Pentecost 2 2023

Good morning.

I'm going to invite you to hymn 362.

Just like in the bulletin, hymn 362, and we'll sing the first, third, and fourth verses.

Uh as you know, Garmin is out for a few weeks, so this week you're stuck with me, and uh we'll we'll do the best we can in in coming weeks.

Christ is risen.

The Lord is risen indeed.

Hallelujah.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be worked without in.

The Lord be with you.

Let us pray.

O God, from whom all good proceeds.

Grant that by your inspiration we may think those things that are right, and by your mercifully guiding may do them.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Please be seated.

As you're being seated, our children are invited to children's chapel in the back with Mr.

Alex.

A reading from Genesis.

Now the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land I will show you.

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be blessing.

A blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

So Abram went as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him.

Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.

Abram took his wife Sarah and his brother's son Lot, all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haram, they set forth to go to the land of Canaan.

When they had come to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place called Shekem, to the Oak Morah.

At that time the Canaanites were in the land.

Then the Lord said appeared to Abram and said, To your offspring I will give this land.

So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent.

With Bethel on the west and Ali and on the east, there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord.

And Abram journeyed by on by stages towards Negab.

Hear what the Spirit is saying to God's people.

Thanks be to God.

Rejoice in the Lord, right?

Praise the Lord with the harp.

Sing for the Lord new song.

Sound a fair fair with all your skill upon the trumpet.

For your word, O Lord, is right.

And all your works are sure.

You love righteousness and justice.

Your loving kindness, O Lord, fills the whole.

By your word, O Lord, hear the heavens made, where the heavens made.

By the breath of your mouth, all the heavenly hosts.

You gather up the waters of the ocean as in a water skin.

Let all the earth fear the Lord.

For the Lord spoke, and it came to pass.

The Lord brings the will of the nations to naught.

But the Lord's will stands fast forever.

Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord.

The promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham nor to his descendants through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.

It is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs.

It is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs.

Faith is null and the promise is void.

For the law brings wrath, but there is no law, neither is there violation.

For this reason, it depends on faith in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherences of the law, but also to those who share in the faith of Abraham.

That is the father of all of us, as it is written.

In the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist, hoping against hope, he believed that he would become the father of many nations, according to what was said.

So numerous shall your descendants be.

He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which is already as good as dead.

He was about a hundred years old.

For when he considered and for which already as good as dead, for he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the barenness of Sarah's womb, no distrust may him cover waver concerning the promise of God.

But he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.

Therefore, his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness.

Now the words, it was reckoned to him, were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also.

It will be reckoned to us who believe in him, who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who has handed over to the death of for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification.

Hear what the Spirit is saying to God's people.

We are going to sing the first and then skip to the fourth, fifth, and sixth verse.

So one, four, five, and six.

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth.

And he said to him, Follow me.

And Matthew got up and followed him.

And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples.

So when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?

But when Jesus heard this, he said, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.

So go and learn what this means.

I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

For I've come to call not the righteous, but sinners.

While Jesus was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, saying, My daughter's just died.

But come and lay your hand on her and she will live.

And Jesus got up and followed him with his disciples.

And then suddenly a woman who'd been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak.

For she said to herself, If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.

Jesus turned and seeing her, he said, Take heart, daughter, your faith has made you well.

And instantly the woman was made well.

Jesus came to the leader's house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, Go away, the girl is not dead but sleeping.

And they laughed at him.

But when the crowd had been put outside, Jesus went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up.

And the report of this spread throughout that district.

The gospel of the Lord.

Please be seated.

So we have cleared, think through the church here, Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter.

We had the day of Pentecost and Trinity Sunday, and now this is called the season after Pentecost, or sometimes it's called ordinary time.

And it may be tempting to think, oh, ordinary, like regular, and of course, no, what that's meant to say is this is ordered time.

Curious, have you ever heard somebody called the canon to the ordinary?

The canon of the ordinary is the bishop's right-hand person, right?

Do you know who the ordinary is?

The bishop is the ordinary who sends orders for how it is we're to function liturgically.

So ordinary time does not mean it's DREB or regular, it means it's meant to be ordered.

And we use green to say it's meant to be ordered toward our growth, not just as individuals, but as communities, and the way we know we're doing it right is if there is fruit from our growth to share with the world.

So this is how we're to order all the way through November.

How do we grow?

And this is the very beginning of one of the major story arcs in the Hebrew Bible.

So reminder that throughout the 50 days of Easter, we read Acts instead of the Hebrew Bible to talk about how it is people were experiencing the res in Christ.

But now we're going back into the Hebrew Bible, starting with Genesis, with the story narrative of God calling Abram.

And any class I've ever been a part of, college, seminary, really likes to point out this particular text because it this is the call that says, I will bless you so that you can be a blessing to other people.

Now, if you turn on the TV, you might find a message that says, God will bless you because you deserve it.

God will bless you because you've been faithful, so God will give you more money.

I even had a teacher in uh my Baptist college who said, God wants you to be rich, God wants you to be rich financially so that your tithe will be bigger.

I mean, you can hear that, but that's not the call to Abraham.

The call to Abraham is I will bless you, I will give you privileges or experiences, wealth of all kinds, even if no money's on the table, so you can share it.

It's like a helpful reminder of how we're supposed to order the rest of our year, is that whatever blessings we perceive, and even in the ones we we don't perceive, hopefully we'll help one another recognize what's going on in our lives, it's worth sharing.

We will indeed make a blessing to other people.

Not because we're trying to earn anything.

And this is where Paul comes in.

By the way, did you notice a little bit of ageism in Paul?

Abraham was about a hundred years old, he's as good as dead, right?

Like only a young person writes that.

Um, anyway, Paul picks up this argument, and I don't know if you've heard it, that um God promises to Abraham a future and a blessing, and it's reckoned to him as righteousness.

Did you notice that?

That phrase, reckoned as righteousness.

There are two ways to read that phrase.

One way is that Abraham had faith, and God said, Ah, you look, you've earned a blessing.

So God reckoned Abraham's faith as righteous.

Our Jewish brothers and sisters do not read it that way.

Turns out that he is very ambiguous.

Most commentators from uh from our uh brother and sisterhood are rabbis read this as Abraham believed God's promise that I'll bless you so you can be a blessing to others.

And Abraham reckoned that promise to God as righteousness.

Righteousness.

What God has given us is meant to nourish the world.

You may say, Mike, that sounds a lot like social justice, but you know uh in Hebrew the word righteousness and the word justice are the same word.

So Abraham reckoned the fact that we are blessed to be blessings to others.

He said, God, you're righteous for behaving that way.

That you have given each and every one of us blessings so that we can nourish the world.

That's righteous, God.

I like that read.

And consider why that is.

Abraham didn't earn God's blessing, he already had it.

Good news for you, you don't have to earn God's blessing either.

You already got it.

So the question is, how will you take the blessings in your life and bless other people with them?

And you might be thinking, I don't have all that much money, but look in this story.

We didn't hear about money.

We just heard Abraham was called to do something kind of wild.

Go to a country he'd never seen before.

And I want to be really clear what kind of country it was.

Canaan?

When you live in Mesopotamia, that's between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, everything's green.

When you go to Canaan, it looks like San Diego in the desert.

You guys been out there before?

It ain't green.

It's kind of like, hey, I'm gonna send you the promised land, you're gonna go to Mississippi.

Oh Lord.

I know I'm playing on sensibility.

Nothing against Mississippi, just playing on cultural stereotypes there, right?

But this is this is essentially it.

Abraham's gonna leave New York City to go live in Mississippi.

What blessings does he have?

Well, he's willing to go somewhere he hadn't been before.

I am I'm sure all of us have the opportunity to take that blessing up.

What else does Abraham have?

Well, we don't know if he's got money, but he does have family members.

You notice he brings Lot, his nephew.

One blessing Abraham's able to have that so often I didn't feel really anxious about doing, is invite other people to go with him.

I don't even know where we're going.

You want to come along?

The other thing Abraham's got, and this is, I think, fairly fair, he's got age.

And reading Paul's ageist argument a little bit, I mean, maybe Abraham's body doesn't work like it used to when he was 30.

I doubt it did.

And that's not a limitation.

That's actually a thing he's able to offer.

I don't know if any of you all have read this particular book that we're going to start reading collectively on Wednesday, The Wounded Healer, but the author said, one of the biggest blessings that we have, whether we realize it or not, is that we all have loneliness in our lives.

Loneliness.

And sometimes we're so afraid of it, we try to get away from it, we try to solve it instead of looking at the riches of just frankly being lonely.

You ever had pain in your life?

Well, the fact that you're here means you probably have.

Pain is not a limitation, it can be a blessing to say, I also have pain.

I also have pain.

And that is not in any way a front to faith.

That's not a disqualifier that God loves me.

That's part of the human experience.

And I'm able to share being in pain with you instead of running away from your pain because I don't like feeling.

I don't know what blessings you got, but I know you got some.

I know you do.

And I know that part of this call as we think about how to order our lives individually and community is how do we be blessings to other people with the stuff we already have?

God is not asking you to go get a bunch of stuff you don't have so you can share that.

God is saying, will you go a little bit into the unknown and be a blessing to other folk?

And that brings us right into Jesus.

So here's the call of Matthew.

Sometimes we call him Levi, that would have been his Hebrew name, but Matthew, here he is, and he's a tax collector.

And I've talked to you about tax collectors before.

Essentially, uh people really hated them because they were Jewish and they were collecting money for a well, for a government that was dominating Judaism.

And they were profiting off doing that.

So much so that there was a stereotype in the ancient Near East that tax collectors were sort of like Benedict Arnold's for high profit.

And not only were they taking money to support Rome, but they were enriching themselves.

Apparently that happened some.

But I do want you to know, I read this book, How the Irish Saved Civilization, which reviews some ancient documents, and I learned since last year when I talked about tax collectors, that tax collectors were essentially a caste.

You were born a tax collector and you had no choice.

You couldn't leave the profession unless, well, you wanted to be a beggar.

The army wouldn't take you.

Your job was to be a tax collector whether you liked it or not.

You like our IRS agents?

I mean, I don't know any.

But if prima facie value, right, we might say, like, I don't like what you do.

So this is Matthew's law in life.

And what's really interesting is Jesus says, follow me, and he goes.

He invites a guy whose politics and associations nobody else likes.

In fact, they hate.

Jesus says, Hey, Benedict Arnold, why don't you come follow me?

I don't know if you realize, but there's at least two disciples out of the twelve that hated Matthew without knowing him.

Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot.

These were guerrilla sort of tacticians who were fighting the Roman Empire, even assassinating people to overthrow them.

Not only were they killing soldiers, they were killing tax collectors.

So there's this really interesting thing that at least three of the disciples hated each other without knowing each other.

And part of the miracle is that Jesus got them to sit down at the same table.

We don't have any story that says tax collecting's right or wrong.

We don't have that story.

We don't have a story where Jesus says, if you're real warfarer, that's the way to go.

We don't have that.

What we have is Jesus takes people who hate each other and he gets them to share a meal.

Do you have that blessing?

I think you got it within you, whether you know it or not.

I'm not sure I've got it yet.

But I think that's how God might be calling us to order our time.

The story done there, though, is it right?

You get these people together, and then there's an interruption.

The synagogue leader says, My daughter's dead, will you come touch her?

Now you probably know this already.

There's a prohibition against touching dead bodies.

It's not so different now.

I've done this before.

A couple years ago, somebody said, My mom just died.

Will you come to the morgue and read her her last rites?

It's not normally what we do.

I'm not really excited about touching dead bodies in the morgue.

It's not exciting, but it's right.

It's right.

So we go and we do that.

If you asked me, would you like to go touch a dead body at the morgue today?

I'm going to say no, I would not like to.

But I'm able to go into strange country when I recognize there could be a blessing for people who just aren't sure what's happening with their mom who was 50 degrees when I touched it.

I don't think we've gotten over this.

Touching dead things is a concern for us.

It is.

And in the ancient world, this is a concern too.

And consider, look, we've just gone through a pandemic where we didn't even know exactly how.

You remember the first couple months of the pandemic?

We didn't even know what we were doing, right?

So we were doing all this sort of stuff, and uh later it turns out he was airborne, right?

Like uh and this stuff was really good for us, but maybe not necessarily one-to-one with COVID, right?

I mean, we're still trying to figure that sort of stuff out because we realize diseases are communicable and quarantining is an old strategy, right?

So in the ancient world, when somebody dies, the the you know, the mortician buries them and then they go away for a bit before they come back to make sure they catch anything, right?

This is like sensible public health.

So we still contend with some of this.

Anyway, Jesus goes.

I don't know if you noticed in the story, the dad said she was dead, but the story didn't say she was.

Do you catch that?

Touch my daughter because she's dead, and Jesus says, she isn't dead.

She's asleep.

And everybody laughs at him.

I hear this story, I gotta tell you, there are people in my life I have written off as dead, who are very much still alive.

I just don't want to be around them.

What blessing does Jesus offer?

He goes into a room where people are scared of death and he says, get up.

He says, get up.

I wonder.

Well, I'm actually pretty convinced that the world could use a few more people who visit people we've written off for dead, and also say, now get up, and here's my hand, and I'll help you up.

This is really different from going to somebody who you've written off for dead and say, Darn it, get up now.

Instead, Jesus offers not a handout, he offers a hand up and he says, Here I am to help you up.

Now look, if you've been a parent, you've probably had this experience where you told your kid something 9,000 times and they never did it, and then Aunt Jeanette, who they've never met in their life, tells them the thing and they do it immediately.

Have you had that experience before?

Or your neighbor says this thing, and you're like, I've been telling you this for years, and why did you listen to Uncle Steve instead of me?

And of course, this invitation for us is not to dwell in how we were unaffective, but to rejoice that somebody else went into the room and said, Come on, honey, get up and here's my hand.

And I wonder if part of the call we have for ordering the rest of our summer, all the way up into November, is frankly to have more people around the bedside of folks we've written off with their hands out saying, I sure hope you'll take my hand and get up.

It's hard because sometimes people say, I'd rather lay in the bed.

That's real.

There are people who do not want to get up.

And, thanks be to God that there are some people, rarely me, who show up and say, I'll wait here till you take it.

I'll wait here till you take it, right?

So this is not about enabling.

This is about time to get up and can I support you on your way up?

And I gotta tell you, there's this brilliant anthropologist, uh MD out of Harvard, named Paul Farmer, and he talks about the difference between giving a handout and giving an accompaniment.

Handout or giving, I decide when I'm done.

When I accompany you, you decide when I'm done.

Interesting to hold on to those two thoughts, right?

Here comes Jesus talking to people who are on Megan's list.

Here comes Jesus talking to people who have felonies.

Here comes Jesus talking to people who voted for whoever that person is you don't like, and says, get up.

You can do it, and I'll be here.

And then we get one more interruption, right?

Comes in the middle, it's the hemorrhaging woman.

Now, this story is longer in Matthew and in Luke.

And it tells you she's hemorrhaging internally, uh, probably uterine hemorrhaging, which is one of the kind of the scariest things.

Again, from a contagious disease perspective, this is really concerning.

Any of you like blood, by the way?

Any of you like look at somebody bleeding and say, yay, blood.

I can't wait to touch that.

Yeah, I didn't think so, right?

Most physicians I know are like, ugh, blood.

Um, right?

I mean, it's just it's a little disarming.

So let's not pretend like we've gotten away with this.

And you know, this represents, right, this weird combination, right, of, hey, the source of life and then blood, leaching blood is not always associated with life.

So this poor lady has been quarantined, according to Mark, for 12 years, which means if you read those other Gospels, she can't touch anybody else.

Because she might contaminate them with her disease.

If you read Mark and Luke, this lady has paid physicians to touch her.

She can't touch them.

She pays them to touch her.

She spent all her money and she got worse, not better.

She pays people hazard pay because they shouldn't have to touch her.

This is the first time, as far as we can tell, in 12 years she's dared to touch another human being.

You notice what it says, she touches him on the fringe of his clothes.

This is a lady living on the fringes who touches Jesus on the fringes.

There's something a little deeper than that going on.

I got as a visual laid for you something our Jewish brothers and sisters use in the synagogue called a talet.

It's essentially a prayer shawl.

And if you go to the synagogue on Friday night or particularly on Saturday morning, you will see our Jewish brothers and sisters cover their head with this talet, right, as a way of showing their humility underneath God.

And there are exactly 613 fringes on every talat.

613.

That's because the rabbis, when they read Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the Torah, they decided from there that they could extrapolate 613 mitzvot or commandments.

248 are do-nots, one for every bone in your body.

You don't have that many.

But a do not for every bone in your body, and 365 dos, one for every day of the year.

It was a way of saying, hey, I know how it is I'm meant to behave so that I can enjoy my life and benefit the community and be in right relationship with God.

And if you've seen further on the roof, or if you've been to New York, there are members of the Jewish community, then as now, who not only wore the Tah and synagogue, but they would wear it as a shirt.

And you can see the fringes kind of coming out underneath.

As a visual reminder, we're supposed to wear the Torah with us and keep the 613 principles, not so we can earn God's approval.

We already have it.

So we can enjoy the life God's given us and be a blessing to our families and others.

This is really where Torah comes from.

I don't know if you know this, but a lot of the purity laws, this lady's quarantine came out of these mitzvah.

And I want you to see her faith.

She touches the Torah.

She touches Jesus precisely in the same regs that have been used against her because I put before you she believes the Torah is meant for her as well.

Now, please do not hear me saying anything like, well, Jesus understood Judaism better than Jewish people.

That's the roots of anti-Semitism, and it's terrible.

No, I want you to hear, frankly, that in every religion I've ever been a part of or studied, of course, there are many ways that we can approach our faith.

And I would tell you particularly, if you want to hate your neighbor, you can read the Bible and you can have really good reasons to do it.

You can do that.

If you want to hate people who have different skin color from you, you can probably use the Bible to justify that.

You probably could.

I just would tell you it's wrong.

Even though you can do it, I'd tell you it's wrong.

So sometimes we read these stories and we say, ah, look, Judaism is just so legalistic.

That's our reading.

That's no Jewish person I've talked to.

What we miss is we do the same stuff all the time.

Oh, you don't believe the right stuff about the Eucharist.

Well, you can just watch.

You've got that bumper sticker on your car because you voted for that person.

Maybe you should try the Lutheran church.

It's not that I can't use your pronouns, I won't.

Maybe this isn't you.

Some of this is me.

Some of this is me.

And instead of saying, oh, look, Jewish people get it wrong, no, I want you to look at Jesus being Jewish himself, says the Torah is meant for you as well.

The Torah is meant for you as well.

He doesn't say purity laws are silly.

Do you notice this?

He says you're healed.

He doesn't say, oh, y'all don't have to abide by any of that stuff.

He cures the condition.

I want you to notice he does it publicly.

And I think the reason he does it publicly is so that everybody else has to hear that the person they would never want touching them is in fact touchable.

If this happened privately, maybe she made it up.

If this happened privately, the community doesn't have to reckon with being reconciled with somebody they'd written off for dead.

And now Jesus says, y'all have to contend with this.

Here's a human being.

Could you imagine not being allowed to touch a human being for 12 years?

That is, by definition of the Constitution, cruel and unusual punishment.

To be untouchable unless you pay somebody.

Touch and intimacy are universal human needs.

And the question is, who in our society, in our family, is just yearning for a universal human need.

Somebody who will go in when everybody else thinks they're dead and have a hand put on it.

Somebody who's willing to abide with a handshake.

Even if I don't smell good.

I don't know what blessings you have.

Where you put your body is a blessing we all have.

Where you put your body.

Whose personal space you're willing to be open to.

These are the kinds of thoughts that I hear at the very beginning of ordinary time.

That I think the scriptures are inviting so that we truly can order our time.

And not only grow just to grow, but to produce fruit that a starving world, a starving little girl in this story, a starving woman, somebody who's doing their job, who had no choice about their job, needs a touch.

One of the cleverest things my last diocese came up with, and I know I've told this to you before, it was on Maundy Thursday, we gave haircuts to homeless people.

And I was with, I was one of these people, just because I had clippers, I didn't have any training, but I was willing to do it.

And I was with a barber who said, after a client left, keep in mind, this is somebody probably hadn't washed their hair in a year.

They came in once a year for a haircut.

He said, their hair is just so gross.

And he was right.

Actually, I had to have two pairs of clippers because the normal ones wouldn't even cut some of the hair.

It was so oily and matted, I had to use my sheep, my sheep trimming shears, which I happened to have a pair of, um, because I groomed my dogs with them.

Um we sanitized them and there it worked.

And of course, it was gross, and I washed my hands later.

And yet what I realized is this was the one time in a year where another human being touched a homeless person's head with the intent to give them dignity.

In fact, it's rarely convenient.

But every year when Maundy Thursday comes around, I think about buying a plane ticket to go back to San Diego where they do that.

Because I want to do that.

I don't know what the clients leave with.

But I know they heal me every time I touch them.

This I think is how we're meant to order our time.

Please join me as we pray our faith in the words of the Nicene Creek.

We believe in one God, the Father, maker and of all that is being an uncle.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only time of God, eternally God is the Father, God and Father, I can find, true God and true God, the unmade, of one being the Father, through and all things were made.

For us, for our salvation, he came down from heaven.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, he became heart of the Virgin Mary, and what is man.

For our three three and after fire, each other death and prayer, on the day of man, and for the truth, each death, and I follow the father.

Evil God, Lord, the thought of death, and the kingdom of God and we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Kiver of life, who proceeds to the Father and Son, who with the Father and Son is worshiped before God, he has open to the prophets.

We believe in one holy Catholic path of the Church, who acknowledge the Lord.

The prayers of the people.

With all our heart and with all our mind, let us pray to the Lord.

For the peace from above, for the loving kindness of God, and for the salvation of our souls, let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

For the peace of the world, for the welfare of the Holy Church of God, and for the unity of all peoples, let us pray to the Lord.

For the people and clergy of the church, for our bishops and other ministers, the priests in our community, Mike, Jim, and Craig, our bishops Andy, Hector, Jeff, and Kay, in the Diocese of Texas, Grace Galveston, Holy Trinity Dickinson, Mosaic Pearland, and Santo Nino Church Plant Pearland, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin, and our presiding bishop Michael.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

For our parish and our vestry, that the source of strength may guide us, the source of strength may support us, and the source of love may unify us.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

For St.

Thomas the Apostle's School, that those who teach and those who learn may rejoice in the knowledge of your truth, that we may teach our students to love whatever is just and true and good, and that we may be bearers of your grace to all who come through our doors.

Let us pray to the Lord.

For all who govern and hold authority in every nation, for the members of the armed forces throughout the world, and for all who struggle for peace and justice, that they may act with prudence and vision to plant the signs of your dominion everywhere, let us pray to the Lord.

For this city, for every city and community, and for those who live in them, let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

For the good earth which God has given us, and for the wisdom and will to conserve it, let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

For the aged and infirm, for the widowed and orphans, and for the sick and the suffering, let us pray to the Lord.

The congregation is invited to name their own celebrations or petitions silently or aloud.

Let us pray to the Lord.

For the poor and the oppressed, for the unemployed and the destitute, for prisoners and captives, and for all who remember and care for them.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Hope, Lord, have compassion.

For all who have died in the hope of the resurrection, and for all the departed, let us pray to the Lord.

Hope, Lord, have compassion.

For deliverance from all danger, violence, oppression, and degradation.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

That we may end our lives in faith and hope, without suffering and without reproach.

Let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, have compassion.

In the communion of St.

Thomas and of all the saints, let us commend ourselves and one another and all our life to Christ our God.

To thee, thee and the Lord our God.

Let us confess our sin against God and our neighbor.

There are many ways to be unfaithful to what we have become through baptism, to our commitment and our obedience to God.

So we offer God now our prayers of repentance.

We confess to you, living God, our failure to live as brothers and sisters and as your children.

We confess to you, loving God, that we have not loved you as you have loved us.

We confess to you, gracious God, that we have doubted your word and failed to obey its teaching.

We confess to you, merciful God, our desire to own you and contain you within our doctrines and theologies.

We confess to you, Almighty God, that we do not acknowledge you as Lord of all the earth.

Forgive us and redeem us, for we have not allowed your presence to shine among us.

There are many ways in which we have failed in our commitment and obedience to our fellow men and women.

We will turn towards our neighbors and our friends, and offer them our prayers of repentance.

The Almighty and compassionate Lord offer you absolution and remission of all your sin, true repentance, amendment of life, and the grace and consolation of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

The peace of the Lord be always with you.

And also with you.

And we'd be tremendously grateful if you fill one out and put them in the blue basket.

And look, if you don't want to call, don't check that box and you won't get one.

So you decide what follow-up looks like.

But we would just be absolutely thrilled if you would fill one of those out so we have a record of your visit.

And thanks for worshiping with us today.

There are a few announcements I want to call to your attention.

Many of these, of course, you'll see uh in the Wednesday midweek bulletin.

But first, we are super grateful that Bob Ketchum has helped us redo our assisted listening.

And there's a couple options.

Not only are there the hearing-assisted devices we have right out there in the narthex, but you can also tune, if you have hearing aids, they go through your phone, there's a way you can tune that directly to your phone.

Bob has made a super easy to follow instruction sheet that's right there in the narthex.

And if you have any questions, I probably can't answer them.

But I could connect you with Bob.

And I just want to tell you, this is what's super amazing about what Bob does.

So not only do I think Bob enjoys doing this, but Bob told me the reason we stream, the reason we do this, is not just because it's nice and accessible, but because it includes everybody.

So I continue to learn what inclusion means from you.

And thank you, Bob, for doing this work so that nobody has to be left down.

It's a really beautiful thing.

Okay.

This Wednesday, we are going to have an organizational meeting for our fall fest.

This is our annual party that we put on for the neighborhood.

It is in many ways the most visible community event that we do every year.

This year it'll be on October 21st.

And so this is a meeting where we get to talk about, hey, uh, what are the things we're going to offer at the fest and how are we going to do this?

And so you may say, I don't want to lead the festival.

Good news, we already have somebody doing that.

But if you would be willing to help either lead or support the book sale or the entertainment or the food, uh, this is the meeting where you can hear more about the festival and say, like, hey, I've got blessings I want to share with the community.

So that's this Wednesday at 6 30 in Kristall.

Is that good enough?

Okay.

I also want to raise your attention that if you were here last year, we had with us Eric Ellis, he's a dentist, trying to become a priest.

He's going to be what's called a bivocational priest.

So he'll be a priest as a volunteer and keep his dental practice going.

And um he passed.

So Eric is going to be ordained to what we call the transitional diaconate.

In the Episcopal Church, you're ordained as a deacon, and usually at least six months later, maybe longer, but at least six months, then you're ordained a second time to the priesthood.

Eric's diaconal ordination will be at Christchurch Cathedral downtown on June the 24th.

He'll be one of, I think, 13.

And if you've not been to a diaconal ordination before, it's pretty holy.

I mean, it's really, really special, right?

They have, in this case, 12 or 13 people saying, I'm going to be uh, you know, essentially an ordained minister who wears one of these collars around.

I'm going to do it for free because I think God's called me to do this.

It's a beautiful service, and uh we know Eric because we received his gifts.

So again, that'll be on June the 24th at 10.

And um one of our parishioners' mother was a priest and had a little communion box.

If I've ever visited you before, you see me bring my communion box.

It's a beautiful thing.

Uh my daughter loved it when she was little.

It's like a dollhouse set of communion.

Everything's like a small chalice, this little plate, a little bread box.

They're really expensive.

And so um, one of our parishioners said, you know, my mom used this, and I want to share it.

And so this is our ordination gifts to Eric.

We have uh refinished the box, we've put his name on it, and the best part about a gift like this is it's already been used.

So Eric will be picking up the mantle of her ministry from us.

It is, I mean, it's really beautiful.

So that's what we'll be presenting to him on the 24th.

And as I mentioned to you, anybody can go.

You want to show up a little early because there's like no parking, even though there's a garage, uh, and it is just a really beautiful service to be a part of.

Um, hey, Vicky continues to thank you for all of the great uh materials from St.

Vincent's house that you're giving toward the nearly new, uh, way beyond what they asked for, and they're just delighted to be able to help people.

So I know I've been saying that, but you keep doing it.

So thank you.

Um we are starting a new study this Wednesday.

Uh, it's called The Wounded Healer by all three now in.

We're gonna meet at 9 o'clock, we'll be done by 10, and and it's like 20 pages of reading a week, but it is really an interesting book, and it speaks compellingly as sort of I try to mention a little bit about the blessings we have that we don't even always think we have, and even when we have them, we're not sure they're blessings.

So um, if this is a book appeals to you, uh it's a lovely book, and we'll be reading it in community starting this Wednesday.

Uh, one other community announcement.

Last week I mentioned to you that one of our school teachers, Janet Baker, her husband was diagnosed with cancer and had a couple of months to live.

He died this week.

And so uh this is Ron Baker.

Some of you know him, some of you don't.

Please pray for the Bakers.

I mean, this was very sudden.

You'll see by Wednesday, we think the service is this Saturday at 2.

It'll be at Clear Lake Presbyterian.

Janet taught there uh for about 25 years in the early childhood development while teaching here as well.

Um but please, prayers for Janet, and we'll confirm, we'll confirm in the e-news that it'll be Saturday at 2.

Um, just can't imagine, right?

We can't we can't imagine.

So, you know, one of these things I just want to offer to you pastorally is a lot of times when somebody dies, they get a bunch of cards and then they don't hear anything again.

So you may consider whether you know Janet or this is somebody in your family, go into your phone calendar and uh let's see, September or October the 11th, put a note, send a note to person.

I'm still thinking about you and praying for you, right?

The first couple of weeks, people are so inundated with Social Security and clearing titles.

They have a hard time really receiving the notes we give.

So send one and then send another one.

This is just what I would encourage you to do if you know Janet, but just as a life skill, it's just so lovely to hear a year later somebody's still thinking about you because you're not done grieving, right?

You're not done grieving, and to know somebody's thinking about you is a gift.

So I just want to offer that to you.

Um the last thing I want to do is celebrate our grads.

So if you look on the back of your bulletin, um we've got names of uh graduates.

There's even a picture of Alex Abney.

Thanks, Heather, for that.

Um, we left one grad off, and I want to recognize that Sean Schultz graduated in December from Houston Community College with his AA.

So we're just really celebrating all that happens with our graduates.

So they've worked hard and we're sending them out into the world.

And so I want to offer this prayer for graduates.

Gracious and caring God, our source of light, we ask for your Almighty hand to be upon our graduates as we send them forward.

With their classes and grading now complete, may they strive toward excellence in all they do.

With the applause of ceremonies quieted, may they celebrate and lift up those who are around them.

With speeches concluded, may their voices rise up to pronounce peace and justice in the world.

With fanfare ceasing, may they find bliss in future endeavors and adventures.

With degrees and credentials in hand, may their achievements grow and enrich their communities.

Educated in knowledge, virtue, wisdom, and faith, may they discover holiness in the midst of life's blessings as well as life's challenges.

And as their careers commence, may they conduct their life's work with exceptional skill and integrity, inspired to go forth and join you in repairing the world from this day onward.

Amen.

Congratulations to all of our graduates, and um, as I've mentioned before, Jesus had to learn too.

So this is holy business learning and going forth to be a blessing to others.

Uh, I just want to prepare you that I intentionally had changed the Lord's Prayer.

So uh when we get there, you might want to look at the bulletin.

This comes from the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer.

It is a little different.

I hope you'll enjoy it for the next couple of weeks.

Don't worry, the regular Lord's Prayer will come back.

But we're we're doing this uh to worship alongside our New Zealand brothers and sisters today.

Continue to walk in love as Christ first loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.

This is the table not of the church, but of Jesus Christ.

It is made ready for those who love him and those who want to love him more, so come.

You who have much faith and you who have a little.

You who have been here often and you who have not been for a long time or ever before.

You who have tried to follow and you who have failed, come.

Not because the church invites you, it is Christ.

He invites you to meet him here.

Our service continues on page 369 of your red prayer book.

Page 369.

The Lord be he with you.

I am also giving you to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord of God.

God of all power, ruler of the universe, you are worthy of glory and praise.

Glory to you forever and ever.

At your command all things came to be.

The vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets and their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.

By your will they were created and have their being.

From the primal elements you brought forth the human race and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill.

You made us the stewards of creation, but we turned against you and betrayed your trust, and we turned against one another.

Have mercy, Lord, for we are sinners in your sight.

Again and again you call us to return.

Through prophets and sages you reveal your righteous law, and in the fullness of time, you sent your only son, born of a woman, to fulfill your law, to open for us the ways of freedom and peace.

By his blood he reconciles us.

By his wounds we are healed.

Therefore we join, therefore we praise you, joining with the heavenly chorus, with prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and with those in every generation who have looked to you in hope to proclaim with them your glory and their unending hymn.

Santo, santo, santo, rico Santo, my high to save you.

So, Father, we who have been redeemed by Him and made a new people by water and spirit, now bring before you these gifts.

Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be the body and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord.

On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, gave it to his disciples, and said, Take, eat.

This is my body, all that I am, which is given to build you up.

Whenever you eat bread, remember me.

After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, gave thanks, and said, Drink this all of you.

This is my blood, my life force given to nourish your own.

Whenever you drink wine, remember me.

Remembering now his work of redemption and offering to you this sacrifice of thanksgiving, we celebrate his death and resurrection as we await the day of his coming.

Lord God of our parents, God of Abraham, Keturah, Sarah, and Hagar.

Of Isaac and Rebecca, of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world about us.

Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this table for solace only and not for strength, for pardon only and not for renewal.

Let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body, one spirit in Christ, that we may worthily serve the world in his name.

Risen Lord, be known to us in the breaking of the bread.

Accept these prayers and praises, Father, through Jesus Christ, our great high priest, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit, your church gives honor, glory, and worship from generation to generation.

Amen.

And now, as our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to pray, Eternal Spirit, earthmaker, pain-bearer, life giver, source of all that is and that shall be, Father and Mother of us all, loving God in whom is heaven.

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe.

The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world, your heavenly will be done by all created beings.

Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us, and the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.

In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.

From trials too great to endure, spare us.

From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and forever.

Amen.

Alleluia, Christ our Passover, is sacrificed for us.

Therefore, let us keep the feast.

Father of all, we give you thanks and praise that when we were still far off, you met us and your Son and brought us home.

Dying and living, he declared your love, gave us grace, and opened the gate of glory.

May we who share Christ's body live his risen life.

We who drink his cup bring life to others.

We whom the Spirit lights give light to the world.

Keep us firm in the hope you have set before us, so we and all your children shall be free, and the whole earth live to praise your name.

Through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Like a chalice, like a basin, like a bowl.

When the Spirit comes, let it find our heart like this, shaped like something that knows how to receive what is given, that knows how to hold what comes to fill.

That knows how to gather itself around what arrives as unbidden, unsought, unmeasured love.

And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be with you this day and remain with you always.

Amen.

Join me in hymn 490.

I want to follow Jesus.

I want to look at Jesus, shine on my and show me the way to the never is no darkness.

I want to be with Jesus when we have run the patience of Christ, down to the show of Jesus.