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A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY
by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor
19th Sunday After Pentecost • September 11, 2016

Lost

What was the last thing you lost? Losing things is a constant struggle for me. My ability to misplace keys, glasses, wallet, phone is a commonplace in my family. They’re all used to getting ready to go somewhere and then waiting while I say, “I can’t find my…”, then waiting while I frantically look through the various places I put things. I deal with this by putting my stuff in one place near the door. This doesn’t always work; things get moved, things seem to drift on their own. And once they have, they’re lost. Lost isn’t just something that happens to keys, of course; it can happen to persons as well. Some sociologists say almost half the people in this country are one paycheck away from poverty. That means one paycheck from getting lost economically. Whole groups can get lost; we’re seeing this in the Middle East now as thousands of refugees eek out day to day in camps and thousands more try to move to places where they can make new lives. A whole generation of children are being lost to violence there.

Jesus lives with the lost; his society was full of them. Just as I keep things found by putting them in their place, in Jesus’ time, people were sorted based on whether they were lost or found. Perhaps you were a well to do trader who went to worship, gave your offering, paid your vows, said your prayers, made sure the kitchen in your house was kosher, never came into contact with Gentiles or women or others who were lost: good for you, you were found, that is you were pure. Pure is like my keys being on the shelf where they belong: everything just as it should be.

Giving Up on Some

But not everyone was pure, just as the keys don’t always stay on the shelf. All kinds of things could knock you off. Gender, ethnicity, even what you did for a living. If you worked with leather, for example, no amount of prayer or paying vows would make you pure. If you collected tolls for the Judah Turnpike Authority, you were right out of it—that’s the people described as tax collectors. If you ate food that wasn’t kosher—off the list. All these are what are described in the Gospel of Luke as ‘sinners’. We have to keep this in mind because to us sinners sounds like people who do bad things. These are people who have just gotten lost, according to the Pharisees, lost to God, outside God’s care, outside God’s compassion. So it makes sense to just give up on them, just as, according to some of the preachers in Jesus’ time, God has done.

That’s the background to the complaint we read today in Luke. “the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “’This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” Most of the teaching of Jesus, the parts we love to remember like “Love your neighbor as yourself” weren’t new; most were applications of things already in Torah, in God’s Word. One thing was new and different: the people Jesus invited to dinner. One of the ways the Pharisees kept straight who was lost and found was by making sure they only ate with the found. Now Jesus and his disciples are messing up the categories, eating with sinners, eating with the lost. It’s like someone moving your carefully sorted keys.

Parable of the Lost Sheep

Jesus doesn’t answer directly; instead he invites these critics into an experience. “Look, think of a shepherd who counts the flock and discovers one is missing; he leaves it and goes and looks for the lost sheep.” Everyone there knows this is true; shepherds are accountable for the flock. A stray dog or a cat that wanders off may come home. When a sheep gets lost, it just lays down and bleats. So shepherds go out looking, listening, and when the sheep is found, it still won’t do anything so it has to be carried. Maybe some of the people listening started out as shepherds and remember those anxious searches.

But the point Jesus is making isn’t about sheep; it’s something deeper. When Jacquelyn and I were dating, I once took May to a bookstore with me. The books for her were at one end of the store; my magazines were at the other. Now I knew Jacquelyn always kept close to May but I’d been a parent and I thought I knew what worked. I told May she could look around and I’d be over by the magazines. So off I went, looking up every once in a while to make sure she was there. This went fine until a moment when I looked up and couldn’t see her. I moved: still no May. I moved some more: nothing. So I quickly walked over to the young reader books, and that’s when I really started to worry: no May. Up one aisle, down another, more and more frantic. Finally, there she was; May was petite and she’d found a nice nook meant as an under counter storage area. I was overjoyed; I was so happy I remember it to this day.

Finding Joy

Have you lost something? Do you remember the joy of finding? This is what Jesus wants his listeners to remember: how much fun it is to find. He wants them to understand this is what God does, this is what makes God smile and laugh. Just like the shepherd finding the sheep, God’s joy leaps at finding the lost. And joy is shared. When the shepherd finds the sheep isn’t just happy himself, he comes home and tells his friends, tells the other shepherds. Can’t you imagine him doing it? I guess it might have been smart to keep the story of losing May quiet but I was so happy about finding her, I couldn’t resist telling her mother. I’m not sure this was a great recommendation for stepfather: that I had lost her daughter. But she couldn’t resist how happy I was about finding her.

Finding the lost isn’t free. Another church I served helped start a program to feed anyone who was hungry on Sundays four times a year. Now every church has one or two big events that have gone on for years and everyone enjoys; ours was a Thanksgiving dinner. We did the usual things church people do, held planning meetings and so on even though everyone always knew who would cook and the menu. The year we started the feeding program as it happened our turn to host the program coincided with our Thanksgiving dinner. This was a church with about the same number of people we have; the feeding program drew over a hundred each time.

No Turkey Dinner!

But our Deacons decided to go ahead and combine them, so we bought extra food and set extra places and when the Sunday of the thanksgiving dinner came, we had a line even before we opened the doors. A group of our long time members carefully found places at one end of the fellowship hall but as it turned out, that end was the last to be called up to be served. They did what people do: they complained to their pastor, me, about the time it was taking and I assured them all would be fine. I was wrong. By the time that group got up to the kitchen, we’d pretty much run out of turkey. There was a lot of criticism of this and along with some other church officers, I apologized endlessly. But then when I was back in the kitchen, one of our newer members came up and said, “Wasn’t that incredible? Wasn’t it amazing? One of those guys told me he’d never had a thanksgiving dinner like this.” Others talked about conversations with people they would never have met otherwise. It changed some hearts. I’m not sure who got found; I do know for certain, there was a lot of joy among some. But it did cost some people their turkey dinner.

Finding the lost, eating with them, is going to cost Jesus his whole life. It might cost yours. Here’s what he says: finding the lost is so wonderful, it’s worth it. Finding the lost is finding joy. Maybe you’ve lost something, like the woman in the other story. Have you ever had your engagement ring go down the drain? Have you ever put your wedding ring in a drawer and forgotten you did it? She’s a poor woman; we know this because she only has ten coins, ten drachmas. Now a Palestinian house is dark, no windows, so of course she needs to light a light. I think though it may also be that she’s doing what Jacquelyn does when she loses something; she cleans. Perhaps the light glints on the coin; perhaps it shows up in the sweeping. Like the shepherd, not only is she overwhelmed by joy, she just can’t help sharing it with others. “When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’”

This is the experience Jesus wants to share: how to find joy, how to be part of a community of joy. Look for the lost, find the lost, embrace the lost. While the Pharisees are judging everyone, Jesus is creating a community of joy, inviting us to join him in finding the lost. We so love to make projects and work at them but look at these stories. The sheep doesn’t come to the shepherd, the shepherd comes to the sheep. The coin doesn’t come to the woman, the woman finds the coin. Finding joy doesn’t come from getting someone to work harder, to come to Jesus, even to come to church. It comes from finding someone, touching them with God’s love, being the means, like Jesus, of assuring them they are not lost to God, no one is lost to God.

A Community of Joy

I’ve been trying for a few weeks to think of a single slogan, a single phrase, that might serve as a theme for us. I realized as I thought about these stories that I was making it too complex. Jesus makes it simple: find joy by finding the lost. That makes God smile; that creates a community of joy. And isn’t that what we are meant to be as a church? It’s the reason we do collect coats, white goods, food, and other things. We are not a store for survival goods; these things are really a way of saying to someone, “You’re not lost: we found you!” And in finding the lost, we find joy. We are meant to be a community of such joy.

There are so many who feel lost. Every single one is cherished by God. What would you do if someone you loved was lost? A child, perhaps or even a pet. Think how people plaster neighborhoods with posters when a cat wanders away. God so loves the lost that God came in the person of Jesus Christ to find the lost. Do you remember being found? Do you remembering that joy, that feeling that finally you were found? Now we are followers of Jesus most when we find the lost, when we open our doors so wide, they can’t be mistaken for  something closed, when we make a way so there is no threshold, no barrier to anyone, when we like Jesus, find the lost. As we set out on another year together, let us be clear, let us share this one mission: we are here to find the lost and bring them home to the God who loves us all.
Amen.

This is a set of thoughtful articles from Christianity Today. While the magazine has a distinctly evangelical/non-inclusive outlook overall, I thought these articles were interesting and written with a perspective that’s important to share.

Part 1: Facing a New Reality

Part 2: Mainline and Evangelicals

Part 3: Vital Trends

The whole of Acts 11:1-18 concerns the reaction of the church at Jerusalem to the conversion of Cornelius so it makes sense to go back and look at this story, beginning at Acts 10:1 .

God Fearers

Cornelius is described as a God fearer and a centurion of the Italian Cohort. John Dominic Crossan has called attention to the importance of the God fearers in the early church. This describes Gentiles who participated in synagogue worship and followed kosher rules. Many of the Roman troops in Judea were raised from local levies; the remark that it’s an Italian cohort may distinguish it as troops from Rome itself. Cornelius is in Caesarea, the area where Jesus began and Peter’s home. He has an angelic visitation commanding him to send to Joppa, a considerable distance, for Peter. The distance is emphasized by the two day journey it takes Peter to get to Cornelius.

Was God Mistaken?

We can only speculate on the fear that a visit from a Roman centurion would cause to a leader of a church being persecuted, whose Lord had been crucified by Romans. Still, Peter goes and along the way has an inspired dream. The dream is the shocking repudiation of the kosher rules. These specify a variety of foods as being ritually unclean and describe a process for slaughtering those that are acceptable. Both are rejected in the dream, where Peter is presented with food and told to slaughter and eat. Peter himself argues against the repudiation of the rules, saying, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.” The reply is simple: don’t contradict God!

Conversion

When Peter arrives at the home of Cornelius, he himself points out that simply visiting the home (so reminiscent of Jesus’ visit to the homes of sinners), it is a violation of Jewish practice. He announces this principle: “God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.”

The content of Peter’s preaching is this: (Acts 10:38ff)

First Principle

1. God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power
2. [Jesus] went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil
3. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem.

Second Principle

1. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree
2. but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear
3. not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.

Third Principle

1. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify
2. he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead.
3. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.

Notice the emphasis on the role of the witnesses. Jesus’ ministry is validated by the witnesses. Parenthetic note: no mention of the Galilean ministry, which seems strange since Peter himself is a Galilean. The crucifixion/resurrection is raised as a second principle, also validated by the witnesses. Note the important point that these are specified as those who ate and drank with the risen Lord, not just those who saw him; this contrasts with Paul whose experience of the Risen Lord is visual/auditory only.

In discussing the present and future, the role of the future moves to the front and becomes to understand Jesus is the Lord who judges all and dispenses forgiveness.

The result is that Cornelius’ household is visited by the Holy Spirit and converted.

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor – Copyright 2016 All Rights Reserved

Second Sunday in Easter • April 3, 2016

Chris Is Risen – Click Here to listen to this sermon Easter 2C – April 3, 2016

Anything Special?

For years I’ve been asking kids at Children’s Time, “Did anything special happen this week?” The responses never cease to amaze me—both the ones I get and the ones I don’t. Years ago, for example, one of the active families in our church spent three weeks touring the west. They visited the Grand Canyon and many national parks. It was the trip of a lifetime. On their return, I asked Katie, their six year old daughter, if she had seen anything special in the last week. Now Katie was a bit shy and seldom said much at Children’s Time; I thought for once she’d have lots to contribute. But she scrunched her nose for a moment and then said, “Not really.” Even from my perch on the chancel steps I could see her parents weren’t pleased but no amount of prompting could shake Katie: nothing had impressed her. Are you like Katie? I know I am at times, I confess it. Every day God gets up early and puts on an amazing creation. But I know there are days, sometimes whole weeks, when I just pass it by without a thought, like Katie.

What did you see this week?

What did you see this week? All of the scripture readings this week revolve around the act of seeing the power of God. They offer a series of snapshots of Easter visions. The first is the disciples gathered after the resurrection. The shocking memory preserved in the gospels is that the disciples didn’t believe the first reports of the empty tomb. They couldn’t imagine Jesus was up and moving still, that the ultimate bounds of human life had been broken. So here they are, meeting in a locked room, voices hushed, afraid the same thing will happen to them. There, in the midst of them, the risen Christ appears. Even then, they don’t believe; the story says he has to show them his hands and feet—they need to see his wounds. Some still don’t believe; they have to touch. This is how we go forward in church, a bit at a time: we don’t all get the vision at the same time, we don’t all see the same thing and sometimes when we do, we need convincing.

Snapshot: The disciples on trial

The second snapshot is from a few weeks later. Some of the disciples have started telling people what happened and preaching in Jesus’ name. The same council that arrested him arrests them and thinks to scare them. But how do you scare people who have seen a man back from the grave? Isn’t it interesting to see what the disciples say? They don’t quote a creed; they just report what they’ve seen:

The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. 31God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. 32And we are witnesses to these things,
John 19:30ff

The Council has them flogged; but at the end, clearly it’s the Council that’s scared. The Council puts them out because one leader, Gamaliel, warns the council members they could end up opposing God, as indeed they have. The disciples don’t just offer Jesus: they offer a view of him located in the tradition of Torah, of scripture.
The third snapshot comes from the end of time. John has a vision of what the end of creation will look like and he describes it this way,

Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen. 8“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. [Revelation 1:7f]

The clouds are just scenery, like the mountains in a John Wayne movie or Manhattan in one of Woody Allen’s. These people don’t drive, let alone fly, and the clouds are there to make the hearers imagine someone more powerful, higher, than anything they have ever seen. The one who was raised is raised so high that we see him in the clouds. And the power of his coming overwhelms even those who thought to oppose him.
What have you seen? These are all snapshots, reports of what someone has seen. Jesus up and around, Jesus getting his disciples , simple men, to stand up to the powers of their city, Jesus coming in clouds of power.

These are not ideas; none of the reporters offers a philosophy about Jesus. This is the family album and these are people showing the family pictures. When we look out at the world, when we look around, there is a great tendency to answer the question, “What do Christians think?” More and more, I am convinced Christian life has more to do with seeing than thinking—and then telling people what you saw.

Show Me Your Resurrection

We live in a culture that seems to have adopted Kurt Vonnegut’s phrase as its response to evil. “So it goes”. What else can we say? A Buddhist monk posed this question to Christians: “Show me your resurrection.” When I look for the power of irresistible, eternal life, when I search for Christ, I see people, people who touch his light and lift it. Written on the wall of a cellar in Cologne where Jews were hidden these words were written: “I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when I do not feel it. I believe in God even when God is silent.” If God is silent, maybe the silence is there so we can speak up, so we can tell what we’ve seen.

Chris is risen

Like a lot of churches, we put an Easter banner on the front this year. It just takes a few minutes to order these things but you do have to proof read them. That’s a lesson someone got powerfully wrong this year; John sent me a funny picture of a white Easter banner that said in big, bold, red letter CHRIS IS RISEN: not Christ, which was surely intended, but Chris. So I laughed about this, somewhat ruefully because over the years I’ve made many proofreading mistakes. And then I thought about it and this was my question: who’s Chris? Was I wrong, was I being short sighted? Did Chris rise just like the sign said? And what about us: surely Easter is meant to be more than a nice day with special music and pretty flowers; surely it is meant to remind us we are called to rise with Christ. What if we put your name where Chris is: Jim is risen, Eva is risen, Deb, Amy, Ken, and so on.

The disciples didn’t debate; they didn’t write a systematic theology. They told what they’d seen, they lived from the love of Christ and were raised by it to new lives, lives they told about and shared with such power that soon the little group of 11 or so was growing so fast it couldn’t be contained any more than the tomb could contain Jesus. Like Jesus, they shared their wounds; like Jesus, they shared their faith in the ultimate power of God whether seen or not at that moment. Like Jesus, they lived the resurrection.

Try it out: maybe the sign printer knew something important. Chris is risen: so are we. Show it, tell it, this week.

Amen

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY
by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor
Third Sunday After Epiphany,C • January 24, 2016
© James Eaton 2016

Have you ever wondered how sermons begin? This one started in a noisy coffee shop. There was a meeting going on a few feet away, perhaps ten people gathered at a long table. One guy was talking loudly and a lot to dominate the group; one was simply smiling and not saying much; I wondered what he was thinking. Past them, a couple of ministers planning worship. Lots of people were talking, there was music playing. I sat at a table that could have come from IKEA with coffee and my computer, reading these scriptures, trying to see them just for themselves, just as they are, listening for them over the din of everything, and it dawned on me that these are noisy scriptures.

Think of the Psalm: “The heavens are telling the glory of God”: cue the thunder. “Day to day pours forth speech and night to night declares knowledge.”The writer is asking us to imagine the day itself speaking, night itself, preaching God’s goodness. The writer knows this is poetry; he says, “There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard.” This is the song of creation praising the creator and if we don’t hear it, still it’s going on: 

…yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In the heavens he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy, and like a strong man runs its course with joy.

There is the theme: the joy of praising God. It’s big, it’s irresistible, it’s joyful and it’s noisy. Creation is singing: sing along.
The reading from Nehemiah is a big public meeting. It’s a crowd, it’s a speaker, they read Torah, they read the whole book of Deuteronomy, they preach it—the text says that Ezra gave the sense of it— and then there’s a huge street party. I’m sure someone is playing the 6th century BC Hebrew equivalent of Born in the USA. We’re used to worship that lasts about an hour with a 15 to 20 minute sermon; this goes on all day. It must have been a loud, amazing celebration. At the end they don’t just have coffee hour. The people are told, 

Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our LORD; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.

The joy of the Lord is your strength. Creation sings with joy God’s goodness; God’s people take up the song, locating their strength in the joy of God’s presence.

Sometimes we forget about joy. Most of my career, progressive churches and their leaders have been shaking their heads over the rise of big, evangelical churches. Recently I agreed to be a reference for a friend so I’ve been getting calls from a number of churches that tell the same story. They used to have full Sunday Schools; they used to have lots of families. Now they don’t. But there’s a big, growing church on the edge of town that does Why is this? I think one reason is that so many of us in progressive churches have forgotten the joy of the Lord. I’ve been to worship from that pattern and it’s fun. People have a good time; they may not get a lot of sound theology, but they experience the joy of the Lord and that feels strong. Where does the joy come from? It comes from connection. I knew Jacquelyn had attended some more conservative churches earlier in her life and I asked her about it, about the appeal. She said, “They may not make you think, but they sure take care of you.”

Maybe you found connection at church camp. You start out lonely and missing home, you make a few friends and at campfire they sing songs you don’t know but you kind of murmur along. Another night you start to get some of it and you start to sing and by the end of the week you’re hugging people you didn’t know when you started. Nehemiah is preaching a noisy, joyful celebration. What people are hearing connects them to each other and to God The next thing you know, they are celebrating, drinking wine and eating food that isn’t on any list of healthy diets and taking a a long time to praise the Lord.
At the other end of the readings, Jesus is preaching and reading scripture too. He’s gone on a trip to Judah, he got baptized as we read a couple weeks ago. We skipped the part after that, where he goes out in the wilderness and encounters temptation. We’ll come back to that in a few weeks but for now, he’s just back in the area, preaching in area synagogues. Their worship wasn’t so different than ours. There were familiar hymns and a pattern of readings. Today he’s back home. He’s gotten some notice and the leaders asked him to speak. So he stands up and he reads this from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” There it is again: the joy of the Lord. He’s there to announce it, his ministry begins with it, good news. There’s an old song we used to sing at camp, “Good news, chariot’s a’coming, good news, chariot’s a’coming, good news, chariot’s a’coming and I don’t want it to leave me behind.” In other words, I want to be part of the kingdom, I want a piece of heaven in my home.

So where does the joy come from? This week I needed new tires for my car; I looked up where to buy tires and found lots of places. We know where to go for groceries, for a mop, for all kinds of things. Where does this joy creation is singing come from? Where does the joy that is our strength come from? How can we bring a piece of heaven home with us?

The key is what Paul tells the Corinthians. We talked a bit about this last week but in case you don’t remember, he’s talking to a congregation that’s dividing. Some are gentiles, some are Jews; some are rich, some poor, some men, some women, some think they are more spiritual, some less so. He’s already told them all Christians share an essential union when they believe Jesus is Lord. Now he goes on to say that we are meant to be joined together like the parts of a body.

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body–Jews or Greeks, slaves or free–and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.

We’re used to playing the game of categories: age, income, gender and so many others. Paul wants us to look at each other and see all of us as part of the whole, one body with one Lord, joined together so carefully that we can’t separate.

That same spirit runs through the Jesus’ announcement of his ministry.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

We’re not alone; we are joined by God inextricably to all the others. Those who are sent away, the captives? The good news is for them too. Those who are blind, and certainly as we will see he means spiritually blind as well as physically? They’re meant to recover their sight. Those who are oppressed? They are meant to be freed to express fully the gifts God has given them, gifts given because they are needed.

Where does the joy come from? It comes from this joining together, this identification with one another. It comes from knowing that everyone around us is a child of God and that we ourselves are children of the same God. This is the great vision of Jesus Christ, this is the his message: at the table of the Lord, there’s a place for every single one because every single one is part of the whole body of Christ, every single one is a child of God, meant to sing out the joy of expressing God’s gifts, praising the one God.
Our problem isn’t that we are too small; our problem is that our churches have thought small. Something floated across Facebook this week that made me laugh and pointed up this problem. 
It said,

if someone from the 1950’s suddenly appears today, what would be the most difficult thing to explain about life today? It’s that I possess a device, in my pocket, that is capable of accessing the entire of information known to humanity. I use it to post pictures of pets get in arguments with strangers.

We are meant to be members of the greatest choir of all, the choir of creation. We didn’t come here to make money or make lives, we were created, we came here, to praise the Lord. To do that we have to remember that we are connected to each other, we are meant to sing together.

How do we do this? What’s the plan? Talk. “Day to day pours forth speech”. Look around when you get up today: see your friends as strangers you need to know better; see the people you don’t know as friends waiting to happen. Greet a visitor; it took a lot for them to get up and come here today. Don’t let the chance to greet someone get away, it may never come back. Take it with you; look for someone this week to give good news. Ministry is the old name for this but when we hear the word, too often we think of it as the job for a church pastor. Ministry is what we do when we connect to each other celebrating God. Ministry is what we do when we care for each other. Ministry is what we do when we see our connection and act on it.

This week, I was at the tire place, I’d gone back because there was a problem with one of the new tires. I had to wait an hour and a half while they fixed it. When I went to check out, the guy behind the counter clearly thought I’d be mad and was braced for my explosion as he apologized. The truth is, I was pretty annoyed when I went in. But I’d spent the time writing this sermon, so I felt pretty good about it by then and I said, “You know what? It’s ok; I wrote a whole sermon about finding joy by connecting to your neighbor while you worked on the tire. You can hear it Sunday, 10:30, on Quail Street at First Congregational if you’re curious. Anyway, thanks for taking care of the car and making sure we’ll be safe. He just smiled. I’d like to think I gave him a little good news; I’d like to think he got a bit of the joy of the Lord. Who can you give some to this week?

Amen.

Welcome to First Reflection. Think of this as three things. First, it’s like a kitchen where I cook up reflections on scripture that become a sermon for the week. Second, it’s a place to share the finished sermons. The third thing is up to you: I hope it will be a place for you to question, discuss, wonder about the scripture and the sermons with me. Come on in: reflect. Share. Wonder.