Saturday, August 27, 2011

sunday's sermon--Exodus 3.1-15 (draft)

Today we get the calling of Moses to be God’s messenger. God calls to Moses through a burning-bush-that-was-burning-but-not-consumed. An amazing, impossible, can’t-miss-it kind of sign that something’s happening right? The burning bush is not about the burning bush. It’s about God calling. And it’s about Moses answering. Or, maybe it’s about Moses expecting a call. But it’s not about the bush.

See, I hear from folks a lot the question, “how come we don’t see burning bushes anymore?” or “where are all the big miracles that we read about in the Bible now?” or “how come God doesn’t talk to us anymore?” Wrong questions. Moses saw the burning-bush-that-was-burning-but-not-consumed because he was looking for it. Or because he was willing to see it. Exodus says Moses looked at the bush, then decided to turn aside and get a closer look. He chose to see God’s presence there rather than just moving on. We don’t practice seeing God very well and so when God shows up, we often don’t notice, or we attribute it to something else—a natural phenomenon like the gradation of blue in a cloudless sky or rain that keeps us from an appointment (what’s more natural than God?), or thoughts in our brains (since we’re so busy-busy, why wouldn’t God nudge us that way?). And most of us don’t think that we could be called by God because we can’t imagine God wanting to call us. Why me?

But God does call us. All of us, individually and as a group. Paul talks about how all of us are part of the body of Christ, all parts necessary for healthy functioning, no part unnecessary—all of us called to the healthy functioning of the church and the world. God is constantly speaking to us, constantly trying to get us to look at him like a young woman crushing on a boy. “Just look at me…” And the big things we read about in scripture, those are signs that God’s trying to get our attention. They’re not the messages.

Think about it this way:
First, there’s The Story, God’s story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration, a portion of which is told us in scripture. The Story which we revere and which describes for us what the world often looks like, which suggests to us how we might make that world function better, more compassionately. The Story which includes big crazy stories like the burning-bush-that-was-burning-but-not-consumed and Elijah speaking to God directly and hearing God the whirlwind, God the thunderstorm, and God the silence. The Story which we love and struggle with but which we don’t often practice connecting with our own stories.
Part the second, is our stories: your life is a story, has a plot you don’t yet know the end of, characters who come and stay for a time, pain and triumph, boring bits and exciting bits. Our stories shed light on where we are now. I have a lot of compassion for folks on the margins—prisoners, the working poor, the gay community—because I was on the margins for much of my life. I was a weird kid—who knew?—and was teased mercilessly in elementary and junior high. I felt…feel like an outcast and so identify with others in a similar category. I am where I am now because of that experience. Our stories show us how we got to where we are and sometimes a bit of where we’re going.

And last, there’s a dynamic, creative space where these two stories connect, where The Story/God’s Story connects with our own stories. The stories of scripture aren’t just a rule book and they aren’t just bizarre stories about miracles. They’re our own stories, our own lives writ large. C. S. Lewis once said, "Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see."

The Story of Moses and the burning-bush-that-was-burning-but-not-consumed is about God calling to this guy Moses, this shepherd, this guy who stutters and who, it turns out, can’t keep control of the people he’s been entrusted to care for. He’s just this guy, you know? And God calls to him, and Moses chooses to turn aside and look and listen. And, before you think that’s the end, in this and every call story in the Bible, the person being called objects. Sometimes strenuously. Moses doesn’t think he can do it. Sound familiar? And God says, “yes, you can and I’ll help. Pay attention.”

So, how to tell when God calls? Often, when God calls, it’s not just one time, not just in a single heated moment. A lot of the time, it takes us some time to see and turn aside to look. I am personally rather thick and so I need a lot of prodding. So, at the risk of being self-involved, I thought I’d share a little of my own spiritual autobiography. How did I get here? What signs did I see along the way that suggested God wanted me to do something?

When I was in first grade, around the time my father went to seminary, I was vaguely aware of religion and God, but I didn’t really think about it much. I do remember I was terribly afraid of the dark for years, a fear which I have never truly shaken. I would panic when entering a dark room and fumble wildly for the light switch. I would run up a flight of stairs from a dark hallway to a light one, afraid that a monster was chasing me. It was at Easter each year that I began slowly to lose that fear. At the university, the seminarians and faculty go all out for the Easter vigil, beginning very early on Sunday morning in complete darkness. They light a blazing fire to symbolize the light of Christ which pierces the darkness, but which to me only put up a thin, weak wall between us and the surrounding darkness. Slowly we processed into the chapel and began the vigil. Most of us kids would fall asleep in the chairs, awoken later by the rising sun streaming through the surrounding tall, thin windows when we came to the Resurrection. It was magical. That the service could be timed so well, that the sun was so glorious streaming through the windows, that the music was so jubilant was a real “Wow” moment for me. I was overcome with joy and renewal and felt that something very good had pushed away the literal and figurative dark.

In high school, I sometimes went with my priest father to the local women’s prison. For a while, on Wednesday nights, he would go and celebrate Eucharist for a small group of women. It didn’t occur to me to be afraid of the people we visited until I walked through the first set of metal doors. Their clanging shut sounded so final and I woke up a little. The second set told me I wasn’t getting out of here easily, and neither were these women. Even then, I was not afraid but curious. At the point in the Eucharist after the long, beautiful, boring prayer is over, the priest invites the assembly forward saying something like “These are the gifts of God for the people of God.” My father always added, “holy things for holy people.” That was when I realized what was happening. These women whose pasts I didn’t know and could only guess were indeed holy people. This bread and wine was theirs as God’s beloved. Prisons have struck me as holy ground ever since, rather like the ground Moses removed his shoes to walk on.

Around this time, I also read a book called The Mirror of Her Dreams which, honestly, may not be very good, but it affected me profoundly. One supporting character, one of the daughters of the king who is rather dreamy and idealistic and thought to be weak-willed, says to the main character, “problems should be solved by those who see them.” Later, she finds her courage and risks her life for a wounded stranger. Problems should be solved by those who see them. Yes, they should. If not you, who? If not now, when? Yes, I thought, yes, I felt in my bones. And the fire in my heart began to burn in earnest.

Many years later, after rejecting the feeling that I was called to ordained ministry several times, I ended up in seminary. To make ends meet, my husband and I worked at Barnes and Noble and, at this time, the number one bestseller on every list there was was The Da Vinci Code. To be honest, I didn’t care for it, but many did and I found myself in daily conversations with coworkers and customers about issues the book brought up. And those conversations expanded into more personal ones about folks’ faith and desires. I became the informal chaplain to the store. It was a weird spiritual place, but one which helped explain the burning in my heart to care for those hurt by the church, those seeking, those wandering lost in the wilderness.

All of these experiences were my burning-bush-that-burned-but-was-not-consumed. It wasn’t a sudden moment. And, while I’m still figuring out what it means to be a priest, I have turned off the main path to look at what God is calling me to.

Sometimes the overlap between God’s story and our story is sudden and easily seen like Moses’ story or like Paul on the Damascus Road. More often, it takes time, is a cycle, seems rather ordinary. And that is precisely where God is working all the time. God doesn’t need the big moments to tell us something, to call us into deeper relationship or risky giving or radical forgiveness. God calls to us in every moment of every day.

Let me give you one more example. Steve Jobs has retired recently, but in 2005, he spoke at Stanford’s commencement. He said,
“[My] college at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

This week, I’m giving you homework. And I’ll check back next week. I want you to try to connect the dots.
Take a little time each day this week to consider your life story. What are your strongest memories? What were your favorite books or most influential people? How are they related to who you are now? Do you see any similarities among those stories? Threads which continue through your life but that you hadn’t noticed before?
Then spend some time in prayer—not the intercessory prayer we often do for others, but in silence, asking God to help you see what God’s trying to show you.
Consider what God might be saying to you in the most ordinary moments of your life, in the birthday parties and the deaths, in the Habitat houses you’ve built or the papers you’ve written, the things you’ve gotten excited about and the things you wish you didn’t remember. Ask God to help you see more clearly the thread of the sacred running through your life. Ask God where that thread might be leading.
Write this stuff down if that’s helpful, or talk about it with your family or a trusted friend.
Be honest. Be open to a burning bush-that-is-burning-but-not-consumed, because it’s been burning all your life, off to the side, in the corner of your eye. Turn aside from the path you think you have to be on and look at what God is doing. Choose to see your story connected to God’s story.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

sermon--Matthew 16.13-20

[All of the below are notes to riff on, not complete thoughts. It's possible this will not make any sense to anyone but me. Probably you ought to read the passage cited in the title...]

I wanna be like Peter—he gets it so wrong, but gets it so right here

“who do you say that I am?”
—silence in bible study when asked, our own silence
what if it’s about more than profession of faith?
Yes, name God to others (identify God working—my job on campus)
But also see God for God
God wants to be seen, desires us, makes self-revelation
Like the Navi’i in Avatar… “I see you”
Like our crushes—“God, just look at me!”
Weird to speak of desire/romance with God?
Not far off—bridal mysticism (look it up, off topic)

Who do we say God is,
not just to be right or win political office, but to show others
a completely changed and desire-charged life
Merton—“I believe my desire to please you pleases you.”
College students
Who do you say I am?
Many think they know, many want to find out
What bearing does the church have?
Why should we pay attention?
Student Reggie—didn’t know she needed God, wanted something
Wanted to know and be known, to be changed
I offered, I showed a complex, radically inclusive, risky face
Peter and the others--gave up everything, tried to change the world
Who we say God is, and who we show God to be

What we do, how we show God’s face to others,
is all because we’ve turned when God called and said, “I see you”
to truly see God face to face and to be seen
that experience changes everything

May we see and be seen. May we love with a risky, active love and be loved in return. May we desire to please God, whether or not we are right. May we see the face of God on all we meet and may we be the face of God to all we meet.

Friday, August 19, 2011

catecheumenate

Christianity 101—inaugural year
Curriculum

This Fall, we're adding a catecheumenate to the Edge House's repetoire. Or, for the uninitiated or recovering-Catholic among you, Christianity 101. The idea is that we have students who would like to be baptized or who'd like to reaffirm their faith and we ought to offer information and conversation to help those decisions. After meeting for a couple hours once a month, at the Easter Vigil 2012--at, like 4:30 in the morning--we'll give them the opportunity to affirm or reaffirm. Should be amazing!

What remains is for me to figure out what I'm going to teach them... Here's a very vague sketch. Your thoughts?

October: how did you get here?--share stories, watch Cameron Duncan's "DFK6498", talk about where we're bound and where we need freedom, begin talking about scripture and how that big story got here (maybe a short study on something relating to the exile)
homework: memorize books of the bible (very handy, that...)

November: continue conversations about scripture, in particular overview of The Story/Plot, intensive studies of several pivotal passages, clip from Firefly: disc 2, "Jaynestown", chapter 3, 9:44, from Book: "What are we up to?" through Book: "You hang onto those now."
homework: assign stories for projects--must read from several translations, short essay maybe on what's happening literally and spiritually (what's God doing? how do we react?), where you see yourself, and some creative response

December: church history--how'd we get here?, Paul, councils, denominations, etc.
homework:

January: theology—sola scriptura vs. Three-Legged Stool, major bits of theology (Christology, Trinity, soteriology, what else?), I know I have some media for “what’s God like?”—film clip? Excerpt from book?..., maybe use some of the 500 Theses from seminary, Images of Jesus handout
homework: begin working on spiritual autobiography

February: ethics—read and discuss some ethical case studies from my seminary ethics class, play the “Who Gets the Liver?” game, heroes of the faith (Good Samaritan, Constance and her Companions, the Widow and Elijah, who else?)
homework: continue working on spiritual autobiography

March: practice—make communion bread together while talking?, orthodoxy vs. orthopraxy, liturgy and worship, prayer, mission, present autobiographies
homework: share your autobiography with someone who’s not in this group

April: participate in Holy Week and Easter Vigil

Tuesday, August 09, 2011

sunday's sermon--Psalm 85.8

Baruch attah adonai elohenu melech ha-olam. Blessed are you, Lord our God, ruler of all possibilities.
* * *
[Teach “Let Me Hear” by Philip Newell]
Let me hear, let me listen, help me listen,
because I think God has something to say.
But I keep getting distracted. Do you have this problem?
There’s always something: the laundry, or work,
or it’s not practical to spend time in prayer or to advocate for…
ooh, look! a shiny thing…
It’s been a heck of a week for me at the Edge campus ministry house:
I’ve had to say “no” to a couple wanting to have their marriage blessed
even though I didn’t want to,
I’ve had to say “no” to a student
who wanted to continue to be a part of the ministry,
I’ve gotten to say “yes” to some exciting outreach plans
for the school year and spring break,
…aaand then had to say “no” again to our friendly neighborhood bum.
Bennie sleeps on the porch. And leaves trash on the porch.
And pees on the porch. And he’s a violent drunk.
And he’s the county’s arrest record-holder.
So I don’t kick him off on a whim—
it’s not a good situation for us and it’s not good for him either. The thing is, he doesn’t listen. Or he can’t listen.
Every time I see him, I tell him,
“Bennie, you can’t sleep here” at least five times.
And he says he’s not.
And then we find evidence he’s been there, or Bennie himself,
still sleeping off his cheap liquor.
His mental illness keeps him from understanding
what people say to him.
And I wonder if we, too, have something
that keeps us from understanding what people say to us,
what God says to us.
Do we have some sort of—let’s call it a mental illness—
that distracts from the abundant life God offers?
Yeah, we do. It’s called sin.
Not a pleasant word in our world,
not a word we want to apply to our not spending much time
in prayer
or our justifications for the comfort we have.
But it’s our word, it’s the church’s word
for all that distracts us from the amazing, delightful,
peace-filled life God invites us to.
Sin is thinking you have the right answer on your own,
it’s looking down on your parents or professors,
it’s hurting other people whether we know it or not,
it’s not practicing the generous faith we claim.
Sin is not listening to God.
My spiritual director gave me an article years ago which has stuck with me.
In it, the writer says that he always thought prayer
needed to be very calm, very spiritual,
approached from a calm, spiritual day.
You know, some yoga, a cup of tea, soothing classical music,
no…you know…actual life happening around him as it does.
He says his prayers never looked like that,
that he would stew over the events of his day
for the majority of the time,
then ask a kind of perfunctory “I’m here, where are you God?”
and then be done with it.
But he came to realize that his prayer was
more expansive than that—
that the stewing was indeed part of the prayer,
that God wants us to tell him everything,
even though he already knows it.
Turning over the events of the days in the presence of God is prayer.
And most of us never get past this part—
we talk at God and then call it a day.
But that’s not all of it.
After we can’t stew any more, we reflect:
“I think this is what’s happening here,
maybe this is how I ought to reply,
ah, that one story from scripture is kind of similar…”
If we’re lucky, we make it to this reflection part of prayer
and we think we’re deeply spiritual.
And it is an advance of sorts.
The vast majority of us rarely, if ever,
let ourselves get to the third stage: listening.
Emptying ourselves of all the stewing
and all the pride that we can figure it out
and just listening to what God might have to speak.
And all of this is what we mean by turning to God in our hearts.
But what does God sound like? What are we listening for?
Some really do hear words,
others feel a strong, repeated push towards something
over months or years,
others feel God in a sudden inspiration that seems outside
of what they could have come up with.
Scripture suggests that the voice of God is peace.
When we listen, says the Psalm for today, God speaks peace
to the faithful who turn to God in their hearts.
And not peace in the cute, marketed peace-sign kind of way
but what our Jewish brothers and sisters call shalom.
It’s a complex thing, shalom.
It means first wholeness and interdependence.
And it means truth, a deep, abiding truth
that speaks to our guts as much as it does our brains.
And it means love, but a challenging love of sacrifice,
loving something that we’re not entirely gung-ho about.
Because, again, we don’t want to hear it.
The word of God is about righteousness and faithfulness
and connection being the norm.
This is what Shalom is.
It’s like the moment right after you put your kids to bed.
It’s the place after all the “yes’s” and “no’s”
that we have to say during the day,
it’s the place where it all makes sense,
fits together, and is beautiful.
When God speaks peace and we hear it,
it’s not just hearing the vibrations in the air,
“yeah, ok, that’s nice” but a full-body kind of hearing.
Often, we can only hear the voice of God
because we’ve been practicing hearing it.
What we do regularly
—church, outreach, getting to know the neighbors, shopping—
what we do regularly shapes us,
it forms us into beings who can or cannot hear God speaking.
What we do regularly allows us to drop the distractions.
Or it allows us to keep those distractions, those sins, in place.
This is the practice of the faith—listening means practicing.
And God speaks peace all the time.
Shalom, wholeness, it’s few and far between in this broken world
—but it’s here nonetheless.
God is speaking peace to us constantly
—in our marriages and family life,
at work where things can get contentious,
in the middle of exam week or co-op decision time on campus,
in the middle of a movie,
in our conversations about theology or sexuality or politics—
God is speaking peace, is offering us a different way,
the true way that we’re struggling so hard to achieve on our own.
God is speaking peace, wholeness, vulnerability, faithfulness, peace
to every one of us in every moment.
To hear God, maybe we need to make time to listen
and not just assume that we’ll get it one day.
Let’s turn to God in our hearts
and reach out for the peace God’s offering.
Let’s practice listening for peace.
[Sing again.]

Monday, August 01, 2011

sunday's sermon--Matthew 14:13-21

Most images below come from Things Organized Neatly. You should check it out. Also, Things Organized Neatly, please don't sue me for posting these images. They made my sermon more effective.


(asterixes indicate a slide change)
“Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.”
“Everyone who thirsts…” Are you thirsty?*














Are you hungry?
What for?*(black screen)
I hunger for cool new shoes. And the approval of others.
I thirst for free time and then spend it doing housework
—it does not satisfy.
What do you hunger and thirst for?
I hunger for radically inclusive church community
where everyone is not just allowed in but desired
I thirst for a church where the poor, the outcast, the broken,
yes, even the rich are welcomed with open arms.
I hunger for more time with my delightful daughter.
I thirst for deep prayer in a world which doesn’t have the time.
These would satisfy. These would be the bread Isaiah and Jesus speak of.
It seems like we here on the ground, we ordinary people
are always striving for something else, something more.
Yet the something more we receive rarely satisfies.
You know what I’m talking about: houses, cars, clothing, success at work,
people liking us for the image we present
—that stuff doesn’t satisfy, not for long.
I don’t know about you, but I kind of expect God to be, you know, obvious.
Sign-like. A big burning bush in the middle UC’s campus
or a pillar of smoke in the middle of the House of Representatives
leading us to the Promised Land.
But, no, we have ordinary old sidewalks and ballpark hot dogs.
We hunger and thirst for something huge and flashy
and we get something small and ordinary.
We’ve been talking about finding God in the ordinary the last few weeks
—have you caught on to that?—
because we rarely get the huge, flashy sign of God’s presence.
But, more than that, we’re talking about finding God in the ordinary
because that is precisely where God shows up.
Check it out. One of my favorite blogs is called Things Organized Neatly
—she posts images of, well, things. Organized neatly.
Here’s a couple examples: clay pots stacked neatly*,











matches in varying degrees of being burnt*,










books organized by color*,











all the pieces of a pocket watch*













—you get the point.
Each is made up of very ordinary things, yet seen in a different way,
are things of extraordinary beauty.*(black screen)
Or try this one:
my husband has been spending his summer away from teaching
revising his young adult novel so he can pitch it to an agent.
Parts of the revision go smoothly,
he really gets into it and hours pass without his realizing.
Other parts are much more difficult, and he struggles with them.
And every so often, having had all of those parts of the plot
swimming around in his head for months,
an elegant solution rises to the surface
which makes everything fit together.
I’m not speaking of a blinding flash of insight here, folks,
but the everyday, ordinary workings of our brains
which, to me, suggest the action of the Holy Spirit.
She moves in mysterious ways, in subtle ways,
in ways we’d call ordinary and thus not divine.
But the ordinary points to the divine.
Look: The stuff Jesus fed the 5000 with is ordinary stuff.
Bread and fish—you could buy it at any store, or make it yourself.
It’s not special.
And even the bread and wine of our weekly meal here is ordinary.
Ordinary things—fish and bread, bread and juice…us.
We’re ordinary things—we’re no saints,
we’re made of dirt if you remember the Genesis stories!
Ordinary dirt sculpted into something beautiful.
But that’s what the saints were
—ordinary people doing extraordinary things—or, rather,
ordinary people doing the ordinary things of the Kingdom of God.
Check this out.
Today (Saturday) we celebrate the feast day of William Wilberforce,
an abolitionist and politician from the 1800s.
He made long speeches and worked tirelessly for 18 years
to abolish the slave trade in England because of his faith
in the freedom we have in Jesus Christ.
You might think
“it’s all well and good for him, he was famous and powerful.”
But he was just a guy
who didn’t think a person should own another person.
All the heroes of the faith are ordinary folks
trying to live like God is really here like he says he is,
ordinary folks thirsting and hungering
for justice and truth and mercy.
When Jesus told the disciples to feed the crowd of well more than 5000 people,
they didn’t know what to do—they only had a little bread and fish,
nothing compared to the crowds gathered.
And Jesus said, “bring your nothing to me.”
This morning, I bring to God my nothing
and hope that he can make something out of it.
I bring our beloved country’s literal hunger and thirst.
From what I read, there is plenty to go around,
so why, in a country which prides itself
on its Christian history and Christian present,
do so many suffer from malnutrition?
Every time I go to the Freestore/Foodbank to volunteer,
they show us around the warehouse,
and when we get to the PowerPak station, I tear up.
Every time.
PowerPaks have food for the 36-hours of a week-end,
food that doesn’t have to be refrigerated
and doesn’t need special tools like can openers to open.
Because it’s for kids whose parents can’t or won’t feed them over the weekend.
Kids who won’t eat otherwise.
This is not right.
This is not what a Christian nation looks like.
Trappist monk Thomas Merton says
we can’t hope to bring about the Kingdom
with non-Kingdom practices—
we can’t bring about peace with weapons,
we can’t bring about abundance for all
with wealth concentrated in the few.
This is a hard thing, brothers and sisters,
because these things have become ordinary to us.
Our comfort and wealth have become entitlements
Which only means things we’ve got used to.
Our hunger and thirst have become ordinary
to the point that we don’t notice them,
we don’t see the Kingdom of God showing up in our lives
because it doesn’t seem important enough.
We can’t see past the ordinariness of our situation
—but that is exactly where God meets us
and makes of our nothing an abundant feast.
Jesus made the little bit of bread and fish
into food for thousands but that wasn’t the only point
—that was the big sign that something was happening,
but then the something happened.
The disciples fed the people.
They took the bread and fish
and handed it out to the people waiting.
They fed the hungry.
And they fed ALL the hungry.
This is the kingdom of God, brothers and sisters…
In the ordinary stuff of our lives
—scissors*,














salad*,









baby clothes*,










ingredients for cookies*,










leaves*,













tea*,








sandwiches*,














candy bars*














—God makes something out of nothing.
And do you see how many of these images were of food?
It’s one of the most ordinary parts of our lives
and yet gives us a foretaste of the kingdom of God.*(black screen)
Do you see?
Do you see how God can slip in through the cracks
where we don’t expect him?
Do you see that in ordinary things like a bit of bread and fish,
God calls us to the life of the Kingdom
where all have a place at the table,
where all receive what they need and offer what they have,
where there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek,
slave nor free, gay nor straight,
rich nor poor, Democrat nor Republican
and where we receive abundant life,
and where we give it away as well.
What if we lived like that Kingdom were here right now?*










What do you hunger for?
What do you thirst for?
Does it satisfy?
Come to the table, for the meal is prepared.
*(black screen)