"All that I am and all that I have"

“All that I am and All that I have” 

When Cindy and I exchanged rings at our wedding ceremony 39 years ago, we said what the Book of Common Prayer asked us to say; “I give you this ring as a symbol of my vow and with all that I am and all that I have, I honor you, in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” (Book of Common Prayer p. 427)

“All that I am and all that I have”. 

We all belong to one another and moreover we belong to God with “all that we are and all that we have.” 

We come to the time when we launch our Membership and Pledge campaign. I ask you to pray about these things. We are members of Christ and of one another. We are Christ’s Body; the Church, as my namesake tells us in Scripture (Romans 12 and I Corinthians 12). As you pray about your Membership and your Pledge, I ask you also to pray about how you may reach out to family, friends, neighbors and to perfect strangers. How indeed are we to fill the earth with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea? (Habakkuk 2:14)

How might we reach out and exercise our ministry of Invitation? As “Jesus reached out his loving arms on the hard wood of the cross”, (Book of Common Prayer p. 101),  how might we reach out our loving arms to all? The invitation to belong to Jesus is not just to ourselves when we pledge and renew our church membership, but also to others as we seek to extend Christ’s Reign here on earth.

I needn’t tell you how urgent a matter it is to extend the Reign of God. Recent shootings in a house of worship in Pittsburg and in a night club in California remind us how urgent a matter it is to proclaim the love of God and the power of Jesus to heal us of all our soul’s diseases. 

Too many have turned away from that love. There is too much hate, anger and vitriol in our public discourse. There is too much untreated mental illness. We send our young off to war and when they come home they are left too often to put the pieces of their broken lives together all by themselves. We cannot wash our hands of any of these social ills.

The time for conversation is upon us. The time for invitation is now: a time to love, to forgive, to reconcile. And it is an urgent matter. The idea of Membership in Christ and generosity to the Church’s work is not a trivial matter but central to our core Mission. 

In our families, among our friends, and perfect strangers! All people, by whatever race, ethnicity, gender, orientation, class or language belong to God. 

We do not belong to ourselves. We belong to God. 

The Poor Widow recognized this simple fact. She had two copper coins worth a penny. She gave it all to God. She belongs to God forever in the same way that we all do.

I was pleased to see that a significant number of Native Americans have been added to the House of Representatives in Tuesday’s election. When their land was taken away from them they were presented with a perplexity. In much of Native American culture, the land does not “belong” to anybody. This is why having an address is so foreign to many tribes. The land belongs “The Great Spirit”, the One we call God. We are but sojourners on the land. Anyone therefore who thinks that it “belongs” to them is laboring under an an exaggeration of self importance.

For example, Chief Seattle was asked to give large tracts of land to the White Man. He responded with his famous oration in 1854. It is one of the few statements recorded for posterity which helps us understand how those native to this land viewed “ownership”. Listen to his words;

“Yonder sky has wept tears of compassion upon my people for centuries untold, and to us appears changeless and eternal…Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains…Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man…cannot be exempt from the common destiny of humankind. We the Red Man and you the White Man may be brothers after all. We will see. Let your Great Chief be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless…To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground…Dead, did I say? No! There is no death, only a change of worlds.”

Chief Seattle recognized that everything, including our very lives are on loan to us. Furthermore he recognized that all tribes, nations and peoples are under the same God. It is futile for us to think of God as belonging to the White man or to the Red Man to the exclusion of others. God is as universal to the human condition as is the water with which life itself flows within us. 

The Book of Ruth is a Biblical case in point. Ruth is a Moabite woman; a foreigner. But she weds Boaz an Israelite. Their child Obed, became the father of Jesse, Jesse the father of David, and in a long line of ancestors Jesus is born under a Bright beautiful Star in Bethlehem. Jesus is a blend of blood lines, and becomes author of Salvation for ALL PEOPLE. 

The universal work of salvation that the Bible proclaims is true for all. We humans are still having difficulty in figuring out how generous God is to no matter who we are or where we are from.

The Poor Widow understood God’s generosity. Jesus pointed out when she put her copper coins worth but a penny into the treasury, she gave God, all that she was and all that she had.

So then whether we give large sums or two copper coins, we recognize that what we have is not ours to give, but a response to God’s generosity to us in the first place. 

All we are and all that we have belongs to God. 

If you are rich and you can give vast sums, thank you. I suspect that most of you, however are something less than rich. Thank you for your generosity. If you are poor, and you have never pledged before, that’s fine. Begin today with two copper coins. If you don’t have two begin with one. And thank you.

Jesus is watching you place who you are and what you have into God’s treasury. And Jesus alone recognizes how poor we are. Each and every one of us like the poor widow; “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

With all that I am and all that I have let us therefore render unto God the things that are God’s. 

Today marks 100 years since the Armistice. A moment of Remembrance now for the soldiers who gave all that they were and all that they had for us. 

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break the faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, thought poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

In the Name of God, the Most Holy, Undivided, and Everlasting Trinity. Amen.

Fr Paul

A Membership Drive!

A New Idea!

In so many ways this is a new idea for Episcopalians. We’re so used to infighting and membership loss over the past half century or so that it seems all we know how to do is loose members.

But now we have a whole new church. We are increasingly an “inclusive” church. We are taking our mission and ministry much more seriously. We’re organizing our church life more around the idea of justice and human need that ever before.

I believe it is time for a spiritual awakening for us. 

In April of 2013 I led a Clergy Conference in the Diocese of Montana for a good friend Bishop Brookhart. We had a wonderful time there and +Frank has invited me back to Montana to tour the Diocese. He wants me to share with the vestries of his diocese a lifetime of experience with Evangelism. I bring with me the idea of a "Membership Drive for the Episcopal Church". We've been wringing our hands about a loss of membership long enough. Let's try being a bit more positive about the possibilities.

The Community Context is the core of a Membership Drive. When a congregation organizes its life around the needs of its community, it will prosper and thrive. Then when that same congregation commends its faith to the community and intentionally invites its neighbors not so much to "go" to church but to "be" the church, it will enjoy a new growth in its spirituality.

I've spent a lifetime developing a model and a technology for this work. During the decade of Evangelism I wrote "User Friendly Evangelism". Now, I'm developing what is an essentially a new idea. 

A Membership Drive!

So now that I am planning to retire for yet a third time, I may be available to share a lifetime of learning with others. 

May God prosper this wonderful church we love so much. May God prosper the “Progressive Church” also embracing all human beings, also courageously facing human suffering and injustice. This is exactly what God would want to see his church doing.

Fr Paul

Hope for the Church

God Needs You!

Seriously! God does need you. God's people and God's creation needs you!

There is war, violence, suffering, poverty, imprisonment, and a dying planet to save. This is serious business. My children and the host of humanity cry out for an ethical presence from both the sacred and the secular alike.

There is an emerging church out there willing to organize its life around the real needs of human beings and around the care of the planet we live on. Just this week I presented at a clergy conference in the Episcopal Diocese of Montana.

If you ever make your way to an Episcopal Church, chances are you will find a remarkable cast of characters there. The clergy are very intelligent as a rule, they are kind and quite caring of people and their sense of ethics includes concerns about American militarism, poverty, and the created order. Unlike so many of the right wing church, the Episcopal Clergy love science. The congregations they serve are also a cast of characters and often reflect this sense of care for the communities in which they find themselves planted.

It was wonderful to be in the Diocese of Montana with +Frank Brookheart and the clergy there. They are an extraordinary group of people whose commitment to the poor, the prisoner, the created order and to the host of other human needs is a marvel. Not to mention the sheer beauty of the place.

They are clearly committed to organizing the church's life around the needs of the people and the planet. This is a church worth saving and building up in strength.

I love the Episcopal Church and the "Emerging Progressive Church". The Right Wing Evangelical Church has been growing in strength for some years and we in the mainstream have been in the decline. I think it is time to reverse that trend and build up this church once again.

There is a sacred presence in the hearts of many who are becoming impatient with greed and power. 

Many of my friends in the secular world are rightly suspicious of the Church. Many recoil at the word "Christian". It evokes images of the Civic Religion of Rome before the fall when faith was wrapped in national symbols, wealth, power, and exclusive judgmentalism. American Civic Religion is seen as belligerent, bellicose and judgmental. It wraps itself in the flag and calls itself patriotic. It wraps itslef in militarism. Its God is the Almighty Dollar. There is a growing base of the unchurched who feel alienated and hostile to the world of institutional faith. Rome has often betrayed the trust of many.

My purpose in going to this clergy conference was to help make clear how we might better develop and strengthen the church's ministry.

I began with a recollection that the Celtic Church which, many forget, organized itself around the needs the people they lived among. The early monks of Aidan at Holy Island (Lindisfarne) focused their energies on a very practical set of realities.

"Do you have a loved one dying? Bring them here and we'll take care of them"

"Is there illness in the family? Bring them here and we'll tend to them"

"Are you hungry, we will feed you."

"Do you hunger for learning? We are among the best scholars in the world. Learn with us."

"Are you a weary and frightened traveller? We will provide you with safe lodging and hospitality"

"Are you burdened and saddened with life's drudgery and toil? Come here for cheer and merriment"

"Most importantly, are you Baptized? Do you know life has a purpose? Do you know that forgiveness and eternal life begin now? When you come to the waters of Baptism, you come to a wellspring of joy and life. When you come to the Table of Jesus, you come to a banquet which is but a foretaste of the Eternal Banquet?"

The Celts began with the most practical and basic of human needs and worked their way up to the greatest need of all; Forgiveness and Eternal Life. Baptized in water and fed by the Eucharist people came to know God and they in turn began to minister to the real needs of others. And the cycle turns over and over again until the world is filled with the fullness of God.

We remembered these things in Montana.

We celebrated the things being done by the church here now.

And now I challenge the church to recruit the people of God to do the work of God.

For most of my professional ministry I have been studying congregational development and evangelism. But when I bring people to Jesus, I bring them to serve people. Loving God and loving people are one and the same thing.

We face so many dangers:
Militarism, poverty, ecological degradation, and the concentration of wealth just to name a few.
What we need is a strong ethical presence in this world. The emerging Progressive Church can be just such an ethical presence. I am talking much more than personal moral agency. I am talking about the social ethic.

In many ways I find myself more allied with secular humanism than with the far Right Wing or with the Roman church. I am hopeful that Pope Francis will at least look out for the poor. That would be enormous, and probably the best we can hope for now.

For us in the Episcopal Church and in the Emerging Progressive Church there are no distinctions according to race, ethnicity, class, gender or orientation. For us Jesus spent his time recruiting the very same folks who had been "cut off" from the Temple. We're doing our best to fling wide the door so that the church can be "A House of Prayer for ALL People". We are doing our level best at embracing the teachings of Jesus.

So now, how do we build such a church? How do we strengthen it?

Now I shift into my "priest" role. I believe in the priesthood of all believers and let me just highlight some of the work I've been doing to strengthen the church in places I've served. My special thanks to the folks at St. Gabriel's Church in Douglassville, PA who have been a "laboratory" for some of these ministry efforts. The essence of what I presented in Montana is as follows.

The Mechanics of a Membership Drive as an annual congregational effort which doesn't end in the fall but is a continuing year long effort. Frankly when we use the word "Stewardship" we reflexively resist because it is all going to come down to the wallet.

The focus of a Membership Drive is to encourage all to work and pray and give for the spread of the Kingdom of God. This language is drawn directly out of the church's catechism.

The work of the church is much as I have spoke about above; to serve the needs of humankind.

The prayer of the church is to gather week by week as a community and to express our love of God as well as our love of all human beings. We gather at Christ's Holy Table and rejoice in the Risen Christ and his victory over sin and death. (By the way sin is seeking our own will instead of the will of God. And God's will is for the greatest good for the greatest number, to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God)

The gifts we give are in proportion to what God gives us. The biblical tithe is 10%. Some give more, some give less. But giving in proportion to what we receive is part of what it is to be a member of the church.

Thus Membership is not about pledging alone. It is about salvaging what we can of our lives and the lives of those we love, and the communities in which we live. It is about salvaging what we can of the planet we live on.

This is a matter of great urgency.

In the context of this presentation I did share this model for New Member Ministry. This is a new idea for many in the mainstream or emerging church. But I believe we need to become more intentional and systematic about our efforts. And we need to sustain these efforts over time. Many churches use this model or variants of it. Here are just a few highlights of the idea.

New Member Ministry is a five step process:
     Visibility: Increase the congregation's visibility though signage, Every Door Direct Mailings, Web pages, blogs etc. God knows I've done all the above and more at all my churches and the efforts result in a flurry of interest.
     Greeting: Fine tune the congregation's greeting skills. Practice good hospitality. Get the names and addresses and make a same day contact by telephone and ask how their fist visit was to the church. See if you can set an appointment to have a cup of coffee and have some conversation.
     Orientation: Help guide folks into the life of the congregation. The Membership Task Force of a Congregation should plan follow up and help establish relationships between newcomers and folks who are already members. You may want to provide classes for newcomers.
     Incorporation: There is a right time and a wrong time to invite folks to consider membership. Some will be clear about that right away. Others will want time to "explore". Give this some thoughtful prayer.
     Apostolic Call: As a general rule you have six months from the first visit to help folks find and involvement mode in the congregation. It can be as simple as ushering or choir, but there is plenty of work to be done. Lots of folks will be attracted to a church that has feeding programs for the poor and the like and they will often want to help out. Encourage that.

In all the church's I've served there has been significant growth. We've also tended to the needs of the young and the old, the poor and the hungry, the homeless or even battered women and their families. The church is not here to "survive". The church is here to serve. St Gabriel's, Douglassville, where I currently serve as interim is a case in point.

I want to thank Bishop Franklin Brookhart and the clergy of the Diocese of Montana for their kind hospitality over the past few days. I hope that what I have shared will help. I only wish all God's churches could awaken to the new hope of servant ministry.

I will end by saying that having been nurtured by the Episcopal Church, I believe we are a very well kept secret...too well kept. By publishing this article, I hope to bring the church to the attention of many. I plan to write some more on this subject. And I stand ready and able to share by learnings with others.

The folks here in Montana told me to tell you; "You had us eating out of your hand!"

Peace be with you,
Fr. Paul

A Welcoming Heart!

(Note: We did an Every Door Direct Mailing last week and the response was, as you might say, underwhelming! Still we did have a few visitors on Sunday, and I articulated this welcome. If we are to be the People of God we'll need to be a People of the Warm Welcome. In such a wise we welcome God and God's people into our lives. That's not a bad way to live!)

A Warm Welcome!

Welcome to St. Gabriel’s Church. This week we sent out a direct mailer to every household in Douglassville and several surrounding mail routes. We have opened our doors to give folks a chance to discover a little about  the church. So then whether this is your first visit to a worship service here or whether you’ve been coming here all your life, welcome!

You will notice that we are a church of ritual. We sing Hymns. We have a Book of Common Prayer and we follow a set formula for worship. The shape of our liturgy has its origins in the early church’s custom of remembering the night before Jesus died. This death was for the forgiveness of our sins and as a gift that leads to eternal life. He took bread and wine, thanked God as any family would at Grace, and especially as a Jewish family would at Passover in the Liturgy of the Haggadah, literally “telling the story of our deliverance from slavery”. At one time or another we have all been slaves. At one time or another many have held slaves. Either way, God seeks to deliver us from slavery.

We read a set of scriptures every week from the Old Testament, the Psalms, the Epistles, and the Gospel to put us back in touch with with God’s Story. These readings are intended to be explained by the preacher.

So then, you are subjected to a sermon. In it, the priest/preacher is charged with the responsibility of building a bridge between what happened in ancient times to what is happening today in our shared life stories. Various clergy do that with varying skill.

Today for instance, we have a Gospel reading in which the Disciples are making their way through Galilee in that dry and rocky land underneath the heat of an oppressive noonday sun in that inhospitable place. And Jesus tells them yet again, for a second time that he, the Son of Man, will be betrayed into human hands, he will be killed, and then on the third day, he will rise again. He said this plainly.

But the scripture says they did not understand him. The first time Jesus talked about this, Peter rebuked Jesus, you may remember, but Jesus went right back at Peter and said “Get behind me, Satan. You think like people think. It is time for you my followers to put on the mind of God, and think like God thinks.”

There were hurt feelings, of course. But on they went. He healed people of physical and mental disorders. He did do some very extraordinary things. Miracles seemed commonplace with him. He had a way of teaching they found compelling, and most of all he had a way of loving people, ALL people, even sinners, even the unwashed, outcast and rejects of the day. Rich or poor, he loved them. 

So then they had time to kill and a fight broke out among them as to who was the greatest. I remember playing “King of the Mountain” when I was a boy. I was actually pretty good at the game. I had a low center of gravity even then, so I was able to hold my ground.

So the Disciples of Jesus were playing “King of the Mountain” too. Having been upbraided by Jesus, they probably shrugged their shoulders and began to wonder, half joking, who was going to be the greatest among them when this “Jesus Kingdom” finally came.

So Jesus asked them; “So what were you arguing about”? Of course he knew, he could read their body language, and he may have had good hearing too. And besides all that, he was Jesus, so he knew anyway.

I do hope you know that the secrets of your hearts are indeed open to God. And he loves you very much, even with all those secrets being disclosed to the heart of God.

Well they were embarrassed about admitting that they were playing “King of the Mountain”; just a silly child’s game.

So he sat down: the posture of the teacher in the ancient near eastern world.  Whoever wants to be first, he said must be last and moreover must be the servant of all. Jesus would later reinforce this idea by washing their feet on the night before he died for them. Then he took a child. There are always children wandering about in the Middle East even today. They are desperately poor then as now. They were trying to peddle thing then as they do now. Post cards, water, cheap trinkets. They are often dirty from the constant kicking of dust. Water is way too expensive for the poor to use in such an extravagance as frequent washings.

So he took one of these children and set him or her in their midst. And then taking the child into his arms, he told them whoever welcomes such a child welcomes Jesus and moreover whoever welcomes Jesus welcomes the One who sent Jesus.

Suddenly, Jesus had taken an ancient child’s game and turned it upside down. This is not about becoming “King of the Mountain”. This life is about becoming a servant to humankind.

Now for those of you who are new to St Gabriel’s, I suspect that even you know that we have organized our life around the needs of Senior Citizens. We have played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Keystone Villa. And then we incurred significant debt by building the Parish Life Center. We house the Good Shepherd Learning Center, and  we provide for the needs of younger families in the community and tend to their children in a safe, clean, and educational environment. The Boy Scouts meet here. There are seven recovery groups that meet in the building. We feed the poor at the Community Center in Birdsboro, and we make lots of soup for the food pantry housed up at St. Paul’s.

Now you know as well as I do that we cannot rest on our laurels. That’s why we’ve invited you to gather with us here at the church today, at St. Gabriel’s church. There are so many human needs for the followers of Jesus to tend to. That’s why we are here. We are here as Jesus said, to be child-like servants one of another.

When St. Gabriel came to Mary yea all those many years ago, he told her; “Mary, I have news for you. You are going to have a baby. And not just any baby.” She was hardly a girl herself and her betrothed Joseph was going to have a hard time with this story.

But Gabriel had a message for her as well as for the rest of us. God cares about the people. All God’s people. And God was sending Jesus into the world to show how much God cares; how much God loves all these people.

So, then week after week after week, we re-enact in our liturgical worship that supper Jesus had with his friends. We break bread together. We remember Jesus not just as we would a historic figure. We invoke Jesus into the present as Jesus told us to do. This is how we remember him. This is my Body. This is my Blood. Jesus becomes present to us in this Liturgical offering.

So welcome to St. Gabriel’s Church. Whether this is your first Sunday with us or whether you are a cradle Episcopalian, this is your church anytime you need one. You are welcome at this table, all of you always. When Jesus fed the multitudes on the hillsides of Galilee, he didn’t check anybody’s membership cards, he didn’t check on bank accounts, race, ethnicity, age, theological orthodoxy, gender or even orientation.

To Jesus if we were human beings we were children of God. And as the Son of Man he welcomed us to God. And so on this day I welcome you to God as well. Draw near to God, as today’s Epistle lesson says, and God will draw near to you.

May you be filled with all the fullness of God this day. 

Fr. Paul

A Tale of Two Sundays

This Week the Bishop

Next Week the Invitation

It is just one thing right after another at St. Gabriel’s. Just when we thought things were getting busy enough, they go right on getting busier. The Bishop comes here today and next week we are inviting 6,000 households to St. Gabriel’s!

I know that the very mention of the Bishop’s visit can make many anxious. But add to that an invitation to 6000 local households! That’s enough to take your breath away with anxiety if you are responsible for running the Sunday School or the Youth Program, or the whole church, for instance.

So let me first remind you and me to breathe deeply. In and then out; breathe!

Breathe in and then out; in and then out and continue doing so. 

"All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well."

This is how the Holy Spirit comes to us.

She comes to us in our Breathing.

In Eastern Christianity, the word "Sophia" means “Wisdom”. Wisdom becomes the feminine dimension of God, in a very important sense.

The Center of the Eastern Church for over a thousand years was the Church of the Hagia Sophia or “Holy Wisdom”.

Those who seek to live in Wisdom must practice their breathing.

To inspire is to take a breath.

To be inspired it is necessary to practice breathing.

So then, breathe.

It is at the root of prayer and meditation to breathe well and to breathe deeply.

Thus we learn of God’s Wisdom, and God’s inspiration.

The word “spirit” and “inspire” share the same root in English, Greek and Latin; all the great languages of the Western Church.

So then the Bishop comes to us this morning.

The visit of a Bishop is a signature moment for Episcopalians since it is in the very name of our church that we describe ourselves as a church with Bishops.

There’s that Greek language again; “Episcopos” being the root word. It means “overseer” or “superintendent”, one who has responsibility for a grouping of congregations in a unit we call a “Diocese”.

In fact the basic building block for the church is not the congregation if we look back historically at our own church or even as we look back at the majority of the Christian Experience.

The building block for the church is the Diocese.

The Bishop is the Defender of the Faith.

He or she represents our Unity in Christ

Our Apostolicity is resented to us in the Bishop in the sense that the Whole of the Church is represented to us in the office.

Thus, for instance, when we come to the Bishop for Baptism, Confirmation, Reception or Reaffirmation, we proclaim our faith to the whole Church.

The Bishop becomes much more than a person and the Church becomes more than an organization.

Understood correctly the Bishop represents our physical and spiritual connection to Jesus.

I used to tell that to my children, since my priest told me the same thing. 

When the Bishop lays hands upon your heads, it is symbolically as though Jesus himself lays His hands upon you, because in an unbroken Apostolic Succession, that Physical and Apostolic presence comes down to us at the hands of the bishops of the church.

And too the Church is more than just an organization. We become members of Christ as we gather with our Bishop and as we gather with one another.

We are the blessed communion of all faithful believers. And I believe this Communion crosses denominational boundary and even crosses beyond life and the grave and unites us to all the faithful of God, living and dead. When I go to communion, I gather with all the beloved of God.

And that brings me to next week too. Over the next day or two almost 6,000 invitations will be extended to every household in Douglassville. We are doing an EDDM an; an Every Door Direct Mailing. Much like the local Pizza Parlor or Chinese Restaurant, we too need to announce to the community we live in that we are in business.

We are in the business of God. And yes, that makes us busy. If we are to be busy with the business of God when visitors come to our door, lets do so with a warm welcome. And lets remember that it is always our business to proclaim Christ’s Victory over sin and death. Our sins are forgiven. Life doesn’t end, it changes. It changes at our Baptism, it changes at our Confirmation, it changes as we gather with one another week after week. It changes as we are gathered to God one after another unto our ancestors.

And what we are learning too in the Episcopal Church is this; God loves us without distinction just as blessed Peter the Apostle said in his now famous Easter Sermon;

Acts 10:34,35

The “Outsiders” Hear the Good News

Then Peter began to speak to them: ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.'

And Blessed Paul the Apostle also stayed on message when he said the following.

Galatians 3:28

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

I know full well that there is a spiritual brouhaha over sexual orientation, gender identity, class, race and ethnicity. And one after another we, in the Episcopal Church, have come to believe that Jesus makes no distinctions and neither should we. And yes, I know that there are passages in Leviticus where you can  condemn for certain kinds of people, but when the Chief Priests and the Pharisees challenged Jesus to sum up the Law, Jesus did not begin to tick off those we could exclude from God’s Salvation Plan. You and I know full well what he said:  he picked the “Shema” that Verse from Deuteronomy that says:

Deuteronomy 6:4,5

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God is One and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

This, Jesus said, is the first commandment. And the second is like unto it. His mind searched the Scripture in an instant and he said this;

Leviticus 19:18

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

The two become one congruent law with the other. Love God and love your neighbor. You cannot love the One without loving the Other. God and neighbor are interchangeable as it were. Jesus then sent us out to do the work that God has given us to do. And a hard piece of work it is too, when we think of those who mean us harm, or even those within our families with whom we feud.

But now, getting back to next week, I doubt very much that 6000 folks will come to our doors next Sunday. I have no idea how many will carelessly toss our invitation into the recycle bin. But I pray that some will be moved to feel that tug within the heart that says; "Maybe, just maybe these people down at St. Gabriel’s will welcome me into the Holy Place and allow me to meet God and explore what it means to love God and serve God’s people".

So, keep breathing. Breathe in and breathe out. 

God will be with us in all things!

Fr. Paul