With our routines and world upended by the Shelter in Place Order that affects all of California, we are looking for ways to stay connected during a mandate to physically stay apart from one another. This is a continuation of our time together, even though we’re in different spaces.
Greeting
Liturgists: Joni Palmer & Helpers!
Opening Hymn • Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation • Page 275, Chalice Hymnal
Invocation
Lay Leaders: Taegen Palmer
Risen Christ,
You prepare a place for us,
In the home of the Mother-and-Father of us all.
Draw us more deeply into yourself,
Through scripture read,
Water splashed,
Bread broken,
Wine poured,
So that when our hearts are troubled,
We will know you more completely
As the way, the truth, and the life.
Amen.
Tithes and Offerings
Checks can be mailed to:
Grace Community Church
C/O Rene Horton
P.O. Box 368
Auberry, CA 93602
Holy Scripture • 1 Peter 2:2-10
Lay Leader: Joni Palmer and Adeline Gren
Children’s Time
Faith formation resources for families and those who like to color as prayer.
Gospel Reading • John 14:1-14
Lay Leader: Joni Palmer and Luke Gren
Church at Prayer and The Lord’s Prayer
All are invited to email me prayer requests for next week’s prayer, or to get in touch any time during the week. We are in the midst of an unprecidented global event, and I am available as a compassionate ear if you find you need to talk through what’s going on.
Hymn • How Great Thou Art • Page 33, Chalice Hymnal
The Message
Sermon Transcript
How appropriate was that, that in this morning’s scripture reading we had imagery of newborns craving milk and maternal care? As I sit here recording this sermon, my kids are busy covering the kitchen with flour and making me an 8,000 calorie breakfast that am going to enjoy with delight. I won’t only enjoy it because it’s been a while since I had chicken-fried steak, which it has been, but because oh my gosh, things have just been a little extra-ultra, over-the-top, why is this all happening, did we really need to add MURDER HORNETS to the list of things to worry about, difficult lately. Am I right? It seems like at every turn, things might be getting better, the curve might be flattening, human-interest feel good stories start popping up again, and then BAM. MURDER HORNETS. If you somehow have missed the news on this one, I’ll spare you the details, but as someone who already seems to be a bug magnet, I’m just kind of shaken by this last wild news story. I mean, the government just released confirmation of UFOs and that was barely a blip on the radar, so to speak, because we’re just so oversaturated with the uncomfortably weird, that now we’re like, Oh. Hm. Maybe they’ll bring us a Coronavirus Vaccine on their flying saucer. Or at least some chicken-fried steak. Mmmm.
And that’s nothing, this week we have been confronted with the news of the arrest of the killers of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man in Georgia who was jogging when a father and son chased him down and shot him in February. It took 72 days for the arrest of the two, highlighting an uncomfortable and inescapable truth that though we are all minding our own business and staying home, injustice, racism, and white privilege have not disappeared. We are still part of a system that does not value the lives of everyone equally.
And we’ve seen armed protests, protests that are not against the injustice names above, not against the families still detained at the border, not against the constant rolling-back of rights of LGBTQ people, or the fact that entire communities do not have adequate resources to combat COVID-19, but armed protests at captiol buildings, on city hall steps, even street corners right here in Hanford where I live, with people holding up signs that say… “I need a haircut.”
Or worse, with signs that compare public-health measures to slavery. Or even worse, with signs that bear the same words on them that were inscribed over the gates to concentration camps like Auschwitz while protesting in front of the office held by someone who is Jewish.
I don’t harp on these things to be macabre. I’m not bringing them up to make us feel worse, even though it doesn’t exactly make me feel any better to say them out loud either. This is where we are, if we were to drop a pin in our timeline, this is what is overlapping with this morning, this is what is in the air we breathe today. This is a side dish to accompany the hash browns and fresh fruit salad on my mother’s day brunch. It feels awful.
I asked out lay leaders to read rom The Message translation this morning, it really helps set the tone-especially in First Peter, in a way that we can understand and benefit from today. “So clean house! Make a clean sweep of malice and pretense, envy and hurtful talk. You’ve had a taste of God. Now, like infants at the breast, drink deep of God’s pure kindness. Then you’ll grow up mature and whole in God.”
Peter is handing us ancient wisdom, serving it up on a plate fit for brunch during a time of bad news and hardship. Revisiting the imagery of being like children before God, we are asked to take on innocence, childlike wonder, simplicity. These things are not an easy ask when our minds are reeling with whether we will be able to make the mortgage next month if our hours remain cut, or if the unemployment online system remains so overloaded we cannot even login to check the status of our benefits. Our first job right now is to remember we are children of God. We will be provided for, even though it may not look the way we envisioned it. We should not lose heart, and more than anything, as we drink deep of God’s good kindness, we must remember that it is then fitting for us to respond to the world with the same kindness, graciousness, and mercy which God shows us. How is God blessing us, even now when the world is upside down?
In the reading from John, we also receive guidance and reassurance, this time from the mouth of Jesus himself. In this reading, jesus is giving something of a goodbye speech. This shouldn’t be read like it’s the words of a man on death row, giving his last words, however. This is more like what you’ll hear from a president who is ending their term, a retirement speech from a long time business partner, it is the speech to sustain the apostles when times get tough, and reassure them when they aren’t so sure of their path or calling. It is akin to Martin Luther King Junior’s famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, a speech of passing on the baton to the next runner in the relay. In it, King says, “But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop … I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”
In John, The apostles are faced with all kinds of bad news when this is happening. Judas’ betrayal. Peter’s denial. Jesus has already told them that his death is near. Things look bad. They feel bad. Not quite Murder Hornets. Instead, much worse, much scarier. How on earth, Thomas asks, will we know where to go without you telling us? Guiding us. Doing what you always do, and over-explaining things again and again in different ways because we never can seem to get your meaning on the first try? You expect us to find our way?
Jesus simply puts it, in one of the better known verses in the bible, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
Don’t worry, Thomas. Your way will be paved for you. I’ll just note that Jesus isn’t creating an exclusionary club with this statement, which I think we sometimes pull from this because we love being special. Instead, Jesus is telling Thomas, and all of them, and all of us, that even when things get murky, we won’t lose our path because we have it deeply embedded in us, as followers of Christ. Thomas, your way is already made for you, if you know me, you already know God. You have everything you need to pull you through any rocky circumstance. Any problem you might encounter. Murder Hornets.
Both readings remind us that God is within us. As believers and followers of Jesus, we are never separate from God. Both readings use “house” imagery. First Peter says “let yourselves be built into a spiritual house” and in John, Jesus says, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” Before he goes to explain that God is in him, and is accessible to the apostles, to all of us, through him. Houses are pretty strong images for us right now, I would say, since we’re all stuck in them all the time except for sometimes gloving up, putting on the mask, and braving the wilderness of the produce aisle. What both of these readings gives us right now is twofold, God isn’t only to be found at church, but instead God can be wherever we are. Not only is God’s church pretty portable since it’s within each of us, but there is a ton of room for everyone—many dwelling places—because each of God’s children is provided for. This isn’t just in heaven, as “My father’s house” is often taken, this is here, now. God is dwelling with me here in my old farmhouse in Hanford just as God is dwelling among you wherever you are.
And finally, because we are spiritual structures, sanctuaries built of flesh and bone, we are living in this world, but we are of God first and foremost. Before we are world citizens, we are of the citizenry of God’s expansive and inclusive kin-dom. There is much work to be done here on our earthly plane, and it cannot be done if we are disconnected from our purpose and call as God’s children. While we sit in our homes feeling powerless against racial violence, microscopic germs, and yes, murder hornets, we are given hope for a better tomorrow, we are given solidarity in one another as believers and oneness with God, Christ, and Holy Spirit. We are given help as we come up against things that take our breath away, Christ aids us and compels us to act in a manner that is aligned with his own actions. We are loved, and so we can love, we can forgive wrongdoing because we have that love, and through that love we are better able to work toward the dismantling of what caused the wrongdoing in the first place.
Our own ability to solve the world’s problems before breakfast are limited, but with the understanding that we are in this big, messy, murder-hornet-y world with God beside us, we can continue to shine Christ’s love into the places where it is needed most. Even from our own homes, and especially over brunch. Do not lose hope, God is with us always!
Closing Hymn • I Love to Tell the Story • Page 480 Chalice Hymnal