 by Rev. Dr. Molly Scherm
On my day spent with my grandson Elliot this week, we played several rounds of his current favorite board game, “Race to the Roof”. Like the old game Chutes and Ladders, each player tries to get to the end first, by rolling dice. In Race to the Roof, if you roll a six, you pick a card that has a picture of an object found somewhere in the house – the teddy bear in the baby’s room, the turkey on the dining room table, the first aid kit in the bathroom, and the like – and when you’ve found the pictured object you then move to that room, either gaining or losing ground in your journey to the roof. Elliot desperately wants to roll sixes: it’s the basic thrill of gambling, but I’ll give him credit that when a card sends him back to the basement, he’s good humored about it. At four years old, he’s inclined to roll the die off the table and, when I can’t see it, tell me he rolled a six. Sometimes when he rolls a one or two, he simply asks “Can I roll again?”. It's Elliot’s desire for “do-overs” that was surfacing in my mind as I sat with this morning’s gospel lesson this week. We all want and long for do-overs, for second chances when the dice have not given us what we wanted. But often enough, the do-overs we want are the chance to rectify the mistakes that result from our own actions Many of our errors in life result from hurrying, or from not paying enough attention. My colleagues in St. Andrew’s Guild know that we need lots of do-overs in knitting and stitching – when you find that you dropped a stitch several rows back, or sewed a seam with the fabric facing the wrong way. These are trivial do-overs. Some of our more serious life errors are also results of not paying enough attention, or from rushing or carelessness. But many of the choices we make that we’d like a second chance at are from acts that we knew at the time were problematic – when we tried doing something the easy way rather than the hard-but-right way, or when we are acting out of fear, or selfishness. Sometimes we’re fortunate and we get do-overs, but in the more serious mistakes, the do-overs are usually not as easy as re-rolling the die in a board game or picking up a dropped stitch. Anyone familiar with 12-Step Programs used by Alcoholics Anonymous and other addiction-recovery programs is aware that among the important steps practiced in recovering from addiction and moving toward wholeness is the work of acknowledging harm that one actions have caused, and making amends. We can begin to move on when the person we have hurt chooses to forgive us, in time, or when we are able to rebuild what we lost. The wisdom behind this practice in 12-Step programs is that our errors - when we don’t do the work of taking responsibility and making amends – can become toxic in our lives. They DO US spiritual harm. The regret, guilt and shame of our wrongdoings - or, perhaps, the delusional self justification we engage in as a means of escaping our guilt – can cause us to become the secondary casualties of our own mistakes. Doing the work of fixing things we did wrong the first time is deeply important. And tragically important is the fact that some mistakes can’t be undone, or made amends for, and the consequences can last a lifetime. I still think about a wonderful young man I worked with as a Student Leader in the dorm when I was on the faculty at Northfield Mount Hermon School. Not too long after his graduation he made the terrible mistake of driving under the influence and caused an accident that resulted in a death. I’m very sure that even having served a period of incarceration, he will never get over that mistake. *** What does this have to do with this 3rd Sunday of Easter? Today’s gospel from John is a wonderful, interesting story with lots of implications, but one of its themes is that it’s a do-over story, a story of Jesus’ providing the second chance that Simon Peter quite desperately needs. But first, a comment about historical context – Today’s gospel from John 21 is the third and final post resurrection appearance of Christ in John’s gospel. It immediately follows last week’s story of Jesus’ appearance to the disciples on the day of the resurrection, his gift of the Holy Spirit, and his appearance a week later to Thomas. Today’s breakfast on the beach is the ending of John’s Gospel. Do you remember how last week’s gospel ended? Here’s what we heard: Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. Sounds like the ending, doesn’t it? But then in the following chapter, today’s gospel, we hear that Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Galilee. It happened this way, And we hear about a disappointing fishing trip, a stranger on the shore giving advice, a miraculous catch, a breakfast cooked on a fire, and then an intimate and powerful exchange between the resurrected Christ and the disciple Peter. Scholars conclude that this 21st chapter of John, like the ending of Mark, is a later add-on to the gospel’s original form. It’s believed that what sounds like an ending after the Thomas story WAS the original ending. But the Johannine community, later, felt a need to tack on one more story (and at its end we get a second summary conclusion.) We can speculate on why this additional story was important – and many have – but one of the most compelling theories is that the community needed to account for Peter’s prominence in the leadership of the early church, especially in the light of the damning story of Peter’s denial of Jesus after Jesus’ arrest. Peter is the one who initiates the nighttime fishing expedition that brings up nothing but empty nets. When the stranger on the shore suggests where to drop the net that is then filled with fish, John exclaims to Peter, “It is the Lord!” Peter’s response - not unlike Adam and Eve in the Garden hiding themselves when God appears after they have eaten the fruit – is to cover himself and to jump out of the boat. Peter is frightened. Peter is ashamed. He is does not want to face the Master who predicted that Peter would deny him, and who Peter did, in fact, deny three times. Somehow, the return to shore and the need to haul in the net with its enormous catch enables Peter to get beyond his own distress and withdrawal, and he rejoins the group, now being fed the meal Jesus had prepared - a breakfast of fish and bread. It is after the meal has ended that the important moment comes: When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” Jesus asked Peter the question not the once, but three times. Did Peter notice the details that John wants us, as readers, to notice – that the triplicate question giving Peter the opportunity to affirm his relationship with Jesus is a parallel to that earlier moment when Peter did it wrong, both exchanges taking place around a charcoal fire? In the first instance Peter’s fear prevented him from owning his relationship. Finally, he is able to affirm that his bond with Jesus is that of love. Jesus is not only giving Peter a do-over, but he gives him the blessing of a purpose, as well: Feed my lambs. Feed my sheep. Jesus gives Peter the gift of forgiveness, but he also gives him the reason to move forward beyond the fear and shame that have paralyzed him, and he gives him the work that will fill up his moving beyond. And the story ends as it began, with Jesus’ invitation to Peter, to disciples, to us, to Follow me. Jesus’ final gift to disciples (in John) is gift of encouragement, of nourishment, of reminding them who they are, who they are called to follow and who they are called to be. Likewise, this is Jesus’ gift to us. In baptism we are commissioned to share life and ministry of Jesus, but remembering how to do it is hard. We fall short. Get sidetracked. We compromise. We fail to follow through. We get discouraged. We fall back to old ways, failing to bear witness to faith in living Christ. So WE need lots of do-overs. Jesus stands on shore saying “Try again”. “Put your net on the other side.” God looks beyond our failures. She not only accepts our shortcomings and invites us to try again, He not only feeds us, but God also invites us to give what we have - to bring ourselves, our skills & resources, our love – to the feast. As Jesus did with Peter, God gives us do-overs. God calls us to follow, to live in Christ, to feed God’s sheep. Alleluia, Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia.  By The Rev. Dr. Molly Scherm
Our readings this morning speak to us of unease, of longing, waiting, and lamenting. As is so often the case, scripture touches the realities we are living in our own lives. We’ve heard two stories. Both of them involve longing and waiting, and they shine a light on what it is to live in the complexities of being faithful. The first of the two stories involves a moment of encounter between God and Abram from the book of Genesis. Abram had been spoken to by God twice before, at this point, but while God had spoken, Abram had not responded with words. Now, Abram replies to God. He has a burning question, an unfulfilled longing he can no longer keep silence with: he has no heir, no inheritance. For Abram’s people, having “everlasting life” consisted in having the legacy of descendants to carry on one’s memory, and an estate to provide for them. At the point of today’s passage in Gen. 15, God had already promised heirs and land, but to Abram, the promise is not really real. He has heard God’s promises, but has no lived reality through which to make sense of them. For Abram, they are empty words. He has been faithful: he has followed God’s direction in leaving his home without knowing where he is going, traveled to places appointed, and continued through various challenges and hardships. But he is having an increasingly hard time trusting the promises when there has been no confirmation IN EXPERIENCE. Abram has been waiting, and waiting is eroding his confidence. So God reiterates the promise: “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be. I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.” But still Abram longs for a sign, and questions: "O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?" And so Abram and God enact a ritual. To us it is a pretty strange ritual, but it is customary to that time and culture. When two parties are making covenant, they jointly offer animal sacrifice, splitting animal carcasses into two and passing between them. The act symbolically states their willingness to suffer same fate as the split carcasses if they should dare to break their covenant promises. In the Genesis text, a flaming torch – foreshadowing the pillar of fire that will indicate God’s presence in leading Israelites in the wilderness after their delivery from Egypt – passes between the parts, signifying God’s commitment to God’s promises. The storyteller doesn’t tell us, however, whether Abram’s disquiet was eased by the vision. Today’s gospel also speaks of longing and of waiting Jesus’ daily ministry involved the work of healing, providing what was needed to those he met. He demonstrated the presence of God’s Realm, God’s Kingdom, breaking into the world by his acts of providing what was needed -
Jesus does these acts of deliverance and healing as demonstration of his message of God’s love and God’s nearness. At the point at which we listen in on today’s story, Jesus is also traveling gradually toward Jerusalem – the city that had historically rejected and killed the prophets. He had received recent news of Herod’s beheading of John the Baptizer, and now a group of Pharisees inform him that Herod wants to kill him. Jesus knows, in general at least, that this is the fate he is traveling toward, but has his own timetable. He has more work to do before his work is complete – today and tomorrow (he says)- … and on the third day I will finish my work. Third day refers to the time of resurrection. Jesus’ work includes his daily ministry AND his arrest and death and resurrection, which will allow his disciples to finally understand the whole point of his life and teaching, that God’s Realm is present here and now. Jesus’ ministry does not end with his death, but is completed on the third day. Just as Abram longed for an heir and a legacy, and for certainty regarding God’s promises, Jesus expresses, in response to the news of Herod’s dangerous intentions, his own longing. His response to the Pharisees’ reminder of what lies ahead is compassion.
Abram longs for an heir, a legacy, understanding of G’s promises. Herod longs to eliminate Jesus as a threat. Jesus longs to protect Jerusalem from its own worst inclinations. Longing for that which will bring us respite from the worries and fears of life is always a part of the human experience. Often we long for relief from the difficulties of our personal lives, for ourselves and those we love
In this time in the history of our nation and the world we are also living with tremendous anxiety (and often with anger) in relation to the ways in which the policies and practices of our nation have shifted. We read in the news, daily, of the loss of protection for the vulnerable in our nation and world, of the loss of livelihood for many, of the abandonment of measures that support the wellbeing of our environment. So, much of our longing, like Abram’s, is for assurance that the future is not as bleak as it looks. For Abram, and for the author of the psalm we sang together this morning, the answer is that we must maintain trust in God to provide what we need, and that we must accept God’s timetable, rather than our own. Honestly, it is hard to feel reassured by this when we see suffering, and fear that terrible mistakes are being made in our world. At the same time, there is some relief (for me, at least,) in knowing that even as we are obligated to do what we can do to work for what is right, at the end of the day, we can leave it in God’s hands. From Jesus we learn two things.
And in these troubling times, we need to up our games by calling out for the justice we long for, by sending our postcards to the White House, and calling our representatives, and signing petitions. As we continue to move forward with as much patience and hope as we can muster, let us remember and find comfort in the words of the psalm we have sung together this morning: The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear? One thing have I asked of the Lord; one thing I seek; * that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life; O tarry and await the Lord's pleasure; be strong, and God shall comfort your heart; * wait patiently for the Lord. Amen  The lectionary does an odd thing in these Easter weeks in the B cycle. You’ll recall that the lectionary, or schedule of lessons we’re assigned to read each Sunday, has three rotations. In the “A” year we mostly hear the gospel as Matthew tells it, with his emphasis on Jesus’ parables; in the “B” cycle – which we’re in this year – we mostly hear Mark’s version, a more fast-moving, action-oriented gospel; and then in the “C” year, we hear how Luke understands the gospel story, with his interest in Jesus’ outreach to society’s outsiders.
There’s no cycle for John. It’s quite a different account from the other three. John covers both less and more: it includes fewer stories of Jesus’ ministry – the healings, general teaching, and everyday encounters with people who came to see and hear him – but goes to much greater detail in those stories he does include in his narrative. It is only John who gives us some of the key accounts that give us insight into Jesus’ mission and ministry, including the wedding at Cana, the raising of Lazarus, the Samaritan woman to whom Jesus reveals his identity at the well, and the “doubting Thomas” incident we hear on the second Sunday of Easter every year. When the framers of the lectionary set it up, they spliced these unique passages from John into the Matthew, Mark, and Luke cycles so that we could benefit from hearing them even though – for whatever reason – John didn’t get a cycle year of its own. Which brings me back to my observation of the peculiarity of the lectionary’s structure in this “B” year’s Easter season. Instead of continuing with accounts of what was happening for the disciples in the time between the resurrection, the ascension and Pentecost, as would seem logical, the “B cycle” takes us back to hear Jesus’ words to the disciples at the Last Supper. Last Sunday, today, and next Sunday we hear excerpts from what is known as the “Farewell Discourses”, material that is unique to John’s gospel. As Heather suggested in her sermon last week, it is important to hear these passages in context, specifically, that they represent what John wants us to understand to be the final words that Jesus shared with his friends in the last hours before his arrest. Heather summarized it this way: “In the verses that precede our lesson, Jesus modeled for his disciples what it means to love one another by washing their feet. Now he is advising the disciples to abide, and in the verses that come immediately after our lesson, to love.” The repeated theme throughout the “Farewell Discourses”, as Heather pointed out, is relationship. Jesus emphasizes the relationships between himself and the disciples, a relationship that mirrors the relationship between himself and the Creator, his source and grounding, whom he referred to as “Father”. Jesus offered the metaphor that “I am the vine, and you are the branches”, conveying not only that the bonds between himself and his friends could not be broken, but that whole and complete life is not possible if one is cut off from the source that gives us life and enables us to “bear fruit”. These words of reassurance were undoubtedly intended to provide comfort for the disciples, an image to remember and hold onto in the days following his death and his eventual departure, when the loss of his physical presence could well feel like loss of the relationship. His words undoubtedly provided the same comfort and reassurance to the early Church community for whom John’s gospel was written, about 60 or 70 years later, as they suffered under persecutions by the Roman Empire. In the part of the passage that we have heard this morning, Jesus goes beyond emphasizing the relationship between the Father, himself, and the disciples: he reminds his friends of the love that is at the center of the relationship, and urges them to sustain it: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you” and “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” As Heather pointed out last week, throughout these farewell passages Jesus repeatedly entreats his friends to “abide” in him, and in his love, just as he abides in them, and, of course, in us. He uses the word “abide” eleven times in the eleven verses of this extended text. Even though we don’t use the word much ourselves, these days, we know what “abide” means. We know it means to dwell, to stay, to shelter, to inhabit a particular context or environment. “Abide” suggests calm, a restful place to dwell – we’d never say someone “abides” in prison, for example, or in a war zone. Cynthia Briggs Kittredge points out that dwelling or abiding is a theme throughout the whole Gospel of John. Discussing the opening verses of John, which declare that “the Word became flesh and lived among us”, she observes that the Greek more literally could be translated that the Word dwelt among us as in a tent.* “The Word pitched a tent or “camped out” among us”, she observes, “and showed us the embodiment of God’s love. In Jesus’ life, God’s love walked and talked among the people of first-century Galilee and Judea.”* And it is in God’s love that Jesus calls us to find our shelter, and then, to express that love to one another. “Abide in my love,” he says. “Make my love the house, the tent, the shelter in which you dwell and move around in,” he seems to say.* We all know how critical the place where we abide is. Thinking about our homes, when we have the resources to create a space that not only feels comfortable, but reflects our passions, our priorities, and our histories, we have a home base in which we can live with joy, and from which we can venture out boldly, and to which we can return for refreshment and renewal. On the other side of the coin, we’ve probably all had periods – hopefully brief ones – of living in spaces that were not our own and somehow felt alien or hostile, and we know how difficult it is to feel joy in our living there, or to thrive in our day to day life. We’ve also all lived through a pandemic in which our homes were both shelter and, which, at times felt somewhat suffocating. Jesus invites us to allow God’s love to provide us a safe, nurturing and empowering shelter. We can perhaps imagine Jesus elaborating, “Let my love be the foundation under your feet, let my love permeate the walls that shelter you, and let my love form the roof arching over your head.” And we know what it means to live grounded in Jesus’ love: We can live out of the dwelling of God’s love when we volunteer for Sunday Sandwiches or Second Helpings. We abide in God’s love when we call on a neighbor to check on how she is feeling. We do so when we work to reduce our carbon footprints. When we donate to humanitarian relief organizations that provide aid to those impacted by war. When we write emails to our local and national officials to express our concerns and solicit their action on the justice issues facing our communities and nation. When we abide in God’s love and strive to live as Jesus did, we are not satisfied to remain where we are. We recognize our own need to learn and to understand more deeply. We choose to engage with tough questions and try to bridge divides by listening to perspectives different from our own. The more that we can allow God’s love to be our dwelling place, our foundation and shelter, the more room we have to invite others to shelter there with us. In this season of resurrection, may we abide with Jesus in God’s love. May we find new ways and commit ourselves ever more fully to abiding in the love of the One who first loved us and who shows us how to love one another.
By The Rev. Dr. Molly Scherm  Copyright Greenfield Recorder, 2023 Most of you are probably aware, as I am, that we are preparing for a transition. In fact, we’ve already begun it. Today and next week are my last Sundays as Associate Rector at Saints James and Andrew, after which I will join the good folks of St. Mary’s in the Mountains in Wilmington, Vermont, in figuring out how to best live into the Gospel in that context.
Change is hard. Whether an upcoming change is something we’ve chosen, or it’s something that was chosen by someone else, and even when there are elements of what is coming that we are excited about, it’s difficult. Change involves the loss of the familiar. It magnifies the uncertainty – which we’re always living with, but often manage not to think about – the uncertainty of not knowing what lies ahead, and what it will be like, and how we’ll manage it. In these days of preparing for transition, of living with the challenges of change, it would have been lovely to hear a nice, uplifting set of readings. Well, as you may have noticed, we don’t always get what we’d like. This morning’s readings are, in fact, rather off-putting. First we heard the familiar story of the crossing of the Red Sea, as the people of Israel fled from their enslavement in Egypt. It was a great day for the Israelites, but not so much for the Egyptians, who wound up, as the narrative tells us, “dead on the seashore”. And then we heard Paul, in his letter to the Romans, lecturing about not showing judgement toward others. And finally, one of Jesus’ hard parables speaking to the question of forgiveness, with a servant handed over to be tortured because he was unwilling to forgive a neighbor’s relatively minor debt. Not very uplifting. But the scriptures always have something to say to us, so let’s dip in. Both Paul’s letter and Jesus’ parable are follow-ups to the texts we heard last week and both remind us of some of the worst of our human inclinations when we live in relationship with other people. Given that times of transition, when we may be feeling somewhat frail in our uncertainties, may be times when we are particularly prone to responding out of our less-generous proclivities, perhaps it’s good to be advised as we are by this morning’s lessons. As Heather helped us to understand last week, in his missive to the Church in Rome, Paul was addressing himself to Christ-believing Gentiles, those followers of Jesus who had come from traditions outside of Judaism but were practicing their new faith within the context of the Jewish synagogue in Rome. They did not feel as recognized or included as they would have wished, and Paul advised them of their responsibility to exercise patience and continually seek to love their neighbors, even as their neighbors were apparently not as hospitable as they could have been. In today’s continuation of this exhortation, Paul turns his attention to the believers’ inclination to judge others. Some within their community were committed to and practicing elements of Jewish tradition that Paul had declared to be no-longer-required for gentile converts, and the latter group were apparently frustrated and impatient that everybody was not on board with the program. Isn’t it just always the case that when we’re feeling vulnerable ourselves, the behavior of others can get on our nerves with particular intensity? So, as we live with the changes ahead, let’s take Paul’s advice to heart, and take deep breaths when we feel like passing judgement, and do our best to remember that judgement is God’s job, not ours. In the gospel passage we heard last week, Jesus provided guidelines for, likewise, handling conflicts and wrongdoing within the community of believers. He urged that when one member of the community does wrong to another, it can’t be swept under the carpet; communication and reconciliation need to take place. He emphasized the importance of accountability, teaching that the offending member should be spoken with by as many as necessary, including holding public discussion of the wrongdoing if it becomes necessary, until such time as the offender can acknowledge and understand their fault. In this morning’s gospel, Peter follows up on that teaching by asking about the obligation to forgive others’ wrongdoings. He must have felt magnanimous in suggesting that he should be willing to forgive seven times. Jesus’ reply was, basically, that we need to forgive past the point at which we can count. In other words Peter (and we ourselves) ALWAYS have to forgive, and we will never have forgiven “enough”. Jesus’ answer was followed with a distinctly disturbing parable. It’s about a king who shows mercy to servant who has accumulated an absolutely massive debt. The debt was more than the fellow could EVER hope to repay. After his initial impulse to hold the servant accountable and have him sold, along with all of his possessions and his entire family, the king suddenly and without explanation reversed course and declared the entire debt forgiven. The experience didn’t have the impact one would have expected on the person whose debt had been excused. Instead of paying forward the compassion he had been shown, the servant who had been forgiven, when he in turn ran across a fellow servant who owes HIM money, was adamant in demanding that he be repaid. The one who had been shown mercy, when his opportunity came, had no mercy at all, and arranged for his debtor to be thrown into prison. When the king learned of the first slave’s hard-heartedness, having received reports from the first servant’s offended colleagues, the king turned him over to be tortured. Jesus tells the story with a frequent and familiar introduction: “God’s Realm is like this”, and it’s not hard to understand the point. This parable-of-the-Kingdom reminds Peter – and us - how extraordinary it is that we, whose failings are numerous, are yet loved and accepted by God beyond our deserving or our comprehension. The parable asks us - how, then, can we fail to extend compassion and generosity to one another? It’s a beautiful principle, but we all know how hard forgiveness can be. Now, some offenses are really not too hard to forgive, and letting them go doesn’t cost much and even allows us to feel good about ourselves. Other wrongs can be so deeply disturbing and cause us so much pain that they feel utterly unforgiveable. Some of the wrongs we experience in life cause true, ongoing hurt every time we think about them and seem like they’ll never go away. Probably the place where forgiveness is hardest is where the other person won’t acknowledge or take responsibility for their wrongdoing, let alone apologize. Here's the thing, though, and I’ll bet we all know it: holding on to unforgiven hurts ultimately does more damage to the one who cannot forgive than it does to the wrongdoer. Nurturing resentment, hurt, and anger can become its own prison, leading us into bitterness and self-pity that separate us from others. Forgiveness, when we can offer it, frees us. Martin Luther King had it right: “Forgiveness is not an occasional act,” he said; “it is a constant attitude.” Jesus calls on us to live out of a spirit of generosity, just as God shows immeasurable generosity to us – not keeping a record of wrongs done to us and a tally what we are owed in compensation - but a spirit of compassion for the many ways in which we all stumble and fail, a spirit of readiness to extend new chances to others, to let them try again get it right, even if they don’t see the need to do so. *** Having said all of this, I also believe that accountability is critically important, and that “get out of jail free” cards are not always called for, and not always what is best for us. As an example, we live in a time, in this nation, when we need and are trying to come to terms with the deep and persistent wrongs – those of the past and those that continue - done by white America to our neighbors of color. Because of this depth and persistence of this wrongdoing, I see it as dangerous to hold up limitless forgiveness as an ideal. I don’t have easy answers, but I do feel that there are some principles that are consistent with the Gospel that we need to hold in tension with the mandate to forgive. Again, I don’t claim easy answers, but I think there are some principles we might apply when looking at the question of forgiving wrongdoings:
The changes ahead are going to require generosity, as well as patience, as we all find our ways. So let’s head into the transitions that lie ahead of us striving to live into and extend to others the inexhaustible generosity that has been extended to us. Let’s proceed with patience and thoughtfulness, recognizing that when things are messy and times are hard, it’s easy not to be our best selves. Let’s be gentle with ourselves and extend compassion to one another in ways that help us all to take responsibility for our acts and to live, more and more, into God’s dream for us. And let us do it with thanks for God’s grace. * Readings: https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp19_RCL.html |
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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.
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