Pocket Sized Pastor*

5Thus says the Lord:
 Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals
  and make mere flesh their strength,
  whose hearts turn away from the Lord.
6They shall be like a shrub in the desert
  and shall not see when relief comes.
 They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness,
  in an uninhabited salt land.
7Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
  whose trust is the Lord.
8They shall be like a tree planted by water,
  sending out its roots by the stream.
 It shall not fear when heat comes,
  and its leaves shall stay green;
 in the year of drought it is not anxious,
  and it does not cease to bear fruit.
 9The heart is devious above all else;
  it is perverse— who can understand it?
 10I the Lord test the mind and search the heart,
  to give to all according to their ways,
  according to the fruit of their doings.

Jeremiah 17:5-10

My sermon from the 6th Sunday after Epiphany (February 16, 2025) on Jeremiah 17:5-10.

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So this is the second weekend in a row when a Saturday night storm made this moment a bit unsettled. For almost sixteen hours, all kinds of water – snow, ice, sleet, and rain – have fallen from the sky. This water is simply doing what it’s supposed to do, seeking out the easiest path from the sky to the ground. We, though, have done our best to get in some of that water’s way by building a roof over our heads. Water, though, has a habit of seeping through any expectation we have. And a couple of weeks ago, I noticed a cardboard box sitting on a cabinet in the church office that was completely soaked. It was then when I noticed along one of the walls all kinds of water stains and paint peeling off the walls. Our property team and others at the church quickly responded to this issue by contacting our roofers and setting up a few dehumidifiers when the office began to smell. Their generous and faithful work is amazing but we’re still not exactly sure how the water is seeping through. There’s been storms over the last little bit that have left a puddle of water on the cabinets and other storms that have left the room completely dry. And while the search for the leak continues, I can’t help being a little annoyed and a bit anxious about what’s seeping through a building we’ve put a lot of time, energy, and money into. Watching and waiting for the water to seep through the roof can be very stressful. And in today’s first reading we heard from our Bible, the prophet Jeremiah points out how there are other things other than water that seep into us, becoming what we trust and believe.
Now over these last few weeks, we’ve spent quite a bit of time with the prophets. We heard Isaiah give voice to the message God called him to share 900 years before Jesus was born and how those same words shaped Jesus’ understanding of his own mission and call. A prophet is a person called by God to share a message inviting people to re-center their relationship with God and with one another. And in ancient Israel and Judah, the role of prophet was identified as a kind of religious leader that some kings and queens supported with money and resources. But when a religious leader ends up becoming part of a leader’s entourage, their message can become primarily a way to reinforce whatever their leader wants. There are a number of books in our Bible named after prophets; yet these prophets were the reluctant ones who weren’t really supported since God told them to push back against those who assumed God was always on their side. Jeremiah’s work began around the year 626 BCE and his words seeped into the life of the kingdom of Judah for the next forty years. Those in power assumed they were the blessed ones since they had wealth, resources, and could tell others what to do. People assumed that those kinds of resources were extremely limited and so those who had more than enough were seen as entitled to what they assumed God had given to them. This self-reinforcing fantasy masquerading as common sense valued keeping things as they were or returning to some romanticized past where only the right kind of people were in control. But when Jeremiah began to preach, the Babylonian Empire located in modern Iraq had started to grow. Those living in Judah and Jerusalem grew anxious as kingdoms came to fall to these outsiders from the East. The community responded by trying to form new alliances, strengthen their military, invest in their borders, and even embraced non-Jewish religious practices as a way to convince the divine to act on their behalf. Over time, their anxiety grew into a story of safety and greatness that even the prophets working for the king promised God would respond if Babylon’s armies ever broke through. Jeremiah, though, brought a different kind of message – proclaiming that it was God who was leading Babylon’s armies against them. The community had put so much of their trust in their wealth, their power, and their own understanding of what was holy and true that God had to respond. This trust had seeped so deeply into their lives, those incharge and those who supported them couldn’t even see what they had become. Their trust was reflected in the ways they treated their God through the harm perpetuated on the poor, the orphan, and those they chose to marginalize. They believed life was only meant for the right kind of people and their desire to dominate others had not gone unnoticed by their God. The community was so wrapped up in what they were, they couldn’t even listen to those around them showing how dry, dusty, and cruel their hearts had become.
And so Jeremiah, throughout his career, pointed to something else that could seep into their souls instead. We shouldn’t assume that the status quo, our traditions, or our expectations are a kind of holy foundation of who we get to be in the world. Every one of us has the opportunity to not let a sense of goodness, purpose, or faithfulness be the limit of what our life should be. And that’s because our God will continue to shape the foundation parts of who we choose to be. When we refuse to act as if God is still changing us, we become the shrub in the desert failing to realize how much more we can become. Saying we trust God isn’t always enough since what we do, say, what we listen to, and how we treat the most vulnerable among us reveals what we really trust instead. We might act as if this moment and our future depends on our wealth; what we hoard; and a deep sense of entitlement assuming certain opportunities belong only to us. We might choose to act as if the gifts God has given us, like our intelligence or our work ethnic, is only for us and not a world desperately in need. There are a million different ways we make our God small by choosing to put our trust in all the other stuff seeping into our lives that pretend only one kind of identity, purpose, goal, or culture is allowed to be. God, though, knows that these limits will not be the end-all-be-all since something else has already seeped into our lives. When you were baptized, the water that fell on you did what it was supposed to do. Some of it fell off the side of your face, seeking the ground, while other drops seeped into your skin and hair. It was that water, united with the promises of God, that became the new water meant for the roots of your soul. The promises of God – of an eternal life that has already started; of a union with a holy family stretching beyond all time and space; and the promise that your value isn’t based on what you have done or will do but on God’s love for you alone – that is at the heart of who we get to be. This does not mean life will always be easy nor that we won’t often put our trust in things that cause woes, death, and destruction rather than hope and peace. But it does mean that what we get to trust is that we truly are worth living, dying, and rising for. This is a gift that none of us are entitled to but one that helps us do the hard thing of loving God; loving our neighbor; and of choosing to serve those we don’t fully understand – no matter what comes next. And when we truly trust that the God who was born, who lived, who loved, who laughed, who cried, and who died on a Cross with arms open to all – when we trust the God who is with and for us all of our days and beyond – that’s when we begin discover how our true life has already begun.

Amen.

¹Once while Jesus was standing beside the Lake of Gennesaret and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, ²he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets. ³He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. ⁴When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” ⁵Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” ⁶When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to burst. ⁷So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. ⁸But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’s knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” ⁹For he and all who were with him were astounded at the catch of fish that they had taken, ¹⁰and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” ¹¹When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

Luke 5:1-11

My sermon from the 5th Sunday after Epiphany (February 9, 2025) on Luke 5:1-11 and Isaiah 6:1-8.

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I wonder – what did you expect to happen in worship today? I know, because of the snow, I spent most of this week anxiously wondering if this moment would even happen. My energy was tied up in the logistics for a Sunday that won’t meet our usual expectations. But taking time to focus on what happens when the divine shows up is, I think, pretty much what worship is about. The act of worship isn’t about what we do; it’s about where God chooses to be. We gather together virtually or in-person trusting that, regardless of whatever happened this week, this is the moment where you are seen, known, and loved. The divine really is meeting you right now even though our expectations for what this moment should be like probably varies from person to person. We might imagine that when God shows up, we should feel a kind of peace and comfort – as if a warm towel was suddenly draped over our shoulders. Or maybe we hoped some passion, energy, a guitar, and a voice would lift up our hands, our hearts, and our souls. Maybe we need this moment to have a kind of silence large enough to overcome the other noises telling us that we aren’t who God made us to be. Or when the divine shows up, we assume we’ll be inspired by a word propelling us into something new. What we want is an encounter with the divine that changes this current moment into something truly positive and amazing. Which is why our readings today from Isaiah and the gospel according to Luke feel a little weird because when the divine does show up, everyone’s first response is full of fear. 

Now the fear we see in these readings isn’t what we feel while watching a scary movie. When Isaiah and Peter encountered the divine, they were truly afraid for their lives. There was a belief that when the holy showed up, our story could come to its end. And we see this when Isaiah received a vision of God where the Holy Temple in Jerusalem became an extension of a heavenly palace. God, as we read, was an overwhelming presence sitting on a throne while wrapped by a royal robe that filled the entire space. Around God flew all kinds of fantastical beings that were covered in way too many wings and eyes. Nothing about Isaiah’s vision was meant to bring comfort or peace since he was witnessing just how powerful God truly is. Isaiah, in that moment, was overcome by a sense of his own humanity since comparing his createdness with God’s uncreatedness stole any sense of joy he had. His words weren’t simply what we’d expect a prophet in our Bible to share. He was, instead, articulating just how imperfect he truly was. These words weren’t about questioning his sense of worth or his own self-esteem. He was, instead, feeling an incredible sense of awe that was indistinguishable from terror and fear. Isaiah’s response was, I think, something we would feel if the hem of God’s royal robe suddenly filled whatever space we’re currently in. So why did Peter, while hanging out with Jesus who wasn’t being physically massive and over the top, react to God in the very same way? 

Now this probably wasn’t the first time Peter – aka Simon – met Jesus. In the verses right before today’s story, Jesus went into Peter’s house and healed Peter’s mother-in-law from a deadly fever. Jesus, at the time, was doing what he always did – preaching, teaching, and bringing wholeness to those who needed it. Their experience of the divine was the kind of experience so many of us want for ourselves – and our family members – right now. This is why, I think, Peter was perfectly fine with Jesus jumping into his boat and using the water as a way to amplify the sound of his voice so everyone could hear what he had to say. His experience with Jesus was already positive so he didn’t mind sticking around on the Lake of Gennesaret (which was just another name for the Sea of Galilee) after a night where Peter caught nothing. Peter was probably a little disappointed by how little he caught even though he knew that some nights, the fish were biting while others, they’re not. Peter was doing what he always did, using his gifts to take care of his friends and family. That typical moment was a little strange since there was currently a 30 year old shouting out over the water. But when Jesus, with a word, invited Peter and his friends to fill their boat with all kinds of fish, that abundance scared Peter half-to-death. Now Peter had already experienced the divine yet all this life; all this bounty; all this stuff to take care of his extended family didn’t inspire him with hope and joy. That moment, when Jesus displayed the kind of power over the others, should have caused Peter to give up everything to cling to all that wealth and control. But when the divine made its presence felt in this particular way, Peter was instead full of awe and fear. 

And maybe – just maybe – that really is a healthy response to when God shows up. God isn’t only about bringing us peace and comfort; God also challenges, transforms, and changes. God, as God, will always be bigger than our expectations. And while we have a habit of mistaking displays of power as true power itself, our God will also remind us of how loved – and created – we truly are. We often, I think, hope that a certain kind of ideology, way of life, or exercise of power will transcend how human we truly are. What we long for is access to whatever will create all that fish rather than the One who created that fish in the first place. Yet the God who brings us comfort is also a God who isn’t afraid to move us out of whatever is holding us back and into something a bit more true. God’s willingness to do this, though, is terrifying since we have to unlearn those thoughts, beliefs, and understanding that cares about power over rather than power with. When the divine shows up, abundant life always flows. And while we often want that life only for ourselves, it’s telling that Peter left all that fish for others to discover what God’s love chooses to do. That doesn’t mean, however, that we don’t need comfort and peace from our God since that is often how we are held through all the chaos life can bring. Yet I wonder what it would be like if we also let our encounter with the divine be something that can challenge, change, and even scare us. It’s scary, I think, to trust that this moment won’t be the sum of all our moments nor will our story be the default story meant for everyone else in the world. It’s terrifying to realize that people around us, including those we don’t like or even understand, really do bear the image of God. Our hands might shake when we realize how much our sense of self depends on the displays of power we or others exercise over others. And it’s frightening to see how Jesus chooses to give life to others whenever we do our best to take it. Our experience of the divine will never be the end-all-be-all of what the divine will do since God is always bigger than what we can imagine. And while that can be scary, it’s also a blessing since it’s this same God who, in baptism, has promised to never let you go. Our encounter of the divine will sometimes be obvious or peaceful or ridiculously scary. Yet the One who is with you will also be the One who moves you into an eternal and everlasting future where God’s life will flow out of your life to bring hope to the world. 

Amen.

²¹Then [Jesus] began to say to [all in the synagogue in Nazareth, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” ²²All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” 
²³He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’ ” ²⁴And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. ²⁵But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months and there was a severe famine over all the land, ²⁶yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. ²⁷There were also many with a skin disease in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” ²⁸When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. ²⁹They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.  ³⁰But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

Luke 4:21-30

My sermon from the 4th Sunday after Epiphany (February 2, 2025) on Luke 4:21-30.

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So last week, I invited us to pause and hold whatever we were feeling, thinking, or imagining until we listened to the 2nd half of the story we heard from the gospel according to Luke. Jesus had just started his public ministry and began to make a name for himself throughout the region of Galilee. When he returned to the town he grew up in, the synagogue was packed with people he had grown up with. The attendant in that space handed him a scroll containing words from the prophet Isaiah and he was invited to read and preach. When he unrolled the scroll, he read out loud a handful of verses describing what life would be like for the community when the Messiah showed up. At first, those around him nodded and whispered and were excited by what he said. But once his words started to sink in – the promise of good news only for the poor; the hope of realising every prisoner and those who were oppressed; the healing of those who needed to be healed while also kicking off a year of jubilee that would reverse everyone’s economic futures – it’s then when the questions started bubbling up. If we let Jesus’ words remain merely abstracted and spiritualized, then we’re okay with what he said since we all struggle, worry, and long for some kind of relief. The words Jesus shared, though, were also pretty literal. Wondering if we are really poor or oppressed or if we’re pretending to be those things as a way to harm those around us – while also thinking if we really do what our economic futures and those around us to be reversed – aren’t ones we might be so thrilled to have after listening to these words from the son of a carpenter. Pausing to wonder and think what’s really going on can gnaw on us. And when Jesus kept speaking, that gnawing grew into a deep, deep, grind. 

Now Jesus seemed to know what they were thinking since he named their expectation that his attention, power, and love should primarily be for the benefit of those immediately around him. This community had, after all, been there while he was busy living his life. Yet the biblical stories Jesus used to interpret Isaiah’s words made them second guess who this Jesus might be. The prophet Elijah’s lived roughly 900 years before Jesus was born. And he worked primarily in what was known as the Northern Kingdom which formed after the kingdom David established broke into two after the death of his son Solomon. Elijah was known as a prophet who performed miracles and who also ticked off  those who assumed they knew what God could do. So after one particularly intense verbal battle with the king and queen of Israel, Elijah became a hunted man since God, through him, initiated a famine that lasted three years. At first, Elijah found safety hiding in the wilderness, away from the police and soldiers that stalked him. But when the water in that area dried up, he fled across the border into the land of the Philistines. The Philistines were, at that time, the major political and religious competitors to ancient Israel. And those kingdoms regularly fought wars against one another. The famine, though, wasn’t restricted to only one country and Elijah soon ran into a widow who was about to make the last meal for her and her family. When Elijah drew near, she had no interest in inviting anyone to her table who might take away the limited food she could find. She relented, however, and when she went to make food for her and her kin – God also chose to provide to this non-believer everything she needed to thrive. A generation later, Elijah’s disciple Elisha, found himself in a similar position. Naaman, the commander of the armies of the kingdom of Aram, a nation that regularly fought with and against Israel and Judah, had contracted some kind of skin disease. Naaman wasn’t a follower of God nor was he necessarily the kind of person we imagine should be a part of God’s holy family. And yet after being told by an enslaved woman what God was doing through Elisha, Naaman sought him out and was healed. Both stories show God choosing to act among people we would put at the back of the line when it comes to seeing what God’s love should do. We could, I think, read way too much into these stories by assuming this was God saying that these outsiders rather than the insiders were now God’s chosen family. Yet the stories don’t end with Naamen or the widow becoming the believer they assume they would become. Rather than justifying our own sin by consciously or unconsciously deciding who is God’s people and who isn’t, we can choose to notice what happened before any miracle took place. What we see, read, and hear in these two stories are people – with their God – showing hospitality to those they never wanted to be hospitable to in the first place. Elijah became a refugee who needed help from a woman who thought she had nothing to give. Yet when she gave him a seat at her table, God’s hospitality for her and her family flowed. Naaman, a military leader who won victories against God’s chosen people, needed Elisha to show him the kind of hospitality and care that no army could bring to bear. And when he let himself be vulnerable, Elisha welcomed him and showed what love can always do. God wasn’t simply going to be a God who would only work in the ways we expect. God would, instead, operate through the kind of hospitality that reveals who our God chooses to be. 

And so that might be why the community after listening to these words – then tried to toss JEsus off a cliff. After initially being really excited about what this wunderkid might do, they realized he wasn’t there to make their assumptions true. Rather, the God who chooses to do what God chooses to do will never be limited by who we imagine that God to be. Instead, our God will love. And this love will not be idealized or limited to only one community or one kind of relationship or only expressed between the vows couples make to one another. The love God gives is a love we get to share as individuals, as a church, and as a community living in the world. God’s love is often experienced at its best through hospitality. And its within these kinds of relationships where we learn how love really is patient and kind, not envious, arrogant, or rude. It’s the practice of hospitality that invites us to move beyond insisting that everything and everyone must follow our way. Hospitality is where and how we bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things. And while hospitality, like love, is always risky – we have a God who, through Jesus, has already shown that hospitality by claiming you in baptism and faith – as a beloved child of God. We, because of Christ, have already been brought into a divine family that extends beyond every border of time and space. And God did this not because we are perfect or special or always look the part when it comes to being faithful or Christian or even a true believer. Rather, Jesus chose you because you really are worth living, dying, and rising for. And so if Jesus can be that hospitable to us, I wonder what it might be like to show others what God’s hospitality truly is. 

Amen.

¹On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. ²Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. ³When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” ⁴And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to me and to you? My hour has not yet come.” ⁵His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” ⁶Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. ⁷Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 

⁸He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the person in charge of the banquet.” So they took it. ⁹When the person in charge tasted the water that had become wine and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), that person called the bridegroom ¹⁰and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” ¹¹Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.

John 2:1-11

My sermon from the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany (January 19, 2025) on John 2:1-11.

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So for those of you here in the sanctuary, it’s not hard to notice all the different ways Christmas lingers. Even though we had a lot of amazing volunteers come together to put away the creche, the tree, and the candles – stuff remains. There’s, for example, the dozen or so poinsettias sitting in our narthex and the stray box of ornaments that haven’t quite made it into the storage space behind me. And since our cleaning service won’t be here until later in the week, there’s also a lot of plastic pine needles sitting at our feet. I’m also pretty sure those at home can see the light brown glaze of hay still covering the steps leading up to the altar as well as the shimmer of all the silver and gold glitter that, no matter how much we vacuum, will never go away. One of the major outcomes from these big celebrations, worships, and moments is that they linger longer after they happen. And in our reading today from the gospel according to Luke, we discover how Jesus needed something to linger with him too. 

Now the baptism of Jesus is always our first Sunday after Epiphany and even though I’ve preached on it a bunch of times, I’m still not entirely sure what this moment might mean. It is a bit odd that the Son of God would need some kind of ritual washing to show how God was always with him. This baptism Jesus experienced wasn’t exactly like what we do when God baptizes us with a little bit of water and a few special words. But these kinds of ritual washing have been part of our human story for centuries. Using water as a way to tend to our relationship with God was a big part of Jesus’ own Jewish identity and served as a way to refocus people’s mind, spirit, and energy towards the God who loved them. We often need this kind of gift since we pretend as if our ego, our wants, and our perspective are the only things that truly matter in our world. Ritual washings can invite us to not only recognize the ways we fail to be who God knows we can be but to also reaffirm that, in spite of all of that, the creator of the universe still cares about you. The baptism John practiced was, I think, something along those lines – helping folks recognize how being with God makes a difference in the here and now. And so, one day, when word of what John was up to in the wilderness finally reached Jesus, he put down what he was doing and went to see what was going on along the shores of the Jordan River.

Now when Jesus arrived, his experience as described in the gospel according to Luke was a bit different than we see in the other versions of Jesus’ life. We don’t, for example, see John pointing to Jesus as the One holding that winnowing fork nor is it implied that everyone heard that booming voice from heaven. Instead this moment – while big – is also very muted. And Luke acts as if Jesus – the One who was there when the universe was made – was only one person indistinguishable from everyone else in the crowd. All those people along the shore of the Jordan River had gone through the same ritual; heard the same words; and felt the same kind of fear, awe, wonder, doubt, and hope such a moment can bring. But once the water had dried from his hair, something very personal happened. Jesus was doing what he often does in Luke – praying – when he saw the heavens open and the Holy Spirit manifested in the physical form of a fancy looking pigeon. It was the kind of event that, I think, was big enough for everyone around him to witness and see. Yet when the voice echoed from above, the message Divine spoke was for Jesus alone. The “You” in “You are my son” is not a general “you” meant for everyone in the crowd. It’s the kind of “you” entirely focused on Jesus himself. God the Father, God the Creator, and the God who is, and was, and will be – told Jesus not only that he was the beloved; but that God was already well pleased with him. Before Jesus had shared a single story; before he healed anyone who was sick; before Jesus casted out a demon and before he took his first steps towards the Cross – Jesus heard from above that he already mattered. This wasn’t, I think, meant as an affirmation of what Jesus would do. It was, instead, a reminder of who God always is since there was nothing the Son of God needed to do to earn a place within the Trinity he was already a part of. Rather, the word God the Father shared was a word the Son of Mary needed to hear since he had a lot of living left to do. 

I’m not sure, from a deep theological perspective, if Jesus really needed to be baptized. But I do think that he, like all of us, needed something to linger with him as he moved through what was about to come. Jesus longed for the assurance that when the troubles and tribulations came, everything about him wasn’t merely arbitrary, random, or meaningless. The Son of God knew what could be yet the Son of Mary needed the affirmation that being known by God and knowing God does more than simply tend to our fragile egos. There is something that fills our soul when we realize that all of this actually matters. The prayers we say; the worship we do; the communion we share; and the wonder we make real in the lives of others through acts of service and care does more than simply give us something to do. Rather, the gift of faith invites us to realize how we are part of a holy story that doesn’t let our individual story be the limit of what God is all about. And while it would be awesome if life was full of over-the-top experiences that show us what faith can be; what we often get instead is the bits of  grace, mercy, kindness, and love that lingers long after those big moments are gone. It’s the pine needles of hope; the shimmer of a peace; and the glaze of wholeness that carry us into a meaningful life while living through moments that often feel meaningless. I’m not sure if I’ll ever come across a deep theological explanation about Jesus’ moment that will open my mind to the fullness of what this moment in Jesus’ life was all about. But I do know that as someone who needs from God all bits of words, prayers, feelings, knowledge, and experiences that show me all the different ways God’s love lingers in my life and in the life of others; I appreciate how it seemed as if Jesus once needed the same. And while I’m not always sure how those bits of faith will be made real in your life, I hope that God will give you every bit of grace, hope, and love that you need to be carried through everything that this life might bring.

Amen.