SPEAKER_00: A reading from Ephesians.
SPEAKER_00: Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light.
SPEAKER_00: Live as children of light, for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.
SPEAKER_00: Try not, try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.
SPEAKER_00: For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly.
SPEAKER_00: But everything is exposed by the light, becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore it says, Sleeper, awake, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
SPEAKER_00: Hear what the Spirit is saying to God's people.
SPEAKER_03: I invite you to join me for hymn 143 in your blue hymnal.
SPEAKER_03: Hymn one forty-three, and we'll sing the first four verses.
SPEAKER_02: We celebrate songs of praise for Christ, by whom all things were made himself as fast and as praise, loving God, and to life sing.
SPEAKER_02: So then you treat his mystic from the bridegroom's friend became the hill's name.
SPEAKER_03: As Jesus walked along, he saw a man blind from birth.
SPEAKER_03: His disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned?
SPEAKER_03: This man or his parents, that he was born blind?
SPEAKER_03: Jesus answered, Neither this man nor his parents sinned, he was born blind, so that God's works might be revealed in him.
SPEAKER_03: We must work the works of the one who sent me while it is day.
SPEAKER_03: Night is coming when no one can work.
SPEAKER_03: As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
SPEAKER_03: When Jesus had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, saying to him, Go, wash in the pool of Saloom, which means sent.
SPEAKER_03: Then Jesus Then the man went and washed and came back, able to see.
SPEAKER_03: The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?
SPEAKER_03: Some were saying, It is he.
SPEAKER_03: Others were saying, No, but it is someone like him.
SPEAKER_03: He kept saying, I am the man.
SPEAKER_03: But they kept asking him, Then how were your eyes opened?
SPEAKER_03: He answered, The man called Jesus, made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, Go to Saloom and wash.
SPEAKER_03: Then I went and washed and received my sight.
SPEAKER_03: They said to him, Where is he?
SPEAKER_03: He said, I do not know.
SPEAKER_03: They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind.
SPEAKER_03: Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.
SPEAKER_03: Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight.
SPEAKER_03: He said to them, He put mud on my eyes.
SPEAKER_03: Then I washed, and now I see.
SPEAKER_03: Some of the Pharisees said, This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_03: But others said, How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?
SPEAKER_03: And they were divided.
SPEAKER_03: So they said again to the blind man, What do you say about him?
SPEAKER_03: It was your eyes he opened.
SPEAKER_03: He said, He is a prophet.
SPEAKER_03: The Jewish leaders did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, Is this your son who you say was born blind?
SPEAKER_03: How then does he see?
SPEAKER_03: His parents answered, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind, but we do not know how it is now that he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes.
SPEAKER_03: Ask him.
SPEAKER_03: He is of age, he will speak for himself.
SPEAKER_03: His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, for the Jewish leaders had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.
SPEAKER_03: And therefore his parents said, He is of age, ask him.
SPEAKER_03: So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, Give glory to God, we know that this man is a sinner.
SPEAKER_03: He answered, I don't know whether he's a sinner.
SPEAKER_03: One thing I do know, though I was blind, now I see.
SPEAKER_03: They said to him, What did he do to you?
SPEAKER_03: How did he open your eyes?
SPEAKER_03: He answered them, I've told you already, and you would not listen.
SPEAKER_03: Why do you want to hear it again?
SPEAKER_03: Do you also want to become his disciples?
SPEAKER_03: Then they reviled him, saying, You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.
SPEAKER_03: We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we don't know where he comes from.
SPEAKER_03: The blind man answered, Here is an astonishing thing.
SPEAKER_03: You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.
SPEAKER_03: We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to the one who worships God and obeys God's will.
SPEAKER_03: Never since the world began has it been heard that any one opened the eyes of a person born blind.
SPEAKER_03: This man were not from God, he could do nothing.
SPEAKER_03: They answered him, You were born entirely in sins, and you were trying to teach us, and they drove him out.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, Do you believe in the Son of Man?
SPEAKER_03: He answered, And who is he, sir?
SPEAKER_03: Tell me, so that I may believe in him.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus said to him, You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.
SPEAKER_03: He said, Lord, I believe.
SPEAKER_03: And he worshipped him.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus said, I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.
SPEAKER_03: Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, Surely we are not blind, are we?
SPEAKER_03: Jesus said to them, If you were blind, you would not have sinned.
SPEAKER_03: But now that you say we see, our sin remains.
SPEAKER_03: The Gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a lamb of your own fold, a sheep of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming.
SPEAKER_03: In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Please be seated.
SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Rose Sunday.
SPEAKER_03: The fourth Sunday in Lent is always set aside as Rose Sunday, or sometimes called Galdate Sunday.
SPEAKER_03: Rose, of course, being a symbol of joy.
SPEAKER_03: And it's a reminder to us that the middle of our Lenten discipline, our Lenten journey is meant to go somewhere that is good for the world and good for us as well.
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes in a lower setting, this might be called refreshment Sunday.
SPEAKER_03: That is to say, we've been at this for three weeks, we're halfway there, and uh time to remember where all this is headed, which is hopefully joy.
SPEAKER_03: There's a weird thing happening today.
SPEAKER_03: Many of you know that the lectionary divides the Gospels each into their own year in a three-year cycle.
SPEAKER_03: So year A is Matthew, that's the one we're in.
SPEAKER_03: Next year it'll be year B, and that's Mark, and uh year C is Luke.
SPEAKER_03: And that leaves John without his own year.
SPEAKER_03: So John shows up typically during Easter tide, but also during Lent, John will show up.
SPEAKER_03: And particularly, I think what we're invited to do today is we look at both what John's offering, the story is not in Matthew, and what we get in uh Samuel, is to think about, frankly, our vision.
SPEAKER_03: So I want to tell you two stories from the Mahabharata first.
SPEAKER_03: And I don't know if you're familiar with this, this is like the secondary inspired text in the Hindu tradition, the first being the Vedas, which really are just about how priests are supposed to behave.
SPEAKER_03: But uh, these two other ones that I want to share with you, short stories from the Mahabharata, uh, are about sort of the lives of the gods and how things came to be.
SPEAKER_03: Uh so the first one is that there is, many of you know the god Shiva.
SPEAKER_03: You've uh if you've seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, um, I don't recommend that movie at all.
SPEAKER_03: But if you've seen it, uh Shiva shows up in there.
SPEAKER_03: So Shiva is like the preserver of life, the sustainer of life, and therefore sometimes the destroyer of life.
SPEAKER_03: And uh Shiva is married to this lady called Parvati, who sometimes turns into Durga and then sometimes uh turns into Khalid.
SPEAKER_03: Anyway, Shiva is watching the world to make sure all goes well as the protector of the world.
SPEAKER_03: And his wife Parvati starts to give him a hard time.
SPEAKER_03: All you ever do is work, everything will be fine, just take a break, let's spend some time together.
SPEAKER_03: Shiva says, you know, no, it's literally my job to like make sure the world doesn't go to heck in a handbasket.
SPEAKER_03: So um Parvati thinks that she's going to prove her point, and she sneaks up behind her husband while he's watching the world and covers his eyes.
SPEAKER_03: And oddly enough, at that right moment, this wasn't planned, this was not part of Parvati's design, um, along comes like a sea serpent that is going to swallow the earth.
SPEAKER_03: And Shiva is the only one who has the power and the fortitude to take this on, but he's blind.
SPEAKER_03: So goes the story that Shiva opens his third eye.
SPEAKER_03: The one that sees deeper than physicality, sees the threat, manages the threat, and the world is saved.
SPEAKER_03: And from this story comes the tradition, maybe you've seen this, and I'm not talking about women.
SPEAKER_03: That dot on the head is called a bindi.
SPEAKER_03: That's not the third eye.
SPEAKER_03: This is for like holy men in the Hindu tradition that you'll see the third eye on their head.
SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you've seen these pictures, perhaps in National Geographic, or you've been to India before, or maybe you've seen this in a film.
SPEAKER_03: Aesthetic followers who are devoted to the god Shiva show this on their head.
SPEAKER_03: It turns out actually that in the iconographic tradition, there's often a little eye put on the head of Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: It's not drawn like with a pupil and an iris, but you can see the shape of an eye in the head of many an Orthodox icon depicting the third eye.
SPEAKER_03: The one that sees below, deeper than physicality.
SPEAKER_03: There's a parallel story about the danger of the eye and the need for water.
SPEAKER_03: Story goes that once upon a time there was a crazy king who decided to be a tyrant, and he let a horse run wild for two years, and anywhere the horse stepped would be his land.
SPEAKER_03: This was the rule.
SPEAKER_03: And uh the horse came into a holy man's abode, and the holy man was very much in prayer, and uh nobody could find the horse.
SPEAKER_03: So the king's 1,000 sons came and accused the holy man of stealing the horse and said that he would die a most painful death, at which point the holy man opened his third eye and obliterated all of them in an instant.
SPEAKER_03: The power of the third eye.
SPEAKER_03: This was a major problem because this was an important king.
SPEAKER_03: So the gods decided that they would unleash holy water upon the world, the holiest of all rivers, if you're Hindu, which is of course the Ganga or the Ganges.
SPEAKER_03: Uh this is the river of heaven.
SPEAKER_03: So it's flowing so hard, and it was going to come to Earth and revive all of these dead suns.
SPEAKER_03: That ultimately happened.
SPEAKER_03: But the power of the river was such that if it hit the earth on its own, it would completely destroy the planet.
SPEAKER_03: Now, I don't know how they didn't figure this out.
SPEAKER_03: So Shiva, the one with the third eye, steps in and catches it in his braids.
SPEAKER_03: And this is how the water safely comes from heaven to earth and flows, and then the 1,000 sons are restored.
SPEAKER_03: The reason I share these stories is because I think they have a fair bit to say about how it is we see and what's happening in these stories, particularly with holy water.
SPEAKER_03: Okay, so the first one's easy enough.
SPEAKER_03: With David, right, this is the anointing of David, and remember that Saul is the king.
SPEAKER_03: So to anoint a different king is an act of treason, you're probably going to die.
SPEAKER_03: Samuel goes to do this, and um, of course we know the story.
SPEAKER_03: David's the youngest, probably still a boy, like not a man, which would mean in Jewish tradition less than 13.
SPEAKER_03: He's got big brothers, they're tall, they're good looking.
SPEAKER_03: In fact, Eliob could mean God is my father, or um the God of my father, either one.
SPEAKER_03: So this is like a good-looking guy, and Samuel's prepared, and of course, that's not the one.
SPEAKER_03: Somehow God sees something that Samuel doesn't.
SPEAKER_03: Crosses off the list seven times, then lastly, there's David, and we get this instruction that God doesn't look like human beings look.
SPEAKER_03: God's third eye penetrates to the heart.
SPEAKER_03: And keep in mind that in Hebrew tradition, the heart is not the seat of your emotions.
SPEAKER_03: The heart is the center of your will.
SPEAKER_03: Where would you say the center of your will is?
SPEAKER_03: Would you put it here?
SPEAKER_03: I think most people would say it's here, right?
SPEAKER_03: Now, in sports terminology, like if you've seen the movie Rocky, Rocky has heart because he'll step into the ring and get like beat to the point that the other person's tired and then he'll win the fight, right?
SPEAKER_03: I mean, this is like Rocky's strategy.
SPEAKER_03: That's called heart.
SPEAKER_03: No, in the Hebrew Bible, your heart is the center of your decision making.
SPEAKER_03: I think that would be in your brain.
SPEAKER_03: So what is it about David's brain that God loves?
SPEAKER_03: Well, we don't know.
SPEAKER_03: We don't know, but I will let you know David in Hebrew means beloved, and he is indeed beloved by everybody, including God.
SPEAKER_03: God sees to the heart.
SPEAKER_03: If you know David's story, um David kills one of his best friends to cover up an adulterous thing that probably is a rape.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, David is brutal with his enemies.
SPEAKER_03: Uh he mismanages his kingdom.
SPEAKER_03: He's pretty much a terrible father, and nonetheless, people love him, including God.
SPEAKER_03: I want to suggest to you, actually, that that might be what's important in the story.
SPEAKER_03: It's not that David deserves to be loved.
SPEAKER_03: It's not that David has a better brain than you or I.
SPEAKER_03: It is simply the fact that God has chosen to love David Wartz and all.
SPEAKER_03: Which is to say, if God can enjoy somebody like David, there is hope for you and I.
SPEAKER_03: Because I suspect you have not killed your political rivals in cold blood.
SPEAKER_03: I suspect you did not, most of you anyway, I don't know, please tell me if this is different in confession in two weeks, um kill your best friend so that you could steal their wife and get away with having a baby.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I just really suspect that's not the case for any of you in the room.
SPEAKER_03: So I hope you'll hear, rather than David earning God's affection or being somebody super special, that David's story to me says that God loves us as we are, even, well, when we try to resist being lovable.
SPEAKER_03: By the way, that's not condoning what David does, it's just a reminder.
SPEAKER_03: As Desmond Tutu once said, sometimes we forget how low God's standards are.
SPEAKER_03: They are really low.
SPEAKER_03: They're so low that there is nothing we can do to make God love us any less.
SPEAKER_03: And they're so low that there's nothing we can do to make God love us anymore.
SPEAKER_03: That's our reminder, this lint.
SPEAKER_03: You are not going to curry favor with God over the next three weeks.
SPEAKER_03: The next three weeks are about you enjoying the favor God already has for you, extending it to yourself, and extending it to your neighbor, you know, the one who you can't stand, because after all, God's third eye is able to see the beauty that we often can't.
SPEAKER_03: And don't you see that's the story that happens in John?
SPEAKER_03: And it's a long story today.
SPEAKER_03: You probably thought, this is part of my Lenten penance, having to listen to that long gospel reading.
SPEAKER_03: Um, but I hope what you hear in the story, right, is that here is somebody who is completely judged as disabled, not normal, malfunctioning.
SPEAKER_03: So much so, well, sin's a tricky word.
SPEAKER_03: Keep in mind that sin can mean missing the target.
SPEAKER_03: It can mean, we often say, like a moral blemish, but it can just as well mean a heavy burden.
SPEAKER_03: So when you hear that this man is born in sin, he is born with a heavy burden.
SPEAKER_03: People think that he's missing something.
SPEAKER_03: That he's incomplete.
SPEAKER_03: They can't see in him what God sees in him.
SPEAKER_03: So there's heavenly water.
SPEAKER_03: It's interesting, though, how Jesus does this.
SPEAKER_03: It's not it's not with something that falls to earth such that Jesus has to catch it in his hair.
SPEAKER_03: No, instead, Jesus spits on the ground.
SPEAKER_03: And I want you to consider that this man has probably been spat on most of his life.
SPEAKER_03: People who revile him and mock him and say there's something wrong with you.
SPEAKER_03: And how curious it is that Jesus also spits on this man, but does so with his touch.
SPEAKER_03: It's almost like an ironic reversal of mockery.
SPEAKER_03: You don't have to touch somebody to spit on them.
SPEAKER_03: In fact, isn't that part of the point?
SPEAKER_03: Jesus does this interesting thing.
SPEAKER_03: He makes contact with somebody who probably doesn't believe he's lovable.
SPEAKER_03: He makes contact with somebody whose own parents are a little bit embarrassed and worried to claim him because what would happen to them?
SPEAKER_03: They've been scandalized their whole life already, second-class citizens in their own kingdom.
SPEAKER_03: This miracle of holy water turns this man around, and of course, look who's waiting to figure it out.
SPEAKER_03: Everybody else in the community.
SPEAKER_03: They still resist seeing the miracle that Jesus has done.
SPEAKER_03: They still resist that this person who doesn't deserve God's favor already has it.
SPEAKER_03: They resist.
SPEAKER_03: And I think the story asks us really clearly, who are we in the story?
SPEAKER_03: Do we resist God's beatific vision?
SPEAKER_03: The one that looks at us with the third eye and sees God's image and likeness incarnate and human form in each and every member of God's family.
SPEAKER_03: Did this man deserve being born blind?
SPEAKER_03: Jesus says, of course not.
SPEAKER_03: We don't deserve being born American.
SPEAKER_03: I'm really glad I was.
SPEAKER_03: We don't deserve being born into households with a privilege education.
SPEAKER_03: Boy, I'm really glad I was.
SPEAKER_03: We don't deserve being born Christian.
SPEAKER_03: It is my story, and I'm grateful for it.
SPEAKER_03: These are gifts.
SPEAKER_03: Or maybe better said, these are privileges.
SPEAKER_03: And the reminder we get throughout Lent is that they are given to us not so that we can lord them over others, but so that we can lift others up who may not enjoy the same, frankly, rites of birth that we did enduring and we get anyway.
SPEAKER_03: And we come back, I think, to Rose Sunday every year, precisely because one of the four words that gets translated into belief, like do you believe in Jesus, is actually the Latin word visio, which means vision, a way of seeing.
SPEAKER_03: And I want to suggest to you my third eye is often closed.
SPEAKER_03: Or when I open it, I open it to obliterate the opposition.
SPEAKER_03: Instead of to bring life.
SPEAKER_03: So this was a Catholic heart hospital, mostly for geriatric patients in Atlanta.
SPEAKER_03: And I was there doing a CPE, a clinical pastoral education unit, where I would have to spend nights in the hospital, and if people were coding or if people wanted to see a chaplain, I would go.
SPEAKER_03: And because it was Catholic, about 12 of the staff chaplains, and they were 13, were nuns.
SPEAKER_03: And these weren't habit-wearing nuns, you know, ever since Vatican II, the habit kind of had disappeared.
SPEAKER_03: But they dressed very much like nuns.
SPEAKER_03: And they had these really cute cards, like nun tracks.
SPEAKER_03: Now I grew up evangelical and we had tracks, you know, like things like if you died on your way home, do you know you go to heaven?
SPEAKER_03: Like this sort of thing, right?
SPEAKER_03: Um tracks are different from those kinds of tracks.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, nun tracks, particularly the one that I remember very fondly, had a picture of a of a rose-colored rose that's pink, and um, it had this like scripted font.
SPEAKER_03: It's a kind of birthday card my mom still gives me.
SPEAKER_03: You know, like this old, very old-fashioned kind of nun-ish birthday card.
SPEAKER_03: And um this was my favorite track.
SPEAKER_03: It said, and again, you've heard this, so spoil alert, you already know probably how this is gonna go.
SPEAKER_03: It said, God, help me to accept the truth, capital T, about myself, no matter how blank it is.
SPEAKER_03: Well, I looked at the card for a second.
SPEAKER_03: I didn't actually read it.
SPEAKER_03: You know sometimes how you read a thing without actually reading it?
SPEAKER_03: In that way the card reads you.
SPEAKER_03: So before reading that blank word, I filled it in no matter how awful it is, no matter how hard it is.
SPEAKER_03: Help me to accept the truth about myself no matter how disappointing it is.
SPEAKER_03: I don't know how you would fill that blank in.
SPEAKER_03: The reason we come back to Rose Sunday is because I think the nuns track said it very well.
SPEAKER_03: God helped me to accept the truth about myself no matter how beautiful it is.
SPEAKER_03: And I want to suggest to you the only way we can do that is with our third eye.
SPEAKER_03: The one that we so often leave closed, the one that has not only the power, sadly, to obliterate, but the power to bring new life, and especially to us.
SPEAKER_03: The third eye, the one who sees what we so often miss because we're in too much of a hurry, or because we're so wrapped up in our own judgment of ourselves that we just share that with other people.
SPEAKER_03: You ever find yourself looking at something somebody's done and implying motive to it?
SPEAKER_03: That person cut me off.
SPEAKER_03: They must be a jerk.
SPEAKER_03: That person showed up late, it's because they disrespect me.
SPEAKER_03: You ever find yourself doing that?
SPEAKER_03: Um, that's what I do like 99% of the time, and the other 1%, I'm like doing it twice, just to be really clear.
SPEAKER_03: Giving motive to just actions.
SPEAKER_03: You ever had your mind made up about somebody?
SPEAKER_03: I mean like being just a base individual, and then you learn something about them.
SPEAKER_03: Something that tenderized them for you.
SPEAKER_03: Like they were abused for years.
SPEAKER_03: Or they had a tumor.
SPEAKER_03: Or they had four stillborn babies.
SPEAKER_03: If you've had a moment like that, I hope your heart softened.
SPEAKER_03: Because you were able to see deeper than just the surface level.
SPEAKER_03: You were able to see that pain so often comes from pain.
SPEAKER_03: You were able to see that, hey, instead of people changing language from they wouldn't to for whatever reason they could not.
SPEAKER_03: Big difference between won't and can't.
SPEAKER_03: You're able to see somebody who seemed like they were, for lack of a better word, disabled.
SPEAKER_03: And then start to appreciate, instead of judging the burdens they carried, appreciate the strength it took to carry the burdens that they carry.
SPEAKER_03: I think that's the third eye.
SPEAKER_03: And I wonder this Rose Sunday, if your third eye opens when you look at your life.
SPEAKER_03: I wonder if you're able to hear really the good news of that none track.
SPEAKER_03: God, help me to accept the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, of course we know roses have thorns.
SPEAKER_03: And it's true that even the greatest gifts that God gives us can cast shadows.
SPEAKER_03: They can't.
SPEAKER_03: Creativity is a really great gift.
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it turns out looking at like rebellion.
SPEAKER_03: Even our greatest gifts can cast shadows.
SPEAKER_03: That doesn't mean there's something wrong with the gift.
SPEAKER_03: No, the question, and there's nothing wrong with the stem either.
SPEAKER_03: No, so often we focus on these thorns in ourselves and other people, so much so that we fail to see the rose.
SPEAKER_03: The beauty.
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes I'm worried we focus so much on the thorns and ourselves and on others that we spend all of our energy on the thorns and give very little to the bud.
SPEAKER_03: And I think again, we're invited not to come to God from a place of fear or anxiety.
SPEAKER_03: We're not invited to come to God because we're afraid we'll be punished in hell forever when we die.
SPEAKER_03: That's no real invitation.
SPEAKER_03: No, I think the invitation we have before us today is to come to God, frankly, in one of the, well, it's scary.
SPEAKER_03: It's scary to think that we get to come to God because God loves us exactly as we are.
SPEAKER_03: That actually frightens me more than coming to God because I'm afraid God will punish me.
SPEAKER_03: Those things that drive me crazy about myself.
SPEAKER_03: God's third eye looks at and says, I know why you do that.
SPEAKER_03: I know why you do that.
SPEAKER_03: You may not even know why you do that.
SPEAKER_03: I know why you do that.
SPEAKER_03: You're carrying that.
SPEAKER_03: You can do it.
SPEAKER_03: And whatever it is that thing that's carrying you, that you're carrying, you may want to put it down, but I don't want you to put yourself down.
SPEAKER_03: Some of those things we carry with us are quirks.
SPEAKER_03: If we lost them, we wouldn't be us anymore.
SPEAKER_03: And God's really happy with who we are.
SPEAKER_03: Can you imagine coming to somebody completely unafraid?
SPEAKER_03: Because no matter what you do, or even what you think, they'll see the beauty in that.
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna have to do this again next year because I'm not there yet.
SPEAKER_03: I'm not.
SPEAKER_03: But I hope that maybe for a moment this week, you will stare yourself down in the mirror, in a journal, in meditation.
SPEAKER_03: And maybe the prayer is, God help me to see myself the way you see me.
SPEAKER_03: And if you've made it, well, then maybe move on.
SPEAKER_03: To the person whose name makes your armpits start to kind of get a little balmy.
SPEAKER_03: Or hairs on your neck start to stand up when they come in the room, or the corners of your mouth turn down.
SPEAKER_03: God opened my third eye so that I can see them the way you do.
SPEAKER_03: I didn't think we need any more news about how bleak things can be.
SPEAKER_03: I think we're pretty enamored with that.
SPEAKER_03: I think what we're invited to consider is not news, but good news.
SPEAKER_03: The gospel, which is God's unconditional, extravagant, not only love, but enjoyment of us.
SPEAKER_03: Enjoyment that we are invited to cultivate and participate in and extend to one another.
SPEAKER_03: And if we could do that, I don't think we'd need the rest of Lent.
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna be honest.
SPEAKER_03: But we do have three more weeks to prune away those parts of ourselves that are getting in the way of seeing the beauty that God has put in us.
SPEAKER_03: As you'll hear in the blessing, it is not our job to go seeking for love, but rather to seek out the barriers we have erected within ourselves to God's love for us, to our love for one another.
SPEAKER_03: Please join me as we pray our faith in the words of the Nicene Creed.
SPEAKER_03: We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.
SPEAKER_04: We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally God and the Father, God who God, my own God, your God, your God, the God who might be almost our salvation in heaven.
SPEAKER_04: I have the Holy Spirit in the crucified.
SPEAKER_01: For the courage to protect creation and the persistence to make informed decisions every day.
SPEAKER_01: For the victims of oppression throughout the world, especially those who have been silenced by governments, abuse, and poverty, power their voices and sending our leaders of them, for refugees and those displaced by war or strife, for those who hunger, satisfy their physical and spiritual needs, mentor and guide elected and appointed officials throughout our world.
SPEAKER_01: For forty-seven years of female clergy shining your light in the Episcopal Church, we praise you and we thank you, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Enable our laity, deacons, priests, and bishops to discern your work in the world and boldly join it.
SPEAKER_01: Bless our day school, its teachers, staff, families, and students.
SPEAKER_01: We praise you for the constant love, compassion, diligence, kindness, and guidance of spouses, siblings, parents, friends, and extended families who have put us and others before themselves.
SPEAKER_01: Mend broken relationships and comfort those who are alone.
SPEAKER_01: Equip us to empathize even when we are in pain.
SPEAKER_01: Protect the dignity of those who are in physical decline or hardship, and the celebrations or petitions the congregation wishes to name at this time, silently or aloud.
SPEAKER_01: Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: We pray for all who have died, especially Lunan and Janet.
SPEAKER_01: Compassionate God, make your healing and peaceful presence known to the world.
SPEAKER_01: Comfort those who mourn, strengthen those who are weary, encourage those in despair, and lead us all to fullness of life.
SPEAKER_03: Let us humbly confess our sin unto Almighty God.
SPEAKER_03: Holy God, creator of all that is, donor of grace, and giver of life, hear our prayer.
SPEAKER_03: There are chasms in our lives, deep valleys that separate us from one another and from you.
SPEAKER_03: We confess that we have allowed those rifts to grow, for fear of admitting our part in the separation, for fear of being rejected when we reach out.
SPEAKER_03: You call us to a reconciled life, to heal relationships, to a wholeness with each other and with you.
SPEAKER_03: Mend us, we pray, and make us new creations, through the power and love of Christ, in whose name we pray.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Friends, hear this good news.
SPEAKER_03: The love of God is beyond measure, and you are included in that love.
SPEAKER_03: Know that you are forgiven, and thus freed to love and to serve.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: The peace of the Lord be always with you.
unknown: Peace.
SPEAKER_03: Good morning, peace, and thank you for worshiping with us at St.
SPEAKER_03: Thomas today.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, if you're new to us or haven't done this before, in the little room right behind the one we're in, we call that the Narthex.
SPEAKER_03: So these little cards that say welcome, and we'd be tremendously grateful if you'd fill one of those out and put it in the little uh sort of blue bin so we have a record of your visit.
SPEAKER_03: And don't be scared, you get to choose if you want to call back or not.
SPEAKER_03: Uh I won't call you if you don't want one, uh, but we would be very grateful if you take the time, like I said, so that we have a record of your visit.
SPEAKER_03: Um few announcements I want to call to your attention.
SPEAKER_03: Most of these you'll find on the handout, but I do really want to emphasize that today, uh, right after this service, uh, we're going to have a chance to, while our kids are learning dinner etiquette, we're going to have a chance to meet with author Jason Porterfield, who's here worshiping with us today.
SPEAKER_03: Uh he wrote a book, uh, it was last year, right?
SPEAKER_03: Uh Fight Like Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: Fight Like Jesus, right?
SPEAKER_03: Uh and so it really gives a different frame for the actions during Holy Week.
SPEAKER_03: To be honest, I've always been bothered about Jesus making a whip of cords and driving people out of the temple.
SPEAKER_03: And Jason has done some tremendous research that he will share with us about a different way to view that story along with many others that I hope will be helpful as we think about not only what did Jesus do, but how we're called to emulate and walk and pattern our lives after him.
SPEAKER_03: So I hope you'll take a moment to join us for adult ed this morning, right after the service with Jason.
SPEAKER_03: I want to remind you that next week is our blood drive.
SPEAKER_03: So the Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center will be here in the maker space we have at the school at the end of the hallway from 8.30 till 1.
SPEAKER_03: And as I've often said, I don't know what to do for Ukraine.
SPEAKER_03: I really I don't.
SPEAKER_03: But they'll take my blood, and people need it.
SPEAKER_03: So I can do that.
SPEAKER_03: I don't know what to do about a number of political issues, but I know that I can share my life through my blood.
SPEAKER_03: So I really want to encourage you if you can.
SPEAKER_03: This is a really lovely Linton discipline to pick up and do the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_03: Share as much as you can the life that you have with people whose life is on the edge.
SPEAKER_03: So you'll find a sign-up in the e-news.
SPEAKER_03: They do ask for as many appointments as possible so that they can kind of guide the flow.
SPEAKER_03: You can just walk in next week, but um would encourage you to think about whether or not this is a time for you to donate uh blood, and you'll be able to do that next week.
SPEAKER_03: Also, next week, Dr.
SPEAKER_03: Darlene Hunter will be talking to us about uh healthy ways of grieving.
SPEAKER_03: And I don't just mean when somebody dies, I mean even for things like disappointment and setbacks.
SPEAKER_03: And so that'll be our adult ed uh next week.
SPEAKER_03: And then a reminder in two weeks, uh really want to encourage you to think about end-of-life planning, which I will do with you.
SPEAKER_03: We have a great resource online about designing your funeral because we are all going to die.
SPEAKER_03: And one of the best gifts we can give those who are behind us is our wishes, because otherwise, I can tell you, I see this over and over again.
SPEAKER_03: People say, I have no idea what mom would have wanted.
SPEAKER_03: So this is a lovely gift, and it's a lovely way to think about how it is you can honor your family.
SPEAKER_03: So that'll be in two weeks.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, reminder also that on April 1st is our next food distribution.
SPEAKER_03: That'll be out here in the parking lot from 7.45 a.m.
SPEAKER_03: until about 9.30.
SPEAKER_03: We're pretty much done.
SPEAKER_03: And it's a great way to play April Fool's on the food desert that we live in, honestly.
SPEAKER_03: And that many people in this neighborhood, which most of you know is pretty, well, reasonably expensive, are coming through here because they don't have enough money for groceries.
SPEAKER_03: It's very sobering.
SPEAKER_03: So it's a thing that we can do to help serve people, uh, whether we know their particulars or not.
SPEAKER_03: Uh it's a sort of a way of joining God and offering roses to our community.
SPEAKER_03: Uh last thing I want to uh well, two more things, remind you of is um the Holy Week schedule is posted on our website.
SPEAKER_03: You'll also see.
SPEAKER_03: It in the e-news.
SPEAKER_03: And maybe you've done the Holy Week services before, maybe you haven't, but I just have to tell you, it's probably my favorite part of being an Episcopalian is the opportunity to live into the stories, not just hear them, but worship alongside them so that we participate in the week.
SPEAKER_03: So you know, I don't want to twist your arms or anything, but I find them very life-giving and beautiful and lovely.
SPEAKER_03: So I just want to offer that up to you that there has been value for me every year, not just in doing them, but being a part of them.
SPEAKER_03: Again, you'll you'll you'll find that uh posted online.
SPEAKER_03: And lastly, uh just really love to say that um we had a really fantastic uh week in Paladuro Canyon.
SPEAKER_03: There were about five of our families here uh and that that went for the week.
SPEAKER_03: And um boy, it snowed on us, we got sunburned, it rained, there were 40 mile an hour wind gusts, and uh our children got along and played together, and uh it was just really lovely and beautiful.
SPEAKER_03: So um so thank you, and um thank you for affording this opportunity uh to form families in wonder um in awe and beauty together.
SPEAKER_03: We continue to walk in love because Christ first loved us and gave himself for us an offering and sacrifice to God.
SPEAKER_03: This is the table not of the church, but of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_03: It is made ready for those who love him and those who want to love him more, so come.
SPEAKER_03: You who have much faith and you who have little.
SPEAKER_03: You who have been here often and you who have not been for a long time or ever before.
SPEAKER_03: You who have tried to follow and you who have failed, come.
SPEAKER_03: Not because the church invites you, it is Christ, and he invites you to meet him here.
SPEAKER_03: Our service continues on page 367 of your red prayer book.
SPEAKER_03: Page 367.
SPEAKER_03: The Lord be with you.
SPEAKER_03: Lift up your hearts.
SPEAKER_03: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
SPEAKER_03: It is right and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is tempted in every way as we are, yet did not sin.
SPEAKER_03: By his grace we are able to triumph over every evil, and to live no longer for ourselves, but for the one who died for us and rose again.
SPEAKER_03: And therefore we praise you, joining our voices with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, who forever say this hymn to proclaim the glory of your name.
SPEAKER_03: Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory, Hosanna in the highest.
SPEAKER_03: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest.
SPEAKER_03: We give thanks to you, O God, for the goodness and love which you've made known to us in creation, in the calling of Israel to be your people, in your word spoken to the prophets, and above all in the word made flesh, Jesus your Son.
SPEAKER_03: For in these last days you sent him to be incarnate from the Virgin Mary, to be the Savior and Redeemer of the world.
SPEAKER_03: In him you have delivered us from evil and made us worthy to stand before you.
SPEAKER_03: In him you have brought us out of error into truth, and of sin and to righteousness, out of death and to life.
SPEAKER_03: The night before he died for us, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread.
SPEAKER_03: And when he had given thanks to you, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, and said, Take, eat.
SPEAKER_03: This is my body which is given for you.
SPEAKER_03: Do this for the remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_03: After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them and said, Drink this, all of you.
SPEAKER_03: This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for all for the forgiveness of sin.
SPEAKER_03: Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_03: Therefore, according to his command, O Father, we remember his death, we proclaim his resurrection, we await his coming in glory, and we offer every sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to you, O Lord of all, presenting to you from your creation this bread and this wine.
SPEAKER_03: We pray you, gracious God, to send your Holy Spirit upon these gifts, that they may be the sacrament of the body of Christ in his blood of the new covenant.
SPEAKER_03: Unite us to your Son in his sacrifice, that we may be acceptable through him, being sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_03: In the fullness of time, put all things in subjection unto your Christ, and bring us to that heavenly country where with Thomas and all your saints we may enter the everlasting heritage of your daughters and sons through Jesus Christ our Lord, the firstborn of all creation, the head of the church, and the author of our salvation.
SPEAKER_03: By him and with him and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory as yours, Almighty Father, now and forever.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: And now, as our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to pray, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
SPEAKER_03: Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus, Lamb of God, have mercy on us.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus, bearer of our sins, have mercy on us.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus, Redeemer of the world, give us your peace.
SPEAKER_03: These are the gifts of God for you, the people of God.
SPEAKER_03: Feed on them in your hearts by faith and with thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_03: Loving God, we give you thanks for restoring us in your image and nourishing us with spiritual food in the sacrament of Christ's body and blood.
SPEAKER_03: Now send us forth a people forgiven, healed, renewed, that we may proclaim your love to the world and continue in the risen life of Christ our Savior.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
SPEAKER_03: And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be with you this day and remain with you always.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.