about the blessings of light, of healing, and especially of love.<br /><br />Light and darkness are important signs or symbols in John’s gospel, which makes sense, because they are important symbols to us. Our gospel today starts in the middle of Jesus’s conversation in the middle of the night, in the darkness, with a Pharisee named Nicodemus. Nicodemus comes in the night also because he lacks true understanding of who Jesus is, but at least he is straining toward the light. <br /><br />When Nicodemus first approaches Jesus, in verses we don’t get to hear to help us understand the context, it is clear that Nicodemus is drawn to Jesus. Nicodemus is beginning to be drawn to the light of Christ, for at that start of chapter 3, he states: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who is coming from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” As a Pharisee and yet a seeker, Nicodemus is a man torn between two worlds, just as the church members in Ephesus were, and frankly much like many of us are. <br /><br />Jest before our reading, Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be born again, which Nicodemus rightfully does not understand. Yet thinking about being born to a new life in Christ is a fruitful metaphor. We are born with an abiding hunger for connection, and for meaning even from the time we are infants. Babies want to be embraced, and they want to be fed. God helps this along by making babies helpless and also adorable, which goes a long way toward making up for the smell. With our poor eyesight, as infants we experience the world mostly through out hearts, and our bellies. Babies get anxious when either of these are not full—and I am persuaded that frankly, those feelings of hunger, especially spiritual hunger, remains one of the driving forces in our lives—one that we ignore or misuse at our peril. <br /><br />Our own hunger for God within us brings us to this point, and calls us to repentance, to change. That change is scary. It means letting go of the familiar. But what will we gain? Only the certainty that we, and this whole world, are beloved by God.<br /><br />How are our lives changed when we embrace Jesus as Savior? In our epistle, Paul states here that it is the difference between death… and life. We are asked to embrace our brokenness, and allow the light of Christ to wash over it. The world according to God is filled with reconciliation, discernment, self-honesty, and abundant beauty and grace. Paul’s words attest to the abundance of God’s love—abundant beyond our imagining, especially. <br /><br />And here we see the blessing of healing that runs through all our readings, as well. Living as one of us, and dying as one of us, Christ in particular can reach into the shattered places in our spirits, and restore us from the shadow world in which we have lived into newness of life. Sometimes those wounds we bear were inflicted on us. Yet, other times, our own choices have wounded us. But God is always there.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Eternal life starts right now. It starts with understanding ourselves as living—right now-- in the presence of God. Right where we are. God loved us in this way, that God gave us God’s only Son. And why? So that NO ONE feels hungry, or empty, or lost—so that everyone can have a whole and lasting life. That Son didn’t come into the world to condemn us, but to save us, and remind us of who we are: Beloveds of a God who loves us and longs for us so much that God continually reaches out to us, asking us to align ourselves with God’s economy of abundance, grace, and peace.<br /><br />The world according to God is one of grace, not condemnation. And as God’s Beloveds, we are called to bear God’s light into the world. The world that God so loves.</span><br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: medium;">(1) Maltbie Davenport Babcock (1858-1901), American clergyman, poet, and hymn writer, “This is My Father’s World.” From the United Methodist Hymnal, 144.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Image: The famous "<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/blue-marble-image-of-earth-from-apollo-17/" target="_blank">Big Blue Marble</a>" photograph taken by the Apollo 17 crew on December 7, 1972 as the crew traveled toward the moon. This was the first photo of Earth that showed the southern polar ice cap. Image credit: NASA.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Readings:</span></b></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Lent/BLent4_RCL.html#ot1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Palatino, "Palatino Linotype", "Century Schoolbook L", Baskerville, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Numbers 21:4-9</span></a></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Lent/BLent4_RCL.html#ps1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Palatino, "Palatino Linotype", "Century Schoolbook L", Baskerville, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22</span></a></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Lent/BLent4_RCL.html#nt1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Palatino, "Palatino Linotype", "Century Schoolbook L", Baskerville, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Ephesians 2:1-10</span></a></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Lent/BLent4_RCL.html#gsp1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Palatino, "Palatino Linotype", "Century Schoolbook L", Baskerville, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">John 3:14-21</span></a></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Preached at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, on March 9-10, 2024, the Fourth Sunday in Lent.</span></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-26260209011063118062024-02-25T06:46:00.000-08:002024-02-26T07:05:48.084-08:00 Bearing the Name, Bearing the Cross: Sermon for Lent 2B<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGr_Sa_7su6CJ8JZ2Yko9zSq7WiMJbKO0It6znvCwt0bhchKxwNkkktmoRJPD6FHSsDeLmaunSvhqCr1eWY8J8m7271hQHaax2AqGCFZTkyut9tOP5ncAo-xKXrXXAS8MnhojbsJBLHywAln55tmwt_HVprLIyYcgfECxVu5aGGT8u1PkjxX03HGPKoDYO/s3264/Cross%20and%20Prayer%20Beads.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGr_Sa_7su6CJ8JZ2Yko9zSq7WiMJbKO0It6znvCwt0bhchKxwNkkktmoRJPD6FHSsDeLmaunSvhqCr1eWY8J8m7271hQHaax2AqGCFZTkyut9tOP5ncAo-xKXrXXAS8MnhojbsJBLHywAln55tmwt_HVprLIyYcgfECxVu5aGGT8u1PkjxX03HGPKoDYO/w640-h480/Cross%20and%20Prayer%20Beads.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: large;">What’s in a name?<br /><br />Shakespeare first famously asked that question in his tragedy of <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, a tale of two star-crossed lovers whose families were at war with one another in the streets of Verona. The Montagues and the Capulets were openly at each other’s throats—and Juliet Capulet and Romeo Montague fall in love at first sight, despite their families enmity.<br /><br />In Act II, scene II, the subject of names is the main topic. Juliet sits at her window and muses these famous lines, with Romeo lurking out of sight in the orchard beneath, listening in:<br /><br /></span><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">What’s in a name? That which we call a rose<br />By any other name would smell as sweet;<br />So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,<br />Retain that dear perfection which he owes<br />Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,<br />And for that name, which is no part of thee,<br />Take all myself.</span></i></blockquote><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Of course, it is not Romeo’s given name that is the problem. The problem is his family name—and hers, for their families are at war under the banner of those names. Their names, and the communities each represents, threatens to forbid their love.<br /><br />Names are important banners we wrap around ourselves, but they are NOT individual. They tie us to other people, to nationalities, to ideologies, to kin and kindred spirits scattered far and wide. Most importantly, most names are shared, and thus they establish boundaries and expectations for entire communities.<br /><br />In our readings today, the idea of names and their symbols lies under all our readings. Abram, although a wealthy and faithful man, risks having his name die out, for he has no legitimate children. Yet even though he is 99 years old—about which St. Paul made an incredibly ageist crack in our epistle—we see a second covenant in two weeks, as God promises Abram descendants so numerous that his name will never die, and he will be the father of many nations. </span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">To emphasize this, God reveals a new name for everyone involved in this covenant. The name used here for God, meaning “God Almighty” or “God of the Mountain,” is “El Shaddai” in the original text. Abram, meaning “Father is Exalted,” become Abraham, which means “Father of a Multitude.” Sarai, which means “Princess,” becomes Sarah, meaning “Mother of Nations.”<br /><br />In our section from Romans, Paul is writing to the followers of Jesus in Rome, although he has never met them. They are struggling with the requirements to form a community of Christ- followers, with those of Abrahamic heritage arguing about whether gentile converts should have to follow Jewish law before admittance to the community—including becoming circumcised, which was also mentioned in the verses omitted in our reading from Genesis. Paul makes a case that, as Jesus is the fulfilment of the Law, and underlying this is the idea that Abraham was the father of nations, plural, that anyone who shares the faith Abraham had in God is therefore a child of Abraham’s promise, through faith alone. In other words, one follows God by faith, not by bloodline --or painful surgical procedures on tender bits of one’s anatomy. Ouch.<br /><br />In our gospel, Jesus is talking about what it means to be a true disciple and follower of Jesus as the son of God. And it is here that we must remember that each gospel was written for a specific community at a particular time and place. The Markan community was undergoing great persecution and suffering—so these verse that we might draw back from were written to comfort the listeners, to remind them that their suffering was in allegiance with someone who died out of love for them and for the entire world on the cross. The cross, which had been a symbol of shame, is now a symbol of the victory and power of love in action—self-giving love, that seeks to draw all creation into community, bound by self-giving love.<br /><br />And here we are, two thousand years later. The name we choose to bear as followers of Jesus, is “Christians.” And it is a name that lays a lot of obligations on us—the first of which is to be guided by love, always. Love that is willing to seek another’s good even at our own expense, just as Jesus exemplified in every moment of his ministry.<br /><br />Sure, we live in a time when, in our context, following Jesus generally is not going to expose us to a torturous death—although that IS certainly true in other parts of the world, even today, and we should never, ever minimize or forget that. <br /><br />But following Jesus—not just using his name to hammer other people, but instead living open-heartedly according to his precious gospel—certainly will set us at odds with the culture in which we live. And the way Jesus’s name is used by too many people today is 100% in opposition to Jesus’s message. </span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Tragically, some people use the name of "Christian" as a weapon against others and to make themselves feel superior, members in a rarified club. And they use the name of Jesus as a club against anyone they consider “less-than.” They use the name of Jesus as an excuse to contemptuously deny the humanity of those they believe don’t measure up—the very poor, outcast, and oppressed with whom Jesus spent most of his time standing in solidarity. And so, they risk tarnishing the holy name and true gospel of Jesus in the public sphere. They forget that taking on the name “Christian” is about serving others, especially those the world around us despises-- rather than serving yourself.<br /><br />The core of discipleship, of bearing the name of Jesus with integrity, is self-giving compassion and generosity, Jesus reminds us continually, especially in this season of Lent. Tragically, that certainly is not something in line with our own culture, where self-indulgence is raised up as a virtue. It is at this point especially that Jesus makes it quite clear that the gospel is certainly counter-cultural throughout the ages. And it is still counter-cultural now, surrounded by the myth of “rugged individualism,” in which any need for someone else is portrayed in the public American ethos as a failure. <br /><br />But that is exactly the kind of life we are challenged to lose and lay down if we want to bear the name of Jesus faithfully and call ourselves “Christians.”<br /><br />It is that life of selfishness and disdain for others that Jesus encourages us to lay down and lose. Losing that life is the only way to open yourself to living in harmony with Jesus and following him as God’s beloved children. Peter is rebuked for thinking in a worldly way, wanting a warrior Messiah. But that is NOT God’s way. <br /><br />So, we too are asked to look at the life the world encourages us to lead critically. We are currently in a crisis of loneliness and isolation that has NOTHING to do with COVID but everything to do with the myth that our families and communities can survive when greed and contempt for others are worshiped are embraced to rule over us as gods. Suicide rates, addiction, and violence plague our every step in every community, regardless of wealth or zip code. Antisocial behaviors have been normalized and even applauded and laughed about. Cruelty is sport. <br /><br />It is THIS life Jesus urges us to lay down and lose in order to have life in him and bear his name as Christians faithfully. We gain so much more than we lose!</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Gp2tIAww5mKiUNqADw3kdSySKUcvD8O5cA5BZX1mpnYHgdW8HedSsE6OZryzr5zRXk3XfLHrJe88bkA9XZAI1xiguWp7oDvokYmeoVdviq7k3rpsQ8oaCvW1tYav33x8tx6IXLkns5t20yVBzCpLilTylFIWcDBwzyUzzXg6WRgjDOv5vSdDk5DM4yrx/s3264/Holy%20Cross%20display%20Clergy%20Retreat.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Gp2tIAww5mKiUNqADw3kdSySKUcvD8O5cA5BZX1mpnYHgdW8HedSsE6OZryzr5zRXk3XfLHrJe88bkA9XZAI1xiguWp7oDvokYmeoVdviq7k3rpsQ8oaCvW1tYav33x8tx6IXLkns5t20yVBzCpLilTylFIWcDBwzyUzzXg6WRgjDOv5vSdDk5DM4yrx/w640-h480/Holy%20Cross%20display%20Clergy%20Retreat.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br />The cross in Jesus’s time was something shameful, yet for us now it is a sign of faith and hope. The cross has been so transformed by the power of the self-giving love it represents that we now wear it around our necks, hand it over or behind our altars, and regularly make the sign of the cross over ourselves as we are blessed or absolved. <br /><br />When I became an Episcopalian, I embraced the habit of genuflection, because it reminded me every time I did it that Christ has asked us, as Christians, to take up our cross—a cross of love, service to others, and community—and follow him, as our gospel recounts today. It is a reminder to me that the Holy Trinity is ever near. And it is a sign, as much as the name of Christian, that binds us all together in one family, one community, one faith—all centered on self-giving love in action for others. The cross and what it stands for is NEVER to be used to divide us.<br /><br />During every Eucharistic prayer, as part of our Catholic, meaning universal, identity, we are all encouraged to make the sign of the cross over ourselves as the Holy Spirit is called down to consecrate US as well as the bread and the wine—to remember that the cross is a sign of the victory of love and the generosity of God to us in feeding us around this altar a meal which makes us one body sharing one name and one ministry, one obligation to each other—the name of Jesus, the sweetest name in the world.<br /><br />So today, I challenge you and myself, to take up your cross of love and bear it with joy, right now. Realize the gift of renouncing the suffering wrought by the world’s values. Lay down that life with joy, and take up the life of love, faith, and hope in the name of God. Let us commit ourselves, starting this Lent, to follow Jesus in truth, bearing his glorious name in word, but more importantly in deed, as we all seek to be a blessing to the world around us.</span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Preached at the 505 on February 24 and at the 10:30 Eucharist on February 25 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church- Ellisville, MO.</span></i></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Readings:</span></b></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Lent/BLent2_RCL.html#ot1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Palatino, "Palatino Linotype", "Century Schoolbook L", Baskerville, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16</span></a></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Lent/BLent2_RCL.html#ps1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Palatino, "Palatino Linotype", "Century Schoolbook L", Baskerville, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Psalm 22:22-30</span></a></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Lent/BLent2_RCL.html#nt1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Palatino, "Palatino Linotype", "Century Schoolbook L", Baskerville, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Romans 4:13-25</span></a></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Lent/BLent2_RCL.html#gsp1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Palatino, "Palatino Linotype", "Century Schoolbook L", Baskerville, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Mark 8:31-38</span></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /> <br /><br />Amen.</div></div></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-55170929342595125422024-02-06T10:34:00.000-08:002024-02-06T10:34:44.795-08:00Prayer 4039<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVkP4O7Jn2Odk5X8nbmMNWDV6IA9ZlNqfiRJCbWnohN3ZclXB5qx3uR5_T2Hmd8ZYSvRDA4bTIFLM1TF0T9hl9XJJm4rPnW3TM_2adcBuynH_YNpwcIOlmSP6h2j6S-EvxSxllm9P8Yx1qD5kYlqm6WUuNLnWBa6cHXBG3E2EaskkUFOyF-4WYbYPx3Ww9/s3600/Big%20Sur%20Hwy%201.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2400" data-original-width="3600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVkP4O7Jn2Odk5X8nbmMNWDV6IA9ZlNqfiRJCbWnohN3ZclXB5qx3uR5_T2Hmd8ZYSvRDA4bTIFLM1TF0T9hl9XJJm4rPnW3TM_2adcBuynH_YNpwcIOlmSP6h2j6S-EvxSxllm9P8Yx1qD5kYlqm6WUuNLnWBa6cHXBG3E2EaskkUFOyF-4WYbYPx3Ww9/w640-h426/Big%20Sur%20Hwy%201.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: large;">Crafter of the Earth and Sky,</span><div><span style="font-size: large;">we offer you our praise,<br />as we marvel at your handiwork all around us<br />and dedicate ourselves to your commandments.<br /><br />On this day, may we<br />forgive freely,<br />act for healing where there is injury,<br />stand with the oppressed,<br />welcome the refugee,<br />and care for the desolate and forsaken.<br />For we know we have drunk deep<br />from the bowls of your mercy and grace,<br />not for our own sake,<br />but so that we may then embody your steadfast lovingkindness<br />to a waiting, hurting world.<br /><br />Strengthen us to be your hands in the world,<br />Beloved Savior, Light of the World,<br />that we may work for the welfare of all people,<br />as we ask your blessing upon those we now name.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Amen.</span></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-48451150391694317292024-02-05T09:18:00.000-08:002024-02-06T09:22:15.266-08:00Prayer 4038<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvbPa_QAPL5zZ5jXrp4WNwEBsEkii-FxUM8OwvDMvuRLy0_OA4rUDTQ7N5q3tZq1x20oH1NIIYOQhRo7GzdSr1T8ewWrt2rohfK7CDWtIMsGo-WyXblMM4zHzk4YiQHf8b_Jeo-ymca7-DM-5FbsFE6ZDl1azekWSMIvuVPUP8Uud30re6mY3kcPwIDD46/s1920/Angels%20and%20sky.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvbPa_QAPL5zZ5jXrp4WNwEBsEkii-FxUM8OwvDMvuRLy0_OA4rUDTQ7N5q3tZq1x20oH1NIIYOQhRo7GzdSr1T8ewWrt2rohfK7CDWtIMsGo-WyXblMM4zHzk4YiQHf8b_Jeo-ymca7-DM-5FbsFE6ZDl1azekWSMIvuVPUP8Uud30re6mY3kcPwIDD46/w640-h360/Angels%20and%20sky.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Holy One,</span></div><span style="font-size: large;">the curtains of night have parted,<br />and the birds are singing the sun into wakefulness.</span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />May the dawn of understanding and charity<br />break over all creation,<br />and may all join hands in compassion and kinship.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />May our hearts beat in tune with each other<br />in reverence before our God.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />May we drink deep from the well of wisdom,<br />that we may align our lives with your divine will.<br />May our hands be skilled in building bridges, not walls;<br />may our souls embrace you holy commandments<br />that we may love truth and walk with integrity/<br />May we dedicate our lives <br />for the sake of the reconciliation of the world<br />with your holy purpose, O God.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Led by the Spirit, <br />may we pace our hand in your, Lord Christ,<br />trusting in your abundant grace,<br />and asking your blessing upon those for whom we pray.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Amen.</span></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-91670957728048933292024-02-02T04:51:00.000-08:002024-02-02T16:56:10.684-08:00Prayer 4035: Inspired by Psalm 42:1-2, 8<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8A1Eeec5bPw7cE0HQC-DYg8djnFK0DhvRc7OTSKMGL-jmfI_z4by0V6ZOCeKT5k_zQpsaMtaWVFx9j77Qm77DCwX8cVU6XS8VmxDzUIO70WRCdiRQOEedCcTcqZqWk7M0lF3WyMhQtvvXD9ziBq9KGTl2TiYYX7A5-_Bu_NZbtpTEGNNDHGGRHJ1Nqweh/s6016/Reindeer%202.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4016" data-original-width="6016" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8A1Eeec5bPw7cE0HQC-DYg8djnFK0DhvRc7OTSKMGL-jmfI_z4by0V6ZOCeKT5k_zQpsaMtaWVFx9j77Qm77DCwX8cVU6XS8VmxDzUIO70WRCdiRQOEedCcTcqZqWk7M0lF3WyMhQtvvXD9ziBq9KGTl2TiYYX7A5-_Bu_NZbtpTEGNNDHGGRHJ1Nqweh/w640-h428/Reindeer%202.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">(Inspired by Psalm 42:1-2, 8)</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: large;">As the deer longs for the water brooks,<br />and searches for her food within the woods,<br />so too we hunger and thirst for you, O God our Sustainer.</span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Your life-giving word<br />nourishes our souls:<br />sweeter than honey on the tongue<br />are your steadfast lovingkindness and mercy,<br />O Shepherd of Our Souls.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Trusting in your faithfulness and care,<br />may we release all the hurts and weights<br />that draw us from you and each other,<br />and lift up a prayer always to the God of Our Life.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Shine the light of your countenance<br />upon all whose spirits or strength is faltering, O Holy One,<br />and give your angels charge<br />over those for whom we pray.</span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Amen.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">(Image: A herd of New Zealand deer on a farm on the South Island, December, 2023)</span></div></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-69087953768635596852024-01-29T06:46:00.000-08:002024-01-30T06:48:32.631-08:00Prayer 4031<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwDVKny3LPuSqlXHzcARI4RFNvsHMXIXu6Dp2KEORNE7VL-VoVlJU7VAMom6yXK6xyhyQ1tbGITPzvCVlUk0UrfN9VUok3Zpahz2_LbQTjQafR3QVQ4U7y__s1m9RGZWoMH40gX0uMejnUuUBzUEgdOZWuDeQCU3ypKluW5K-Q47Jl_BEYkmWPTEfhyomN/s4032/Dawn%20at%20the%20deer%20pond.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwDVKny3LPuSqlXHzcARI4RFNvsHMXIXu6Dp2KEORNE7VL-VoVlJU7VAMom6yXK6xyhyQ1tbGITPzvCVlUk0UrfN9VUok3Zpahz2_LbQTjQafR3QVQ4U7y__s1m9RGZWoMH40gX0uMejnUuUBzUEgdOZWuDeQCU3ypKluW5K-Q47Jl_BEYkmWPTEfhyomN/w640-h480/Dawn%20at%20the%20deer%20pond.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: large;">Holy One, the morning sun<br />burnishes all it touches,<br />and we rise to give you praise.<br />Glorious Savior, you are the bread of life,<br />and you nourish us with wisdom and grace <br />so that we may support your work of redemption:<br />we hunger and thirst for you alone.<br />Heal us of all our iniquities, we pray,<br />that we may be worthy bearers of your love's banner <br />and dedicate ourselves to living lives of integrity and justice,<br />inviting all into your Beloved Community. <br />Spirit of the Living God,<br />direct our paths this day,<br />and give your angels charge <br />over all who stand in need of prayer,<br />especially these beloveds for whom we pray.</span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Amen.</span></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-3032687973450909462024-01-28T06:48:00.000-08:002024-01-30T07:02:13.510-08:00A Case for Love: Sermon for the 4th Sunday after Epiphany (Annual Meeting)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5_XzLCMWKrdJokWUmGXMtY0887cA23P1kwGdyet8k97Gt3mJq14YbBnzEkhMKG8oXqVY6O-iJJtmyO2pvF4mXec7m4UMzSBNVgmUfrM0uc8tETbvb4dgkareEfQMuDx5TrbQ9P-v0HudE3C6S4Ezg0OhTSzTvyx7PKSVGy6z0nV28oraeDyfPLSQsIAna/s1200/A%20Case%20for%20Love%20Movie%20Poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="627" data-original-width="1200" height="334" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5_XzLCMWKrdJokWUmGXMtY0887cA23P1kwGdyet8k97Gt3mJq14YbBnzEkhMKG8oXqVY6O-iJJtmyO2pvF4mXec7m4UMzSBNVgmUfrM0uc8tETbvb4dgkareEfQMuDx5TrbQ9P-v0HudE3C6S4Ezg0OhTSzTvyx7PKSVGy6z0nV28oraeDyfPLSQsIAna/w640-h334/A%20Case%20for%20Love%20Movie%20Poster.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: large;">This last Tuesday, some of us throughout the diocese and all around the country attended the theatrical premiere of a documentary entitled <i>A Case for Love</i></span>(1)<span style="font-size: large;">, which examined the teachings of our own Presiding Bishop Michael Curry on the Christian call to live lives centered on what he calls “The Way of Love.” <br /><br />The documentary included a handful of vignettes of ordinary people who have been transformed by the power of love—both of receiving it from others, and offering it to those they have encountered in the course of their lives. Stories included people who have fostered and adopted traumatized children; women who have been supported in leaving lives of crime and violence on the streets through the work of <a href="https://thistlefarms.org/pages/our-mission" target="_blank">Thistle Farms</a> around the country; soldiers and Marines dealing with trauma and healing it in the lives of so many; a family who had their eyes opened to racism and its effects after adopting—and later losing to cancer—a child with a different ethnicity, and more.<br /><br />One story in particular which filled the heart was from Bishop Curry’s own childhood, as he grew up himself the child of an Episcopal priest. He introduced us to a pivotal figure from his own life named Josie Robbins. Ms. Robbins wasn’t even a member of the Curry family’s parish; she dropped off one of her neighbor’s children there on her way to her own Baptist church. But she heard of the pastor struggling to take care of two small children with his wife fighting cancer in a hospital miles from their home, and asked what she could do. </span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Overwhelmed, he asked if she could iron a room full of clothes—they covered two twin beds in a spare room-- that he had been able to launder but not finish while juggling all his duties as priest, father, and husband. The children we told to leave her alone and remain upstairs while she lovingly worked on this task. <br /><br />Then one day, Bishop Curry’s father was running late and asked if she could make the children lunch, to which she graciously agreed. She later remarked that after that lunch, young Michael pulled up a chair in the doorway and started talking to her until the moment she left for the day, and for every day afterward. <br /><br />Josie Robbins was there for the Curry family when Michael’s mother later succumbed to cancer. Josie Robbins soon was taking the children to the drug store to see the parakeets and hamsters, just as they Mommy had done. She attended every recital, every graduation, every celebration. Here was a stranger who saw two children under the age of 8 and a devoted young husband who were losing their mother and their wife to a terrible disease. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">“Josie Robins is what love looks like,” Bishop Curry later recounted in his book <i>Love Is The Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times</i>. Through Josie Robins, love embodied in action arrived to help iron the laundry of a family in crisis, and stepped into Bishop Curry’s life as a mother figure for the rest of his life, and she remains so even to this very day </span>(2)<span style="font-size: large;">. <br /><br />In the trailer for the movie, Presiding Bishop Curry’s prophetic voice comes to us, saying: “We were made for each other, and I believe we were also made for the God who made us. And that’s the ultimate community: all of us together and the God who made us.”<br /><br />In our reading from 1st Corinthians this Sunday, we have the question of whether it is lawful for Christians to eat food that has been sacrificed to idols. What’s interesting is the way that Paul frames this discussion. In vv. 1-3, which we do not get to hear in our reading, Paul starts with a discussion of which is greater: knowledge or love. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">It reminds me of a question I used to ask my middle schoolers: If you could only be one thing, would you rather be the smartest kid in school, or the kindest? It was always an interesting discussion, and often the first time they had had a discussion about values. And basically, Paul comes down with something that many of my students stated: being truly loving can have more of an impact than self-serving knowledge. The question comes down to being inwardly or outwardly focused.<br /><br />The Corinthians lay out a logical argument about why, since the Greek gods do not really exist, it is permissible to eat meat from Greek temples. But Paul asks them to consider the greater good: what happens to those who SEE Christians openly eating meat sacrificed to idols? Might this lead people astray by appearing to still engage in the ways of the pagan world around them. Christian are, after all, called to live a life different, a life that even in commonplace things demonstrates their allegiance to God, not the world around them. <br /><br />Paul points out that knowledge is rooted too often in the self, while love only exists in community, and love must be in a community to build it up. But love always comes first, both in time and as a priority in our relationships with God and with each other. Paul argues that even if what we do is legal, if it causes another to be led astray, the demand of love must take precedence. Could it be that the Corinthians—many of them former pagans by default cultural practice—might be unwilling to really change their lives that much even while claiming to follow Christ? <br /><br />But that is a question for us as well: how much are we really willing to change in order to live out the values of Jesus in our everyday lives? And yet, by calling ourselves Christians, how we live and love—or not—is a profound testimony to the rest of the world.<br /><br />We live in a world that does NOT prioritize real, self-giving love. <br />Yet that is exactly the main ethical demand God calls us to live by as Christians. <br /><br />To live not in fear, or by vengeance, or by indifference to the suffering of others—but to live by love. Jesus calls us into community—parish, diocese, denomination, or as the universal Body of Christ, to remind us that love always comes first—from God to us, and from us to the hurting world in which we live.<br /><br /><i>A Case for Love</i> aligns perfectly with Paul’s argument, which was Jesus’s as well, that sometimes love calls us to a higher standard than knowledge and logic alone. Knowledge may be good, but LOVE as an act of the will and freedom in the world is most important. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicSs57xP9L-Ezd05x0RsATEJknBct6mylNqFEdomLJhQLhZNHGWivSiWG8Nt0Pcsw_1nzE7mMM0QukrTQyracpevSJnifCk2sGVt4AcTbRAIkRUiGXEepngw5D8qf146MIhgkQ9gw5L_DGwerig-z0xNTc2szxz6rXOx7o3mM5Hb39vT1ysu-n4_RGtN2Q/s800/RNS%20Michael%20Curry.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicSs57xP9L-Ezd05x0RsATEJknBct6mylNqFEdomLJhQLhZNHGWivSiWG8Nt0Pcsw_1nzE7mMM0QukrTQyracpevSJnifCk2sGVt4AcTbRAIkRUiGXEepngw5D8qf146MIhgkQ9gw5L_DGwerig-z0xNTc2szxz6rXOx7o3mM5Hb39vT1ysu-n4_RGtN2Q/w640-h480/RNS%20Michael%20Curry.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br />As we open our parish annual meeting for this year, I invite you to consider all the ways that St. Martin’s exists not just as a community for its members—but as a sign of Christ’s love in the world. There is much to celebrate here—and everything that we do in love is ONLY possible through each and every person here. How do we all make a case for love—the love of God and love of each other—in our own lives each and every moment? And how can we continue to grow that in the days and months and years ahead?<br /><br />At the end of watching <i>A Case for Love</i>, each viewer was challenged to engage in a thirty day challenge. We were directed to a <a href="https://acaseforlovemovie.com" target="_blank">companion website</a>, where there are <a href="https://acaseforlovemovie.com/resources/" target="_blank">supplemental materials</a> for deepening our engagement from being merely spectators watching a documentary to following in the footsteps of those ordinary people who were featured in the film. There is a journal for engaging for thirty days in doing one selfless act of love and recording it and reflecting upon it each day. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">I hope you will join me in starting this challenge as part of your Lenten devotion starting on Ash Wednesday--- even if you didn’t see the documentary. We will discuss this in a later adult forum. But for now, let us consider the way St. Martin’s parish, through YOUR actions and support, makes a case for love in the world every single day.</span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Amen.</span></div></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Preached at the 9:00 Holy Eucharist and Annual Meeting 2024 for St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Readings:</b></span></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Epiphany/BEpi4_RCL.html#ot1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Palatino, "Palatino Linotype", "Century Schoolbook L", Baskerville, serif;">Deuteronomy 18:15-20</a></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Epiphany/BEpi4_RCL.html#ps1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Palatino, "Palatino Linotype", "Century Schoolbook L", Baskerville, serif;">Psalm 111</a></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Epiphany/BEpi4_RCL.html#nt1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Palatino, "Palatino Linotype", "Century Schoolbook L", Baskerville, serif;">1 Corinthians 8:1-13</a></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Epiphany/BEpi4_RCL.html#gsp1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Palatino, "Palatino Linotype", "Century Schoolbook L", Baskerville, serif;">Mark 1:21-28</a></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Citations:</b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">1) <i>A Case for Love</i>, documentary film by Grace Based Films, 2024.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">2) Michael Bruce Curry, </span><i>Love Is The Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times, 13.</i></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-3618214886966450322024-01-27T04:59:00.000-08:002024-01-28T05:07:30.909-08:00Prayer 4029: Inspired by Psalms 138-139 in the Daily Office<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiisx_DeulN-q7QmkHks_1uArIiHNSvNbg6Yo_Nc4sy0-1-HuYV8sS58tRWjrOYLA2c0h1Oux77NfyM8g1L5epeYyeWN2ycyrqRXa8ugYPzMWY3XEAx5a_Okcr9kPX4dNSHgorp0zw0ziXWDGidpx2jArMmmAjg9UwsgJ03GkUQUuGti46ncEw0OhfAEQpC/s800/Above-the-Mountains.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiisx_DeulN-q7QmkHks_1uArIiHNSvNbg6Yo_Nc4sy0-1-HuYV8sS58tRWjrOYLA2c0h1Oux77NfyM8g1L5epeYyeWN2ycyrqRXa8ugYPzMWY3XEAx5a_Okcr9kPX4dNSHgorp0zw0ziXWDGidpx2jArMmmAjg9UwsgJ03GkUQUuGti46ncEw0OhfAEQpC/w640-h480/Above-the-Mountains.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: large;">O God,<br />you are our safe harbor; our shelter and our keeper:</span><div><span style="font-size: large;"> we lay open our hearts before your throne.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Before I yet breathed <br />you knew me and had me <br /> within the bowl of your mercy:<br />in you, O God, do I trust,<br />for you are ever with me<br />in rejoicing or in travail--<br /> in trouble or tempest you remain steadfast.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">In sundering sea or thundering wave,<br /> you steady me and strengthen me by your grace.<br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">With the eyes of our hearts<br />may we see your imprint in the world around us,<br />O Redeemer and Lover of Our Souls,<br />that we may tell out your goodness in the world<br /> in all we do or say.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Cast the mantle of your presence, Lord Christ,<br />over all those who call upon you for help,<br />especially those for whom we pray.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Amen.</span></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-58457191687525749642024-01-26T10:00:00.000-08:002024-01-26T10:00:22.321-08:00Prayer 4028: Inspired by John 6:1-15<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh27YOldlVJH_S0xAv47dQexT2riFXdi8cWqDIibUi7KNSLNqT927Zkjx-BNmWt9D1mhlWaITpZlKWhrbsI5f4z2cWCrm7JHN4eUHHlZzOeM4OsThnjK0Uw7XLR6-WD2X6eT80ImLzrB0N-G2q4mL8D2l8P_RLeWexeE0MkNb5Frc61c-b2LW771m5ayUOr/s432/Jesus%20Feeding%205000%20icon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="432" height="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh27YOldlVJH_S0xAv47dQexT2riFXdi8cWqDIibUi7KNSLNqT927Zkjx-BNmWt9D1mhlWaITpZlKWhrbsI5f4z2cWCrm7JHN4eUHHlZzOeM4OsThnjK0Uw7XLR6-WD2X6eT80ImLzrB0N-G2q4mL8D2l8P_RLeWexeE0MkNb5Frc61c-b2LW771m5ayUOr/w640-h512/Jesus%20Feeding%205000%20icon.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><span style="font-size: large;">Blessed Savior,<br />who in the feeding of the five thousand<br />showed how even a little is more than enough,<br /><br />place your hand over us and bless us<br />who have a little faith but a great hunger <br />to imitate your fidelity and generosity;<br /><br />who have a little understanding but a great need<br />to walk in your integrity and wisdom;<br /><br />who have a little strength but a great desire <br />to emulate your loving dedication to freeing all<br />from oppression, denigration, and injustice.<br /><br />May we offer our little to you,<br />trusting that it will be transformed into enough,<br />made great by your love and redemption.<br /><br />Holy One, may we walk the good road of your mercy,<br />and bring our hearts into alignment by your love and grace.<br />Grant your comfort and blessing<br />to those whom we now name.</span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Amen.</span></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-55621636067908103132024-01-25T08:03:00.000-08:002024-01-25T08:03:43.507-08:00Prayer 4027: For Christian Unity <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxf1xxMAAKRi2Vgr9_DiYT9L94jM1_FO-bVgcsQwrz3akGuflzvyl_cq_D2ob6x3CQSypIPdXIsyor7dT9E-R9mMIVQlQVrNIJf0IGVGLYLSSzoBkysiB6X0nVNDrhxc5oI1vyan-GqR58WBhxKexW450Hq7j_k-c5vUGktkkWRxe-pXsOHIS9z9wRQoxZ/s800/The%20Milky%20Way%20Galaxy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxf1xxMAAKRi2Vgr9_DiYT9L94jM1_FO-bVgcsQwrz3akGuflzvyl_cq_D2ob6x3CQSypIPdXIsyor7dT9E-R9mMIVQlQVrNIJf0IGVGLYLSSzoBkysiB6X0nVNDrhxc5oI1vyan-GqR58WBhxKexW450Hq7j_k-c5vUGktkkWRxe-pXsOHIS9z9wRQoxZ/w640-h480/The%20Milky%20Way%20Galaxy.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><span style="font-size: large;">Creating God,<br />we rise beneath your spangled heavens,<br />the filigree of stars and constellations designed in your wisdom,<br />and we center ourselves in your love.<br /><br />You weave together all that is <br />and charge and entrust us with serving and tending <br />this delicate, bountiful planet;<br />you knit together all peoples in one common tapestry;<br />the art of your creation fills us with wonder and awe.<br />You laid out a path of integrity and reconciliation <br />in the footprints of the Savior you send<br />to live among us and draw us closer to You.<br /><br />All the works of your hand testify to your glory:<br />may the gravity and force of your Spirit <br />move over the deeps of our hearts<br />that we may stirred up to live by your precept of compassion.<br /><br />May all who commit themselves to the Way of Jesus <br />live in amity and charity with each other,<br />and with all who seek to live lives worthy of You.<br /><br />Gather into the vault of your mercy and compassion<br />all those who cry out to You, O Most High,<br />and give your angels charge<br />over those for whom we pray this day.</span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Amen.</span></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-66918163135257786462024-01-24T04:46:00.000-08:002024-01-24T10:47:18.701-08:00Prayer 4026: Inspired by the Life of Florence Li Tim-Oi<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3WhgzhLao_aOhEx1pkjhNXRoPU4WR95EkLy3T3Mx_AL9IcmHOqRTd15LLo0yMvc20EV3zLtpnhq3sBQHMeZyOOch14MJuW0YPJ_ZbmdEthueIFJQewklxJXXiyvbWwP4_5andhBCtoc0L16BcxtUfNlFOfZCXEGspZl56y-DpJ_wKh9UIYxQK2H3IAdQ/s616/florence%20li%20tim-oi%20icon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="616" data-original-width="458" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3WhgzhLao_aOhEx1pkjhNXRoPU4WR95EkLy3T3Mx_AL9IcmHOqRTd15LLo0yMvc20EV3zLtpnhq3sBQHMeZyOOch14MJuW0YPJ_ZbmdEthueIFJQewklxJXXiyvbWwP4_5andhBCtoc0L16BcxtUfNlFOfZCXEGspZl56y-DpJ_wKh9UIYxQK2H3IAdQ/w476-h640/florence%20li%20tim-oi%20icon.jpg" width="476" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: large;">Almighty God,<br />we worship and praise you this day,<br />and seek your will in our lives.<br />Inspire us by the example of your servant Florence,<br />who humbly accepted your call to minister<br />even in the midst of war and oppression,<br />bringing your sacraments to her people <br />that their faith and hope be nourished.<br />Give us the courage to feed the hungry, clothe the naked,<br />shelter the unhoused, landcare for the ill<br />as bravely and as selflessly,<br />even in defiance of tyrants, <br />and grant the warmth of your comforting embrace<br />to those for whom we pray.</span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Amen.</span></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-4109429281170044052024-01-23T08:06:00.000-08:002024-01-23T08:06:25.477-08:00Prayer 4025: Inspired by John 5:1-18 in the Daily Office<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju1nkRD7bk1s5yzHgp2yYSKm8LIUQUL9gGVn_LXWoHyuu9WbU108ViE0856zwTq9LnHd4KOKb8Uw1qqA2VWNYSdeQ1cP5X5w3vvHMuB0VcPKp2W6a_ihISV7VdiV7sTStmzIKc-_OY8ZIa0J1dQjdoE7HKPo8sQzXGE143dr1zBUGP9VFISu5BYqSUXb8V/s240/Icon%20John%205%20sheep%20gate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="183" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju1nkRD7bk1s5yzHgp2yYSKm8LIUQUL9gGVn_LXWoHyuu9WbU108ViE0856zwTq9LnHd4KOKb8Uw1qqA2VWNYSdeQ1cP5X5w3vvHMuB0VcPKp2W6a_ihISV7VdiV7sTStmzIKc-_OY8ZIa0J1dQjdoE7HKPo8sQzXGE143dr1zBUGP9VFISu5BYqSUXb8V/w488-h640/Icon%20John%205%20sheep%20gate.jpg" width="488" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: large;">God of Compassion,</span><div><span style="font-size: large;">we praise you and bless you,<br />tuning our hearts to sing your praise and presence<br />in all that we do or say this day.<br /><br />Lord Christ, you healed whenever there was a need,<br />seeing the suffering and acting without hesitation:<br />may we also fill our hearts to overflowing<br />with the desire to act in the name of love and restoration<br />giving of ourselves freely for the healing of the world.<br /><br />Make us steadfast in our commitment to your gospel,<br />and faithful to your example of compassion and generosity,<br />inspired by your faith in us to live lives of grace,<br />walking in paths of mercy and joyful service.<br /><br />Grant your benediction over all who call out to you,<br />O Worker of Wonders,<br />and place the kiss of your blessing<br />upon those we now name.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Amen.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-66539471778569878342024-01-22T09:28:00.000-08:002024-01-22T09:28:58.778-08:00Prayer 4024: For Awakening and Compassion<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNpJRo80IC6oNSGrHXsl7t4SL9Wajf0JZALw-wGW7QNl7urn9L7i0PbMBoizSo1jY0lCWSROCrS2fjnUqsv9d1YLZft3V870UsKDMYbUlhQMBi7GIxvWlAxAKfFd6Ii7J_RMM4xS1KWCG41CXjqFZNsy12kQLUplUc7AhVGVyEMIfI4rgc0IxKsAiDGTuG/s640/Dove.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="640" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNpJRo80IC6oNSGrHXsl7t4SL9Wajf0JZALw-wGW7QNl7urn9L7i0PbMBoizSo1jY0lCWSROCrS2fjnUqsv9d1YLZft3V870UsKDMYbUlhQMBi7GIxvWlAxAKfFd6Ii7J_RMM4xS1KWCG41CXjqFZNsy12kQLUplUc7AhVGVyEMIfI4rgc0IxKsAiDGTuG/w640-h640/Dove.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: large;">O God Of Justice and Mercy, <br />we humbly sit before you,<br />opening our hearts to hear your Word <br />and walk in your commandments.<br /><br />Awaken us, O Savior,<br />where we numb ourselves to the needs of others,<br />that we may reclaim your empowering Spirit.<br /><br />Trouble us, O God,<br />that we may be awakened to speak out<br />against the silences that breed injustice and oppression,<br />against the contempts that lay waste to our hearts.<br /><br />May we trust in you, O Merciful One,<br />enough to place our hand in yours,<br />and make our lives living testaments to your grace and truth.<br /><br />May we employ each breath <br />in the service of reconciliation and healing,<br />hearing the voice of Christ in the cry of the forsaken.<br /><br />May we make our hearts a tabernacle for your presence,<br />O Spirit of Compassion,<br />and our lives an oblation of courageous service to You, O God,<br />as we pray for the special needs of those around us.</span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Amen.</span></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-29170799069254940772024-01-21T08:42:00.000-08:002024-01-22T08:48:16.739-08:00Off the Hook: Sermon for the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany B<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvv_OOI4Yk5NNAIWcgX1ibp2v-XOw_atxBrOlCMVHe3bG_8jnB9ZcmRJRUOnaQ2E8yruA40HkmAQOYarSrWjz6GyL-kfBj7wVJPW1tYHGsSFiUUW6MMUOH09-5ZjC3_29_RDwQDgBYGL3aoAjijB2KrqwnPVye8ZfNCDF5ybLBxXEKZTr08VO9okBjfxtR/s2000/Mark%201%2017%20Epiphany%203B%20cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1545" data-original-width="2000" height="494" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvv_OOI4Yk5NNAIWcgX1ibp2v-XOw_atxBrOlCMVHe3bG_8jnB9ZcmRJRUOnaQ2E8yruA40HkmAQOYarSrWjz6GyL-kfBj7wVJPW1tYHGsSFiUUW6MMUOH09-5ZjC3_29_RDwQDgBYGL3aoAjijB2KrqwnPVye8ZfNCDF5ybLBxXEKZTr08VO9okBjfxtR/w640-h494/Mark%201%2017%20Epiphany%203B%20cover.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-large;">Many of you have probably heard the old Chinese proverb: Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.</span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />It’s a beautiful sentiment. But I have also seen the truth of its corollary: Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish, and he will be gone the entire weekend.</span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />There’s a lot of fishiness in this week’s readings, and hopefully, we are hooked into trying to learn more.<br /><br />We start with just a snippet from the Book of Jonah. It’s unusual among the prophetic books. There are very few prophecies of his included. Instead it is a narrative of Jonah’s life. His life as a prophet is unique because in this book he is sent not to the people of Israel to correct their sins and shortcomings, but to the people of Israel’s oppressor—specifically, to the great city of Nineveh. A city Jonah hates, because it is the capital of Israel’s enemies, the Assyrians. So when Jonah is told by God to go offer his enemies salvation, he adamantly refuses and does everything he can to avoid it. I mean, a prophet who defies God. That’s some chutzpah. But in the end, to Nineveh he does go, and converts them with a single sentence. And in doing so, he learns that God’s mercy is wider than the widest sea.<br /><br />In Mark’s gospel, which is notorious for using the word “immediately” dozens of times, Jesus converts two pairs of brothers with a single sentence, too. As I discussed this gospel with the vestry the other night, some of us contrarians reflected that the idea of fishing for people can seem rather negative. This image implies, after all, that maybe people should be baited, or hooked, or caught against their will. Fishing works by fooling the fish, or sneaking up on them unawares, after all. Not to mention the fact that fishing for a living, rather than when one does it as a hobby, is backbreaking work with no guarantee of success—and desperate, too, when fishing is a matter of survival.<br /><br />When we survey the scope of scripture, being caught in a net is almost always a negative thing. A net is almost always portrayed as a trap. In the psalms, a net is what your enemies lay out to trip you up, to ensnare you. With that in mind, the idea of “fishing for people” can be seen as manipulative.<br /><br />And sure, there are some faith communities that use gimmicks to ensnare people. There’s the obvious things, like offering childcare—I used to know a lot of parents who would send their kids to a local church in east Tulsa because it had a fleet of old school buses that would drive through the neighborhoods, and they could send the kids off to this church and get a couple of hours to themselves while the church kept the kids busy on a Sunday morning. I know other churches that advertise coffee bars, and climbing walls, and even Mixed Martial Arts bouts and fashion shows, or who play to the very attractive idea that those who DON’T belong to the church are losers, outsiders, cast off from God—like God’s love is an exclusive offer to only the right sort of people. Then there are churches where people go to make business connections, or to be “seen”—a story as old as time.<br /><br />This week’s readings continue last week’s theme of being called by God and the mutual recognition that is involved in call, as we are given more depictions of being called by God and the various ways we can respond.<br /><br />To review: we could respond with innocent eagerness, like the boy-prophet Samuel last week.<br /><br />We can respond with skepticism, like Nathanael did last week in John’s gospel.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMurMCrlllPi92Fr3S0MqJ-5o0ijBMWcnLhKTUlMqm23erP-HD4h3Wj61_FeY9NX5hT44drvRVWMqSafuc-MazcXmEbqGM7fnn8Ortd0WW-JYkJnTU27fqhHa-oFGAWeqG4jIiWCbQVdxIPdQrDeI8DKJ-ctyecxXxzLdPdth700s5e3CVwh9K2N5JJBXm/s640/Jonah%20Carrow%20Psalter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="539" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMurMCrlllPi92Fr3S0MqJ-5o0ijBMWcnLhKTUlMqm23erP-HD4h3Wj61_FeY9NX5hT44drvRVWMqSafuc-MazcXmEbqGM7fnn8Ortd0WW-JYkJnTU27fqhHa-oFGAWeqG4jIiWCbQVdxIPdQrDeI8DKJ-ctyecxXxzLdPdth700s5e3CVwh9K2N5JJBXm/s320/Jonah%20Carrow%20Psalter.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>We can respond with a desperate and angry “NO!” until one gets FORCED to surrender, as in Jonah’s story--and surrender he does, but he resents the hell out of being forced to offer a chance for repentance to his most hated enemies.<br /><br />Or we can respond with shocking abruptness, like our two sets of brothers in our reading from Mark. Here we see them drop everything that they are doing—leaving behind bewildered (and undoubtedly angry) fathers and unmended nets and following this stranger with a handful of words.<br /><br />I don’t know about everyone else, but for me, choices two and three have definite relevance for my life. After all, saying yes to God sometimes means ceding control, letting God’s will triumph over our own will. And there are few things more unsettling and potentially scary than that. We live in a culture, after all, in which sacrifice, compromise, joyful obedience and being malleable are seen as signs of weakness, signs of being a patsy. We have been conditioned, after all, to always seek to win—to demand “What’s in this for me?”—and the way our churches are set up can be no different.<br /><br />So maybe that’s why some of us feel sorry for those poor fish-people. Visions of that scene in Finding Nemo might be flashing through your mind’s eye right now—the one where poor little Nemo has been caught in the net of the trawler along with hundreds of other fish, and they panic at the prospect of their impending doom as the net inexorably cranks upward.<br /><br />But Jesus’s Good News never starts by tricking or guilting people into conversion and repentance. Jesus’s Good News, one that we are called to proclaim and embody, emphasizes living a life of discipleship rather than an emphasis on how to suffer through life until you get a reward of heaven when you die. My life was hard enough growing up. “Get used to it, kid,” or, a million times worse, smugly being told “It’s all God’s will” in answer to the real deprivations and chaos in which I grew up did NOT entice me into feeling like I was on the winning end of a bargain.<br /><br />Jesus met people where they were, and invited them into relationship by being spiritually and intellectually welcoming. Again and again, he invites us to bring our questions and our doubts and not be rejected or shamed for them. And the places in my youth that operated with baiting nets and condemning some people as “garbage” worthy only of destruction when they got caught in God’s net did not appeal to me one bit.<br /><br />In calling us, Jesus doesn’t offer us a bargain. In calling us, Jesus offers us our lives.<br /><br />Rather than vengeance and punishment, Jesus calls us to mercy and grace. Rather than a transactional mindset like the rest of the world around us, run by merciless parameters like “dog eat dog” and “take advantage of others before they take advantage of you,” Jesus’s Good News is instead an orientation toward compassion and helping others without stopping to refuse those who were deemed “unworthy.” An emphasis on helping the struggling rather than ignoring their struggles or seeing those struggles as “God’s will.” A proclamation of how Jesus’s incarnation is meant to remind us of how precious we are in God’s sight, rather than how fallen and corrupt the material world is—and letting Christians off the hook from trying to make the broken places in the world better.<br /><br />It's a question of emphasis. As our gospel passage begins, Jesus is walking along the shores of Galilee proclaiming GOOD NEWS. Good news, of mercy and grace, rather than suffering and smiting. That’s what entices people to leave the nets that have ensnared them and follow Jesus.<br /><br />We can hear Jesus’s call with a different emphasis.<br /><br />Instead of “Follow me, and I will make you fish for PEOPLE.”</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">What if we heard, “Follow me, and I will make you fish FOR people.” </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">To live for others, to live for God, and in doing so, living lives that really matter.<br /><br />Jesus calls Simon and Andrew and James and John and you and me to actively join with him in proclaiming the Good News to those we encounter in OUR lives. To take stock of what God’s love does for us in each moment, and to be so overjoyed we share that love with others. And that’s how we get out of the net and off the hook, and instead live lives of richness and abundance.<br /><br />Jesus’s call to us, as disciples, is to not to trap people in our nets, but to leave the nets and the manipulations and seek reconciliation and good news for ALL.<br /><br />Jesus’s call to us, as disciples, is to have faith in God’s love for us—and for our own ability to share that love in a world that DESPERATELY needs it. Immediately.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Preached at the 505 on January 20 and the 8:30 and 10:30 Eucharists on January 21 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville. MO.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Readings, 3rd after Epiphany B:</b><br /><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Epiphany/BEpi3_RCL.html#ot1">Jonah 3:1-5, 10</a><br /><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Epiphany/BEpi3_RCL.html#ps1">Psalm 62:6-14</a><br /><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Epiphany/BEpi3_RCL.html#nt1">1 Corinthians 7:29-31</a><br /><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Epiphany/BEpi3_RCL.html#gsp1">Mark 1:14-20</a></span></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-64900544758977058792024-01-18T07:07:00.000-08:002024-01-18T07:07:55.872-08:00Prayer 4020: Being Centered in Grace<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnJyXeFjyQgHjFIFlOprPAVx4pv1C8jC4g2DkZKs1kJPOIIuAFfzHM51aeBoils_pm1jQnkDro4UiP-Xr78uIlSBtjY3LaRTkvky9FrPL1gRW321RORIGbGIcumd3wUTypHKUI9Hx8ggpN9rvOCwYfuRNHGT41MW_swbNqOquMFFRf7C5MlwmbSmNkmmE8/s4710/Sunrise%20over%20Deer%20Lake.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3906" data-original-width="4710" height="530" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnJyXeFjyQgHjFIFlOprPAVx4pv1C8jC4g2DkZKs1kJPOIIuAFfzHM51aeBoils_pm1jQnkDro4UiP-Xr78uIlSBtjY3LaRTkvky9FrPL1gRW321RORIGbGIcumd3wUTypHKUI9Hx8ggpN9rvOCwYfuRNHGT41MW_swbNqOquMFFRf7C5MlwmbSmNkmmE8/w640-h530/Sunrise%20over%20Deer%20Lake.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Linden Hill; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: Linden Hill; font-size: large;">O God Our Maker, Our Home,<br />this day unfurls before us:<br />let us anchor it in praise to You,<br />ground it in faithfulness and grace,<br />our vision sparked by gratitude, not grievance,<br />that we may have a taste of your heavenly banquet.<br /><br />O God Our Shepherd, Our Guide:<br />this hour offers itself to us,<br />redolent with possibility:<br />let us devote it to manifesting your goodness<br />by the purity of our actions and words,<br />holding fast with integrity to your Word,<br />nourishing the hungry, welcoming the stranger, <br />and tending the soul-weary around us.<br /><br />O God Our Shield, Our Promontory:<br />this moment calls to us:<br />let use our breath to breathe our prayers to you,<br />rising with the song of birds,<br />singing their way home,<br />that in faithfulness and confidence<br />we may center ourselves and those we love in you<br />as we pray.</span><div><span style="font-family: Linden Hill; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Linden Hill; font-size: large;">Amen.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-87535063541954903632024-01-17T07:08:00.000-08:002024-01-18T07:13:51.804-08:00Prayer 4019<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCRb4woX-8HauAJXtBQNNG7Wmhjac-RPHIN-MWUpq1VzE5KjJ_Ha2B2I6RJLbDq_V6erF3SJV1bIk46ZACansW9XGZe09_UclaBN2IIUp2aChI4I-i9Y4yIgaWOonlDZEKB5KM4f-SZQtRD6NtO_2zgPSPCDxMSYm-BKz-wVus1b-S6_rQ7DS6amx9YeTX/s2048/lighthouse%204.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCRb4woX-8HauAJXtBQNNG7Wmhjac-RPHIN-MWUpq1VzE5KjJ_Ha2B2I6RJLbDq_V6erF3SJV1bIk46ZACansW9XGZe09_UclaBN2IIUp2aChI4I-i9Y4yIgaWOonlDZEKB5KM4f-SZQtRD6NtO_2zgPSPCDxMSYm-BKz-wVus1b-S6_rQ7DS6amx9YeTX/w480-h640/lighthouse%204.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Linden Hill; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: Linden Hill; font-size: large;">Almighty God, Source of All Blessing,<br />we turn to you in faith and trust, <br />inviting your Spirit into our hearts.</span><div><span style="font-family: Linden Hill; font-size: large;"><br />May we make our way steadfast and blameless<br />in walking in your holy Law, O God.<br />that we may radiate your compassion<br />into the world around us.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Linden Hill; font-size: large;"><br />Place the balm of your blessing over all creation,<br />O Steadfast One,<br />over all in need of peace or comfort,<br />over those who seek you <br />with a wordless, unformed longing<br />as we pray.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Linden Hill; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Linden Hill; font-size: large;">Amen.</span></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-32720138867877312462024-01-16T08:35:00.000-08:002024-01-18T07:14:48.652-08:00Prayer 4018-- beginning the 12th year of the Mutual Prayer Circle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB5pMDqsZcQz2MEBXt0WgmQOR0-TwtCHBfOikz3DLeE0s2hHwJEEKm5X9OXZXzL-HtNHYbDNMn0iq-5FXGX6Qn-ARqDVnfYsaiU5tfVy9PfOEc_FUrwYQ6BlfkpzN0Zx81gmcuLdAQS7V15s1a_aqbofO2mqedQKx3BJd05GVZWJmy6l1Dvw-kzetcH9ki/s4032/Winter%20red%20headed%20woodpecker.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB5pMDqsZcQz2MEBXt0WgmQOR0-TwtCHBfOikz3DLeE0s2hHwJEEKm5X9OXZXzL-HtNHYbDNMn0iq-5FXGX6Qn-ARqDVnfYsaiU5tfVy9PfOEc_FUrwYQ6BlfkpzN0Zx81gmcuLdAQS7V15s1a_aqbofO2mqedQKx3BJd05GVZWJmy6l1Dvw-kzetcH9ki/w480-h640/Winter%20red%20headed%20woodpecker.JPG" width="480" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><span style="font-family: Linden Hill;"><span style="font-size: large;">i</span><span style="font-size: large;">nspired by Psalm 26 from this morning's Daily Office<br /><br />Sheltering God, Companion in Love,<br />we praise you and raise our hearts in offering:<br />center us in your mercy and grace, we pray.<br /><br />May our actions as your children ever honor your holy name.<br />May we cling fast to your law of love,<br />making no compromise with the deceitful,<br />nor align ourselves with the wicked,<br />the plotters of evil or the givers of bribes.<br /><br />Instead, may we walk each step <br />in paths of righteousness and humility,<br />that we may be worthy to stand before you <br />with integrity and peace in our hearts,<br />united by your love and grace.<br /><br />May we embody wisdom, shalom, and lovingkindness, <br />making our lives a celebration and testimony<br />of the beauty of your word and statutes.<br /><br />Draw all who wander or search<br />into the warmth of your embrace, O Most High,<br />and place the shield of your mercy </span></span><div><span style="font-family: Linden Hill; font-size: large;">over those for whom we pray.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Linden Hill; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Linden Hill; font-size: large;">Amen. </span></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-12927067078658379122024-01-14T08:45:00.000-08:002024-01-16T10:01:36.023-08:00 The Call for All: Sermon for 2nd Sunday after Epiphany B<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguTm87RvOJUFmAxqNLVWoHZ2Y66yvaaUTybQdQkkIYViGYEy95CfuCXkzHozOaax9EPIoG7F3-WZzlsMtfiRpxbBThVu6TF5ck34yf6yiwuPFb99-YseQexzFNTWgSW2mUEmbI_FTxr4uZPVVsIRrEQ36BrYPnAmq9n0Z4wDklsmErQFtHz3JrTLxDt55a/s640/MLK%20time%20to%20do%20what%20is%20right.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="486" data-original-width="640" height="486" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguTm87RvOJUFmAxqNLVWoHZ2Y66yvaaUTybQdQkkIYViGYEy95CfuCXkzHozOaax9EPIoG7F3-WZzlsMtfiRpxbBThVu6TF5ck34yf6yiwuPFb99-YseQexzFNTWgSW2mUEmbI_FTxr4uZPVVsIRrEQ36BrYPnAmq9n0Z4wDklsmErQFtHz3JrTLxDt55a/w640-h486/MLK%20time%20to%20do%20what%20is%20right.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: large;">This morning I had a decision to make: should we go ahead with in-person worship, or should we go online? The bitter cold outside and the safety of everyone was my overriding concern—but then I feared that if I decided to call off in-person worship, some people would not get the message. Even if I tried to call people, I was afraid some would not get the call—or take the call, if they didn’t recognize my number.<br /><br />Then I laughed to myself, because the theme of calling runs all through our scripture choices this morning. In this season of Epiphany, we are drawn through our readings to see how God was manifest in the life of Christ to both Jew and Gentile alike. But this week, and actually next week, we are led to a deeper consideration: how are WE manifestly known, treasured, and called into partnership by God? This, too, is a vital question that the season of Epiphany calls us to explore.<br /><br />First of all, our readings encourage us to consider WHO God calls into partnership. It can be someone who is so young that they do not even KNOW God’s voice, as with the child Samuel. We see throughout scripture that God knows us better than we know ourselves—and loves us intimately because of and sometimes in spite of that knowledge.<br /><br />The portion of Psalm 139 that we read this morning reminds us of exactly that—that because God created each of us, God knows us to our very core. And as beautiful as the verses we hear today are, the part that is omitted is even more precious:<br /><br /><i>6 Where can I go then from your Spirit?<br />Where can I flee from your presence?<br />7 If I climb up to heaven, you were there;<br />If I make the grave my bed, you were there also.<br />8 If I take the wings of the morning<br />And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,<br />9 Even there your hand will lead me<br />And your right hand hold me fast.</i><br /><br />Even the reading from 1 Corinthians, which normally I would not want to touch with a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole, supports the day’s theme by reminding us that what we do in front of others as self-professed Christians not only affects the Church, but reflects back upon what the world thinks about Jesus. We are, as St. Francis and many other saints insisted, the only Christ, most people will see. Part of our call as Christians is to exemplify the life for others that Jesus embodied with every single breath.<br /><br />In our gospel, we again see a call narrative: the calling of Philip and Nathanael as disciples of Jesus. John’s gospel is the only one that lists Nathanael as one of the apostles. The other gospels mention Bartholomew in Nathanael’s place, so some scholars wonder if they are not the same person. It certainly is common that people in the Bible have multiple names: Abram-Abraham; Jacob- Israel; Simon-Peter; Saul-Paul, just off the top of my head. So it’s possible.<br /><br />Nathanael at first fails to understand who Jesus is, just as the boy Samuel misunderstood who was calling him and speaking to him. Yet Jesus tells Nathanael that he had “seen” Nathanael under a fig tree, and this causes Nathanael to believe that Jesus DOES have the special powers that the Messiah would have. Just as in our psalm, we have Jesus as the Son of God claiming to know a person intimately, even though he and Nathanael had never met. Once again, we see God through Jesus reaching out to us and seeking us, knowing us even better than we know ourselves. The image of the ladder reinforces that our relationship with God is a two-way street. God calls to us, but we can choose to respond or not. <br /><br />One of the reminders we have here in all of our readings is that whatever we hear or know about God comes first from God. Without God’s initiative, we would know nothing about God. Our own reason alone will not lead us to that understanding—in fact, depending on reason alone can lead us in exactly the opposite direction if we believe that reason works in opposition to faith (an incorrect assumption, but nevertheless the point holds).<br /><br />Of course, fitting with the theme of Epiphany, this reading is about various people having a sudden understanding or revelation of who exactly Jesus is. But there’s another, important discovery being made here. In each of this week’s readings, God calls out to us as much as we recognize God. <br /><br />We are assured in each of our readings today that God knows us, better than we know ourselves. And in knowing us, God sees in us our potential to share in God’s work of reconciliation and redemption.<br /><br />The great Jewish teacher and rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote a wonderful book after a lifetime of study. It was called God in Search of Man. The title was meant to startle us by the order of the words—it wasn’t “Man in Search of God.” Instead, Rabbi Heschel pointed out that throughout scripture, it is always God that seeks us—and too often, it is US who hide, or run away, or evade, or stop up our ears or our hearts. And when we do that, we inevitably come unmoored. We lose our way. We make compromise and prevaricate against doing what is right in favor of doing what is easy. We stop listening for God’s call to us to use our lives to God’s glory. And that is the start of the slide toward evils both small and great.<br /><br />The 20th century, after all, with its terrible cataclysms that rocked the world, including the Holocaust as the most glittering example of the dangers of humanity’s technological prowess operating free of ethical or moral constraints, led to an actual movement called the “God is Dead” movement in some intellectual circles. Yet those evils were the result of us abandoning God, not God abandoning us.<br /><br />Sometimes bad things just happen. But more often, bad things happen, and they happen because of choices that have been made by humans and human societies. The most dangerous examples throughout history occur when people are convinced that they themselves cannot make a difference and blind themselves to the consequences of their inactivity. When we see suffering or danger, but we convince ourselves there is nothing we can do, we acclimate ourselves rather than exercising the agency God has given us. Rather than asking “Where is God?” when trials or cataclysms happen all around us, what would happen if we instead asked ourselves, “Where are we?” <br /><br />Always, always, there’s a reminder that in our journey through life, the biggest obstacle most of us have to overcome is ourselves. Our fears. Our doubts. Our lack of faith in both God and in ourselves, especially when it comes to making a real difference in the world.<br /><br />Epiphany reminds us that God realized that being WITH us was not enough. God came into this world as Jesus and became ONE of us in God’s search for us. When we couldn’t hear God’s voice calling us in nature or in history or in law or in scripture, God became one of us, in the hopes that we would hear the voice of God calling us into relationship. Relationship with God, and each other, in order that we would make a real difference in the world. In order to truly be children and disciples of God.<br /><br />We may believe we are not worthy of being called by God—that’s completely normal. We may think what good we might try to do doesn’t matter. But that’s exactly the opposite of why God became incarnate in Jesus and came to show us the way to live.<br /><br />When God calls to us, God empowers us to step into our status as beloved children of God. Where we once believed ourselves powerless, or disconnected, we are changed. The overall call we hear from God as God’s children is to a new identity with new possibilities, a new understanding of ourselves. That new understanding is predicated upon God’s knowledge of and love for us, asking us to open up our eyes to have an epiphany in our understanding of ourselves as well as of our understanding of God. When Jesus calls to us, we are really being called to see ourselves in a new light, in a new way.<br /><br />Epiphany is not just about Jesus being recognized as the Messiah and the Son of God. It is also about people throughout history who have listened to and heard the call of God to a life of love, compassion, reconciliation, and healing. It’s a time when we are called to remember that Jesus’s call to US is not to be simply spectators, but to BE members of a Beloved Community that encompasses all people and all of creation—to be people who work for the common good, having faith that God sees us, knows, us, and makes us partners in this world-changing work, even if we simply do so one small action or kindness at a time.<br /><br />And how each and every one of us are being called by God in every moment is a vital question to ask ourselves during this weekend in which we celebrate the life and calling of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We celebrate his life as a catalyst for equality at a time when most of this country accepted the separation and oppression of others based on the color of their skin. <br /><br />But especially as Christians, we must NEVER forget that every single thing the Rev. Dr. King did was not just as a civil rights leader, but as a person whose life was directed and formed by his faith in God and by his response to God’s calling to him. And that is why, at the start of his leading others to fight for the freedom and equality of all people, Dr. King grounded his leadership in prayer.<br /><br />How is God calling you, and us, right now to embody the life of Christ in our lives, in our choices, in our common life together here at St. Martin’s? Let us hear and share this prayer of the Rev. Dr. King’s:<br /><br /><i>O God, our gracious heavenly Father,<br />We thank thee for the inspiration of Jesus the Christ, <br />who came to this world to show us the way.<br />And grant that we will see in that life <br />the fact that we are made for that <br />which is high and noble and good.<br />Help us to live in line with that high calling, that great destiny.<br />In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.</i></span><span style="font-size: medium;">(1)</span><br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><span style="font-size: medium;">Preached at the 505 on January 13 and at the 10:30 Holy Eucharist on January 14, 2024, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Readings:</span></b></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Epiphany/BEpi2_RCL.html#ot1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Palatino, "Palatino Linotype", "Century Schoolbook L", Baskerville, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20)</span></a></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Epiphany/BEpi2_RCL.html#ps1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Palatino, "Palatino Linotype", "Century Schoolbook L", Baskerville, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17</span></a></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Epiphany/BEpi2_RCL.html#nt1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Palatino, "Palatino Linotype", "Century Schoolbook L", Baskerville, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">1 Corinthians 6:12-20</span></a></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Epiphany/BEpi2_RCL.html#gsp1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", Palatino, "Palatino Linotype", "Century Schoolbook L", Baskerville, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">John 1:43-51</span></a></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><b>Citation: </b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">1) Prayer from <i>“Thou, Dear God:” Prayers That Open Hearts and Spirits (King Legacy Book 6)</i>, p. 63.</span></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-45925350411448683742024-01-13T08:39:00.000-08:002024-01-16T08:41:11.276-08:00Prayer 4015<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8yUOvau5Jp7Q6T38TpZYGlOzQ41HGmWNjbgYMS5nmFBchfzVlWoybX5_00Ew3Ab5voUuW1C6Tbp6nJsJlZCsEEq2XPBkZRxCp2GEx6yInyYiCJB8AM1iCzPBNZMbZfCHNbSyRXuHOcn_lbTYINfVxvhwJvZYNKRb9uPwgVq1L5VZ_qvsk_DLeAz_ksGq3/s1024/Follow-me%20highlight.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="384" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8yUOvau5Jp7Q6T38TpZYGlOzQ41HGmWNjbgYMS5nmFBchfzVlWoybX5_00Ew3Ab5voUuW1C6Tbp6nJsJlZCsEEq2XPBkZRxCp2GEx6yInyYiCJB8AM1iCzPBNZMbZfCHNbSyRXuHOcn_lbTYINfVxvhwJvZYNKRb9uPwgVq1L5VZ_qvsk_DLeAz_ksGq3/w640-h240/Follow-me%20highlight.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: large;">Most Holy God,<br />we turn our eyes to the rising sun,<br />and our hearts to your commandments.</span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />May we dedicate ourselves to your instruction<br />to love one another as You love us;<br />to turn aside from war to be makers of peace;<br />to seek reconciliation and healing<br />in our relationships with God and each other.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Strengthen us in compassion and mercy;<br />give us a delight and awe at your handiwork all around us;<br />help us to tread gently upon this earth<br />and as companions in your Way of Love and Justice.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Spread the canopy of your protection, we pray,<br />over all who turn to you for help, O Most Holy,<br />especially for those we now name.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Amen.</span></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-54167633775743056452024-01-12T08:41:00.000-08:002024-01-16T08:45:00.651-08:00Prayer 4014<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh-A8l9KWNyQ68nsCmbGpfGPJ_haq6qtEKrHlkP89yjVRZwIUGoKHznk2qCGIj8DTWCO1AmfAPXJrxHRFArtp9Lr_Tw7M1R1Xa5jQ87BTwpZ-TBQUm3EN033eJctRYtVxt0KyGoiWheTBP1P1W1nA6lk2M_obHepQPDhbY1ydHq8jjpRlYITEyKqakM6ys/s863/sheep%20follow%20shepherd.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="487" data-original-width="863" height="362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh-A8l9KWNyQ68nsCmbGpfGPJ_haq6qtEKrHlkP89yjVRZwIUGoKHznk2qCGIj8DTWCO1AmfAPXJrxHRFArtp9Lr_Tw7M1R1Xa5jQ87BTwpZ-TBQUm3EN033eJctRYtVxt0KyGoiWheTBP1P1W1nA6lk2M_obHepQPDhbY1ydHq8jjpRlYITEyKqakM6ys/w640-h362/sheep%20follow%20shepherd.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> Tender Creator,<br />whose hand has cradled us<br />through the hours and dreams of the night,<br />shelter and shepherd us<br />as we carry your good news into the world this day.</span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Make us seekers of wisdom,<br />reflectors of light to those who wander,<br />companions to those who are isolated.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Make our lives a living prayer of praise and gratitude,<br />and a testimony to your grace and hope.<br />Make our hearts a fertile field for your truth<br />that we may be fruitful in our service<br />to You and to others, Most Holy God.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Beloved Savior,<br />the creation is resplendent with your glory,<br />your abundant love dazzles<br />from greening trees and children's laughter<br />and the generous hearts of elders.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Come, Holy Spirit,<br />endow our spirits with courage and hope,<br />and place your hand of blessing over those<br />for whom we now pray.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Amen.</span></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-55325022279056892062023-12-24T17:26:00.000-08:002023-12-26T16:17:02.517-08:00God With Us-- Sermon for the Eve of Christ's Nativity, December 24, 2023<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh280N2C9G9G30rVVoUf4c4hhZbAcBDJp6YGotsEBmmVn29XXRoRn710xW7jWx1DPervAUCgHFm-ymauPwas6HNq6FRdO-STnCPfcxgAhJfEJLQ8YFTE8FAqBvRIcuDmawIild6cF97_0_f9WJB20rk2ySYTiD-CPtYMTDgXb2odvWHu3bokmNt7B77QtDg/s960/The%20Nativity%20by%20Gari%20Melchers%201891.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="647" data-original-width="960" height="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh280N2C9G9G30rVVoUf4c4hhZbAcBDJp6YGotsEBmmVn29XXRoRn710xW7jWx1DPervAUCgHFm-ymauPwas6HNq6FRdO-STnCPfcxgAhJfEJLQ8YFTE8FAqBvRIcuDmawIild6cF97_0_f9WJB20rk2ySYTiD-CPtYMTDgXb2odvWHu3bokmNt7B77QtDg/w640-h432/The%20Nativity%20by%20Gari%20Melchers%201891.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>Once, we knew we lived, and walked, with God.<br /><br />In the beginning God placed us in a beautiful garden</span><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: georgia;">(1)</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">—an orderly place, where everything had a name, and everything had a purpose, and everything, even the humans, had been placed there in this beautiful garden by God. We knew we lived with God because every day God would come and walk in the cool of the evening with us. </span><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: georgia;">(2) </span><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">We’d stroll along, companionably, and talk about our day together. God would ask us what we had done: “Today we found a new plant over in the verge over there, and we were drawn to it by its amazing fragrance. Few flowers smelled anything like this plant, God, so we named it fuschia.” And our days were filled with wonder, and everything we saw and tasted and touched was a miracle. And God was very pleased. </span><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br />When we asked God what God had done that day, God would talk about very important matters, something like midwifing a new solar system in another galaxy,</span><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: georgia;">(3)</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> or watching puffins play, or teaching chimpanzees how to use a stick to dig termites out of their mounds so they could eat them as a tasty treat. And always making sure to be home in time for our shared evening walk.<br /><br />But our restless selves were not satisfied, and so we chose to move away from God and God’s loving companionship. We chafed to be independent. We chafed to make our own rules.</span><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: georgia;">(4)</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> That garden and that companionship was tossed aside. </span><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: georgia;">(5)</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> <br /><br />But God has been chasing after us ever since. <br /><br />And when we are very honest with ourselves, we have felt something missing deep inside us.<br /><br />We built monuments to ourselves in Babel, in Nineveh, in Athens, in Mesopotamia, pretending we didn’t need God. God kept visiting our ancestors all along the way, and maybe we’d walk beside God for a while, but always, always, we would decide we could choose our paths better, find an easier way. God even rescued us from slavery in Pharaoh’s courts, parting the waters of the sea like they’d been cracked open like an eggshell, but even then we complained and carped.</span><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: georgia;">(6)</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Out in the wilderness, where everything was as un-gardenlike as possible, where hunger and thirst and rattlesnakes dogged our every step, we grudgingly agreed to not only follow God’s cloud in the day and fire in the night and eat the food of angels and the fried chicken God rained down on the ground.</span><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: georgia;">(7)</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">And in return, in order to keep us happy and safe, we agreed to follow God’s 10 Simple Rules—all of which boiled down to one word really: Love. Love of God and love of each other.</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #cc0000;">(8)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">We’d promise—and it would last for a little while. But then, like the trickster raven, we’d get distracted by something bright and shiny, or we’d want to be like the other scrabbling clans around us, or we’d decide we didn’t need a God so incredibly close to us, and we’d push God away and wander off again to do our own thing.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> Over and over.</span></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(204, 0, 0); color: #cc0000; font-family: georgia;">(9)</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">When we did turn to God, all God asked was to love us and have us love God and love each other and have some faith. All God asked for was for us to honor God’s presence in the midst of us—not for us a God who needed mountains like the Greeks or Ziggurats like the Babylonians or Teocalli like the Aztecs. All God wanted was to live in the midst of us, and for us to love God and each other. Really.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">But we wanted control. We kept trying to put God in a box. David tried to build God a house of cedar, and his son Solomon actually achieved it. God said, "No, no, I’m happy living among you all, a tent is fine, really!"</span><span style="color: #cc0000;">(10)</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;">But we wanted our God to be just as awe-inpiring as the neighbors’ gods. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Each generation made that house bigger and bigger and bigger, and added porches and courtyards and antechambers dripping in gold and gemstones and ivory, all obscuring the fact that they thought they were further confining God out of their everyday lives. Soon, talking to God was reserved for only special days for a select few, and the rest of the time they could go about their business without even thinking about God shut behind those imposing walls and turrets.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">But God would not be shut in a box. Not then. Not ever. God would not only be willing to be brought out like the fine china on special occasions or like a lucky rabbit’s foot when things got tough. Because here was the secret: even when we shut our eyes, even when we pushed God away, God was still there. Not forcing us, but waiting for us to see and trust in God. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">See, God is always with us, loving us—even when we turn our heads, or our hearts, and insist on our own way—even when our own way is out there with the rattlesnakes and the desert wastes of our fearful hearts even when our own way looks more like a hell of our making. God comes to show us that love is justice and mercy in action—and calls us to embody that with joy and faith. So simple, yet so difficult.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">And so it went on. God calling to us, setting before us God’s beautiful vision for which God had made us—and us resisting, mistaking selfishness for security and wealth and power for well-being. Which never worked, much as we wouldn’t admit it.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Finally, God decided that prophets and saints and sages and mystics and even angels just weren’t enough to get us to remember those days when we knew God was always with us.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">God with us…..</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">That gave God an idea.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">God, who is the literal embodiment of love and community, decided to actually become one of us. And not as some fire-bolt throwing, six-pack flaunting, bearded Titan; not as some pampered princeling with a fine pedigree and a fancy mansion. Oh no. God had had enough of boxes, even fancy ones. God wanted to show us that God is always loving and present to us—even in the least significant places.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">God came to be one of us—and one of the least of us, because God had been trying to tell us all along that money, fame, political power, military might, and oppressing others in the name of our comfort were no way to fill the aching empty spaces in our hearts.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">God came to us as the most helpless creature in the world—a human infant, born to a teenaged mother in an occupied territory under the thumb of one of the greatest empires the world has ever know. God came as a little child, to show us the qualities that really matter by embodying them:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Compassion for the lost and aching.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Healing for the hurting.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Wisdom and teaching.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Food for the hungry, given freely.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Empathy for the wayward.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Freedom for the oppressed.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Community and equality for all.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Self-sacrifice and virtue for everyone’s mutual benefit. Especially the forgotten.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">A little child, wrapped in rags, lying in a manger—a feeding trough. He and his family looking, like all of us, for a home. Born TO us, born FOR us, living and teaching and loving among us.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Tonight, tonight, if we are very quiet, we can hear—if we are very still and intent—the slight rasp of angel wings as they flutter overhead just as they did to those ragged shepherds all those years ago, and we hear that promise, as much a promise as a plea:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Do not be afraid.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">To you, and me, and to all of us is born this day a savior.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">He will be called Emmanuel—God With Us.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">He will be a Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">He will come to live among us, to walk alongside us, in every moment of our lives, no matter how much we try to shove him back in a box and only bring him out on Sundays.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">No, our Savior is looking for a home. May we open the doors of our hearts, and spirits, and invite him in, that he may guide us in learning how to live a life of purpose, of joy and connection and life eternal, grounded in love. Jesus didn’t come to reward us for when we die. Jesus came to show us how to live. And it starts by remembering how to walk alongside him, allowing him to show us the way of virtue and love, every day of our lives.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Joy to the world! Jesus Christ is born this night. All he asks is that we live among him, and allow him to a home inside our hearts, that we may walk beside him. Tonight, and every night. God with us. Emmanuel.</span></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Preached at the 8:00 pm Christmas Eve Choral Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>Readings:</b></span></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC_RCL/Christmas/ChrsDay1_RCL.html#Ot1"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Isaiah 9:2-7</span></a></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC_RCL/Christmas/ChrsDay1_RCL.html#Ps1"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Psalm 96</span></a></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC_RCL/Christmas/ChrsDay1_RCL.html#Nt1"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Titus 2:11-14</span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC_RCL/Christmas/ChrsDay1_RCL.html#Gsp1">Luke 2:1-14(15-20)</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Citations:</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">(1) <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=570628437" target="_blank">Genesis 2:8-19</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">(2) <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=570628798" target="_blank">Genesis 3:8 a</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">(3) <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=570629335" target="_blank">Job 9:7-10</a> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">(4) <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=570629027" target="_blank">Genesis 2:15-17</a>; <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=570629608" target="_blank">Genesis 3:1-5</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">(5) <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=570629608" target="_blank">Genesis 2:24-25</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">(6) <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=570629975" target="_blank">Genesis 11:4</a>; <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=570630176" target="_blank">Genesis 10:6-12</a>; <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=570630611" target="_blank">Jonah 3:1-3</a>; </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">(7) <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=570631321" target="_blank">Exodus 13:3-10</a>; <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=570631383" target="_blank">Exodus 16:2-16</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">(8) <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=570631692" target="_blank">Exodus 20:1-17</a>; <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=570631777" target="_blank">Matthew 22:36-40</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">(9) <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=570632545" target="_blank">1 Kings 12:26-30</a>; <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=570632468" target="_blank">Judges 2:11-13</a>; <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=570632728" target="_blank">1 Kings 11:33-34</a>; <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=570632900" target="_blank">2 Kings 23:8-14</a></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">(10) <a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Advent/BAdv4_RCL.html#ot1" target="_blank">2 Samuel 7:1-11</a></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-26328796628012876132023-12-24T08:30:00.000-08:002023-12-26T16:06:56.277-08:00The Power of Yes: Sermon for the 4th Sunday in Advent B<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7vbwNhoBIX06TevQ9mSiTryx3-p5lxUFeT-BqKugVHpX4UcAacFrV54M9ewj6gMj9J7YrnWbEvi0A0Xpb7RPr87hF9pY-qfKRCVrZsnugayfhnYxydVELW7oOnFgFAYrZ3Ezyuk02CEyfpOMwMtkXEuQgoAKpGPg3lc4kRUy0f_3xyVjye2mTtDxaxyXF/s3264/Hitchcock%20Annunciation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7vbwNhoBIX06TevQ9mSiTryx3-p5lxUFeT-BqKugVHpX4UcAacFrV54M9ewj6gMj9J7YrnWbEvi0A0Xpb7RPr87hF9pY-qfKRCVrZsnugayfhnYxydVELW7oOnFgFAYrZ3Ezyuk02CEyfpOMwMtkXEuQgoAKpGPg3lc4kRUy0f_3xyVjye2mTtDxaxyXF/w640-h480/Hitchcock%20Annunciation.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">A couple of years ago, a sweet little film about family life was released called Yes Day. I loved the opening of the movie. It mused upon the way that we often change through the stages of our lives. The Mom character reflects upon, in her young adulthood, how she lived a life of adventure, saying yes to, say backpacking through India and hitchhiking with Buddhist monks, going rock climbing on a whim, meeting and marrying her future husband. Their lives revolved around saying “yes” to all the adventures and opportunities life has to offer.<br /><br />Then came the kids. And suddenly yes becomes foolhardy, especially around things like playing near power outlets, beating up your kid sister, jumping off of roofs, and strapping rockets to your back to try to fly. Just for starters. And like in many families, Mom ends up being the Mean Baddy while Dad too often opts for “Fun Daddy.”<br /><br />I don’t want to spoil the movie. Let’s just say that the family bonds through the experience, even when things go wrong. There are some challenges, and in the end the kids learn that sometimes yes comes from a place of love, and no comes from a place of love. <br /><br />But it got me thinking. We live in a strange time—one in which we supposedly have a plethora of choices, but in which we feel ever more powerless to change the most important things about our lives. We have fifty-seven different kinds of laundry detergent, but if we want to have better roads without potholes or cleaner water or our children to be able to go to school and feel safe, we are often told it can’t be done. <br /><br />We DO live in a time when “No” too often takes precedence over “yes.” Too often cynicism takes precedence over hope. We are told we are powerless, we are told to hate anyone different from us, we are told to look out for ourselves no matter how much that might hurt others. Too often, “no” is a substitute for not having to try, for not challenging ourselves, for not having faith in ourselves and each other and our collective power if we work together.<br /><br />Our Gospel today opens with the Archangel Gabriel appearing in Galilee to a virgin named Mary. This scene is beautifully depicted in numerous pieces of art throughout the centuries, and they all usually share certain images and symbols. There’s a lily, symbol of purity somewhere near the young woman. She is often shown with a book of devotions or of Isaiah’s prophecies. The Holy Spirit, depicted as a dove, hovers just above them on the edge of the picture, awaiting the young woman’s answer, waiting for welcome. It’s a beautiful and imaginative depiction of the ways that Mary has inspired artists, poets, and musicians for centuries.<br /><br />In reality, Luke’s gospel makes it clear that Mary is not a person of high position—far from it. She is a teenaged peasant girl in an obscure, dusty corner of a mighty empire. She is a person that in every way is hemmed in by “no.” She has no power, no position, no wealth. Her marriage to Joseph has probably been arranged by her parents and his parents. Everything she has ever done has been without her consent. She is a young woman in an occupied country under the thumb of a despotic empire. No one takes any account of her.<br /><br />Yet suddenly one day, an angel of God appears before her and treats her like-- somebody. Gabriel greets her as “O favored one,” and says that the Lord is with her. When Mary was declared to be God’s “favored one” one wonders if she did not have to fight off the urge to look behind her to see if the angel was talking to someone else.<br /><br />In the face of this messenger from God, she’s not afraid, but rather is perplexed and puzzled. Prophecies are then made about the child she is going to have, with even more amazing titles being used to describe the child. Mary responds, “How can this be?” and Gabriel explains to her the miraculous things in store for her.<br /><br />She could have run. Heck, she SHOULD have run. But instead, the beginning of our clue that she is tougher than she appears begins right here.<br /><br />She considers. And she says yes.<br /><br />This is an important point. Mary agrees to bear this child of God of her own volition. Mary had the freedom to say “No,” but the courage and the faith to say “Yes.”<br /><br />Mary had the freedom to say “No,” but models for us the courage and the faith to say “Yes.”<br /><br />And her yes has consequences that she herself witnesses—she is the only person in scripture to be present at Jesus’s birth, obviously, as well as at his crucifixion (John 19:25), and on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 1:15). In her Magnificat we hear her thunder with a prophetic voice a very specific vision of the justice and economy of God’s kingdom—a vision that undoubtedly resonates with the message her son himself will embody.<br /><br />God’s call to Mary is an invitation, not a command. It seems impossible. And yet, “Nothing is impossible with God” Gabriel reminds her—and us. As crazy as this all sounds, Mary ponders… and says “Yes,” even though her entire world will be changed in unimaginable ways. In giving her assent, with faith, hope, and heart, Mary is one of the most astounding examples of human free will joyfully and humbly collaborating with God.<br /><br />What would it be like if WE decided to say yes to God? Because saying yes to God may be the only thing that will ever change the world for the better. Saying no sure doesn’t seem to have worked, you know? God doesn’t call us to sit on the sidelines. God calls us to believe—to believe in God, and more immediately to believe in each other—in the power of good in the face of evil. What if we said yes to acting in the power of love, to allow that power to change and empower us, even when it is risky. Maybe especially if it is risky.</span><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br />Can we share in Mary’s courage and faith? Can we say yes to God, and allow God to work through us to transform us each and every day, and therefore to transform and restore the world?<br /><br />Can we say yes to bearing Jesus within our very selves, to making ourselves a home in which Christ can dwell? Can we say yes to acting as Christ’s hands and feet into the world in ways great and small?<br /><br />Can we say yes to Christ’s enduring gifts to us- faith, hope, and charity- and receive them abundantly?<br /><br />Can we say yes to testifying to who Jesus is in our lives, to the thousand ways he is present to us and alive in us today, in faces both beloved and unknown to us?<br /><br />Can we say yes, and let that yes change us?<br /><br />To remember that in working with us and through us, Christ’s healing power helps gather up the shattered places within ourselves and repairs them so that we can have new life and hope, living lives of purpose and meaning far beyond our imaginations?<br /><br />To remember that God became human so that humans could know and embody the healing love of the Holy One of God?<br /><br />God became human so that humans could know and ourselves embody the healing love of the Holy One of God.<br /><br />Even now, at this moment before Christmas comes, God invites us to carry Christ out into the world, every day. Mary is a model to all of us who seek to follow in the Way of Jesus. Her story reminds us that we all have the choice as to whether we will bear Christ into the world—or not.<br /><br />It's important to remember that the full name for Christmas Day is “The Feast of the Incarnation.” This is the season we remember that God became human and lived among us. That’s what Incarnation means. with all its rich meaning for us in the holy way we are called to live our lives is why I hope you make a point of worshiping at either the 505 on Saturday or on Sunday at 10:30. The gospel text for Advent 4 contains one of the most awe-inspiring encounters in the gospels: the Annunciation of Gabriel to Mary, followed by Mary’s stirring song of faith and praise known as the Magnificat. It’s fitting that the season of Advent this year reminds us that Jesus, as revolutionary as he was, was his mother’s son. As God in human flesh, Jesus came by his faithfulness, and his boldness naturally.<br /><br />Why is this important? Because, as Jesus reminds us repeatedly throughout the gospels, Jesus does not come to live among us solely to be worshipped, but rather, and more importantly to be the exemplar of how we are called to live and act. Jesus lives among us as fully human and fully God to open to each of us the way to live a God-centered life. And God is alongside us, to help us, as we affirm in our baptismal covenant’s promises.<br /><br />The Incarnation reminds us: We are not called to be spectators. We are called to be participants in God’s divine plan for human flourishing. That’s true worship—a way of living that changes the world, with God’s help.<br /><br />That’s why Mary is asked, rather than commanded, to participate in her role as the Mother of God. Her own Magnificat is a full-throated celebration of how she sees God’s dream for the human family, and how her participation is a blessing. This is why it is so useful to pray the O Antiphons in the week leading up to Christmas Eve, by the way.<br /><br />The Incarnation is the counterpoint to the death-dealing systems that spring forth whenever humanity forgets that it is called into partnership with God, starting from being made in the image of God and through the yearly celebration of God coming to live among us as one of us so that we may be inspired to join in God’s saving work on earth. <br /><br />Mary’s courage can be our own. This year, may we all live so that our souls proclaim the greatness of the Lord, and our spirits rejoice in God, our Savior, who has looked with favor on us, his lowly servants. May we say "Yes" to God, and be blessed.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Amen.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><b><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Readings:</span></b></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Advent/BAdv4_RCL.html#ot1"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16</span></a></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Advent/BAdv4_RCL.html#nt1"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Romans 16:25-27</span></a></div><div><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Advent/BAdv4_RCL.html#ps1"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Canticle 15</span></a></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Advent/BAdv4_RCL.html#gsp1">Luke 1:26-38</a></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Preached at the 505 on December 23 and the 10:30 am Holy Eucharist on December 24 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-18060196742196172532023-11-04T13:39:00.000-07:002023-12-05T12:42:53.978-08:00Be One Too: Sermon for the Feasts of All Saints'/All Souls', November 4, 2023<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1b8wnGGaT1rVW72WccqB5NtknJ_WSi2caELWkM0M6u25F9dvfv1odnn2rrnCizPaSDm65YOJs6Xvh7o69bcKqlGZajqmku6BKSOMpUCYPBL0kZ0GfqMeby9m4Kdwzhl-doAqLiLSODC0pMpotxhfBa9_Hpwa2DFKVc8XjA-vuWapWg3vPhE7DvIOFvJiA/s538/Dancing%20saints%20gregory%20of%20nyssa%20two%20rows.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="538" data-original-width="308" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1b8wnGGaT1rVW72WccqB5NtknJ_WSi2caELWkM0M6u25F9dvfv1odnn2rrnCizPaSDm65YOJs6Xvh7o69bcKqlGZajqmku6BKSOMpUCYPBL0kZ0GfqMeby9m4Kdwzhl-doAqLiLSODC0pMpotxhfBa9_Hpwa2DFKVc8XjA-vuWapWg3vPhE7DvIOFvJiA/w366-h640/Dancing%20saints%20gregory%20of%20nyssa%20two%20rows.jpg" width="366" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">What makes someone a saint?<br /><br />It’s actually not a straightforward question. When most people think of saints, they think of someone who is perfect: not a spiritual hair out of place, floating about thinking deep thoughts, halo firmly affixed atop their golden locks, eyes perpetually cast upward, sexless and bloodless, a kind of religious Barbie doll—and I am not talking about the movie.<br /><br />It is easier to maintain such notions when we talk about people who lived—or who are rumored to have lived—hundreds of years ago, before, you know, photography, much less diaries, letters, newspapers, magazines, and now Instagram, none of which can be controlled by religious authorities to sanitize someone’s life if you are willing to believe your own eyes.<br /><br />But especially when we can glean more information that’s not in the official religious bios of saints of God, we see the picture is much less clear. Basically, the understanding now is this: “If someone appears to be too good to be true, they are.” <br /><br />I will admit I was sad when, a few years ago, one of the most popular saints, St. Christopher, was acknowledged by the Church to probably not have ever existed and so he remains a saint, but in symbolism more than reality—and the same goes for St. George, patron saint of England. Ouch. St. Anthony really appears on most people’s lips only when we’ve lost something—I admit it, I’ve done it too. <br /><br />Thinking that saints have to be perfect gets in the way of being able to relate to them, since we are ourselves not perfect. St. Francis could be judgmental, abrupt and rude. St. John the Baptist probably smelled like old goats and had a talent for ticking people off. St. Paul was so insufferable that we STILL find him insufferable much of the time, and that's a real talent. St. Joan of Arc definitely refused to stay in her place as a peasant girl, and was burned at the stake by a French cardinal who was not only a traitor to the French cause but was angry about her wearing men’s clothes, among other things. St. Mary Magdalene remains in some places the subject of a smear campaign that claims she was a prostitute partly due to how common the name Mary was among Jesus’s family and followers, but also because of her prominent place among Jesus’s disciples interfering with the false claim that Jesus only called men as apostles. And closer to our time, Saint Teresa of Calcutta, we now know, experienced a prolonged period of feeling disconnected from God even as she working tirelessly among the most desperate of the poor and ill in Calcutta.<br /><br />In the Episcopal Church, which has a much less formalized process for assigning saintly status, even we sometimes admit we got it wrong, such as when we voted in 2022 to remove Sewanee dean and theologian William Porcher Dubose from our Calendar of Saints. The Rev. Dubose, although a inspirational teacher who emphasized the power of God’s love in his theology, was also a Confederate officer and chaplain, and vocal proponent of both slavery and the Klan. These three things eventually led to a reconsideration of whether he deserved such memorializing. <br /><br />Actually, here in the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement, we use the term saint in a pretty broad way- there are “capital S” saints that we inherited from Rome, mostly, and “lower case s” saints who are acclaimed as pathfinders while not being expected to spout blood from their wrists, feet, and sides. We hardly expect them to be perfect, but that bears repeating especially on feasts such as All Saints’ Day. We acknowledge that saints should be inspiring—but also should be real people in order to actually BE inspiring. <br /><br />And even better—ANYONE can be a saint, especially if you redefine your understanding of miracles from things that violate the laws of physics to simply things that violate the selfishness, ugliness, contempt, and cruelty that predominates too much of our existence right now.<br /><br />Our gospel reading today provides us with some suggestions for the way of saintliness in a more practical vein. The passage of Matthew’s gospel we just heard is from his Sermon on the Mount, and its name at least is one that many people have heard before: The Beatitudes.<br /><br />The name comes from the first two words of each of these sayings in Latin, beati sunt, which means “Blessed are.” In the original language that Jesus spoke, however, they are in the same pattern as the very first verse of the Book of Psalms, which in some translations starts “Happy is the one who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly.” The word for “blessed” and the word for “happy” is the same word in Hebrew, the original language of the Psalms, as we discussed last week.<br /><br />So, if you knew that, but had never actually read this passage before, you might think that the Beatitudes are about happiness, right? About being blessed by God.<br /><br />Not so fast.<br /><br />While the specific things that are listed that makes one blessed are certainly counterintuitive. Note the conditions that Jesus says can lead to someone being blessed: being poor, being hungry, weeping, being hated and treated hatefully on account of your faith, as we just heard.<br /><br />Who here thinks any of those things, on the surface, sound like happiness?<br /><br />But if someone acts to recognize those situations in another person’s life, and resolves to do something about it, that’s when they act as a saint. Someone who acts with the healing compassion of Jesus—that’s when they act as a saint.<br /><br />The Beatitudes encompass the greatest lesson in the lives of the saints, and that lesson is this: those who are content with things just as they are usually have no understanding of how their own fortune may insulate them from the suffering of others. Just because a system work for you, does not mean that the system works for everyone. And saintly people are willing to look beyond themselves to consider EVERYONE’s flourishing, not just their own.<br /><br />In the Beatitudes, Jesus calls us to one-ness with each other. Jesus calls us to renounce calculations of giving based on fear, calculations of giving to each other that in the end don’t cost us too much, whether that’s in money or attention or time. Instead, we are called to expand our circle of well-being to include everyone, to have the kind of love for each other that sees that peace can only exist where we all support each other. That love can only exist where generosity and empathy rule.<br /><br />The Beatitudes remind us that we have responsibilities to each other, and that those responsibilities are actually blessings.<br /><br />This fits in beautifully with our observation of Native American Heritage Month. In Native spirituality, there is the concept of the Medicine Wheel, or the Sacred Circle. It is meant to imply completion, wholeness, balance, and unity—kind of similar to the Hebrew word shalom. But the ideas of interconnectedness and mutual obligation and compassion are at the root of the Sacred Circle. It is also at the center of the lives of the truly inspiring saints of God. That’s the kind of life real saints embody for us. <br /><br />Being a saint is about living by the baptismal covenant that we will repeat together in a few moments. But if you want another way of looking at the baptismal covenant, try this: Look at those eight statements Jesus makes in our gospel. Now add at the end of each one this phrase: “With my help and advocacy.”<br /><br />3 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven… with my help and advocacy.<br />4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted… with my help and advocacy. <br /><br />5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth… with my help and advocacy.<br />6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled… with my help and advocacy.<br />7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy… with my help and advocacy.<br />8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God… with my help and advocacy. <br />9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God… with my help and advocacy.<br />10 Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven… with my help and advocacy. <br /><br />Saints live a beautitude- and baptismal covenant-shaped life. The gift of the Beatitude-shaped life is the gift of acknowledging our own need for others, our own need for God. To be standing in the need of mercy and receive it is to be blessed. To be standing with others helping you stand when you can’t go on is to be blessed—and then to return the favor is even MORE blessed. Being a saint is not about being perfect. Being a saint is about realizing, each day, that YOU are the only hands, feet, and heart Jesus has on earth right now, and to use any opportunity you can not only not to place more burdens on someone’s back, or ignore the burdens on someone’s back, but to relieve the burden on someone’s back. Even if that comes from biting back an angry remark or giving someone grace when they screw up. <br /><br />Being a saint begins in a moment, in an hour, in a day where you work to be a part of the solution rather than ragging on and on about how you are not being served. Saints realize God is active and performing miracles every day among us in this world—but that WE are the instruments God uses to make those miracles real and visible. And what do saints get out of this deal? Saints live a beautitude- and baptismal covenant-shaped life—and the most amazing thing happens—they live a happier and more blessed lives themselves, filled with purpose and meaning.<br /><br />In our hymnal, this theological attitude towards saints is summed up in the third verse of a hymn that is popular for this day, <i>I Sing a Song of the Saints of God</i>, hymn # 293. After extolling saints who were doctors, and queens, and priests, the third verse turns toward the realistic, and the hope that is for us all:<br /><br /><i>They lived not only in ages past;<br />there are hundreds of thousands still;<br />the world is bright with the joyous saints<br />who love to do Jesus’ will.<br />You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,<br />in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea;<br />for the saints of God are just folk like me,<br />and I mean to be one too.</i><br /><br /><br />As we look at our hurting, bleeding world, at needs both great and small from wars and cataclysms to schoolyard bullying, one thing becomes clear: the world needs more saints. Lots and lots of them. And Jesus calls us not to be just observers, but doers.<br /><br />So when it comes to saints, realize that being one is within everyone’s reach, starting with one act of compassion or kindness at a time. Whe it comes to saints, we best celebrate them when we decided that we will be one too.<br /><br />Amen.</span>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-81133740783040481252023-10-22T06:29:00.001-07:002023-10-22T16:33:13.667-07:00God’s Currency: Sermon for the 21st Sunday after Pentecost, October 22, 2023<p><b style="font-family: Garamond, serif;"></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="font-family: Garamond, serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbYMHNHMAlakB7Y9frBYjzIeLP4aKapIdt6sRoFAH-nk-YvSjAY5aS1YD6q5q9C9sA2_ttbSkve077NC397vC_mx0ZqALBT8g06qNJ4tsmGrvZJ89RIVcrY7QvCu_JPqqgApwZ7tpVYB1eoMIAAoEmpEvbBq7xR5eC1ehxpNxr1mTAazayJmI8qk4X9lnr/s880/denarius.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="660" data-original-width="880" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbYMHNHMAlakB7Y9frBYjzIeLP4aKapIdt6sRoFAH-nk-YvSjAY5aS1YD6q5q9C9sA2_ttbSkve077NC397vC_mx0ZqALBT8g06qNJ4tsmGrvZJ89RIVcrY7QvCu_JPqqgApwZ7tpVYB1eoMIAAoEmpEvbBq7xR5eC1ehxpNxr1mTAazayJmI8qk4X9lnr/w640-h480/denarius.jpg" width="640" /></a></b></div><b style="font-family: Garamond, serif;"><br /><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><br /></span></b><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">Readings, Proper 24A</b><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">:</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Garamond, serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp24_RCL.html#ot2" style="color: #954f72;">Isaiah 45:1-7<br /></a><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp24_RCL.html#ps2" style="color: #954f72; text-align: -webkit-center;">Psalm 96:1-9, (10-13)<span class="apple-converted-space"><span color="windowtext" style="text-decoration: none;"> </span></span><br /></a><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp24_RCL.html#nt1" style="color: #954f72; text-align: -webkit-center;">1 Thessalonians 1:1-10<br /></a><a href="https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp24_RCL.html#gsp1" style="color: #954f72; text-align: -webkit-center;">Matthew 22:15-22</a></span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Garamond, serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></p><span style="font-size: large;">When I was a kid, I collected coins. I collected coins because my dad collected pennies—especially wheat pennies and even the rare Indian head. Every few months, he would sit me down in front of the pickle jar where he’d toss his loose change when it would get full. I would sort all the coins by denomination, and look for dimes that were pure silver. I’d separate out the Canadian coins because Dad told me they were junk—sorry, Canadians. Then I’d go through the pennies and look for any that were either wheat pennies or steel or bronze pennies from 1943 and 1944 during the war. I learned about the obverse and reverse sides of the coins, the mints marks, and other features. And voila! A coin collector was born—a skinny little girl reading coin collector books in the library like the little weirdo I was.<br /><br />My collection expanded when Dad would take me to the flea market at the Fairgrounds. Dad himself didn’t believe in paying money for coins, but I got a paper route when I was 8 and started mowing lawns and babysitting when I was ten, so he’d let me do it. At first, I just collected US coins—buffalo nickels, Eisenhower dimes, Kennedy half dollars, Liberty dollars, and uncirculated sets. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi72ELiak4m0M0FwL3BTQNhJloXX8px7-Zg-I9LOzoznN5Ckv7-xtc7jqRtFdG8Onm9E_gpqwPYfInzO8XFvtsrLwETNHX6p2BSSjKs76RTjgUOceJAAfb7ujLf1LSngY4nx0A6Tyfs412_CueAOI262Jz9P_gb9yh_QqJ2EXD3jQRwAQMMUoBkxRw-oRjV/s700/Buffalo%20Nickel%20obverse%20and%20reverse%201936.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="335" data-original-width="700" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi72ELiak4m0M0FwL3BTQNhJloXX8px7-Zg-I9LOzoznN5Ckv7-xtc7jqRtFdG8Onm9E_gpqwPYfInzO8XFvtsrLwETNHX6p2BSSjKs76RTjgUOceJAAfb7ujLf1LSngY4nx0A6Tyfs412_CueAOI262Jz9P_gb9yh_QqJ2EXD3jQRwAQMMUoBkxRw-oRjV/w640-h306/Buffalo%20Nickel%20obverse%20and%20reverse%201936.jpg" width="640" /></a></span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Then I got to collect coins from foreign countries. My dad worked for American Airlines as a mechanic, and even though we were working class, we could fly for practically nothing as long as we dressed up in case the only open seats were in first class, which of course made all the employees stick out like sore thumbs. <br /><br />So I first travelled overseas at age 7—my mom took my brother and myself out of school a week early that spring and we travelled first to New York then to Rome, where we spent several days, staying in inexpensive penziones, and then we flew to Amsterdam, once again staying in cheap hostels. We didn’t care. We saw the Vatican with its priceless works of art and ancient buildings. We met interesting, kind people who didn’t mock our homemade haircuts or Okie accents but found our wide-eyed excitement to be with them charming, apparently. <br /><br />And now, besides the historical and sentimental value of coins, I learned about the exchange rate. This is how much each currency is worth in US dollars, and it changed daily. Since we had very little money, the timing of changing our money before each trip was important—you wanted to have the value of the other country’s currency be as low as possible in relation to a US dollar. When we went to Japan, the exchange rate was 300 yen to the dollar, which was shocking. I think the Italian lira was even worse, which is probably why so many people fling their coins into fountains in Italy. The man whose job it was to collect the coins from Trevi fountain on behalf of an Italian charity invited me into the water (which was normally forbidden) and I got to help him pick them up. <br /><br />We later went to Japan, where I first saw coins with holes in them, and after high school we bummed our way around the UK and Europe, adding marks and French francs and Swiss francs to my collection. When we travelled to Ireland from the UK, I was harshly reminded of how political money could be when suddenly in the middle of the Irish sea the boat stopped accepting British pounds and only accepted Irish pounds.<br /><br />All along the way, I collected a full set of the coins of each country, and added them to my collection. <br /><br />My oldest coin was a tiny bronze Roman coin found in the mud of the Thames that I bought in a riverside stall, a reminder that the Romans had founded Londinium. The Romans enforced the use of their currency throughout their empire. And sometimes, they would design the coins in particular ways to remind the subject peoples of their surrender. Their coins became part of the way to grind their subject people under their heels. And so it was with the coin that stars in this week’s gospel.<br /><br />See, the Romans demanded that every single inhabitant in their conquered territories pay a tribute every year to Rome—a tribute that would be used to pay the soldiers and officials who oppressed the native people. Only Roman coins could be used, and so local money had to be exchanged for Roman money, which further increased the cost of the tribute, because the money exchangers would always skim a percentage for themselves. The entire process was designed to be at the very least humiliating as well as expensive, because the tribute penny, as it was called, was actually worth an entire day’s wages. And when you are living hand to mouth, giving up a day’s wages means you give up food for you and your children for that day. Plus, you are funding your own oppression. And, if you are Jewish, you are doing it with coins that violate the commandment about having no graven images, since the obverse of these coins usually features the emperor’s head with the claim, in Latin, that he was the “son of god.” <br /><br />It is here that I remind us that the word “politics” itself is NOT a negative word. Politics becomes negative when leaders move from tending to simply administering the benefits of society to all citizens, to using the operation of government in an unjust way, as a way to make people feel powerless. The gospel is political in the best sense. The crucifixion of Jesus is political in the worst sense. And in between these two political axes but definitely on the negative side is the issue of the use of Roman coins and paying that Roman tax. <br /><br />So when Jesus’s opponents question him about whether to pay the Roman occupation tax or not, they are still asking him about authority, and they have been doing throughout Matthew’s gospel. But they are asking Jesus a political question. And Jesus responds so snarkily, I just love it. Did you catch that. The Pharisees believe the very coin itself is violation of the commandments, and so Jesus makes them acquire one and hand it over. Brilliant! The Herodians are collaborators with Rome, so they are watching to see if Jesus publicly espouses resistance to the empire so that they can tell their boss, the puppet king Herod, so that he can tell his Roman bosses and get Jesus arrested for rebellion. See? Totally political.<br /><br />In the translation I first heard as a child for this story, Jesus asks whose image is on the coin. They acknowledge that it is the current emperor’s. But hold that thought of the question of image for a moment.<br /><br />Jesus’s famous dictum “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's” may have been taken by many to be an indictment of the Roman empire. It was. But more important was the second half of Jesus’s statement: give to God the things that are God’s. <br /><br />If we think about this statement creating two neatly delineated piles, we are in error. Even that denarius, stamped with the emperor’s face, represented not just the empire, but also the precious energy and time that was expended in earning it. Money is, of itself, neither tainted nor holy, nor are the human systems that money represents. But neither money nor economic systems have ever created the wonder of a single newborn day or created a single life. <br /><br />So some people ignore the political nature of the situation itself, and take Jesus’s statement completely out of context, forgetting that he is adroitly evading a political trap. Or they focus on the first half of his statement and ignore the second half.<br /><br />Because here’s the issue: the image of the emperor, and the currency of the emperor, represents more than just metal and denomination. It represents Roman oppression, Roman cruelty, Roman injustice, Roman war, Roman godlessness. That’s the real image of empire imprinted on those coins—scarcity, dehumanization, want. Using people until you use them up.<br /><br />Pay Caesar in the coin of the realm. But give to God in God’s own currency. <br /><br />But what is God’s currency? It’s the opposite of Rome’s. God’s currency is grace, reconciliation, peace, justice, community, and love. It is all the blessings and goodness that is woven into creation—and into every gift God gives to God’s children. And God’s currency can be found in the image of God that each and every one of us bears from the time of creation onward—when we seek to live holy, faithful lives, guided by the summary of the law that Jesus repeats and exemplifies over and over: love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. ALSO the opposite of the Roman currency of stealing from the masses to fund their gigantic war machine. <br /><br />We cannot forget that we ourselves belong to God, and that everything we have comes to us from God, given to us out of love by God for not just our survival but for our flourishing. God’s currency is a currency of fearlessness because it is a currency that proclaims the profligate presence and love of God in all of creation. And the exchange rate is ALWAYS in your favor.<br /><br />Holding a day’s wages in his hand, Jesus reminds us that the abundant, profligate, priceless love of God brought creation into being, and traced its way down to me and you and every living thing, binds us together and calls us into flourishing and well-being. Jesus calls us to remember whose we are, and how we use that knowledge to set the priorities in our lives. If that priority is not love, rooted in abundance and faithfulness, the love that makes us part of something greater than ourselves, all our striving is empty and our lives risk being hollowed out like a drum lying forgotten in a corner.<br /><br />God’s currency is the foundation of all stewardship. We belong to God, and when we live according to God’s values, we are signs of and testimony to God’s currency in the world. A currency of more value than any dollar, mark, pound, ruble, Euro, or denarius. A currency that never loses value but remains precious and in mint condition the more it is passed around from person to person.<br /><br />Whatever we give—love, forgiveness, compassion, empathy, justice, mercy, grace-- will be returned a hundred-fold. We may need to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. But let us never fail to render unto God the things that are God’s. Which is—everything that matters.<br /><br />Amen.</span><br /><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Preached at the 505 on October 21, 2023 and at the 10:30 Holy Eucharist on October 22, 2023 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.</span></div><div><br /> </div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8300001407797649232.post-13141992530925794332023-10-18T08:25:00.004-07:002023-10-18T08:25:40.203-07:00Prayer 3885: For Peace and Compassion<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyMDfi315g67qGYrOYIQTegiRTx7W-mS8MtNjFZ122alHgY0umku4wIawYhXqWULTEnYrbkBjc0xt1wpZFvMKObqGBNoai_G_PblFnjVISFztQB1bpQR7sfrGa9UbXx-sAEK6wxrKGwWXx5LbA-UgxnqDZgg9B1HPuIjqmk7BXBul9PSdp_6OeXtsn0kKJ/s960/Peace%20I%20leave%20with%20you%202%20TEC%20Meme.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyMDfi315g67qGYrOYIQTegiRTx7W-mS8MtNjFZ122alHgY0umku4wIawYhXqWULTEnYrbkBjc0xt1wpZFvMKObqGBNoai_G_PblFnjVISFztQB1bpQR7sfrGa9UbXx-sAEK6wxrKGwWXx5LbA-UgxnqDZgg9B1HPuIjqmk7BXBul9PSdp_6OeXtsn0kKJ/w640-h480/Peace%20I%20leave%20with%20you%202%20TEC%20Meme.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: large;">Most Holy God,</span><div><span style="font-size: large;">we turn our eyes to the rising sun, <br />and our hearts to your commandments.<br /><br />May we dedicate ourselves to your instruction<br />to love one another as You love us;<br />to turn aside from war to be makers of peace;<br />to seek reconciliation and healing <br />in our relationships with God and each other.<br /><br />Strengthen us in compassion and mercy;<br />give us a delight and awe at your handiwork all around us;<br />help us to tread gently upon this earth<br />and as companions in your Way of Love and Justice.<br /><br />Spread the canopy of your protection, we pray,<br />over all who turn to you for help, O Most Holy,<br />especially for those we now name.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Amen.</span></div>Scoop (Leslie Scoopmire)http://www.blogger.com/profile/03599423243399045800noreply@blogger.com0