a sermon on 1 John 3:1-3 and Revelation 7:9-17 for All Saints Sunday
preached on November 6, 2011, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

“What will happen to me when I die?” People ask this question a lot, particularly as children or in facing a difficult illness or old age, and questions like this are very much on the minds of many people who make their way to church. The afterlife is a part of religious belief and practice around the world and across many centuries, and a great deal of our human thinking about religion and spirituality is centered on this question. The church culture in which I was raised also had a lot to say about these things. I remember hearing about an evangelism program at the church where I grew up that would start conversations about Jesus with the question, “If you died tonight, where would you go?”

While this is an important topic of faith for many people, there are others for whom the afterlife isn’t quite as important – the focus instead is on the ways in which our faith, belief, and practice can change and transform our current world as much as the next. The old gospel hymn “When We All Get to Heaven” doesn’t speak so clearly in this mindset – the traditional images of heavenly mansions, clouds in the sky, pearly gates, and streets of gold represent an incomplete vision of what lies ahead for us as people of faith in this mindset, for the important things lie in this world as much as in the next.

Nonetheless, after we have looked back over the past several weeks to our 140 years of life and ministry here and then with our remembrance of the Reformation last Sunday, our eyes turn heavenward today more than they do at any other time of year as we celebrate All Saints Day. Today we remember the generations of women and men who have gone before us in the life of faith and shown us how to live and love as Jesus did. Today we remember the saints, known and unknown, celebrated and ignored, dead and still very much alive, whose witness strengthens us to live the life of faith each and every day. Today we remember that there is an unnumbered multitude of the faithful who still sing God’s praise with us, but from another shore.

And so today our texts direct our attention to that place I so hesitate to go – to our understanding of what lies ahead for us in the world to come. These two texts are among many throughout the Bible that give small glimpses of the world to come. In the gospels, we hear Jesus describing the coming “kingdom of God” that looks very much unlike any of the kingdoms of this world and suggests a very different way of God at work in the world even today. The prophets of the Old and New Testaments speak words of longing for a world where justice is done for everyone and sorrow and pain are no more. In several letters in the New Testament, the apostles warn us not to inquire too much about the things that are ahead. Daniel and Revelation give us dark insights into the future for those who do not meet God’s approval. And John’s vision in Revelation offers us moments of great joy that come alongside the arrival of a new heaven and a new earth.

All these incredible words are too often merged into one single popular vision of “heaven” and “hell,” with angels and souls of faithful women and men floating around in the clouds of heaven and servants of the devil suffering in the eternal fires of hell. But the overall picture that emerges of the days ahead for us can’t be summed up so easily and wrapped up so neatly.

Our first reading from 1 John today reminds us so clearly of this, and it shows us the first of two really important principles I think we can keep in mind as we think about that day when we all get to heaven. The apostle tries to address the question of what is ahead for people of faith, for women and men who struggled with the challenges of living their faith in a time and place that didn’t welcome their different way of life, for people who knew the reality of persecution and struggle for their faith firsthand. So he reminds them that they are already children of God – an incredible and wonderful gift from God in and through Jesus Christ – even when the world doesn’t recognize it. Still, though, this status as children is not everything – “what we will be has not yet been revealed.” Things are not over, and there is something more to come that isn’t fully known yet – but we do know that “when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” In the midst of all that we don’t and can’t understand about the life of faith that is ahead, we can be sure of this much – that we are already children of God and that what is ahead will only make us more like God.

Our second reading tells us the second most important thing I think we can know about the time when we all get to heaven. In this portion of the book of Revelation, we have a brief interlude from John’s vision of great destruction to get a glimpse of the eternal praise that seems to one of the few other things we can be sure about for the days ahead. In this passage, John describes his vision of the new kind of life that lies ahead: a great unnumbered multitude robed in white from all nations and peoples singing God’s praise around God’s throne, an incredible gathering of people who have emerged from great trial and tribulation to celebrate and praise God, a new way of life and living that leaves hunger, thirst, and scorching heat behind for the wonder of life with God guiding and leading and caring for the people at every step of the journey. And so I think this is the second great image of the days ahead that we can take with us: that a multitude will praise God for all eternity because of the incredible ways in which God’s presence is finally and fully known in the world to come.

Beyond these two things, I don’t think we can say much more with certainty about the days ahead. When we all get to heaven, we can be sure that we will see God as God and be more like God and join the multitude praising God for all eternity for overcoming all the hardships and perils of our lives and this world. All this is reason for rejoicing here and now – for giving thanks to God for all the saints who already are making their way to this new way and place of life with God and for the possibility of new life for us and all creation in this world and the next.

But alongside our rejoicing, all this gives us the opportunity to join these faithful women and men in working with God to make all things new. We can embody the reality that we and all people are children of God now by standing up for those whose full humanity is not welcomed. We can show the wonder of God’s glory in our worship and praise and prayer every day. And we can work to make this world one where there is no more hunger, thirst, or scorching heat as we make our way to springs of the water of life. These are the things we should undertake to make our own in these days – the possibility and reality of God’s new thing taking hold in our lives and our world, in the here and now and not just in the world to come.

So until we all get to heaven, may God strengthen us for the living of these days by the memory and witness of all the saints and by the feast we share with them and all creation here as we look forward to the great feast that awaits us in the world to come.

Lord, come quickly! Amen.

a sermon for Reformation Sunday on Jeremiah 31:31-34 and Romans 3:19-28
preached on October 30, 2011, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

There’s something wonderful about remembering our history and celebrating where we have been. We had such a great day last Sunday as we celebrated 140 years of ministry in this congregation. Today we celebrate a milestone birthday for one of our members and think about the incredible gifts and lives that people bring to our community of faith. These and all the remembrances of our lives can and should inspire us to many, many more years of faithful life and living.

Today is actually another chance for us to remember our history as we celebrate Reformation Sunday. Today we especially remember that day in October 1517 when Martin Luther posted a list of his “95 theses” of complaint and petition to the doors of the church in Wittenburg, Germany. But Luther’s actions on that day were only a marker in a much larger movement that had begun before him and continued long after him. Luther himself didn’t walk away from the Roman Catholic church of his time but took many years to begin the branch of Christianity that now bears his name. With the rise of the printing press some years before, the text of the Bible had become more accessible to those who literate, and new ideas were more easily spread. Other church leaders of Luther’s time took advantage of a general sense of anger and frustration directed toward officials in Rome to build on the work of others who had been calling for a different way of being the church for centuries. Even some who remained in the Roman Catholic church sought to bring change to the institution that so many had rebelled and protested against.

All these saints encouraged the church to return to its roots, to clear out some of the accumulated baggage of 1500 years, to reclaim its identity in scripture, and to build the most faithful institution possible around these key tenets. And so new leaders emerged across Europe to give shape and form to this emerging way of faith and life in the particular contexts of that day and age. So today, nearly five hundred years later, as we celebrate this important shift in the history of the church – a shift that still shapes and forms our practice of life and faith today – I think we best remember these things by doing exactly what our forebears did and returning to the core principles of who we are by listening for the spirit of the Reformation.

Our two readings today do exactly that. First we heard the beautiful text describing the coming of the new covenant from the prophet Jeremiah. At their heart, these incredible words remind us that God is always seeking to be with God’s people in new ways. If one way of relationship doesn’t fit the need, God will keep trying until another one does. Jeremiah insists here that God changes minds and hearts and lives, that God breaks into our humanity to “be [our] God” so that we can be God’s people. To top it all off, God promises to be in relationship with each and every one of us – and all of us together – so that we can be renewed amidst our missteps and restored to life.

The apostle Paul picks up on much this same theme in our reading this morning from his letter to the church in Rome. Paul takes the prophet’s ideas of renewal and restoration and new life and connects them directly to the life and death of Jesus Christ. He suggests that the law of God cannot save but can only condemn, and so Jesus’ life revealed the full righteousness of God to sinful humanity. Paul declares that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” – and yet God’s grace becomes effective in us and through us in faith and brings us back into relationship with God. Paul insists that this is not any of our own doing – responsibility for all this belongs only to God.

These two texts bring us some of the key ideals of the great Reformation of the sixteenth century and bear the spirit of that time into our own, but they don’t always translate into our day and age right away. The spirit of the Reformation should always be before us, as one of the great principles that has emerged over the centuries reminds us: we are not just the church once reformed; we are also the church still being reformed according to God’s Word and Spirit. As we make our way into our 141st year of ministry in this congregation, we have to sort out what these things mean for us to make the spirit of the Reformation our own. What is it for us to reclaim these great ideals of relationship, self-sacrifice, and trust in God for the church and the world in 2011? How do we live out what we have learned about being in relationship with God in this changing time? How do we help others to see what we have seen and experience the presence of God in our world? Asking these kinds of questions is, I believe, the most faithful way we can be church together in this changing day and age.

Looking closely at what we are doing and how we are doing it to see how it fits into our new reality in Jesus Christ and our changing world is our greatest challenge – but also our greatest opportunity. Helping people sort out what it means to believe and have faith in 2011 and beyond ought to be at the center of our mission in these days. And all along the way, we must embrace the questions that will come up and honestly face the difficult decisions that come before us, for it is in those moments that we truly have the opportunity to embody the spirit of the Reformation in our own time and place.

So as we journey together in the coming months, as we face the change that is certainly coming our way, as we work to wind up some things that have occupied our minds too much lately, as we sell our beloved manse and purchase something new, as we make a new space for the work of the church in this building, may the spirit of the Reformation continue to call us to ask the tough questions, to sort out what it means to be the people of God in this time and place, to remain confident of God’s presence in the face of everything that changes around us, and to keep showing the face of God to everyone we meet throughout the good days and bad. Thanks be to God for this confidence, this hope, this challenge, and this way of life in faith together in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

a sermon for the 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time on Exodus 33:12-23
preached on October 16, 2011, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

If someone asked you to draw a picture of God, what would it look like? Would you draw some sort of human form? Would you make a picture of your favorite natural scene? Or would it be something else entirely, something more abstract, something more obscure, something more personal?

Humans have been trying to depict divine beings of all sorts for centuries. The Greeks and Romans of the ancient world built dramatic statues to show off their deities’ very human bodies. The Israelites got in big trouble with God for making a golden calf while Moses was receiving the Ten Commandment on Mount Sinai. And even in Christendom, artists have made countless depictions of Jesus, some hailed as beautiful additions to the history of art and our understanding of faith and others attacked and destroyed for attempting to paint what should not be painted. Nowadays we keep up our attempts to depict God. More than one blond-haired and blue-eyed man has been cast as Jesus on the big screen. James Earl Jones and Morgan Freeman, two black men with deep, resonant voices, have been cast to speak as God. And the recent unexpectedly bestselling novel The Shack depicted the Trinity as an African American woman, a Middle Eastern carpenter, and an Asian woman.

So it’s quite natural for us to want to know more about what God looks or sounds like, to catch a glimpse of God in human form, to have a God sighting every now and then. These God sightings have been a part of our world for longer than we can know, and even the great man of faith Moses wanted to catch a glimpse of the great glory of God. In our reading from the book of Exodus this morning, we hear about this moment when Moses asked to see God’s glory and ended up with his own God sighting. While he was up on the mountain with God to receive the Ten Commandments a second time, Moses had an incredible heart-to-heart conversation with God. The exchange was incredibly human, sounding much like inquisitive banter between old friends, with Moses recognizing God’s considerable steps in guiding him and the Israelites to this point in their journey while also stating his very human desire to have a greater sense of God’s presence with him along the way ahead. Upon hearing Moses’ request for God’s continued presence, God responded with grace and mercy, promising, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

But Moses kept up the conversation, noting that he and the people of Israel could not get to the promised land  on their own – they needed a very present and real God to go with them. They needed to know God’s favor and see how God made them distinct from others, and without this assurance, Moses felt it was silly for them to go at all. His concerns were well-founded – the Israelites had done little more than complain about the food and the water all along the way so far, and he was on the mountain again with God because the people had been worshiping an idol under the guidance of his own brother Aaron and had already broken the covenant that God made with them. But even so, God again assured Moses of God’s continued presence with them along their journey to the promised land: “I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”

All this conversation, though, seemed to be a prelude to Moses’ real question, his desire for a God sighting: “Show me your glory, I pray.” God didn’t walk away but instead offered one final promise to Moses: “I will make all my goodness pass before you… But you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live… You shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.” So Moses followed God’s instruction and made his way out onto a rock, where he stood in a cleft of the rock. God covered Moses with God’s hand while God passed by, but then after God had passed, God’s hand was removed so that Moses could see God’s back.

This is truly such a great story – it’s not only great to know that at least one human being has had a real, honest-to-goodness God sighting, it’s also pretty incredible that Moses only saw God’s back side! Still, I can’t quite imagine a world where we see God in this very direct and human way. Sure, we say that we have seen God in Jesus Christ, but that was a one-time glimpse, and we only have the biblical witness to that God sighting and no eyewitnesses among us. The images of God that we do have leave so much to be desired – the old paintings of Jesus rarely speak to the contemporary world, and many people just don’t identify with any of the images and words of faith and belief at all. So the leap of faith involved in seeing God these days is pretty significant, and God doesn’t seem to show up quite so directly or often anymore anyway. But we are here in the church, either because we have experienced the presence of God before and want to experience it again or because we figure this is as good a place as any to have our first God sighting along the way.

I believe that we can reasonably expect to have that kind of encounter with God in our journey together in this place, but there is more to what we must do than just that. We need to be on the lookout for where God is present and at work in our world, for the places where God is already stepping in to change things and make things different, for the comfortable and uncomfortable places where God is embracing us or challenging us, for the dramatic and real presence of God not so much where we would most expect it but maybe where we would least expect it, maybe most in the longings of those in need, in cries of the poor, in the prophetic words calling out for justice. We also need to be ready to tell others about our experiences of God, to describe our God sightings in whatever form they take, to speak about how we have seen God at work in our lives and in our world, even to honestly speak about the times when we have doubted God’s presence in our midst. And most of all we need to be about showing God’s face to others, joining in those times and places where God’s presence is already visible and making it clearer, acting to embody the presence of God among those in greatest need, and living life in such a way that others might have a God sighting of their own in and through us. This is our greatest challenge but also our greatest hope – to keep our eyes open for God each and every day even as we embody God’s presence in our world so that others might also know the fullness of life that we have found along our journey.

So may God inspire us in our hearing and seeing and speaking and doing, that we might hear God’s voice directing us into the way ahead, we might see God’s presence in whatever way we need, we might speak of God’s presence so that others can hear, and we might join in doing and being and living in all the places where God is already present and at work to make all things new until he comes again.

Lord, come quickly! Amen.

a sermon on Philippians 3:4b-14 for the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
preached on October 2, 2011, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone 

Conversion stories are everywhere in Christian literature. You know how they go – someone starts out living a terrible, horrible life, with all sorts of sinfulness and worldliness, then that person is radically changed through a dramatic experience and comes to faith. We have them in the Bible and beyond – it seems that so many faithful people have wonderful stories to tell about how God has intervened and changed things in their lives.

The apostle Paul’s story is one of the greatest of all conversion stories. The book of Acts tells it from one perspective, and Paul himself tells it several other times in his letters to churches around the Mediterranean that are collected in the New Testament. In today’s reading from his letter to the church in Philippi, we hear a little of that story. Paul was a very faithful Jew, properly circumcised and raised in the tradition, with the right ancestry and perfect lineage in the tribe of Benjamin. He studied the Law at length, and from this knowledge he became a Pharisee and attacked the early followers of Jesus because he felt that they misinterpreted the Law.

But then something happened to Paul. He had an experience that changed everything. He doesn’t recount the details here, probably because the Philippians knew his story very well, but from the other tellings of it in the New Testament, we know that it was a dramatic encounter with Jesus himself long after Jesus had ascended into heaven, an encounter that left Paul blind for several days and may have even given him some sort of lifelong physical affliction.

This conversion experience changed everything for Paul. As he says in these verses, everything that Paul once counted in his favor he now viewed as rubbish, garbage, nothingness. He suffered the loss of all things because of Christ, and this new emptiness gave him the space to gain Christ, not that he could claim all this by his own doings but rather that God could fill him and share with him Christ’s faithfulness and righteousness.

But Paul knew that he was not yet completely filled in this way. He recognized that he still had a long way to go to make this way of life his own, yet he kept on trying to do all this “because Christ Jesus has made me his own,” as he said. Paul put aside the ways of his past life so that he could move forward into something new and different and real and complete in the days ahead: “Forgetting what is behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

Like so many conversion stories, Paul’s story is an incredible one, a powerful witness to the transformation possible in and through the life of faith. While so many over the centuries have experienced this kind of conversion, many other faithful people have a less dramatic story of growing into the life of faith.

Take me, for example. I grew up in the church and never really stepped away from it. Conversion for me almost wasn’t even possible because I was grounded in the tradition from the very beginning – baptized as an infant,raised in Sunday school, active in the youth group and campus ministry, and a natural fit to go to seminary right away. If anything, I sometimes identify more with Paul’s life before his conversion than anything else! I’ve always felt connected to God and the community of faith and can’t really point to a single large moment of powerful transformation or conversion like Paul could.

For a long time, I wasn’t particularly comfortable with this, especially growing up in a culture in the deep South that insisted on a specific moment of salvation as part of an authentic Christian religious experience, but I’m grateful that someone once suggested to me the idea of a “nurturing conversion,” where we find transformation not in a single moment but rather over a lifetime of being nurtured into the life of faith. I know I’m not the only one who lives and feels like this  – others too have spent a lifetime trying to sort out what it means to be faithful in their lives, building on the faith they have had for a full lifetime and seeking to walk with God along all the changes and challenges of life and living even though they have never experienced the kind of dramatic conversion that Paul describes. I’m grateful that our Presbyterian tradition welcomes all of us, both those who have experienced a powerful moment of transformation and those who have been converted through the nurturing life of faith, but I still feel like I’m missing out on something sometimes because I don’t share that transformative experience.

So what do we do with all this? How do we connect Paul’s incredible experience from two thousand years ago to our own lives today? How do we make sense of Paul’s conversion alongside our own faith journeys? What does it mean for us to give up the things of our lives and find our real and true value and worth in Christ?

For me at least, I think this all begins when we open our minds to the possibility of transformation each and every day so that we can live into the new life we have in Christ. Whether we have experienced a powerful moment of conversion or not, God can still work a new thing in us and through us and around us and in spite of us. Whether we can identify firsthand with Paul’s experience of conversion or not, God can transform our lives by the power and faithfulness of Jesus Christ himself and remake us more and more in the image of the one who comes to make all things new. And whether we are new to faith and life or have seen many years in life and the church, we all have to keep trying day by day to make this our own, to sort out the meaning of the cross and the resurrection for us and our world, to share that experience with others along the way, and to trust that there is still more in store for all creation.

But the good news in all this amidst such varied experiences of conversion is that we are not alone. Whether we can point to a moment of radical conversion or have been converted over the whole of our lives, whether we identify with Paul or someone else, whether we have walked many miles along the road of faith or are just setting out on the journey, we are one family, one people, one church, following our one Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ, gathering around one font and one table where we can know his presence even today.

So we are not alone. We are not alone as we sort out our faith in our lives. We are not alone as we figure out what transformation and conversion might be for us and our world. We are not alone in seeking God’s glory and promise We are not alone in struggling to make the cross and resurrection our own. We are not alone in giving up the things of our past and of our world so that we can take on a new and shared identity with all those throughout time and around the world who follow our Lord Jesus Christ.

So today as we celebrate World Communion Sunday, a day when we particularly remember that whenever we gather at this table we gather with sisters and brothers all around the earth, we gather at this feast of celebration, not alone or with a few of our choicest friends but with the whole company of the saints in heaven and on earth, trusting that here Jesus is with us and makes us his own and will never leave us alone as we press on toward the goal of new life in him.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

a sermon on Exodus 17:1-7
preached to the Presbytery of New York City on Saturday, September 24, 2011
and in a very similar version to the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone on Sunday, September 25, 2011

The journey through the wilderness to the promised land had only just begun, and the Israelites were already getting frustrated. Moses had come back to Egypt to lead the people out of slavery and into freedom, but freedom was harder than anyone had imagined.

The journey kept dragging on and on and on, and the inconveniences kept mounting. For a while it was hard to find food, but God finally provided manna and quail. Then the people started to complain that there wasn’t enough variety on the menu – but there’s only so many ways you can mix up two ingredients! And in today’s reading, the people were complaining that there was no water to drink as they camped.

As you might expect, the people directed their anger, frustration, and complaints at Moses. They even questioned his motives for leading them out of Egypt: “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” They were so frustrated that they just wanted to go back home to Egypt, back to the land of suffering and slavery that they knew so well, where they knew what to expect. They’d rather face the perils of life under Pharaoh than take a chance on the uncertainty of a wilderness journey.
 
 

The Israelites aren’t alone – we too know what it’s like to take a wilderness journey to a promised but unknown land. Our world these days has more than its share of uncertainty: How long will our economy keep slumping? How long will it take for our friends and neighbors to find a job? What sort of world will our children and grandchildren receive from us?

As if our world’s uncertainty wasn’t enough, there’s also our church and our presbytery. Will we ever return to the way of life we once knew, where every church had a pastor, where every pastor had a church, where the sanctuaries were full and the nurseries were bustling? How long will it take us to sort through our problems and find some way to live together? Will there be anything left of us when we get to the promised land – if we ever get there at all?

All along the way, we find things to complain about in the church and the world. We question the motives of our leaders. We doubt that we’ll have enough food or water or money or patience to survive the journey. We even quarrel amongst ourselves about how we should or should not be moving forward. Like the Israelites, we too would usually prefer to turn back to the unhappy and difficult ways we have known rather than risk a little bit of uncertainty on our wilderness journey.
 
 

In the midst of all this complaining and quarreling, Moses was nearing his wit’s end, so he turned to God for some advice. “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” God’s instruction to Moses was clear: “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you… I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.”

So God got involved in the Israelites’ troubles yet again, not ignoring their complaints but taking action, setting up a way forward that took care of their present needs in hopes of keeping the people focused on the promised land. God made it clear that Moses was not the only one who could move things forward – he had not been alone in leading the people out of Egypt, so he should not be left alone to face the trials and tribulations of the journey through the wilderness to the promised land, either. So God offered to meet Moses and the elders not where they were but a little closer to where they were going.

When they had gone on a little ways, God met them and gave them water from a rock, keeping them focused on the way ahead and helping them to move beyond the memory of Egypt just a little more. Moses made sure that the Israelites did not forget all that they had put him through, though – he named the place Massah and Meribah, or “test” and “argument,” because there they had wondered if the Lord was with them on their wilderness journey.
 
 

Amidst all the complaining and crying of our day and our own wilderness journeys, there are certainly voices that speak up trying to make a difference. Some folks set right out and go looking for the water we need to survive on the journey. Some women and men look for a way to change the system that keeps getting us off track. Some people try their best to take action to address the complaints going on all around. But all too often it seems that the complainers keep on complaining, that the chorus of quarreling and testing goes on and on, the thirst for the water we need unquenched. There are few who step up to lead the people out of the chorus of woe, few who try to lead the people out into what will move us beyond our impasse rather than just maintaining the status quo of complaining.

But even the best leaders can’t fix things on their own – others have to stand up and join in to move ahead of the people’s doubting and quarreling, not just to resolve the immediate complaints but also to help everyone move into something new. In these wilderness days, we need our elders of all sorts – our Presbyterian ruling and teaching elders, for sure, but also the other elders and leaders of our nation and world – to step away from the murmuring and complaining crowds, to join with those who are not afraid to seek God’s guidance for the days ahead, to look at the problems of our church and our world through new eyes and ask new and different kinds of questions, to go on out ahead of the people to meet God a little further out in the wilderness.

When we go together – when we stop looking back to the Egypts of our past and start dreaming of a new and different promised land, when we step out from where we are into something new, when we support one another in our wilderness journey – we might just meet God, stepping in to give us what we need, challenging us to put aside our bickering and complaining and testing, and inviting us to keep our eyes and hearts on the promised land of new life in this world and the next as we go on our wilderness journey.
 
 

And so we take our next steps on this way by meeting here at this table, by glimpsing here even a minuscule vision of the things ahead for all creation, by gathering here with saints and sinners of this time and of all time to set aside as much quarreling and testing as we can, by hoping and praying and expecting that we will meet Jesus here and find everything we need for the wilderness journey ahead. Thanks be to God. Amen.