Holy and ever-living God, God of grace and glory, God of power and might: Hear us as we pray. We gather to give you praise; we stand in wonder at your incredible creation and to stay thank you for our place in it. We are amazed, O God, when we stop and look, at all the ways you are at work in our lives, in small, subtle ways, and in big, incredible ways.

We give you thanks today for all that you have done for us. For walking with us through the wilderness and bringing us into the promised land… For walking with us to the cross and emerging from the empty tomb… For calling to us beside our fishing boats and inviting us to life with you, we give you thanks, O Lord.

We pray for our church today, and all the ways that we are trying to be the body of Christ together… We pray for our youth as they prepare for mission trips this summer, and we thank you for inspiring them to do good work in your world. We ask your blessing on our garden where planting has begun and soon we will see your earth coming to life with food we can share to feed the hungry. We pray for those in our church who gather today to study your word, here in worship, in Sunday school, in book studies and individual times of prayer. We pray for the leaders of our congregation and those who do so many unnoticed things to support the ministries of the church.

We pray for our world this morning. We pray for those who are working in the Gulf of Mexico cleaning up the oil spill. Forgive us for the careless ways we treat your creation. We pray for those who serve the poor and the hungry, the refugee and the immigrant… Forgive us for the careless ways we treat your people.

Inspire us and challenge us, O God, to do good work in this world. Call us out from our comfort zones and push us to see the pain and brokenness around us… Give us strength that we might truly be a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world.

Hear our prayers, O God, as we lift them to you, for we know that this is your world; this is the day that you have made; we will be glad and rejoice forever. Amen and amen.

Oh, these words… these words. In the midst of everything else on this night – the mounting anticipation, the soaring music, family gathered, the candlelight – on this night it is these words that ring true and clear.

“In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered…”

Oh, these words… we long to hear them, all of Advent our hearts have been aching to hear these words again. These words speak to us across time… they come to us from far away and long ago… they emerge from deep in our spirits where they have been lodged for a year or a lifetime… they echo to us from the land of our own childhood.

“She gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”

Oh, these words.

Garrison Keillor says that “Childhood is the country we had to leave behind, and at Christmas we get to go back and try to speak in our very first language.”

And so tonight, we surround ourselves with these words and try to speak again. Continue reading »

An excerpt from Sunday’s message:
John 6:1-21
Ephesians 3:14-21

There’s a little boy in this story. He only gets one line, and of the four gospel writers who tell this story, only John mentions him, but he’s the one who had the picnic basket that made all the difference.

He almost didn’t go that day, I like to imagine. He almost stayed home, where there were chores to do, a baby sister to look after while his mother was up to her elbows in laundry and his father was off working in the field. He almost stayed home, but his mother sees him standing longingly at the doorway, watching people from the town head out to the hillside.

“Go,” she says, “I’ll pack you a lunch.” He grins and scampers back inside to find the basket.

“Take a little extra,” his mother says. “You might need to share with someone.” And she reaches up to the top shelf where the bread is kept. There isn’t much, but she gives him everything she has, and wraps it in a cloth. She kisses him on the head and tells him to be safe, then turns back to the baby and the laundry. The little boy takes the basket and heads out the door. Continue reading »

John 20:19-31
Acts 4:32-35
An excerpt from yesterday’s message:

We greet Easter with fanfare and singing, so grateful for the coming of spring and the end of Lent and the good news we find in the empty tomb. But there’s actually quite a bit of fear in these first Easter stories. There’s an awful lot of running away, of hiding behind locked doors. There’s not much fanfare. They don’t stand around the empty tomb and sing their praises. “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” hadn’t been written yet, and there are no Easter lilies. No cross draped in white, no Easter dresses for the children, no bunnies and bonnets and chocolate filled eggs.

Instead, the disciples have run from the tomb, and regrouped that evening in this locked room, to try to decide what happens next. They don’t seem to have believed Mary, if she did tell them about seeing Jesus in the garden outside the tomb. Maybe because she was a woman, maybe because it was just too weird to believe – I mean, would you have believed it?

But then, Jesus is there with them. He says those powerful words, “Peace be with you,” and he shows them his hands and side. And then he breathes on them.

He breathes on them. This is the only place in the New Testament where that word is used quite that way, and we’re reminded of that very first chapter of Genesis, when a breath (or wind, or spirit) from God swept over the waters… In Genesis, God breathes life into the world. In John, Jesus breathes life into this frightened community and makes them the church.

The church – not the building but the community – can be the place where doubt and wonder meet. This community that has been breathed upon by the very breath of God is the place where we can stand with skeptic’s eyes and stare at the empty tomb and say, “Really?” But it’s also the place where we can stand in speechless awe and  feel the very presence of the risen Christ as he offers us peace.

May we stand in that moment of doubt and wonder, and truly meet the risen one who walks beside us.

Alleluia! Amen.