July 26, 2009
Abundant life
John 6:1-21, Ephesians 3:14-21, 2 Kings 4:42-44
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

Today we are in the very middle of summer. Gardens burst with vegetables and flowers; peach trees are full of fruit; summer rains make for some very happy weeds. The morning sun streams through our bedroom window at dawn, awakening chirping birds and barking dogs. The fullness of summer is upon us. 

This is the mood of our readings today. In the Hebrew scriptures, we catch up with Elisha the prophet in one of a series of miracle stories that all have to do with abundance. Prior to today’s passage, Elisha filled an arroyo with gushing water; he caused a poor woman’s oil jar to overflow so much that she was able to sell the excess and get out of debt; he raised a dead child back to life again. And in today’s reading, in the middle of a famine in Israel, he took 20 loaves of bread and caused it to multiply so that many more were fed. There was even food left over. 

Does this sound familiar? In today’s gospel, Jesus is the new Elisha. The people are hungry. They bring him 5 loaves and 2 fish. 5,000 are fed, and again, there are leftovers. 

Finally, Paul offers an ecstatic vision of what it is like to live with the Spirit of Christ in our hearts. Our inner being is strengthened so that we have the power to comprehend the divine love that fills us with all the fullness of God. 

It is a vision of the world as an abundant place, full of the goodness of God. Throughout the scriptures, this theme reappears again and again. 

What has become of this message? It has been shaped by our contemporary culture, so that it becomes about limitless financial abundance for individuals. It is called the prosperity gospel. A modern version of some old forms of Calvinism, it says that wealth will come to those who truly trust in God.

What is promised in the scriptures, however, is not material riches but the abundance of peace, mercy, security, joy, love, and hope.  Jesus died poor and alone on a cross, after all, and his followers didn’t fare much better. Nevertheless, he told them “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

This is what Paul meant by abundance in today’s reading: that our inner being would be strengthened with the power of the Spirit, that Christ himself would dwell in our hearts, that we would be rooted and grounded in love, filled with the breadth and length and height and depth and all the fullness of God. This kind of abundance, which is not even dependent upon our circumstances, is what Paul promises for those who love God. 

So even when material improvement does not happen, even when we get sicker instead of better, even when our debt rises and our friends disappear, we are still surrounded by God’s abundance and filled with the love of God. Even then, the blue sky remains, we can always love others, and the peace of God, which passes all understanding, can always dwell in our hearts. 

But there is something else about the abundance that is offered in scripture, and that is the way in which it is given. It never comes to individuals by themselves. This is another misconception of our modern day – that we can sit alone at home, visualize success and happiness and health, and then manifest it, all by ourselves. 

In the scriptures, we see that abundance always rises up out of community, never to a lone individual. Abundance in the Bible begins with a created world whose prodigious plant, animal, aquatic, and human life is all interdependent. Everything feeds on everything else, and nothing stands in isolation. Nothing can even survive without everything else. It is abundance through the community of creation.

The scriptural vision of communal abundance then moves into the Israelites becoming unified and moving into a land of plenty, as a people. It is Jesus saying that he came to bring abundant life, and then doing it by bringing together a new kind of community of acceptance and healing. It is the people of the early church selling everything they owned, putting the money in a common pot, and distributing to everyone according to their need. The scripture’s teaching about abundance is always that it comes through community. 

And the miracle in the feeding stories of Elisha and Jesus just might be about abundance found in community, too. Did Jesus really physically expand the amount of bread all by himself? Or did the miracle consist of each person bringing what little they had, sharing it with others, and discovering that what they could do in common was so much more than what anyone could do alone?

You have probably heard of the Millennium Development Goals, initiated by the United Nations, and taken up by many nations and organizations, including the Episcopal Church. These goals are that by the year 2015, we humans eliminate extreme poverty, hunger, and gender inequality; provide universal education and healthcare for children and their mothers; combat AIDS and create environmental sustainability; and establish partnerships in development between poor and wealthy people for the benefit of all. 

All we need to do to reach these goals is for nations, institutions, and individuals to commit 0.7% of our resources to them, and to cooperate. All we need to do is bring our 5 loaves and our 2 fishes, and share, and a miracle of abundance will occur. As it is often said, for the first time in human history, we have the capacity to end poverty. All we lack is the will. 

I think this is true about the current debate about health care in our nation. We can provide healthcare for all. But do we have the will? Some of you may have seen the Michael Moore movie “Sicko.” Whatever you think of his heavy-handed propagandist style of filmmaking, he manages to communicate this one heart-felt truth: in many other countries, when you ask someone on the street why they should contribute their money so someone else can have access to quality medical care, they look at you like you’re crazy. They say “Because we all need help sometime; we’re all in this together.” 

We see how abundance comes when we share our meager resources year after year in our parish budget; we see it in the fundraising for our building projects. We are not the kind of parish that has a few wealthy angels who give mountains of dollars. Our pyramid of giving is pretty flat. Many people contribute modest amounts, and it all adds up to a lot. We bring our 5 loaves and our 2 fishes, we share, and a miracle of abundance occurs. 

And so it is for our personal lives, too. Any time that we are in need of any kind, whether we are sick, in debt, confused, or up against a wall, we are always surrounded by a communal abundance of grace: people with kind and generous hearts, the Sandia Mountains rising up majestically over us, this parish, social agencies that able to help, the wind in the trees, and advice from wise friends. We live in an abundant world that has more than enough resources to carry each of us beyond our individual limitations. 

To tap into this abundance, we only have to believe that it does, indeed, surround us in the community of life, and to then turn to others, to God, to life itself, and humbly ask for help. God is just waiting for us to give us grace, at all times, through the community of life. 

Do you believe that life is abundant for you? 

I will leave you with two images, two memories of mine. One is of a bishop speaking recently at General Convention about a resolution that requires churches to pay into the pension plan for lay employees, as we have done here for years. He lumbered up to the microphone and warned darkly “If this resolution passes, many of the small churches in my diocese will have to cut back their employees’ pay in order to cover their pension.” I imagined him constantly reminding the people of his diocese of the need to be cautious, to hold on to what they had, to fear the awful scarcity of life. 

The other memory is of an obituary I read in the Taos newspaper a few years ago. It is of a simple man who sold the local paper for a few pennies. He got around everywhere, giving a smile and easy conversation to all. He was poor and in ill health, but full of grace, knowing that he was surrounded by the abundance of Taos’ good people and its natural beauty. According to the world’s standards, he was a nobody, even deprived. But everyone in Taos knew and loved him because of his abundant heart. His obituary took up half the page. 

Two people, two assumptions about the kind of world we live in. Today, how will you choose to live?

July 19, 2009
General Convention: a good shepherd
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

Our readings today speak of sheep and shepherds, a metaphor that has been used for 3,000 years for the church and her leaders, for Israel and the prophets, for Christ and God. There are good shepherds and bad shepherds, shepherds who scatter and destroy, shepherds who feed and anoint, gather and love.

In the gospel we just heard, Jesus looks around at the huge crowds around him like sheep without a shepherd. They recognize Jesus’ power, his love and wisdom. So they flock to him, press upon him, and follow him and his disciples, even to the quiet places they go to try to get away for a little peace and quiet. Jesus has compassion on them and heals them. It is a scene of great need and great response. 

The crowds are still there. There is still great need and we, as a church, have the ability to respond with compassion. People still have a great God-shaped hole in their lives, people are still like sheep without a shepherd, people still need healing, and when you offer it, they respond. 

Last week I attended the General Convention of our church for a few days. I was struck, as I always am there, by the way in which we, as a church, can be shepherds to the world around us. General Convention not only is the primary legislative gathering where are the big decisions are made about our church; it is the place where people doing ministries can display what they do, make reports, seek funding, and network with others. 

It is a dazzling experience. Christian vegetarians, monks, malaria programs in Africa, young adult advocates for justice, Guatemalan and Haitian fair trade products, you name it; the exhibit halls burst with the people of the world, their needs and our response. There are international guests from all over. The worship features African American gospel choirs, Spanish music, Native American dancers, and video images of the earth and its people, in all its suffering and beauty. It is like being with Jesus, surrounded by the whole world; no, it is being with Jesus in the world. 

General Convention did several things, as it always does, to respond to the world with compassion and healing. They began a major new initiative that will do what we are starting this fall – reaching out to 2nd and 3rd  generation Hispanics, and beyond, to offer a truly bilingual, bicultural ministry. Recognizing that we are fast becoming a bicultural nation, with every 5th child today speaking Spanish, knowing that not all of them are happy in the church tradition in which they were raised, we offer to these vast crowds what we have as the Episcopal Church, which is so much. We can offer these sheep without a shepherd real compassion and healing. I hope to tie in what we’re starting up here with Fr. Daniel together with this initiative, and perhaps access some funding, while we’re at it. 

General Convention re-committed to funding many programs that partner with our brother and sister Anglicans in the third world, especially in Africa, to help combat malaria, AIDS, and hunger. The millions who flock to Anglican churches there find compassion and healing in their worship and in their social programs, which is made possible partly by the Episcopal Church. 

But there is one kind of sheep that General Convention had compassion on and reached out to more obviously than others, especially if you pay attention to the media. It is gay and lesbian people. Sitting in our pews and surrounding us in our world are millions of people who have suffered much in their lives simply because they were born with a natural attraction to others of their gender. In this way, they are like left-handed people. And because of their difference, they have – some of you have - been condemned, excluded, told to repent, kicked out of families and churches, and killed. Truly like sheep without a shepherd, they have no spiritual home. 

At General Convention, we acted like a good shepherd and reached out to these hungry crowds of gay and lesbian people and said to them “you belong here. You are safe here, and we want you at every level of our church life.”  

Here’s what we did. In one resolution, we asserted that God calls gay and lesbian people to every ordained position, including that of bishop; and that we will discern those calls according to our own canons. In doing this, we moved past a controversial compromise of 3 years ago, when we told the Anglican Communion that we would observe a moratorium on ordaining as a bishop any person that might cause difficulty for more traditional Anglicans. This will no doubt cause a few more to depart, and it will raise yet more loud voices of protest from other Anglicans. 

In a second resolution, we began the process towards authorizing the blessing of same-gender holy unions. The Standing Committee on Liturgy and Music, together with the Theology Committee of the House of Bishops, will collect and develop theological resources and liturgies for this purpose, to be presented 3 years from now to the next General Convention. This train has left the station, and there is no going back. Before long, we will have authorized rites for the whole church, not just in isolated places where bishops choose to allow it. 

In both these actions, the Episcopal Church was a compassionate shepherd, looking out at the flocks of gay and lesbian people, looking out at the millions whose sons and daughters and best friends are gay, looking out at a modern and youthful world that does not believe that there is anything disordered or wrong about being naturally attracted to one’s own gender, and said healing words to these crowds: “You belong here. We want you at every level of church life.” 

How was this possible to make what was, for us, an historic leap forward? Well, the loudest voices, what turned out to be a small minority, have departed. They have decided that they cannot live with the direction we are taking as a church. With their departure, the atmosphere of rancor and fear has dissipated. The debate was lively but calm. We were able to move ahead. The votes came out 3 to 1 in favor of these actions. We are moving forward, unafraid, saying to the world “this is who we are, as Episcopalians,” willing to take the heat, believing that when we do the right thing by God’s people, it doesn’t matter what the consequences are. 

For many of us this is an historic time akin to milestones in the Civil Rights movement. Because we understand that same-gender attraction is a part of one’s identity, then if we were to continue to bar gays and lesbians from marriage or ordination, it would be the same thing as opposing interracial marriage or minorities in positions of leadership.  

I thank God we’re finally turning the corner and getting past this. It’s about time. Our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters – right here in this parish – have suffered too long. The millions of gays and lesbians in our society have been like sheep without a shepherd for too long. It is time to say the healing words of love and compassion: that your relationships of love are as holy, as godly, as any other. 

The Episcopal Church has so much to offer, and the needs of the world are so great. St. Michael’s has so much to offer, and the needs of our neighborhood, of our city are so great. There are thousands around us who are like sheep without a shepherd. We do our best to have compassion, and in doing so, we re-live what Jesus and his disciples did. 

We give people food every week through Casa San Miguel, our Food Pantry. This fall in our 5pm Sunday bilingual liturgy we will say to traditional Hispanic New Mexicans who have left their church of origin “you have a home here; we welcome you in every level of our church.” We support third-world cooperatives with coffee and many other products. We offer a place for skeptical seekers to question their faith, seekers whose questions are not welcome in many other churches. We offer a monthly mass with devotional chanting and meditation for people who will never come on a Sunday. We have opened our doors and our hearts to gay and lesbian people who are excluded from other church communities. 

The sheep who surround us on every side, who sometimes press upon us looking for healing, who want to see what we have to offer – they come to us as we make ourselves known, as you invite your friends to come and see, as we live out who we are. As we offer our compassion, we are Christ the Good Shepherd to them, and they are Christ to us. 

So today we have hung the Episcopal Church flag in our narthex, and we give thanks for this new day in our church. And we give thanks for the opportunity to be good shepherds, to participate in Christ’s healing ministry of compassion. 

St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church   
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Sunday July 12, 2009 
Preacher: Christopher McLaren 
Text. Mark 6:14-29 and 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
Theme: Godly Play, Herod and David – rediscovering our dance with God

This week I had the deep pleasure of exploring the sacred stories of our tradition in a new way. A group of nine adults from this parish including me spent three full days engaged in learning the profound discipline of telling sacred stories to children using an approach called Godly Play. It was moving beyond words to become like a child again and to hear these stories as if for the first time: told in such surprising ways, in such elegant and evocative simplicity that so much more than my mind was engaged. We did in fact find ourselves playing: drawing and writing and telling stories and laughing at what God could do in us through a story that seemed so old, so ancient but somehow so alive to us here and now. 

For three days we had the privilege of experiencing the Bible in a whole new way that was not just “child’s play.” It was rediscovering our childhood before God. It was the stretching opportunity to realize that when one is open to not just hearing a story but entering it and allowing it to invite you into a conversation with God new meaning, new understanding, newness can happen. We found ourselves wondering about the stories that shape the Christian life in such fresh ways that our own spiritual lives began to open-up.

In fact, when I began to ponder our gospel lesson for today in light of what I had been experiencing I found myself laughing at this gruesome text of a child asking for the prophet John the Baptist’s head on behalf of her mother. The first thing that came to mind was that this is not a text for children, yikes! Why do we read this in church? If ever there was a text bent on destroying the spiritual potential of children or manipulating them to adult purposes this is it. I began to wonder about what this story might be saying to me in the midst of exploring the theology of childhood? 

To be sure this story is meant to make it clear that Jesus’ popularity is growing and that his works of power are beginning to cause a ruckus in the political world that surrounds him. Just as John predicted Jesus would increase as he would decrease. But in the text there are some extremely interesting details. Herod, while the cause of John’s death, is presented as a complex character.  I have always loved the playfulness of the phrase, “When he (Herod) heard him (John), he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him.” It is as if the gospel writer is trying to tell us something about how we are to encounter the challenging ways of the scriptures.  We don’t have to know all the answers, we can be perplexed and troubled by the ways of God or the person of Jesus but at the same time there is a deep attraction, a joy in grappling with the spiritual meaning hidden in these stories.  

Though Herod knows that John disapproves of his ethical and moral life, he continues to listen to John puzzling about the messages of this holy man and going so far as to protect him from harm despite his family’s discomfort. It is as if Herod is engaged spiritually by John and is in the midst of a game that we all are invited into hide and seek with God.  It is a game best learned in the presence of children who have an intuitive ability to experience the presence of God. To enter the Kingdom of God we need to become like a child.  Children can intuit divinity they know that the world is charged with the grandeur of God and will show you if you will take the time to be with them.  It is no secret that children are more open to spirituality than adults, who rely more on their abilities with words than the nonverbal communication they had before they acquired language. 

This brings to mind a story from a wonderful book by Gertrude Mueller Nelson called To Dance with God. In it she describes an experience with her daughter. 

Some years ago, I spent an afternoon caught up in a piece of sewing I was doing. The waste basket near my sewing machine was filled with scraps of fabric cut away from my project.  This basket of discards was a fascination to my daughter Annika, who, at the time, was not yet four years old.  She rooted through the scraps searching out the long bright strips, collected them to herself, and went off.  When I took a moment to check on her, I tracked her wereabouts to the back garden where I found her sitting in the grass with a long pole.  She was a affixing the scraps to the top of the pole with great sticky wads of tape. “I’m making a banner for a procession,” she said. “I need a procession so that God will come down and dance with us.” With that she solemnly lifted her banner to flutter in the wind and slowly she began to dance” (To Dance with God p. 3). 

Nelson writes, “This little primitive allowed me to witness a holy moment and I learned all over again how strong and real the sense of wonder that children have – how innate and easy their way with the sacred.  Here, religion was child’s play.  And of course I had to wonder what happens in our development that as adults we became a serious folk, uneasy in our relationship with God, out of touch with the mysteries we knew in childhood, restless, empty, searching to regain a sense of awe and a way to “dance with God.” 

Perhaps this is what is so delightful about the story of David dancing before the ark of God in our Older Testament reading. David is rejoicing in the presence of God. He is uninhibited in his celebration, dancing with all his might before the Lord with the people of God.  David is not a perfect human being as we well know but what he does seem to have is an ongoing childhood before God. He knows how to delight in God, to enter into a playful relationship with God that never ends. He is caught up in the wonder, joy and love of relating to God and will not be stopped or inhibited by the adult conventions bent on destroying this Godly play. He is alive to God in his body and does not need language to show his love of God.

Perhaps that is what is so sad about the dancing that is going on in the story of Herod. His daughter dances to impress the adults. The child is being used to entertain the adults and because of this Herod feels the need to reward her. This dancing is not the spontaneous pleasurable dancing of a child that has its own intrinsic rewards and leads to new and creative activities.  It is not the joyous and worshipful dancing of David. Rather this dance is calculated to impress and because it requires reward it leads to a kind of death that closes down the creative process and eventually leads to physical and spiritual death.  Herod is deeply grieved and his daughter is manipulated and robbed of her childhood as she sees that her creative potential will be used to take life instead of to create it. 

It may seem strange but this passage of scripture that is so “adult” and so “inappropriate for children” has the potential to remind us of what children need to grow spiritually and ultimately what we need to grow along with them, for they can be our guides and our guiding of them can lead us back to discovering our own childhood before God. 

I wonder what do children really need to grow in relationship with God? I wish that on a Sunday morning like this one the sermon could end right here and we could turn to our neighbors and talk about this wondering question. I wonder what you need to grow spiritually? I wonder where your childhood is before God? Perhaps if I had more guts or was less “adult” about all this preaching business I could really issue this invitation? Or perhaps I’m just childlike enough to do so? 
(pause) I can see some Episcopalians out there getting nervous. 

I think our children need permission to be children. They need time and space to play with God and not that kind of techno-garbage play we are served so readily today that requires so little of them. Children need play for its own sake. It doesn’t have to be productive. Play is its own reward. 

I think our children need adults who are willing to draw out of them what is already inside of them. The limitations that they already sense around them are important. Life has limits,  freedom has limits, time moves on, and we all have questions about why we are here? 

Perhaps most importantly children need stories it is the language they are most comfortable with:  stories of pilgrimage, parables that tease their hearts awake, stories of God’s creative power. Story is how we discover the world, that is how we shape our lives and make meaning, they are how we become aware of a deeper reality that surrounds us. 

I believe that children need to be allowed to grapple with the mysteries of our tradition. They need the opportunity to sense in their bones the deep mystery of Christ at the Great Vigil of Easter, to find comfort and belonging around that awesome and holy table that is open to everyone.  They need us to reflect back to them the mysteries of our faith that we find in the wisdom that God reveals to them so easily. 

Like us they need to find themselves in a community that gathers around the light. That centers itself around the goodness and grace of God and the creative power of the Spirit to transform all it draws into that circle of light.  

But that is only my list and I do wonder what your list might look like? What do you believe children need to play with God? And is it all that different than what you need to become playful with God yourself?  David danced before the ark of God with reckless abandon. He danced with all his might in the presence of the Holy. It doesn’t have to be a dance of joy. A good friend of mine got up from her bed and danced with God the night before the cancer finally took her body. I wonder what it would take to get you dancing with God? I wonder what you need to play with God, for that is its own reward. 

July 5, 2009 God and Country
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor
Ezekiel 2:1-5 Mark 6:1-13

God and country. Here we are, on Independence Day weekend, in church. The American flag will be brought up at the altar, as an offering of our national life to God. God and country. How do we put these two together? 

Some people merge the two. Their Christian faith is blurred with patriotism. Both have something vaguely to do with being a good person. The cross is wrapped in the flag, and somewhere along the way, it loses its distinctive meaning. Religion is used in the service of nationalism. 

Others put God and country together by trying to legislate public life according to their understanding of the Bible, banning this and banning that. They want to make everyone else live under their restrictions, whether they are Christian or not. 

For still others, God and country are kept entirely separate. They want no discussion of religion in public life and no discussion of politics in church. They keep God in a little box, trotting him out to help with their individual problems, and expect him to remain silent about social problems. 

But there is another way of living out the relationship between God and country, one that is actually quite traditional both biblically and historically in the church. It is the way of the prophet. Today’s readings take us there. 

Now in popular use, the word “prophet” means someone who has had a vision that enables them to predict the future. The word literally means “to see before.” The prophet is depicted as wild-eyed, angry, and kind of crazy. But the word “prophet” in the Bible and in church history is really just someone who uses the traditional teachings of the scriptures as a standard in order to critique what is happening in the present. They stand, fully grounded in God’s Word, and apply it to the social world in which they live. 

In the first lesson today, we hear God calling Ezekiel to be such a prophet. Ezekiel was one of the Jews who had been exiled to Babylon around 600 BC. He looked at their suffering and evaluated the situation in light of what scripture says. He concluded that Israel’s exile was a direct result of their unfaithfulness to God’s ways. And so he was sent by God to speak to this “rebellious, stubborn, and impudent nation,” to call them to return to God.  

Jesus was also a prophet. He too looked around in his day and used traditional teachings of the scriptures to critique his nation. For one thing, he called them away from the greed, violence, and materialism of the cosmopolitan Roman world, back to a more communal way of living that was grounded in the Jewish law. In the gospel today, Jesus speaks to his neighbors in Nazareth, who didn’t want to hear what he had to say. Jesus notes that prophets are usually without honor in their hometown, and because of their lack of faith in him, he has no power among them. He will have to take his prophetic message elsewhere in Israel, and ask his disciples to share some of the work, by being prophets too. 

The prophetic way of approaching God and country is also traditional in church history. Early Christian martyrs, critics of kings and empires, church reformers, abolitionists and civil rights workers – they have been grounded in the teachings of scripture; they used this grounding to critique their world; and they then spoke about what they saw. That is what prophets do. 

Understood this way, every person of faith is called to be a prophet. Every one of us is asked to not keep God in a little box, trotting him out to help us with our individual problems. We are also asked to stand in the scriptures, in the heart of the gospel, and use this perspective to evaluate the times we live in. 

This assumes that we are, in fact, grounded in the vision of life that God and Jesus have revealed to us in scripture. When we hear the Word proclaimed here, when we read it at home, we try to understand not just what it might say to us personally, but also what it says about the use of money, about employment practices, about how the privileged should relate to the poor and others who suffer, about crime, punishment and war, about dealing with foreigners and people of a different religion, and our enemies. 

Then we apply what we believe about God’s ways to the world in which we live. How do we do this? In a wide variety of ways. 

A few of us are really good at getting directly involved in the political process to further candidates and legislation that we believe will further the ways of God. Others give time or money to organizations that do the same. Some work full time in jobs that further Gods ways. Some write or speak. Most of us read and talk with our friends and neighbors, speaking from our heart, from our faith. Hopefully all of us vote in a way that is consistent with what we believe to be God’s intention for this world. 

We’re not all activists, we’re not all leaders, but we’re all asked to be prophetic – to actively apply the values of the scriptures to the world we live in. As we set about doing this, however, it is easy to become frustrated and lose heart. After all, this is a huge world with many deeply-ingrained problems. There are times when we wonder What difference can I make?” “What’s the point of even trying? This is where today’s readings from the Old Testament and from the gospel are most helpful.   

Ezekiel was told to go and speak to his nation about how they had strayed from God’s ways. But at the end of the passage, God says something critical to Ezekiel. “Whether they hear or refuse to hear, they shall know that there has been a prophet among them.” That’s the important thing - not that Ezekiel was so effective that he turned his nation back to God, but that there had been a prophet among them. What was important is that Ezekiel witnessed to God’s ways. That’s all. 

And then the gospel. Jesus sent his friends out to proclaim his teachings. But before they go, he says to them “If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” Jesus did not expect his disciples to succeed in every village, with every person. He knew that like him, like every prophet, they would not be effective in every place. That’s not what matters. What matters is that they witness to God’s ways, and then leave the results to God. 

You and I will not make over this world into the kingdom of God. We will not see universal peace and perfect justice in our day. Even Jesus hasn’t done that. What is most important is that God has people here on earth who listen to his Word and to his Son, become grounded in that truth, and have then consider what the implications of that revelation are for the world they live in. What matters is that God has advocates here on earth, people of faith who speak and act on behalf of God in this world. 

On this Independence Day weekend, as we give thanks for our good fortune to be citizens of this wonderful and privileged country, we also pause and remember God’s even higher calling: that we be prophets to our nation. 

Perhaps at the Offertory today, as we bring our nation’s flag forward, you might think of it as a symbol not just of our country, but as a symbol of your intention to exercise this calling. For our nation today, and every nation in every age, needs those who are willing to witness to God’s ways. And God needs us to be his advocates.