Pentecost 2A

My sermon from yesterday.

Matthew 9:9-13

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, "Follow me." And Matthew got up and followed Jesus.

And as Jesus sat at dinner in the house – Matthew's house – many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples.

When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"

But when Jesus heard this, he said, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy; not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners."

Here in the global North, we're one week into the halcyon days of summer, with sunny days, star-spangled nights, picnics, barbecues, music on the half shell, and feeling all of our dreams may come true, after all.

At the same time, the church's year of grace has opened wide the six month long season when we count Sundays after the Feast of Pentecost, a time of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost when the Church really comes into its own as we discern God's call and claim on our lives, and what ministries God may be calling us to respond to. Green is the liturgical color for these months, as we act in ways that help the world around us bloom and flourish.

This is the year of Matthew's gospel; today's gospel reading is Jesus' call to Matthew and Matthew's response. Although none of the earliest gospel manuscripts indicate an author, a community gathered around this disciple Matthew probably wrote this gospel.

As we just heard, Jesus notices Matthew at his workplace. Matthew collected taxes, tariffs, and tolls in the employ of the occupying Roman government. People generally hated tax collectors because – among other abuses – they added on their own charges to the amount required to return to Rome.

The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all contain this story. And, Mark and Luke tell us this tax collector's name was Levi, which means he was from the priestly tribe of Levites that ministered at the Jerusalem Temple. In other words, his life had fallen off the rails and he was in a profession opposed to his origins.

Today's reading from Matthew's gospel only mentions a house, but Luke and Mark tell us it was Matthew's house where Matthew/Levi made an extravagant banquet. Although we don't know the elapsed time between Jesus' invitation and Matthew's response, Matthew doubtless already knew a lot about Jesus. As part of his response to Jesus' invitation to follow him, Matthew offered an amazing feast to all comers, as if he already knew plentiful food was one of the signs of the presence of God's reign on earth.

Luke tells us everyone reclined at table. In that culture, reclining for a meal was a sign of shalom, of having "enough," no longer needing to scratch for life or be beholden to empire. Reclining at table meant everyone was an equal among equals.

* * *
You know about the ultra-religious pharisees with their self-righteous attitudes, and how they separated themselves from everyone else to avoid contamination. Jesus references "sacrifice" of the ceremonial law that did nothing to connect anyone to God, nothing to benefit anyone anywhere. Jesus reminds us he wants mercy.

Long ago in a previous life I knew a young woman I'll call Cheryl, because her name was Cheryl. Life dumped a lot on her from outside, and she made some decisions that had negative outcomes. It felt as if everyone was giving her unhelpful suggestions. When a new dog came into Cheryl's life and she decided to adopt him, she told me she asked herself what trait or characteristic did people need most? Her answer was mercy, so she named her new canine companion Mercy.

Is God able to name and call each of us Mercy and Merciful?

* * *
Originally for this start of the season of Pentecost when we discern and engage ministries that help the world bloom and flourish, I considered asking all of us to divide our lives into our immediate home, workplace, neighborhood; this parish and any other church communities where you're involved; and the larger, greater world out there. I thought I'd ask each of us what God is calling us to do in each of those arenas—smaller, manageable acts of service. That still feels like a good idea, but it's clear to me that the past couple of months, last Sunday's guest from Global Refuge, the needs of the city and county of Los Angeles and beyond, and today's immigration focused retreat after worship all point us to a continued emphasis on immigration and immigrants.

Last week Karla from Global Refuge placed immigration in the context of the Pentecost of our baptism! Scripture tells us we all are strangers and sojourners everywhere we go, and God travels with us.

I don't have an answer or a suggestion for ways to engage and minister around immigration during the next few months. We know it takes prayer, thought, listening, time, and conversations to discern where God is leading us and the nature of our responses.

* * *
Again today Jesus invites everyone to the table of grace for a foretaste of the feast to come when…

…many will come come from the east and the west, the north and the south, and recline at table in the Kingdom of Heaven. Luke 13:29

Amen? Amen!

Our song of the day is "We Come to the Hungry Feast"

Pentecost 3B :: Good News

Mark 3:16-35

¹⁶ So Jesus appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter), ¹⁷ James son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder), ¹⁸ and Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Cananaean, ¹⁹ and Judas Iscariot, who handed him over.

²⁰ Then he went home, and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. ²¹ When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, "He has gone out of his mind." ²² And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, "He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons."

²³ And he called them to him and spoke to them in parables, "How can Satan cast out Satan? ²⁴ If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. ²⁵ And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. ²⁶ And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. ²⁷ But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.

²⁸ "Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter, ²⁹ but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin"— ³⁰ for they had said, "He has an unclean spirit."

³¹ Then his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. ³² A crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers are outside asking for you." ³³ And he replied, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" ³⁴ And looking at those who sat around him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! ³⁵ Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother."

* * *
What's good news to you?
What's good news to you?

We're in Mark's gospel year!

Mark has been our main gospel since a new year of grace began on the first Sunday of Advent. During the Great Fifty Days of Easter, we heard from John's gospel; now we're back in Mark as we start the six month long season of the Spirit. This is the green and growing season of Pentecost, when the church comes into its own with the Acts of the twenty-first century apostles. That's us!

First, Mark opens with "the beginning of the Good News, the gospel, of Jesus Christ, Son of God."

What's good news to you?

• Mark is the earliest gospel and the shortest one. It has no birth account. No genealogy. No resurrection in the earliest sources.

• Mark includes a lot of miracles, healings, and exorcisms.

• Mark is about the end of the world as we've known it!

• In Mark's gospel, Jesus' journey to Jerusalem and the cross is incessant and focused. For Mark, his passion, cross, and death by imperial powers that be provides the best understanding of Jesus of Nazareth's purpose and identity.

• Our baptism into Jesus death and resurrection provides the best understanding of the church's mission and identity.

• We are the people who continue this written-down "beginning of the Good News."

What's good news to you?

* * *
According to the evangelist Mark, we don't find God in the Jerusalem Temple. God is not far away and unreachable. We cannot find God in any religious, social, cultural, political, or economic establishment.

Mark tells us we find God:

• in the cross
• in the wilderness
• outside the city limits
• in the stranger
• in the unexpected

Mark's Jesus brings the end of the world as we've known it.
Mark brings us the great good news of the Reign of Life.

* * *
Where are we now?

Two weeks ago on the Day of Pentecost and the fiftieth day of Easter we celebrated the Holy Spirit symbolized with wind and fire. We anticipated full diversity and inclusion. The first Christian Pentecost happened when some early Jesus followers were in Jerusalem for the Jewish Pentecost, the annual celebration of God giving the ten words of the Sinai covenant through Moses. The commandments that shape our life together. And they were in Jerusalem to celebrate the wheat harvest that fed and sustained their physical lives.

The fiftieth day of Easter, the Festival of the Spirit gets us ready for the green and growing season of the church…

…baptized into the HS of Pentecost, we follow Jesus into the world abounding with the good news of the end of the dysfunctional parts of the world

We follow Jesus to the edges, the margins, the wild places, and we continue to minister right here in this space, in our homes, in our workplaces, in this neighborhood. We help create the end of the world as everyone has known it.

* * *
Back to today's reading. We're near the start of Jesus' public ministry and we hear,

"THEN" Jesus went home. Then? After what?

• after John's baptism by John in the Jordan River
• after forty days in the wilderness–an even more remote location than the Jordan
• after teachings and miracles
• after interactions with powers that be

Most important for us, then Jesus went home "AFTER" he called disciples and sent them out.

Today's cast of characters that we know about includes:
• A packed crowd
• Jesus' family of origin
• Religious leaders from Jerusalem

all of these people followed disruptive provocative Jesus home to Nazareth!

We could write a book about Jesus and the people who crowded him
About Jesus and his biological family in this reading and elsewhere


People have written books about the religious leaders' reaction to Jesus' home invasion robbery parable that we heard today.

Because tying up and immobilizing dysfunctional aspects of economic, religious, political, educational institutions is central to Jesus' ministry. Those actions are especially vital to the cross of Good Friday and the empty grave of Easter. They helped create the end of the world as everyone had known it and expected it to continue? Were Jesus' actions blasphemy against the HS? Some onlookers thought so.

* * *
But we're at the start of the second half of the church's year of grace, so let's consider Jesus' words and actions. He wondered:

33 Who are my mother and my brothers?
34 Looking at those around him he said, "here are my mother and my brothers."
35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.

Did you noticed Jesus never excludes his biological family?

"Church as family" sometimes doesn't sit well, especially given traits of some biological and adoptive families. But we are Jesus' family, joined to him and to each other in our second birth by water and word; filled with the HS in baptism.

Mark's gospel opens by announcing the beginning of the good news

What's good news to you?

• a new family arrangement?
• a new family?

How about the end of the bad, dysfunctional parts of our economic, religious, political, educational systems?

Something different from the disappointments of your last half dozen years?

What's good news to you?

Those early Jesus people gathered on the Jewish Pentecost. Pentecost celebrated the ten words or commands of the Sinai Covenant that still bind us to our God and to one another and charge us:

• to do justice
• to act with mercy
• to love God by loving our neighbors

Whether the neighbor is human, plant, animal, or water. We're still caring for the LA River, right?

To love the immigrant and the refugee and that annoying person at work

When we love creation, the ground, the waters, the cities and the outskirts, a bountiful harvest will help feed us and our neighbors.

* * *

What's good news to you?

Today Jesus invites us to the table of grace for the good news of a taste of heaven on earth.

In the Lord's Supper

• all are forgiven
• all is healed

This Holy Communion, this Eucharist is good news.

Amen? Amen!

To God alone be glory.
Amen.

Pentecost 4B Creation Care

Sometimes people want to hear what they already know.

Scriptures

• Ezekiel 47:9

Wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish once these waters reach there. It will become fresh, and everything will live where the river goes.

• Ezekiel 47:12

On the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing.

• 2 Corinthians 5:17

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, everything has become new!

• Mark 4:26-34

²⁶ Jesus also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground ²⁷ and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. ²⁸ The earth produces of itself first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. ²⁹ But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle because the harvest has come."

³⁰ He also said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? ³¹ It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, ³² yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."

³³ With many such parables Jesus spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it; ³⁴ he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

Creation Care Outline

Where are we now in the church's year of grace? One month ago we celebrated the Day of Pentecost, the fiftieth day of Easter. We recollected when a large group of Jesus' first followers gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish Pentecost. They remembered and affirmed God giving the Ten Words or Commandments through Moses, that way of obedience you could call the Working Papers for our lives together. And they celebrated the wheat harvest, God's gift from the ground that sustains our bodies every day.

Here in the church we recently started the six month long green and growing season of Pentecost; during this stretch of time we emphasize all creation as God's planting,. You know the story of God and God's people and the land from Genesis through Revelation.

Today's scriptures offer agricultural images. We hear from the prophet Ezekiel, and we hear two parables from Mark's gospel: scattered seeds and the famous mustard seed! The gospels of Luke and Matthew also include the mustard seed parable, so that may mean it's especially important.

A month ago we celebrated the Christian Day of Pentecost, or the fiftieth day of Easter. Christians have been celebrating Easter for two thousand years! Our formal theology tells us Jesus Christ's death and resurrection ended endless cycles of death, violence, and everything contrary to God's intention, but we look around and still see war, climate chaos, sorrow, sickness, death—none of that is over and done with yet.

Even though Jesus Christ has died, is risen from the grave, and ascended to reign from the right hand of God, even though we identify as Easter people… what's going on?

Jesus' original followers wondered, too.

After Jesus' resurrection and before his Ascension, in Luke's book of the Acts of the Apostles, his friends and followers asked if now he finally would "restore the kingdom" to the world. Jesus informed them the question was wrong. He told them to stay and wait right there in Jerusalem. and they would be his witnesses, they would testify to new life. In the power of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost, they would be Jesus' presence in the world.

In Romans 8:19-21 the Apostle Paul tells us all creation waits, hopes, and longs to discover us as God's authentic offspring, as people who embody, reflect, and act in God's image to help redeem all creation. Like Jesus!

The agricultural parables in the Good News of Jesus Christ, Son of God, according to Mark, align well with today's song, "God, Whose Farm Is All Creation." All creation. Not only prairie and heartland. But also crowded, overbuilt cities and suburbs. Remote rural wide spots in the road. Deserts. All creation is God's garden. God's land. God's farm.

God whose farm is all Creation,
take the gratitude we give,
take the finest of our harvest,
crops we grow that all may live.

Take our ploughing, seeding, reaping,
hopes and fears of sun and rain,
all our thinking, planning, waiting,
ripening into fruit and grain.

All our labor, all our watching,
all our calendar of care,
in these crops of your creation,
take, O God; they are our prayer.

Author: John Arlott

Romans reminds us creation hopes to discover that we'll treat oceans, wetlands, savannas, and cities in ways that help them heal. Creation watches us and waits for us to become good caretakers of waterways, trees, animals, insects. Of our own backyards and window boxes!

The new creation began 2000 years ago. That eighth day of the week, was the first day of a new reality. The new creation is not finished. The old creation still waits and hopes for us to be green people.

What's a biblical creation care model? We need to learn about plants, about seeds and soils, climates and seasons. It's also a great idea to act locally!

In the bible's promised land we see:

Crops watered by cascades down mountains into valleys and not by water shipped thousands of miles Gardens warmed by the great light of the sun and not by plugged in grids

Scripture shows us act locally. You know some of the ways:

• farmers markets
• street vendors
• community gardens
• backyard plots
• kitchen windowsill herb gardens
• composts

School and community gardens can help cancel food deserts
Besides, living local adds savor and flavor
Although we lose some long term keeper food
When that happens?!
Share the extras!
Trust the mystery!

In Ezekiel we hear about rivers flowing from the temple and healing everything the waters touch. Because everything those waters reach becomes healthy and well, the name of the city then becomes The Lord Is Here.

Today Jesus invites us to his table of grace. This eucharistic festival of thanksgiving is a taste, a token, a sign, a promise of creation completely redeemed.

Christ is raised and dies no more.
By water and the word
we share his death
his Eastered life

The new creation comes to life and grows
Everywhere we go!
Alleluia.
Amen!

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

Five Minute Friday :: Capacity

O Lord, I love the house
in which you dwell,
and the place where your glory
abides! Psalm 26:8

• Five Minute Friday :: Capacity Linkup

David wanted to build a house for God, but God replied he always had "moved around in the tent of meeting" and never ever had asked anyone for a cedar house.

It wasn't a brand new theological concern, but the famous meeting of Reformers Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli at Marburg centered on the Lord's Supper as they debated whether the finite (bread, fruit of the vine) had the capacity to contain the infinite. They had that debate even though Jesus had announced, "this is my body!" And even though God's incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth already answered that question! To paraphrase the Heidelberg Catechism, we move from Nativity with the mystery of Spirit in flesh to Ascension, with the mystery of flesh in Spirit.

God eventually got that house of cedar and stone, yet neither the first nor the second Jerusalem Temple had the capacity to contain God. Its mini-model of the universe was a pathetic attempt to mimic the reality of the Creator God whose place of being and acting always had been the entire panorama of creation… but "contain" the free and elusive God?!

Finally, on the fiftieth day of Easter, the day of Pentecost, the Spirit of Life filled the world. Every crack and corner and crevice. Every person.

O Lord, I love the house
in which you dwell,
and the place where your glory
abides! Psalm 26:8

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, which you have received from God? Now you belong to God. You are not your own.
1 Corinthians 6:9

God had moved around, peregrinated, free ranged in the tabernacle. Now we are the house in which Divinity dwells, the place where God's glory abides. God moves around everywhere in the people of God called "Christian." The Christ of God always is incarnate, enfleshed, embodied. And now in us!

What does that say about the capacity of the human heart? The mercy of each life? The welcome we offer strangers and outcasts, the sojourner and the lonely? We are the house where God lives. God's glory fills us. What does that say about God's claim and call on us as individuals? As community?

O enter, Lord, Thy temple,
Be Thou my spirit's Guest,
Who gavest me, the earth-born,
A second birth more blest!
Thou in the Godhead, Lord,
Though here to dwell Thou deignest,
Forever equal reignest,
Art equally adored.

So you can sing all thirteen stanzas just as Paul Gerhardt wrote them (1653) and Catherine Winkworth translated them (1863):

• O Enter, Lord, Thy Temple

Tune: Zeuch ein zu deinen Toren, Johann Crüger, 1653
German text: Paul Gerhardt, 1653
Translation: Catherine Winkworth, 1863, alt.

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Five Minute Friday :: Spark

A fire burns out of control along a ridge
during the California wildfires in Rough and Ready,
California, October 12, 2017.
California National Guard photo

• Five Minute Friday :: Spark Linkup

Related to fire and related to sparks, I originally wrote most of this about desert spirit's fire! for the worship bulletin I designed for the Day of Pentecost a while ago.

Since the dawn of creation, God's Spirit has been active throughout the history of planet earth. Humans once intended for God to reside in the Jerusalem Temple, but that space was too limited and confining. Forty days after the first Day of Resurrection, on the Day of Pentecost the indwelling Spirit of Life came to us with spectacular signs of fire and wind. Now God's Holy Spirit the Temple could not contain lives in each of us and has free range in the Church.

This is wildfire country. Southern California fire season now is year round. You probably know a spark sometimes grows into a multi-acre fire. The experts have gotten really skilled at uncovering and discovering the source of an initial spark that's resulted in devastatingly destructive conflagrations. I've lost track of how many named fires there typically are at any time in these here parts.

In summer 2002 as I explored a few dozen possible names for this blog, from the start I suspected desert would be a winner; fire was likely, too. I've written about there being no scriptural narrative or saga about the creation of fire, yet the Holy Spirit in an individual Christian's life and in the life of a Christian community often functions in ways similar to how fire works in nature and in industry.

This is fire country. In writing and teaching theology, I often mention how prescribed or controlled burns long have served to maintain overall forest health and to deter larger, more destructive blazes that otherwise would happen. You easily can make analogies to your own situation!

This is fire country. Finding plants growing from seeds that wouldn't have sprouted unless fire first seared them always moves and amazes me.

It starts with a spark.

The Holy Spirit often nudges us to do something, whether it's visiting a friend, beginning a new spiritual practice, participating in a particular ministry, doing something life-enhancing for friends or family. Those times usually start with only a small spark from the Spirit, because a wind-driven fire would overwhelm us.

"Sparks from the Spirit of Life" would make good journaling. Sometimes those sparks seem to come unbidden from nowhere. Many times we receive an inspired spark from a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger. What's your most recent experience?

# # #

Five Minute Friday :: Persevere

• Five Minute Friday :: Persevere Linkup

Especially in the southern states of the USA, people like to encourage one another to "keep on keepin' on." It doesn't take a regional folk saying to know you won't accomplish much of anything unless you persevere with your dreams, your ideals, your plans, your vision of a future.

This week on my scripture blog I'll be reflecting on a passage from the Acts of the Apostles. As Luke's Volume II opens, Jesus is concluding his post-resurrection ministry. He tells the disciples to wait in Jerusalem because there they will receive God's promised Holy Spirit to such a degree they'll be baptized (immersed) in the life of the Spirit.

Possibly still awaiting and hoping for a military or a royal savior, they ask Jesus if now he will restore "the kingdom" to Israel. Jesus replies the question is wrong because they will receive the power of the Holy Spirit so then they will witness in word and deed "to the ends of the earth" and help establish the reign of heaven on earth that Jesus began. Because the Spirit will indwell them, they'll be able to persevere and accomplish everything God (in the HS, of course) calls them to.

Born of Spirit, Water, and Word, the nascent church made sure everyone had enough, no one lacked essentials. We hear about members constantly being added as a result of dynamic, inviting preaching and caring community, yet the earliest members had followed an itinerant rabbi whose teaching and very existence got him crucified by the occupying Roman imperial government.

Their leader was dead, yet they met Jesus of Nazareth as the very alive Christ of God three days after Rome killed him; the disciples continued to interact with him until his ascension to sovereignty and power "at God's right hand," as the ecumenical creeds proclaim. The disciples kept on keeping on persevering; they kept on persevering on order for God's dreams, plans, ideals, God's visions of a free, just, compassionate, and inclusive future for planet earth would happen.

An Acts scholar could tell us how much elapsed time the book chronicles, but we're continuing to persevere and write the Acts of the contemporary people of God in Jesus Christ. We're keeping on as we persevere in our families, our schools, our neighborhoods, our churches. Some of us have been or still serve in an elected or appointed role in local, county, provincial, or state government. We must persevere in order to resist and overcome those forces that push against God's call to justice, righteousness, and overall well-being.

Because the Holy Spirit dwells in us, we are able to persevere and accomplish what God calls us to. We persevere together in order to help enact God's common wealth of well being and shalom for all creation. And sometimes we even journal about it or blog about it!

# # #

May and Spring 2024

• Yellow Hibiscus
• Eat well. Be well. from the Santa Monica eatery where we enjoyed lunch on Memorial Day
• Bright flowers in the sun


• March 2024 Lent to Easter

• April 2024 Overview

• City Paradise / Urban Wilderness Lectionary Blog for May


• As my April summary explained, "since mid-December I've been doing a Gap Half Year that may – or may not – keep on keepin' on a little longer; I'll eventually catch up on my lectionary blog." It started serendipitously with three months in the high desert; I was back in town for Holy Week and Easter at Saint John's Gardena.

• Bright posies around town

• Barbara's birthday bash was on the day of Pentecost!

• The Day of Pentecost 2024 in West Los Angeles

• Memorial Day Outing with a friend from Edmonton to Santa Monica—Third Avenue Promenade and beach boardwalk

Five Minute Friday :: Stir

• Five Minute Friday :: Stir Linkup

Therefore [because of the faithfulness of Timothy's mother Eunice and grandmother Lois] I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God has not given us a spirit of apprehension, but of power and of love and of clear understanding.

2 Timothy 1:6-7

Word study this time!

Stir up God's gift(s) that are inside us. Exactly like when we stir dying embers and the entire fire reignites, getting our talents and abilities out where people can notice and know them, where we can use them, literally stirs them up and helps them blossom and bloom. Like the wind and the fire of Pentecost, "stirred up" gifts spread far to benefit the world. I'll take stir further! Stirring cooking or baking ingredients together combines them to create yummy results no one ever could get from only a single ingredient. Using our gifts and talents together…

I love that the Greek words for grace and joy are very similar – probably from the same root. Charisma, the word for gift in this scripture literally comes from "charis" or grace. Doesn't using our gifts of grace result in joy all around for everyone?

The apostle Paul counsels his ministry sidekick Timothy to build on the testimony in words and action of his grandmother and his mother. You probably know scripture constantly tells us "do not fear." Although some translations of these verses read "God has not given us a spirit of fear;" rather than phobos that gives us the too familiar English phobia and phobic, the Greek here is closer to apprehension, uneasiness, or "timidity" several translations offer.

In Romans 8:16 Paul announces the Holy Spirit resonates with our human spirit to let us know we are God's offspring. Given the reality of God's own Spirit indwelling us, is it any surprise that our power is the dynamite word scripture often uses for God's own power?

One more! Our spirit of love is God's world-embracing unconditional agape! Do we believe it, can we rock it? Maybe so, with clarity, understanding and self-possession.

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May & Spring 2020

• It's the end of another meteorological season! Time to link to Emily Freeman – What I learned this spring. It's my third monthly roundup blog in the current global season of COVID-19. And? Today, the Fiftieth Day of Easter that's the Day of Pentecost is the third day of the #LARiots2020, second day so far of a stay at home curfew for all but essential workers. National Guard has been deployed: 500 troops to the city; 500 to the county. Heartbreaking.

• March 2020 Highlights



• By mid-March #SaferAtHome and #StaySafeStayHome were in place, so Green Team transformed the long-planned actual World Water Day into a virtual event. "When life gives you lemons make lemonade." See you next year by the river?!

• April 2020 :: Lockdown

• I didn't picture either Easter Sunday or Earth Day 50 in my April summary blog! However, I gave both events a solid paragraph and I'd already blogged both days. If I'd been able to get out in the world to celebrate, both festivals would have included many many pictures.

• Easter 4 Sunday School notes – "Teaching and Fellowship Breaking of Bread and Awe" Acts 2:42-43

• Preparing detailed lessons to email to my mostly-lectionary [mostly] adult Sunday School class has become major since the world started #ShelterInPlace; partly for lack of outings and other activities around town, partly because they've been coming out really well, I'm linking to all 5 reflections for May and adding illustrations. Have I said this before? The notes I used to blog (and will again) after interactive Sunday morning discussions were more interesting and dynamic, but for people who weren't there that Sunday, these newfangled lessons may be easier to follow.



• Every year includes a Cinco de Mayo; no other has happened during a year like this. Here's one of my all-time favorite designs from a previous year in Previous City.

• Easter 5 Sunday School notes – "Chosen Royal Holy God's Own People" 1 Peter 2:9





• When physical distancing got serious, my nearby Subway franchise stopped offering trays and baskets to customers, then became takeaway only, then closed down completely for a few weeks. A couple weeks ago it opened again for takeaway. With restaurants now permitted limited indoor dining, I wonder if they'll reopen to eat-in, sit-down?

• Easter 6 Sunday School notes – "You will get your quilt" John 14:16



• Ascension / Easter 7A Sunday School notes – no illustration for this one.

• Day of Pentecost Sunday School notes

   



• In January I declared 2020 my year of living local. So far it has meant no amazon purchases, more fruits and veggies grown nearby, community owned restaurants and other retail outlets. #SaferAtHome has helped make life extremely local… families are doing better at being together; board game sales have increased a lot!

Porch Story • May • Spring 2018 • Days of Grace

• For her Porch Story, our host Kristin remembers her favorite month with May Days!

• And I'm participating in Emily P. Freeman's end of season linkup.

• Originally I picked up on Emily Freeman's monthly (now quarterly) What I Learned in Name of Month to archive my activities. Though I almost never indicated ever having learned anything, I still kept the What I Learned in tag. This blog originally began in 2002 when starting a blog was the thing to do in much the same way starting a blog has become the thing to do in 2018. Due to many factors, even my Life Stuff label posts mostly have been little more than monologues with myself. Howsomeever—despite my life starting to rebound a decade ago and then unraveling again, I've learned all hours, days, months, years, and more are times of grace; I'll blog and link here to my Green Faith Team Talk about bountiful gifts as soon as I have an illustration to accompany it.

• The two other months of spring 2018:

• Porch Stories :: March 2018 So Far

• Porch Stories :: April 2018

• A new moon flower/datura or two every day or so


• On my way to Green Faith Meeting at judicatory offices in Glendale, I couldn't help but notice these super-bright bougainvillea.


• Undersea – one of many fun one utility boxes in Glendale.


• Adventures In Writing Camp has divisions for kids in first grade, elementary school and ready to enter middle school


• "The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of the Lord stands forever." Isaiah 40:8

• Bulletin board banner at the school that meets in same building as judicatory offices
• Friday 18 May was National Pizza Party Day, so we had pizza for lunch!





• A spontaneous trip to Theodore Payne nursery.



• Day of Pentecost design: Alleluia! the Spirit of Life Fills the World! Alleluia, Alleluia!"



• Peaches on the Day of Pentecost.