Micah

            This lent we are going to be doing a sermon series focusing on the prophets. 

To give a broad overview: In terms of the books in the Bible, there are three books named after major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and twelve named after minor or “lesser” prophets.  I am saying it this way because we know there were many other prophets mentioned in the Bible as well, but ones that did not necessarily have books written after them.  The difference between those who received books and those who didn’t, those who are called “major” and those considered “minor” prophets is not in their importance so much as it is in the length of their books, or the length of what was written about them.  Some of the prophets are speaking to the whole of Israel, but many are speaking to either Israel (Northern Kingdom) or Judah (the Southern kingdom where Jerusalem was located) during the time when they were split into two kingdoms.  Some wrote before the Babylonian exile, some during and some after.  In the case of the book of Isaiah, there are indications that parts of it were written during each of those periods. 

All of the prophets deliver similar messages of God’s call to the people to act with love towards God and towards others, and they focus especially on loving those who are underprivileged and oppressed.  These prophets condemn those who use others to their own advantage, and the prophets particularly condemn the people in power, and the systems that oppress certain populations of people.  These include the poor, the widowed, those who have less than we do or were outcast  or marginalized in some way.  It can be hard to hear the words of the prophets because they begin, universally, with condemnation and the promise of punishment as a result of God’s anger towards the people because they have done otherwise.  For many of us we find self-condemnation in these words.  For others, we hear it as a promise that the ungodly will be punished.  But for all of us, the call as we listen to the prophets is to focus, especially during this Lenten season when we are called to look deep at ourselves and what blocks our relationships with God, we are called to listen to the prophets’ call to change in our own lives.  This focuses in two areas: what idols do we put before God that we need to confront?  We don’t have statues here, but in our culture we have other idols: power, fame, money, our toys, our schedules, our addictions, our images for who we are rather than the realities of who we are.  And the second again, is the call to be more loving towards people, and especially towards those who are less privileged than we are.

            Obviously, with five weeks we will not focus on all of the prophets, but I want to give you an overview and so we will focus on a few of the prophets over the weeks of lent, all of whom are “lesser” prophets simply because we don’t hear from or about them as often.  Today we will begin this series by listening to passages from the book of Micah.  

----------------------------(scripture)

Micah was speaking to the kingdom of Judah (Southern kingdom) during the time when the kingdoms were divided, before the Babylonian exile.  Micah’s primary focus is on the injustice of God’s people towards those with less.  Unlike some of the other prophets, Micah really does not focus so much on idolatry, but his focus is solely on the injustice of God’s people towards one another.  Micah felt great compassion for the poor and dispossessed and he held the leaders of Judah as responsible for their suffering.  He sums up what God is calling us to do with the famous passage that we hear so often from the book of Micah:

“What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.”

So today I want to look very briefly at these three activities:

Doing Justice:  Micah is confronting the rulers of the time in Judah, who were specifically driving the independent (small) farmers off of their land, something Micah said was completely against God.  These fields were then being foreclosed on, forcing these farmers into extreme poverty.  Micah, as with all the prophets is highly political and is condemning a society in which such a thing can happen.  How does this relate to us?

In a nutshell, the justice that Micah is talking about here starts with remembering that we are all deeply connected.  Before you act towards any other person, whatever their situation, you need to think how you would feel as the recipient of that action, how it would affect you, how it would affect your family.  Justice is then living out that deep connection to one another by seeing the pain of our brothers and sisters, our neighbors, and even our enemies and being willing to first, own our part in causing it, and secondly, to change our behavior that damages or hurts others.  Justice is acting with love and compassion towards whomever it is that we encounter, whomever it is that is standing in front of us in each moment.  But of course it is also much more than that.  Justice is standing up against the status quo even for those we will never meet.  Remember, Micah’s God punished the entire community, everyone, for not only perpetuating these injustices, but for allowing them to take place within their community.  Justice then is knowing that while I do these actions out of love for you, in serving you, I serve myself because without your justice, there is no justice for me; without your peace, there is no peace for me; without your love, I am nothing. 

This is hugely central to Micah’s message, and, frankly, to all of the prophets.  While the violence they attribute to God may be something we struggle to understand or see in the God of love we have come to know, the message, that central message of justice, is a big part of Jesus’ message as well.  It is not something we can ignore or leave out of our understanding of who God is.

Loving Kindness: This is pretty simple and direct, though maybe one of the hardest to work out day to day.  It means that we are called to avoid being snippy, angry, attacking or rude and instead find ways to be compassionate, present with people, honest, yes, but with love and the other’s best interest in mind.  Loving kindness means striving to remember that if someone is acting badly, that says a lot about them and nothing about us, so we can be compassionate for the bad day they may be having, or the bad week, or even the bad life.  If someone is mean to us or rejects us, that is about their failure to be kind, and we do not have to let ourselves be influenced or controlled by that bad behavior into behaving badly ourselves.  Loving kindness is searching out the good, seeing the good, affirming the good, and choosing the good in our own behaviors.

And finally, we are to Walk Humbly with our God:

Walking into the empty sanctuary of his synagogue, a rabbi was suddenly possessed by a wave of mystical rapture, and threw himself onto the ground before the Ark proclaiming, "Lord, I'm Nothing!"

Seeing the rabbi in such a state, the cantor felt profoundly moved by similar emotions. He too, threw himself down in front of the Ark, proclaiming, "Lord, I'm Nothing!"

Then, way in the back of the synagogue, the janitor threw himself to the ground, and he too shouted, "Lord, I'm Nothing."

Whereupon, the rabbi turned to the cantor and whispered, "Look who thinks he's Nothing!"

For us being humble means several things.  First, I think we are called to recognize that we can’t really take most of the credit for anything we would normally brag about.  I think there is a strong inclination to think, for example, that if we were born to parents who had resources and if were given a good education and if we were fed well, that it is somehow because we deserve it over all those people who were not born into families with resources, with education and good food.  We did nothing to deserve that and we forget this, very quickly, very easily.  Also, our talents and our gifts are gifts from God.  They honor God and should not honor ourselves.  Second, we need to remember that what we think of as “accomplishments,” the things our society recognizes as accomplishments are not the things that God prizes.  Does God think those who die with the most money win?  How about the most power?   The most fame?  How about the most friends?  The most children?  No, instead, God prizes the very things Micah mentions: justice, kindness, humility.

We walk humbly with God by doing the things that God places in front of us to do while recognizing that God is not calling us to a particular task because we are somehow “better” or “superior.”   We see this when we look at other parts of the Bible as well.  Why did God choose Mary to birth Jesus?  We are told nothing in our scriptures to indicate that Mary is superior.  Instead it seems she was quite ordinary except for one thing - and that is that she said, “yes” to God’s call for her.  The same could be said of any of the prophets or holy people in the Bible.  Though many resisted their call (Jonah, Jeremiah, even Moses), in the end, all said yes.  If you say “yes,” to God’s call, you have succeeded.  If you do that without bragging about it or somehow feeling superior, then you have truly learned to “walk humbly with God.”

C.S. Lewis’ main character in the second of his space trilogy, Peralandra, says, “Don’t imagine I’ve been selected for (this task) because I’m anyone in particular.  One never can see, or not till long afterwards, why anyone was selected for any job.  And when one does, it is usually some reason that leaves no room for vanity.  Certainly, it is never for what the (person) him (or her) self would have regarded as their chief qualifications.”

Being humble means giving thanks for the gifts we have, not in relation to others, but just giving thanks for the gifts we have.  It means taking the risk of doing the loving, doing the justice, being kind and saying “yes” to the tasks that come before us.  It means recognizing that all are called, and that we are called out of God’s love for us, not because we are more special than the next person, but because God loves us that much.

The book of Micah, while being a book that strongly condemns the mistreatment of others, ends on a note of hope.  Within the anger and destructive response of God to injustice still always lies the seeds for renewal, repentance, and hope for God’s restoration, God’s resurrection, God’s recreation of us as a people.  God does get angry, but God is also compassionate and full of mercy and grace.  That is the good news.  We are given opportunity in every day to try again.  To repent.  To renew.  To be recreated.  And to accept the grace of God. 

Our challenge this lent remains to follow God’s words as spoken by the prophet Micah; to do  justly, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.  Amen.

Immigration

Hebrews 13:1-2  Keep loving each other like family. 2 Don’t neglect to open up your homes to guests, because by doing this some have been hosts to angels without knowing it.

Leviticus 19:33-34  When immigrants live in your land with you, you must not cheat them. Any resident alien who lives with you must be treated as if they were one of your citizens. You must love them as yourself, because you were immigrants in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.

Exodus 22:21 Do not mistreat or oppress a resident alien, because you were once aliens in the land of Egypt.

This last Sunday was national immigration Sunday in the Church, big C.  The reason is obvious: this country was founded with immigrants, and so it is appropriate that the week of July 4^th, we reflect on our history, on our beginning, on how we came to be in this place and to be the people we now are.

The three scriptures I posted above all say very similar things:  Don’t oppress the stranger, the foreigner, the “resident alien” - in other words, the immigrant: the one who lives in your country but is not a citizen in your country. Why? For the Israelites the reason was that they needed to remember that they too had been immigrants. They needed to treat others remembering once again that time is the difference between us: that they had also been in those situations and they were to treat others as they would have others treat them. They had been the immigrants before, and in remembering that, they were called to treat those who were the “new” immigrants with the same welcome, acceptance and compassion as they had sought to be treated. 

What does this have to do with us?  With the exception of full blooded Native Americans, all of us were also either immigrants (or our ancestors were) or we were brought here against our will. “The resident alien who resides among you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the immigrant as yourself, for you too were immigrants in this land.”

But, as you must all surely acknowledge, as a country, as a people, we have struggled, from the beginning, in our relationships with the newest immigrants or newest arrivals to this country. Who those immigrants are has changed and who we struggle against therefore has changed. But the struggle itself has not. For a time, the immigrants from Ireland were oppressed and rejected. Did any of you come across with the Irish immigrants?  And were your ancestors treated well? Then it was immigrants from Italy: also abused, mistreated, threatened.  Again, any of you have Italian ancestry? Currently, it is immigrants from Central and South America as well as immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries with whom we struggle. The faces have changed, the group we struggle with has changed, but the problems: the discrimination, the fear, the abuse - it is the same, each and every time.  What’s interesting is that we still have undocumented immigrants from Ireland and Italy.  Apparently, we have 50,000 undocumented Irish immigrants in the US, 10, 000 of those are in San Francisco alone. But we no longer struggle against them. No, our focus has changed. Or the deeper reality: our fear has changed.  Because when it comes down to it, that is, always, the reason we struggle against immigrants. We are afraid. We fear many things, but it comes down to fear.  Perhaps we are afraid that the United States will become too crowded. Perhaps we are afraid that their way of life is somehow different from ours and will be threatening. Some would say we are afraid of an increase in crime, though the statistics over the last twenty years tell us the exact opposite is true: 

Immigration-crime research over the past 20 years has widely corroborated the conclusions of a number of early 20th-century presidential commissions that found no backing for the immigration-crime connection. Although there are always individual exceptions, the literature demonstrates that immigrants commit fewer crimes, on average, than native-born Americans. Also, large cities with substantial immigrant populations have lower crime rates, on average, than those with minimal immigrant populations. … Cities and neighborhoods with greater concentrations of immigrants have lower rates of crime and violence. (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/fact-check-immigration-doesnt-bring-crime-u-s-data-say/)

In some cases we fear that the level of education in this country will decrease.  This too is countered by the facts:

Compared with all Americans, U.S.-born children of immigrants are more likely to go to college, less likely to live in poverty, and equally likely to be homeowners. Thirty-six percent of U.S.-born children of immigrants are college graduates—5 percent above the national averagehttps://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/reports/2017/04/20/430736/facts-immigration-today-2017-edition/  

The biggest fear I think is just plain racism. This is supported again by our behavior towards our immigrants. Because as I mentioned above, we aren’t talking about deporting the Irish “resident aliens”. To put this in bigger perspective, CNN reported that a PEW research study indicated that in this country right now there are between 475,000 - 500,000 undocumented Europeans.  Again, there is no conversation about blocking or deporting them.  Less than half of this country’s undocumented folk are from Mexico, and most undocumented folk come into this country legally and simply overstay visas.  Yet, we persist in ideas of building walls. (http://gothamist.com/2017/01/09/undocumented_immigrants_nyc.php)    

Perhaps we are afraid of how they will impact us economically. A news program that I heard about a month ago was discussing the finances that go along with the current immigrant situation. There has been a lot of “scare”, again, around the idea that somehow undocumented persons are taking our money or costing this country a great deal.  But the truth is that undocumented persons are paying taxes and many are paying into social security; every time they buy anything they pay taxes, and most have taxes taken from their pay check as well, by giving false social security numbers or in a variety of ways, they are actually paying taxes, often more than most of us. But these are people who will never be allowed to withdraw any of that as social security or many of the other benefits that come from our taxes. While this in itself is a severe miscarriage of justice, none the less, when the money numbers are punched out, the fact is that our undocumented persons contribute a great deal more to our economy and our taxes and our social security than they will ever receive or take.

In addition, as you know, our undocumented persons are currently doing jobs that most documented persons in the United States just plain won’t do. Sometimes they are severely abused, taken advantage of: hired to do work for which they are not paid, knowing there is no legal recourse for them. Or being paid so little that they can barely feed their families.  But the economic reality in this country is that California provides over half the agricultural food for the rest of the country, and most of the work on that food is done by undocumented persons.  If our immigrant workers leave, the cost of our food will rise exponentially. This, too is a severe injustice and has created almost a slave caste of people in the United States. Rev. Anthony Robinson, a UCC pastor in Washington says,  “Injustice anywhere leads inexorably to injustice everywhere. If there is a class of people without rights, without voice, without legal recourse and protection, it puts not just that group at risk.  It puts an entire society at risk. It becomes a cancer that eats away at the whole social body. If a certain group can be exploited, then exploitation begins to infect the whole society. Its overall standards of justice and fair play are lowered and distorted.” In the face of this, while treated amazingly unfairly, these undocumented persons still choose to come here, which tells us that at some level even this is better than what they have left behind.

But whatever it is we are afraid of, (and I think it is important to look at what it is we actually fear and to find out if those fears are real or imagined) the God who is God of all people, including these people, is a good God and when we decide that “these people” (whoever that is…whatever group that is) will somehow affect us negatively we are forgetting first that they, too, all of the “theys” out there are God’s children, and second that they are our brothers and sisters whom we are called to love and care for no matter what.  “The resident alien who resides among you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the immigrant as yourself, for you too were immigrants in this land.”

While I realize that we could, and no doubt will, argue over the politics and economics of immigrant rights, really this is a much more basic issue about how we are to treat one another, our neighbors, our brothers and sisters. We often feel a sense of deep entitlement to this land, to this country, to the things we have here as legal immigrants (because again, we are all immigrants whether in this generation or previous). But where do we get this sense of entitlement?  Certainly not from God. We don’t own this country. We don’t own the land, we don’t own the resources. All of these are on loan from God.  Given to all people to use well, to care for responsibly, to be stewards over.  Who are we to decide who is acceptable to live here, who can go where, when and how?  “The resident alien who resides among you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the immigrant as yourself, for you too were immigrants in this land.”

When I was a seminary student, half of my internship involved working with the immigrant population in an area of San Rafael known as the Canal district.  During one of my first days there, I met a wonderful woman named Maria.  When I met her she was working her little plot in the community garden of the Canal, while watching her four year old and six year old play ball together in the nearby park. She was very friendly, but even so, it took her some time to open up and tell me her story.  It seems she and her children had escaped from Guatemala after their village had been destroyed by the military, after her husband and brothers had been disappeared, after she heard the rumor that they were looking for her too. It was hard to understand why her family had become a target of the military. They had not, like some Guatemalans, dared to speak out against the military oppression in Guatemala. She and her husband had, though, been organizers of the people, beginning community projects such as childcare cooperatives and a community garden that would raise them out of the deep poverty that they all experienced, the day to day doubting whether they would have enough food to live.  Average income in her village was about $3.50 a week, almost enough to buy a pound of meat, but certainly not enough to raise her four children.  Still, the military had felt threatened.  They saw too much power in this poor Guatemalan family’s ability to organize the people.  But now she and two of her children were living in the Canal district.  She tried unsuccessfully to keep a smile on her face as she told me she had had to leave the other two children in Guatemala, with friends, there just wasn’t a way to get them all out. Their new life here wasn’t the life they had known.  The United States wasn’t and would never be, home.  Rather than being seen as a leader of her people, here she was an outcast; considered illegal, she was marginalized, refused services, anonymous, and often unseen.  Still, she told me that she didn’t mind too much, that in a way it was nice to be unknown for a change, not sought out.  She did worry about their illegal status.  She had tried to apply for asylum, but the U.S. didn’t recognize the oppression of the Guatemalan military and so asylum was denied.  Still she was here.  Yes, they were poor and illegal refugees.  Yes, they lived in what many felt was a dangerous part of town.  But she told me she was okay; her family was safe so far, and thank God, while finding work was difficult, they had enough to eat, enough to get by.

I saw Maria a lot at first and her love and commitment to improving the lives of those around her, even in the United States, was an inspiration to me.  But there came a day when I stopped seeing her around.  After a while I noticed that her little plot of land had fallen into ruins.  At first when I asked about her all I got were anxious looks.  But finally in answer to my persistent questioning, one of the other women came forward.  She told me that one day while Maria was working in the garden, Miguel, her four year old, had run into the street to get his ball and had been hit by a car.  Maria was not fluent in English and she did not have a car, but she managed to get Miguel to the hospital.  The hospital did save Miguel, but they had felt it necessary to call immigration as well which had promptly picked her up and sent her back to Guatemala, leaving her four and six year old children here because they had been born here, without parents, without family.  I never found out for sure what happened to Maria, but I was told she disappeared soon after her return to Guatemala.  Unless her kids are extremely lucky, the life they face will be extremely hard. 

This story may leave you with mixed feelings.  You may feel it is an extreme story, but unfortunately, it is not.  People come here, making the often extremely dangerous and risky trip here to the United States for many reasons - all of them about survival for themselves and their children.  Who are we to decide that we are somehow more deserving of a life that is safe, that is economically sound, that has hope and a future than some other child of God on this planet?  The resident alien who resides among you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the immigrant as yourself, for you too were immigrants in this land.”

Many of my children’s friends are immigrants or the children of immigrants.  While many of these have been the top students in my kids’ classes, the fear for their families has caused some of their grades to plummet.  The school district has also reported that many children of immigrants have dropped out of extra curricular activities because of that fear.  My daughter’s best friend was born in this country, but her parents were not. At one point when I went to pick Youngest up at her house, her friend's mother met me at the door in tears, “Why do all white people hate us?” She demanded. “we are not all bad!  We work hard, we pay taxes, we never do anything wrong!” For all my assurances, she was not convinced that we did not all feel this way.

Still many cling to stereotypes that tell us they are “other” and not as good somehow.  Because we are afraid.

Our call is so simple.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  It is not an easy call.  It is not easy to step outside of our fear of the unknown, our fear of the “other”.  It is not easy to remember that this is God’s land, not ours.  It is not easy to remember that we too were foreigners in this land.  But it is simple.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  It's that clear.  It's that simple.  Get to know your neighbors, get to know those who are different from you.  Talk to those whom you fear.  Learn to love them for the people they are.  Amen.

In Through the Gate

Acts 2:42-47

John 10:1-10

In today’s passage from John, Jesus describes himself as the gate, the gate by which we, as sheep “come in and go out and find pasture”.  Later in John, Jesus says he is “the way, the truth and the life”.  These passages have a depth of meaning for each of us.  Christ is both the way to life (the gate) and Christ leads the way to life (the good shepherd).  One commentator said, “Both of these are intensely relational, which means that these statements tell us who Jesus is in relationship to those who follow him.  Who Jesus is and who the community around him are – these two things are inextricably linked.” 

Jesus calls us to be in relationship with him, and he calls us to follow him, to recognize that his is the way.  We do that by following in the way. 

What does it mean, then, to follow Jesus as the way and in the way?  What does it mean to you that Jesus is the way?  Following Jesus means knowing what he did and how he behaved.  So what are some of the things that Jesus did and things that strike you as important about how he behaved?

He fed the hungry, he visited the sick and imprisoned, he healed the sick, he welcomed the stranger and the outcast.  And when we follow Jesus, these are all important things for us to do.  As the passage in Acts describes the disciples after Jesus’ death saying, “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers…many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles,” so, too, we are called to do the same.  In Matthew 25 we are told that “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me,” and so we are reminded to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe those without and visit those in need.  In seeing Jesus as the way, we are called to walk this way and this path in care for others.  As we read in passages such as James 2:14-26, “as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.”  We are called to enact our faith in concrete loving and caring ways.

But, we also have to look towards Jesus as the way by looking at all of what Jesus did and there are other parts to Jesus besides his caring for those around him.  He spent forty days in the wilderness by himself.   He fasted, he went away to pray by himself and with his disciples.  He renewed himself by going apart and through prayer, most of all.

We, too, are called to find that balance in our Christian lives and in our Christian faith.  Yes, we are called in the way of Jesus to do as he did in caring for God’s people.  But that must be grounded and supported.  As Glenna Beauchamp wrote in an article from  These Days: Daily Devotions for Living by Faith, “Our faith, like every part of our lives, needs balance.  If I focus only on nurturing my spiritual life, my faith will become disconnected from Jesus’ prayer to bring God’s kingdom on earth.  If I focus only on helping others, I will suffer compassion fatigue.  The prophet Micah sums it up well:  ‘to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.’  Here is the balance we need to live faithfully as God’s people.”

Father Chacour, the archbishop of Galilee and Jerusalem puts it another way, “Vision without action is just a daydream, but action without vision is a nightmare.”  We are called to start with a relationship, our relationship with God.  It is from that relationship then that we are given the gift of vision.  Only then, with our relationship with God supporting us, guiding us, giving us vision can we be inspired to follow Jesus as the way into loving God’s people through the concrete actions of feeding, healing, comforting, visiting and praying with and for one another.

Balance.  I’m reminded of a story: One day, a professor entered the classroom and asked the students to prepare for a surprise test.  They all waited anxiously at their desks for the test to begin.  The professor handed out the exams with the text facing down as usual.  Once he handed them out, he asked the students to turn over the paper.  To everyone’s surprise, there were no questions – just a black dot at the center of the white sheet of paper.

The professor, seeing the expression on everyone’s faces, told them the following:    “I want you to write about what you see there.”  The students, confused, got started on the inexplicable task.  At the end of the class, the professor took all the exams and started reading each one out loud in front of all the students.  All of them, without exception, defined the black dot, trying to explain its position in the center of the sheet.

After all had been read, the classroom was silent, and the professor started to explain.  “I’m not going to grade you on this, I just wanted to give you something to think about.  No one wrote about the white sheet of paper.  Everyone focused on the black dot – the same thing happens in our lives.  We have a white piece of paper to observe and enjoy, while we always focus on the dark spots.” In the story, he goes on to explain that we do this with the bad and good things that happen in our lives.  We are surrounded by good but we tend to focus on the negative little dots that show up.  But for me, this is also a good illustration of other ways in which we fail to seek and find balance, especially in our faith.  Jesus calls us to follow, he is the way, the gate, the shepherd – all of it showing us how to be in this life.  As I’ve said before and as I will say again and again, everything God calls us to do we are asked to do because God loves us, wants wholeness for us.  But we lose balance.  We focus on our own needs and forget about others. We feel that just being ‘nice’ is what it’s about and forget that Jesus wasn’t always nice, instead he was just and confronted oppression. Or we focus on service to others, but forget to pray. Or we focus on coming to church and serving on committees, but forget about making time for the relationship that we are called to have with God. We focus on whatever our eyes travel to first, the black dots in the middle of the paper and forget about the white, the presence of God all the time, every time, with every breath we take. We forget about building the relationship with that whiteness that makes up most of our lives.

It is the putting together of all of these things that make us people on the way, people following Jesus, people striving to be who God calls us to be.  Like with music, which is putting all the notes together along with rests, spaces, silences: it is working together with all the pieces, not just one note, that makes the music, so too our lives need that balance to be whole.

I came across a poem that I’d like to share with you this morning:

YOU ASK WHY I FOLLOW THIS JESUS?

You ask why I follow this Jesus?

Why I love Him the way I do?

When the world's turned away from His teachings

And the people who serve Him are few.

It's not the rewards I'm after

Or gifts that I hope to receive

It's the Presence that calls for commitment

It's the Spirit I trust and believe.

The Lord doesn't shelter His faithful

Or spare them all suffering and pain,

Like everyone else I have burdens,

And walk through my share of rain.

Yet He gives me a plan and a purpose,

And that joy only Christians have known,

I never know what comes tomorrow,

But I do know I'm never alone.

It's the love always there when you need it;

It's the words that redeem and inspire,

It's the longing to ever be with Him

That burns in my heart like a fire.

So you ask why I love my Lord Jesus?

Well, friend, that's so easy to see,

But the one thing that fills me with wonder is

Why Jesus loves someone like me.

Yes, we follow in the way that is Jesus by doing what he did, lifting up our arms and using them to serve God by serving God’s people.  But we must begin by having a ground to stand upon.  And that ground is our relationship with God, a relationship that needs to begin with time together, with conversation or prayer, with faith.  Amen.