2021

In July 2020, five months into the pandemic, I began to build time for walking into every day. It was a commitment to emotional, spiritual, and physical health in a time of pandemic. Instead of sitting in a car on the Mass Pike for two hours each day, I'd walk. 

Since then, over the past eighteen months, I've walked over 3,100 miles: basically from Boston to San Francisco. Most of those miles were on the Central Mass Rail Trail, from West Boylston to Holden, and then back again. 

One year ago - six months into this practice - I resolved on January 1, 2021 that I would walk the number of miles in this year (2021) which is roughly 5.6 miles a day. I wrote about that here. As of today, I have achieved and surpassed that goal, with three days left in the year. 

As I said, it's been a commitment to emotional, spiritual, and physical health. It's a way to be outside even in the short days of a New England winter. Most of the time I walk in the morning. I've walked with family and friends and even made a couple of new friends. I've run into people I have known for years. But most of those miles have been on my own. It's been a practice of putting first things first and of paying attention. To paraphrase Mary Oliver, I may not know what a  prayer is, but I do know how to pay attention. The truth is that's a big part of prayer. 

I plan, God willing, to keep walking in 2022. Since I like having goals and since I'm a visual person, I'm going to try to walk the distance of the Appalachian Trail in 2022. It means stepping it up a bit, since the distance from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine is about 2200 miles. That will require a little more than six miles a day I'll have a three-month sabbatical in 2022. I hope to put in some miles in The Holy Land this May and then in Spain in October. I'd also like to figure out how to walk at least a few miles that are actually on the AT, at least where it comes through Massachusetts in the Berkshires. But mostly I anticipate walking most of those miles on the rail trail. See you out there! 

Yet, and Still: The Nativity of Our Lord

Tonight I am serving at St. Luke's in Worcester. Merry Christmas! 

The poet, Edmund Hamilton Sears, was born in the Berkshires on April 6, 1810. He was an ordained Unitarian minister who served congregations in Barnstable, Wayland and just up the road in Lancaster during the middle years of the nineteenth century. He wrote the words to “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” in 1849. 

I know we just sang it but I need some help with this sermon and I want to introduce you to what may be a new tune for some, with Ken’s help. It’s the one found on page 90 in your hymnals. Let’s just sing the first verse to get used to it:

        It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old;
        From angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold.
        “Peace on the earth good will to men, From heaven’s all gracious King!”
        The world in solemn stillness lay to hear the angels sing.

Sears suffered from depression, or as it was called in the middle of the nineteenth-century, “melancholy.” At the time he wrote this hymn the world was in a real mess: Europe was at war and the United States was at war with Mexico. Of course that was nothing compared to the deep national divide over slavery and the Civil War lurking on the horizon. Sears was feeling that the world was “dark and full of sin and strife” and that as such, the world was unable to hear the songs of the angels. The way he wrote the poem makes more sense to me than the Hymnal version does. For some inexplicable reason the editors of The Hymnal 1982 inverted the second and third verses. Here is how he wrote them:

Yet with the woes of sin and strife the world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled, two thousand years of wrong.
And man, at war with man, hears not, the love song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing.  

Still thro’ the cloven skies they come, with peaceful wings unfurled;
And still their heavenly music floats, o’er all the weary world.
Above its sad and lowly plains, they bend on hovering wing 
And ever o’er its Babel sounds the blessed angels sing. 

The key there, I think: yet and still. That’s why that order matters. Yet there is sin and violence in the world; and still the angels sing. Yet we live in a noisy world of strife; and still the heavenly music floats o’er all the weary world. If I were the to give a title to this Christmas Eve sermon it might be yet and still.

Then comes what is for me the most poignant and pastoral stanza, one that was omitted in The Hymnal 1982. I am told however that other hymnals (including the Lutherans) kept it. It is addressed to all who feel personally exhausted and worn out at this time of year—all who feel just plain tired and lost and scared. But you get the sense that like most preachers, Sears is talking first and foremost to himself. Now that you know the new tune, let’s try that verse, found on the back cover of your bulletins:

All ye, beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low;
Who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow.
Look now! for glad and golden hours, come swiftly on the wing;
O rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing.                                       

Look now! Rest...and hear. Some have criticized Sears’ poem as being too unscriptural. Others have criticized it for not being Christ-centered enough, pointing out that the Christ-child is not even mentioned. (Insert eye-roll emoji here!) I’m about halfway through this sermon and in choosing to focus on this hymn I could be accused of the same. But I’m not too worried. For one, there are other hymns and shortly we will gather at the Table and break the bread. And second, we all know who’s birth we are here to celebrate on this holy night. 

But for the record, Sears was very Christ-centered. While nineteenth-century Unitarians challenged the doctrine of the Trinity, they still saw themselves as deeply loyal to Jesus and to the Incarnation. “The word of Jesus opens the heart,” Sears told his congregations, “and touches the place of tears.” As for scripture, the story as Luke tells it features angels from beginning to end. Angels are all around this story. 

Literally angels are God’s messengers: they deliver a word from heaven to earth. And so an angel comes to Elizabeth and Zechariah to announce that she will bear a son in her old age. And the angel Gabriel comes in the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy to Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to man named Joseph, announcing to Mary that she is pregnant. And of course as we heard tonight, the angel speaks to the shepherds, announcing the birth of the Savior and sending them to Bethlehem to see for themselves. And then there is a multitude of angels praising God and singing: “Gloria in exgelsis deo…” Glory to God in the highest! 

I confess to you that I don’t tend to see angels in my mind’s eye like they are portrayed by Renaissance artists with the big wings. I tend to be much more of the Frank Capra (Clarence-in-“It’s-a-Wonderful-Life”) school. But however you see God’s messengers, Sears is claiming that it is their song that we must listen for. That the angels’ song goes on and on throughout the ages, but mostly that it goes unnoticed. Unheard. It goes unheard because the drumbeat of war and strife drowns out the song of peace on earth and good will to all. Hush the noise, the poet says: hush the noise ye men (and women) of strife to hear the angels sing.  

Our job, not only on this holy night but in our daily lives is to be still enough to hear the angels singing, so that we do not lose hope. On this Christmas at least as much as as in 1849, we need hope. We need to know that God is still at work in the world and in our lives. From there we can take it one day at a time. This poem is addressed to the Church—to you and me as people of faith. That is what hymns are for. Whether you were here every week of Advent or not, we are challenged tonight to listen, for it is in the quiet that we enter into the mystery of the Incarnation in decidedly new ways.   

Living at this moment in human history, I think it’s very normal to feel the melancholy and even despair that Sears felt when he wrote this hymn. It’s easy to feel that we don’t quite measure up or that the world is falling apart. It’s easy to feel discouraged and then in response to try to numb it all. But the word from heaven to earth on this holy night is that a child is born, a Son is given. The good news—the gospel—that the angels sing of is of Emmanuel, God-with-us right in the midst of all that other stuff. 

The angels sing “Gloria” and then we are invited to join their song. The Church’s mission is to keep singing Gloria because that word truly does have the power to heal and transform us, a word that can sustain and equip us for the work of ministry in the year ahead. We who may well be feeling that life’s crushing load is too much, and our forms are bending low as we toil along the climbing way – this hymn speaks to us across the decades to stop. Listen. Hear the angels singing Gloria in excelsios:  

        Glory to God in the highest heaven. And on earth, peace among those who God favors.

And then join the song. It’s ok if you aren’t much of a singer – the angels have got the melody line covered. Ultimately Sears imagines all of creation joining the song – people from every tribe and language and people and nation. In the meantime, our work is to keep practicing, like any good choir.

Sing Gloria, in word and in deed, in this place and where you live and work. Sing glory to God in the highest. Sing and imagine peace on earth, peace among the nations, peace at our tables, peace in our neighborhoods. And then let it begin with us.

Let’s sing the last verse of Hymn 90 together, before we confess our faith:

        For lo! The days are hastening on, by prophets seen of old 
        when with the ever circling years shall come the time foretold,   
        when peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendors fling,
        and all the world give back the song which now the angels sing.

The Third Sunday of Advent - St. Luke's Worcester

The Gospel reading for the Third Sunday of Advent can be found here. 

You brood of vipers! Who warned you? Bear fruit worthy of repentance!

I once read that preaching should mimic the text being preached on. So doxology should be preached in ways that praise God. And prophetic texts in ways that challenge God’s people. Laments can help us to find ways to articulate grief and loss. And so forth…

Sometimes that means that as a preacher that I need to remember that I’ve been entrusted to convey a message larger than myself, and that preaching from the lectionary means that sometimes I have to stretch out of my comfort zone in order to speak in a voice that may feel less natural for me.

Today is one of those days. Especially in the midst of a pandemic, in a congregation that is waiting expectantly for an interim to arrive, left to my own devices I’d prefer to preach comfortable words today. My pastoral instincts would kick into overdrive: comfort, comfort ye my people. Speak tenderly to St. Luke’s…and tell them everything is going to be alright.

It will be. But what we get today is the second week in a row of John the Baptist. The rhetorical scholars tell us that as he unpacks his message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins at the Jordan River that he is engaged in exhortation. So this sermon, if done right, should exhort all of you. (And me too!)

But let’s be clear: exhortation is not finger-pointing, although I know that John’s words can sometimes sound that way to our ears. His rhetoric, like his clothes and his diet and the desert where he delivers his message, is wild and untamed. This is not brie and chardonnay in the ‘burbs! John is very direct. Even so, exhortation when done correctly is about speaking the truth in love – and about encouraging us all to work on the only person we can really change: ourselves. In the twelve-step practices, which can be helpful to all of us, #4 is about making a fearless moral inventory of ourselves. To me, that’s what exhortation is about.

The essence of John’s message is that he exhorts us to live our lives in conformity with what we say we believe. He isn’t telling us anything we don’t already know. He is simply exhorting us as we gather here on this Third Sunday of Advent to live our lives in synch with what we profess to be our core values as followers of Jesus.

Notice that John the Baptist isn’t running after people on a street corner in order to chastise complete strangers. Those who hear his words have chosen to go out into the Judean Desert to listen to him. Later on in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus will remind the crowds that anyone who went out to see John the Baptist knew before they went that they weren’t going out to see some reed shaken by the wind (Luke 7:24) or a man dressed in soft clothing (Luke 7:25) John offers no smooth words. To encounter John is to encounter a great prophet like the prophets of old. (Luke 7:26-28) To encounter John is meet a truthteller who speaks with a sense of urgency and immediacy: Now is the time is Now for repentance! Sleepers awake! (You brood of vipers!)

If we aren’t careful, churchy words like “repentance” can start to become little more than cliché. We are tempted to domesticate such words, but when we do that they become nothing more than a passing feeling of guilt or shame. We’ll get over it the same way we get over a passing moment of indigestion. In fact, the word “repentance” is not about how we feel. It comes from a Greek word, metanoia; which means “to turn around.” Metanoia requires change. Repentance is about getting our act together and sometimes it’s like those old GPS before Apple and Google Maps that would say, “recalculating…recalculating.” Advent is a timie to recalculate and get back on track.

For John, what matters is not how fervently we pray or how often we make it to Church—although presumably those things can help us to better remember who we are and who we are called to become. What matters in the end, however, is how we act in the world and quite specifically with how we behave in the work God has given us to do.

“What should we do?” the crowds ask John. “Share your stuff,” John exhorts. It’s as simple as that. John isn’t here to make us feel guilty about not doing enough for our neighbors in need but to exhort us to allow God work in and through us to do infinitely more than we could ask or imagine, by cultivating generosity in us and by imploring us to live simply so that others may simply live.

“Even tax collectors came to be baptized,” Luke tells us. And they, too asked, “what should we do?” And John tells them, “do your job with integrity…don’t be greedy.” And some soldiers also came to be baptized and they asked him what they should do and he told them not to misuse their power, because when soldiers walk into a village with guns people are usually pretty scared. They shouldn’t use fear or intimidation to become bullies because they are called to something better than that, something nobler than that.

You can fill in the blanks. I think the possibilities are endless and you don’t even need to be a Biblical scholar or a Canon to the Ordinary to figure out what this text means! Formulate any question around any profession and ask John the Baptist what you should do on this third Sunday of Advent. The answer will be the same. Some professors and teachers came; some lawyers and some cleaning ladies and some priests and some engineers and some politicians and some hairdressers and some librarians and some nurses and some business people and some cops and some social workers and some students. All of them came out to the wilderness and said to John, “what should we do?”

And John speaks across the centuries and channels his inner Coach Belichek: do your job. If you are called to pick up the trash, then pick up the trash. If you are called to teach a child to read, then teach that child to read. If you are called to change the bedpans, then don’t leave it for the next shift to do. If you are called to enact a law on behalf of the constituents who elected you to office, then tell the special interests where they can go and do your job. If you are called to be a student then don’t miss the opportunity to learn.

There is a line in a film I saw many years ago, Broadcast News, with William Hurt and Holly Hunter and Albert Brooks. The character played by Albert Brooks is talking with Holly Hunter and he says to her:   

What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he's around? Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. No. I'm semi-serious here. He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing... he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance, just a tiny bit.

 Exhortation isn’t figure pointing. It isn’t about yelling at strangers on a street corner or preachers going all “hellfire and brimstone.” It’s about reminding the gathered community that has been tempted all week to move the line just a little bit and lower their standards that we have a higher standard. It is to exhort the Baptized community to act like and to remember that we have been claimed by Christ and sealed and marked as Christ’s own, forever. Several times a year we renew that covenant and remember who we are:

• a people who renounce Satan and all the evil powers that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God and all that draws us from the love of God;
• a people who turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as Savior and put all our trust in his grace and love, following and obeying him as Lord;
• a people who continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship by breaking bread and saying our prayers;
• a people who persevere in resisting evil and whenever we mess up,  repent and return to God; 
• a people who proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ;
• a people who seek and serve Christ in all persons and love our neighbors as self - no exceptions;
• a people who strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being. 

Oh yeah, one more thing: we do all of those things with God’s help. We do not walk alone. We do all that supported by a community of faith that loves us one day at a time. That is who we already are and we are called to become by growing more and more into the full stature of Christ. No one should pretend that any of that is easy. But surely it isn’t all that hard to understand it. When we speak ill of a neighbor, that’s not love of neighbor. When we feed gossip that hurts another person, that isn’t love of neighbor. When we take short-cuts in our work that erode people’s trust in their government or their schools or their churches or their healthcare or the company they work for, that isn’t love in action either.

“What should we do, John—to get ready for Christmas?” We should do what we all know we are meant to do, the work that God has given us to do. We should act in ways that make the world around us a little bit more loving and a little bit kinder and a little bit more peaceful and a little bit more joyful and a little bit more hopeful and a little bit more life-giving. We should act in ways that set the bar a little higher. We should let our little lights shine, and not curse the darkness. And when we do these things we know we’ve had a pretty good day. And tomorrow?  Just plan on getting up to do it again, tomorrow, too, my friends in Christ. That is how we prepare the way and make the path through this world a little bit straighter. That is how we make a highway through this wilderness we have been living through. In so doing we point beyond ourselves to the One who is greater than John and greater than the Church: we point people to Jesus. Third Advent reminds us that we don’t have to be messiahs. We just need to do our jobs.

A Celebration of New Ministry: The Rev. Martha S. Sipe

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the Word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

I am tempted to call on my boss here, Bishop Fisher, because he loves these two verses almost as much as he loves the story of the feeding of the five thousand and Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising. In fact, to be more precise, what I have heard him say is that they may well be the most important verses in the Bible.

I love them, too, and I think for the same reason. Let me see if I can channel Doug for just a moment. These words situate the birth of John the Baptist, preceding even more familiar words we will hear about in less than three weeks about the birth of his cousin: “in those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered…this was the first registration, when Quirinius was governor of Syria…” These words insist that what we believe, what we claim about the Incarnation is not a fairy tale. It’s not “once upon a time” stuff.

Ministry is not a fairy tale either. Ministry is not “once upon a time.” Context matters. Always. Martha you know this – you’ve been at it a while. And Christ the King/Epiphany, you know it too. You’ve been at it a while as well, first separately and then together and now through COVID years which I think count like dog years. Many of us first hear and follow a call to ordained or lay ministry with wide-open eyes. But the world is too dangerous right now for anything but truth and too small for anything but love, so we need to be real. It requires our all and there are not many easy days.  

And so we gather at then end of the first year of the Biden Presidency, when Charlie Baker was governor of Massachusetts, and Jim Hazelwood was bishop of the New England Synod of the ELCA and Doug Fisher was bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Mass, still in the midst of a global pandemic that has taken lives and sapped our energy. We gather here during the first year of the ministry of The Rev. Martha Sipe at Christ the King – Epiphany when the Word of God came to God’s people in Wilbraham. 

Now what? What is the narrative that will be written by you, together? What is the "good news" that comes next?

For decades we mainline Protestant types have been talking about the end of Christendom. But it seems to me that a global pandemic has finally made that real. Really real. There is no going back: not to the 1950s nor to the 1980s nor even to Advent 2019. We are called to be the Church in this precarious moment as we light that second candle and as we wait in hope. Like John the Baptist it is now our time to prepare the way for what lies ahead.

Martha didn’t exactly get to pick this day. It’s a challenge to coordinate two bishops’ calendars, so you get what you get. But I admire her decision to lean into it and embrace it. It’s Advent which is not Lent. It has a different vibe. It’s short and quiet and intense. We try to train our eyes to see better in the dark as we light those candles, one by one, looking for signs of hope and peace and joy and love in this congregation (and others like it) and in the neighborhood and in our homes.

Before 2020, I resisted Zoom meetings. Honestly, I loathed them. I wanted to be in the room where things were happening and I would prefer to drive some distance than sit at my computer. I have had to adapt just as the leaders here who worked on a profile and then on calling Martha here had to adapt. We have had to figure it out together and before I go further let me just say that as close as we Lutherans and Episcopalians are to each other our call processes are not the same. I’m so grateful for my colleague Steven Wilco and for the ways we remained flexible with each other from beginning to end. And thanks to the leaders here for bearing with us with patience and kindness and gentleness. We had to figure out a lot of it as it unfolded. You did well, good and faithful servants.

I think that it can be tempting to see an occasion like this as an ending. All that hard work after Karen’s death and through the bridge ministry of Barbara. Thanks be to God for both of their ministries and for the many signs of hope and joy and peace and love through it all, even in difficult times. But in truth, we gather today to begin again, with God’s help. It seems to me that today is exactly the right time for this particular celebration of new ministry: this Second Sunday of Advent in the year of our Lord 2021. We dare to see (or at least to look for) new beginnings in the signs of endings all around us. To explore new possibilities, with God’s help.

I don’t know the politics here about singing Christmas hymns in Advent. I have never felt called to be the Chief of the Liturgical Police Department. But what I love about Advent is that those hymns are to me just about the most beautiful ones in the church’s repertoire. Silent Night on Christmas Eve is great; I’ll give you that. But for my money that deep yearning of Advent literally does prepare us for the dear savior’s birth and without them we lose our way.

• Creator of the stars of night, your people’s everlasting light…
• Sleepers, awake!
• Come, thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free…
• There’s a voice in the wilderness crying, a call from the ways untrod...
• Comfort, comfort ye my people, speak ye peace, thus saith our Lord.
• Prepare the way, O Zion, your Christ is drawing near!
• The king shall come when morning dawns... 
• Come, O Come, Emmanuel...

So here is the deal, my siblings in Christ: I don’t care if you are wearing blue or purple or even rose. Or if you didn’t get the memo and have on a white or red stole or even if you are a proper Episcopalian wearing cassock, surplice and tippet – it’s all good. We are in this together in this time, for better or worse, to wait. Not anxiously but expectantly. Not in fear, but in hope. Come, Lord Jesus.

There is an Advent prayer offered to the Church by Walter Brueggemann. It’s called “The Grace and the Impatience to Wait.” I commend the whole prayer to you but it’s that use of the word “impatience” that I want us to consider for just a moment this afternoon. I would likely write an Advent prayer asking for the grace and the patience to wait. That’s because I’m no Walter Brueggemann! And also because I am not very patient, so I’m always asking God for any help I can get on that.

But patience is a luxury of privilege, I know, when it comes to seeking justice in the world. The grace and the impatience to wait suggests something else, I think. It suggests a sense of urgency, yet without the freneticism and anxiety that can take us off the rails. It suggests something like the ministry of John the Baptist and for that matter of Jesus of Nazareth – the urgency of Mark’s Gospel, maybe – where everything is happening immediately. Episcopalians (and I am guessing Lutherans too) don’t always embrace impatient waiting which it seems to me is a kind of active waiting. It means a willingness to do the work God has given us to do, now, rather than kick the can down the road for someone else to deal with. And so we tend to have yet another meeting about how we might someday have another meeting to consider the possibility of perhaps having one more meeting and then appoint a committee to work on a plan. Against that grain, Walter prays for us all:

Look upon your church and its pastors
in this season of hope
which runs so quickly to fatigue
and in this season of yearning
which becomes so easily quarrelsome.
Give us the grace and the impatience
to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes,
to the edges of our finger tips.

Martha, I’m a Pennsylvania boy, born and bred. But for 35 years I’ve been a New Englander and for the past 25 of those I’ve lived in Central Massachusetts. Welcome. We are all so very glad that you and Tricia are here. We are grateful that you said yes. It’s a good place to live and to serve.

The work ahead is in some ways very new and exceedingly difficult. We are all beginners again, I think, even those of us who rely on decades of pastoral experience. Because context is everything and because you are now called to this particular work in this particular place as we prepare for the second year of the Biden Presidency when Hazelwood is still bishop of the New England Synod and Fisher is still bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Mass. (And Lord have mercy upon you having to deal with not one, but two bishops!)

But in other ways, I think, the work to which we who are called is also still familiar, as familiar as it was on the last night of Jesus’ life when he took a towel and poured water in a basin and commanded us to love one another. Love these people, Martha. They are a mixed bag as you have no doubt already discovered. Some of them are hard to like. Even so, love them all. Love them because Jesus told you that you have to. Love them because it’s the only way to prepare for a heavenly banquet where all are welcome. Love them not because they deserve it, but because they need to be reminded of their Baptismal Promises and because God loved them first. Love them enough to also set clear boundaries.  

Christ the King/Epiphany. Love Martha and love Tricia, too. Not because they are perfect. But because this work has always been so very hard and is so much harder these days. Love them because some among you will make it even harder than it needs to be. And Martha especially will carry that in her body, all that emotional work of leading a congregation: the anger, the fear, the grief, the disappointment, the yearning and the possibilities. All of it. Love her because what keeps clergy going is not the paycheck, but knowing that somebody notices. When you decide that you must write a note to Martha to “speak the truth in love” please let it be a word of gratitude and not an anonymous nastygram left under her door. 

I had a senior warden when I was a parish priest who used to tell me, “we need you well.” She was a wise woman and she still is and she had no problem telling me when I was wrong. But I always knew that she really was speaking the truth in love and not hiding passive aggressive behavior behind those words. All of you do your part in helping Martha to stay well in doing this good work. 

There is a song – I think of it as more of a hymn – by Ingrid Michaelson that goes like this:

Have you ever thought about what protects our hearts
Just a cage of rib bones and other various parts
So it's fairly simple to cut right through the mess
And to stop the muscle that makes us confess
And we are so fragile
And our cracking bones make noise
And we are just
Breakable, breakable, breakable girls and boys

So my friends: be gentle with each other, in brittle times. That goes in both directions. Love one another through it all. Be patient and kind – not arrogant or rude. The world can be a brutal place; let this congregation be a laboratory where First Corinthians 13 is embodied – where it takes on flesh. Why? So that the neighbors will know you are Christians by your love.

And so that the light will keep shining in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it.