 By Bill Hattendorf, Lay Preacher
Perhaps you’ve noticed that over the last five Sundays, we’ve been working our way through the Chapter 6 of the Gospel of John. However you feel about John, today is the end of that run for now. We’re back to the Gospel of Mark next Sunday. To put today’s lesson into context, allow me to bring back up some other pieces of this story. The Gospel of John, of course, is different from the other three in the New Testament. John’s is a gospel about the logos, or “Word.” It relates the history of the Word that it says was with God in the beginning (that phrasing being an allusion to the opening of Genesis). The synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) purport to provide “good news” which some folks see as an historical account of Jesus’s life, whereas John’s gospel could be called the spiritual gospel precisely because it tells the story of Jesus in symbolic ways that differ sharply at times from the other three. John’s existential theology is to simply believe (“credo” in Latin), rather than conform with Matthew’s “kingdom of heaven.” As the logos, John’s Jesus overcomes death, and his miracles are simply a means to show the people a sign that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah, a sign of God’s love for us, a sign that we can trust and believe in Him. The teaching of John is of self-sacrifice, of passion, of love, and of friendship. Jesus tells his followers to pursue the light and spread love and self-sacrifice. This is different from, say, Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount where Jesus commands his followers to love their enemies, rather than telling them to lay down their lives, out of love, for their friends. In John's gospel, Jesus dies on a different day than in Matthew, Mark and Luke’s … In the three synoptic gospels Jesus actually eats a passover meal before he dies, but in John's gospel he doesn't. John’s last supper is actually eaten before the beginning of passover, so there’s a different sequence of events leading up to the crucifixion for John's gospel. Matthew and Luke follow Mark closely by having Jesus crucified at the third hour (9 AM) on the day following the Passover feast. But John’s timeline you could say is different for theological reasons. It has Jesus taken to be crucified on the sixth hour (12 noon) on the day before the Passover feast. Let’s say that Passover begins at 6 o’clock with the evening meal, so in John, the day leading up to the Passover is the day when all the lambs are slaughtered and everyone goes to the temple to get their lamb for the passover meal. In Jerusalem this would have meant thousands of lambs being slaughtered all at one time. And in John’s gospel that's the day on which Jesus is crucified. So that quite dramatic scene in John’s gospel has Jesus hanging on the cross while the lambs are being slaughtered for passover. John’s gospel is forcing us, dramatically at least, in his storytelling mode, to think of Jesus as a passover lamb. Jesus doesn't eat a passover meal, Jesus is the passover meal, at least within the way that John tells the story. So this theme of the Lamb of God, the Passover symbolism, runs all through John’s gospel. From the very first scene in John when Jesus enters the story for the first time, John the Baptist sees him coming and says, “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” So the whole story is now bracketed by this one motif, the Lamb of God. And that’s the kind of symbolism that eventually becomes one of the most profound and dominant in all of Christian theological tradition. In just that small capsule we have a whole theological tradition of Jesus as the Lamb or God wrapped up. In the New Testament we see many pictures of Jesus. We see him as the Good Shepherd, the bread from heaven, the Word, and the vine. We learn about him in parables, and we puzzle over what those parables might mean. And, we’re in good company with our questions and wonderings. Even the disciples – Jesus’ closest followers – had questions, too. John's symbolism may be the most evocative as well as provocative in the New Testament. John’s language can seem intentionally antagonistic toward Jewish tradition and sensitivities. The idea of the Passover, of course, is very Jewish but John tends to turn some of those ideas against Jewish tradition. In today’s lesson, Jesus essentially says, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Later John notes “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” Jesus grosses them out with talk of consuming flesh and blood. The idea of drinking blood is absolutely abhorrent to Jewish dietary regulations. So the very language and the symbolism that is so rich within John's gospel also has a decidedly political tone to it in terms of the evolving relationship between Jews and Christians. John’s gospel is witness to a Christianity that’s moving further and further away from Jewish tradition. And in fact it’s seeing Jewish tradition often as actually hostile to the Christian movement. In John, we get a startlingly clear look at who Jesus is, which is why John is the favorite Gospel of many people. But, for all its beauty and imagery, today’s John 6 reading is also one of the most disturbing passages in the Bible. So disturbing, in fact, that it causes many of Jesus’ disciples – though not the twelve – to turn back from following him. Although Jesus’ words “I am the bread of life” are familiar to most Christians, in this passage the disciples declare this to be a “hard saying.” While the crowd was initially enthusiastic about the idea of Jesus as one like Moses who could provide a miraculous bread (the loaves and fishes), many find his teaching sufficiently “hard” that they turn away. What is it about Jesus’ teaching that they find difficult? Well, some interpreters think that Jesus’ disciples have only understood his words on a literal level. Although modern readers are conditioned to hear Jesus’ words about those “who eat my flesh and drink my blood” as a reference to the Lord’s Supper, the disciples at the time would have no experience of the Eucharist. This episode precedes the Last Supper. They reject Jesus’ teaching because they think that he is referring to cannibalism. However, it may make more sense to think about the narrative logic of what John is doing here. In the original manna story, the people’s response to God’s salvation is mixed. Although they initially herald the triumph of God in the Exodus, they immediately begin to “grumble” & “complain.” They don’t trust God to take care of them. Similarly, the group following Jesus initially receives the seemingly miraculous food of loaves and fishes and heralds Jesus as a prophet. But they also begin to “grumble” against Jesus and his teaching about the manna. It’s too hard. To partake of Jesus as manna involves a reliance on God. One way John expresses this throughout the Gospel is through the word “abide.” The same Greek word, meno, appears here, although it is often translated remain: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood remain in me and I in them.” Feeding on Jesus as manna means remaining or abiding with Jesus. It is through this proximity that Jesus brings life to those who eat. But “abiding” with Jesus is difficult. Staying with Jesus and learning from him is a long process. For many, a quick fix would be more attractive. The crowd initially attracted to Jesus – as a Moses figure who could work miracles – learn that Jesus is not offering an easy victory but the long road of discipleship. The twelve are the ones who “abide” with Jesus. They stick with him even though his teaching is difficult. (Although they, too, will scatter during the trial and crucifixion.) Here, they recognize Jesus’ words as life giving and do not turn away. In doing so, they represent what it means to trust that God will provide manna. They stick with Jesus, who is the manna, and they listen to his words. This is their only real option – much like the Israelites in the wilderness, whose only other option was to return to slavery: “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.” John tells us Jesus knows the disciples are finding this teaching to be especially difficult, and he calls them out. He asks them the question, “Does this offend you?” The Greek word also translates as “scandalize.” The disciples are offended by Jesus’ teaching. They are scandalized by it. John tells us, “Because of this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.” The truth he spoke was offensive. Scandalous. And they simply couldn’t accept it. Jesus then asks the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Theologian Soren Kierkegaard contends that there comes a point in our lives where we have to make a choice: to believe or be offended. But, before the choice can be made, there is tension. We are confronted by God with the scandal of God’s amazing and self-giving love, and we face a profound tension that will lead either to offense or belief. It is this tension that holds within it the beautiful possibility of faith. All of the disciples – the wider group and the twelve – face the difficult teaching of Jesus. When many of Jesus’ followers walk away. Jesus asks the twelve if they want to leave also. In the midst of the tension, Jesus sits with them and allows them to take it all in. Simon Peter answered, “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.” For Peter, profound tension was the beginning point of deep faith. Faced with the scandal of reliance on the very body and blood of Jesus, Peter found himself abiding in Christ. John 6 makes it clear that the Gospel is hard. It’s offensive. Are we offended? Are we scandalized? In this day and age, we are no strangers to scandal. We hear, almost daily, about the fall of celebrities, about people who have climbed to the top, only to have their deepest, darkest secrets exposed as they fall from lofty heights. Scandal after scandal is featured on the tablopids in the grocery check-out line. The good news of Jesus Christ is that the scandal of our sin is no match for the scandal of God’s self-giving love. The most amazing news of all is that the Word was made flesh and dwelled among us. The good news of the Gospel is that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus – nothing. I love the way Heather frequently closes this service by saying “Rest assured that God is infinitely more concerned by the promise for our future than the mistakes of our past.” The love of God in Christ is far more than we could ever believe or imagine. And confronted with that reality, we are shaken to the core. But Jesus not only speaks out and challenges us in the tension, he allows us to sit with it, too. So, will we be offended, or will we believe? Amen  By Rev. Heather J. Blais, Rector
Today is an exciting day for our faith community. We will be baptizing sweet Emmalina. Every baptism is an invitation for us to recall the meaning of this ritual, examine why we chose this life of faith, and to reflect on how we are living into our baptismal promises. Baptism is a ritual bath that welcomes one into Christ’s Church. Sometimes referred to as simply the Church (capital C); the body of Christ; the household of God; the Jesus Movement; or the Way of Love. It represents our unity with Christ in this life and in resurrection life; and is a reminder of God’s forgiveness and ceaseless love. Baptism is also an affirmation of the Holy Spirit’s place amongst us. She guides and sustain us as a faith community and in our personal walks of faith. Unfortunately, throughout the Church’s history, there has been some harmful theology around baptism. In particular, teachings about what happens if someone dies without being baptized. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had over the years, with folks who are anxious that a loved one, often a grandchild, is not baptized. Our family recently watched a pretty humorous depiction of this worry play out within a family on the show Young Sheldon. The parents were hounding their adult children to baptize their new granddaughter. When they finally became exasperated by their parents' relentless pushing, they informed their parents they would not be baptizing their little one. They didn’t practice the faiths they were raised in, and they wanted their daughter to make the choice for herself someday. Well, this answer did not fly with either grandmother. One was a devout Southern Baptist. She was terrified about what this might mean for her granddaughter’s soul. I think it’s fair to say she was equally terrified that the other grandmother, a practicing Roman Catholic, might convince the parents to baptize their daughter within the Roman Catholic church. In this comedy, even though Southern Baptists generally wait for baptism until adulthood, the pastor understood the grandmother’s sense of urgency. He actually agreed to a secret baptism in the family kitchen - a secret he and the grandmother were ready to take to the grave. Meanwhile, the following day, the Roman Catholic grandmother, encouraged her daughter to take some time to go buy herself something nice using her credit card, while she would take her granddaughter out for a walk in the stroller. Seems nice enough, right? Except it just so happened the Roman Catholic church was around the corner, and she stopped by for her own secret baptism. While these grandmothers were Southern Baptist and Roman Catholic, they could just as easily have been Episcopal and Methodist - the particular denominations are irrelevant to the story. Part of what made the unfolding dynamics so funny, was the stark reminder of our human capacity for catastrophizing and the lengths we will go to avoid exploring whether our fears hold any actual truth or not. It was irrelevant whether their granddaughter’s soul was actually in any kind of mortal danger, because like an alert for a tornado watch, these grandmothers could see the emergency that would soon unfold if they did not take action. The secret baptisms left both grandmothers feeling as though their granddaughter’s soul was saved, and maybe even more importantly baptized within the ‘right’ Christian denomination. Unfortunately, their comfort and peace of mind came at the cost of the autonomy of their adult children and granddaughter, as well as, the lack of a community promising to support this child on her faith journey. All the while perpetuating the harmful baptismal theology the institutional Church touted for centuries. Many of us were taught that should a child not be baptized, they would not get to experience resurrection life. But when we take a step back to examine how this teaching unfolded within the Church, it is helpful to remember that it arose from the institutional Church as it sought to ‘grow the church’ in numbers and resources, using fear as the motivaiton. These are the very behaviors and teachings that have left generations of folks questioning and rejecting the institutional Church. Every institution has its shadow side, and this is part of ours; as it does not reflect what we know about God’s nature throughout scripture. Scripture shows us, repeatedly, that our God is a God of transformative, unconditional love. Whether one has formally been marked in baptism, each and every person in this world is adopted, cherished, and loved by God. It can be hard to remember - about ourselves and others - but we are each beloved and beautiful children of God. And as we proclaim here each and every week - there is a place for all of us at God’s Table. No exceptions. Baptism is one of the many doorways or paths to God. At its best, baptism is an intentional act of love, a choice to walk this life in faith with the support of the community. A choice made in freedom, not to avoid an eternal ‘timeout’. The only real requirement or reason for baptism is a desire to be baptized. A desire to be part of this universal Church, that spans across time and space, and a desire to proclaim our intention to the world in thought, word, and deed. To say: I want to walk through this life with faith, hope, and love; to be a part of Christ’s Way of Love, that will help God’s dream for this world come into fruition; trusting in the knowledge that we are all children of God. And when infants are baptized, it is the parents or caregivers desire to raise their child this way. When we choose to baptize our child or to be baptized ourselves, we are choosing to acknowledge in a visible way, an inward truth of God’s grace. God’s grace that proclaims each and every person is a beloved and beautiful child of God. A truth that is there, with or without baptism, yet the act of the sacrament celebrates and lifts up this truth. The ritual bath and chrism oil symbolize it. The gathered community affirms God’s grace, the inherent goodness and worth of each and every person, while also promising to walk with the newly baptized in faith, now and always. Today, we baptize Emmalina. And her parents desire this sacrament for her for all the right reasons. We join them in celebrating the truth that Emmalina, and every child, is beloved and precious in God’s eyes. We wash and anoint her to make this truth visible, and to affirm her family’s choice to raise her to walk in the Way of Love with the support of her family, friends, and faith community. In a few minutes, we will all be invited to stand to reaffirm the promises of our baptism, what we refer to as the Baptismal Covenant. The Baptismal Covenant takes the shape of question and answer. We begin by affirming the Apostles’ Creed. The creed summarizes the basic teachings of our faith: that God created everything; that Jesus Christ lived; our faith in the Spirit, the universal Church, the communion of saints, that our sins are forgiven, and the promise of eternal life. Each of these three statements begins, I believe. In this instance, I believe, does not mean we are intellectually subscribing to something; rather it means, ‘I give my entire heart to this reality’. 1 We then make six specific promises, and these are big, bold, and beautiful ideals for us to strive to live into. We promise:
The only way we can really live into them is in the context of community, and by remembering the words we say when making these promises: I will, with God’s help. 2 Not I will; but, I will, with God’s help - which includes the help of our community. As we head back into the world later today, I wonder if we might explore:
 By Rev. Heather J. Blais, Rector
Last Sunday’s gospel lesson featured a handful of verses from John 6, generally known as ‘the bread of life discourse’. Our lesson today picks up with the provocative statement Jesus made at the end of that discourse: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Or as it says in the Message translation: …“I am the Bread of Life. The person who aligns with me hungers no more and thirsts no more, ever. I have told you this explicitly because even though you have seen me in action, you don’t really believe me. Every person the Father gives me eventually comes running to me. And once that person is with me, I hold on and don’t let go. I came down from heaven not to follow my own agenda but to accomplish the will of the One who sent me (6:35-38).” Today’s passage dives into the implications of this claim. It can be helpful to remember who Jesus was speaking to in the crowd. Several disciples were present, many of whom would leave as a result of this discourse. Many more were his childhood neighbors, all of whom would have known him to be Mary and Joseph’s son. Jesus was a familiar face, a kid who grew up in the neighborhood, in a community where everyone knew one another’s business. Except now that kid has grown up. He is claiming to be divine; here to act as God’s agent in the world by teaching God’s Way of Love, and expecting folks to follow him on the Way. It probably would have been difficult to take him seriously. Especially given most folks would have taken his words literally, and imagined Jesus was promoting cannibalism. Awkward and not at all in keeping with their Jewish tradition. At best his kinder and non-judgmental neighbors would have been concerned about his overall health and wellbeing. While the more judgmental neighbors would have rolled their eyes at one another and said, “There goes Joseph’s son again, thinking he is God.” Deep sigh. That said, when we reflect on Jesus’ metaphor, it is incredibly spot on. In my own experience, the truth of this metaphor resonates more deeply each year. Here’s why. Jesus was speaking to folks who were intimately familiar with poverty and hunger, and were living in an empire where they had little to no power or say. They needed to be frugal with their meager food supply, and a bad harvest or moldy stores of grain could be disastrous for households. Their very real hunger and thirst instilled in them the need to be resourceful in finding ways to sustain themselves. We see this same kind of frugality and resourcefulness in many neighbors who make use of our community meals and essential’s pantry. Folks find a way to take a meal or two and stretch it across a few days or to feed multiple mouths. Hunger, poverty, and the resulting marginalization is still all too real, even in our own backyard. As a faith community, we have chosen to be aware of this deep rooted hunger that so many folks face, including our own parishioners. We have chosen to do our small part to ease that hunger by offering meals, essentials, and given the even greater gift of offering our respect and seeing each person’s dignity; remembering each person is made in the image and likeness of God. When Jesus tells the crowd then, and us today, that “I am the bread of life” he is offering us the liberating truth that we can and will be sustained in body, mind, and spirit by our life giving God. Many of us have experienced times when the money we had did not seem like it could possibly cover the essentials. In those moments, we pray for God to help us find a way forward, and somehow, things always come together in ways we never could have planned. To be clear - this does not mean prayer leads to magic money, the power of positive thinking, or easy answers. Prayer is the truth that when we rely on God, our prayers will be answered in one way or another. Often in surprising ways:
This is equally true when we shift from physical hunger to spiritual hunger. Since the very beginning of the Jesus Movement, communities of seekers and believers have gathered each week to worship God. Communities gather as a body in worship for several reasons:
In my own faith journey, it was the experience of receiving communion each week that hooked me into following Jesus and embracing the Episcopal Church. To this day, receiving communion continues to bring a peace and calm that sustains me, while also defying all logic. I mean, how could a stale, dissolvable wafer and some taylor tawny port sustain anyone through the challenges of this life? I don’t know how, but Christ is really present in this spiritual meal, and it is a truth Christians have discovered again and again and again. Yet it took living through covid for some of us to realize just how important it is to gather as a body of Christ. It turns out the communion we create when we gather as a worshiping community is just as essential for spiritual nourishment. Because following the Way of Love is not a solo pilgrimage through the wilderness. It is something that Christians have been doing together since the very beginning of the Jesus Movement. While I imagine none of this is news to those walking the Way of Love, it is helpful to to reflect on Jesus words’: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” His words are offered both as a fact and as an invitation. Where are we seeking out nourishment in our lives? We all have resources we tap into during times of challenge, hunger, and need. Yet instead of seeking nourishment through prayer and community worship, we often will seek nourishment any and everywhere else. In my own faith journey, even as an occupational pray-er, I will routinely seek sustenance in places that lack nourishment (hello, Netflix and BBC), before getting a loving memo from God that a life of faith means turning to God, not a screen. I embarrassingly share this because I imagine I’m not alone. There are so many other bright and shiny ways our world invites us to seek nourishment, when in reality, these ways tend to leave us feeling emptier and hungrier than we were in the first place. There are also seasons when we do seem to get it right, and remember to go to God first, but then somewhere along the way, not on purpose, we get distracted and start looking for our sustenance elsewhere. It’s a pretty human thing. God knows we are easily distracted, and that like our friend Peter, we are frequently a bit slow on the uptake. That’s why I hope this week we will receive Jesus' words as an invitation to reflect:
 I wonder how many times you have read or heard the story of David and Bathsheba? It’s a story I’ve definitely been familiar with for a long time, and the way I have heard or read it has most often been from David’s perspective. David sees someone beautiful, someone who catches his attention, a woman he asks about, wanting to know more about- someone he deeply desires and (in his mind) who he needs to be with. David sends for Bathsheba, she comes to be with him, and she goes back home. And then, there is trouble- this isn’t going to be just a one-time tryst, as she is now pregnant. And this isn’t something that is going to be easily hidden or explained, as her husband Uriah is away. David tries to get out of this trouble by bringing Bathsheba’s husband back to her, but he stays away from her, and shows his integrity. He doesn’t think it’s right for him to enjoy being with her while his men are out and still in danger. So, David has to take more drastic action and sends Uriah out to the front lines, setting him up to be killed. And when we pick up the reading in today’s passage from the Hebrew Bible, it all works out for David, his problem is solved, Bathsheba becomes his wife and bears him a son. Phew- right?! Well, except for that last part of Chapter 11, the very end of verse 27- “But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord,” Whoops, David. So, God sends Nathan to help David understand, and how does he do that? By helping him see what he has done from the perspective of Uriah. So David comes to see that he has done something very wrong to Uriah and has sinned against God. We even see in Psalm 51 how very sorry David is and how he pleads with God to help him. I think it’s safe to say that we can all see, in looking at this story, that David did some awful, terrible, maybe some would say unforgivable, things. If we read it as presented from David’s perspective or even as Nathan presents it to David, recognizing Uriah’s perspective, it's awful, AND, unfortunately, when we look at it from Bathsheba’s perspective, it’s worse. Many of us were likely brought up with a patriarchal view of stories in the Bible. We are generally told the perspectives of the men in these stories and the women are referred to as property or possessions, when they’re included at all, except for a very select few. In fact, there exist interpretations which place the blame of seduction and adultery on Bathsheba. But, what if we look at this story through a different lens? Dr Wil Gafney, a prolific womanist theologian says, about Psalm 51, “It is ostensibly David’s psalm of repentance after his abduction, rape, and forced impregnation of Bathsheba, and his subsequent murder of her husband. Yet he does not mention her or his specific transgressions against her in it. To be fair, the biblical text constructs David’s sin as being against God and Uriah, her husband, but not against her.” So yes, the Bible lays it out for us with this patriarchal lens, but if we really look at what it says, David took Bathsheba because he could. He was the king. He saw someone he wanted, and without regard for who it would impact, he claimed her. He didn’t need a wife, he had at least 6, not to mention access to servants or prostitutes. He ended up taking everything from Uriah and he also took everything from Bathsheba. When David spotted Bathsheba and sent for her, she didn’t have the choice to say no. She was taken by and for David and then sent back home when he was done with her, where everything was now different- and that was just the beginning. David’s sin took the life of her husband (who honestly seemed like a pretty stand-up guy) and also the life of her yet unborn child. So what can we learn from this awful story? When Nathan comes to David and tells him the story about the beloved lamb of the poor man being taken by the rich man, it’s clear to David who is in the wrong. Whether David recognized the effect that his actions had on Bathsheba or only on her husband and God, he knows he is wrong and instead of denying it, he immediately recognizes it, owns it and also faces the consequences (as did the others involved). I wonder if it’s easy for us to write this off, finding comfort in feeling like what David did was far worse than anything we’ve ever done. But, what if instead, we looked at where we might have done something that resulted in others being wronged, and look at how we have owned up to our actions? Likely we’ve all had moments during which we may have been so driven by what we wanted that we ignored the impact on others- times when we might have told ourselves we needed something or deserved something because of a position of power or a certain role that we had, or because of something we had accomplished. But when we don’t consider our actions through lenses other than our own, we run the risk of harming others. Living where we live, in this time, in this city, in this country, we all carry privilege- it’s different for each of us, but it comes from our gender, our economic status, our appearance, our skin color, our upbringing, our life experience, our family background, the ableness of our bodies, our education, et cetera. If we’re not careful to consider the ramifications our actions- even our basic daily decisions about if and what to purchase, what we say, what we eat, what we wear, how we get around- hold consequences, some more present and immediate than others. And what about the sins of our nation, and the hundreds of years during which all humans weren’t valued the same? While our laws now don’t allow for this in an obvious way, this is still happening. And our ancestors’ lives still have great impact on our lives today- when the opportunities our ancestors had were vastly different from those of others, we aren’t starting on level ground. We continue to run into the consequences of our sins as a nation and it’s a scary thing. We are so divided, half of us think the other half is at fault, wrong and probably worse than that too. We can’t see eye to eye and we can’t understand each other. I believe there’s something in this story about what our role is going forward from here, like not being paralyzed by the fear of what is to come. David faces the consequences laid out before him and looks to God to help him work through it. Most of the time, we are likely not confronted with our behavior like David is here, but if we hold ourselves accountable, looking to God to help us find our role in changing things and recognize what gifts we have that we can contribute, we begin to move towards a better future for everyone. I see many of you in our church and in our community working diligently for what you believe in and encouraging each other to do the same! And also, looking to the future in the life of our country, it’s easy to feel hopeless, and I think for some of us it’s tempting to say something like what I read between David’s lines, “I won’t like this, but I’ll survive”. The thing is, even if we aren’t directly vulnerable, there are others who won’t survive- those whose lives will be made unsustainable. We all need to try to look at this from their perspective, through their lens. Who would those be? Those who are already facing challenges of poverty, those who rely on the systems currently in place to support themselves, those needing and unable to access reproductive healthcare, individuals seeking acknowledgment of unfair treatment that they still face today, LGBTQIA+ individuals who are outright persecuted for who they are. We can’t just sit back and let this happen. Now is the time to work to protect and look out for people around us who are or will be affected even more than we are. So what do we do? I think we need to ask ourselves, individually and as a community- whose perspective are we missing? Who has God placed in our lives, in our paths through whose lens we can see things differently? Whose voice is in danger of being silenced that we can listen for and amplify? What privilege do we have that we can use for the good of our siblings who might not have as much? How might the audience we have be affected by hearing other voices? How are we connected, how can we be more connected? In these next critical months, may we take seriously our place in God’s Beloved Community, and open our ears and eyes to the others here with us. May we look to God to help us keep our hearts and minds open and consider the perspectives of others in all that we do. And may God help us to see how we can use what we have and what we can access to help those who are in this Beloved Community with us. Amen. |
Mission
We believe God is calling us to cultivate a community of love, joy, hope, and healing. Jesus is our model for a life of faith, compassion, hospitality, and service. We strive to be affirming and accessible, welcoming and inclusive; we seek to promote reconciliation, exercise responsible stewardship, and embrace ancient traditions for modern lives.
Office HoursTuesday 9:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Thursday 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Friday 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Closed holidays Our gardens and grounds are open from dawn to dusk for the community to pray, rest, be. Please help us take care of this sacred space by following the outdoor ethic & principle of “leave no trace.” |
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