SPEAKER_03: Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and blessed be God's family now and forever.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_03: Almighty God, do you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.
SPEAKER_03: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: The Lord be with you, and also with you.
SPEAKER_03: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_03: Keep, O Lord, your household, the church, and your steadfast faith and love, that through your grace we may proclaim your truth with boldness and minister your justice with compassion for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: A prayer for the power of the Spirit among the people of God.
SPEAKER_03: God of all power and love, we give thanks for your unfailing presence and the hope you provide in times of uncertainty and loss.
SPEAKER_03: Send your Holy Spirit to enkindle in us your holy fire.
SPEAKER_03: Revive us to live as Christ's body and the world, a people who pray, worship, learn, break bread, share life, heal neighbors, bear good news, seek justice, rest and grow in the Spirit.
SPEAKER_03: Wherever and however we gather, unite us in common prayer and send us in common mission, that we and the whole creation might be restored and renewed through Jesus Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_04: A reading from Genesis.
SPEAKER_04: He looked up and saw three men standing near him.
SPEAKER_04: When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them and bowed down to the ground.
SPEAKER_04: He said, My Lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant.
SPEAKER_04: Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree.
SPEAKER_04: Let me bring a little bread that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on, since you have come to your servant.
SPEAKER_04: So they said, Do as you have said.
SPEAKER_04: And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah and said, Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, eat it, and make cakes.
SPEAKER_04: Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it.
SPEAKER_04: Then he took herds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and he set it before them.
SPEAKER_04: And he stood by them under the tree while they ate.
SPEAKER_04: They said to him, Where's your wife Sarah?
SPEAKER_04: And he said, There, in the tent.
SPEAKER_04: Then one said, I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.
SPEAKER_04: And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him.
SPEAKER_04: Now, since Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age.
SPEAKER_04: It had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.
SPEAKER_04: So Sarah laughed at herself, saying, After I've grown old and my husband's old, shall I have the pleasure?
SPEAKER_04: The Lord said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh and say, Shall I indeed bear a child now that I am old?
SPEAKER_04: Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?
SPEAKER_04: At the set time, I will return to you in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.
SPEAKER_04: But Sarah denied, saying, I did not laugh, for she was afraid.
SPEAKER_04: And he said, Oh yes, you did laugh.
SPEAKER_04: The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised.
SPEAKER_04: Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him.
SPEAKER_04: Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son, whom Sarah bore him.
SPEAKER_04: And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him.
SPEAKER_04: Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
SPEAKER_04: Now Sarah said, God has brought laughter for me.
SPEAKER_04: Everyone who hears will laugh with me.
SPEAKER_04: And she said, Who would have ever said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children?
SPEAKER_04: Yet I have borne him a son in him's old age.
SPEAKER_04: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_04: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 116.
SPEAKER_00: I love the Lord because the Lord has heard the voice of my supplication and inclined an ear to me whenever I cried out.
SPEAKER_00: How shall I repay you, O Lord, for all the good things you have done for me?
SPEAKER_00: I will lift up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all the chosen people.
SPEAKER_00: Precious in your sight, O Lord, is the death of your servants.
SPEAKER_00: O Lord, I am your servant.
SPEAKER_00: I am your servant and the child of your handmaid.
SPEAKER_00: You have freed me from my bonds.
SPEAKER_00: I will offer you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call upon the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all the people in the courts of the Lord's house, in the midst of you, O Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_01: A reading from Romans, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: And not only that, but we also boast in our suffering, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
SPEAKER_01: For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
SPEAKER_01: Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die.
SPEAKER_01: But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
SPEAKER_01: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_03: Glory to you, Lord Christ.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness.
SPEAKER_03: When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
SPEAKER_03: And then he said to his disciples, harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.
SPEAKER_03: Therefore asked the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest.
SPEAKER_03: And then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.
SPEAKER_03: These are the names of the twelve apostles, first Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew, James, son of Zebedee and his brother John, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector, James, son of Alpheus and Thaddeus, Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.
SPEAKER_03: These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions.
SPEAKER_03: Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
SPEAKER_03: As you go, proclaim the good news.
SPEAKER_03: The kingdom of God has come near.
SPEAKER_03: Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.
SPEAKER_03: You receive without payment, give also without payment.
SPEAKER_03: The Gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Praise to you, Lord Christ.
SPEAKER_03: About a year and a half ago, the artist David Frazier came in to a concert we were hosting here at St.
SPEAKER_03: Thomas and said that he has pioneered some work in something called circle photography.
SPEAKER_03: And the way it works is that he puts a camera on a fixed point, and as he rotates on a on a very fixed center point, he takes hundreds, sometimes even a thousand photos of a particular space and then uses software to digitally edit them together.
SPEAKER_03: And so the scene behind me is the first one of his circle photographs that I saw, and it's our own sanctuary.
SPEAKER_03: We were in Jordan at the time, and David was kind enough to send this to me.
SPEAKER_03: And when he first sent it to me, I thought he had maybe sent me the wrong file.
SPEAKER_03: I actually didn't really recognize much of the space apart from our stained glass window, and it took me a while to see the way in which the Lord's table curls around, the way in which our pewneelers are here clearly depicted.
SPEAKER_03: I think the thing that was hardest for me is that we have some really strong points in our architecture, beams that are meant to represent an upside-down boat hole, which is depicting the idea that the church is the ship of salvation.
SPEAKER_03: And of course, as you look at this photography, those sharp edges are rounded out.
SPEAKER_03: And I'd never seen quite this image before of our front wall.
SPEAKER_03: I almost thought that it was the Sydney Opera House, or on closer inspection, it looked more like a lily.
SPEAKER_03: And the interesting thing that David says is that he likes to go into sanctuaries and take pictures that he calls a God's eye view.
SPEAKER_03: So instead of us just looking up and seeing flat and seeing sharp points, this is God's eye rounding out the sharp points and sort of taking a bunch of different still pictures and being able to weave them all into one harmonious.
SPEAKER_03: And if you'll go with the lily picture, a blooming flower.
SPEAKER_03: And I want to suggest to you that there are a couple of different God's eye view considerations we could use in our stories today.
SPEAKER_03: And the first one that we get to hear right out of the Hebrew Bible is this really interesting dual-edged between laughter.
SPEAKER_03: So in the story, Sarah has been barren her whole life, and God shows up and says, within her hearing, within a year, this 80-year-old lady, well past menopause, is going to have the child she's always longed for, and Sarah laughs.
SPEAKER_03: It's interesting because she doesn't laugh with joy.
SPEAKER_03: I want to suggest to you she laughs because she scorns the idea.
SPEAKER_03: It is so absurdly preposterous that there could be any sort of promise for her at this point.
SPEAKER_03: The visitors say, Hey, um, did you laugh?
SPEAKER_03: And she denies it because she knows it's bad manners to mournfully mock a visitor.
SPEAKER_03: Um but she does.
SPEAKER_03: What's really interesting is that at the end of the story, sure enough, a year later she does, in fact, give birth to Isaac, which in Hebrew means laughter, and she says, it's because rather than laughing back at her, God has chosen to laugh with her.
SPEAKER_03: And it seems to me like laughter is one of those things that can be so different.
SPEAKER_03: Laughter can be one of those things that we either do at somebody's expense and thereby take a community that was already starting to feel tension and feeling frail and split it absolutely asunder, or laughter has this incredible power to bring us together.
SPEAKER_03: And I think maybe the different kind is not only at whose expense it is, but where it happens.
SPEAKER_03: The deep belly laugh, in my experience, uh, is one that connects me to other people.
SPEAKER_03: The laughter that happens in my head and in my throat only is one that often divides me from other people.
SPEAKER_03: I want to share that difference with laughter with you because I think what we get to hear in Paul is two different perspectives.
SPEAKER_03: At the very beginning, we get to hear that we've been justified by faith.
SPEAKER_03: And I'll tell you, in my human perspective, looking up at the window, I hear that story, I've heard it my whole life, and I think, well, I'd better have the right faith.
SPEAKER_03: And until I do, I won't be justified.
SPEAKER_03: So to the work.
SPEAKER_03: And I love to get to work.
SPEAKER_03: At the end of the passage that we hear today, this really incredible bit that says, While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
SPEAKER_03: I'll tell you from my human point of view, I hear that powerful conclusion, and so long in my spiritual journey, I've heard that as saying something like, God loves who you might be so much that God will take a risk.
SPEAKER_03: God comes down to earth, suffers, and dies, all for who you might be.
SPEAKER_03: But you know, as with all gamblers, when it didn't go well, God might get really, really mad.
SPEAKER_03: So you'd better work to have the right faith.
SPEAKER_03: Um part of the way I internalize some of these stories, uh, I think to my detriment from my human point of view, is that if we are not receptive and open and obedient, that God might laugh at us scornfully on the last day.
SPEAKER_03: But I am indebted to the theologian Carl Barth.
SPEAKER_03: He's probably one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century.
SPEAKER_03: And Carl Bart came back to this passage and said, listen, I'm gonna take the conclusion so seriously that it's going to inform uh how I read the introduction.
SPEAKER_03: And the conclusion goes like this: While we were sinners, God died for us.
SPEAKER_03: Not because of who we might become, but because God was deeply, madly, confusingly in love with the people we already are, especially at our worst.
SPEAKER_03: This is what Brene Baron says.
SPEAKER_03: We don't love one another in spite of our flaws, we love one another because of our flaws.
SPEAKER_03: And Carl Bart said at the beginning, then don't you see, it's not our faith that justifies us before God.
SPEAKER_03: It's God's faith in us that justifies us before God.
SPEAKER_03: And God's faith in us, if we reread this passage, hear it anew, is unshakable and it's borne out in the end.
SPEAKER_03: Now, I want you to know that I find this language extremely powerful and challenging.
SPEAKER_03: And it really is the difference uh between belonging and fitting in.
SPEAKER_03: Now, if you ask any middle schooler what's the difference, uh middle schoolers are usually pretty, they're pretty good on their feet, and they can tell you something like, in order to fit in, I have to be who you want me to be.
SPEAKER_03: When I belong, I get to be who I am.
SPEAKER_03: And I want to suggest to you, Ramons might be saying to us this week that we don't need to fit in with God.
SPEAKER_03: God's faith in us allows us to belong exactly as we are, flaws and all.
SPEAKER_03: And I guess suppose we can consider whether or not it is God's patience that builds hope or our own.
SPEAKER_03: I do believe that Romans is inviting us to join God in loving extravagantly.
SPEAKER_03: The reason I think that is on the table for us this week is because I look at the call of Jesus to these twelve disciples.
SPEAKER_03: As with the Trinity, so often I am used to thinking that the disciples pretty much were all the same.
SPEAKER_03: They might have been a little hot-headed, but in general, they were all really good friends.
SPEAKER_03: And it not even looking extremely closely at this, I want to tell you what's amazing about what Matthew does, and it's different from what John and Mark and Luke do, is he lays out twelve people, some of whom would have been absolutely natural enemies of one another, and some of whom, just when we hear their name, we already think that's the bad guy.
SPEAKER_03: And yet, somehow Jesus is able to take 12 people, many of whom might have laughed at one another, made jokes at one another's expense, and somehow transform that group into a group of people who were able to sit together at a table and eat, which is really hard to do with somebody you don't respect, and then go out in mission and ministry, of course, after Easter.
SPEAKER_03: So what kind of divisions are we talking about?
SPEAKER_03: Well, at the very end of the list, there's Simon, there's Judas Iscariot.
SPEAKER_03: Judas Iscariot, who the word Iscariot likely comes from the word sicari, which means long knives.
SPEAKER_03: The Sicari were a group of people who were freedom fighters.
SPEAKER_03: They were so opposed to Roman occupation that they would, in big crowds, sneak up behind a Roman soldier, stab the soldier with a long knife, and slip away into the crowd.
SPEAKER_03: Essentially what they were trying to do is make Roman soldiers refuse to serve in the region of Judea.
SPEAKER_03: They were terrorists.
SPEAKER_03: You could put it on the positive and say they were freedom fighters.
SPEAKER_03: And if you're on their side, absolutely they were patriots.
SPEAKER_03: But these were people who were willing to go to any length, even calculating murder and death, in order to have their independence.
SPEAKER_03: And then there's Matthew, who's a tax collector.
SPEAKER_03: Matthew is the guy who's working for the Roman government, who is literally going to his Jewish brothers and sisters and shaking them down for every penny he can on behalf of Rome, and the harder he shakes, the more fall in his pocket.
SPEAKER_03: Judas and Matthew would have been even more opposed to one another than a member of the Tea Party and a Yellow Dog Democrat.
SPEAKER_03: And Jesus somehow was able to bring them together.
SPEAKER_03: The unique thing that Matthew does is that often in the Gospels there's Simon who's called the Zealot.
SPEAKER_03: But in Matthew, he's called Simon the Canaan.
SPEAKER_03: Now look, the land has been called Canaan a long, long time, but the Gospels usually call the land of Jewish inhabitants, Judea.
SPEAKER_03: To call it Canaan is really, really interesting move.
SPEAKER_03: And I want to suggest to you it's really possible that Matthew, instead of calling Simon a zealot, is calling him a Canaanite.
SPEAKER_03: That is to say, it's going to sound wild, but please permission to go with me here for a second.
SPEAKER_03: It's sort of like saying you've got these good Christian folks, you've got these Lutherans, you've got these Episcopalians, and then you've got Simon the Muslim.
SPEAKER_03: And Jesus gets Simon the Muslim to come and be one of his twelve disciples.
SPEAKER_03: A Canaanite would have, uh that word Canaanite easily could have represented somebody not only of a foreign national and ethnic identity, but of an indigenous in what uh our scriptures and we might consider a pagan religion.
SPEAKER_03: And Jesus brings him in as one of his twelve disciples.
SPEAKER_03: We could, I think, laugh at that level of diversity.
SPEAKER_03: Or I think we could laugh with God's ability to create it.
SPEAKER_03: We could laugh with God in overturning the prejudices we often settle for.
SPEAKER_03: And I want to suggest to you that we're being called to consider and reconsider our own skepticism this week.
SPEAKER_03: These 12 people who are so different from one another are sent out to do things like touch dead bodies, uh, drive out um unclean spirits to heal the sick.
SPEAKER_03: And I've got to tell you, I don't know that I've ever healed a sick person physically, but I do know that uh viewing a sick person a sick person or a suffering person or somebody who um is just going through an extremely difficult time, or maybe even somebody with an addiction or a mental illness or a prison record, there's a way in which we can react and reach out and love those people such that those possible divisions and barriers, words we use like illness or incarceration, no longer necessarily divide us from one another.
SPEAKER_03: We can reach out in such a way that we no longer make jokes at their expense, but we laugh deeply with God at the ability for God to show up in the strangest and most amazing ways.
SPEAKER_03: And this is how I think Jesus is sending us out to say, along with the disciples, look, the kingdom of God is at hand.
SPEAKER_03: We could look at it with that diagram last week.
SPEAKER_03: Here's the kingdom we live in on earth, and here's God's kingdom.
SPEAKER_03: And look, they're relatively close, but we won't really get there together until uh it is that we die.
SPEAKER_03: Or I think we could say, look, if we work really, really hard, we might enjoy just a little bit of that overlap in this lifetime.
SPEAKER_03: We might just get a little taste.
SPEAKER_03: I want to suggest to you though that when Jesus says the kingdom of God is at hand, what he's really suggesting is that here's the life in which we live, and here's God's presence enshrouding us.
SPEAKER_03: And the question before us, I suppose, is whether or not we're going to reach down into it and offer it to our neighbor.
SPEAKER_03: And hence I think we're we're told that the harvest is plentiful, but the labors are few.
SPEAKER_03: And I think now is a time on our national stage, on our local stage, when people are hungry, starving, even, to be nourished by this deep belly laughter that really looks like reconciliation and God's ability to have faith in us even when we cannot have faith in ourselves or one another.
SPEAKER_03: This nourishment, I think, is about how we might belong together instead of telling people that they have to fit in.
SPEAKER_03: Now, all of us have groups in which belonging is a little bit easier than others.
SPEAKER_03: And I'll tell you, as a religious person, sometimes it's things like theology that make it the hardest for me.
SPEAKER_03: Uh people who say, well, you got to work your way to God, or you've got to accept this and that, or um, you know, uh God essentially doesn't uh love us like we are only for who we could be.
SPEAKER_03: Those things are really, really hard for me to laugh with.
SPEAKER_03: And I don't know that I've got uh the silver bullet on this, but I will tell you one of my core stories about my son happened when he was about seven.
SPEAKER_03: We had worked really, really hard and just kind of turned the corner on being able to read.
SPEAKER_03: And I had gone into Starbucks in a hurry.
SPEAKER_03: I was buying something for my wife and I had to wait in line.
SPEAKER_03: And I'll tell you, you know, um most of my parenting uh successes and failures and loves are really predicated on whether or not I'm in a hurry.
SPEAKER_03: So there I was in a hurry, waiting to check out because I had to be somewhere.
SPEAKER_03: And uh there was this little sign, this was at a time, this is gonna date how old I am, maybe, but um, the tea latte was brand new.
SPEAKER_03: The tea latte.
SPEAKER_03: And there I was in line.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I probably was in line like five minutes, and I my my poor kid, he could probably just feel like the anxiety coming off my face.
SPEAKER_02: And I don't know what spirit possessed him, but he looked at that sign and he and he read it and uh he started to read it out loud, and he started to grab the sign and put his head out behind it and put his head back behind it, and he would come out and back, and he kept saying, tia latte.
SPEAKER_02: He didn't call it a ti latte, he called it a tia latte.
SPEAKER_02: Now I want you to know initially I thought he was trying to provoke me to madness because there I was mad, he just needed to be quiet, but I can feel this energy coming out of him, and I want to tell you about the fifth time he did it, he broke me.
SPEAKER_02: He broke me, and I had uh probably one of the first deep belly laughs with uh with my son that I still remember strongly that he meant to cause.
SPEAKER_03: He was trying to provoke me to laughter, not to scorn.
SPEAKER_03: And part of what I needed to do in order to go there with him was to change my eye view from what he was doing and from the stress of the situation to this God's eye view of how it is we might use our energy and our love in order to provoke one another to laugh in this deep, belly, inclusive way.
SPEAKER_03: And I can tell you it's a really silly story.
SPEAKER_03: It's such a small thing, and it's one of my core memories of my son still.
SPEAKER_03: This, I would tell you, is who he is.
SPEAKER_03: Somebody who can find uh who can find this this sort of joint and push on it hard, hard, hard for the sake of that person.
SPEAKER_03: And I think that might be what Jesus is asking us to do.
SPEAKER_03: Uh I've said this before, but I have a few people in the parish who I really love, and one of those people has told me, and one thing I've never heard this person do is tell a joke at somebody else's expense.
SPEAKER_03: And uh I in a house I grew up in that really uh praised things like satire and scoffing, uh, maybe we were too cool for school sometimes, I don't know, but um boy, it's such an invitational way of being to laugh deeply and to cost nobody else anything.
SPEAKER_03: And here I think Jesus is inviting us, and again, you decide whether or not it's Judas or it's Matthew or it's Simon that would bother you the most.
SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's somebody uh who votes uh Democrat straight ticket without even looking.
SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's somebody who votes Republican straight ticket without even looking.
SPEAKER_03: Maybe they don't wear a mask in public.
SPEAKER_03: The question is, is there a way that God could be guiding us to laugh deeply with one another at the fact that God is able to draw all of these disparate kinds of people together because God has faith in us and not because of who we might be, but because of who we are today.
SPEAKER_03: So I want to encourage you, it takes a risk to laugh deeply.
SPEAKER_03: I want to encourage you to think hard about how we laugh this week, the kinds of jokes that we tell and think are funny, and whether or not, in fact, we're laughing scornfully or we're laughing with God.
SPEAKER_03: I invite us to renew and reconsider our faith in the words of a New Zealand confession, Kupu Wakapono.
SPEAKER_03: From this land we confess that we believe in and belong to the one true and living God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, love before all love.
SPEAKER_03: We believe in God the Father, sovereign and holy, creator and nurturer of all, Father of Jesus Christ, sender of the Holy Spirit, and Judge of all the earth.
SPEAKER_03: We believe in God the Son, Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, truly human and truly divine, who lived among us full of grace and truth.
SPEAKER_03: For our sin, he was crucified and by the power of God was raised from death, forgiving us, setting us free and bringing to birth God's new creation.
SPEAKER_03: Now ascended, he calls us to repentance and faith and restores us to God and to one another.
SPEAKER_03: We believe in God the Holy Spirit, the giver of life at work and all creation, who inspired the Scriptures and makes Christ known, who transforms hearts and minds and gathers us into the community of Christ, empowering the Church in worship and in mission.
SPEAKER_03: We belong to this triune God, women and men, young and old, from many nations.
SPEAKER_03: In Christ we are one people, witnesses to God's love and word and action, servants of reconciliation and stewards of creation.
SPEAKER_03: As God's people, we look forward in hope and joy to the return of Christ, to the new heaven and earth, where evil and death will be no more, justice and peace will flourish, and we shall forever delight in the glory of God.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Let us humbly confess our sins unto Almighty God.
SPEAKER_03: Merciful God, we have sinned in what we have thought and said, in the wrong we have done, and in the good we have not done.
SPEAKER_03: We have sinned in ignorance, we have sinned in weakness, we have sinned through our own deliberate fault.
SPEAKER_03: We are truly sorry.
SPEAKER_03: We repent and turn to you.
SPEAKER_03: Forgive us for our Savior Christ's sake, and renew our lives to the glory of your name.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Through the cross of Christ, God have mercy on you, pardon you and set you free.
SPEAKER_03: Know that you are forgiven, and be at peace.
SPEAKER_03: God strengthen you in all goodness and keep you in life eternal.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: The peace of the Lord be always with you and also with you.
SPEAKER_03: Today we had hoped to be together to celebrate the achievements of our graduates, but we cannot wait any longer to celebrate them.
SPEAKER_03: And so I invite you if you're looking on through our website, we have a list of our graduates that you can print out and follow along with you.
SPEAKER_03: But I just want to highlight our names and bless our grads from afar, hoping that we'll be able to see and bless them before they go off to their next adventure.
SPEAKER_03: So from high school, we are happy to celebrate the achievements of William Hutchison.
SPEAKER_03: This is Ann and Billy's grandson, particularly because he earned the award of Eagle Scout, and he'll be headed to the University of Texas this fall.
SPEAKER_03: Grateful to celebrate Morgan Clazel, granddaughter of Max and Carol, who is going to be headed to AM in the fall.
SPEAKER_03: Evi Morrow, who finished high school a year early, is going to be headed to McDaniel in Western Maryland.
SPEAKER_03: She's going to take a gap year, but Evi was able to buckle down and get done early, and Evie has been a wonderful servant here at St.
SPEAKER_03: Thomas through our youth program and acolyte.
SPEAKER_03: The Sanders triplets, Tom, Witt, and Libby, curiously enough, they are all headed to AM together.
SPEAKER_03: God bless you guys.
SPEAKER_03: And they have also been extremely faithful in the acolyte ministry here.
SPEAKER_03: Davis Waidel, who has been a faithful acolyte and in our youth programs as well, has graduated from Clear Brook and was able to participate in the National Award-winning drumline there a number of years.
SPEAKER_03: And Davis will be heading to LSU in the fall.
SPEAKER_03: From college, Chloe Abney is graduating from Texas State University.
SPEAKER_03: Michael Colvert is a graduate of Texas AM, who is grandson of Carol and Max Claysel.
SPEAKER_03: I forgot to mention Chloe, of course, is the daughter of Lou and Heather Malar.
SPEAKER_03: Madeline Harris has graduated from Tombaugh High School and is headed to Chapman University.
SPEAKER_03: Aidan Tones has just finished his BS from Embry Riddle, and of course that's Kevin and Amy's son.
SPEAKER_03: Stephanie McKernan has just graduated from Law.
SPEAKER_03: This is, of course, Leslie McKernan's daughter.
SPEAKER_03: And she graduated Magnum Culmade, so this is a big deal.
SPEAKER_03: And blessings to you, Stephanie, as you study for the bar.
SPEAKER_03: There is a huge program that we've sponsored here at St.
SPEAKER_03: Thomas called EFM, Education for Ministry.
SPEAKER_03: And it's a four-year program, and our grad and our students meet for four years for a little over two hours each meeting for several weeks, like 30 of them.
SPEAKER_03: And this year we're celebrating that Natalie Brady, Kay Clutier, and Betty Galardo have all completed through St.
SPEAKER_03: Thomas their four years here through educational ministry.
SPEAKER_03: So one year in Hebrew Bible, one year in Christian scriptures, one year in history, and another in theology.
SPEAKER_03: And we are also celebrating that Ken Jorgens, Jane Ketchum, and Herb Meyer have completed a fifth year.
SPEAKER_03: So the sort of postgraduate work for EFM.
SPEAKER_03: And of course, here at St.
SPEAKER_03: Thomas School, we are graduating a robust class.
SPEAKER_03: And I mean truly, this is a talented, lovely group of students.
SPEAKER_03: We had eight graduates this year and did a Zoom online graduation.
SPEAKER_03: And these students are Andrew Bradley, Sophie Gay, Abigail Jenkins, John Levine, Evan Smith, Jack Snap, Marcus Astaric, and Jade Thomas.
SPEAKER_03: And it's been a true pleasure to have them not only in chapel, but to spend around about an hour a week with them teaching them religion this year.
SPEAKER_03: And again, a better class you'll would be hard to find.
SPEAKER_03: These are really, really thoughtful, kind students.
SPEAKER_03: To all of our grads, we of course are so sorry for you to miss the end-of-year festivities that we've all come to appreciate and enjoy.
SPEAKER_03: And we also know that your resilience and your flexibility, your curiosity and your diligence are going to make the world a better place.
SPEAKER_03: So a blessing for you, Grants.
SPEAKER_03: As your classes and grading are now complete, may you strive toward excellence in all you do.
SPEAKER_03: As the speeches conclude, may your voices rise up to pronounce justice and peace in the world.
SPEAKER_03: As the fanfares cease, may you sing of joy, even in the dark and lonely places.
SPEAKER_03: As the applause quiets, may you celebrate and lift up those around you.
SPEAKER_03: As you graduate, may your achievements grow and cause growth in your communities, and may we all know of the overwhelming blessings of the one who created all things, God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: And now as our Saviour 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.
SPEAKER_03: 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: May God, who by the Holy Spirit cause those of many languages and world views to proclaim Jesus as Lord, strengthen your faith, and send you out to bear witness to God in word and deed.
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 forever.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_03: Alleluia, Alleluia.