Where'd the sermons go??

Dear Friends,

I'm sorry...  I haven't posted in a while.  My main source of posts have always been sermons - but for the past several months I've been experimenting with extemporaneous preaching.  It's been an important way for me to continue to try to stretch myself and grow as a preacher, and I think it's also been important for the ways in which I'm able to embody the community that I so often preach about and that remains so central to my understanding of Christian theology.

I relate more, and I'm engaged more with my congregation.

I certainly prepare.  Maybe even more than I did before.  But I'm not writing out a script anymore.

So it's been tough figuring out how to continue with the whole posting sermons thing.

In reality, I'd really love to post audio clips of my sermons each week, but my parish is small, and has never even considered that sort of thing.  If I were just operating on my own, I could do it, but ever system I've imagined implementing would involve me either a) interrupting the liturgy to activate a recording device, or b) recording far more than would be necessary and then having to spend all afternoon on Sundays editing and getting it ready to post.

So I welcome your input.  Does anyone have any ideas how I can get this done easily (oh yeah - AND CHEAPLY!).

Thanks for your advice!  I hope to be back to posting soon, I just need to figure out how!!

Keep thinking of solutions for me, and keep popping by in now and then!

Peace!

It's not fair

Pentecost 14A, Proper 20

Exodus 16:2-15

Matthew 20:1-16

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

This is a difficult parable for many of us to hear: those who do the least are rewarded the same as those who do the most.  Particularly to our American ears - so steeped in the Protestant work ethic and the promises of meritocracy and against the dominant cultural symbol of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.  It just doesn’t seem to add up against everything that our culture teaches us.

It might be particularly troubling to hear this lesson in these days of a down economy.  Prices for nearly everything that we need to buy keep rising, but wages aren’t keeping pace.  The basic structure of this parable resonates with us: unemployment rates have remained too high for too long, so many of us understand what it’s like to be the late laborers - looking for work, perhaps even just enough to get by on, and too often without success.  And even those of us who haven’t experienced that anxiety directly know someone who has.

So why have these people in the story been compensated for work that they didn’t do?  Moreover, why did those poor laborers who had been working all day get the same as those who just worked for a bit?

It’s not fair.

And we’re not the only ones to think so.  When those workers who had given their whole day received their pay, “they grumbled against the landowner saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’”  In essence they were saying, “It’s not fair!”

And it’s not.  At least not the way we usually define “fair”.

The story we read about the Israelites’ time in the desert from the Exodus offers another perspective.

They, too, were grumbling against their leaders.  Times were hard, wandering through the desert.  Resources were scarce.  The people were afraid, and they began to wonder if being freed from Pharaoh’s bondage was really the best thing for them after all - slavery had been hard, but at least they hadn’t been starving!

God heard the people’s grumbling and said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day.”  In the evenings quail came and gave them all the meat they needed.  In the mornings, the bread for the day was scattered across the desert floor.  In this way the people of Israel were sustained.

They were sustained with enough for the day.  Not with storehouses of food, but just with enough for the day.

They couldn’t rest on a one-time gift from God that brought them through the forty years of wandering.  Each day they went out to get ‘just enough’.

In God’s economy, the defining measurement is not fairness, but enough-ness.

We often talk about God’s abundance, but that doesn’t mean the streets will be paved with gold, or that our pockets will be overflowing with money.  It doesn’t mean we will have resources to waste, and certainly not that we’re guaranteed to have as much as some of the people around us.  It only means that we will have enough.

Think about the Lord’s Prayer - those familiar words written on all of our hearts.  When Jesus taught us to pray, he said: ‘give us this day our daily bread’.  Not ‘give us this day our winning lottery numbers’.  Not ‘give us this day as much as our neighbor’.  And certainly not ‘give us this day what is fair’.  (The truth is, none of us want that.)

But no, it’s ‘give us this day our daily bread’.  Give us this day enough.  Help us get through today and we’ll think about tomorrow when it comes.

It’s a humble prayer.  And it’s how we were taught to interact with God.

The people who worked in the vineyard for just one hour earned enough to sustain them for the day.  So, too, did the people who had worked all day.  They didn’t get rich; they got sustained.  They got enough.

God’s grace is not bestowed on us according to how much we deserve it, but according to how grace-filled God is.

It doesn’t make sense in a capitalist system.  It doesn’t make sense to a culture that teaches and values the concept of meritocracy.  In God’s economy no one ‘pulls themselves up by their bootstraps’.

We are all sustained, not by our own merits, but by God’s grace - God’s overflowing and abundant, though never wasted grace.

It’s certainly not fair.

Thank God!

Remembering and Forgiveness

Pentecost 13A, Proper 19

Matthew 18:21-35

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

It feels strange to be talking about forgiveness today - on this the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 2001.

But really, that’s one of the gifts in the lectionary cycle of readings for worship.  Other churches or church leaders might sometimes be tempted to look past some of the more difficult readings, or the way certain readings interact with world events, but in our tradition that’s not possible.  We read and reflect on the text appointed for the day.

And today we’ve been given this - forgiveness.

“How many times should I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me?  Seven times?”

“No.  Seventy-seven times!”  Or some sources say, “Seventy TIMES seven times.”  (If you’re curious enough to think it through, that one comes out to 490 times for forgiveness.)

But the point isn’t the number of “times” we offer forgiveness.  Even if you take the larger number, it’s not like saying to your neighbor, “Okay, that’s one.  489 more times and we’re done!”

That’s not the point.

The point is that forgiveness is an ongoing process.  Forgiveness can’t end.  A truly forgiving heart draws from a well of love and grace that never runs dry.  When you can’t forgive anymore, that’s when it’s time to dig deeper and find a way.

Just as is so much of the Christian message, this, too, is a difficult message to hear.

In the church we know - at least intellectually - that we are charged to replicate the kind of forgiveness that has been extended to- and modeled for us.  But the problem with that is, too often we try to rush forgiveness without doing the work that true forgiveness requires.

Because we think it’s what we ought to do, we often proclaim forgiveness before it’s real.

In his book Don’t Forgive Too Soon, Dennis Linn compares the process of forgiving with the process of overcoming grief.  Just as recovery from grief can’t be rushed, we, also, can’t be rushed into forgiveness if it’s to actually mean anything.

You’ve all probably heard about the five stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance - but Linn writes about those as five stages of forgiveness.  Recognizing the close relationship between forgiveness and grief, he uses that same framework to examine how we can move beyond pro forma expressions of expected forgiveness, into genuine forgiveness that springs from a place of deeper truth.

And the truth is, if forgiveness does not come from a place of truth, it will breed resentment.

A common (though unattributed) quote in twelve-step, recovery groups says that resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.  Without forgiveness, we are destined to breed resentment in our hearts.  And it will kill us spiritually.

Even if our brother or sister might only cause offense once - even then(!) we have to forgive “seventy times seven” times.  Only then can it begin to come from a place of truth.

The fact is we do hurt one another.  We do offend the heart of God.  We exploit each other.  We are unfaithful to each other.  We fail to recognize the humanity in each other.

We are all victims, and we are all guilty.

But we must learn to forgive.

So on this, the tenth anniversary of September 11th, 2001, we hear a call to forgiveness.

It doesn’t make sense.

It can seem all but impossible.

But we have to do it.  We have to find a way to forgive because it’s the call of Christ; and, because it’s necessary for our own spiritual health and wellness.  We have to keep finding ways to forgive, even in the face of our deepest pain; because even these ten years later the work is not yet done.

In these past ten years there has been a lot of talk about justice.  As a country, we’ve been seeking justice against the perpetrators and supporters of the horrors of that day.  We’ve taken a lot of steps - for good and for ill - at doling out justice around the world.  Too often we’ve mistaken revenge for justice.  But in the end, I believe that true justice will only come through deep forgiveness.  It’s only in a world where forgiveness is a way of life that we can ever hope to find that justice is a reality.

And forgiveness will only become a way of life when we keep practicing it.  Seventy-seven times.  Seventy times seven times.  Whenever the hurt and the anger and the fear are renewed, try to forgive again.  Not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because doing it will make things right.

How many times are we to forgive our brothers and sisters when they sin against us?

As many times as it takes.

This is part of the hard work of following Christ.  May we all gain the strength to do this that we are called to do.  Amen.

 

Stormy baptismal waters

Amaoge Gabriella Okere

Pentecost 8A, Proper 14
Matthew 14:22-33

**reworked from 2008 in Morristown


In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

We’ve all been there. The storms of our lives blowing around us, everything feels rocky and unstable, we become afraid. We feel so isolated that even the sight of help engenders more fear. We feel so vulnerable that we run away from what shelter we do have. We withdraw from the communities that would have made our perceived solitude untrue.

This is the story of Jesus and Peter walking on water. It’s not the story of a magic trick. It’s not just some story about Jesus going out for a stroll on the lake when he happens to run into his friends. It’s a timeless parable of the human experience.

You can always count on the stories of St. Peter to be that way – to be timeless parables of the human experience. He is impulsive and fallible, but somewhere beneath all of that he is loyal and dependable. He is Peter – the rock – on him the church was built, and whether he is at his worst or his best, he is like us. And like us, even the rock can be shaken by the storms of life.

In the Gospel lesson this morning we were told that the disciples were afraid. They had been sent into the world while Jesus went up alone to pray. But while they were apart, the disciples began to feel battered by the storms around them. In their anxiety, they could not see Christ in their midst, they could only allow themselves to see more cause for fear.

The story does not begin to shift until we hear again that familiar refrain: “Do not be afraid.” So often, when we find ourselves in the explicit presence of the Holy, our first instinct is to fear. When the angels announced the birth of Jesus, they announced themselves with a plea to not fear. When the women discovered the empty tomb, the figure inside implored them, “Do not be afraid.”

Since it seems so often to be the case, it warrants asking: what holy moments in your life have felt like fear? Which fear-filled moments might have been holy?

Even after Jesus announced himself, Peter – the rock – the one on whom the church was built, was not convinced. “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He needed proof.

It would be easy to judge Peter. It would be easy to ridicule him for needing that extra nudge. It would be easy to feel superior to him “of little faith.” But I’m afraid it wouldn’t be honest. How often are we, the church of his progeny, unconvinced when we are faced with the presence of Christ? How often are we, when battered by the winds of change, debilitated with fear? And even when we, like Peter, finally take that leap of faith to step out toward Christ, don’t we, too, often begin to sink into the mire of our own self-doubt?

Like Peter, we can be impulsive and fallible, but also like Peter, somewhere beneath that rocky exterior there is something more – something truer to which Christ is calling us to be.

Today isn’t one of the days set aside in the Prayer Book as being “particularly appropriate for baptism”, but it is a good day to be remembering our baptismal covenant. A colleague of mine often talks about ‘stormy’ or ‘polluted’ or ‘swirling’ baptismal waters.

Sure, water is an essential element in the recipe of life, and it can be cleansing and refreshing. But water can also be scary. Depending on what you’re trying to do with it, water can seem perilously unstable.

That’s important to remember on a day of baptism.

Water may seem unstable when we try to walk out across is, but Christ is calling us nonetheless. Christ is calling us walk in those places where we feel unstable and most vulnerable. Christ is calling us to walk in the covenant of our baptism, no matter how scary it might be.

After Peter stepped out of the boat, he paused to notice what he had done. His anxiety churned at his feet and he began to sink back into it. In desperation, he reached out to Jesus crying, “Lord, save me!” and he did.

It’s a timeless parable of the human experience.

When we traverse the seas of life and feel overcome by the often-stormy winds of change, Christ is there. And even when in our fear-filled and desperate search for stability, we remove ourselves from our communities and seek to find the way on our own; even then, Christ is reaching out to draw us back in. When we are at our best and when we are at our worst, Christ is there, holding us up through the storms and luring us on.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Making more

Proper 12, Pentecost 6A
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52


In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Too much is never enough.

It’s a strange message to be hearing in the church. Very often you hear us talking about conservation, asceticism, making do with less. Jesus is forever telling people to give more away and make do with less.

That’s the way it often is with material possessions. We focus ourselves on material needs or desires, but they never sustain us. We consume them, we draw them down, we run out. But, today, Jesus tells us about true sustenance - Kingdom of Heaven sustenance.

And the essence of that Kingdom of Heaven sustenance is that it’s about making more. It isn’t consumed or depleted, but it always makes more.

God is the ultimate renewable resource. Not just plentiful, but always renewing.

In the Anglican tradition, we endeavor to approach faith, and spirituality, and even religion through the lenses of scripture, tradition, and reason. Remember that from confirmation classes? We have the scriptures. We live in and are a part of the traditions of the church. But what of reason? That’s the creative part. That’s the Holy Spirit part. That’s where God continues to speak. There are churches and religious traditions that would like to present the world as if God’s work was done - as if the scriptures are not more than a simple book of instructions. But as Anglicans we believe that we have more: reason. We have a part to play in how God continues God’s work, and how God’s continuing work is understood.

One way we might employ that gift - reason - is through remembering the more-making nature of God. When faced with a task or a decision or a dilemma, we might ask ourselves: What will make more? What will be renewable and renewing? Where does the cup inexplicably run over? All of that is simply another way of saying: What reflects the nature of God?

Our job as a parish is to seek out what makes more. What makes more of us? What makes more for the community in which we’ve been planted for God’s service? What makes more for those who need more the most?

Sometimes it’s work: feeding the hungry, providing shelter to those most vulnerable, providing companionship to the lonely, providing education to those who are forgotten. The list of possibilities could go on and on.

But whatever kind of work it is - or even if it turns out not to be “work” at all - God’s more-making is always about relationships. God is in the business of more-making, and the way God does this is through the currency of relationship. Always.

Some churches will tell you that to be a good Christian you must love or not love certain people, that you must consume or not consume certain things, that you must associate or not associate with certain kinds of people, that you must perform or not perform certain rituals… But I tell you, what I’ve discovered about God and Christianity and what it means to live a life in union with the teachings of Jesus is on one hand simpler and on the other hand endlessly more complicated.

It’s simpler because I’ll never recite for you a list of rules that you must follow to be a part of this faith or even this community. There’s only one rule: be like God by being about making more. Resist the temptations of scarcity and focus instead on abundance. BE abundance. MAKE abundance. SHARE abundance. Be a tiny seed that grows to feed a village and shelter a flock. Be a treasure more valuable than all other possessions. Be small, but make more.

But it’s also more complicated than any list of rules might be: say these magic words… hate these other people… eat like us, walk like us, dress like us, worship like us… Those ways of living are simple - you just follow the rules. Our way takes a little more thought. Our way takes a lot more courage. It takes love and it takes faith.

Prohibitions and rules can sometimes serve a purpose. They can help us to stay safe. Sometimes they can keep us from harm. Sometimes they can help keep order. None of us would allow a child to touch a hot stove, nor would any of us want to live in a society without any laws.

But sometimes these rules and prohibitions turn out to be a little more selfish than just that. Often, when religious communities start talking about rules, they’re not looking out for you, but for themselves. Often, those rules are more about drawing lines around communities than they are about lifting up those communities - as if you could achieve security by segregation. But, of course, we all know that that never works.

But even beyond the fact that segregation never works, it’s not even relevant in God’s economy! We can try to segregate ourselves all we want, but God has already drawn all the lines that matter - God has drawn us all in. Others can shout “you’re out!” at us until they’re blue in the face, but God has already made sure we are in.

“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … No… Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor ANYTHING ELSE IN ALL CREATION will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

FULL STOP.

Not because we’ve done the right things, or followed the right rules, or run with the right crowd of people. We will never be separated simply because we are God’s. We are the people of God and that is all that matters. It’s all we need. That’s all it took, and that’s all it ever will take.

We have the Holy Spirit as our advocate and intercessor, not because we’re so great, but because we’re so God’s.

Nothing in ALL of creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. So like the mustard seed, or the pearl, or the treasure, go make more of yourselves. That’s all God needs. Amen.

Just right

Proper 9, Pentecost 3A
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Goldilocks. She went for a walk in the forest. Pretty soon, she came upon a house. She knocked and, when no one answered, she walked right in.

At the table in the kitchen, there were three bowls of porridge. Goldilocks was hungry. She tasted the porridge from the first bowl.

"This porridge is too hot!" she exclaimed.

So, she tasted the porridge from the second bowl.

"This porridge is too cold," she said

So, she tasted the last bowl of porridge.

"Ahhh, this porridge is just right," she said happily and she ate it all up.

After she'd eaten the three bears' breakfasts she decided she was feeling a little tired. So, she walked into the living room where she saw three chairs. Goldilocks sat in the first chair to rest her feet.

"This chair is too big!" she exclaimed.

So she sat in the second chair.

"This chair is too big, too!" she whined.

So she tried the last and smallest chair.

"Ahhh, this chair is just right," she sighed. But just as she settled down into the chair to rest, it broke into pieces!

Goldilocks was very tired by this time, so she went upstairs to the bedroom. She lay down in the first bed, but it was too hard. Then she lay in the second bed, but it was too soft. Then she lay down in the third bed and it was just right. Goldilocks fell asleep.

As she was sleeping, the three bears came home.

"Someone's been eating my porridge," growled the Papa bear.

"Someone's been eating my porridge," said the Mama bear.

"Someone's been eating my porridge and they ate it all up!" cried the Baby bear.

"Someone's been sitting in my chair," growled the Papa bear.

"Someone's been sitting in my chair," said the Mama bear.

"Someone's been sitting in my chair and they've broken it all to pieces," cried the Baby bear.

They decided to look around some more and when they got upstairs to the bedroom, Papa bear growled, "Someone's been sleeping in my bed,"

"Someone's been sleeping in my bed, too" said the Mama bear

"Someone's been sleeping in my bed and she's still there!" exclaimed Baby bear.

Just then, Goldilocks woke up and saw the three bears. She screamed, "Help!" And she jumped up and ran out of the room. Goldilocks ran down the stairs, opened the door, and ran away into the forest. And she never returned to the home of the three bears. The End.

(The story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears from www.dltk-teach.com)

***

The story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears is rather unsatisfying, isn’t it? When this story popped into my head earlier this week, I couldn’t exactly recall how it ended. I remember Papa Bear and Mama Bear and Baby Bear. I remembered the sequence of things being wrong at the extremes before settling into something “just right”. I even remembered the family of bears discovering Goldilocks at the end of the story. But I couldn’t remember what happened after that.

When I read the story, it became clear why I couldn’t remember it. It’s unremarkable. It just ends. And Goldilocks was never heard from again.

It didn’t make sense to me, so I did a little research. Sometimes these old fairy tales are watered down and sanitized for us. Previous generations had a bit more of a tolerance for violence and happy endings that weren’t necessarily happy for everyone than we do today.

But no. This fairy tale was first recorded from the oral tradition fairly recently - just in the middle of the 19th century. And though some details of the characters have been shifted over the years, the plot is essentially unchanged. I expected to find that in the original, the little girl became supper for the bears, or at the very least was enslaved in their service. Something! Instead, she just ran away, never to return.

I thought of this story as I heard the words of Jesus: “John came, neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard…” You can hear the exasperation in his voice.

Putting aside how excited I am to hear this biblical account of our “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild” as a “glutton and a drunkard” - how I love the way that this flies in the face of so many popular assumptions of what it means to be “holy” - even that’s not really what today’s Gospel lesson is about.

Jesus is exasperated because the people seem never to be happy. They had the ascetic John, and his critics from within the religious elite could only complain. They had a near polar opposite in Jesus - a man, not roaming the countryside and crying out in the wilderness, but in the midst of the people, meeting them where they were, engaging in normal human hungers and desires. But even then they weren’t happy. It wasn’t “just right”.

The thing about “just right” - it’s a fairy tale. And it’s never as “just right” as it might have initially seemed. Just ask Goldilocks.

Even Jesus wasn’t “just right”. At least not the way most of the people expecting a Messiah might have imagined him to turn out. He wasn’t a king. He didn’t overturn the oppressive political rulers.

Instead he hobnobbed with tax collectors and sinners.

And he never promised to make things “just right”. Instead he said, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take MY yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

If the world is pulling you down, if you’re feeling overburdened and oppressed, don’t just try to go it alone. Go with me, and you will find rest for your souls.

It’s a good word to hear on this holiday weekend. At a time when many of us have a chance to seek out the rest that our bodies need, we get to remember that we can also have rest for our souls.

It may not be “just right” - at least not as we might have imagined it. But it’s good. Amen.

You are welcome here

Proper 8, Pentecost 2A
Matthew 10:40-42


In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

I’m reminded of a simple phrase that I heard over and over again a few years ago while traveling through Palestine. Whenever my colleagues and I would enter a shop or a restaurant or a home, the same few words would be said to us each time: “You are welcome here.”

It was jarring to my Western ears. I was used to “good morning” or “hello” or even sometimes “welcome”, but there was something about turning that one word - “welcome” - into a full sentence that made it seem somehow more declarative. The welcome seemed less like a perfunctory greeting and more like a real statement of fact: “You are welcome here.” Period. No questions asked.

Then the host would invariably offer us sweet and stout Arabic coffee and chairs for us to sit a while and talk. There were no “secret shoppers” in Palestine. It wasn’t enough to browse or even to buy. We were expected to build relationships. It was part of the ritual of being (or welcoming) a stranger.

The greeting might have been a quirk of language - most of the people that we met were native speakers of Arabic, not English, so maybe that jarring phrase just arose out of some translation from an Arabic greeting. But part of me wondered if it wasn’t just language.

There’s an ancient history in the Middle East of providing hospitality to the stranger. As those trade routes linking the East and the West grew out of the deserts few would have survived were it not for the hospitality of strangers. Travelers could not depend on a spray of Holiday Inns and Super 8s across the region. When they needed hospitality, they knocked on doors. And it was widely understood that if someone knocked on your door, you opened it and helped your guest however you could - because you might be a traveler someday yourself.

To be a stranger is to be, at least in part, vulnerable: out of place, not in the know. We’ve all been there at one time or another. Whether it’s a first day at school, or moving to a new town, or a new job, or even a new church, we’ve all felt what it’s like to stand on the outside of a community looking in. It takes nerves of steel and it always involves risk.

What would it be like if every time we found ourselves as strangers, we were received as welcome guests? Not just with perfunctory “hellos” but with genuine words of welcome then married with actions to demonstrate that the welcome was real.

That’s why I think the welcome I received from Palestinians was not just a quirk of language. They weren’t just saying words translated into English. They were translating the practices of their culture to those of us who were vulnerable strangers. They were translating not just their words, but also their welcome to those of us who were most foreign.

It’s been said that Christ came, not to make us better Christians, but to make us better humans. I learned a bit about how to be a better human from these mostly Muslim shopkeepers and hosts - all of a race that our culture has taught us to fear. We were about as foreign from one another as any could have been, but together we found humanity.

What would it be like if we - the church - made that kind of welcome our policy? What would it be like if, instead of perfunctory greetings, we offered people opportunities to build relationships?

Too often the church is so concerned with self-preservation that it can’t imagine, much less offer, real welcome. Too often churches’ welcomes come with strings attached. ‘You’re welcome if you come from the right background.’ ‘You’re welcome if you bring the right connections or gifts.’ ‘You’re welcome if you’re just like us, or at least willing to become just like us.’

Too often we welcome people so we can try to change them, but that’s not the gospel. We welcome people not to change them, but out of our hope that they will change us.

All people bring gifts. All people come pre-endowed with God’s love and support. It’s not our job to mold them into people who are worthy of God’s love, because they already have it. No questions asked.

It’s our job to welcome them, not just with our words, but with our actions: to fold them into the community of Christ; to build relationships; to let them change a bit of who we are; to meet their vulnerability with a bit of our own.

The Palestinians I met changed me. I think, perhaps, I changed them, too. We learned from each other about our cultures and we dispelled the myths that had been taught to us.

Those kinds of communities - the ones that spring up between strangers - are the only things that ever do change us. My culture had taught me that they were the incarnation of evil and enemy, but real incarnation had shown me that they were friends. Real incarnation had shown me that they were good.

It’s important that God came to us as Christ. God came as a human being, humbly born - a vulnerable stranger seeking welcome.

And that’s how God always comes.

It’s in those moments of incarnation that we find God; and, it’s in welcoming the strangers among us that we find real moments of incarnation.

The world teaches us to build walls and find divisions and draw lines. But God has drawn all of us in. God has shown our divisions to be illusory. God has laid down our walls so that we might use them as bridges.

God has welcomed us.

Now we are called to welcome God. Amen.