Indexed by Date. Sermons for Epiphany Year B

February 5, 2006

Isaiah 40: 21-31
Psalm 147: 1-11, 20c
1 Corinthians 9: 16-23
Mark 1: 29-39

A church community was having an auction to raise money. Some items were new, some were collectables and some were well used. One was a scratched and dusty violin that was left till the last so as not to waste money. “What am I did for this old violin?” asked the auctioneer. “$20"?

Silence

“Ten?”

Again silence.

“$5"? And the crowd laughed. One man offered his bid, “One dollar”.

Just then an elderly man no one had seen before stood up at the back of the room and walked silently but authoritatively to the front. He took the violin from the auctioneer’s assistant, adjusted the bow and began to play. The crowd was mesmerized by the beauty of the music taht flowed from the movement of the bow across dusty strings. After he had finished and had taken his seat, the silence was broken when a bid was offered, “One hundred dollars ” and it was quickly raised by another and then another and so on. The potential of the violin which had not been recognized had been uncovered by the hand of a master musician. The violin had not changed one little bit, but the people at the auction saw it in a whole new light. What was hidden had become obvious. Based on a poem attributed to Myra B. Welch.

On the wall of a building in a Nazi Death Camp were scratched these words:

“I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining;

I believe in love, even when it is not shown;

I believe in God even when he is silent.”

It should be obvious; yet is it isn’t to everyone. It should be obvious that when the sun isn’t shining, it’s still there. It should be obvious but it isn’t always. When the circumstances of life have dealt us a serious knock-out punch, what we have learned and believed all of our lives can be severely tested. What we know can be hidden and even forgotten. NOTE: On teh day this was preached it was about zero degrees (celcius) and raining. Afternoon worship was cancelled because of the danger of slipping and falling on icy walks and driveways

Today’s reading from the book of Isaiah was written in a time of great hardship and difficulty for the small nation. Israel has been defeated in war, their city AND their beautiful temple destroyed and the people carried off into exile. If the level of hope could be shown on a thermometer, the mercury was well into the minus digits.

Since they had entered the land of promise under the leadership of Joshua and especially under the reign of the great King David, the people of Israel had been so tied to their land that they had forgotten that God was not tied to their land but rather, was tied to them. Under Solomon’s rule a beautiful temple has been built which spoke to them of God’s power and of their chosen-ness. Since that time they had tended to see the temple as the only place where God was and it was as if they has forgotten the years before the temple even existed.

So, during the exile, many of them reasoned that the God they once thought was so powerful was not at all powerful, if he had let them be defeated in war. And of course, many also wondered if the God of Israel could be worshipped in a foreign land. Maybe their God was still back in Israel, in the rubble of the ruined and desecrated temple.

The exile was a crisis of identity and of religion. Yet prophesy was not dead. This prophet named Isaiah was called to speak of God to the people of Israel. This reading from the book of Isaiah has a definite ring of frustration to it. It has the sound to me of a frustrated parent who has to tell a child yet again to do something that should be obvious. “How man times do I have to tell you to put the milk back in the fridge.” “How many times do I have to tell you to pack your backpack before you go to bed so you won’t be racing around and looking for things while the bus is waiting for you!” Such connections are obvious, for the parent, but some kids never seem to learn.

Don’t you know?

Don’t you remember?

As I said the people had begun to doubt the power of their God. Some had come to see their God as powerless, or at least less powerful than the gods worshipped by the people of Babylon. This passage is a hymn of praise to their God, a hymn to the Gods who created the heavens and the earth. It is a hymn written in the style of rhetoric.

Don’t you remember the story of creation?

Don’t you know that to God people are like grasshoppers are to us?

Don’t you know that to God created the heavens as we might stretch out a curtain?

Don’t you know that the kingdoms of the world come and go, as quickly as the seasonal plants that wither with the fall frost?

We may think that the mountains are grand, but don’t you know that God is grander still? Imagine all of the angels in heaven; God is greater than all of these. Don’t you know that?

There are two things that are distinctive about the writings of Hebrew prophets and psalmists. One is that repeating things in a slightly different way accomplishes the same purpose as our rhyming does for us in English. Secondly, and more importantly for us in today’s passage, repeating a thought or theme adds strength. Repetition makes the point stronger. How many times does it need to be said: again and again, it seems.

Yet these are more than the rant of a frustrated prophet, these verses are the proclamation of a community of faith, though its prophet. They are the almost forgotten proclamation of a community of faith; a community in danger of losing its heart and soul.

To be fair to the people, the exile was a devastating experience and it is perfectly understandable for them to be depressed and to lose heart - yet God’s prophet has a word of hope and life for them. That’s what prophets are for; to speak for God; to tell the people what they need to remember.

These ancient words become a word of hope and life for us. It is not a criticism of despair, but rather, a call to move out of that trap and into a perspective that has light and hope.

This passage does not just leave the people with a recitation of God’s power and might; it shows them the grace and care of this God who knows them and loves them. The prophet proclaims, that this God gives power to the strongest and most majestic of birds, the eagle so this God gives mere mortals power so that it is as if they could soar with eagles; so they could enter the marathon at the Olympics and get the Gold without even becoming tired.

So more than telling the people to take heart, have a stiff upper lip; and that the tough have to get going when the going gets tough, this passage bases the faith response in the action and care of Almighty God. This passage enjoins the people to wait in faith: the day is coming when the land will be restored to them, just as it was when they first left Egypt bound for the land of promise and led by the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day.

What does this passage have to say to us? We aren’t in exile? At least not in the way they were. Many people though, from time to time, or more often for some, feel as if their purpose in life has been taken from them;

the death of a partner or a child or the loss of a job has left them on unfamiliar ground;

when life’s circumstances have worked together so that it seems that those circumstances have sucked out all the hope, all the life, all the faith that one ever had.

It is then, especially then that we must listen to these words, to the message behind them.

Our God is not limited to the good times.

Our God’s power has nothing to do with our defeat or misfortune.

The reasons for these unfortunate things are many, but it does not mean we have been abandoned. This God will provide during the trying times and this God will restore.

As we look at the gospel passage we see the care and compassion of Christ and of the community who ministers in his name as being one of the ways in which people are given strength to become all they can be. This care and this ministering reminds the people, SHOWS the people, as Isaiah’s prophesy did, of the God who stretched out the heavens and gives the strength of eagles.

We need not fear, but look to the God who renews our strength. It may take time; very little in life that is valuable comes without waiting, without walking the ‘valley of the shadow of death’ but the biblical proclamation, the gospel proclamation is that God is with us and in time will soar with us and run with us.

Amen.

February 12, 2006

2 Kings 5: 1-14
Psalm 30
1 Corinthians 9: 24-27
Mark 1: 40-45

We are a culture that worships the body strong and beautiful. At this very moment thousands of athletes, the best from their respective countries, are in Italy competing for Olympic gold, and each one dreams of the honour of having their national anthem played because of them. They are healthy and strong and fit and at the top of their game; and the IOC seeks to make sure that this does not come with the illegal use of performance enhancing drugs.

We turn on our TV’s and buy the latest magazines to find out all there is to know about the latest Olympians and the Grammy and Oscar and Golden Globe and Juno nominees and just a little part of us wishes for their fame, their beauty their lifestyle, and, their money. Yet, when we go below the surface, things are not always as they seem on the outside and the magazines love to tell these not so secret stories as well ! Mostly, the secrets are stories of failed relationships, drug use and abuse, financial problems, legal issues and the like. While some of this interest is because we tend to want to topple those famous ones from their pedestals, when we realize that we can’t BE them, it proves the point that wealth, fame and beauty don’t make one truly happy and certainly are no antidote to tragedy, stupid mistakes and the problems the normal world faces every day.

Almost 25 years ago I watched a scratchy old film, obviously almost worn out, on the life and work of a Canadian, living in France, by the name of Jean Vanier. At that time he was becoming known for his work his insights into the inclusion of people with physical and mental handicaps. Probably the only thing that I really remembered about the movie was a single phrase, “If you’re not there you are missed.” That’s the kind of place he wanted to create: a place where everyone had a real place and would be missed if he or she were absent.

A little over a week ago I watched a special broadcast on c-pac, entitled “Journey to Personal and Social Transformation”, in which Jean Vanier and Dr Balfour Mount, widely considered the founder of the palliative care movement, talked about transformation and healing.

While many would assume that palliative care was what happened as a result of a failure to heal, but Dr Mount was careful to tell us of many patients who discovered a better ‘quality of life’ and deeper happiness while they were dying than they had ever experienced before. We tend to equate healing with cure, but in many cases they are almost completely separate.

Jean Vanier talked about the barriers we erect between ourselves and the disabled out of fear and how removing those barriers is a an essential step in social transformation and true healing for all involved, not just the disabled.

The biblical stories contain a great many healing miracles but the more I reflect on these stories what is most important is not the cure, (that the story seems to assume) but the HEALING.

And what I mean by healing is that the person is restored to an overall sense of well being, to a renewed faith and to his or her community. Each of them has a renewed faith in the goodness and power of God; each sees life in a whole new way; and each can begin life again among friends and family.

In two of the readings today: the one from the Hebrew Scriptures and from the Gospel the presenting condition is Leprosy. Leprosy is a horrible, horrible illness; and is a disease affecting the nerves where sensation in the extremities is lost, injuries happen easily and those suffering from the disease people end up with sunken faces, and stubby and deformed hands and feet. It has been eradicated in all but a few areas of the world. The various charities that work in this area tell us that this previously incurable illness can now be treated and completely cured when caught in its earliest stages.

However, given all of the descriptions in the various biblical verses which speak of the condition, we are not entirely sure if this is the disease to which they refer or if it also refers to is various forms of skin conditions such as eczema or psoriasis. Given that there were procedures in place to certify cures it seems that some, at least, had much less serious conditions than true leprosy.

However, what is important is that while the disease, whatever it actually was, was in it’s active phase, the person could not earn a living, could not worship in synagogue or temple, could not live at home, and was ostracized from his or her community. The issue was not health or disease; it was the difference between ritual cleanliness and ritual uncleanliness. The healing involved a restoration to a normal life, a restoration to former relationships. The healing showed them that God cared about their lives, that the common and every day was important to the one who created the heavens and the earth.

One of the very important things that we need to keep in mind when reading the biblical stories of healing miracles is the association between sin and illness. Most disease was thought to be a punishment for sin. We know that behaviour and so called bad habits such as smoking, drug abuse, excessive drinking and overeating can cause a myriad of diseases we don’t usually label it sin and refuse to help the one who is suffering. In the biblical world an attempt at a cure was seen to be an attempt to thwart God’s punishment.

So it seems that the stories are as much about restoration to community and acceptance as they are about any kind of removal of disease.

I would suggest that even today much of the problem that people with serious illness face arise from a removal from community.

When Jesus cured the man with leprosy he acted with compassion and a seeming disregard for the various laws which kept the man outside the community. As part of the healing Jesus touched him and since that was forbidden he would have become unclean himself, for a time. You just didn’t do that back then; that’s why people with these kinds of diseases had to stay away from other people.

The question for us today is how we in the church can be vehicles for healing; and I’m not talking about alternative medicine, as such. If anyone has a broken limb or a gunshot wound or has unusual lumps or chest pain or various suspicious symptoms then that person needs to go to their doctor or to a hospital. The question for us is how we can assist the person and the medical community in the healing process. The suffering of people with AIDS is often increased tremendously because they are often treated as if they are highly contagious, which they are not or as if they are somehow a menace to society. Even those whose diseases are highly contagious deserve better. We need to maintain friendships and contact, keeping in mind all necessary precautions against the spread of the disease. We may need to advocate for better treatment options and social support and so on.

When we look at people with developmental disabilities we sometimes feel that it is better to institutionalize them so that we do not have to think about ‘them’. There are great debates about whether or not school classrooms should be open to everyone, regardless of ability or disability. We forget in all of this that all people are God’s children and are as loved as we are. Often, we would rather that they just “go away” and it has nothing to do with wether or not the institution is the best place overall for their care.

We place our frail elderly to nursing homes because they need the care that we can’t give, but some are forgotten, not because their care is too demanding, but because they make us uncomfortable. We don’t know how to communicate with Mom anymore or we know that Uncle Fred is just not the same anymore and we don’t know how to be around him.

Healing in community has as much to do with us than the one we think has the problem. We want the problem to go away; we don’t want to think about it; we don’t want to pay the cost, we don’t want to make the effort, we don’t want to admit that we are uncomfortable and out of our league and we simply can’t cope with the changes that have tested our love and our relationships.

Into all of this comes the biblical message that God calls us to participate in the healing of the entire community. Into this comes the message that faithfulness is more important than success. Into all of this comes the God who waked in human shoes and showed us what was possible. Into all of this is a Vision of what the human condition would be.

One of the things that we need to banish from our minds is the assumptions of “us” and “them”. We may assume that we are the healthy ones and they are the ones who need our help. We need to realize that we all have hurts and woundedness and weaknesses that we would like to hide or cover up and our separation from those whose problems are more visible only compounds the problem. The solution, as proclaimed by the biblical account is to embrace all aspects of our human condition and to love the others into wholeness and in so doing we will discover the love we have been seeking as well.

The message of God’s healing love is extended to those with leprosy and AIDS and the disabled but it also extended to us in all of our abilities and imperfections and joys and sorrows.

We can rejoice in our healing because the God of love goes with us just as Jesus walked those dusty roads so long ago. His words to others are addressed to us: be clean and live .

Amen.

February 19, 2006

Isaiah 43: 18-25
Psalm 41
2 Corinthians 1: 18-22
Mark 2: 1-12

Perhaps Jesus and his friends just wanted to go home, put their feet up and settle down to a nice meal, after days and days on the road. After days and days of seeking to meet the needs of people it would be nice to shut the door and relax. However, on this occasion it was just more of the same. His popularity was proving the old saying that “no good deed goes unpunished”. Even without telephones and television and newspapers word got around. They flocked to him in droves, just like every place he went. People wanted to hear for themselves what this popular preacher was saying; I’m sure many were simply curious, some people truly wanted something new and meaningful in their lives and they sought him out. Planned day off or not he welcomed them and began to teach. There were so many there, we are told, that they filled every space in the house and there was no place to stand, let alone sit. There were so many people that no one could get in or out.

The crowd outside was a bit noisy; a bit of pushing and shoving always took place at a time like that and he probably knew there was some of that going on but he kept on with his sermon. Imagine his surprise; imagine everyone’s surprise, when the ceiling started to come down – and a man on a stretcher was lowered down. It was easy enough to get up on the roof; lots of folks used their roofs at night; to enjoy the cool evening air after a long hot day.

However on this day some folks had come to Jesus, not to hear him preach, but for healing. They had heard about this part of his reputation too. They were determined to see the teacher, despite the crowds. Remember the story of the woman who came to Jesus for healing and all she had the courage to do was to touch the hem of his robe. Yet, that was enough. That was enough because it showed great faith, great trust. This man and his four friends did what they had to and they showed their faith, and their determination. It would have been no small task to dig through the various layers that made up the roof, though it was probably easier than doing so in an average Canadian house.

Jesus was used to people coming for healing, but this is one of the few stories that shows just what lengths some people would resort to in order to make their request.

On this occasion the man on the stretcher does not even speak before Jesus addresses him and pronounces, not words of healing, but words of forgiveness.

And of course, some folks had trouble with that and the controversy begins yet again. In the minds of some, Jesus had crossed the line. He was in for trouble and he knew it. He could hear them muttering under their collective breaths. He knew that they would be accusing him of getting too big for his britches. Of course only God could forgive sin and only a priest could assure someone of God’s forgiveness after the sacrifices has been made properly and according to the laws of Moses. Jesus being a fearless sort addressed the issue directly and the debate was on. With the command to “pick up his bed and go home”, the healing was complete and the man left – and this time the crowd got out of his way, I am quite sure. Imagine this scene, this man going along carrying a stretcher with bits of rope dangling behind, followed by the four men who had hastily gotten down from the roof.

So what was the problem? Jesus didn’t actually forgive the man, he just said that he had been forgiven. Yet, it seems that even that had crossed some invisible but well established lines. There seemed to be a widely accepted view that the man was paralyzed because of his sin. His medical condition was God’s punishment and to tamper with it was just not right. It was to stand in the way of God.

Jesus knew that there sin was a problem all right; but he also knew that this man’s illness was not God’s punishment for that sin nor was it God’s will.

Yet he knew that this man had know God’s love and forgiveness before he could be truly whole.

Even with all of our sophisticated medical knowledge there is still a great deal we do not know about the relationship between the psyche and the body. Many illnesses are completely curable these days where they were often fatal. Antibiotics revolutionized the treatment of disease and even though we have huge problems of antibiotic resistance we know that proper use of drugs is all that is needed for many conditions.

Yet, I’m sure we all know of someone who is sick, and has always been sick, but doctor after doctor has not been able to find anything seriously wrong - physically that is. Chronic illness and disease in these cases is a far more complex matter than saying that “it’s all in their head”, but it does have to do with how they have learned to deal with life and its joys and disappointments and no drug will truly fix what ails them. I know of at least one person who only feels truly loved when she is sick - because her family waits on her and pays attention to her and she feels special. If someone in her family gets sick, she has to come down with something more serious.

I’ve watched many tv shows where the problem in a person’s life is not the past, or any real medical condition, but their inability to accept that they are a loveable person. Perhaps they are unable forgive themselves or to accept the forgiveness of others for something in their past, or there are unable to forgive someone else and they have been nursing this anger and hatred for years and it has made them sick.

As far as I am concerned the single most important thing to teach children is LOVE. We must teach them that they are loveable and teach them how to be loving. All the rest flows from that. Yet it is at the root of most of our problems.

I think that this was true in Jesus day too, That’s why he said what he did about it being easier to say that the man had been healed. Yet, Jesus was willing to do the hard thing. Jesus was willing to risk the anger of the religious establishment by saying what was more difficult but much more important.

Forgiveness and love are intertwined of course. They relate to our ability to let go of the past and the baggage of the past and accept the love that God offers to us in the present. We can’t change the past, we can’t live in the past. Yet the past is what we know and while it seems easier to hold onto it, it is no recipe for true contentment. Isaiah knew this. Isaiah knew that God was leading the people into the future but that they had to give up their hold on a past they could not change, a past they were in danger of repeating unless they accepted the covenant once again and embraced the promise of a God who would lead them into the future.

To hold onto the past, as of it were the present, is to deny the ability of God to enter into and transform the present. It is to deny God’s ability to truly forgive the past and enable the people to begin again.

The people of Israel during the time that our passage from Isaiah was written were stuck in the past and lamented its loss. Part of the prophet’s goal in his proclamation is to assure them of the adaptability of God, the power of God, the presentness of God.

Their lives had changed tremendously in the exile and they needed to know that God was able to accompany them through this change. They had to at the very least realize that their God was bigger than they had ever imagined before. Before they went back to their ancestral homeland, back to the promised land, they had to know that it was not a return to the “gold old days” but to a new time in which the God of their ancestors would be with them as well.

In the end, both of these stories are about the power of God, not about the origin of disability or disaster or misfortune.

I don’t think that we in the church are all that different from the complainers taht Jesus faced on that long ago day. So often we as the church seem to want to stand in the way of this forgiveness – we want to have OUR rules followed . We want to make “those people” pay for their mistakes - we want some kind of advantage for having been here all of our lives, being good and righteous all of our lives, (more or less, anyway). Yet the gospel and even the Old Testament lesson challenges that most strongly.

As a people of God we need to be realistic about our own lives AND THEN we need to accept the good news that we are loved and that love can free us from whatever it is in our past that is preventing us from moving forward in faith.

While the things that God has done in the past are indeed important they are not the end of the story. God is waiting to offer us healing and presence and unending love – in all of the days that lie ahead of us.

Amen!

February 26, 2006 -- Transfiguration -- Last After Epiphany

2 Kings 2: 1-12
Psalm 50: 1-6
2 Corinthians 4: 3-6
mark 9: 2-9

Have you ever watched the tv program on Vision TV, “Touched by an Angel” At the end of each episode the angels reveal their true identity to the people they have come to assist and part of this revelation involves one or more of the angels ‘glowing’ or ‘shining’. Of course that’s tv and we know that things like that don’t really happen to normal people, or do they?

The stories from both today’s Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospels are about such unusual, “shimmering light”, almost terrifying events. In the lesson from the book of Kings the prophet Elijah prepares to leave his disciple Elisha behind. Elisha asks for a double portion of his spirit, which is as far as I can tell, simply a way of saying that Elisha wants to be his primary heir. Inheritance law stated that the oldest son always received double what his brothers did; and along with the double inheritance came much greater responsibility. This is a tall order of course,. And a great responsibility. Yet it is granted as he sees Elijah carried heavenward in a whirlwind accompanied by a chariot and horses of fire. Such a thing could never happen today, could it?

In today’s episode from the gospels several of the disciples go to a mountaintop with Jesus and they have an amazing experience in which they see Jesus with Elijah and Moses. Not only was Jesus glowing, but we are told that his clothing was so white it could have been used in a first century commercial for laundry detergent! In this passage Jesus’ true identity is revealed to anyone who had any doubts. This is God’s son. In addition, the disciples are told to listen to this Jesus.

But we say, “that’s the Bible, those were ‘special times’ and Jesus has gone back to heaven and it’s not very likely that anything like that will happen to us.” Or is it?

Today’s readings have been selected by the people who chose the lectionary passages to celebrate something called the ‘transfiguration’. That’s just a fancy word for that funny glow the witnesses are supposed to have seen. However, that’s only a part of what the celebration of the transfiguration is about. It’s also about passing on of the life’s work to those who follow.

The Olympics have been front and centre on many minds lately. The image we have from many of the Olympic Games is the torch which is passed from city to city as the games move from one host nation to another. One of the images in today’s passages is the mantle or cloak that passes from Elijah to Elisha.

Both of these passages attest to the fact that these kinds of transitions are often fraught with fear and uncertainty.

It is at times of transition, times when lives are at the crossroads when there are the most opportunities for holy moments, or perhaps when we are most open to them, whether we want to name them as such or not.

From time to time I sit with folks who are dying. Their family is gathered around and they know the end will come soon - and while they want the suffering to end many aren’t really ready to ‘let go’. Many want just ‘one more breath’; just one more smile, or one more opportunity to show or exchange love.

Such is the normal course of things but these are also holy times; times when heaven and earth come so close together that one touches the other.

I talked to a nurse one day about holy moments. She told me of a time when she was a student and was assisting a doctor at her first delivery. She said, “One minute there were three people in the room and the next there were four”. It was something common and ordinary but still this ordinary and common experience brought this young nurse to tears. This ordinary and common experience was also extraordinary and holy. It was a time when heaven and earth were touching.

I’m not a mother but when I see moms looking at their infants I see glimpses of the holy, I see the place where heaven and earth touch. And sometimes I see the “glowing”. And it’s not just moms; I’ve seen it in the eyes of dads too!

This is to say nothing of the mystical experiences that people have, and are unwilling to talk about, visions, dreams and the like. They are unwilling to talk about them because they don’t quite believe them, or because they are worried that someone will call then a nut, or worse yet, call the funny farm. I am told that over 50% of the population have had an experience that could be termed mystical, but most are unwilling to talk about it, mostly because of the reasons I have already mentioned or because they aren’t sure themselves and are afraid to delve into it or to process it.

It seems to me that if we are open to these moments, open to the holy there will be a message for us. Perhaps we are struggling to make a decision. Perhaps we are just going through change and need to see and feel the and know the presence of the God of heaven and earth.

Perhaps it is like Elisha and the disciples; we are being handed the torch and the task is now ours. Perhaps its about making connections between the holy and the seemingly ordinary and recognizing God’s presence which we are often blind to or too busy to notice.

Perhaps it is about drawing power and strength and insight from the experience so that one has what one needs to be able to go into an unknown future.

When Jesus was baptized he was affirmed as God’s son. At least in this gospel it is ambiguous whether or not anyone else could hear the words but now the ambiguity is gone. The disciples have no excuse for not hearing. “This is my Son,” says God, “Listen to him”. And. Of course, listening involves doing. They are told that the teachings of this Jesus will give them what they need for the uncertain future that lies ahead of them. Remember - they ARE on the way to the cross, whether they know it or not, whether they are prepared to acknowledge it, whether they like it or not.

Elisha would face things Elijah did not, as would the disciples face things that Jesus himself had not. We will face things no one written about in the Bible everdreamed of! The key as far as I am concerned is not either Elijah or Jesus or even us but God. Both Elijah and Jesus pointed to God and to the power of God and that was what was important. The message is clearly that the God of Elijah would be with Elisha and was also with Jesus and would be with the disciples who listened and followed. The message of God’s abiding presence is the same today.

So let us open ourselves to the holy - to the places where heaven and earth meet. As we deal with change in our lives, welcome or not let us know that God goes with us - and is surely present whether we know it or not. Sometimes those images and feelings are with us without effort, often though it takes a lot of will to hold those in our minds, sometimes it is just that sense in the back of our minds that we are not alone, that certainty that we are part of a great and awesome enterprise and that we have received a great commission to be a disciple of the one called the beloved Son.

Are we looking? Are we listening? Are we following?

Amen!