Lent 4 2023

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And blessed be God's family now and forever.

Amen.

Let us give thanks to God for all the gifts freely bestowed upon us.

For the beauty and wonder of your creation in earth and sky and sea.

We thank you, Lord.

For all that is gracious in the lives of women and men, revealing the image of Christ.

We thank you, Lord.

For our daily food and drink, our homes and families and our friends.

We thank you, Lord.

For minds to think, hearts to love and hands to serve.

We thank you, Lord.

For health and strength to work, and leisure to rest and play.

We thank you, Lord.

For the brave and courageous who are patient in suffering and faithful in adversity.

We thank you, Lord.

For all valiant seekers after truth, liberty, and justice.

We thank you, Lord.

For the communion of saints in all times and places.

We thank you, Lord.

Above all, we give you thanks for the great mercies and promises given to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.

To you be praise and glory with you, Father, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you the secrets are hidden.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts from the inspiration of your Holy Spirit.

That we may perfectly love you and will magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ says.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

This is the first and greatest commitment.

And the second is like unto it.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two commitments hang all of the Torah and the prophets.

Let us pray.

Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread, which gives life to the world.

Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us and we in him, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

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

Thomas.

I have rejected him from being king over Israel.

Fill your horn with oil and set out.

I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.

Samuel said, How shall I go?

If Saul hears of it, he will kill me.

And the Lord said, Take the heifer with you, and say, I have come to sacrifice the Lord.

Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do.

And you shall anoint for me the one whom I named to you.

Samuel did what the Lord commanded and came to Bethlehem.

The elders of the city came to meet him trembling and said, Do you come peaceably?

He said, Peaceably, I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.

Sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.

And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.

When they came, he looked on Iliab and thought, Surely the Lord's anointed is now before the Lord.

But the Lord said to Samuel, Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him.

For the Lord does not see his mortal scene.

They look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

When Jesse called Abidadab and made him pass before Samuel, he said, Neither has the Lord chosen this one.

Then Jesse made Shamma pass by, and he said, Neither has the Lord chosen this one.

Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel.

And Samuel said to Jesse, The Lord has not chosen any of these.

Samuel said to Jesse, Are all of your sons here?

And he said, There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.

And Samuel said to Jesse, Send him and bring him, for we will not sit down until he comes here.

He sent and brought him in.

Now he was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome.

The Lord said, Rise and anoint him, for this is the one.

Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.

Samuel then set out and went to Rama.

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

We will read responsibly the half verse.

The Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not be in want.

You make me lie down in green pastures.

And lead me besides the waters.

You revive my soul.

And guide me along my pathways for your namesake.

Though I walk through the valley in the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

For you are with me, your rod and your shaft, and they comfort me.

You spread a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me.

You have anointed my head with oil, and my cup is running over.

Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light.

Live as children of light.

And the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.

Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.

Take no part in the unfruitful works of the darkness, but instead expose them.

For it is shameful even to mention that such a people, what such a people do secretly.

But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light.

Therefore, it says, sleeper awake, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

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

As Jesus walked along, he saw a man blind from birth.

His disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned?

This man or his parents that he was born blind?

Jesus answered, Neither this man nor his parents sinned.

He was born blind, so that God's works might be revealed in him.

He must work the works of the one who sent me while it is day.

Night is coming when no one can work.

As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

When Jesus had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, saying to him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, which means sent.

Then the man went and washed, came back able to see.

The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?

Some were saying, It is he.

Others were saying, No, but it is someone like him.

He kept saying, I am the man.

But they kept asking him, Well, then how were your eyes opened?

He answered, The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, Go to Siloam and wash.

Then I went and washed and received my sight.

But they said to him, Where is he?

He said, I do not know.

I brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind.

Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.

Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight.

He said to them, He put mud on my eyes, and I washed.

Now I see.

Some of the Pharisees said, Well, this man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.

But others said, How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?

And they were divided.

So they said again to the blind man, What do you say about it?

It was your eyes he opened.

The man said, He is a prophet.

The Jewish leaders did not believe he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, Is this your son who you say was born blind?

How then does he now see?

His parents answered, Well, we know that this is our son and that he was born blind, but we don't know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes.

Ask him, he's of age.

He will speak for himself.

His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, for the Jewish leaders had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.

Therefore the parents said, He is of age, ask him.

So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, Give glory to God.

We know that this man is a sinner.

He answered, Well, I don't know whether he's a sinner.

One thing I do know, though I was blind, now I see.

They said to him, What did he do to you?

How did he open your eyes?

He answered them, I've told you already, and you wouldn't listen.

Why do you want to hear it again?

Do you also want to become his disciples?

Then they reviled him, saying, You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.

We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we don't even know where he comes from.

The man answered, Here is an astonishing thing.

You don't know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.

We know that God does not listen to sinners, but God does listen to ones who worship God and obey God's will.

Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind.

If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.

They answered him.

And they drove him out.

Jesus heard that they had driven him out.

And when he found him, he said, Do you believe in the Son of Man?

He answered, And who is he, sir?

Tell me, so that I may believe in him.

Jesus said to him, You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.

The man said, Lord, I believe.

And he worshipped.

Jesus said, I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see.

And those who do see may become blind.

Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, Surely we are not blind, are we?

Jesus said to them, If you were blind, you would not have sinned.

But now that you say we see, your sin remains.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you a lamb of your own flock, a sheep of your own fold, a sinner of your own redeeming.

In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, welcome to Rose Sunday.

It is standard that the third Sunday of Advent and the fourth Sunday in Lent are marked with the Rose color.

We'd call it pink out there, but this is church.

We need to differentiate regular from extraordinary.

So we got rose, and the reminder that rose is a symbol for joy, and in the middle of a penitential season, it's a valuable reminder that this is going somewhere.

The point of penitence is joy, not suffering.

Which is to say, if your lengthened discipline is giving no one joy, I, as your priest, would encourage you to stop it.

I would.

Give up Lent for Lent if you need to.

The question is: are we growing our joy, entering into God's joy, and sharing joy with one another?

And by the way, we will do this next year because I'm suspicious like me.

You will need a reminder.

The texts today are pretty clear.

And look, I think if we take them at face value, uh, well, there's something else.

But I want to suggest to you they are about ways of seeing.

There's really no way to disentangle that.

And uh, if you don't mind, I'd like to share with you just a brief story that comes from the Hindu tradition.

You'd find it in the secondary uh writings, the Mahabharata, uh, secondary and inspiration behind the Vedas.

The Mahabharata tell stories about all of the different gods.

And maybe if you've seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which I don't recommend, uh, you are familiar, I really don't recommend it.

Um, there is this Hindu deity called Shiva, who is the sustainer and the destroyer.

So his job is to kind of keep the earth going, and sometimes that means like well-intentional wildfires, right?

So sometimes things have to die in order to keep things working out.

So Shiva, it turns out, is like super aesthetic, but his job is to watch the world and care for it.

And his wife parvati gives him a hard time.

She sort of says, hey, like, why do you think you're so important?

Like, everything will be fine, just take a break.

And Shiva says, No, no, like, this is my job.

So she goes to prove her point, and she covers up his eyes with her hands, and this isn't planned, but precisely at that moment, there's sort of this like primordial monster that comes to consume the world.

And here's Shiva, the only one who can do something about it, unable to see.

So the tradition goes, Shiva opened his third eye.

His third eye, saw the obstacle, and took care of it.

Now, I don't know, you've probably heard this idea about a third eye, that is, seeing beneath appearances.

That shows up in the David story, and I want to suggest it shows up in the John story as well.

But uh, what maybe you don't know is that there is this really strong Hindu tradition, and maybe you've seen ladies in India, particularly in India, who wear this red dot on their head.

Has nothing to do with the third eye.

Nope.

The third eye is for people who are in the aesthetic tradition, and usually you'll find it in men who wear kind of like loincloths and they have really messy long hair like Shiva, and they'll paint this kind of whitish, well, third eye on their head, which is about trying to cultivate a deeper vision of reality than what's visible or what's apparent.

Like we heard in the Ephesians letter, you are darkness, be light.

Of course, what we know from physics is that darkness is teeming with light.

It's just not visible to our own eye.

Outer space is full of light, you just can't see it.

So, what do you need to see it?

Your third eye.

Curiously enough, if you look at Jesus over there, you'd have to get really close.

You'll see that often in a Byzantine icon, there's like an impression of an eye, like a football shape on their head, because this matriculated from the east to the west.

There is this sort of vision.

That goes beyond physical or face value, that looks beneath at the totality of being.

This is what happens, of course, in the Samuel story.

Samuel is going to anoint a new king while Saul is on the throne and has an heir.

This is like dangerous stuff, which he says.

And of course, as you read the story, Samuel doesn't get it himself.

Now keep in mind, this is like a prophet who cannot look past outward appearances.

Eliot, which either means God of my father or my father is God.

Hard to say which one it is, is not the one.

Isn't that interesting?

Seven times not the one.

The one who is the one is David, who is a child, as then he's younger than the age of 13.

And he's handsome and he's got good-looking eyes, but ultimately that isn't why he's chosen.

What we get to hear is that God looks at people unlike the ways in which people look at people.

God looks at the heart.

We usually think of the heart as the center of our being, where our emotions live.

I love you with all my heart.

But in the Hebrew Bible, your heart is the center of your will.

Where would you locate the center of your will?

I'd put it here.

Now I know in sports terminology you say, like, you gotta have heart to win, which is like you endure adversity, but look, that's a function of the will.

Let's be honest.

It's a function of the will.

I I only picked this up today.

You know, I grew up in this church that said uh that David was beloved by God because he had a heart after God's own, a will after God's own.

But I want to suggest to you uh nothing could be further than the truth.

Have you read the book?

David murders one of his best friends to cover up an affair, at best, more likely a rape, of his best friend's wife.

David is a calculating, ruthless killer of any political rivals.

He's an absentee parent.

Frankly, he's not a good person.

I would be hard-pressed to say he has a heart like God's.

Which is why I think we hear this on Rose Sunday.

God sees something we don't see.

David's a villain.

And God loves him anyway.

That's hard to swallow.

David, by the way, means beloved in Hebrew.

And sure enough, everybody loves him, even though, frankly, he is not very lovable.

Would you love someone who impregnated your spouse and then did a murder to cover it up?

That would be hard.

I'm grateful there's probably nobody in the room who has done that.

It makes it easier to preach this to you.

But I would suggest that even if you had, here's the moral of the story.

God is able to see in ways we can't.

God is able to somehow see the invisible light in the center of David's will.

God is able to look for light that is very faint.

And we forget that over and over and over again.

Not just when we're in conflict with one another, but if you're like me, we forget it, frankly, when we look at ourselves.

I don't know that we need rose-colored glasses, but I do want to share a rose with you.

I might run out.

Kathy's gonna help me do this.

Um when I went to Knowles on my sabbatical, the National Outdoor Leadership School, I had this chance with everybody to do a sweat lodge.

And I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago.

You know, and a sweat lodge is pretty intense.

Like it gets really, really hot.

And uh the preparation, right, is that we are gonna sweat out from our bodies, well, like the junk that is like the residues of, well, war or name-calling or whatever there is.

In preparation for the sweat lodge, we had this lovely guy named Kay.

This is a man named Kay.

I don't actually really know if it was short for something or not, but Kay Harris.

And something Kay did that he had done quite a bit in native communities that he'd counseled throughout the years, is he shared with us each a sprig of sage, abundant in the desert.

Incredibly fragrant, actually, really, really beautiful and lovely.

And he invited us to look at the sage.

And we did it kind of like this: there was no choice in the sage we got.

We kind of got a pile, and we were supposed to like take one and pass it on.

Now I can tell you, I got my sage.

And you know the first thing I did when I got it?

I thought, I wish I got a different piece.

Particularly because I passed on pieces that were much more appealing to me than the one I got.

Like the one I got was like asymmetric and um it wasn't very fluffy.

It was like very kind of strange, and actually I found myself thinking, not only do I wish I got a different one, but maybe I could take the sage I got and I could sort of change it.

So I started, before he got the talk, I started plucking off pieces of the sage so that it would be more lovely.

It would be more uniform and symmetric and balanced.

And then, of course, what he said is really interesting, isn't it?

How is one piece of sage more beautiful than another piece of sage?

Because it looks more symmetric?

Because it's fluffier?

No.

The lovely thing is each piece of sage is internally different, internally coherent, has a beautiful smell.

No, there's nothing wrong with the sage I was given.

I just wished it looked like somebody else's.

I think that's called being born in sin.

Wishing I had what somebody else had instead of being delighted in the beauty of what God has given me.

Why do I say that that's being born in sin?

Because that's one of the heaviest burdens I think we can carry for the rest of our lives.

Wishing we were somebody other than the beautiful child of God we have been made to be.

What's wrong with this rose?

Well, it isn't pink.

I tried to find pink ones.

I went to four stores, I couldn't.

It actually really works that I got like a different variety, I think, because maybe you wished you got a white one and you didn't.

You got the one you were given.

And I wonder whether or not we can look at the beauty of a single flower we were given without having to manicure it or balance it or change the color.

I wonder if we can look at the beauty of the one we got and say, I wouldn't change anything about you.

I can't do it yet.

I can't.

Which is why I'm gonna be back here next year.

I mean that.

Right?

And I'm gonna share something with you that's a little bit weird.

It doesn't show up in the passages today, it doesn't, but uh seems really, really important to me because I just discovered this article.

Uh, you're gonna see this in the blog this week, and it's okay if you say it's heresy.

That's okay, it probably is.

But I did read this, baby did you go in.

Uh I read this really interesting article from a New Testament scholar.

I was listening to this book called How the Irish Saved Civilization.

I don't know if you've read the book, but one of the things that the author does is he talks about uh the Roman tradition and frankly how Irish monks are the ones who preserved it.

When uh you know the Visigoths and the Vandals overrun Rome and they burned all that stuff, it was ultimately Irish monasteries that were delighted to copy it, and that's like how we have it still.

Because Irish monks copied this stuff.

And um they were reading this passage from it, and it talked about, this is from Plato, I don't know if you've read Plato.

He talks about Socrates and all of the good teaching of Socrates, and then he uses this really interesting word.

He says the demon of Socrates was to enlighten the minds of the youth of Athens.

The demon of Socrates?

Sounds like a bad thing, doesn't it?

I'd never heard this before, so I turned to one of my professors who sent me on to an article.

It'll be referenced this week.

Turns out that in the ancient world, the word demon meant a manifestation of the divine within a human person.

You ever heard that before?

I had not heard that before.

The decision was, somewhere in the first century BCE, that since people like Socrates were part of pagan values, their demon was evil.

That is to say, in the first century BCE, there was a discussion that some genius served false gods, some genius served the one god.

If you serve the false gods, demon became bad, so they had to invent a new word.

Happened in the first century.

The new word was angel.

Invented in the first century to differentiate genius that served false gods versus genius that served the true God.

You ever heard this before?

I felt extremely betrayed by my church because it's really interesting.

I mean, I really mean this, to think that a demon is a manifestation of God in your body and person, or to use the Latin word, it is your genius.

I read this book series to my daughter called His Dark Materials, the author Philip Pullman.

The first book is called The Golden Compass.

Has anybody read this book?

I don't know that I'm gonna recommend it.

It's a good story, and it's about a parallel universe in which your soul lives outside of your body.

And it lives as an animal, actually, in an animal form.

And so the main character, um demon, has it settled into one animal.

That happens at the age of accountability.

Um, and it turns out in this parallel universe, uh, the church is sort of a tyrannical body.

Uh this Philip Pullman is Nosseus Lewis, uh, turns out.

And uh so the church becomes very concerned with original sin, and they decide that the best way to take care of original sin so that people don't grow up to be corrupt-based individuals is to cut their demon away while they're still children.

And they come up with a clever method to cut somebody's soul from them.

Now it sounds probably like I didn't know what I'm saying, and I may not, but I want to connect the dots for if I might.

It occurred to me that sometimes I look at other people as being very possessed with a demon in the traditional sense.

An unclean or evil spirit.

You know anybody that's an alcoholic?

I do.

You know what would happen if you cut the part of them away that led them to alcohol abuse?

They would lose a part of their soul.

I'm not sure that's good.

Listen, I'm not saying alcohol abuse is okay.

I'm not saying that.

I'm saying it comes from a part in us that God created and God sees as beautiful and lovely, and if we cut that part off, it would be like having a lobotomy.

Now you look at your flower and you tell me what you would pull off of that flower.

Look back at your life, and I would challenge you to say, what would you trim from your life?

Because the truth is, anything you cut off from your life would mean you are not the person you are today.

You are not.

Even the bad stuff.

I think Rose Sunday invites us to look at the worst parts of our lives and say, that shouldn't have happened, it was wrong, and it's made me who I am, for which I am eternally grateful.

I don't have faith like that.

I want to.

This is the difference between opening our third eye and going around blind.

I've told you this story before, and you know, so you probably already know the punchline.

But it seems really important to me.

I used to work in a heart hospital.

It was run by nuns.

It was Catholic.

So they were like 12 nuns, and this is post-Vatican II, so they weren't wearing habits or whipples or anything like that.

Uh, and uh, I grew up in a tradition where we gave tracks out.

Do you know what a track is?

A track is like this like car that sort of says, like, if you died on the way home today in a horrific car wreck, do you know you'd go to heaven for sure?

And if God asked you why should I let you in, what would you say?

It's like like literature that's meant to force an uh like a cognitive conversion.

The nuns at the hospital had tracks.

And they were very nun-like, if you don't mind me saying.

This is very stereotypical of me.

I love the nuns.

But they were an older group of ladies, to be honest.

And uh they had this track that I was really drawn to, and it looks like the kind of cards my mom gives me on my birthday.

You know, like cursive-y font and like floral patterns, you know, like very traditional kind of thing.

And I looked at this card, and you know, sometimes when you read a thing and you didn't actually read it, like you start reading it and you know where it's going already, so you finish the thought and you're done, right?

And you don't actually look at the page, you just started to.

So it said, God help me to accept the truth, capital T, about myself, no matter how blank it is.

Well, I filled in the blank really fast because I didn't read the card, the card read me.

God help me accept the truth about myself no matter how difficult it is.

Help me accept the truth about myself no matter how painful it is, no matter how disappointing it is, no matter how ugly it is.

I didn't know how long it took me to actually read the card.

Again, you know the punchline already, probably.

God help me accept the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is.

It's probably the best track I've ever met in my life.

Because every other track pretends to have good news, but it's really bad news.

Bad news, God will punish you in hell forever if you don't say the magic words.

Well, I mean, I guess that's mixed news.

You can like learn the magic words.

This had good news in it.

No matter how beautiful it is, I've mentioned to you before, and this is probably my own spiritual journey, and it may not be yours.

That track is probably the scariest piece of religious propaganda I've ever met.

Because it suggests God finds me beautiful.

That's why we have Rose Sunday.

Because we're meant to return to God's way of seeing that is different from our own.

You know the way I usually see things.

I usually judge the burdens people carry instead of appreciating the kind of strength it takes to carry those burdens.

It's because I don't see it like God does.

But you know, there are times when I have totally made my mind up about somebody else.

And then they've surprised me.

I don't know if this has happened to you.

You had somebody in a category and then you learned something about them.

Like maybe they were abused for a number of years.

Or maybe they lost a child.

And a few times.

God has upset my categorization by learning about the burdens people are carrying that have led them to the behaviors that result in my judgment.

And if you're like me, it's been very humbling to look at this person I had formerly completely written off and said, as evil, frankly, or base or lazy, and then have this conversion, oh my God, you are doing the best you can.

And I cannot imagine walking an inch in those shoes.

I want to suggest to you that's when we start to open this eye that saves the world.

I don't know about being born blind.

I don't know.

But I do know my tendency is to close the eye of God and just look with these.

When I look with these, if somebody shows up late, it's because they're lazy.

Right?

What I do with these is I put motive behind actions.

You cut me off in traffic, probably because you're a Democrat.

Fill in the blank.

I might be the only person in the room that does this.

And I want to suggest when I do it, I'm being blind.

And I don't have to be blind.

Part of what I think we get to do on Rose Sunday is come to God, not in fear, but come to God.

Because God's happy to have us.

I know I've said this before, and I'll say it again.

Desmond Tutu, I'm probably gonna get it wrong, but this is my understanding of the quote.

More often than not, we don't realize how low God's standards are.

They are really, really low.

They are so low that there is nothing we can do to make God love us any less.

And so low that there is nothing we can do to make God love us anymore.

And I would ask you, when you look in the mirror, do you see a rose or do you see a thorn?

Yeah, thorns are there.

Thorns are there.

And it is true that our genius, our demon, if you will, is a gift from God that can cast light and also can cast shadows.

There is something beautiful about being a perfectionist.

I am, cast a big shadow.

I wouldn't take the gift away.

What I'd like to do is minimize the shadows that that gift from God, that genius of perfectionism, can light up.

Not because God needs me to do it, but because God hopes I will enjoy it.

I don't know if you can look in the mirror and see a rose, even if it's asymmetrical.

Even if it had more forms than you wish.

But I pray we'll do that.

This land.

I pray we will.

I don't know if you can look at that person that drives you crazy.

And open up your third eye and say, maybe I just don't know how you're doing the best you can with what you have.

But God knows that.

And I'd like to see, like you do, God.

I put this on the birthday card.

It's meaningful to me.

Help me accept the truth about myself.

No matter how beautiful it is.

What's interesting is that in the story, Jesus does this miracle of opening up this man's ability to see.

And it's so wonderful that people refuse to accept it.

Who are you in the story?

I'm probably one of the Pharisees in the story that says, this is not good work.

At least six and a half days of the week.

I'm one of those.

And I would say the only thing we got on a lamp was the ability to love ourselves the way God loved us.

Well, I think that'd be more than enough, wouldn't you?

So I invite you to meditate on your rose.

As my dad said a couple of times, he went to Vietnam against his will when he was drafted.

He came back and he said two things.

A communist is a man trying to feed his family.

For God's road.

They are not weeds, even if we don't always want them around.

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

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God and from true God, begotten and unmade, of one being with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

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

By the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.

For our sake he was crucified under possible cloud.

He covered death and was earth.

On the third day he rose again, for according to the spiritual, he is defended in heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

With the Father and the Son, he is worshipped and glorified.

He has spoken to the prophets.

We believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world of God.

Amen.

For the community we live in, for clean air to breathe and safe water to drink.

We praise you and we thank you, O Lord.

For the courage to protect creation and the persistence to make informed decisions every day.

For the victims of oppression throughout the world, especially those who have been silenced by governments, abuse, and poverty.

Empower our voices and our ears to hear them.

For refugees and those displaced by war or strife.

For those who hunger, satisfy their physical and spiritual needs.

Mentor and guide elected and appointed officials throughout our world.

For 47 years of female clergy shining your light in the Episcopal Church.

Enable our laity, deacons, priests, and bishops to discern your work in the world and boldly join it.

May your church function as one body.

Bless our day school, its teachers, staff, families, and students.

May J.

Thomas School grow and empower wisdom, love, and knowledge in our world.

We praise you for the constant love, compassion, diligence, kindness, and guidance of spouses, siblings, parents, friends, and extended families who have put us and others before themselves.

Mend broken relationships and comfort those who are alone.

Strengthen our patience and bold in our forgiveness.

Equip us to empathize even when we are in pain.

Grow our hearts alone as you do.

Protect the dignity of those who are in physical decline or hardship, and the celebration or petitions the congregation wishes to name at this time, silently or aloud.

Holy Spirit, may they and we excourage your compassion.

We pray for all who have died, especially Lou Nan and Janet.

May Now your eternal kingdom.

Compassionate God, make your healing and peaceful presence known to the world.

Comfort those who mourn, strengthen those who are weary, encourage those in despair, and lead us all to the fullness of life.

Lord, we are in prayer.

Let us humbly confess our sin unto Almighty God.

Holy God, creator of all that is, owner of grace and life, hear our prayer.

We need that we all those world, for fear of living our heart in separation, for fear of being rejected when we reach out.

You call us to a reconciled life, in your relationship, to a wholeness with each other and with you.

Amen.

Friends, hear this good news.

The love of God is beyond measured, and you are included in that love.

Know that you are forgiven and thus free to love and to serve.

The peace of the Lord be always with you.

But first, it's good to recap that uh there were five families that went on the spring break trip to uh Palladero Canyon, and uh we got snowed on, we got uh 40 mile an hour gusty winds, there was rain, and we've somehow got sunburned too.

And um, I just have to tell you it was amazing being nourished in truly a beautiful place uh with a beautiful spirit.

Um people who shared meals and songs and uh to see children play together in the outdoors.

It was beautiful, so thank you.

And uh I really missed you last week.

I also missed that we celebrated a marriage about eight days ago, and it's just good to know we do these things from time to time, uh, even during lent.

So uh Father Jim did a marriage for us uh about a week ago, and so uh yeah, that's that's kind of what's been going on.

I do want to prime you that there's a few things uh coming up to look forward to.

One is you might have missed it this morning, but we had truly a lovely speaker talk about Holy Week, um, particularly uh a way of looking at how Jesus offers ways of making peace in his last week.

Uh if you missed that, I'm gonna commend you not only the book, Fight Like Jesus, but also that we've made a recording of this that you can find on YouTube.

It was, well, I thought it was extremely valuable, very thoughtful, and a way of patterning life as well.

So I want to commend this to you if you missed it.

Um, in the next two weeks, we've got opportunities.

Our kids are gonna learn dinner etiquette next week, and then we're gonna have an opportunity to talk about healthy ways of grieving as adults.

Not just when somebody dies, but frankly, in moments of disappointment.

And so Dr.

Darlene Hunter is gonna leave that for us between services at 9.15.

And then two weeks from today, on Palm Sunday, we're going to have an opportunity to talk about end-of-life planning as a sort of a workshop with some things you can fill out to help you and those who will be left behind after you're gone sort of know what your wishes are.

So those are the next two weeks of uh religious education.

Meanwhile, next Sunday is a blood drive.

So Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center, they have a donor center up there on Space City Center Boulevard, but they're gonna be here from 8 o'clock till one o'clock next week.

And I mean, I don't know what else to say, but I don't know how to fix problems in the world, but I have blood that they'll take.

So I can do that.

I don't know what to do about Russia and Ukraine.

But they'll take my blood and other people need it.

So I just want to commend to you.

Sharing life is a beautiful thing, if you're able to.

Uh, and we'll have that window here from 8 o'clock till one next week.

And uh, they do ask us to make appointments so it helps them make the flow.

You'll find a link in the e-news if you'd like to do this to make an appointment.

And um, hey, it takes like 20 minutes, right, Ned, just to give red blood.

If you give something like platelets, expect it takes more like an hour because they they process them.

Uh I don't do it here because I don't have time.

I go up to the blood center every two months and and I sit there for two hours because I can't.

I mean, just that's just it.

I can't.

Uh it takes a lot of time.

I hate needles, and I can't.

So maybe uh maybe this is a way you can share life.

I don't know.

Another way that we can consider sharing life is on April 1st.

We'll have our next food distribution as a way of playing April food, April fools on community food insecurity, which is growing.

Right?

I mean, uh during our retreat we talked about groceries going up, I don't know about 30%, more like 70% some things, right?

And you'd be alarmed at how many people drive through here that live in this neighborhood.

Uh so this is a lovely way that we can serve.

On April 1st, we'll be out there from 7:45 a.m.

to about 9.30, uh, so that, well, so we can feed about a hundred families.

Um, I also want to hold up to you that we I still like two and a half weeks away, but we are coming up on Holy Week.

And if you don't know what that is, uh, or if it's been a long time, I'm just gonna tell you one of the things I love about the Episcopal Church is that we do Holy Week, not Palm Sunday and Easter.

And the reason I love it is because not only do you get to hear the story, you get to interact with the story.

There are few things as dramatic as stripping the Lord's table on Maundy Thursday.

There are few things as dramatic as coming in at the Easter vigil and doing the whole service before the sunrise with a candle.

I mean, just dramatic and inspiring.

And I can't always cognitively understand it, but I can sense it.

So I just want to hold this up to you.

This is like the treasure chest of the Episcopal Church.

Truly.

Holy Week offers liturgies, you can't have the rest of the year.

So I do hope you're plan around it.

Uh, if it's new to you, I hope you will also enjoy it.

And if you don't, you can always say, I didn't enjoy that.

I'll take that.

Um I think that's all I wanted to announce to you this morning.

So continue to walk in love.

As Christ first loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.

All things come of you, O Lord.

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 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, and he invites you to meet him here.

Our service continues on page 367 of your red prayer book, page 367.

The Lord be with you, and also with you lift up your hearts we let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give us thy same praise.

It is right and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, you bid your faithful people cleanse their hearts and prepare with joy for the Paschal feast, that fervent in prayer and in works of mercy, and renewed by your word and sacraments, they may come to the fullness of grace which you have prepared for those who love you.

Therefore we praise you, joining our voices with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, who forever seeing this hymn to proclaim the glory of your name.

The calling of Israel to be your people, and your word spoken to the prophets, and above all in the word made flesh, Jesus your son.

For in these last days you sent him to be incarnate from the Virgin Mary, to be the Savior and Redeemer of the world.

In him, you have delivered us from evil and made us worthy to stand before you.

In him, you have brought us out of error into truth, and of sin into righteousness, out of death into life.

On the night before he died for us, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread.

And when he given thanks to you, he broke it and gave it to his disciples and said, Take, eat.

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

Remember me every time you eat bread.

After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine.

And when he given thanks, he gave it to them and said, Drink this, all of you.

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

Remember me every time you drink wine.

Therefore, according to his command, O Father, we remember his death.

We proclaim his resurrection, we await his coming glory, and we offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to you, O Lord of all, presenting to you from your creation this bread and this wine.

We pray you, gracious God, to send your Holy Spirit upon these gifts, that they may be the sacrament of the body of Christ in his blood of the new covenant.

Unite us to your Son in his sacrifice, that we may be acceptable through him, being sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

In the fullness of time, put all things in subjection under your Christ and bring us to that heavenly country where with Luna, Janet, St.

Patrick and Thomas, and all your saints, we may enter the everlasting heritage of your daughters and sons through Jesus Christ our Lord, the firstborn of all creation, the head of the church, and the author of our salvation.

By him and with him and in him.

In the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory is yours, Almighty Father, now and forever.

Amen.

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

Our Father.

Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day of delivery.

And forgive us our trespasses.

And we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, but the mind is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

Receive them in your hearts with thanksgiving and be nourished by God's unconditional love for you.

Loving God, God, we give you thanks for restoring us in your own image and nourishing us with spiritual food in the sacrament of Christ's body and blood.

Now send us forth and people of heaven field renewed, that we may proclaim your love to the world and continue with the love of forever Savior.

Amen.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against.

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

Amen.