Sermon Text:      Acts 7:55-60

The Rev. Craig MacColl                                                                                              

 

(Note: The following sermon was originally written in response to the movie “Dead Man Walking.” Towards the end of the movie, when Sr. Helen Prejeun, played by actress Susan Sarandon, goes to visit a husband and wife whose daughter was murdered by a convict, played by Sean Penn, the couple kicks Prejeun out of their house and they seem to bare their teeth in rage that she has become the convict’s spiritual advisor. The couple’s angry response to Sr. Helen seemed very similiar to the reaction of the members of the synagogue of the Freedmen when they heard Stephen accuse them of being “stiff-necked people.” The sermon was not and is not intended to take a position on the death penalty, but, in light of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling, and the reenstatement of executions by a number of states, Stephen’s act of forgiveness for those who stone him to death makes one wonder about how far we are to go in seeking to be reconciled with those who hurt or injure us.)

 

I never knew that grinding one’s teeth while sleeping was such a big deal until, several years ago,  my dentist told met that I needed what he called a “splint” to wear at night. I asked him what it would cost and he said, “$4.95” like it was one of those cheep and awful tasting rubber mouth guards we used to have to wear for my high school football team. It turned out to be $495 worth of carefully molded plastic and ever since then I’ve taken teeth grinding very seriously!

 

But I’ve always wondered what makes us grind our teeth at night. In the security of deep sleep are we free to say things to people we’d never say to them to their face? In the darkness of night, do we feel safe enough to express anger and rage that we would repress in the light of day?

 

Rage, anger and teeth grinding – this was the prelude to the stoning of Stephen the deacon in our first reading from the book of Acts. What had Stephen done to suddenly unleash all this repressed anger and hostility? This was no dream or fantasy. For the crowd gathered to listen to Stephen, teeth grinding led to stone-throwing, which led to execution. Stephen never realized that teeth grinding could be such a big deal. By the time he found out, it was too late. He paid for it with his life.

 

What a contrast to just a few weeks before. Stephen and his other six deacons were doing “meals on wheels” for the local shut-ins. The deacons showed up at the local synagogue, collected their allotments of pita bread, rice and garbonzo beans  - no styrofoam containers, just heavy clay pots and bowls, probably loaded on a donkey instead of in a minivan - and went out to do that wonderful, unexciting ministry they had been given by the other disciples.

 

But how did Stephen get from this unexciting ministry of food distribution to the dangerous world of public speaking? Some of you may remember a survey that was done several years ago that showed that 41% of adults in America live in fear of having to stand up and speak in public – something that Stephen did at the drop of a hat. But, I don’t think Stephen knew what to expect. After all, he wasn’t a trained public speaker or a political candidate who knew how to spin words. Stephen was a lot like us. What makes us so afraid of public speaking is that we’re going to say something we didn’t plan to say and insult somebody by mistake. We’re not just going to hurt someone’s feelings, we’re going to make them angry, make them grind their teeth.

 

We never know exactly what to expect when we get involved in the ministry of the church do we? God doesn’t give us a “how-to” manual. For two years, while I was in seminary at St. Stephen’s House in Oxford, I prayed twice a day before a mural of the stoning of St. Stephen. It never occurred to me that what was happening to Stephen could happen to me! I don’t mean literally, being stoned, but teeth-grinding and rage from people who I had made angry by something I did or said.

I couldn’t predict what it would be like to find myself in between angry couples or feuding families or disgruntled parishioners. But this is often where we find the risen Christ – in the middle…where words and emotions fly like rocks….where teeth grinding leads to rage.

 

In the gospel from two weeks ago, we heard how the risen Christ appeared to the disciples in the breaking of bread after their walk to Emmaus. The broken bread opened their eyes to the broken body of Jesus. The broken body opened their eyes to the presence of the risen body. Sometimes, what gets broken when we proclaim the gospel, is not just bread, but ourselves. But it’s not something we prepare for. It usually just happens whenever we get caught in the middle. But what we can prepare for is something that Stephen did. As Stephen was being stoned to death, he knelt down and said, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” As Stephen dies we hear the echo of Jesus from the Cross: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” This willingness to forgive the people who have hurt us…this is a ministry we can prepare for, because it goes right to the heart of what we believe about God – that death and suffering are not God’s final word….resurrection and reconciliation are God’s final word. Stephen knew the power of the risen Christ and he was able to forgive his own murderers.

 

Some of you might remember the movie, “Dead Man Walking” that came out a few years ago, starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. The movie tells the story of a Roman Catholic nun, Sister Helen Prejaun who decides to take up the cause of a man accused of brutally murdering a young couple. The accused murderer, played by Penn, is a hard person to feel sorry for. He’s a con man and claims to admire Adolph Hitler.

 

Sister Helen is drawn from the important but unglamorous ministry of teaching low-income adults to read, to a strange and unfamiliar, but more controversial ministry of seeking a reprieve from the death penalty for a convict. Like Stephen, Sister Helen is surprised when she is caught in between the rightness of a righteous cause, and the rage of the victims’ families. It’s not clear why she’s there until the end. When she goes to the home of one set of parents to support and console them, they become enraged when they discover that she has not switched over to “their side,” but has decided to be the convict’s spiritual advisor. They bear their teeth in disgust and rage as they demand she leave the house.

 

But the father in the other set of parents, lets Sister Helen in his house and, as they talk, they begin to share their mutual sadness and brokenness. They share with each other their realization that, as much as we want to find someone to blame, someone to spew out our anger on, we have to let go of the rage and move on.

 

The movie ends with Sister Helen and this man praying together in a church. The father didn’t forget his anger, but, because Sister Helen was there in the middle, he was able to begin the process of healing and reconciliation. God was there in the middle, in between these two people searching for an answer to their brokenness. And God is there for us too. When we are caught in the middle of a family argument…. caught in the middle when people criticize us when we have said or done something to hurt their feelings….caught in the middle when emotions fly like rocks in our marriages.

 

Recently, another Stephen - Steve Boydston, a parishioner here at Good Shepherd, shared with me another powerful story about reconciliation. In an account Steve wrote, he says, “In 1976 a 17-year-old boy lived across the street from my family. He was very quiet, very polite, but unfortunately, a little slow. As so often happens with a child that is different, the other children made fun of him. My 15 year-old sister was different; she befriended him, took him under her wing and was possibly his best friend. Ironically, when the pressure became too great he snapped. She was the only one there. He took her life and she became my first angel. I did what most people do under similar circumstances. I began to pray. I asked God to give her back, to allow me to wake up in the morning and discover it was all just a bad dream. It wasn’t a dream, so I changed my prayer.

“I held onto the hope that her death was swift and she did not suffer. This last hope was taken away. After my sister’s body was found the young man made a complete confession including all the graphic details. These were passed on to me by a local police officer, a friend of the family. I will not go into the details; suffice it to say, her death was neither swift nor merciful.  For twenty years, without missing a day, I asked God to strike the young man dead and send him to hell. While many may understand my anger, it was a terrible prayer that went unanswered.

 

“Several years later, after the birth of my first daughter, the hate in my heart began to subside. But then, one day, I received another phone call. The caller thought I might like to know that the young man that had taken my sister’s life had been released from incarceration in an asylum years before and was living a free life.  When I hung up the phone, the bitterness and anger rushed over me like a flood.”

 

This episode brought Steve to a breaking point, and he was forced to make a decision to give up his prayer and focus his efforts on raising his children to learn to live with such experiences. But years later, when his daughter was mistreated by another child, the anger returned. He thought he had stopped hating and had forgiven his sister’s murderer, but he hadn’t. And Steve had to make another decision. He turned to the Lord’s prayer: “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” After praying for twenty years that God would strike a young man dead, Steve came to the awareness that he had been asking God to carry out his will instead of God’s will. He had declared himself the judge and jury and had asked God to be the executioner. Steve says, “The first step was to ask God to forgive me for over twenty years of hate. Just as I believe God has forgiven me for my not-so- Christian prayer, I have forgiven the young man that took my sister’s life.” Steve concludes, “Each day I recite a new prayer for the young man that had taken my sister’s life. I have turned the man’s fate over to God and I ask God to forgive and help him. I made a choice between returning to hatred or practicing forgiveness.”

 

Whenever God calls us beyond doing something that is merely helpful to doing something that brings healing and reconciliation…God is there, because that’s where Jesus was. When that happens, don’t let the sound of teeth grinding…don’t let your own feelings of hate or your prayers for revenge drive you away. God may be calling us to do what is at the heart of it all – being Christ to others; responding to rage with reconciliation.

 

Don’t be afraid, Jesus is there. He is risen. The Good Shepherd has gone before us to lead us into the valley of the shadow of death where we will fear no evil, where with Sister Helen, Steve Boydston, and a host of saints and martyrs, we will answer the grinding of teeth with Stephen’s smile.            

A Sermon for the 3rd Sunday of Easter, April 6, 2008

Acts 2:14a, 36-41, I Peter 1:17-23, Luke 24:13-35

The Rev. Craig MacColl 

At some point in our lives all of us have suffered disappointments – times when we have put our faith in someone, perhaps a family member, or a leader, or someone we have fallen in love with –and felt betrayed or abandoned or manipulated. We’ve also had the experience of putting our hope in some great idea or cause – an investment tip from a trusted friend or adviser, a church community that seemed so full of life and promise, a political or social ideology - only to find out that what seemed to make our life more worth living, was, in fact an illusion, a distortion or less than what was promised.

 

If we’re familiar with the bitterness of disappointment, then we can relate to our gospel story for today. We come in on two of the disciples as they are making their way slowly along the dusty, seven-mile road from Jerusalem to their hometown, Emmaus. The bright afternoon sun brings them no cheer. It only accentuates their feelings of disappointment and despair. For many years they and their fellow Jews had been victimized by the occupation forces of Rome. Their property had been stolen through exorbitant taxes. Individual Jews had been subjugated to all kinds of indignities by Roman soldiers. Underground movements aiming at regaining Jewish independence had been brutally crushed.

 

Then, a carpenter named Jesus from the obscure village of Nazareth had begun moving about Galilee and Judah preaching and teaching. For Cleopas and his friend, and growing company of other men and women, the words of this man seemed charged with the authority of God. As the weeks and months had passed, they had begun to believe with excitement that here, at last, was the long awaited Messiah sent by God to free Israel.

 

Then, without warning, there had been a sudden arrest on a Thursday night, a quick mock trial, and Jesus had been nailed to a cross on Friday morning. He was dead before nightfall. The dreams of those who had put their hopes in him were shattered.

 

Now, as Cleopas and his friend walked along, they agonized with one another over many questions. How could they have been so mistaken in their judgment of Jesus? Why did their own priests lead the opposition against him? What on earth was one to make of the strange tale told by the women who had gone to the tomb on Sunday? They were startled that the stranger who had suddenly joined them on the road apparently did not even know what had happened. They answered his questions by recounting the terrible events and spilling out their bitter disappointment. “We had been hoping that he was the man to liberate Israel.”

 

Why does Luke include this incident in his gospel? One of the reasons might be that Luke, like John, in last week’s gospel, is drawn to the fact that the risen Jesus appears to his disciples in all of the places where he had met them before – in the upper room, where the disciples had held their last supper with Jesus, by the banks of the Sea of Galilee where Jesus had joined them throwing their fishing nets into the water. When the risen Jesus met the disciples it was if he had intentionally returned to the places where they had seen and heard and talked with him. It was as if the risen Jesus was going back to the very beginning, back to the places where he had first called the disciples and where they had responded. And it is in these places where the risen Jesus comes back to bind up the broken-hearted and to build up the ruins of their lives, to respond to their bitter disappointments with words of hope.

 

In the case of the disciple Peter, it seems that Jesus has a particular interest in coming to repair the devastation of that last bitterly painful week in Jerusalem. Peter’s threefold denial that he is Jesus’ disciple in the High Priest’s courtyard is countered with his threefold confession of faith in John’s gospel by the Sea of Galilee: “Yes, Lord, you know I love you!” And there on the beach in Galilee, John points out the intriguing detail that a fire of coals is burning – a fire of coals just like the one that was burning in the courtyard of the High Priest when Peter denied knowing Jesus. It’s as if John is telling us that Peter must stand again at the place of his first calling to be a disciple, his first response, and his failure. It’s as if he has to smell again the sour scent of his betrayal in the drifting smoke of the fire.

 

And what about the two disciples on the road to Emmaus? The place where their eyes are opened and where they recognize the risen Christ is at a table, sharing a meal of bread and wine, just like the meal they shared with Jesus in the upper room. The risen Jesus comes and returns to the place where he gave the disciples his new commandment of love…a commandment to love others as they had been loved by him….a commandment which would be secured by his sacrificing his life for them on the cross…a commandment they had not fully understood when they ran away on Maundy Thursday and when they abandoned Jesus on the Cross. No wonder their hearts were burning within them while the risen Jesus talked to them on the road. The promise he made to them – that his unconditional love would endure beyond all times….beyond all suffering….beyond death and the grave – was coming true in their midst. But before the disciples could understand the power and the authority of Jesus’ love, they had to be returned to that upper room…they had to have their memories of that night rekindled.

 

This story of the walk to Emmaus is important because it reminds us that the resurrection is a recapitulation, not a reversal of the history that Jesus shared with his disciples. All of the disciples’ failures, the humiliation and brutality of the cross – all bound together – are memories which will never be obliterated. Instead, these memories are now taken up to be healed in the new age. These memories, as painful as they are, are not to be forgotten. These memories are a source of healing and grace. It’s as if Jesus is saying, “Here I called you, here I broke bread with you, here you betrayed me; and here I still stand with you, calling you and breaking bread with you again and giving you a destiny in my love. Do we not remember all this every time we celebrate the Eucharist?”

 

Archbishop Rowan Williams says, “So to speak of the resurrection of our bodies is to look for the restoration of all our memories. This is a very hard thing to believe and, in some ways, not an immediately attractive thing to hope for. Some things we should very much prefer to have buried. With some memories, it is unthinkable that the grace of God should be able to do anything with them; they seem irredeemable…. But Christ continues gentle and relentless. His light must make its way into every corner, and we must be ready to turn to it.”

 

This may be why the disciples’ hearts burned as they talked to the stranger on the road to Emmaus. Jesus was calling them back…. inviting them to return to the places they would have liked to forget because they were too painful, too disappointing to remember. But Jesus wanted them to remember that God’s grace makes opportunities out of all our sin and unhappiness.

 

When Jesus broke bread with them he was saying that, from then on, his spirit would be present with them to see them through all of life’s difficulties…all of life’s disappointments. There was no promise to remove the harsh realities of their lives. Jesus never promised that. But there was the promise that they would receive strength and hope in the face of these realities.

 

Ever since that night, Christian travelers have brought their disappointments and frustrations and fears along the road to Emmaus until, eventually, they have come to sit down at table with the Lord; and to those who have had eyes to see him and hearts willing to receive him he has given the encouragement, comfort and strength needed for facing whatever life may bring.

 

So if you come here today struggling with the temptation to bury or forget your painful memories of the past remember that God will take us back to the places where our hopes and dreams and faith were destroyed and defeated. But God will do this because our God is God of the future. God will take our disappointments and point us to a new future where our memories can be healed and transformed.

This, I believe, is the essence of our Christian faith, an Easter faith…. a faith in which there is a place for God to be present in the midst of all suffering, all disappointment and failure, all conflict and division…a place for God to be present even in the midst of death. We believe this because we have seen the glory of God in the humiliation of Jesus’ death on the cross.

 

Whatever disappointments, whatever fears or feelings of failure are present in your life…. please find a place for God to be present among you as you go forward in life. Whenever we are tempted to think that the past is not redeemable or that our painful memories have no potential to be places of healing, let us remember the truth of Easter…. let us remember to pray, “stay with us Lord Jesus, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over…stay with us Lord Jesus. Empower us with your presence, with your grace and with your truth.” Amen.

A Sermon for the 2nd Sunday In Lent,

February 17, 2008 

                                                                                                         John 3:1-17

The Rev. Craig MacColl                                                                   

Today’s gospel features a biblical figure who seems to be the epitome of someone who is seeking to grow in faith. Nicodemus is a Pharisee and a leader in the community. He was a man of great learning, power and prestige. He was a respected and respectable man with a reputation to uphold. But Nicodemus was also curious …curious about who this Jesus person was. Somehow, Nicodemus developed a strange attraction to Jesus and he was compelled to seek him out. I say strange because for someone like Nicodemus to want to seek out Jesus is a little like saying the majority leader of the US Senate found herself tracking down an itinerant preacher from a small town in West Virginia….an itinerant preacher with radical views who keeps company with questionable people.

 

And that may be one reason why John, our gospel writer, has Nicodemus go to see Jesus at night. As one writer imagines the scene, “So one night, when he hears that Jesus is preaching at a storefront church on the other side of town, Nicodemus waits until the family is asleep, and then he quietly tiptoes out the back door. He cringes when he accidentally kicks the garbage can in the dark. Miraculously, it seems that no one is awakened by the noise, so he slides into his BMW and lets it coast down the driveway in neutral. He waits until he reaches the street to start up the engine and then, with the headlights off, he heads for his rendezvous with Jesus.”

 

We could also see the nighttime setting as a symbol of the fact that, despite Nicodemus’ curiosity, he is in the dark…he is confused about who Jesus is. Despite his intellect and his stature in the community, Nicodemus can’t really make sense of Jesus. We can see this from the interchange he has with him. When Nicodemus says, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God,” Jesus responds by going off in a completely different direction: “Very truly, I tell you that no one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above.” What’s going on here? It seems that Nicodemus and Jesus are like trains passing in the night. They don’t connect with each other.

 

So then Nicodemus begins to question Jesus, the way he would if he were in graduate school or law school or in a cabinet meeting, and he says, “Jesus, I don’t understand. What do you mean? How can a person crawl back into his mother’s womb to be born a second time?”

 

And Jesus says, “Nicodemus, you’re missing the point!” And Jesus goes on to say that he’s not talking about a physical birth, but a spiritual birth. He’s talking about a person being remade all over…from top to bottom. That’s what the Greek word here means…anothen…to be remade all over, from top to bottom, head to toe, inside and out, so that you become a different person from the one you are now and see the world and people from an entirely different perspective than you see them from the Senate Floor or the Cabinet Room…spiritual rebirth.

 

And the ever-practical Nicodemus asks, “How can that happen?” And Jesus says, “You’re one of the wisest men in Israel, one of our great teachers, and you don’t know that?”

 

What we see in this exchange is similar to many conversations Jesus had with people. No matter how smart people were, how much education or power or status people had, many of his statements were a complete mystery. Remember when Jesus said, “if someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer the left?” Remember when he said, “if you want to save your life, you must lose it?” Or how about when he said, “if you want to be my disciple, take up your cross and follow me?” We have made the cross a piece of art or jewelry so it’s easy for us to forget that this would be like saying, “take up the instrument of capital punishment and follow me.”

 

So many of the things that Jesus said remain a mystery to people like us who are a lot like Nicodemus….well educated, socially and economically respectable people who have been conditioned to believe that everything in life that matters is something that we have earned as a result of our own efforts…as a result of our intellect and our accomplishments in life.

 

But when Jesus says to Nicodemus, “the wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes,” and when he goes on to talk about   how God has loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life…..what he’s saying is that the things that we know or accomplish in our lives can not always prepare us to understand the great mystery of life in the kingdom of God – that God loves us and loves the world and, in Jesus Christ, sacrifices himself in love to save the world.

 

The mystery of God’s love is like the wind. We can’t control it or capture it. It’s something that flows over us and through us. It’s something we have to experience in life. Jesus is saying to Nicodemus and to us that if we want to understand the mystery of God’s redeeming love we have to open ourselves up to receive it as a gift, as a grace,  and then live out this love in our lives. 

 

Perhaps you can remember a time in your life when you felt God’s unconditional love flowing around you and through you…flowing around and through you in a way that cleared out the cobwebs of your soul and left you feeling healed and whole and renewed.

 

When we look at Nicodemus we can see ourselves. We see a man who is hoping to get things tied down spiritually, hoping to find answers, hoping somehow to get God figured out…get God taught, explained and learned…so that we can get on with our business-as-usual Monday lives.

 

We are such high achievers, such do-it-yourselfers. We ask, “what do we have to do? Is there a technique of some kind? What do you have to do to enter this kingdom of God? Can we read a book about it? Are there clear directions, preferably with illustrations?”

 

And like Nicodemus, we tend to devote our efforts to looking at the past…looking at what has worked for us before, what has been successful, what we think people will admire, rather than to trust in the power of God’s love flowing around us and through us, to guide us as we walk into the dark and uncertain parts of our lives.

 

In many ways Jesus invites Nicodemus to do what Abraham did in our Old Testament reading – to come into a relationship with God that did not depend on what Abraham had done. As Paul notes in his Letter to the Romans, God reckons Abraham as being righteous not after he was circumcised, but before he was circumcised….not as a reward  for being obedient in keeping the law, but because of his faith. Abraham didn’t earn a right relationship with God, God granted it to him as a gift, as grace….and Abraham trusted God. That’s why Abraham and Sarah are willing to leave behind the world they know and set out on a journey to the land of Canaan. They are willing to leave behind what is familiar because they trust in God’s promises. Jesus invites Nicodemus to do something similar – to leave behind what he thinks he knows about God…what he thinks he knows based on his previous experience of earning respect and status in the community…and become open to receive the gift of God’s spirit, which is the gift of God’s love flowing around and through him.

 

During this season of Lent, ask yourself if God might be inviting you to be reborn from above….to leave behind what we think we know about God and to allow God’s Holy Spirit to lead us someplace we haven’t been before…all the while trusting in God’s love and care for us. Is there some aspect of our lives that we just won’t let go of …some experience of rejection…some incident in which we felt unloved or disrespected….or some event in the past that we keep returning to over and over to justify our actions or our decisions?

 

In the Eucharist service…in the sacred drama we call Holy Communion, each of us is invited to allow ourselves to be caught up, swept up in Christ’s offering of his life and love for the world. In the drama of our Eucharistic worship, God invites us, through our participation in Jesus’ offering of himself to God….God invites us to be changed. God invites us to let go of our old selves and receive a new self, a transformed self. That’s why we come to this altar each week….to be lifted up through Christ’s offering of himself, and to be changed by the miracle of Christ’s self-giving love. Each week we are invited to change and grow….to resolve family conflicts…to face our personal issues….to confront the barriers that separate us from God and from others.

 

This is the promise of Lent…to be born again… to be born from above….to be caught up in the drama of God’s saving grace and love. Are we ready to take that step? Are we ready to walk out into the darkness with Nicodemus…to take a journey into the unknown with Abraham and Sarah?  Amen

 

 

November is the time of year when are invited to
think and pray about what we are thankful for. We
are invited to demonstrate our gratitude to God for
the many blessing we have received in life by sharing
a portion of our financial resources with the church
and with whomever we feel is carrying out God’s
work in the world. We come together with family
and friends to celebrate the Thanksgiving Day holiday
by eating turkey, watching football and remembering
our Pilgrim forefathers and mothers.

As I look ahead to this season of thanksgiving, I am
mindful of many things to give thanks for. I am
thankful for my health and the health of my family.
One of the great joys of living in the Denver area is
the opportunity to get outside and exercise on a
regular basis by bicycling on the many nearby bike
paths and roadways, by cross-country skiing on the
groomed trails of the many nearby Nordic centers,
and by playing golf and tennis in the spring, summer
and fall. I am thankful for the community of Good
Shepherd – for the friends Ann and I have made here,
for the faithful and committed leaders who step
forward to share in planning and coordinating the
many ministries that go on here, and for my fellow
clergy, both at Good Shepherd and in the Diocese,
who encourage and support me in my work.

I am especially grateful for several retired priests, like
Fr. Ed. Morgan and Fr. Bill Pounds, who have been at
Good Shepherd for a while, and for newly arrived
clergy like Kipper DeGavre and Gary Brower, who
have volunteered to share preaching, teaching and
pastoral care responsibilities. Gary, the new Dean of
the Chapel at the University of Denver, his wife Susan
and children Balein and Peng-Peng, moved to
Highlands Ranch from Berkeley, California this past
summer and, beginning this month, Gary will
occasionally preach on Sunday mornings. I continue
to be thankful for the support and assistance of
Deacons Bill Henwood and Diane Moore. Although
Bill is officially retired and Diane is often out of town
with her Mary’s Hope workshops, they both continue
to serve at the altar when available and to provide
pastoral back-up when I am away from the parish.
Hopefully, Bishop O’Neill will be supplying with us
with a new deacon sometime in the next year.

I am thankful for a talented and hard-working staff
who help keep me keep organized and pick up the
many loose administrative ends. I am thankful for the
beautiful and inspiring music that is offered by our
choir and contemporary music group. And I am
thankful for the many volunteers who help maintain
our buildings and grounds, especially during the
winter months.

This season of Thanksgiving reminds me and should
remind all of us that none of us can be loving and
caring spouses and parents, effective leaders or
productive workers without the help of friends,
colleagues, a caring church community, and a wide
array of health professionals. In short, we live within
a network of people who make it possible for us to
thrive and enjoy life.

So, this month, take a minute to think about what
you are thankful for and then offer up your
thanksgivings to the God whose gifts and blessings we
can’t possibly number.

Yours in Christ,

Craig