10th After Pentecost MP Alex Hillis

Welcome to this ancient place.

Prayer, nature, home to all who come.

Welcome to this gathering place.

Stranger, the saint, and the sinner, and all who gather.

Come with hope or hesitation.

Come with joy or yearning.

All who hunger, all who thirst for life in all its fullness.

As God, the generous Savior, touch us through your spirit.

The world belongs to God, earth and all of his people.

How good it is, how wonderful.

Live together in unity.

Love and faith come together.

Just in peace, join hands.

If Christ's disciples keep silent, stones would shout aloud, open our lips, O God, and our mouths shall fully your grace.

Let us in silence confess our faults and admit our frailty.

With the people of God, I confess to my brokenness, to the ways I wound my life, the lives of others, and the life of the world.

May God forgive us, Christ renew us, and the Spirit enable us to grow in love.

Amen.

Move among us, O God.

Give us life.

Make our hearts clean within us.

Give us mind, body, and spirit.

Give us again the joy of your health.

The spirit of freedom.

Let us prepare ourselves for the Word of God as it comes to us in the reading of Holy Scripture.

Our hearts and minds are open.

Because the Holy God has anointed me.

God has sent me to declare good news to the oppressed, to find God to the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberation to the captives, and freedom unto the prisoners.

To proclaim a year of the Most High God's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God.

To comfort all children, women and men who mourn.

To provide for those women, children, and men who mourn in Zion, to give them glory instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of the faint spirit.

They will be called oath of righteousness, the planting of the Most High, for God to display God's own glory.

They shall build up the ancient ruins.

They shall raise up the harbor devastation.

They shall restore the ruined cities, the devastations of the rods of generations.

For I, the eternal God, am the one who loves justice, and the one who hates robbery sacrificed as a burnt offering.

I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.

Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring not among the peoples.

All who see them shall recognize that they are the people whom the Holy One has blessed.

I will greatly rejoice in the most high God, and my soul shall exalt in my God.

For God has clothed me in garments of salvation, God has covered me with a robe of righteousness.

As a bridegroom vests himself with a garment, and as a bride adorns herself with jewels.

For the word of God in Scripture, for the Word of God among us, for the Word of God within us.

For we are the fragrant aroma of the Christ to God among us, who are being saved, and among those who are perishing.

To the one ascend from death to death, to the other, ascend from life to life.

Who indeed is sufficient for these things?

For the word of God in Scripture, the Word of God among us, for the Word of God within us.

Now Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon, who had a skin disease.

As he reclined at a table, a woman came with an alabaster vessel of pure nard ointment, very expensive.

She broke open the alabaster and poured it on his head.

But some, being angry, said among themselves, For what has the Nard wasted?

For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, three hundred today's wages, and given to the poor.

And they were indignant with her.

But Jesus said, Leave her alone.

What do you trouble her?

A good work has she done for me.

For always shall you have the poor with you, and whenever you wish, you could do good by them.

But me you shall not always have.

What she had it to do, she did.

She has anointed my body beforehand before its burial.

Truly I tell you all, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.

For the word of God and Scripture, the word of God among us, for the word of God within us.

Thanks be to God.

You may always see it.

Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to morning prayer.

This is uh our our our different kind of version of church.

If you've not been here, um it's this is not unfamiliar.

We we've done pretty well with it, but um, usually we have a whole Eucharist, and Father Mike is here.

He's a really cool guy with super cool tattoos.

Uh, but you get me today.

Uh Mike is often away at a Camp Allen, which is the diocesan camp.

He is running a session for the summer camp Kados.

So basically, he is uh there's four campsites.

The director of Camp Allen, all summer camp, Camp Allen, decided he couldn't lead all four of them by himself.

So he has family ministers like myself and priests like Mike come in and run each of the campsites during the week throughout the summer.

Um so he's there leading a session.

Um he is really excited.

Uh going to camp with Mike is really fun.

Uh I went last summer with uh I had Mike come last summer with me to camp.

Um and Mike is really uh um a cool guy, but sometimes he's intense and he gets competitive and he plays all the games with the campers.

And like he he he puts those eighth graders in their place.

So uh if you ever want to have a really fun time, go to camp with Mike because it's a lot of fun.

Uh but he will be back um, I think next week.

Um and he uh we'll be gone throughout a little bit of August, though, so we'll have some guest priests come in and do some Eucharist and do some sermon.

Um but everything will go back to normal in September.

Uh once the kind of school year has started and things have settled in, uh we'll you will see the regular Eucharist and service come back.

Um so we're just kind of experimenting with summer fun.

And so thank you for joining us for morning prayer.

Um I really do enjoy this version.

It's got a lot of beautiful words and a lot of beautiful uh concepts that we don't necessarily put into our normal Eucharist, so I really like what we're doing here.

Uh this I am gonna take this quick moment to do an announcement, so I don't really have announcement time here after.

Um, but a quick announcement.

We do still have this cell phone that we can't figure out whose it is.

If you walk around the Burley Hall, you will see our little uh one-ted photos of it trying to find its home.

Um we are going to this week um give it to the police just to have and kind of get it out of our hair.

So if you if if you know anyone who's missing their phone or know whose it is, uh please let us know.

We're gonna hold on to it for like this a couple more days, uh, but then we're gonna kind of release it back into the world.

So just that's a quick announcement.

Um but now we'll move forward into the Homily.

Oh, and the other announcement I wanted to say this upcoming Saturday is the food distribution.

So if you would join us, we always need volunteers.

Our last food distribution was great, but we were down a couple volunteers, mostly because it was July 4th weekend, so no one was here.

Uh, but if you would join us on Saturday, I'll be here, and we're really excited to always do our food distribution.

That's coming up on Saturday.

So with those quick announcements out of the way, we'll come to the homily.

Um I I really enjoy that these past few um sermons I've had to give have what I've referred to as the easier uh scriptures that I feel like I understand a little more.

Um I feel like when I first started doing these, Mike gave me the hard ones, and I wasn't a fan of that.

I was didn't like being challenged that early on.

So I'm kind of liking this uh this a little easier to understand.

Uh and this gospel is quite interesting.

Um I I I usually do uh two worth of research into the gospel of what kind of just the background of the gospel, what we're looking at.

Um, because I'm because Mike, I'm not like Mike, who can just like rattle that stuff off his brain because he's super smart.

Um I did a little, I so so I did a little diving into our gospel and doing a little recap of it.

Uh what we know about this night that we're we've been invited to in the story is that this is probably the night before the actual Last Supper.

So it's like the eve before the eve of Jesus' death.

So we have Jesus, and we find Jesus in a place that we normally don't find him.

When we jump into Jesus' stories, he's usually giving a sermon, or he's doing miracles, or he's uh, you know, being Jesus.

In this gospel, we literally find him reclined at a table.

We find him in a moment of leisure, he's at the house of Simon, we find Jesus relaxing.

For, you know, and we we don't see him do that a lot, but he's he's at this house and reclining and he's relaxing.

And then what we find is that a woman comes in and she brings in a jar, and what what Nard is, it's it's um it's just a fancy way of saying basically she had perfume.

She had a jar of perfume that she uh owns, and that this is important because back in Jesus' time, women didn't have a lot of really anything.

They didn't they didn't own anything to their own accord.

Um mostly what they had were jewelry and her perfume.

Um and this woman, probably the most prized possession, is this jar of perfume.

And she takes it and she pours it onto Jesus' head, doesn't just come in and just say, hey, here you go, I got this night's gift for you.

She is so excited and so enamored with Jesus and in this moment, really knowing what was happening in her heart between him and her, and he just poured around on his head.

And the disciples, the disciples do honestly, what I think is quite reasonable.

I realize as I go older, uh, I kind of relate more to the disciples in a way that I'm like, hey, they're asking some really good questions.

Like, and Jesus always kind of ends up scolding them, like, you know, and he gives us the counterpoint to which is really beautiful and wonderful.

But a lot of times I find myself like, the disciples weren't unreasonable to say, hey, why didn't you do that?

He said, they said, that is a year's worth of work.

That is a salary right there.

You've just poured onto this to Jesus' head.

We could have fed the poor with that.

And so they start berating this woman.

They really start uh feeling very upset about what just happened.

And Jesus has to step in and say, okay, hold on, hold on.

Jesus says she is doing what she can.

He says, what I think is very uh interesting, uh, what she had to do, she did.

She is showing her love for me.

The poor are still gonna be there.

There's still work to be done.

In this moment, this woman has come and given me her all, her most priest possession, and a good work she has done for me.

And he says she will.

Be remembered.

As long as the gospel is being shared, she will be remembered.

I like this passage.

It's interesting.

I try to relate it to okay, but how do I make that a part of my real world?

How do I take that and equate it to what I do in my everyday life?

And it made me think about the church.

First thing I thought about was the church.

Here at the church, we focus on serving the poor and the needy.

That is a focus of ours.

We do the food distribution.

We do lots of different things.

We partner with lots of different ministries.

Sometimes we go to those ministries and work with them.

We try and do mission trips.

We try and do mission work.

We, as a part of our main goal here at St.

Thomas, as a part of the church, is to reach out to the community that are poor and in need, right?

But as a church, it's not all we do.

It's not all we do, because if that's all we did, we would just be a really good nonprofit who did really good stuff.

But we're more than that.

We're a community of believers who have come to worship on Sunday mornings.

We're a community of believers who come to study scripture and Bible studies.

We're a group of believers who've come together to be in fellowship with one another, to grow in our relationships with one another.

And what I think Jesus is equating in this scenario, this metaphor that came to my mind is that good works can come with those things too.

It's not just your efforts that you give when you're trying to be a good person to help the poor and the needy.

Good works happen when we're doing everything else as well.

It also made me think about, I guess, on a personal scale, my own life, about some of the good works that have come through.

A word that came to my mind as I was thinking about this sermon was unconventional.

The woman who pours her perfume on the head of Jesus as a little unconventional.

A little different from what even the disciples are ready for.

A little unconventional for what they used to see.

I must say, I think my senior year of high school, well, back when I was a senior year of high school, you know, we all did that.

I feel like I was a little unconventional.

Um when um when it came time to pick my classes for my senior year, uh my counselor looked at me and she said, Well, you've met all your requirements for high school and stuff, um, so you can either take electives or you can take uh some college prep classes to get you ready for college.

And I'll give you one guess on what Alex chose.

Yeah, he chose electives.

And he chose uh he chose show choir, musical theater, regular theater, regular choir, and he just spent his senior year kind of singing and dancing his way through it.

Uh a little unconventional.

Um, but Alex was faced with a real problem.

I was faced with a real problem that senior year, and that was what I was gonna do with my future.

Senior year of high school is when you're supposed to start figuring out what you're doing next.

Where are you gonna go to college?

What are you gonna get your degree in?

What are you gonna do with that degree in your job?

And whenever I asked myself that question, or someone asked me that question, I had no idea.

I don't know where I'm going, I don't know what I'm doing.

I ended up applying to eight colleges because my strategy was the one that accepts me, I'll go to.

The problem was I was smarter than I realized, and all eight of them accepted me, and that didn't help at all.

Because now I have to pick which one to go to.

My dad laughed at me so hard when I did that.

I was like, dad, I thought I wouldn't get into one of them at least.

Um a little unconventional.

I I was really stressed about where I was going to do with my future.

But at the beginning of that year, I also felt a weird call, not a weird one, uh, I thought weird at the time, but I felt a little string pool of a call to, hey, what about ministry?

Don't you think you'd really like to go into ministry?

And I thought, hmm, yes, I think that'd be interesting.

And I really felt it like a, well, what about youth ministry?

And I was like, oh, that's kind of cool.

I like that idea.

Um, and I and I really struck, stuck to this idea.

Maybe I could do youth ministry.

Um, and I was hesitant about it because I'm an 18-year-old senior, and I'm like, I'm about to tell people I want to do youth ministry, I don't know how this is gonna go.

So I started kind of telling people slowly, and started telling some of the adults that I trusted, and some of you know my parents, and my parents were supportive, like, that's a good idea.

And I was like, but you know, parents say what they gotta say, so I was like, eh, I don't, I gotta talk to some other people.

Uh, talk to members of my church, and and and and some of my friends, and it was funny because relatively the feedback I got was, hey, that sounds nice, but remember, you gotta get a job that may pay for the family, you gotta get a job that you can provide for all this stuff, and you and you gotta, I don't know how long a ministry career will actually last for you, Alex.

And so a lot of my feedback actually was like not as positive as I wanted it to be when I had my charge strings pulled for ministry.

Um I took that and I wasn't quite sure what to do, because at that point, again, I still am not sure what I'm wanting to do or who I'm wanting to be.

Um and then I came along one point, um, my friend, my best friend, I was talking to about these things, and her name was Christy.

And my best friend Christy, I'd known from childhood, um, so we grew up together.

Uh she was my next door neighbor.

And she, um, as we got older and into our high school career, she became very um she became a very um loud and proud atheist.

Um she became very um kind of defiant towards church and God and the works.

Um, and that was something that I was okay with because she was still my best friend, and and she was okay with me still being a part of church and believing in God, and we made it work and we were still best friends.

Um but we were getting hanging out one time and we were just talking about the future, we're talking about our college applications and where we want to do and where we want to go.

And I don't know why, but I felt like, you know what?

I'm gonna throw this idea at Christy about me doing youth ministry, and I'll just see.

And I was like, well, you're probably not gonna like this, Christy, but I I kind of think I want to do youth ministry.

Like, I kind of want to, I don't know, I think that's part of my life, I don't know.

And Christy looked at me and without a moment's hesitation said, Alex, that's perfect.

Like, you have to go do that.

Like, that is that is what you were made to do.

Like, go do that.

Go be a part of that.

That's wonderful.

And it really surprised me, took me aback, because I thought, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's unconventional.

That's not the normal.

I I ended up, um, I ended up um, as you could tell, in youth ministry, in ministry in general.

It's expanded, my ministry expanded a little.

I'm now up in the front giving sermons, which I'm um was not a part of my plan, by the way.

This is really, I'm getting to my comfort zone now, but it was never part of the plan.

Um it's expanded, the role's expanded.

Good works from unconventional things.

Uh along with that, into that year, I uh I transitioned, I ended up not picking a college.

So what so my mom, that summer after my senior year, got diagnosed with breast cancer.

And it was a big moment for me, another big kind of unconventional moment, because I found myself in a place of fate where I was angry and upset at God for doing such a thing like giving mom breast cancer.

And I I was um felt like it was a season of chaos.

And I told my mom that, okay, instead of going to college, I feel like I now have a direction.

I'm gonna stay home, do community college, and help support you and help my younger brother who couldn't drive and do all this stuff, and I'll be here with you.

So I kind of found a direction, but I was still kind of angry and upset.

I said to my mom, I said, Mom, all this stuff, I said, I I don't know.

I feel upset about this.

My mom said, you know what, Alex, I feel those same things.

But I'm gonna give this to God.

I'm gonna give him my most precious thing right now, which is my fear and my heart, and give it to him.

And uh we spent the year and a half doing, uh, my mom, I say we, my mom spent the year and a half.

Uh she did surgery to remove the cancer, she did all the chemotherapy she was supposed to do, and we found our way unconventionally through it.

I say that because the way we found our way through our time uh as my mom having breast cancer is we we we found the unconventional way was humor.

Um, kind of dark humor in its sense.

Um I I a brief example was that uh one night we're watching TV with my mom, and we were just watching the news, we were watching the weather, and uh the weatherman said something about like a deep cold front is coming, or something deep.

She said the word deep, and my mom, not out of the blue, very quiet in the living room, just looked at the TV as the news went on, and she said, Deep.

Deep.

Deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep.

Deep?

I said, Mom, what are you doing?

And she said, Deep's a weird word, right?

And I was like, no, deep is a very normal word.

What is wrong with you?

She looked at me and she said, chemo, brain, sorry.

And we laughed, and I can't, and I had and in the telling of retelling of the story, it's not as funny as it was in the moment, but I can't tell you how hard we laughed and how we used that humor to make our way through that time in our life.

Unconventional, for sure, but good works came through that as well.

In our life, in our seasons, we will be faced with the unconventional.

We will be faced with what we know as the norm.

What we know to be, if I go help serve others, I do good deeds, and that's done.

But in this gospel, Jesus says to us, yes, but also throwing perfume on our on the Lord and Savior.

Jesus reminds us, I think, most importantly, about the relational aspect of our faith.

That we are called to a relational faith, not just transactional.

And that that will be unconventional.

That that will be the times when we are just here to worship on Sunday mornings, good deeds will come from that.

When we find ourselves in a Bible study or youth group, good deeds will come of that.

We are all times when, like Alex, we feel directionless, or the unknown, we are, we are embracing the unknown.

Jesus will make good deeds of that.

Or in times when we are scared or angry or upset in the chaos, God will make good deeds of that.

It's not always I do good, therefore good happens.

Sometimes we do.

Jesus says something that's that's pretty confusing, I think, when this terminology, what she had it to do, she did.

I looked up a different version and and and it says it says Jesus a little more clear, she did what she could.

Sometimes it feels like we're just doing what we could.

But we must remember, even in those moments, Jesus is going to do good deeds with us.

Jesus says, a good work that we will have done over him.

And now, as our Savior Christ taught us, we are bold to pray.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

With the whole church, we affirm that we are made in God's image, befriended by Christ, empowered by the Spirit.

With people everywhere, we affirm God's goodness in the heart of humanity, planted more deeply than all that is wrong.

With all creation, we celebrate the miracle and wonder of life, the unfolding purposes of God, forever at work in ourselves and in the world.

O God, lead us from death to life, from falsehood to truth.

Lead us from despair to hope, from fear to trust.

Lead us from hate to love, from war to peace.

Let peace fill our hearts, our world, our universe.

We ask it for your own name's sake.

Amen.

We will now say together decree.

We are not alone.

We live in God's world.

We believe in God, who is created and is creating, who has come in Jesus, the word made flesh, to reconcile and make new, who works in us and others.

We trust in God.

We are called to be the church, to celebrate God's presence, to live with respect and creation, to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, to proclaim Jesus crucified and risen, our judge and our hope in life and death, and life beyond death.

God is with us.

We are not alone.

Thanks be to God.

We yearn for the fullness of God that Christ may dwell in us and we in him.

We thank you for the gift of life and for our connection with all that you have made.

May we delight in your creation and protect it.

Fill us with your fullness of God.

God in your mercy.

We thank you for the creative compassion of leaders throughout the world.

May they devote themselves to justice, peace, and the common good.

Leave in God, may they not fail you.

Nor we fail them.

We thank you for the endless and beautiful diversity of humanity.

May we recognize and celebrate your image in every person we meet.

Living God, may they not fail you.

Nor we fail there.

We thank you for the promise of your presence in our lives.

May our concerns for those among us who are hurting bring us to prayer, and may our prayer and care for them be a healing bond.

Living God, may they not fail you.

Nor we fail them.

We thank you for the gift of a new life in this world and the hope of new everlasting life in the world to come.

May those who have gone before us overflow with the fullness of never-ending love and light.

Living God, may they not fail you.

Let us bless the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

This is the day God has made.

We will rejoice and be glad in it.

We will not offer to God offerings that cost us nothing.

Go in peace to love and serve.

Seek peace and pursue.

In the name of the Trinity of Love.

Unity holy and one.