Ship of Fools

Pentecost 9 year B Sermon

The fool says in his heart, "There is no God."

Ok that’s the pew Bible. Now listen to Psalm 14 translated
in The Message.

‘Bilious and bloated, they gas, "God is gone."

Their words are poison gas, fouling the air;
they poison rivers and skies; thistles are their cash crop.

God sticks his head out of heaven. He looks around.
He's looking for someone not foolish—just one
God expectant man, even one God-ready woman.

^And He comes up empty. A string of noughts. Useless, unshepherded sheep, taking turns…pretending to be the Shepherd. The ninety and nine… follow their fellow.

Don't they know anything, all these impostors?
Don't they know they can't get away with this—
Treating people…treating creation…like a fast-food meal
over which they're too busy to pray?

Night’s coming for them, and nightmares,
for God takes the side of victims.
Do you think you can mess with the dreams of the poor?
You can't, because God makes their dreams come true.’

You know I think this psalm… may really be…David’s own poetry. Well his wife Abigail used to be married to an idiot named Nabal

נבל which is the Hebrew word…used in this Psalm… as a euphemism for ‘fool’. That’s right…one of David’s wives had been married to a guy named ‘fool’

You see according to the story in the book of Samuel…back in the day when David was young and feisty… and not yet king…he and his men were outlaws…living rough off the land… in the Wilderness ofParan…they survived by protecting the shepherds who worked for this guy Nabal…aka fool…and Nabal was a very wealthy landowner.

It was coming round to shearing time and David’s boys wanted to enjoy the festivities along with everyone else …but it was hard going… just surviving day to day. They were always hungry…so David sent ten of his boys to negotiate with Nabal for provisions… giving strict instructions how to ask him…

David said ‘now I want you to greet Nabal in my name, and say 'Shalom! Life and peace to you. Peace to your household, peace to everyone here! When your shepherds were camped near us…we didn't take advantage of them. And they didn't lose a thing the whole time they were with us. Just ask them.

What I…David…am asking…is that you be generous with my men—share the feast! Give whatever your heart tells you…to your servants and to me…

warmest regards David your son.' End of message.

Now when David’s boys deliver this message word for word… Nabal tears a strip of them…"Who’s the heck is this David? This son of Jesse? The country’s full of runaway servants. Do you think I'm gonna take good bread and wine… freshly butchered meat for my shearers…and give it to men I've never laid eyes on? Who knows where they really come from?"

Well to cut a long story short…David took the insult personally. In a rage he got ready to rampage right into Nabal’s farm. When one of the shepherds saw this…

he headed straight to Nabal’s wife…Abigail…and told her how her husband refused to feed the outlaws and insulted David.

So just as David sets off for Nabal’s farm with four hundred men … Abigail sets off without telling her husband… in David’s direction … to prevent a catastrophe she’s bringing a very large quantity of provisions

When the two meet up…Abigail falls to the ground at David’s feet…and pleads with him to accept the supplies she brought…she even offers to take the blame onto herself for her husband’s sin.

And while she’s at it Abigail swears Yahweh will ensure David’s dynasty… lasts a thousand of years… and that David will be sinless and divinely protected…and in that case… he wouldn’t want unnecessary bloodshed on his conscience… would he? [pause]

As a result of Abigail’s words of wisdom…David realises he’s about to commit a foolish and grave sin himself…
so he calls off the attack and sends Abigail home in peace.

The story ends when Abigail arrives home next day… to finds her husband drunk and merry…after over indulging at a banquet. When she finally tells Nabal what she’s been up to…he has a heart attack… and dies ten days later. David interprets Nabal’s death as divine punishment … and asks Abigail to marry him…and she accepts.

Now it’s interesting the root meaning of the name Nabal is ‘wilt’ with overtones of failure…

since Abigail’s husband is drunk at the end of the story… this makes a lot of sense. Plays on words and puns like these…were an art form for the Hebrew storyteller.

But ultimately the name Nabal… becomes famous for this shamelessly rude…corrupt and selfish person… Nabal comes to mean … fool. And possibly… our Psalm was written right after Abigail’s husband dies ‘cause he sure fit the definition of fool.

When David’s hungry men ask Nabal to share his considerable wealth…to be generous with them…he covers up his own selfishness…by condemning and abusing the very ones who come to him for relief.

Nabal assumes what he has…belongs to him alone…to do with whatever he wants.

And Nabal certainly doesn’t give God a second thought…
in fact he blocks God right out of his decision making …there’s no commandment to guide him…no values nor morality for Nabal to follow except the ones he decides to make up…for his own benefit

And because the fool makes his own rules…he feels absolutely no responsibility to other people particularly and especially… the outcast the hungry and the poor. Nabal has made himself God…and lord of his universe. He lives by his own rules and our psalmist warns:

The fool says in his heart, "There is no God."

They are corrupt, their deeds are vile. The psalmist says God can’t find anyone who hasn’t turned aside from his way of Shalom…where the goal is the welfare of all people. And God…who is the refuge of the poor…discovers they’re being devoured like bread.

Not only are these fools the psalm talks about…greedy and immoral…they conduct their lives without any recognition of a power greater than themselves…these fools…

as the proverb says… know nothing of wisdom.

And in scripture it’s not just individuals who are fools…the same word ‘nabal’ is applied also to the nations. Since wisdom is the gift of God expressed in the law and the prophets…to be without it…

even worse to ignore it…is to be foolish.

In Deuteronomy we read…

Is this the way you repay the LORD, O foolish and unwise nation? Is he not your Father, your Creator, who made you and formed you?

Take to heart all the words I’ve solemnly declared to you … They aren’t just idle words…they are your life. By them you will live long in the land.

You can see now that for the psalmists, poets and storytellers of the Hebrews…fools aren’t intellectually impaired…they’re morally and spiritually impaired …they’re destructive greedy and unjust. And because they know no higher power…

they’re easily seduced by impostors and idols.

Now the Gospel slant on this is hugely important for us as followers of Jesus…lest we become smug and arrogant and complacent…we learn from Jesus that pointing the finger and calling someone else a fool…is an even worse sin than greed and corruption…because pride is lurking there.

Jesus…the one sent to save us from ourselves and reveal God to us… warns us that to call someone else a ‘fool’ places us right on the precipice of hell. That’s Matt 5:22 if you don’t believe me. We’re warned because our arrogance and pride may have blinded us to our own selfish folly… and blinded…we could stumble.

Of course the gist of Jesus’ wisdom…
is what looks like folly to the world…may in fact be…
the way of salvation for the world. You see from the worlds perspective…the little boy in the story of the loaves and fishes is a fool for sharing his food…and it’s no coincidence the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand is the Gospel story set down for today.

Like the Psalms and the prophets…the Gospels and Paul’s letters…take aim at the same foolish practises…among these of course is relying on earthly wealth… and there’s the foolishness of turning from grace in favour of legalism; another folly is explored in the parable of the foolish virgins: failing to see in the ministry of Jesus…

the work of God…reconciling all creation to himself...

Perhaps even more significant is the folly of the one who builds their house on sand…a metaphor for failing to act on Jesus’ teaching… ‘How foolish you are…Jesus says… and how slow of heart in believing all that the prophets have spoken!’ To the ancient Hebrews…to be "slow of heart" is to be without wisdom and understanding of God’s will.

And Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann notices the fools in Psalm 14 don’t announce their atheism out loud. Theirs is an atheism of the heart…revealed in the decisions they make and their relationships with others. The outcome is their actions are corrupt, without discernment, they are oppressive and exploitative of others. As the psalmist says

Slide words

"They eat up my people as they eat bread." [pause]

Blank slide

Did you know there’s a very popular website…
where atheists can get together to swap yarns and share religious jokes…they’ve named the site intentionally and ironically: ‘Ship of Fools’.

And yes… we can smirk and feel smug…

until we remember with dread…Jesus’ warning that perhaps we ourselves are blind fools…guilty of living by our own rules…making ourselves God and saying in our hearts…
‘there is no God.’

Perhaps the lesson of ‘the Fall’… is that we’re all from time to time…passengers on that little boat…
as it sails across a godless and complacent sea.

And because our culture says in its heart…‘there is no God’
there’s little motivation to examine the values that govern our choices…our relationships…our politics and our lives. In this era of post-Christendom…our ethics can be created and discarded… by each individual as they see fit. [pause]

But as followers of Jesus there is something we can do…

One: examine our hearts…and confess there is a God
Two: remind ourselves and our community…
the standards we try to live up to…are the values of the Sermon on the Mount…the life saving ethic of Shalom…of peace with justice compassion and mercy.

And three…remind ourselves and the world this morality isn’t arbitrary…it’s given by our Creator in the life and teaching of Jesus…in the person of Jesus Christ…so all humankind may live long in the land and in peace. God’s very Word spoken for us…this is the air we breathe. Give yourself to Him as we sing.

The Threefold Way part 3: Via Unitiva

Pentecost 8 year B Sermon 09

Two weeks ago… we started a series…thinking of our church family as a school of practice…where we learn what it means to live and work…in the light of God’s love.

In his book…Finding our way again…Brian McLaren suggests if … we aren’t a school of practice…we’re in danger of becoming just another consumer group…or Sunday morning escape from reality.

Even when we see ourselves as a… passionate well educated congregation…if we’re not practicing the way Jesus taught…we can lose our way…and to find our way forward again…

we have to look back … to see where we got off the track in the first place …

so we recall the accumulated wisdom…

of centuries of Jesus’ disciples and rediscover…
the portrayal of Christian life as a journey…a path…a way…

with stages or seasons of spiritual growth…

It’s what the ancient church called‘the threefold way’ or three dimensions of Christian life…The first dimension…involves a season of self-examination…or self purging…called in Latin the Via Purgativa… or in Greek…Katharsis.

On this part of our journey we honestly examine… how the pursuit of money, pleasure and power… has a hold on our lives…
our marriages, our parenting… our work… our friendships....
We ask how we can hold each other accountable… as we seek to practice the opposite of greed and lust and pride…
as we seek to become a people of humility and compassion…
self control and simplicity. [pause]

Once we’ve cleaned the grime off the windows of our lives… we’re ready to let the light shine in…ready to explore the second dimension of the threefold way…a season of learning and growth… of study and listening and prayer and worship…where we practice seeing everything and everyone…in the light of God’s love.

Here in this second season…we let the wisdom of God illuminate… our lives and our relationships…this dimension of the Christian life ....is The Via Illuminativa…or Fotosis…

And all along…the first and second dimensions of the threefold way … have been preparing us for the third …the one we’re exploring today…the Via Unitiva…or Theosis… where all our practicing…finds fulfillment.

To understand this third dimension… McLaren suggests we sit comfortably by the fireplace… gazing into the flames. It’s so cosy on these cold days…[pause]

and its easy to become relaxed and even captivated by the… beauty and warmth of the fire…

Suddenly we realize we’ve left the tip of the iron poker…
lying in the hot red embers....and we notice something expected but still amazing has happened…

The tip of the poker has started to glow …and the section that’s deepest in the glowing embers… is now completely indistinguishable from them…it pulses with the same orange glow and the same mysterious radiance.

Further up the rod…we notice… it’s orange but not glowing…and still further from the tip… the poker’s white… then gray… and then the normal rough black… of unpolished iron.

And gradually a kind of revelation… starts to warm our hearts. we begin to understand …that the power of fire…is far greater… than the power of iron.

So instead of iron making the fire cold…the fire…
makes the iron hot. If the poker’s in the fire long enough…
the nature of fire overshadows the nature of iron… and the iron begins to catch the nature of the fire. The light and heat of fire… illuminate and warm the darkness and cold of the iron.
There’s a sense in which the iron is fire-ized.

This pre-scientific explanation might maintain that the iron partakes in the nature of fire…until it becomes light and heat itself.

Today we might say something about atoms and molecules and radiant energy or heat transfer…rapid oxidation and combustion. But its experience not science that’s taught us not to pick up the poker without a glove or an old rag even if the handle is black…and when we’ve taken it out the fire… we watch… as the tip reverts… from the nature of fire to the nature of iron.

Less dramatically…we could demonstrate the same thing…
by leaving the poker out in the sun…even simple sunlight can overpower the nature of iron.

Just imagine what would happen…if we could stick the poker right into the sun! Now we’re beginning to understand the third dimension on the threefold way… the via unitiva…the union of our nature… with the nature of God…

To get here…first… with the practice of self-examination…we clean the grime off our windows so the light can shine in…second… through the practice of study… prayer …listening and worship… we place ourselves in the light of God… and now third…we’re gradually overpowered…by the nature of God… and metaphorically you might say …we begin to glow with God’s radiance. We join God…in being fire. [pause]

Eight years before he died…a brilliant 17^th century scientist and mathematician…named Blaise Pascal… had a profound experience of the presence of God…an occurrence he described in a poem he stitched into the lining of his coat…as if he wanted to keep it close to his heart.

The poem begins: The year of grace 1654 Monday 23 November From about half past ten in the evening until about half past midnight…FIRE…

English can’t do justice to Pascal’s experience during those two hours…but some of the words he uses and repeats over and over again are these. Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace Forgetfulness of the world and of everything except God. Greatness of the human soul, joy joy joy tears of joy…

Jesus Christ …Jesus Christ let me never be separated from him. Renunciation, total and sweet. Complete submission…[pause]

Don’t you think it’s fascinating…that Pascal was at the same time a great scientist… and Christian mystic? That his poem wasn’t discovered ‘til after his death…and don't you wonder why he began with the date and the time?

Well McLaren suggests Pascal knew his experience was extra-ordinary and would pass. Perhaps he knew…

if he didn’t write something down… it could easily be forgotten …lost among so many other memories.

And yes…to Pascal …the experience was real and mattered…

but… that wasn’t the point…the point was the agonising tension he expresses… between certainty and complete submission…
and the experience of separation… he writes…yet in my life I’ve departed from him…I left him… I fled him… renounced and crucified him.

Pascal’s extra-ordinary baptism of fire…helps him see and feel… as never before… the horror of turning away from the fire
and the light… of turning away God. And with full awareness of how many times he’s turned away… Pascal wonders how his sense of closeness to God can be sustained after the vision ends.
And so he writes these words

‘He’s to be found only in the ways taught in the Gospel…he is only kept securely… by the way taught in the Gospel’

Notice Pascal repeats the word ‘ways’.

Pascal knew that by definition… such a mystical experience…

is rare…and such moments can only be found and kept securely through ways… through practices….

So just as our hot poker caught fire…in the heat and glow of the embers...if we stay close enough to God’s light and heat… for long enough …through our practicing of self examination and prayerful study…then hopefully we’ll catch alight with God.

And when we do…then just maybe we’ll glow with what God has …maybe we will glow with love and peace and patience and justice and compassion and mercy and forgiveness…maybe these will be transferred to us…and maybe then…

we’ll be able to transfer that light and that heat to others. [pause]

In the beginning there was God…and God said let there be light… and time and space…and all created things were made…
and there was enough… and it was good and it was beautiful and we were given life as gift…and there in the garden of our freedom…we made ourselves the managers…and botched the job.

As Pascal lamented… we departed from him, we fled him…we renounced him…and even though he came to us in love…we crucified him.

The result of this on a global scale? War and waste…and wealth at the expense of others…ongoing poverty and ignorance in a world where God provided enough for everyone.

The result of this on a personal scale? Tears… curses… fear mocking laughter… vicious judgments…selfishness greed…broken families… and a tendency to grab onto anything that will temporarily stop the pain…

And when we discover we’re off the track…heading in the wrong direction… without the fire of God’s love and the light of the ways of the Gospel. We want to defect from the dark cold course we’re on… and so we begin again to practice the ancient ways…beginning afresh…with Katharsis proceeding through Fotosis seeking Theosis.

And we practice this threefold way… not just for ourselves…not just for our own salvation...but for the salvation of the world. We don’t seek union with God to the exclusion of others… but for their welbeing.

We seek theosis not to separate ourselves from those who are still cold and hard like iron…but so we can be glowing links in a chain that reaches through us to them…with light and warmth from God We grow hot so they can grow warm. And on and on it goes…until God is all in all…

As Jesus promised his followers…

‘Because I live, you also will live. On that day you’ll realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.’

The whole purpose of Jesus coming… is that the whole world catch fire with the love of God. That all humanity are reconciled and united with God…till all glowing with Shalom…till all people radiate peace… with justice and compassion and mercy.

As Paul said the reading set down for today…in his letter to the church at Ephesus

So he came to proclaim peace… to you who were far off… aand peace to those who were near; for through him all humanity has access in one Spirit to the Father. So then… you’re no longer strangers and aliens to one another…but citizens with the saints… and members of the household of God.

With Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone and in him the whole structure is joined together… and grows into a holy temple in the Lord…built together spiritually… into a dwelling place for God.

Let us open ourselves to this in silence as we listen to 'This is the air I breathe'.

The Threefold Way part 2: Via Illuminativa

Pentecost 7 year B Sermon 09

Last week we started a series thinking of our church family as a school of practice…learning to live and work…in the light of God’s love. In his book… Finding our way again…Brian McLaren suggests… if we’re not a school of practice… we’re in danger of being just another consumer group…or Sunday morning escape from reality.

So last week we considered how different it is to be part of a passionate dynamic learning congregation…how sometimes when our faith goes a bit stale…we can lose our way…and to find our way forward…we may have to look back through centuries of Christian practice…to see where we got off track in the first place…

We learned when we look back like this…we find a common ancient treasure… a portrayal of the Christian life as a journey… in stages…as life on the way. And in this…we re-discover the stages or seasons of spiritual growth… that derive from what the ancient church called

‘the threefold way’. three dimensions of the Christian life… as we seek to live in the light of God’s love. We discovered each dimension inherited two names… a Latin name… from the Western Church… and a Greek one… from the Eastern church.

So last week we began by exploring the first dimension…the Via Purgativa…[in Latin] or the practice of Katharsis [in Greek]

Practicing that dimension we learn to clean house so to speak… we take the boards off the windows of our lives… sweep out the rubbish that piles up so it blocks the light… we get rid of our idols and our preoccupation with power and pleasure and accumulating things… we remove the dark clouds… that keep God’s love and guidance from shining in…

And we imagined what the Via Purgativa would look like in our church…were we to help each other honestly examine how the pursuit of money, pleasure and power has a hold on our lives. How these forces affect our marriages, our parenting… our work… our friendships. We imagined how we could hold each other accountable…as we strive to practice for the opposite of those things…where we practice humility, self control and simplicity. [pause]

When we’ve cleaned house and the light can finally shine in … then we’re ready for a fresh vision of God…a new way of seeing one another and the rest of creation… and suddenly we’re ready to explore the second dimension of the threefold way

The Via Illuminativa …or Fotosis…This dimension is all about seeing everything in the light of God

When I was ordained… my friend singer Lorina Harding performed a song about it here in this church…[sing]

And to understand the Via Illuminativa… Brian McLaren suggests we imagine its mid-summer [don't we wish]…and we’re walking in a veggie garden…

We see ‘sunflowers facing east for the morning sun, runner beans climbing …pumpkin leaves… as big as two hands spread out together…with little baby pumpkins forming underneath…still dark green

And as we walk we’re reminded how living things draw their life from the sun. How if you take a plant inside the house…it will stretch toward a window… how if you hid it in the hot water cupboard it will wither and die without light.

McLaren says he sometimes thinks of this when he looks at people’s faces…some have seen too little light to thrive …too little of God’s light. Some seem to have been hidden in the shadows… maybe trapped… afraid to come out into the beautiful light of God’s love.

And we’ve all watched how the faces of flowers… follow the sun… as it moves across the northern sky…well I think practicing the Via Illuminativa…is something like that.

In his first letter, the apostle John makes a remarkable statement about God doesn’t he. John tells us … he’s about to summarise the message… he and his fellow disciples received from Jesus…the message they’re called to proclaim everywhere. ‘Here it is’ John says… and wraps it up in one simple metaphor… ‘God is light …and in God there is no darkness at all’.

…before we travel on the…the via purgativa… we’re still in denial about our pride our lust and our greed…we aren’t interested in God’s light. But now with some awareness… how destructive these forces are in our lives…

we can start to practice the second dimension… we begin to let the light of God into our insides… we want God’s light to enter every part of our being to drive the darkness away. So on the Via Illuminativa we begin to practice those things that let the light of God shine… into our minds and hearts.

One of these practices is study… not only the Bible… but other writing about God. Through reading …we welcome the light of God into our thinking and imagining. At church we’re eager to discover God’s light in the lyrics of hymns and song…and the sermons we hear. We look for it in the faces of other worshippers …. we smell it in the fresh baking and coffee after church… and we long to taste it in the sharing of Communion.

When we’re driving in the car… we welcome God’s light as we listen to the radio… or at home on telly or U tube …

we’re look for it in novels or poetry and art. When we go to the movies… we aren’t just looking for entertainment … we’re training in the Via Illuminativa……

Walking in solitude on the mountain or resting in our quiet space at home… we welcome God’s light. We welcome it in conversations with friends…in bird calls…in the night sky… the taste of food …And the more we welcome it… the more of God’s light we want.

We find the first dimension of the threefold way…

has tamed our insatiable desire for pleasure… and now something’s growing in its place … something new and beautiful… as we practice the second dimension of the threefold way…a hunger and thirst for truth and justice and goodness and beauty… what Brian McLaren calls… every pure and holy reality…

As we take ourselves out of the spotlight… well then we want to see everything in the light of God. We stop wanting to be stars and instead… we want to see the stars… and savour their beauty.

Freed from our craving to accumulate money and things…we learn the greater joy of accumulating light…as we hold out our branches and leaves to be warmed by God’s light.

So St John’s description of God as light…helps us to find our way again. We come to understand… that like light…God is everywhere… real yet immaterial… peaceful yet dynamic… powerful yet gentle.

We see the parallels…in the great mysteries of science... knowing we see everything because of light… yet having no idea… how light…can be wave and particle. In the same way… we live with the mystery of how God is… at the same time… Creator, Saviour and Spirit.

The metaphor of light helps us understand… how time and space are relative…how we’re part of something big and beautiful … fast and timeless… And yes…he Via Illuminativa is the way of delight…like children on the first day of spring running barefoot on the grass…like skiing in tee shirts…loving the warmth… getting more joy…[pause]

Yet everyone knows that an unavoidable part of understanding daylight… is the experience of night.

Those who practice the Via Illuminativa…know our enjoyment of God’s light can be interrupted… by long nights and spiritual storms…by low pressure systems…and atmospheric depressions…inversion layers where thick gray clouds
hang right down…for days or months…

We learn about the light… not just by its presence…but by its absence…Remember how we felt last Thursday…when the sun came out… in that vast cloudless sky…how we all wanted to get outside… to feel the warmth of the sun on our faces.

And you know what…it’s only those who’ve come to love the light…who’re devastated when it seems to be gone…in what St John O the Cross calls ‘the dark night of the soul’…

No one would choose to go there…but those who have been there…know there are gifts to be found there too…and wounds that won’t heal until the light returns.

And what’s more… as CS Lewis said… when we’re experiencing God’s light… we’re not content just to see it… ‘we want to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves…to bathe in it…become part of it.’

And…there are other ways to practice the Via Illuminativa…There’s contemplation…as we learn to be still…and receptive to God’s love in silence…we can practice lectio livina …allowing God to speak fresh understanding to us through the words of Scripture. There’s what’s calledpracticing the presence of God wherever we are…and there’s fellowship… where we seek to discern the light of God in one another.

And of course there’s worship….when we sing…and in singing…we bask in the light of God’s love like tuataras on a rock in the sun. In worship… we pray and read and reflect together… on the light of God’s love… keeping our communal spirit …open to God’s light and grace.

When we practice the second dimension of the threefold way… we gradually synchronize our lives to an ancient rhythm…praying… listening… reading… worshipping. …not as a grim duty…but as an expression of our growing desire to know God.

And we interweave and integrate these practices…

into everything else we do…drinking coffee at Muzza’s, chatting on Facebook, riding up the chair lift listening to the news on TV…or voting

What will it mean to practice the Via Illuminativa… next time you get your power bill… or argue with the one you love…or playing with your children. How could you stay open to God’s light on the golf course… or at the kids’ soccer match? Or when you’re so stressed out…you want to scream. [pause]

And right into the middle of our overly busy lives...the ancient threefold way… offers us an array of fascinating experiences…into which the light of God can shine.

And all along…the first and second dimensions are preparing us for the third …the Via Unitiva…or Theosis…but of course that’s next week.

In the mean time…as we sing our next song…I invite you…to be that sunflower seeking out the sun… your leaves just aching to stretch toward the light…[and if you can’t quite bring yourself just yet…to raise your hands…at least now you can understand why other people do…

And without much of a fuss maybe you can just cup them slightly…toward the light of God’s love.

At the very least…I invite you…to let your heart open wide as you sing… and in our worship together…and in our impact on the world… may we practice living in the light of God.