Transformed and Transforming: Sermon for Easter 2 (John and Act)

Look at the change in the Christian community between our two texts this morning!  Look at the transformation that takes place between our story in the Gospel of John and the description in the Book of Acts!  In just a few short years, Jesus’s disciples have been completely transformed, from a frightened and uncertain group hiding from public view into a thriving community of worship and mission.  They experience the Risen Christ, and look where he takes them!      

Let’s look more closely at what our stories have to tell us, beginning with the gospel narrative in which Jesus appears to the disciples a week after his resurrection. And what are the disciples up to?  They’re hiding out!  Frightened, terrified actually, that they will be associated with the man who has been crucified for insurrection against the government.  Lost and bewildered: what are they to do without the leader they have come to depend upon?  Inside, behind locked doors – this does not look like a group with a lot of promise insofar as spreading the word of the resurrection is concerned.

And on their own – they are not.  Of course not. 

But Jesus appears in their midst—twice, as it turns out – and two things happen.  Two encounters, two conversations, in which they are transformed by his resurrected presence.

In the first encounter with Jesus, the disciples rejoice.  Of course they rejoice! Wouldn’t we, too, rejoice in the re-appearance of someone whom we deeply love who has died?  Rejoicing  would be the order of the day.  But there’s more to it than their own rejoicing, because Jesus has a commission for them:

“As the Father has sent me,” he says, “so I send you.

Send.  Pay attention that word, send.  It’s one of the most important words in the Bible.  Jesus sends.

The word in Greek, in the language in which this book was first written, is pempwo; it means to send, to insist that something – in this case, the good news of the resurrection and the unfolding kingdom of God – be carried or sent to others.  In Latin, the language into which it was first translated by the church,  the word is missio – mission, in English.  We might think that a mission is a plan, an idea for getting something done – but at its root, a mission is a sending.

Jesus sends.  Jesus does not say, “Oh, this is excellent  -- stay here, locked up by yourselves inside, and be afraid.  Don’t even try to go anywhere, because it’s too scary and challenging out there.”

No – Jesus does not say that at all.  Jesus says, “I send you!”  Get going.  Be bold! There is a whole world out there waiting for good news – I am sending you out to share it!

But there’s more.  More to these encounters, and more to what we are called to do, and to be. 

You may recall that one of this disciples is absent from this incredible, tremendous meeting.  And you may recall that when he returns and hears what has happened, Thomas says. “I don’t believe it.”  We get that, too, don’t we?  If I walked in here and told you that this morning I had seen someone who had recently died, seen them in the flesh and talked with them, you would not believe me.  “Show me,” says Thomas.  "I'm not going to believe this until I see Jesus for myself, and touch his wounds with my own hands.”

And so Jesus, who never leaves anyone behind – Jesus, who is always gathering people to himself – Jesus, who understands us, and understands our skepticism and our grief and our anger, because he is one of us – Jesus comes back for Thomas.  Jesus makes sure that Thomas has the experience of proof that he needs.

And Thomas?  Thomas’s response is, “My Lord and my God!”  “My Lord and My God!” What sort of response is that?  That’s a worshipful response.  That’s a response of praise and adoration and wonder and awe and humility.   That’s worship.

In this one short story, we have the essence of Christian life in community.  Worship, and mission.

When I was in seminary, we had to take a course called Missiology – the study of mission.  Who knew there was such a thing? (Not me!)  Now, I was not looking forward to this required course.  To me, the word mission was about something like missionaries – about sending people out to the far corners of the world to proclaim the news of Jesus Christ.  And that was not something that held any appeal for me.  As a former world history teacher, I knew a lot about the damage that had been done to cultures across the globe by Christian missionaries who so often though they knew best.  I didn’t think that I wanted to study missiology.

But, to my surprise, I loved that course.  I practically inhaled everything I learned in that course.  Because, as it turns out, mission does not mean setting yourself up as the expert and running roughshod over others in the process.  Mission means being sent – and in Christianity, it means being sent with the good news of the kingdom of God among us.

Our professor had a thesis for his course – a main idea.  And what he told us was this: That the church does a lot of things.  We do education, and spiritual formation, and we care for each other and we feed and clothe the needy, and we visit the sick, and sometimes we remember that we do those things in the name of Jesus and sometimes we don’t.  But his conclusion, his main idea, he told us, was that everything we do – everything – comes down to two main projects: Worship, and Mission. 

We worship, God, and God sends us into the world with the good news.  That’s what all of church -- all of who we are and who we are called to be --  that’s what it all comes down to: Worship, and Mission.  If we aren’t doing worship and mission, then we aren’t church.  If we aren’t transformed, if we don’t hear Jesus saying “I am sending you” and if we don’t follow Thomas in saying, “My Lord and my God!” – then we are not church.  If we are not, like those very first disciples, transformed by the Risen Christ from a huddle of frightened people clinging to one another into a community sent into the world, then we are not church. 

So how do we do this?  We are two little churches gathered here on this fine second Sunday of Easter – and how do we do this?  We are scared, aren’t we? – we are small in numbers, and low on funds, and we might close and we might disperse – we are in a tough spot, and where are we?  We’re inside, talking to each other!  How do we open ourselves up to become people transformed by the Risen Christ among us?  How do we open ourselves up to become transforming people, a community sent to transform our world? 

We start, I think by looking at what happened in the earliest church communities.  In our second reading today, from the Book of Acts, we are offered a glimpse of one of the first of these communities, a flourishing community in which – guess what? – people have been transformed themselves by the Risen Christ and are completely engaged in the transformation of their world.  They share, they care for the needy, and they proclaim the resurrected Christ.   Hiding out in upper rooms has come to an end.  The time for hanging out with only one another for company is long past.  Sharing the good news – witnessing to the resurrection in word and deed – that’s what the first churches are up to.

Now this early community – it sounds a little extreme  to us, doesn’t it? These folks own everything in common – no private property – and they sell their homes and use the proceeds to care for the needy.  A different world!  But let’s not let ourselves be stopped by the radical nature of their particular approach.  Let’s ask, instead, how can we adapt what we learn from them to our own circumstances? 

How can we, like the first churches, become people “of one heart and soul?” 

How can we, with this bold example before us, how can we ourselves, perhaps even as one congregation, become a community of worship and mission with “one heart and soul?”  How can we open our hearts during this sacred time, this time of Easter, of resurrection, of hope, of new life, of new possibilities – how can we open our hearts to the Jesus who walks among us?  How can we be transformed by his risen presence into a transforming people, a people who gather to worship and then welcome the invitation to be sent, to care not only for one another, but to practice kindness and to pursue justice in that big wide world out there?

This, my friends, is an important day for us all.  Today is a time to gather, to talk, to question, and to wonder, together.  It’s a day to pause, inside, to worship, to say in unison, “My Lord and my God,” an to take stock and allow our hearts to be cracked open by the Jesus who is here, stopping with us as we consider the future. 

But it’s also a day to recognize, with great joy, that as followers of the risen Christ, we are sent.    We are people who have been invited to the greatest of missions, the mission Dei, the mission of God.  The mission in which children are encouraged and the hungry are fed and the imprisoned are visited and the sick are attended to. 

Worship, and mission. They’re both right there in Scripture.  Their potential lies among people who are unsure and hesitant, but who recognize Jesus when he walks through the door. Their fulfillment lies among people who respond to the calling to be church, proclaiming the good news and serving the world.

That’s us, my friends: B and B Churches. Called to worship and to mission.  Called to be both transformed and transforming. 

Amen.

Rousing Renewal (Sermon: Acts 2 and Psalm 104)

Here we are, all together.  Women and men.  Black and white.  Older and younger.  All together in one place. Just like the followers of Jesus in the second chapter of the Book of Acts.

And just like them, we are a half-hopeful and expectant people,  -- a people whose lives deal us good days and bad days, joys and struggles -- but a people who gather in community longing for we-know-not what.  A people who wonder, when we join in worship, whether God might reach out to us.  Whether Jesus is present among us. Whether the Holy Spirit still wanders through the human story. 

Now: Imagine.  Imagine a wind rushing down the center aisle of the sanctuary, a strong wind, a wind like a gale force.  Imagine this wind tumbling throughout the sanctuary, so that the lights above us sway, the glass in the windows buckles, the pages of our bulletins and books fly out of our hands, our clothing swirls around our bodies, and our flower arrangements tumble to the floor.

And now, Imagine: Fire!  Fire that does not burn or consume, but fire that spreads around us, flames surrounding our communion table, bursts of light encircling each of us. “What is this that burns and yet is not consumed?” Where have you heard that before?  In the story of Moses and the burning bush, of course!  Moses is out tending his sheep and minding his own business when he comes upon a bush on fire, the means by which God has chosen to communicate with him, and he says to himself, “I need to stop and see why this bush is not burning up” (Exodus 3:1-15).  Imagine this building, flames pouring out the windows and through the roof, but nothing being destroyed.  Would the passers-by wonder, “Why is that building on fire and not burning up?”

Wind and fire – we would pay attention, would we not? We would be curious, probably fearful, perhaps awe-struck.  If a strong wind blew through our pews, we would not be able to continue with the service as we are accustomed to doing – sedately, quietly, even somewhat ponderously.  We might start running around trying to put things in order, but we would not just sit here. If bursts of flame surrounded appeared above our heads, we would not nod and go out – we would cry out in wonder and astonishment. 

Wind and fire – signs of the arrival of the Holy Spirit on the day we celebrate as Pentecost, the day we celebrate as the birthday of the church.  The day when God comes upon us to enliven and to encourage us and to teach and to renew us for life as God’s people. The day God comes among us as the Holy Spirit to rouse us to new life in Jesus Christ.

How do we, today, see the movement of the Holy Spirit among us?  Does the Spirit speak to us, 2,000 years after the Spirit’s dramatic arrival in Jerusalem?  Does the Spirit call our names, encircle us with energy, fill our hearts with fire?  We mark the day with red -- we have red paraments in the sanctuary today – red fabric on the communion table and on the pulpit and lectern, and arrangements of red flowers.  The Bible is opened to the second chapter of Acts, and some of us even remembered to wear red today.  But that’s all pretty tame, very Presbyterian decent and in order, in contrast to wind blowing things away in the sanctuary, and fire setting it all aflame?  We don’t feel the rush of the wind and or see the bright burn of flame.

Or do we? 

One of the most interesting things about the account of Pentecost in the book of Acts is its emphasis on communication among all peoples. On language – all sorts of languages – and on inclusiveness – all sorts of people. Listen to what’s going on, 2,000 years ago:

Jerusalem is filled with Jewish pilgrims from all over the world, there to celebrate the Feast of Shavuot.  Shavuot marks the day on which God gave the law the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, to the Jewish people, to Moses on Mount Sinai.  Shavuot is a feast of God’s self-revelation through the law.  (Isn’t that interesting?  Pentecost is a feast of God’s self-revelation through the Spirit, and happens on the anniversary of the gift of Torah. In the Jewish school in which I taught, everyone celebrates Shavuot by staying up all night to read all the way through Torah together. Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Leviticus, and Numbers – all night, every word, in Hebrew.  That makes for some sleepy students the next day! But it also makes for students who know that God has come among them, revealing Godself and calling them to be more of who they are, to be the people God longs for them to be.)

Back to the first Pentencost:  Jerusalem, where the Jewish people gathered to celebrate their great annual feasts, is filled with Jews from all over the place, which means that it is filled with people speaking different languages, the languages of their native homes towns and nations.  People crowded into streets and lodgings and shops, noisy and happy people, but people who need to communicate with gestures and body language as well as with words, because understanding is difficult to come by.  

And then - that rush of wind and burst of fire?  The astonishing arrival of Spirit in the midst of the people.  And what happens? The Galileans, the disciples of Jesus, begin to speak and preach of God’s mighty works – and everyone can understand them!  It seems that everyone hears the words as if in their own native languages.  Complete clarity of communication, of revelation.  Everyone can understand, everyone is included, every sort of person is included in the Spirit’s movement.  As Peter says, more or less quoting the prophet Joel,

“In the Last Days,” God says,

“I will pour out my Spirit on every kind of people:

Your sons will prophesy, also your daughters;

Your young men will see visions, your old men dream dreams.”

 

Every kind of people.  Gender, age, nationality, ethnicity – the distinctions we so often make?  Where the Spirit of God is concerned, all are included.

You can’t miss it, this movement of the Spirit, this expansiveness of God’s embrace, as the Bible recounts it.  The Bible’s story of the human family begins with two people, Adam and Eve, and slowly expands – to include a few more select individuals and their families and tribes – Noah and his family, Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and his descendants – until God forms a nation, adheres a people together by God’s self-revelation in the law, in Torah.  And then – and then Jesus comes, and discovers in himself a ministry expanding to all sorts of people, Jew and Gentile alike. And then – and then on Pentecost, God and Jesus send their Spirit and God is revealed in a way that all can understand. All individuals.  All nations.

That’s the beginning of the Spirit’s movement that we see in today’s story from Acts – that we are all here, all of us different and yet together, all of us included, all of us called to engagement, all of us roused to renewal.  That’s the beginning of the Spirit’s movement to form the community we call church.

But wait – hasn’t the Spirit been present all along?  Our God is a Trinitarian God, a Creator-Son-Spirit God.  A God who has been there, here, since Before.  A God whose Spirit has been and continues to be ever-present. 

And just as we are reminded of the Spirit’s presence winding through the human community by our passage from Acts, so we are reminded of the Spirit’s presence nurturing the earth by our Psalm of the day:

“When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground.”

The earth, too, is called to renewal by the Spirit. The earth is created when the Spirit is sent forth.

Psalm 104 is a joy-filled hymn of creation.  A psalm that reminds us that God has made all things,  that God delights in all things, and that God renews all things.  That the Spirit of God is intimately engaged in all creation and renewal: in the earth and the sea, in all the creatures that creep upon the earth and fill the waters, in all nourishment and fulfillment. Listen:  “when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust [but] when you send forth your spirit, they are created.”  The same Spirit that arrives in a rush of wind and fire and mingled voices on Pentecost was present at the creation of the earth and pours itself into the constant renewal of all the earth and of our lives.

Now, you might recall that we are doing a little formational work with the Psalms this month – with the prayerbook and songbook of the Bible.  As the Acts story of the first Pentecost reminds us, faith, Christian faith, is in one sense the learning of a language – the language of God’s revelation, of God’s people, of God’s relationship with us.  And the Book of Psalms is one of the most comprehensive introductions to that language.  It’s filled with the music of praise, the songs of lament, the melodies of history.  Does the Spirit blow through our lives? If we pray with the Psalms, it surely does. 

Last week, I sent you off with Sunday’s psalm and asked you to try three ways of praying with it on three different days.  Perhaps during the coffee hour some of you will share with me how that went?

This week I invite you, once again, to three readings, this time of our passage from Psalm 104:

On the first day, read through portion of the psalm in your bulletin, slowly, reverently, thoughtfully.

One another day, read it through again, maybe silently, maybe out loud, and look for a word or a phrase that catches your attention. Manifold.  Rejoice. Praise.  Leviathan.  Send forth your spirit. Any word or phrase at all. Let the Spirit speak to you as you read or listen for a word or phrase that catches your attention.

And on a third day, sit down for a few minutes and ponder your word or phrase. What comes to mind?  What memories? What daydreams?  Wishes? Hopes? Just take some time with your word of phrase and see where the Spirit blows. 

Because, yes – the Spirit still blows. The Spirit still sets the world afire. The Spirit still draws the human family together.  The Spirit still rouses us to renewal, in this building and out among the people of God  - who are all people.

We come to church so that we are reminded of the Spirit’s movement among us – today, with red in the sanctuary, with songs of the Spirit, with prayers calling us to see the Spirit at work.  We pray with Scripture so that we learn to recognize the activity of the Spirit – so that we see God’s delight in creation and know that it is, all of it, wildly and joyfully, birthed by the Spirit.  And then we go into the world because we have worshipped God in community and praised God in prayer and are compelled to by the Spirit to share – God’s wisdom, God’s goodness, God’s grace. Amen.

A Pentecost ~ Trinity Sermon

“Why are you Christians polytheists?”

That was a question my ninth graders often asked me, back when I taught in a Jewish school.  “Why are you Christians polytheists?”

Polytheism, the belief in many gods, was a standard ninth grade vocabulary word.  In ninth grade world history, we studied world religions, and so the students needed the vocabulary that would enable them to discuss the different ways in which people around the world experience faith.  The word "polytheism" most often came up in connection with Hinduism, since many Hindus believe in multiple gods – quite different from Buddhism, which for most Buddhists does not involve a belief in a god, a supreme being, as we understand God.

It’s the three Abrahamic religions – Judasim, Christianity, and Islam – the three religions which trace their ancestry to Abraham, which are monotheistic: religions of one God.  And yet, so often my Jewish students asked me, “Why are you Christians polytheists?”  And Muslims, who interpret our belief in Jesus as a belief in a “helping God,” think the same thing – that Christians do not believe in one God. 

That should give you some idea of how confusing the Christian concept of God as a Trinitarian God is.  The other monotheistic religions don’t understand it – and guess what, neither do we! 

We talk about the Trinity– we baptize, for instance, as Jesus instructed us to do, “in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”  That’s why our Affirmation of Faith today comes from the Presbyterian “Brief Statement of Faith” – because that rather lengthy brief statement – we seldom use all of it, and today’s no different – affirms our faith in a Trinitarian formula.

We sing about the Trinity --  that’s why we sang “Holy, Holy, Holy” this morning.  “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.”  The naval hymn, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save,” Is a Trinitarian hymn.  “Eternal Father, O Savior, O Holy Spirit, O Trinity” – those are the first words of its four verses.

We pray with the Trinity.  Catholic Christians end their prayers with the words, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”  We often address prayers to one or the other of the persons of the Trinity. 

So the concept of a Trinitarian God is one that we accept – but do we understand it?  Not so much. 

I tried explaining to my Jewish students that a God who is three-in-one resembles something that we understand about ourselves – that different facets of who we are appear in different situations.  You’re one person on the soccer field, I would tell them, and another in the classroom, and another at home with your parents.

Then I got to seminary and discovered that that was a totally wrong explanation.  It isn’t really true of humans, and it definitely isn’t true of God as Trinity.  My only solace lay in discovering that it’s the most frequent “totally wrong” explanation given by Christians.

I’ve heard others say that the Trinity is sort of a hierarchy of command:  God is in charge and gives orders to Jesus, who then transmits them to the Holy Spirit.   Nope.  That one’s also totally wrong.

It’s been popular in recent years to explain the Holy Spirit as a dance.  There’s a Greek word, perichoresis – perichoresis, and one of its meaning is “dance.” Maybe.  Or maybe not.  Some of the earliest Christians described the Trinity as a perichoresis, as an eternal dance  of each of the two persons around the third, and many preachers have picked up on that description in the last decade or so.  I think it’s delightful – but my seminary professors didn’t like that one either.   I won’t ask you to struggle through the explanation of why not –  let’s just say it has something to do with the Greek language.

So what is the Trinity?   It might be wise to say, “It’s a mystery,” and leave it at that.  But one thing we do know: It’s about relationship.  From the very  beginning, from before the very beginning as we know it, God was about relationship.  And we can detect that relationship through the winding journey on which Scripture takes us.  There’s no textbook definition in Scripture.  There’s no book in the Bible entitled An Explanation of the Trinity.  But the hints run throughout the narratives and poems and teachings and events.  The hints run through the great conversation about God and God’s creatures that we call Scripture.

Episcopal bishop Charles Robertson tells us that “a[] twelfth-century scholar, Richard of St. Vincent  . . . spoke of God in terms of shared love, a community in which that love is expansive and generous. It is love that cannot be self-contained. It overflows from Parent to Child to Spirit and back again. The love of God, the love that IS God is like a divine Dance [there’s that dance language!], a dynamic and graceful and deeply intimate movement. In this movement, the God who is "I AM" is not alone, never alone, for the very essence of God is relationship. . . . [W]hat we see in the Trinity is a dance of Persons who are mutually affirming, mutually caring. For the very essence of God is relationship, community, unconditional love.

“The very essence of God is relationship, community, unconditional love.”   What does that mean for us?

Most of us probably focus on one person of the Trinity, although that focus may change from time to time during our loves.  I know that for many people here, God is encountered and understood most often as a loving Father.  There are many others throughout the Christian world for whom God is a tender Mother.  For others, Jesus, the revealed face of God, the one who walks with us, converses with us, challenges us and cares for us, is the person through whom we know God.  And, as I’ve recently learned, at least several Nankin folks turn first to the Spirit, or understand God through the workings of the Spirit. 

And yet all of us are talking about and engaging with the One God.  The God who is three distinct persons and yet one person.  One God  -- not many gods, but one God. One God in relationship with all of Godself.

Last week, we celebrated Pentecost, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, one of the three persons of God/  I was over at Red Haw, and Pastor John was here,  and so I’m going to extend that celebration today so that we can ponder the Trinity, and especially the Holy Spirit, together.  Why?  Because I think that maybe we need to consider together God’s interruptions through the Spirit.

What happened at Pentecost? 

 

The disciples were waiting – waiting and waiting and waiting for they knew not what.  Jesus had promised to send the Spirit, but they had no idea what that was going to mean.  And then – woosh! Like the wind, and flames! of fire!  And suddenly, they could speak so that all could understand.  There it was, time for a big festival with people from all over the place pouring into Jerusalem, speaking all sorts of languages – and the Holy Spirit created new possibilities, made it possible for all to understand the words from God. 

 

All.  Everyone included. 

 

The Creator God who made all, the Son of God who came to redeem all, and now the Spirit of God who speaks to all.  In languages that each of them can understand. 

 

It’s a bit unsettling, isn’t it?  It’s one thing for the Trinitarian God to be in relationship among its own three persons, but it’s unsettling and distracting and downright troubling when the Spirit pulls all of us into the orbit of the Trinity.

 

Because we’re all different.  Each of us brings into the community of God who we are and who we are becoming.  We have different ideas.  We have different priorities.  We speak different languages.  And yet we are called to be in relationship.  In community.

 

One of the things in particular that I, and some of you, have learned is that we speak different languages about God.    We use different words for salvation.  We have different ideas about what’s important in the life of faith. 

 

And it’s not nearly as easy as it might seem, from the story of the first Pentecost, for us to deal with our varied points of view and our different jumping off spots and landing places, and to give one another the benefit of the doubt.  When the Holy Spirit interrupts – by bringing us together in challenging relationships, by introducing new ideas into our lives, by asking us to grow in ways we hadn’t been planning to grow – when God interrupts us through the wind and fire of the Holy Spirit, it can be mighty uncomfortable.

 

But let me tell you ~ there aren’t a whole lot of things I know for sure, to use a phrase that Oprah seems to have coined ~ but there is one: when life becomes challenging in unexpected ways, when people make surprising statements, when we find ourselves invited into places we had no intention of going: then the Holy Spirit is at work, just as it was on that first Pentecost morning.

 

On that first Pentecost morning, Jesus’ followers got their first taste of the Holy Spirit at work.  

 

It probably wasn’t what they were expecting.    It was probably a most unsettling experience.  Wind!  Fire! Speaking words they didn’t understand!  So dizzying in its effects that people watching them thought they were drunk.   And so dizzying in its message – this is for everyone!  This is what God’s grace looks like ~ extended to everyone  ~  that they must have been filled with questions and wondered how in the world their Christian faith was going to encompass all peoples.  All peoples, with our different languages and backgrounds and understandings.

How in the world indeed?  It’s an unsettling question, and the answer is unsettling as well.  Because the answer is that God, our creative, redeeming, and sustaining God, our Trinitarian God, is going to rush in like the wind to interrupt us in whatever we think we are doing and is going to light the place up with the fire of new questions, new possibilities, and new hope ~ always, always, always, with new hope that we will love God and that we will love one another across barriers that at first seem impossible to surmount. 

Remember  ~ it’s the sense of interruption, the sense of the unexpected, the sense of surprise ~~ and sometimes even the sense of confusion and dismay that everything won’t be exactly as it always was ~  which tell you that the Holy Spirit is at work.   And what is the Holy Spirit doing?

It’s telling us, egging us on, surprising us with the news that we, like our Trinitarian God, are designed for relationship.  That we are called to be in community.  That the very things with which we struggle are the things with which God works best.  That God creates unity ~ not sameness, not rigidity, not identical little automations, but unity in love ~ out of diversity, because God as Trinity is unity in diversity.  

So let the winds of the Spirit blow!  Let the flames of the Spirit burn!  And embrace the interruptions of our Three-in-One God!  Amen.

Warm-Up for Lent

This morning I was able to worship at my home church. I'm so glad I got myself over there; last night's snowfall made the prospect of staying home an extremely tempting one.

Some of the highlights:

Sitting between and talking with two friends with whom I've worked many times, one a middle school band teacher and the other a big-firm attorney, both of them men  passionately committed to the mission of the church;

A lively and moving rendition of the spiritual Ride the Chariot by the men of the choir, with a spectacular solo by a high school senior;

A dynamite sermon by our senior pastor on Acts 19: 23-28,* urging us to remember the both-and-ness of our call:  to live on the margins and to draw others to the center, and to be disturbed indeed about issues of justice and inclusion;

A terrific offering anthem described in the bulletin as a dithyramb, a  wild passionate Indian hymn using just one syllable to express uninhibited festivity on this last Sunday before Lent;

More conversations after church with friends whom I seldom see these days.

Look at those adjectives I used:  lively, moving, spectacular, dynamite, terrific. It was wonderful to worship without leadership responsibility in a service that was so filled with energy and variety and community.  

*We are off-lectionary these days, as the adult education classes are studying the Book of Acts, in part because it was just a good idea and in part because a group is leaving for Turkey in a few weeks.  Our pastors committed themselves to a preaching schedule that both accompanies the study and gives us all a taste of the texts that relate to the pilgrimage, which will trace some of Paul's steps.

Image: The Great Theatre at Ephesus, here, where the great riot against Paul took place 

and where I am not going anytime soon.