Pentecost 14 2021

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

Blessed be God's family, now and forever.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires are known, and from whom no secrets are hid.

Plans impossible by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit.

That we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify thy holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The Lord be with you.

And with thy Spirit.

Let us pray.

Grant, O merciful God, that your church, being gathered together in unity by your Holy Spirit, may show forth your power among all peoples to the glory of your name.

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

Amen.

And as you're being seated, all of our children are invited to join Alex in the back for Children's Chapel if you choose.

Solomon assembled the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the leaders of the ancestral houses of the Israelites, before King Solomon in Jerusalem to bring up the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord out of the city of David, which is Zion.

Then the priest brought the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord to its place in the inner sanctuary of the house, in the most holy place, underneath the wings of the cherubim.

And when the priest came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priest could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.

Then Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the assembly of Israel and spread out his hands to heaven.

He said, O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and steadfast love for your servants who walk before you with all their heart.

The covenant that you kept for your servant, my father David, as you declared to him, you promised with your mouth and have this day fulfilled with your hand.

Therefore, O Lord, God of Israel, keep for your servant, my father David, that which you promised him, saying, There shall never fail you a successor before me to sit on the throne of Israel, if only your children looked to their way to walk before me as you have walked before me.

Therefore, O God of Israel, let your word be confirmed, which you promised to your servant, my father David.

But will God indeed dwell on the earth?

Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built.

Regard your servant's prayer and his plea.

O Lord, my God, heeding the cry and the prayer that your servant prays to you today, that your eyes may be open night and day towards this house, the place of which you said, My name shall be there.

That you may heed the prayer that your servant prays over this place.

Hear the plea of your servant, and of your people Israel, when they pray towards this place.

O hear in heaven your dwelling place, heed and forgive.

Likewise, when a foreigner who is not of your people Israel comes from a distant land because of your name, for they shall hear of your great name, your mighty hand, and your outstretched arm.

When a foreigner comes and prays towards this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and so that they may know that your name has been invoked on this house that I have built.

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

Thanks be to God.

We will read responsibly by the half-verse.

How dear to me is your dwelling, O Lord of hosts.

My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord.

My heart and my flesh reach forwards in the living God.

The sparrow has found her a house, and the swallow a nest, where she may lay her young.

By the time of your altars, O Lord of hosts, my sovereign, my God.

Happy are they who dwell in your house.

They will always be praised of you.

Happy are the people whose strength is within you.

Those who go through the desolate valley will find it a place of springs.

They will climb from height to height, and the God of gods will appear in time.

Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer.

Hearken, O God of Jacob, behold our defender, O God.

And look upon the face of your mouth.

For one day in your courts is better than a thousand in my own room.

And to stand at the threshold of the house, and to dwell in the tents of the wicked.

For the Lord God is both son and shield.

The Lord will give grace and glory.

No good thing will the Lord withhold.

O Lord of hosts, the government.

Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Therefore, take up the whole armor of God so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything to stand firm.

Stand therefore and fasten the belt of truth around your waist and put on the breastplate of righteousness as shoes for your feet, put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.

With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.

Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication.

To that end, keep alert and always persevere in supplication over all the saints.

Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains.

Pray that I may declare it boldly as I must speak.

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

Thanks be to God.

Jesus said, Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.

Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.

This is the bread that came down from heaven.

Not like that which your ancestors ate and they died.

But the one who eats this bread will live forever.

He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.

When many of the disciples heard it, they said, This teaching is difficult.

Who can accept it?

But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, Does this offend you?

Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?

It is the Spirit that gives life.

The flesh is useless.

The words I've spoken to you are spirit and life, but among you there are some who do not believe.

For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him.

And he said, For this reason I've told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.

Because of this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.

So Jesus asked the twelve, Do you also wish to go away?

Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom can we go?

You have the words of eternal life.

We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Well, here we are, Lectionary Year C, reminder, we're on a three-year rotation of reading through wide swaths of the Bible together.

And in year C, we get to hear this phrase, I'm the bread of the life five weeks in a row.

Now that's a lot, and we've heard uh lots of different images, but I want to suggest to you one thing I haven't said.

It's possible Stacy said it when I wasn't here, is that the reason we hear this so often back to back to back is frankly because there's a lot wrapped up in it.

And if we were to only deal with it one week, we might miss a lot of the other nuancing that invites this into a holistic and healthy spirituality.

So here's a fun fact for you.

Um, where Jesus was living, the highlands of Israel, at the time he was doing his ministry, 90% of the daily diet of the average person was a two-pound loaf of bread.

90% of your nutritional intake was a two-pound loaf of bread.

This uh took women approximately five and a half hours each day to make daily bread.

Sometimes we think about bread so selectively because you know we have things like gluten intolerance, and maybe carbs aren't good for you, and we have a totally different mindset about this, but at the time of Jesus, bread was life every single day, like 90%.

And so when Jesus uses this image that I am the bread of life, he's not just talking about himself.

I suggest to you he's talking about God.

Remember, in Hebrew, God's name is I am, I am bread, like 90%.

And of course, what we're hearing today, and we could hear this, I suggest to you, um, in a way that I didn't think John intends, that we unfortunately have picked up, depending on the kind of spirituality you've been raised in.

We could hear this as, hey, your body doesn't matter, it's all about your spirit.

I was raised with the spirituality, it's rather unfortunate because we have this view that since uh we had to decide between meeting people's physical needs and their spiritual needs, concentrate on the spiritual.

So we would go and we would tell starving people, hey, accept the Lord as your personal Savior so you don't die soon of starvation and go to hell.

And we did not invest in their physical needs.

And I want to tell you, you could read Jesus that way today, the flesh is useless, but I think what he's really saying is, quite honestly, there is no such thing as your flesh on the one hand and your spirit on the other, spirits are embodied, and that's the promise of the incarnation.

That's the promise of our sacraments, the stuff matters.

And it's not an either-or.

The way we do this physically has not just a spiritual quantity, it has a spiritual quality.

And when we hear Paul write about powers and principalities, he's not talking about some kind of abstract red guys flying around the sky with spade tails and pitchforks and horns.

He's talking about spiritual qualities.

Sometimes we hear this language and we take it, sadly, we take it so literally that we forget to take it seriously.

Sometimes we hear these words and we hear about powers and principalities and the armor of God, and we we start to unfortunately enter into the imagination of some very recent churches, I mean in the last two or three hundred years, who have reimagined this to be some kind of spiritual plane where everything's important and the body's not important, and that could not be further from what Paul has in mind.

Could not be further from what Paul has in mind.

What ancient people were very adept in doing, that sometimes we don't give them enough credit for, is talking not just about physicality, but the qualities, the inward qualities, and this is what Paul has in mind when he uses words like power and principality.

I grew up in a tradition that raised me to hear when I were when I read the book of Revelation, and powers were described as an amalgam of beasts, like leopards and bears.

We took that some some kind of code, and instead, of course, what the author has in mind is that there are powers operating in the world that are ghastly, that are beastly.

Not literally, it's an inward description of the qualities of powers that strip humans of their dignity.

That do things like say, Oh friend, it's okay if you starve to death as long as you go to heaven when you die.

I cannot think of a more unhealthy spirituality than that one.

And this, I put to you, is what Ephesians warns us against.

Powers and principalities is really another word for saying things like Zeitgeist, Gefuhl in German.

This is like what romantics talked about, the deep feeling, the representative structures and power we use often as substitute words in English that end with the word ism.

Powers and principalities are racism and sexism and heterosexism and ageism.

Those are powers and principalities.

And what Paul warns us through his disciples, for what it's worth, most scholars don't believe Paul wrote Ephesians, they believe his disciples did.

What Paul warns us of secondhand is against focusing on a given individual when in fact all individuals are enmeshed in these powers greater than themselves.

It is true that some tyrants are better than others, but at the end of the day, tyranny is a power.

And so, if we fooled ourselves into thinking, ah, look, let's not pay attention to the structures, let's pay attention to their absolute specific embodity in a politician or a teacher or a coworker, what we're missing is that there is a spirituality in addition to the immediate physicality.

And the gospel, frankly, is not interested in us trading tyrants around.

The gospel is interested in structures being changed and being reconciled to the way God imagines them to be.

And that's so hard, I put to you, that we'll often just settle for switching the person in power.

We do it because it's convenient, not because it's right.

We do it because we don't know how to change powers.

We just know how to change their immediate expressions.

And here's the difficult thing about powers.

No individual person can overturn a power.

No individual person can reconcile racism in America.

No one person can do that.

And so because we don't have the power to do it on our own, we just say, well, nothing I can do, so what?

Or we choose to get mad at people who don't use language the way we do, and we write them off and we make enemies of them, and of course, what that means is we've submitted ourselves to the very powers and principalities that Paul is warning us against.

Structures.

I hope that's not news to you.

And the brokenness is evidence not of discreet individuals, but of powers and principalities.

And if we swap individuals and think we've done the Lord's work, we're deluded.

That's what Ephesians is telling us.

There are structures at work that are dehumanizing, that are suppressing, that are stripping human beings of the dignity that God intends.

And look, lest I sound like this is just political, I want to introduce you to a personal one that we operate in all the time.

Or I'll just say from myself, I find myself constantly paying homage to powers that destroy my spirituality.

And often I do this with one of the worst words in the English language, the S-word, and that is the word should.

You should do this.

I accomplish a lot from shoulds, but as I've mentioned to you, author uh Marshall Rosenberg in his book Nonviolent Communication says quite prophetically, the reward for doing everything you should do is depression.

The reward for being a good boy and a good girl is depression.

And I want to explain that to you so you can see the power behind it.

This week I went and got my hair cut by somebody who uh I went in and said, I don't know what to do with my hair.

And the person said to me, uh, your hair is really curly, and I have to tell you, I've never thought of my hair as curly.

I've also never had it this long before.

And the person pulled out each curl and cut them one at a time.

Now, this was new.

I've only ever had the hair cut where they comb your hair and they pull it all together and they get it the same length.

And of course, what I wanted to do when I got home is ask my wife, who is one of the people, like the four people, whose opinion of me.

Matters.

I'm clear on that.

I wanted to say, what do you think of my haircut?

By the way, when you ask somebody, what do you think about something I've already done?

That is paying homage to a power and principality, because what I want to do is connect with my wife, and when I ask, what do you think?

I'm creating a situation where I can't meet that need.

If she says, I think it's terrible, connection missed, real clear, right?

If she says, Oh, I love it, you should do it, you might think, oh, look, that connected you.

No.

Because what it reinforces is I need to come back to her for my approval again.

Now I've got to tell you, my life is dominated with that kind of power in principality thinking.

Because being on the treadmill of approval, it never stops.

Never.

And that is a power in principality.

Again, I put to you, how many times have you done something you're not certain about, but you did it?

And then you sabotage yourself by saying, What do you think?

Instead of, I had the courage to do that thing.

And I don't know if it's the best, but it's what I did, and I choose to enjoy it.

Or how often do we look outward instead of in the case of a haircut, in the case of remodel, spending time with ourselves and saying, But what do I think?

But what do I think?

We're so afraid, quite honestly, to leave it up to us that we'll submit to the powers and principalities of approval, which do not connect us with one another in any meaningful way.

Ninety percent of my diet is about evaluation and approval.

I'm gonna be honest with you.

Instead of eating the bread of life.

And this is all within our choosing.

How will we be nourished?

With manna in the wilderness, if you do, you'll die.

It's clear.

By the way, death isn't bad.

God didn't make us to live forever.

God made our bodies out of dirt, not out of iridium.

Right?

If we're supposed to live forever, iridium and titanium would be great choices.

The New Testament doesn't care that we're gonna die.

That's fine.

The New Testament worries about death with a capital D, that is being alienated from the selves God made us to be, from the selves of other people, from relationship with God.

That's death with a capital D.

And we've so confused the spirituality with the New Testament that we think it's all about what happens when we die, that we forget it's all about how we choose to live.

When you hear the words eternal life, the Bible is talking about the life you choose to live now, which continues after your body dies.

There is no way a loving God would like you to be miserable in your body until you die.

There is no way.

And it's a lie we've bought into spiritually.

It's a lie we've bought into that all that matters is what happens when we die because of those flying around red things.

And what we forget is that the most demonic forces in the world are the ways in which we judge one another and judge ourselves, the ways in which we denigrate one another and do it in God's name.

And here's the evidence that we believe in the sick spirituality.

The one thing Christians can never do is have communion together.

And that's the bread of life.

And we can't do it because we're sure everybody else does it wrong.

That's a power and a principality.

That's what the New Testament calls sin with a capital S.

Now, what does that have to do with Solomon?

Um, well, it depends on you.

I want to tell you something I never heard growing up, but that I've researched and learned.

I don't know if you've read the Bible before, but if you've read the first five books, uh Moses goes on top of a mountain and God says some pretty clear commands, right?

Like, I don't live in a place, so don't build a place for me.

Uh don't make any graven images, including things like bulls with altars on their back.

Don't make an altar and use any mortar.

You want to offer a sacrifice, do it in the field and walk on.

Because I don't live in one place.

If you've read that, it's pretty clear.

Then you read the story where Solomon is speaking for God and says, God, you're gonna live in this house I built you.

And I hope, I hope your feelers go off and say, err! What happened?

Let me tell you what happened.

You've heard of David, we've been talking about him a lot.

David grew up in a town called Bethlehem.

In Hebrew, Bethlehem means house of bread.

But um, turns out the Bethlehem David grew up in wasn't a Hebrew town.

It was a town by a group of other Semites called uh the Jebuzites.

And in the Jebusite language, Bethlehem doesn't mean house of bread, it means house of the god Laham.

See, it turns out the Jebusites um, I wanted to say polygamous, that's not right, but lived in multiple gods.

Oh, I can't believe this.

Polytheists, thank you.

Isn't it great getting older?

Um the Jebuzites were polytheists and they worshiped their gods in a house.

Jerusalem is a Jebutite city.

In Hebrew, it means city of peace.

That's ironic, isn't it?

In Jebusite language, it means city of the god Salim.

And Solomon's name is a little bit of a conjugation of that word Salim.

He's named after a pagan god.

Turns out when Solomon built that temple in the city of Salim, it was a scale model of the temple built to Baal in the town of Tyre.

The same people who built the temple to Baal came down and built the one in Jerusalem.

The same one exactly.

Twelve bulls with a basin on their back, when one of the Ten Commandments is no graven images.

And here's Solomon saying this really curious thing that reflects my spirituality that is very sick.

God, I don't know if you can be held in a house, but go ahead and stay there.

And whenever I ask you to do something, just go ahead and do it.

And when foreign people come here and they have to come here, do what they want too.

And something we don't realize is that the temple that Solomon built was one quarter of the size of the palace he built for himself, and it was connected in the corner.

You want to talk about separation of church and state?

Absolutely absent.

What Solomon did when he built this house for God was literally put God in this little box that he is king controlled, and it was a little box, a quarter the size of the box he lived in.

Now, to be fair, I'm not against holy places.

We all have them.

The Celtic tradition calls them thin places.

You know, places where you go and you just sort of feel this spirit.

That's not a halo thing.

That's a quality of a place in which you find yourself connected to the earth or God or yourself or somebody else.

It's a qualitative experience.

Where it starts to become sick is when we choose that we're going to control it and we're going to dictate what God does.

See, every week we say, our Father, who art in heaven, right?

Thy will be done.

But what we really mean is, God do what I think.

That's what we really mean.

And the proof is we come to God and say, God, you need to heal this person who's sick.

You need to do it.

I'm telling you, God, what to do.

Now I know you're thinking, Mike, I don't pray that way.

I'd ask you to consider whether you pray that way or not.

Truth is, I've got a lot of great ideas.

And if God would just listen to me, the world might actually be better than it is.

It might be.

Especially for me, it would be much better for me.

But don't you see?

That's a theology of powers and principalities.

Because so often I don't know whether I can cultivate love in my children, so I'll take obedience instead.

I don't know if you've ever found yourself in that parent trap.

I'll settle for what I control instead of what I actually want.

And that's a power and principality that operates in our lives and in our spirituality.

And Jesus says, you keep eating that bread.

We all know we're going to die one day, but you keep eating that bread, you're going to be dead in the world as you are.

Because there's no life in it.

And instead, you can eat the bread of life.

Now, I don't want to be silly because I'm going to say one other thing about this.

My first job in ministry when I was in seminary was in a narcotics anonymous facility for homeless black drug addicts in Atlanta.

I was 21 years old.

I had never seen drugs in my life because I was a good boy.

I gotta tell you, I so wish I could exercise a drug addiction out of a person in a moment.

I so wish I could pray over an alcoholic and the disease would leave them forever.

But if you know anything about addiction, that's not how it works.

The moment an addict says I'm better is the moment they're getting ready to go right back into addiction.

I wish it were easy and quick.

And that wish is a power and principality.

I'm gonna go back to bread.

It took women in the ancient world five and a half hours every day to take kernels of wheat and grind them and turn them into bread.

That was 90% of their nutrition.

Of course, what spirituality is all about is not the quick loaf, it's about the daily grind.

The daily grind.

And it's not women's work, it's our work.

Our work is to do the daily grind, which is not quick and not easy.

Our work is not about moments of extreme faith, it's about moments of being extremely faithful day by day by day, and that's where larger life is to be found.

Our work is about when we look at somebody and say, I hate your politics and I hate you, is to say, God deliver me from that power and principality.

The scriptures are clear.

If we can't, how can we love God who we haven't seen if we can't love our neighbor who we have seen?

That's the bread of life.

And as I've mentioned to you, that just takes a lot of energy.

And that's why we have communion every week instead of once a quarter.

It takes a lot of energy.

And I'm gonna tell you, you need it more than once a week.

These people, the time of Jesus, they were eating bread like three or four times a day.

And what Jesus is saying is every time you eat, period, don't just be nourished by that food.

But be nourished by God's presence in the food.

In the environment.

In your neighbor you can't stand.

Imagine if you could be nourished by God's presence in your neighbor that you can't stand, you'd never run out of energy.

And that's the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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 from true God, begotten, not made, 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 Pontius Pilate.

He suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures.

He ascended into 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, the 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 through 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 to come.

Amen.

For all people in their daily life and work.

For this community, for this nation and the world.

For all who work for justice, freedom, and peace.

For St.

Thomas the Apostle's School.

For those who teach and those who learn, that they may rejoice in the knowledge of your truth.

For the just and proper use of your creation.

For the victims of hunger, fear, injustice, and oppressive oppression.

For all who are in danger, sorrow, or any kind of trouble.

For those who minister to the sick, the friendless, and the needy.

For the peace and unity of the Church of God.

For all who proclaim the gospel and all who seek the truth.

For all bishops, priests and deacons, for the priests in our community, Mike, Jim, Craig, Bill, and Lillian, for Andy, Hector, Jeff, and Kay, our bishops.

In the diocesan cycle of prayer, for Christ the King, Atascosita, Good Shepherd, King Wood, and Good Shepherd Tom Ball.

And for Michael, our presiding bishop.

For all who serve God in his church.

For the special needs and concerns of this congregation, especially Chris, Sean, Jerome, Mickey, John, Lavon, Paxon, Rick, Nick, Martha, Janice, Lisa, and those the congregation wishes to name at this time, silently or aloud.

For your mercy is great.

We thank you, Lord, for all the blessings of this life.

We exalt you, O King, O God our King.

And praise your name forever and ever.

We pray for all who have died that they may have a place in your eternal kingdom, especially Betty Ann and Mark.

Lord, let your loving kindness be upon them.

Who put their trust in you.

We pray to you also for the forgiveness of our sins.

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

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

Amen.

Before God, with the people of God, we confess our brokenness to the ways we wound our lives, the lives of others, and the life of the world.

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

Amen.

The peace of the Lord be always with you.

And with thy spirit.

If you're new to us or hadn't done this before, uh, in the room right behind this one, we call it the Narthics, there are these little cards that say welcome.

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

And thank you for worshiping with us today.

Uh there were a few announcements I want to call to your attention, many of these you'll see in the e-news, but I think it's important to hear how our principal investment in this place, our facility, is being used as a house of prayer for all nations.

So many of you know that on Friday we hosted a funeral for truly one of the most amazing human beings I've ever met, Betty Ann Kraft.

Friday night we had a wedding rehearsal.

Last night we celebrated a wedding, hence the flowers for new members, um, Doug Somm and Marie McNair.

And in between and Chris Tall, we had a birthday party for a one-year-old.

And these are the ways you make this place a house of prayer for all nations.

Thank you for being welcoming to our community with your number one asset, our building.

Um I raise a couple opportunities, uh, one for service and one for study.

Uh on Wednesday, September the 1st, that's a week from this Wednesday, will be our next fresh food distribution with the Galveston County Food Bank.

They're closed for Labor Day weekend, so we normally do this on Saturday, but we're gonna do this Wednesday evening after school from 4 p.m.

until 6 p.m.

right out here in the parking lot.

You don't have to RSVP, you can just show up.

And of course, what we do is uh unload about$13,000 in retail fresh food into about 468 hungry mouths in our community in about an hour and 45 minutes.

So it is a wonderful opportunity to serve a week from this Wednesday.

Um Wednesday, we are uh really engaging this week in readings with a long-term Bible study of Genesis, Exodus, Luke, and Acts.

That happens Wednesday mornings right now on Zoom only.

Eventually we'll move when conditions allow to a hybrid setting.

Uh this goes from 9 in the morning till 10.15.

And sometimes you can't be there, so we record these.

We have a workbook that we go through.

If this appeals to you at all, please let me know because we're starting our readings in earnest this week, and we'll be reading these books up until April 5th.

Um I commend that opportunity to you.

Another fantastic thing that has happened this week is that our most visible ministry to the community, that is St.

Thomas Episcopal School, began.

It is so lovely.

To have more than 81 students in this place spread out each morning for chapel, which we have every day.

And you, of course, as parishioners are always invited to join our students for chapel.

It happens from 8:15 to 825, so it's short, any day you'd like.

On Tuesdays, the way we do this is that we have Holy Eucharist together.

And one of the things I love about our school, and I will go on video telling you this, we are the only school in the Diocese of Texas where our students serve one another the chalice.

We train our students.

What does it mean to hold that chalice?

What does it mean that that chalice holds the real presence and they serve one another?

On Thursday, we go through a modified morning prayer.

So if you don't know what that is, there's a morning prayer in our Book of Common Prayer that's meant to be a daily rhythm.

We do that together on Thursdays and on Fridays, we learn affirmative practices from different uh faith traditions in our world.

So right now our students are learning about Judaism, they're learning blessings for Shabbat and Hebrew, and throughout the year they'll learn practices that can enrich their own spirituality from Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism.

And so that happens on Friday mornings.

And this is your ministry to students who don't even know.

To thank you.

On their behalf, thank you.

It's so inspiring to be around students who are creative, inquisitive, and faithful as all children are.

And to make space for that in the sanctuary is how you make this a house of prayer for all nations.

So thank you for that.

I might be missing something.

Just check your e-news on Wednesday.

Continue to walk in love.

Oh no, I do want to tell you something else.

I do, it's important.

I want to tell you two things, actually.

One is that late last week, one of our parishioners, Karen McNamara, lost her husband quite suddenly.

And uh and Mark was young.

And um many people wonder what do I do?

How do I show care?

And I I don't say this enough, so I want you to know.

When somebody you love dies, people send you cards the first week, and then you don't hear anything.

So I I'd like to suggest to you this spiritual practice that when somebody you know and love dies, send the card and then put a date on your calendar, and three or four months later send another one.

Many of you know, if you've experienced a loss, the first several months are just numbing, dealing with things like Social Security and pensions and trusts and estates, and then there's no more cards.

So I want to tell you a healthy way you can come alongside people who are grieving is follow up with them three or four months down the road.

The other thing I want you to know, because it's really, really important, and uh this is something people like Betty Ann Kraft uh knew that we forget.

We're using right one right now, and we alternate each week.

And it's really easy for us to believe that words like the, thou, and thy are stilted traditional formal words, which is actually the opposite.

Back in the 1800s, English, just like German and Spanish and most other languages in the world, have two ways of addressing people in the second person: one that is intimate and one that's formal.

So in German, this is the z form for the formal and the due form for the intimate.

In Spanish, it's usted in the formal, and in the informal, intimate, it's two.

Right?

Turns out the, thou, and thy are English's equivalent of intimate address.

We think of them as formal and we're wrong.

If you want to know what changed it in the 1800s, the Quakers decided, since we're all created in God's image, we're gonna call everybody in the intimate.

And everybody else said, no, we're not.

We're only gonna use the formal.

So I want you to hear this language in a new way as we get ready to pray it.

When we say, and with thy spirit, it's intimate.

When we say, God is thou, it's intimate, not stilted.

So with that in mind, walk in love.

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

And of thine own have we given thee.

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 with thy spirit.

Lift up your hearts.

We lift them up unto the Lord.

Let us give thanks unto our Lord God.

It is meet and right so to do.

It is very meet-right in our bound in duty that we should at all times and in all places give thanks unto thee, O Lord, Holy Father Almighty, everlasting God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, according to whose true promise the Holy Ghost came down from heaven, lighting upon the disciples to teach them and lead them into all truth, uniting peoples with many languages and world views in the confession of one faith, giving to thy church the power to serve thee as a royal priesthood and to preach the gospel to all nations.

Therefore, with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, we lord and magnify thy glorious name, evermore praising thee and saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory.

Glory be to thee, O Lord most high.

Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.

All glory be to thee, O Lord our God, for that thou didst create heaven and earth, and didst make us in thine own image.

And of thy tender mercy didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to take our nature upon him, and to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption.

He made there a full and perfect sacrifice for the whole world, and did institute, and in his holy gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that, his precious death and sacrifice, until his coming again.

For in the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus took bread, and when he given thanks to thee, he broke it, gave it to his disciples, saying, Take, eat.

This is my body which is given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Likewise, after supper, Jesus took the cup of wine.

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

This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for all for the remission of sin.

Do this as oft as ye shall drink it in remembrance of me.

Wherefore, O Lord and Heavenly Father, we, thy people, do celebrate and make with these thy holy gifts, which we now offer unto thee, the memorial thy son hath commanded us to make, having in remembrance his blessed passion and precious death, his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension, and looking for his coming again with power and great glory.

We most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us, and with thy word and Holy Spirit to bless and sanctify these gifts of bread and wine, that there may be unto us the body and blood of our dearly beloved Son, Jesus Christ.

And we earnestly desire thy fatherly goodness to accept this, our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, whereby we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies.

Grant, we beseech thee that all who partake of this holy communion may worthily receive the most precious body and blood of thy Son, Jesus Christ, and be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction.

And also that we and all thy whole church may be made one body with Him, that He may dwell in us and we in Him, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, by whom and with whom and in whom, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honor and glory be unto thee, O Father Almighty, world without end.

Amen.

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

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

And now in the spirit of Pentecost, join me as we pray that same prayer, paraphrased by Sarah Breuer.

Loving Creator, we honor you, and we honor all that you have made.

Renew the whole world in the image of your love.

Give us what we need for today, and a hunger to see the whole world ahead.

Strengthen us for what lies ahead.

Heal us from the hurts of the past.

Give us courage to follow your call in this moment.

For your love is the only power, the only home, the only honor we need in this world and in the world to come.

Amen.

Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us.

Therefore, let us keep the peace.

Hallelujah.

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

Come and eat and drink joyfully, with the resolution and understanding that we will continue to struggle and that God will always sustain us if we sustain one another.

Come and feast.

Please come to the aisle closest to your right, down in six-foot intervals, and return to your seat on the fourth side.

We'll have two stations beginning here and beginning here.

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

And 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 for whom you pray this day and forevermore.

Amen.

Well, it's supposed to be an easy well.