 Collect of the Day - Proper 25 / Year C
By Rev. Heather J. Blais, Rector Today marks the end of Sunday Soup and Sandwiches. I found it fitting that the Collect of the Day, gatherers, or rather collects, our shared prayer that God might:
Because in March 2020, when an unknown virus locked us down in isolation, it was painful, but we knew we could sacrifice in person gatherings as a body of Christ for a short while. Just as we knew, that under no circumnstances, could we forsake the neighbors we serve and support through our core outreach ministries. At that moment, more than ever the Monday meal, essential goods, and socks would be needed. When another meal we supported needed to shut down due to the virus, we leaned into our collective wisdom, skills, resources and punted. Sharing our faith, hope, and charity to create a temporary meal until things opened back up. Walter Bruggeman wrote a book - Virus as a Summons to Faith - which was published on April 30, 2020. I remember reading it when it was published, and being amazed he could already be doing such deep theological reflection amidst the throws of the early days of the pandemic, when we still knew so little. In the book he reflects on how the global pandemic was a summons to the Church to lean more fully on our faith during a time of great uncertainty, doubt, change, and fear. Looking back - that’s exactly what happened. The virus summoned us to deepen our dependence on God and our understanding of how much community matters. It was this summons, this increasing dependence on God, that led us to take a leap into the unknown by launching a short term meal to support our neighbors as best we could on Sundays, in addition to our Monday meal. Five and a half years, and thousands of meals later, what is a ministry to do when the need keeps growing, but we sense God is calling us to make a shift? Well, we try like mad to see if there are other ways the meal can evolve, which our Sunday Soup and Sandwiches leaders did, very faithfully. And yet, it also became clear that sometimes something has to fully end before something new can be born. All we can do is end with intention and good communication, which we have strived to do this last year. We only hold one puzzle piece in a 10,000 piece 3D puzzle. We don’t know what is to come next to address hunger in our wider community. Yet just as we felt God calling us to take the leap and launch the meal, we again are being called to take the leap in concluding our Sunday meal. Trusting that in ways we cannot fully know or understand, God is in this too, breathing their Spirit on the greater community and world. While the uncertainty of living with Covid-19 has subsided, we are living in a different time of change and uncertainty. Just as the virus was a summons to faith, this time of change and uncertainty is another summons to faith. Our daily call is to keep leaning more deeply into our relationship with God, keep modeling our lives and community after Christ, and trust that the Spirit is at work in this world. Which brings us to this moment. As I thought and prayed about today, our worship, and the end of this outreach ministry, one thing kept rising to the surface. The most important thing we can do today is to say thank you to our Sunday Soup and Sandwich volunteers that are serving this final meal. Week after week, as we gathered for worship, they were busy next door in the Parish Hall making sandwiches, dishing out soup, and greeting neighbors. In doing so, they have helped share God’s love with our neighbors through a warm meal to carry them into the week. We as a faith community have never fully borne witness to this, as we are quite literally always in the middle of our worship. Which is why today, I’d like to not offer a full sermon. Instead I’d like to stop now, and have all who feel physically up to processing next door to the Parish Hall to do so. Together we can say thank you to those serving, offering a round of applause. Next week, we will offer a prayer of thanksgiving within our worship, for all who have been involved in this meal. So now, let us walk in love, as Christ loved us, and offer our thanks to God for the volunteers serving today and those served by this meal. May they know they are seen, valued, and appreciated by our community. Amen.
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 By Steve Houghton, Lay Preacher
Well good morning. The readings this morning give us a lot of advise about our responsibility for our actions. Jeremiah tells us there is change coming and good things are in store for Israel and part of that will no longer be children suffering for the sins of their parents but “all shall die for their own sins. . .” God is so persistent in holding relationship with us. If you read the whole Hebrew scripture you will see that Israel continuously, and Israel is standing in for all of us, Israel continuously fails to hold up their end of the covenant. Yet God, like the widow in the gospel, persistently says “Okay, how about we try it this way?” God goes on to say “I’d like you to offer me due respect but I would also like you to take care of each other in real ways.” That covenant was offered to the people when they were captives in Egypt and they broke it so many times in the desert. Golden calf, grumbling about food, water, general conditions all during the time in the desert and each time God would consistently come back, sometimes with punishment but always with a new chance. Once in the Promised Land it was the same thing, break the rules, do what you want and always God comes back with a way to mend the tear in the relationship; with a new covenant or a renewal of the old one. This time, though, God uses a new covenant that God writes on the hearts of God’s people and it will be within them, no one will have to teach it to them. You know that voice in the back of your head that speaks up when you are doing something you shouldn’t, yeah that one. That’s God’s voice speaking from your heart. You know what stands out to me in the Letter to Timothy that we just heard? “For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.” Sort of has a ring of the current times in my ears. We are walking away from the Covenant once again. God with God’s persistence and adherence to the Covenant waits for the the voice in our hearts to call us back to the relationship even through our itching ears. Again, I think, responsibility is settled on each of us individually for how we respond to returning to that covenant as God promises in Jeremiah. In the gospel we join Jesus heading for the final time to Jerusalem. We are halfway to the culmination of his ministry, “going through the region between Samaria and Galilee.” (Luke 17;11). Jesus’ teaching in this part of Luke almost seems frenetic to me, jumping from one topic to another in rapid succession, as though Jesus is anticipating the final days and wants desperately to get all of his understanding to his followers. Jesus does something sort of out of character for him in first telling us what he is teaching, “their need to pray always” and then giving us the parable of the unscrupulous judge and the persistent widow. Listen up, Jesus seems to say, you need to pray always and here is how important it is. Using the widow and the judge he demonstrates the power of constant prayer. She harangued the judge constantly to the point where she becomes a constant distraction to him and he rules in her favor. Those of you who have or have had children have a very clear understanding of what that looks like. “Mommy can I have a . . .” “Daddy all the kids have a . . . I need one too.” The chorus is repeated over and over and over and over again till we give in or something else more interesting happens. The importance of the needed thing slips away. Might that be part of what Jesus is trying to teach us here? Pray always. That has often been a stumbling block for me and many that I know. How do you carry on in life and still pray always? There are other things you need to think about to get through the day never mind your work life. Is this even a rational thought? As one of the members of our Preaching Guild said during one of our meetings, the repetition of prayer of petition leads to clarification of the real need and can send us in another more productive direction. One of the things that helped me to get my arms around the idea is a book of the writings of Brother Lawerence, a French, Carmelite monk who lived from 1614 to 1691. The book is called Living In The Presence of God and in it Brother Lawrence explains how he prays always in his daily life. It is living life aware of God’s presence. We sometimes come to the conclusion that prayer is always a petition for something we think we need. Prayer is much bigger than that. The Catechism in our Book of Common Prayer, you know that part near the back of the Book of Common Prayer that most of us, like me, unless we are dragged to it by a class or presentation or having to write a sermon, has a bit to say about Prayer. “Prayer” it says “is responding to God, by thought and by deeds, with or without words.” It goes on to say “The principal kinds of prayer are adoration, praise, thanksgiving, penitence, oblation, intercession, and petition.”(BCP p.856) Prayer can be thankfulness for what we have in our lives. It can be dedication of our work to God. That is the focus of Brother Lawrence. What I am doing right now, what ever that may be, is being done to the best of my ability for God. This kind of approach to the day’s activities makes everything a prayer. It can also lead to thankfulness for so many things that are part of the day and our lives that we wouldn’t normally think about or give thanks for. Charlie and I spent many summer vacations on the beach in Wells, Maine. Charlie loves the ocean and needs to get there as often as possible. As we were trying to make reservations one year we found that the rates for cottages had gone beyond what we could afford that year and I prayed, Petition, that we could find the money to still head to the ocean. As time went on it became clear that my prayers were not going to be answered the way I hoped they would be. In the meantime, Charlie had found a cabin on Moosehead Lake for a very reasonable amount of money and suggested we go there. I was disappointed that she would not have her time at the ocean but we had such a great time at Moosehead that we went there for several years in a row. Struggling with the situation in prayer had brought us to a better outcome. My petition was answered in a wonderful and totally unexpected way. Another reason for praying constantly is that it keeps God foremost in our daily lives. That I think is the crux of what I learned from Brother Lawerence. If when I seek an outcome other than the one in front of me and consider it prayerfully, I have a better perspective on what would be the more love centered, Jesus centered, way to respond. When I am doing anything, cutting the lawn, going grocery shopping, making deliveries or even washing dishes as Brother Lawerence describes and I do it to the best of my ability, with love, and with God in mind, my thoughts and actions are prayer and I am praying throughout the day. I am less apt to respond angrily to things that happen through the day. I am less apt to respond angrily to the actions of people I do or should love. When I am trying to engage the day in prayer I am less likely to over react when I get cut off in traffic. Don’t get me wrong, I still get mad but I get a reminder that this isn’t the end of the world and I should be able to put it behind me. Or when I was younger and one of the kids did something I reacted to angrily, I was better equipped to calm myself down before addressing the issue if I was praying constantly. To be honest I have not mastered praying always and there are days that I completely miss the mark. On the days when I do keep God in mind things work out better. When I was growing up my Mom and my grandmother would often say that God was watching me constantly and I should behave knowing that. Sound familiar? In a more adult approach it is that we ought to keep the values and principles we honor here on a Sunday morning all the days of the week. I think it keeps us better equipped to deal with the political and social divides we encounter daily. We will with God’s help? Maybe praying constantly is the answer to our current cultural quagmire. So in the coming week try praying constantly. No one is keeping score and you will be the only one who knows if and when and how often you succeed. Well God is watching all the time so . . . Seriously, verify what I am saying this morning and see if makes your days run smoother. And don’t be afraid to let me know if it made a difference or if, after trying it, you decide I’m just off my rocker. Amen  By David Sund, Lay Preacher
All-mighty and all-loving God, open our eyes to see your hands at work in your Word and in the world around us. Deliver us from the presumption of coming to you for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal. By your gracious Spirit make us one body in Christ, that we may worthily serve the world in his name. -- As I prepared this sermon I realized that while the settings and frequency very, I’ve been blathering away at lecterns like this for forty years now! Once I’m standing in spots like this, manuscript in hand, it’s usually ‘all systems go.’ I don’t know about my fellow lay-preachers, but I usually get most of my kvetching and panicking done ahead of time. Two weeks ago, I woke at three in the morning, pulse elevated, a bit sweaty: nightmare accomplished! In said nightmare, I was standing in the parlor of another of Greenfield’s old churches, without jacket or tie, or manuscript, Bible or leaflet. I was supposed to be preaching from today’s text but instead, I was refereeing a fierce squabble between senior citizen siblings who were complete strangers to me. Yes, I’m weird!!! And yes, human weirdness is the point of my opening paragraphs. Why do I do this nightmare inducing thing? What is this spooky thing we call a “Calling,” or vocation to preach? Or, why do I work all day in other people’s gardens, only to come home and do it some more? Why do I play board games when I’m rubbish at it? Why do I watch BBC news every evening when it inevitably leads to disappointment, hand-wringing frustration, and desperate prayer? Why do I anything? Simple answer? Again…I’m weird. But maybe we all are? I only say all this because the same can be said for the characters in today’s text from the Hebrew Scriptures. Few of the characters we read about in the II Kings story are two dimensional or easily pigeon-holed. They are all at least a little weird…that is to say they’re all multifaceted, complicated humans. I want to spend our next few minutes exploring these personalities. The first Bible stories I recall from childhood are those surrounding the amazing careers of Elijah, and his successor, Elisha, who shows up in today’s first text. As a child, I was star-struck by the prophets’ almost super-hero status. Today’s account marks just one of twenty miracles that shape Elisha’s narrative in the book of Second Kings. Moses is the only prophet associated with more miracles than Elisha. There are so many similarities to the miracles of the Gospels that many theologians refer to Elisha as a type or foreshadowing of Christ. After an edgy start, Elisha’s ministry was redemptive and constructive. It was without prejudice regarding status, gender, or ethnicity. Most of the time, he’s about feeding the hungry, rescuing the impoverished, protecting the vulnerable, healing the sick, gifting life, even resurrection life. He dispenses God’s transformational mercy and grace. There was lots of big drama, often in public forums. For Elisha, God is always ENOUGH. It would be easy to focus on Elisha today, to the point of eclipsing everyone else in the story! But there are other characters to consider. There’s Gehazi; the servant of Elisha. Gehazi plays a significant role in many of the Elisha stories, including today’s, but today his role is edited out by the lectionary. Here’s someone who’s had a front row seat to Elisha’s miraculous life, and even participated in it. But by the time we get to today’s text, greed and deceit have bitter consequences. For him, there’s no such thing as ENOUGH! His selfish choices make him a cautionary tale. Our narrator includes two kings. And while we can deduce their names from surrounding biblical texts, the narrator chooses not to include those names in this account. The royals are given little fanfare. The only sovereign worthy of the narrator’s attention is God. The kings of Damascus and Samaria only play bit parts to move the narrative forward. The King of Aram is all about expanding his territory. He’s a pragmatic bully who makes assumptions about Israel based on his own culture’s blurring of political and religious roles. His neighbors can safely bet that he is plotting against them, always picking fights he is sure he can win. The King of Israel, is a selfish, unprincipled creature who reduces life to a political and economic chessboard. He assumes he’s the most important piece on the board: he suspects everyone is a competitor and he is the inevitable target. He loves to play the petulant victim whenever he appears in II Kings. Of all the characters in today’s text, it’s interesting that the two kings are the most two-dimensional figures! They are short-term tyrants. And now for some other characters who have walk-on roles. In a movie depicting this miracle story, they would appear far down in the final credits. We are introduced to the general’s wife who functions as a means of connecting the dots between her anonymous slave girl’s gospel and her husband’s desperate need. The last anonymous walk-on happens when we get a brief glimpse of the servant who knows how to speak truth to power and survive the encounter. He’s careful to address the general with the confusing, familial title of “Father.” He addresses the general the same way Elisha used to address his mentor, Elijah, back in chapter two. Neither the servant nor Elisha were literal sons. “Father” was used as an expression of honor and respect. It indicated a close, long-standing relationship between apprentice and teacher, between a trusted retainer and a lord. The servant subtly recognizes the general as bold and brave, capable of accomplishing brave feats. He minimizes offended pride. The servant finesses his boss down from the ledge. He carefully maneuvers the general away from sabotaging his chance for a healing miracle merely because the general is all huffy over receiving second hand directions to take a bath in a dirty river, rather than being directly ministered to by the great prophet, or begged to take on an heroic quest. Next, I direct your attention to the complicated General Naaman. He’s truly a weird mix of personality traits. Naaman is a proud oppressor, a social climber valued for his military ruthlessness but also stigmatized by an incurable disease that can’t be disguised. He’s blinded by prejudice and enriched by exploitation. He is also a beloved head of household where we would expect him to be only loathed and feared. He can be convinced even in mid-tirade. He is deeply grateful and extravagantly generous once he experiences grace. Naaman is willing to embrace faith in this new deity who comes to his rescue, and vows almost exclusive devotion, in spite of coming from a background of polytheism that had almost no conception of divine/human intimacy and focused on use of sympathetic magic to manipulate capricious local deities. Before wrapping up the collection of character studies, I want to redirect your attention to the nameless female child who gets the whole ball rolling in this miracle story. She was born into an ancient patriarchal world where women and children were powerless chattel. She has been abducted, enslaved, trafficked. Here was a child, ripped from family and culture: a stranger trying to survive in a city of foreign strangers. It is no exaggeration to describe her as a victim in an horrific, dehumanizing system rife with all sorts of abuse. While I still cherish my childhood admiration for Elijah and Elisha; these days I’m feeling like the unsung miracle in II Kings, chapter five is this amazing girl. Without her agency, there is no good news, there is no healing miracle, there is no change of heart. Considering her circumstances, the little girl’s short sentence is weird indeed! (If by weird we mean unexpected, uncanny, out of the ordinary, or not aligning with expected behaviors or social norms.) Surely, the expected thing would be a victimized child, silenced by trauma or choosing quiet vindictiveness. Instead there is an expressed desire for her enemy’s wholeness. Her short sentence of Evangelism, or Good News was linguistically, simple, but so amazing! There was a bold confidence in a God who was real, a God who cared, a God who was capable, and a God who was ACCESSIBLE, thanks to Elisha’s famous ministry. I get someone like the prophet Jonah. Later on, he’ll appear on the scene, only reluctantly obeying God, preaching hope to the Assyrian capital of Nineveh. He may have been a spiritual “professional,” but he was also an adult who was acutely aware of current events and knew just how brutal, bloodthirsty and ruthless the Assyrians were. God insisted that he offer them a message of mercy. But Jonah’s commission comes subsequent to surviving the Assyrians ’annihilating blitzkrieg of his homeland. Is it any wonder he bought a one way boat ticket in the opposite direction? He WANTED to see the Assyrians go down for their atrocities. Ironically, rabbis inform us that Jonah’s name translates as “dove.” Picture the creature that brings the tiny olive sprig of hope to flood-weary Noah. But for Jonah, God’s grace toward Nineveh was a consummate disappointment! He wanted the Ninevehites to respond to his hell-fire and brimstone sermon with despair rather than hope. Again, for me, Jonah’s history only elevates the character of the enslaved child, the truly peaceable dove of II Kings 5. My challenge to each of us is that we examine ourselves in the light of the circumstances and example of the anonymous little girl. Do we see ourselves as powerless? Maybe we even imagine ourselves as victims in an out-of-control world? Do any of us have sure-fired plans to end bloodshed in Ukraine or any of the other global hotspots? Do any of us have the resources to feed the starving souls in Gaza or East Africa? Do any of us have the capacity to convince superpowers to reallocate and share resources, halt plagues, or restore ecosystems? After a single news cycle I’m tempted to curl up into a cocoon of disappointment, despair, doubt. I’m quick to abdicate ANY responsibility and cower behind a plea of helplessness. But the weird girl of our miracle story is a wonderful reminder that my rationalizations behind my moral impotence…are LIES. Let me repeat that: my rationalizations…behind my moral impotence are LIES. If a nameless child, who lived almost 3,000 years ago, can be remembered as a bold agent of change and transformation, then WE are without excuse! If we really believe that The Holy Spirit is alive and well in us, we are NOT powerless victims! We are enriched by grace! We are united in resurrection life! We are emboldened by divine direction! We can face our most dire circumstances with faithful, consistent prayer; bold, simple words; and loving acts. Just like that anonymous child we can be tiny agents of big, hopeful, transformational MIRACLES! And isn’t that wonderfully weird?  Luke 17:5-10
By Rev. Heather J. Blais, Rector Last Sunday, we explored the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Jesus shared this parable with his disciples, then and now, as a means of insisting we take inventory, considering: How are we doing at embracing our call to love God and our neighbor? Jesus goes on to convey the seriousness of this call by telling his disciples: “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come. It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble. Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.” (Luke 17:1-4) The emphatic urgency with which Jesus spoke these words would have caught the disciples' attention. It was noteworthy, even if they didn’t yet understand why. All these years later, we have the benefit of knowing what his disciples could not have known for certain. Jesus’ time was running out. They were nearing Jerusalem, where a trial and capital execution awaited him. With this context in mind, today’s gospel becomes a bit clearer. We can appreciate why the apostles’ would have pleaded: “Increase our faith!” It is a curious request. Especially if we take Paul’s teachings, which frequently focus on a life of faith, and set them aside to look strictly at the gospel. When we look to Luke’s Gospel, Jesus generally only references faith as something we either have or do not have. Which may be why he responds: “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” I don’t know about you - but help with gardening is not high on my prayer list, as cool as it would be to move shrubs and debris with my faith. Some commentators suggest his response is a way of telling the disciples - you're not asking the right question.* Faith is not something we can acquire and build up a hearty stock of, like toilet paper during the pandemic. Faith is our belief. It is our wholehearted trust; our leaning into something bigger than ourselves. Faith is our obedience. Obedience is a challenging concept for many of us - myself included. It has historically been used to subjugate those with less power, privilege, and prestige. Our opinions about obedience largely stem from how we understand authority. Authoritarian leadership - particularly in governance - teaches us that when we disobey an order or law, there will be punishment. Irrelevant of whether the order or law is just or unjust. Maternal or paternal authority - better known as clericalism in the Church - teaches us that Mother or Father knows best, infantilizing and disempowering the laity from ministry. Authoritative leaders like Jesus, receive power given to them, and humbly wield it. They expect maturity and cooperation, lean on reasoning, empower others; and in turn, are generally respected and followed. Holding all this in mind, what is the role of obedience in faith? In light of Jesus’ authoritative leadership, our obedience is our desire to comply with God’s call to love God and neighbor. We obey not because we fear punishment, but because we have been moved by the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, to live a life of love ourselves. We are compelled by our shared sacred duty to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. The only metric of our faith and faithfulness is our love. The question before every disciple is: will we accept our call to love God and our neighbor? Yes or no. Jesus does not demand perfection, but rather our intention. Will we embrace our call by striving to love God and neighbor, with God’s help and the support of our community? This is why it is so critical that we come together each week for worship - to pray, confess, forgive and be forgiven; to be nourished; to be empowered to go back out into the world, once more, doing our best to live faithfully. When Jesus describes how challenging this call is, his apostles respond with the plea, “Increase our faith!” Jesus responds by redirecting their understanding of the call. Faith is not something we consume and collect. It is something we either have or do not have. It is not something that will give us power to move plants or other cool tricks. Nor is faith given to us as a reward, as Jesus notes in his reference to the relationship between a slave and the one they serve. Increase our faith! However misunderstood the apostles' plea may have been, it does reflect a sincere desire that resonates with many of us. There are moments, days, weeks, and entire seasons of our journey where we have a keen awareness that we somehow need more faith. Maybe not because we need to have quantifiably more faith, as much as we become acutely aware of our desperate need for God’s presence, Christ’s love, and the Spirit’s wisdom in our lives. Particularly in holding challenging and painful realities, navigating the unknown, and even a sheer willingness to somehow keep going. This is the spirit behind Paul’s writings on faith, as we see in the letter that is attributed to him from our second lesson - 2 Timothy. It is this kernel of faith, merely the size of a mustard seed, Paul calls on us to guard and treasure with the help of the Holy Spirit. Increase our faith! The desire behind this plea is that as disciples we may live increasingly in love and obedience to God’s dream for this world. It might be more accurate to plead, Increase our Love! Increase our capacity to trust and love, setting aside our own ambitions, insecurities, egos, and grand plans. Living more fully into the Way of Love, and witnessing the abundance of God’s grace in this life. Last December, a colleague I respect encouraged me to be part of the bishop search process. After some prayer, and more than a little reluctance, I filled out the nomination form. I did so indicating I would like to be a member of the Transition Committee, which organizes a variety of events from the Meet and Greets all the way to the new bishop’s consecration. I specifically was not interested in the Search Committee, which without knowing why, somehow seemed like it would require more of my internal life than I was ready or able to give. Imagine my surprise when this trusted colleague, responsible for helping appoint the Search and Transition Committees called me and said, I know you indicated you wanted to be on the Transition Committee, but we are hoping you will Chair the Search Committee. It was a humbling moment. While I did not feel equipped, and was not clear I was called to this role or work, I had experienced a similar juncture before. I was quite sure I was not called to be a parish priest, and God chuckled. My spouse and I were fairly sure I was not called to serve former St. James as Priest-in-Charge, but the Spirit moved in startling ways through conversations with Search Committee members, and God laughed once more. Each time, even though I couldn’t make sense of what God was up to, I leaned into the ambiguous and confusing space. The only thing I knew for certain was that God is in it, and there beside us. All these years later, I give thanks for being wrong, and for having faith to lean into the ambiguous and confusing space with God beside us. It was in the spirit of those experiences, that I said yes. And for many weeks, my prayer life matched the apostles’ plea - Increase our faith! With time it became clear it was not a matter of needing more faith. Rather, the desire reflected an urgently felt need to increase my capacity to love, to mature and grow as a leader, and to depend on God alone by expanding and deepening my prayer practice. It was this expansion and deepening of my prayer life that guided my approach to our team’s work. Through it all, God was with us in the ambiguity, clearing just enough of the path forward to know fully the Spirit was our guide. The experience was a gift. One I will treasure, and hope to keep learning from in the years ahead. The most important lesson of our time may have been about communal prayer. Specifically what is possible when the Body of Christ, as a ministry team or a larger body, grounds its work in frequent prayer and thanksgiving, setting aside egos and agendas, sharing our gifts, and listening for the Spirit. One reason we were able to stay so grounded in prayer, is the Standing Committee appointed two chaplains to accompany us in our work. Our own Will Harron was one of the Chaplains, along with Rev. Julie Carson. Together, these chaplains supported us in our efforts to begin and end our work in prayer, to pause and pray at important moments in our conversations, and to return to God throughout each day together. The experience has made me curious about what it looks like to grow our prayer practice as a community, particularly within our ministry teams? Only time and prayer will tell. As we prepare to head back into the world today, I would invite us to continue reflecting on the meaning of faith.
Today’s Readings: Lamentations 1:1-6 Lamentations 3:19-26 2 Timothy 1:1-14 Luke 17:5-10 * Sermon Brainwave 1044: Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost - October 5, 2025 |
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