Pentecost 19 2021

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

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, to you all hearts of the name.

All the spirits of him.

And from you know the secret served.

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

That we may perfectly love you and magnify your Holy Name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The Lord be with you.

And also.

Let us pray.

Oh God, you declare your almighty power chiefly and showing compassion and empathy.

Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we running to obtain your promises may become partakers of your heavenly treasure through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Our children are invited to children's chapel with Mr.

Alexander.

The king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther.

On the second day, as they were drinking wine, the king again said to Esther, What is your petition, Queen Esther?

It shall be granted you.

And what is your request?

Even to the half of my kingdom it shall be fulfilled.

The Queen Esther answered, If I have won your favor, O King, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me.

That is my petition.

And the lives of my people, that is my request.

For we have been told, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated.

If we had been told really a play of men and women, I would have held my people.

But no enemy can compensate for this damage to the king.

Then came after Esther dead, to Queen Esther, who is he?

And where is he?

And who is the known to do this?

Esther said, a foe and enemy, this wicked Haman.

Then Haman was terrified before the king and queen.

Then Armona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, Look, the very gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose words wake the king, stands at Haman's house, 50 cubits high.

And the king said, Hang him on that.

So they hang Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai.

Then the anger of the king was abated.

Mordecai recorded these things and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Astrid, both near and far, and joining them that they should keep the 14th day of the month, Adar, and also the 15th day of the same month, year by year, as the days on which the Jews gained relief from their enemies.

And as the month that had been turned from them, from sorrow into gladness, and from mourning into a holiday, that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.

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

A reading from Psalm 124.

We will read responsively at the half verse.

Blessed be the Lord, we have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowler.

They should pray.

Are any cheerful?

They should sing songs of praise.

Are any among you sick?

They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.

The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up, and anyone who committed sins will be forgiven.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed.

The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.

Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain.

And for three years and six months, it did not rain on the earth.

Then he prayed again.

And the heavens gave rain, and the earth yielded it as harvest.

My brothers and sisters.

If anyone among you wanders over the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a center from wandering will say the center is a wonderful.

John said to Jesus, Teacher, we saw someone casting out unclean spirits in your name.

And we tried to stop him because he was not following us.

But Jesus said, Do not stop him, for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.

Whoever is not against us is for us, for truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.

And if any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.

If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off.

It is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell to the unquenchable fire.

And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off.

It is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell.

And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out.

It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell where their worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.

For everyone will be salted with fire.

Salt is good, but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it?

Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.

The Gospel of the Lord.

But you need to know that this really, this is it.

This story is really describes the Jewish festival of Purine.

And the reason I don't know what they're thinking is that happens in like March.

So I don't get to tell you about it in March because the scripture in March will not be Esther.

So I'm going to tell you about it today.

There's a little bit of a ring, Bob.

Is it just me?

Okay.

Here's the story of Purein.

And remember, the lectionary presumes you've read this story before you hear this snippet.

Once upon a time, all of the people who lived in the area called Judea, hence they're called Jews.

They're from Judea, were taken into exile in Babylon, and the Persian Empire overtook Babylon.

And so the Persian Emperor, we think probably Xerxes or Artaxerxes, we're not sure where the name Ahazarus comes from.

It's not a Persian word, is in charge.

And there's a Jewish man named Mordechai who saves his life.

Helps out, and he's forgotten.

There's a courtier named Chaman.

If we were in a synagogue, every time you hear the word Chaman, you would make as much noise as possible so that we didn't have to hear what's said.

Because if you're Jewish, the name Chaman is worse than the name Hitler.

This is true.

Chaman decides, because Mordechai will not bow down to him as second in command, that not only does he hate Mordechai, he hates all of Mordechai's people.

And he's not just going to hate them, he's decided to commit genocide.

He signs into law that all the Judeans, not just religious Jews, people from Judea, will be executed on the 15th of Adar.

He comes at that date by throwing a lot, which is called a pur, hence the word purim.

Turns out that Mordechai's niece was orphaned, and he raised her, and she's Jewish, and her name's Esther, and she is the king's most favorite concubine.

And she's able to keep her Jewish identity secret.

No one knows she's Jewish.

In this story, she reveals to the king that her life is threatened.

And she says, look, if we were just going to be sold into slaves, I wouldn't even tell you.

But because there's a law that's going to commit genocide against my people and me, I'm telling you.

The king is surprised he didn't know this law would affect him personally.

Right?

And so here we hear the reversal of the story, where Chaman is literally hoisted on his own petard.

He's hanged on the gallows, he built to hang Morchai.

Now, our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate this usually on the 15th of Adar.

You notice there's two days, the 14th and the 15th.

On the 15th of Adar, normally there's something like a Purian carnival.

I'll tell you that Har Shalom will throw one of these in March.

And you can go, whether you're Jewish or Gentile, and you wear costumes.

Hence the Halloween connection, because Esther kept her identity a secret until the fateful moment.

On the 14th, the whole story will be read, and it's incritical.

People in the synagogue will have a noisemaker that's called a grogger, and that's because they don't want to hear Chaman's name, so they'll make this noise, so you don't have to hear it.

The other injunction is because the Jewish people were delivered from this first pogrom, I mean, this is a Holocaust.

Because they're delivered, there's this joy in celebrating wine.

And so part of the Jewish discipline is to have so much wine that you can't tell the difference between the name Mordechai and Haman.

That's a lot of wine.

I just want you to be, I want to be really clear about that.

That's part of the observance in the synagogue.

And the joy is deliverance.

So this is like the archetypal story that precedes all pogroms in Russia, ghetto in Venice, Holocaust in the Third Reich.

This is a core story for Jewish identity.

And uh, what's there's two things I want you to notice.

One that's beautiful about the festival is that our Jewish brothers and sisters, when they remember the story of their independence, they celebrate by taking care of people who are impoverished.

I don't, listen, I love the 4th of July, but we don't have a cultural practice of, oh, thank God we're liberated from the British, let's go help people who can't feed themselves.

So I want you to hear this is a beautiful custom that our Jewish brothers and sisters do on celebrating their independence and relief.

They take care of people who can't take care of themselves.

Number one, that's a lovely thing to uphold, even though it's not going to happen until March.

Number two, you can hear this story something that is totally ridiculous.

Haman is mad at one person and decides to hate everybody possibly connected with that person.

That's called stereotyping.

And you hear in the story, it's crazy.

I mean, Mordechai is one guy.

All of the other Jewish people bow down to Chaman, by the way.

According to the text, they all bow down.

So you just mad at one person and decides to commit genocide.

And hopefully you can hear.

I mean, the Bible tells you this is a true event, but I hope you also hear the caricature of something we often do.

We, me.

When somebody's driving erratically, when I pass them, I want to look at them so I can see how to make a stereotype.

I'm just gonna be honest.

I have to tell myself spirits to do not look at that driver because making a stereotype will not serve you or them.

Sometimes we do this stuff.

And it's crazy, and the story invites you to hear it's crazy.

Now, I've just talked about a Hebrew celebration, and I'm gonna tell you a little bit more about why I wanted to tell you the history behind that and why I want to affirm the way that our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate deliverance by taking care of each other because it's how the gospel starts out.

One of the disciples who follows Jesus, he's probably an Episcopalian.

He sees other people who are not Episcopalians doing good stuff and says, We told them to stop doing the good stuff.

They weren't confirmed.

We told them to stop doing the good stuff.

They hadn't had Eucharist in a while.

Of course, you get that that's silly.

Well, I hope you get that that's silly.

But I want you to hear that in sometimes our twists and turns and our spiritual development, we buy into that garbage.

The criterion is not, do you believe what I believe?

Jesus says the criterion is who gets life.

And I'm going to stretch it because he's not just talking about my opinion.

He's not just talking about whether you're a Protestant.

He's not just talking about whether you're a Christian.

My opinion.

I think Jesus is suggesting this opportunity we have to affirm what is life-giving in our sisters and brothers throughout the world, even if they're blank.

You fill in the blank with the people you don't like.

Even if they're wiccan.

Wiccans are easy because there's not very many of them around, you know.

Let's make it a little bit harder.

Fill in the blank with the hard bit.

And Jesus says, look, you can make a mistake of saying they don't check your intellectual boxes, they don't belong, when really the question is, are they contributing to life with a capital L?

I know Muslim people who contribute to life.

I do.

If you don't, I feel sorry for you.

Because it's incredible the ways they have stretched my own sense of peace and spiritual discipline.

I obviously know plenty of Jewish people who have stretched life with a capital L on my benefit and for the benefit of others.

These are opportunities.

When I see somebody and I'm not sure about, Jesus goes on to say, look, if people do a little thing like give you a cup of water, don't disqualify them from serving life.

Sometimes we don't see because we're looking for something too big, and Jesus says, Well, just look smaller, look harder.

Look for God in the smallest of things.

And this affirmative approach to life-giving spirituality, I think, lies at the core of the gospel.

After all, if God really is omnipresent, like we like to think, if God's everywhere all the time, right?

Let's take that seriously and say that God must be present in Judaism.

God must be present in Islam.

God must be present in Hinduism.

And if I can't see it, it's my eyes that are flawed, not God's presence.

Then Jesus goes on to stretch us a little bit further.

Well, I think that's what he's doing.

He goes on to say, look, if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out.

Now, I grew up Christian fundamentalists, I've told you this before, and we were really sure that we're supposed to take the scriptures literally.

But I'll tell you, myself included, none of our evangelical brothers and sisters are poking their own eyes out.

Because they understand this is meant to be taken figuratively, right?

Well, I think so.

And what I hear Jesus saying, quite honestly, is your eye doesn't cause you to sin.

All your eye does is register information in the world, and then you decide what to do with it.

Your hand doesn't cause you to sin, your hand touches stuff, and then you decide what you're gonna do with that stuff.

So rather than blaming the members of our body for our bad choices, I think Jesus is trying to suggest make better choices.

Now I've heard people say, well, yeah, I know he did that thing to that girl, but he had all those hormones.

And hear what Jesus is saying.

If that's a problem, cut them off.

I don't see anybody doing that.

Nor do I think we should be doing that.

Instead, I think Jesus is saying, take responsibility for your own choices.

Chaman is angry at Mordechai.

And what he decides is, Mordechai has made him angry.

You made me mad.

Nobody makes you mad.

You choose to be mad.

We don't usually think of it that way.

Oh, but he disrespected God.

Let God take care of God's self.

God's big enough.

We don't need to go around policing how other people treat God.

God's big enough to take care of God's self.

We don't even usually do a good job taking care of ourselves.

And I think Jesus is inviting us to really consider instead of blaming other people for our decisions, instead of blaming body parts for our decisions, instead of blaming politics for our decisions, let's take ownership over what we choose to do.

And then he twists it a little bit more.

He says everybody will be salted with fire.

He doesn't say bad people will be punished with fire.

He says everybody will be salted with fire.

So two things to decode: salt and fire.

Salt in the ancient world was not made by mortals.

You know that lady with the yellow clothes and the umbrella, and it comes out and it's like 99 cents for four pounds of it, and it's all granule.

You make it in a lab, right?

Salt in the ancient world actually was kind of hard to come by.

You either panned it out of the ocean and evaporated it, or you mined it.

And it was so valuable that you hear it in the root of the word salary.

Some people were literally paid with salt.

Now, unlike a lot of other minerals out there, if you don't have salt, you will die.

Salt is biologically necessary.

Particularly at a time when there's no refrigeration, when you kill an animal, you either have to eat it up sort of on the spot, right, or it'll go rancid, or else you can smoke and salt it to preserve it.

So salt is the preservative of nourishment.

Fire is another one of those things to decode because a lot of times, since Dante's imaginative work called the Inferno, we think of fire as an instrument of torture.

But in the Bible, fire does one of two things, and they're really the same thing.

Fire utterly annihilates things, and particularly what it annihilates are dregs in wine and dross in metal.

Fire is used to purify, not to punish.

Now, this is still true today.

People don't really seem to know how to purify metal other than heating it to its liquid form and skimming off the dross.

This is still how gold goes from 10 karats to 24 karats, right?

You heat it up and you skim the impurities off.

And Jesus says this is actually a really good thing.

Not only will that preserve you, it will refine you.

So taking responsibility for our own choices is not God punishing us, it's a way of being refined.

Affirming God's presence in other people who don't look like us and worship like us is not a punishment.

It's a refinement.

And then Jesus says something really else interesting.

He says, if salt loses its saltiness, it can't be saltered again.

Well, I've talked to a couple of chemists, including one PhD in chemistry, Nick Rowe, and another PhD in chemistry, chemical engineering, Stephen Alexander.

It turns out salt cannot lose its saltiness.

Unless you took sodium chloride and broke it into sodium and chloride.

But you know what you can do with salt is water it down and you can suspend it in water so that it no longer does what it does.

But I want to share something with you about salt in the ancient world.

We often gloss over.

Like I said, ancient world salt is not white like ever.

Salt comes in lots of colors.

Probably if you've been to the grocery you've seen that pink Himoleon salt.

Because that's pretty widespread, right?

And you can kind of see that everywhere.

And you know why it's pink.

It's got some trace minerals that present itself as pink to our eye, even though it's just sodium chloride.

So it's not just sodium chloride, it's got other stuff that makes it pink.

And if you've been to Hawaii, maybe you've seen that there is also bright red salt.

It's not food colored, that's how it's mined, or that's how it comes out of the ocean with trace minerals.

There's salt from the Black Sea that is black.

There's something called cell gris in France that's green.

Maybe sometimes one of the ways we water down our saltiness is when we decide we're all supposed to look the same.

That we're supposed to be some kind of homogeneous morton's product, and that spirituality is going to a factory and being refined to a granular level, so we're all the same.

And I want to suggest to you that's the way we lose our saltiness instead of embracing it.

Salt in the ancient world is diverse, it's colored, it comes in many different sizes and shapes, and so do you.

And maybe the salt of the earth at the time of Jesus is our opportunity to continue to hear that gospel message that I struggle with.

God is interested in unity, not uniformity.

Please notice Haman's issue is he thinks we're supposed to be uniform instead of unified.

Then we get to the book of James.

And James says something really interesting.

James talks about us confessing our sins with one another when he talks about the power of prayer.

Two words about each.

When he talks about prayer, he talks about how Elijah prayed and the rain was withheld.

I don't know how many of you have read that story.

Elijah never asks for the rain to be withheld.

Actually, God tells him this is what's going to happen.

Sometimes we think prayer is when we ask God to do stuff instead of when we represent God for one another.

And what Elijah does in the story is represents God, not ask God to do what he wants.

So this is a great question.

How are we representing what God wants with one another?

Because that's what prayer is.

Prayer is not just asking God to do what we want.

We pray every week.

Your will be done, not ours.

Prayer is when we represent God.

Like instead of saying, God, I just wish you'd feed all the hungry people.

Have that wish and then go feed some hungry people, and that's prayer.

God, I just wish that person would just get right with me.

Say that, and then go get right with them.

And that's what prayer looks like.

And James talks about us confessing our sins together.

And you know, I didn't think he means coming into church and saying, here, we're going to have 10 minutes, and I want you to tell me what you did wrong in the last week.

Just pop up where you are and say what moral things you did wrong.

No, it's helpful to remember that we get three roots of the word sin in the Bible, two from Hebrew and one from Greek.

In Hebrew, sin means it's an archery target where you aim and you miss.

Or it's a weight that you carry, it's being encumbered.

Hear those words of comfort, Jesus says.

Come into me, all ye who are heavy laden.

All of you who are sinning.

And I'll give you rest, because my burden is easy and my yoke is light.

Jesus is talking about trading in our burdens for something that is lighter and livelier.

In Greek, the word sin actually comes from that word tragic flaw.

If you ever read Oedipus in high school, Oedipus's tragic flaw is that he has something called hubris.

That is, he tries to be more than he is.

But you know, that's not the only tragic flaw.

There are some people whose tragic flaw is they never say no.

You know any of those people?

It's tragic because they never get to be themselves, you see.

And when we live into our tragic flaw, it's at the expense of our life.

I think James is suggesting that when we confess our sins with one another, it's not that we just go around deprecating ourselves.

What we say is, I am carrying this burden and it's exhausting me.

Has anybody else carried this burden who could help me carry it better or show me how to lay it down?

There's a lot of ways we do this in church.

And maybe you've heard, uh, you've been involved with a lot of places, but you know, I've had this idea for a long time, and my mentoring rector gave it to me.

That it would be really great if we had a Rolodex here in the community of burdens we've carried and learned to lay down.

Because then instead of me trying to tell you something I don't know how to do, I could say, Oh, you're dealing with that?

Well, Samuel knows how to do that.

And that's what James has in mind when we confess our sins together, is we say, I am burdened, and I feel like I'm the only one.

You ever felt like you were the only one carrying a burden?

If you've had kids, the answer is probably.

And what's interesting, right, is that I know lots of people.

This is one of the things about being a priest that's curious.

I get to know lots of confidential stuff about who's carrying.

Trouble with difficult children or difficult parenting, and of course, they would never say that out loud that they're struggling.

And you know why?

Because we judge them.

And that's where we're missing it.

It's an opportunity to say, actually, you're not alone.

You're not alone.

I've carried that burden, or man, I'm still carrying that burden.

Maybe we could lift ours together.

Maybe we could lift ours together.

And you know, because some of these things are so vulnerable, we're afraid we'll be judged like Haman judges Mordechai.

We were afraid we'll be judged like John judges people who don't do it John's way.

And James is inviting us into a different way of being church.

You all may not know this, but we actually took that seriously when we revised the Book of Common Prayer in 1976.

Because if you read the prayer book in 1928, you got to the Nicene Creed and you said, I believe in God.

We don't say that anymore.

We believe.

There's days I don't believe some of that stuff.

I'm just going to be honest with you.

And that's why we say we.

Because some of y'all get to carry me in my doubt.

And I sure hope there's days I get to carry you.

I think that's what James has in mind that we so often miss out on.

And how we cultivate this business where we choose to be responsible and we choose to be affirmative of how other people are finding and practicing life.

And how we choose to take seriously the gospel call that we are meant to be unified in mission and not uniform in identity.

I put before you, that's the gospel for the week.

Now, I think it's a good idea that we've got a roll of decks, but I don't know how to do it.

So I want to tell you, I don't know how to lay that burden down in a helpful way.

If you got ideas, I could sure use help.

What I would love to see us do, having earned one another's trust carefully by being proving to one another that we're trustworthy, which takes time.

I would love to see us help carry one another's burdens.

I would love to see us do that at that time.

And I'd love to see us not just this be a place where burdens can be buried.

I'd like to see us practice that here so that we can get around and continue to do that.

This is what a confession looks like.

It's not admitting that we're failures, it's admitting that we're human.

I don't get to do this very often.

There's a sacrament in the prayer book called the Rite of Reconciliation.

I would ask you to raise your hands if you've done it, but that would be really unepiscopalia to me.

About once a year, somebody wants to do this with me.

And most recently, when I did this, which actually was very recent, um, somebody said, Well, I'm just really worried.

I'm really worried that I'm gonna do this thing and I won't do it right, and it won't work.

Okay, this is like this beautiful part of sacramental theology.

It's not your faith in the sacrament that makes it work, it's God's faith in you.

I'm gonna say that again.

It's not what you believe about communion that makes it empower your spirit.

It's God's belief in you that promises your spirit will be empowered, even if you're not sure how.

That's what we call a holy mystery.

You may not believe the sacrament of reconciliation will do what you want it to do.

Well, that's okay.

God's got faith in you anyway.

So, what would it take for us to love one another that way?

That's what James is asking.

Anointing with oil is not just something I do.

Anybody can do that.

I don't know if you've read your prayer book.

You anybody in the world can anoint somebody else with oil in prayer.

And do you know why we do it?

It's because you get to touch the other person.

When somebody is in pain or worry or anxiety or regret, those are the sins I carry more than anything.

Anxiety, regret, fear.

I mean, look, I know how to handle myself when I tell a lie, I don't lie anymore, right?

But I find myself awake at night because I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't have done private school in the third grade.

Maybe we should have stayed at public school.

Those kinds of things drive me crazy.

In the middle of those moments, we're called to anoint one another with oil because when you do that, instead of saying, oh, I'll pray for you, you pray for somebody right there and you touch them.

Which is that moment of connection to somebody who's in pain, even if you've never suffered that way.

You're my brother, you're my sister, and I'm with you.

We believe.

In the words of the Nicene Creed.

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

We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten the Father.

True God, true God, become being the Father.

He came from heaven, and the spirit he became memory, and say he was crucified and consciously suffering with memory.

In the court of the scriptures, he is living in the dead, and it's kingdom.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, and the Father and Son, here to worship the Lord.

He is not to the prophets.

We believe in one Holy Catholic Church.

We acknowledge baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

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

Amen.

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

For refugees and those displaced by war or strife, for those who hunger, spiritual needs, mentor and guide elected and appointed officials throughout the world.

For 43 years of female courage, 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.

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

May your day of school and knowledge of 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.

Equip us to empathize even when we are in pain.

Protect the dignity of those who are in physical decline or hardship, remembering especially Ronnie, Chris, John, Erin, Cynthia, Ken, Jan, Erin, Janice, Nancy, and the celebration of petitions the congregation wishes to name at this time silently or aloud.

We pray for all who have died, especially Helen, Mars, and John.

May we have a grace of your eternal people.

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 fullness of life.

Let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor.

Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father, in your compassion, forgive us our sins, know and unknown, things done and left undone, and so hold us by your Spirit, that we may live and serve you in doing the light, to the honor and glory of your name, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The Almighty and all-compassionate God grant 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.

If you're new to us or haven't done this before in the Narthex, that's the room right behind us here, are these little cards that say welcome.

And we'd be tremendously grateful if you'd fill one out so we have a record of your visit.

And thanks for worshiping with us today.

There are a number of announcements I want to call to your attention, and it's going to feel a little bit like a bulletin board, sorry, but there's a lot of things happening in October.

So here we go.

First off is to let you know some of the good deeds that are happening at St.

Thomas.

So one thing this morning, uh many of you know that we've got this Cub Scout troop, and we've also got a Cub Scout Pack, and we've got a boys' troop and a girls' troop.

And if you saw tents this morning, we just did uh high adventure training for scout leaders all throughout the district.

Uh, maybe you know that Zach Worley, one of our Cubmasters, uh coordinates Episcopal Scouting in the Diocese of Texas.

So this is really good use.

Of our property, and Hal, who's sitting there in the back and would never want me to say this, but it's good to hear, has put on this training to help scout throughout our district.

So thanks, Hal.

Really appreciate it.

I want to call out to you also, I mentioned the Lots luncheon last week, Lord of the Streets Episcopal Church, and we're still waiting on the total tally on that.

But what I didn't fully realize is that our own Kathy Hill managed that whole luncheon, that Kay Clutier and our parish put together all the table decorations last minute, and that Jane Flynn here in the back was absolutely involved in the programming.

So not only did we go, like we put on the thing, and uh this little tiny church in Nassau Bay is making a huge difference for this wonderful ministry to currently and formerly homeless men and women in Houston.

So thank you all, and thanks for supporting lots.

It's worth applauding, absolutely.

If I did call ants, we'd be here until one o'clock because there's a lot of great things going on.

So I better stop.

But I want to tell you some of the opportunities, and there's a lot coming up.

Tomorrow, from 6 to 7, uh, one of the attorneys in our community, who's also married to me, is putting on a legal analysis of State Bill 8 along with one of our own uh parishioners who's a retired OBGYN, uh Tim Brown.

They're going to talk to you about what the law says, what the law means, and probably how it's going to be applied.

The goal of this is so that you learn about the law.

And at the end, you'll also learn a little bit more about what you can do if you like the law or if you don't like the law.

So that's the goal is to give you what's called a legal ethical analysis, but it will very much be in lay terms.

You can only do this from 6 to 7 tomorrow.

I do not have permission to record it.

You can ask questions, but only in the chat.

This is per attorney's rules.

Uh if you can't make it, somebody can tell you about it.

But I hope you'll you'll take time to be involved as a citizen in the way we do laws in Texas, and this presentation is designed to do that.

Immediately after that meeting at 7.30 here in Christ Hall, and that's a physical gathering, the State Bill 8 is a Zoom only.

In Christ Hall is our ECW meeting that stands for Episcopal Church Women, and that starts at 7.30.

So, sorry to be gender exclusive, but guys, you're not welcome.

So if you are a lady, you are absolutely invited at 7.30 to the Episcopal Church meeting here in Christ Hall.

This Friday.

This Friday, our pumpkins are coming.

Now, many of you know we put on a pumpkin pouch here for the last three years.

Not only is it a wonderful gift to the community, uh, but it also is the principal fundraiser for our Cub Scout pie.

Uh, and so the pumpkins come on a transfer truck.

They're grown by Navajo farmers in Arizona.

Arizona?

I think it's Arizona.

New Mexico.

In New Mexico.

Yeah, so this is a great partnership with people who need partners, let's just be honest.

And they come here in a transfer truck at four o'clock.

We're gonna unload them.

And if you've got some spare time, we'll feed you as well.

But it takes about two hours to set up this pumpkin patch.

Um, last year it made something like$7,000 for our scouts, which is incredibly nice.

And it beautifies the campus and serves the neighborhood.

So that's Friday at four.

Saturday, we've got two things going on.

It's a busy place on Saturday.

Um, the first thing is our food distribution, which for the first time is going to be out here in the driveway from 7.45 to 8.

We've never done it here.

The reason we're doing it there is because we have a 5K race we're sponsoring out of our parking lot.

Um, so there's a kids 1K that's at 745, and then there's a 5K walk or run at 8 o'clock through this fantastic organization that proceeds uh support schools throughout our community.

Um, you can do both.

I'm gonna run the 5K, and then I'm gonna run over and put food in people's cars.

So you absolutely can do that.

You can register for the race, or you can bandit run it if you want to.

Bandit means you didn't pay.

It's okay, you just don't get a shirt at the end.

So if you if you want a shirt, you can sign up and uh and you can run this race.

And they do a great job putting on races.

It'll be a lovely track.

And uh, of course, pumpkins are available for your home starting next week.

And if you're gonna buy pumpkins anyway, you might as well buy them here because they're organic and they go to a good cause.

Um, a couple other things to lift up.

I told you there's a lot.

You might know we're not having the fall festival this year, and that's to be COVID sensitive.

But what we are having, and I'd like you to set this on your calendar, is an opportunity to have a parish picnic out here, and the community is also invited.

It'll be outdoor, right?

We'll mask when we're not eating.

There'll be a band, our brew gill will be brewing three different beers, which is fantastic, and we'll have a barbecued box lunch.

And it'll be from 11 to 1 on the 30th of October when the pumpkin patch sort of closes up.

Um, the other thing to to uh to put before you.

Oh, I just lost my train of thought.

The pet blessing is next Sunday.

So we have a community pet blessing that's at this white gazebo right next to us in Howard Ward Park.

You can't see it from here.

It's sort of over there.

It's very big, and we do it outdoor, and it's next Sunday at 4.

And you might think, boy, my pet is not well behaved.

And bring a picture of them.

We can bless facsimiles if you'd like.

If you don't have a pet but you've got a stuffed animal, I'll bless that too.

I'm absolutely happy to do that.

That happens out here at 4 o'clock next Sunday.

It always is right before St.

Francis Day, which is October the 4th.

Uh, one other thing, because we're talking about affirmative inquiry.

They came here like three years ago.

These Tibetan monks are here at UHCL, and you can see on our website, they're building a mandala starting tomorrow.

They'll be building it all week, and then on Friday they just sweep it up to remind us that beauty is worth constructing and it doesn't always last.

And so, if you don't know anything about Tibetan Buddhism, this is your chance.

And the mandala is it's it's huge, right?

I mean, it's like a six foot in diameter circle.

The monks spend like 40 hours on it, and it's gorgeous, and they're really nice.

I mean, they have to be nice.

If you want to be a monk, you have to be nice.

And so they're they're just lovely to talk to.

Last time they came to our school and we made butter sculptures, but you'll see this on our Facebook page that you can go over there, and it's a rare opportunity to interface with specifically Tibetan Buddhist monks.

They'll be right over at UHCL.

I told you there's a lot, and isn't it nice to be in a place that's doing a lot of really holy work?

Thank you.

I'm grateful to take your time representing the holy work that's going on.

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 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.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts.

We lift up unto the Lord.

Let us give thanks unto our Lord God.

It is me and I so to do.

We thank you, Creator God, that we live in a place where the glorious revelation of yourself is all around us.

The bayous burst with song from wind and birds and waving grasses.

The abundance of birds flying freely reminds us of our own freedom, and in many ways you provide sustenance in your kingdom.

From the depths of the ocean floor, you made room for clear lake, and appointed it a respite and sanctuary for your creatures.

We, like your Son, our Lord, are called to drink from these oases for the Spirit to get away and rest in communion with you.

We marvel as we wander alongside pines and wildflowers along the creeks, where jumping fish dance above the lake, and pelicans, egrets, duck, and geese eat and drink from the water's edge.

And we remember that you've given us the living water to quench our thirst.

Our spirit is refreshed and our strength renewed.

We welcome the passing of seasons and broad circles of time, with anticipation of new things to come, and we recognize that same feeling of hope that encircles our faith.

Our lives are lived between sunrises and sunsets and brilliant colors.

But at night, the limitless stars have a way of pushing back the boundaries of our lives, and we dream of heaven and your wonder.

And with all these blessings of your creation around us, O God, we come together in communities on the bayous, by creeks and lakes, on trails and marshes, to receive your word, which has been sown in rich soil and grown into a fruitful crop in the body of Christ.

So we join with saints and angels in proclaiming your glory as we say, Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory, Hosanna in the highest.

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest.

As we gather to see, praise your name, we see your greatest glory.

Your Son, our Savior, reflected in each other's faces, and we know the magnitude of your love for us and ours for you.

On the night before he died for us, Jesus was at table with his friends.

He took bread, gave thanks to you, broke it, and gave it to them, and said, Take, eat.

This is my body which is given for you.

Do this for the remembrance of me.

As supper was ending, Jesus took the cup of wine.

Again, he gave thanks to you, gave it to them, and said, Drink this, all of you.

This is my blood of the new covenant which is poured out for you and for all for the forgiveness of sin.

Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me.

And now gathered at your table, O God of all creation, and remembering Christ crucified and risen, who was and is and is to come, we offer to you our gifts of bread and of wine, and we offer ourselves a living sacrifice.

Pour out your spirit upon these gifts that they may be the body and blood of Christ.

Breathe your spirit over the whole earth and make us your new creation, the body of Christ given for the world you've made.

In the fullness of time, bring us with all your saints from every tribe and language and people and nation to feast at the banquet prepared from the foundation of the world.

Through Christ and with Christ and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, to you be honor, glory, and praise for ever and ever.

Amen.

Now, as our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to pray, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come thy on earth as it is in heaven.

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

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For the family is the kingdom of the power and the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

Therefore, let us keep the feast.

These are the gifts of God for you, the family of God.

Behold who you are, gifts of God, and become what you receive.

God of truth, we have seen with our eyes and touched with our hands the bread of life.

Nourish our faith that we may grow in love for you and for each other, and nourish the world in your image through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

What we choose changes us.

Who we love transforms us.

How we create remakes us, and where we live reshapes us.

So in all our choosing, O God, make us wise.

In all our loving, O Christ, make us bold.

In all our creating, O Spirit, give us courage.

In all our living may we become whole.

And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be upon you, those whom you love, and those whom you pray for this day and forevermore.

Amen.

Hallelujah, hallelujah.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

Hallelujah.

Hallelujah.