The Requiem Mass for Tom Stickney 1919-2019

Tom & Ruth

July 21, 2019

+ I am very honored to be here, to help commemorate and give thanks for the life of  Tom Stickney and to commend this wonderful man to God.

I am very fortunate to say that I was Tom’s priest, and I would also say a friend.

This was a man who lived a good and long life.

As some of you might not know, tomorrow would have been Tom’s 100^th birthday.

So, today, we are truly celebrating Tom and that century-long life.

Few of us can truly comprehend the full magnitude of 100 years.

100 years is something few of us here today will ever achieve.

But as we ponder it, as we ponder 100 years, we have it admit: it’s truly amazing.

All the minutes, and hours and days and weeks and months that make up 100 years is almost overwhelming.

And the experience—the life—that was lived in all of that time is something we should celebrate. 

There will be many stories told about Tom Stickney and his long life.

Many wonderful stories.

And his presence will certainly stay with us as long as we share those stories.

I have no doubt that Tom is with us here this afternoon, celebrating this long and wonderful life with us.  

He is celebrating his 100 years of life with us.

I am of the firm belief that what separates us who are alive and breathing here on earth from those who are now in the so-called “nearer presence of God” is actually a very thin division.

So, yes, right now, I think we can feel that that separation between us here and those who have passed on is, in this moment, a very thin one.

And because of that belief, I take a certain comfort in the fact Tom is close to us this afternoon. 

He is here, in our midst, celebrating his life with us.

And we should truly celebrate his life.

It was a good life.

It was a life full of meaning and purpose.

And many of us were touched by it in wonderful ways.

I certainly was.

I knew Tom and Ruth for many years as their priest.

I remember their strong and gentle presence.

I remember their kindness and their goodness.

I remember their care and their concern for others.

St. Stephen’s was an important place in their lives.

This was their church home.

And so it is appropriate that the new bell tower that we will be getting within the next few months will be dedicated in memory of Toma dn Ruth.

At the end of this service, in fact, we will toll our new bell 10 times.

That tolling with be for each decade of Tom’s life.

When someone has been around for 100 years, and then they are no longer with us, we are going to feel that loss.

There will be a huge gap in the world and in our lives.

After all, they have been a part of this world, when the world was very different than it is right now.

And, although it is no doubt hard to face the fact that we are distanced from him, we can take some consolation in the fact that although Tom has shed this so-called “mortal coil,” he has now entered into that loving presence of God.

There is a great image we find in the book of Revelation.

We find in the book of Revelation God saying this,

“It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.”

As difficult as it is in this moment, as difficult as it is to say goodbye to Tom, we are able to find strength in these words.

We are able to cling to the fact that, although life is unpredictable, life is beyond our control, as Tom would no doubt tell us,  life is not beyond God’s control.

God knew us and loved us at our beginning and will know and love us at our end.

For 100 years, God knew and loved Tom.

And, in this moment, that love is fulfilled.

As the poet T.S. Eliot wrote, “In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning.”

As we mourn this ending, we also take great comfort in the fact that we are also celebrating a new beginning for Tom today.

This is what we believe as Christians.

Tom, of course, was a devout Episcopalian.

What I love about being an Episcopalian is that sometimes we can’t clearly define what it is we believe.

Nor should we.

We can’t pin it down and examine it too closely.

When we do, we find it loses its meaning. 

But when I am asked, “what do Episcopalians believe?” I say, “we believe what we pray.”

We’re not big on dogma and rules.

We’re not caught up in the letter of the law or preaching a literal interpretation of the Bible.

But we are big on liturgy—on the our worship services.  

Our Book of Common Prayer in many ways defines what we believe.

And so when I’m asked “What do Episcopalians believe about life after death?” I say, “look at our Book of Common Prayer.”

Look at what it says.

And that is what we believe.

This service is a testament to what we Episcopalians believe about what happens.

This service is a testimony to what Tom no doubt believed.

Later in this service, we will all pray the same words together.

As we commend Tom to God’s loving and merciful arms, we will pray,

May he go forth from this world in the love of God who created him, in the mercy of Jesus who died for him, in the power of the Holy Spirit who receives and protects him.  May we, like Tom, come to enjoy the blessed rest of everlasting peace and the glorious company of all the saints

It is easy for us to say those words without really thinking about them.

But those are not light words.

Those are words that take on deeper meaning for us now than maybe at any other time.

For Tom, in this ending, he has a new beginning—a new and wonderful beginning that awaits all of us as well.

Where Tom is right now—in those loving, caring and able hands of his God—there is no pain or sorrow.  

There is only life there. Eternal life.

At this time of new beginning, even here at the grave, we—who are left behind—can make our song of alleluia.

Because we know that Tom and all our loved ones have been received into God’s arms of mercy, into the “blessed rest of everlasting peace.”

This is what we cling to on a day like today.

This is where we find our strength.

This what gets us through this temporary—and I do stress that it is temporary—this temporary separation from Tom.

We know that—despite the pain and the frustration, despite the sorrow we all feel—somehow, in the end, God is with us and Tom is with God and that makes all the difference.

We know that in God, what seems like an ending, is actually a wonderful and new beginning.

For Tom, sorrow and pain are no more.

In those 100 years, Tom knew much love and wonder and beauty.

He also knew pain.

He knew sorrow.

He cried probably more tears in that century than any of us can even imagine.

But in this moment, the pain, the sorrow, the tears are all over.

In our reading from Revelation we hear God’s promise that all our tears will one be wiped away for good.

For Tom, his tears have been wiped away.

Tom, in this holy moment, has gained life eternal.

And that is what awaits us as well.

We might not be able to say “Alleluia” with any real enthusiasm today.

But we can find a glimmer of light in the darkness of this day.

It is a glorious Light we find here.

Even if it is just a glimmer, it is a bright and wonderful Light.

And for that we can rejoice and be grateful.

And we can celebrate.   

6 Pentecost

July 21, 2019

Colossian 1.15-28, Luke 10.38-42

+ We should be grateful here at St. Stephen’s for many things.

But one of the things we can be truly grateful for is our artists.

And especially the artists who help make this church a beautiful church.

I know some people might appreciate a bare, white –walled church.

But most of us here at St. Stephen’s, I know, appreciate that fact that we worship with all our senses here.

 We worship with our ears—with music and bells.

We worship with sight, with the beauty of the art on our walls and in our altar and in the hangings here.

And in our icons and religious art.

And in this way, we are paying specially homage to the Eastern Orthodox roots within our church.

In Eastern Orthodoxy, icons take special place in the worship service.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, ikons are pictures which are sacred because they portray something sacred.

They are a “window,” in a sense, to the sacred, to the otherwise, “unseen.”

They often depict Jesus or Mary or the saints.

But they are seen as something much more than art.

They are seen as something much more than pictures on the wall.

They are also “mirrors.”

And that is important to remember

That term Ikon is important to us this morning because we encounter it in our reading from Pauls’ Letter to the Colossians, that we also heard this morning.

In that letter, in the original Greek,  Paul uses the word “eikon” used to describe the “image” of Christ Jesus.

Our reading this morning opens with those wonderful words,

“Jesus is the image of the invisible God…”

Image in Greek, as I said, is eikon.

But eikon is more than just an “image”.

Ikons also capture the substance of its subject.

It captures the very essence of what it represents.

For Paul, to say that Jesus is the ikon of God, for him, he is saying that Jesus is the window into the unseen God.

In fact, the way ikons are “written” (which is the word used to described how they’re made), God is very clearly represented.

But not in the most obvious way.

God is represented in the gold background of the ikon, which is the one thing you might not notice when you look at an ikon. That gold background represents the Light of God. And that light, if you notice permeates through the faces of the subjects in the ikon.

So, when we look at any ikon, it our job to see God in that ikon.

God shining through the subject whose face we gaze upon.

God, who dwells always around us and in us.

For me personally, I do need things like icons in my own spiritual life.

I need help more often than not in my prayer life.

I need images.

I need to use the senses God gave me to worship God.

All of my senses. 

I need them just the way I need incense and vestments and bells and good music and the bread and wine of the Eucharist.

These things feed me spiritually.

In them, I am actually sustained.

My vision is sustained.

My sense of smell is sustained.

My sense of touch is sustained.

My sense of taste is sustained.

My sense of hearing is sustained.

And when it all comes together, I truly feel the holy Presence of God, here in our midst.

I have shared with you many times in the past how I have truly felt the living presence of God while I have stood at this altar, celebrating Holy Communion.

I have been made aware in that holy moment that this truly is God is truly present and dwelling with us.  

The Sacred and Holy Presence of God is sometimes so very present here in our midst.

I can’t tell you how many times I have gazed deeply into an icon and truly felt God’s Presence there with me, present with a familiarity that simply blows me away.

And for those of us who are followers of Jesus, who are called to love others as we love our God, when we gaze deeply into the eyes of those we serve, there too we see this incredible Presence of God in our midst.

In other words, sometimes the ikons of God in our lives are those who live with us, those we serve, those we are called to love.  

This, I think, is what Paul is getting at in his letter.

We truly do meet the invisible God in this physical world—whether we experience that presence in the Eucharist, in the hearing of God’s Word, in ikons or the art of the church or in incense or in bells or in those we are called to serve.

For years, I used to complain—and it really was a complaint—about the fact that I was “searching for God.”

I used to love to quote the writer Carson McCullers, who once said, “writing, for me, is a search for God.”
But I have now come to the realization—and it was quite a huge realization—that I have actually found God.

I am not searching and questing after God, aimlessly or blindly searching for God in the darkness anymore.

I am not searching for God because I have truly found God.

I found God in very tangible and real ways right here.

I found God in these sensory things around me.

Certainly in our Gospel reading for today, Mary  also sees Jesus as the eikon of God.

Martha is the busybody—the lone wolf.

And Mary is the ikon-gazer.

And I think many of us have been there as well.

It’s seems most of us are sometimes are either Marthas and Marys,

But, the reality is simply that most of us are a little bit of both at times.

Yes, we are busybodies.

We are lone wolves.

But we are also contemplatives, like Mary.

There is a balance between the two.

I understand that there are times we need to be a busybodies and there are times in which we simply must slow down and quietly contemplate God.

When we recognize that Jesus is truly the image of God, we find ourselves at times longingly gazing at Jesus or quietly sitting in his Presence.

But sometimes that recognition of who Jesus is stirs us.

It lights a fire within us and compels us to go out and do the work that needs to be done.

But unlike Martha, we need to do that work without worry or distraction.

When we are in God’ presence—when we recognize that in God we have truly found what we are questing for, what we are searching for, what we are longing for—we find that worry and distraction have fallen away from us.

We don’t want anything to come between us and this marvelous revelation of God we find before us.

In that way, Mary truly has chosen the better part.

But, this all doesn’t end there.

The really important aspect of all of this is that we, too, in turn must become, like Jesus, ikons of God to this world.

In that way, the ikons truly become our mirrors.

When we gaze at an ikon we should see ourselves there, reflected there.

We should see ourselves surrounded by the Light of God.

We should see the light of God permeating us and shining through us.

We should become living, breathing ikons in this world.

Because if we don’t, we are not living into our full potential as followers of Jesus.

So, let us also, like Mary,  choose the better part.

Let us be Marys in this way.

Let us balance our lives in such a way that, yes, we work, but we do so without distraction, without worry, with being the lone wolf, without letting work be our god, getting in the way of that time to serve Jesus and be with Jesus and those Jesus sends our way.

Let us also take time to sit quietly in that Presence of God.

Let us sit quietly in the presence of God, surrounded by the beauty of our senses.

Let us be embodied ikons in our lives.

Let us open ourselves to the Light of God in our lives so that that Light will surrounded us and live within us and shine through us.

And, in that holy moment, we will know: we have chosen the better part, which will never be taken away from us.

5 Pentecost

Good Samaritan Sunday

July 14, 2019

Luke 10.25-37

+ For those of you who listen or read my sermons week in and week out, you know that my “themes” are pretty basic and consistent.  Yes, there might be variations on those “themes,” but, in their core, there is really only one main “theme” to everything I preach.

Love God. Love others. That’s pretty much it.

Which is why our Gospel reading this morning is an important reading.

No, I’m not being emphatic enough. It’s not just an important reading. It is, in my opinion, the single most important reading for us as Christians.

And, for those of you who have known for me for any period, you know how I feel about what is being said in today’s Gospel. For me, this is IT. This is the heart of our Christian faith. This is where the “rubber meets the road.”

When anyone has asked me, “What does it mean to be a Christian?” it is this scripture I direct them to.

When anyone asks me, must I do this or that to be “saved,” I direct them to this reading. This is what it is all about.

So, why do I feel this way? Well, let’s take a look this all-important reading.

We have two things going on.  First, we have this young lawyer. He comes, in all earnestness, to seek from Jesus THE answer.

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

What must I do to be saved?

This, after all, is the question we are ALL asking, isn’t it?

And, guess what? He—and all of us too—gets an answer. But, as always, Jesus flips it all around and gives it all a spin.  Jesus answers a question with a question. He asks the lawyer,

“what does the law say?”

The answer is a simple one.  And, in Jewish tradition, it is called the Shema. The Shema is heart of Jewish faith. It is so important that it is prayed twice a day, once in the morning, once at night.  Jesus himself would have prayed the Shema each morning upon awakening and again before he went to sleep at night.  It is important, because it is the heart of all faith in God.

So, what is the answer? The answer is,

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, , and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and [love] your neighbor as yourself.”

Then, Jesus says this:

“do this, and you will live.”

I repeat it.

Do this—Love God, love your neighbor—and you will live.

This is what we must do to be saved.

Now that sounds easy. But Jesus then complicates it all with a parable.  And it’s a great story.  Everyone likes this story of the Good Samaritan.  We even commemorated it in our very first stained glass window.  After all, what isn’t there to like in this story?

Well…actually…in Jesus’ day, there were people who would not have liked this story.   In Jesus’s day, this story would have been RADICAL. The part of this story that most of us miss is the fact that when Jesus told this parable to his audience, he did so with a particular scheme in mind.

The term “Good Samaritan” would have been an oxymoron for those Jews listening to Jesus that day. Samaritans were, in fact,  quite hated.  They were viewed as heretics, as defilers, as unclean.  They were seen as betrayers of the Jewish faith.

So, when Jesus tells this tale of a Good Samaritan, it no doubt rankled a few nerves in the midst of that company.

With this in mind, we do need to ask ourselves some very hard questions. Hard questions we did not think we would be asked on this Good Samaritan Sunday.   You, of course, know where I am going with this. So, here goes:

Who are the Samaritans in our understanding of this story?

For us, the story only really hits home when we replace that term “Samaritan” with the name of someone we don’t like at all. Just think about who it is in your life, in your political understanding, in your own orbit of people who you absolutely despise. Think of that person or persons or movements that simply makes you writhe with anger.

Those are your Samaritans!

It’s not hard to find the names.

Now, try to put the word “good” in front of those names.  It’s hard for a good many of us to find anything “good” in any of these people. For us, to face the fact that these people we see as morally or inherently evil could be “good.”

We—good socially-conscious Christians that we are—are also guilty sometimes of being complacent. We too find ourselves sometimes feeling quite smug about our “advanced” or “educated” ways of thinking about society and God and the Church.  And we too demonize those we don’t agree with sometimes.

I, for one, am very guilty of this It is easy for me to imagine God living in me personally, despite all the shortcomings and negative things I know about myself.  I know that, sometimes, I am a despicable person and yet, I know that God is alive in me, and that God loves me.

So, why is it so hard for me to see that God is present even in those whom I dislike, despite those things that make them so dislikeable to me? For me, this is the hard part.  

The Gospel story today shows us that we must love and serve and see God alive in even those whom we demonize—even if those same people demonize us as well.  Being a follower of Jesus means loving even those we, under any other circumstance, simply can’t stand.   And this story is all about being jarred out of our complacent way of seeing things.

It’s also easy for some of us to immediately identify ourselves with the Good Samaritan.  We, of course, would help someone stranded on the road, even when it means making ourselves vulnerable to the robbers who might be lurking nearby.  

 Right?  

But I can tell you that as I hear and read this parable, I—quite uncomfortably—find myself sometimes identifying with the priest and the Levite.  I am the one, as much as I hate to admit it, who could very easily, out of fear or because of the social structure in which I live, find myself crossing over to the other side of the road and avoiding this person. And I hate the fact that my thoughts even go there.

See, this parable of Jesus is challenging and difficult.  

But… Something changes this whole story. Something disrupts this story completely.

Love changes this whole story.  

When we truly live out that commandment of Jesus to us that we must love God and love our neighbor as ourselves, we know full-well that those social and political and personal boundaries fall to the ground. Love always defeats our dislike of someone.  Love always defeats the political boundaries that divide us.  Love always softens our hearts and our stubborn wills and allows us see the goodness and love that exists in others, even when doing so is uncomfortable and painful for us.

Now I say that hoping I don’t come across as naïve.  I know that my love of the racist will not necessarily change the racist. I know that loving the homophobe will not necessarily change the homophone.  I know that loving the Nazi and the Fascist are definitely not going to change the Nazi and the Fascist.  

Trust me, I know that loving certain politicians (whose names I will not mention) is not going to change those politicians!

But you know what?  It does change me.   It does cause me to look—as much as I hate to do so—into the eyes of that person and see something more.   It does cause me to look at the person and realize that God does love this person despite their failings and their faults—just as God loves me despite my failings and my faults.

These are the boundaries Jesus came to break down in us.   And these are the boundaries Jesus commands us to break down within ourselves.

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” the lawyer asks Jesus.  And what’s the answer?

Love is the answer.   We must love—fully and completely.

“Do this,” Jesus says, “and you will live.”

It not only about our personal relationship with Jesus.  It not about accepting Jesus as our “personal Lord and Savior.”  That’s not what saves us.  He nowhere says that is what will save us.

What will save us?  Love will save us.  Love of God.  Love of one another.  Loving ourselves. Loving what God loves.  

Love will save us.  

Love will liberate us.  

Love will free us.  

Jesus doesn’t get much clearer than that.

Because let’s face it. We are the Samaritan in this story. We are—each of us—probably despised by someone in our lives. We, to someone, represent everything they hate.

The fact is, God is not expecting us to be perfect. God worked through the Samaritan—the person who represented so much of what everyone who was hearing that story represents as wrong. If God can work through him, let me tell God can work through you and me.

We do not have to be perfect. Trust me, we’re not perfect. And we will never be perfect.  But even despite this, God’s light and love can show through us.  

So let us reflect God’s love and light. Let us live out the Shema of God—this commandment of God to love—in all aspects of our lives.  

Let us love. Let us love fully and radically and completely.

Let us love God.  

Let us love each other.

Let us love ourselves.  

Let us love all that God loves.  

Let us love our neighbor.  Who is our neighbor?   Our neighbor is not just the one who is easy to love.  Our neighbor is also the one who is hardest to love.

Love them—God, our neighbor—and yes, even ourselves.  

And you and I—we too will live, as Jesus says.  And we will live a life full of the light we have reflected in our own lives.   And that light that will never be taken from us. 

4 Pentecost

July 7, 2019

Luke 10.1-11, 16-20

+ Since I had a few days off this week, I was driving quite a bit. And, like many of you, when I drive, I think. I think a lot. And I was thinking about the fact that, for most of my entire career as a priest, I have always felt like an outsider. Outside the norm in the larger Church.

It seems my entire ministry, for the most part, has been a ministry under rebellion of some sort.

I know that might sound romantic and all. But it really isn’t.

I can say this: things are changing.  I can say that I am legitimately hopeful for our future here in the Diocese of North Dakota. I feel in my bones that a new age is about to dawn.  It’s a new era.

But…I still have to say this. I don’t really know how to be a priest in a new era. I have been THAT priest for so long—that rebel priest, that upstart priest, that priest who swam consistently against the stream.  That lone wolf priest.

It’s going to be strange and different to not be THAT priest anymore.  I’ll confess—and I am somewhat ashamed to do so—but I have gotten used to being the lone wolf. And not just me. All of us who do ministry here—all of you. All of us who do ministry here—and we are all doing ministry here at St. Stephen’s—might find ourselves susceptible to this “lone wolf” ministry.

Lone wolf ministry can be very dangerous behavior.  We really shouldn’t do ministry and be a lone wolf.  Doing ministry means doing it together.  And I know: my saying just that I am sounding kinda like a hypocrite here.

For any of you who know me and worked with me for any period of time, you know I’ve just done lone wolf behavior about many things.

Some may call it lone wolf.  I guess I always called it being independent.   Or maybe, sometimes, just impatient. Things have to get done after all.  And, when they do, you know, I’ll just do it. But, being a lone wolf is not a good thing.

In the Church it is never a good thing to be a lone wolf.  None of us can do ministry alone.  We all need to admit that we need each other to do effective ministry. And sometimes even the lone wolf admits that simple fact: I can’t do this alone.  The lone wolf sometimes has to seek help from others.

Ultimately, the lone wolf can be a bad thing for the church for another reason though.  Lone wolves can easily be led down that ugly, slippery slope of believing, at some point, that  it’s all about them. Now, I want to make clear: I never have believed that anything is about just me.  I despise that kind of thinking in myself.

For all my lone wolf tendencies, I have a pretty good support system around me—people who will very quickly tell me when they think I might be heading down that slippery egocentric slope.  And I have done the same with some of you who have done just that as well.

There is, after all, a difference, I have discovered between “lone wolf” behavior and ego-centric, it’s-all-about-me, I-don’t-need-anyone’s-help behavior.  And as you all know, I have no problem asking your advice and your opinions on anything before some of the things I’ve done as the priest of St. Stephen’s.  I might not necessarily heed those suggestions. But I appreciate them, and they are, for the most part, helpful.

But, I have known too many church leaders who have not had a support system like mine.  I have known too many church leaders who have  made it clear to me that it was because of them—because their winning personality, or their knowledge of church growth, or their years of expertise—that a particular congregation flourished.

It’s an unfortunate trap leaders in the Church fall into when they believe that a congregation’s success depends on them as individuals and their own abilities of ministry—and, mind you, I am not just talking about priests here. Lay leaders in the Church have fallen into this trap as well. I have known some of those lay leaders as well, trust me.   Maybe to some extent it’s true.  Maybe some people do have the personality and the winning combination in themselves to do it.  

But for those who may have that kind of natural personality, I still have to admit: it all  makes me wary.  It’s just too slippery of a slope. We are dealing with similar personalities in today’s Gospel.

In our Gospel reading for today, those seventy that Jesus chose and sent out come back amazed by the gift of blessing God had granted to them and their personalities.  They exclaim, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” In and of its self, that’s certainly not a bad thing to say.  It’s a simple expression of amazement.   

But Jesus—in that way that Jesus does—puts them very quickly in their place.   He tells them,

“do not rejoice in these gifts, but rejoice rather that your names are written in heaven.”

Or to be more blunt, he is saying rejoice not in yourselves and the things you can do with God’s help, but rejoice rather in God.  The burden of bringing about the Kingdom of God shouldn’t be solely the individual responsibly of any one of us.  

Even Jesus made that clear for himself.  Just imagine that stress in having to bring that about.  

Bringing the Kingdom of God into our midst is the responsibility of all of us together.   It is the responsibility of those who have the personality to bring people on board and it is the responsibility of those of us who do not have that winning personality.

For those of us who do not have that kind of personality, it is our responsibility to bring the Kingdom about in our own ways.  We do so simply by living out our Christian commitment.

As baptized followers of Jesus, we bring the Kingdom into our midst simply: By Love.  We do it by loving God and loving each other as God loves us in whatever ways we can in our lives.  Bringing the Kingdom of God about in our midst involves more than just preaching from a pulpit or attending church on Sunday.  Spreading the Kingdom of God is more than just preaching on street corners or knocking on the doors. 

It means living it out in our actions as well.  It means living out our faith in our every day life.  It means loving God and each other as completely as we can.

But it does not mean loving ourselves to the exclusion of everything of else.  It means using whatever gifts we have received from God to bring the Kingdom a bit closer.  

These gifts—of our personality, of our vision of the world around us, of our convictions and beliefs on certain issues—are what we can use.  It means not letting our personalities—no matter how magnetic and appealing they might be—to get in the way of following Jesus.

Our eyes need to be on God.

We can’t be doing that when we’re busy preening in the mirror, praising ourselves for all God does to us and through us.    The Church does not exist for own our personal use.   If we think the Church is there so we can get some nice little pat on the back for all  the good we’re doing, or as an easy way to get us into heaven when we die, then we’re in the wrong place.  And we’re doing good for the wrong intention. The Church exists for God AND us.   

The Church is ideally-at its very best—the conduit through which the Kingdom of God comes into our midst. And it will come into our midst, with or without me as individual.

But it will comes into our midst through as us.

All of us.

Together.  

The Church is our way of coming alongside Jesus in his ministry to the world.

In a very real sense, the Church is our way to be the hands, the feet, the voice, the compassion, the love of God to this world and to each other.  But it’s all of us.

Not just me.

Not just you as an individual.

It’s all of us.

Together.

Working together.

Loving together.

Serving together.

And giving God the ultimate credit again and again.

Hopefully, in doing that, we do receive some consolation ourselves.   Hopefully in doing that, we in turn receive the compassion and love of God in our own lives as well.

But if we are here purely for our own well-being and not for the well-being of others, than it is does become only about us and not about God.   And in those moments, we are sounding very much like those 70 who come back to Jesus exclaiming, “look at what we have done!”

The message of today’s Gospel is that it must always be about God.  It must always be about helping that Kingdom of God break through into this selfish world of huge egos. It means realizing that when we are not doing it for God, we have lost track of what we’re doing. We have lost sight of who we are following.

So, let us—together—be the hands, the feet, the voice, the compassion and the love of God in the world around us. Like those 70, let us be amazed at what we can do in Jesus’ name.

But more importantly let us rejoice!

Rejoice!

Rejoice this morning!

Rejoice in the fact that your name, that my name—that our names are written at this moment in heaven.