Nothing

 

Sunday, July 27^th, 2008

Proper 12A/ Ordinary 17 A/ Pentecost +11

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Romans 8:26-39

Theme: God’s Love as Unstoppable Force

 

 “²⁶Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. ²⁷And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. ²⁸We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. ²⁹For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. ³⁰And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.

³¹What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? ³²He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? ³³Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. ³⁵Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ³⁶As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” ³⁷No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. ”

 

“We.”   He used the word ‘we’.  Right there at the beginning of the passage, in verse 26.  The VERY first thing he says, of course, is ‘The Spirit helps us in our weakness’ – that is all good and well.  But then he comes out and says “WE” don’t know how to pray as we … in today’s English, we’d be more likely to use the word “should”.  The proper form is ‘ought’, but there you have it. 

 

Let me remind you, this is Paul, the apostle, some would say the architect of the church – not the foundation, but the architect – the one person who is singly responsible for the spreading of the Gospel throughout the Roman Empire.  I should probably qualify that, shouldn’t I?  The person with whom we are most familiar – through his writings that are preserved in the New Testament, and who is best known as being one of if not the first missionary to the gentiles. 

 

And here he is admitting that he doesn’t know how to pray.  I know, sometimes people use the ‘we’ form in order to not come across as too preachy, or to not appear as though they are setting themselves on a higher level of understanding than the people being spoken to.  But Paul doesn’t seem to be doing that here.  He keeps using the first person plural pronoun in the discussion throughout the rest of the passage – he HAS been using it up to this point, and continues to use it later.  Compared to other writings, he doesn’t seem to have any trouble in using the second person ‘YOU’ – just browse through his letter to the Galatians, or the Corinthians.  No shortage of ‘You’s’ there!  No, it seems pretty clear Paul is talking as much about himself as he is about any of his readers. 

 

His point is that, beyond a certain point, we are incapable of expressing what is in our hearts and in our souls when we approach God in prayer.  We have had those moments, all of us have, I suspect, where we begin to voice a prayer and our words become sobs.  Tears and cries replace dry, closed eyes and formed words.  There is an admission of the fact that when it comes to communicating with God, we can go far with our own words and thoughts, but there is a more elemental, a purer, a more profound communion that takes place between the Holy Spirit dwelling in us and God. 

 

In the next verses, Paul SEEMS to be changing the subject – twice – first we hear ‘All things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose’, followed immediately by what again, seems to be a tangent at best – the discussion about God’s foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification. 

 

Six weeks ago, at the end of our joint Vacation Bible School with Farnham Baptist Church, Rodney Morrison, the Pastor there, and I were talking about what the summer was shaping up to be, and I mentioned that I was starting in on a series that would last several weeks and take us through the letter of Paul to the Romans.  He looked at me and smiled and asked how I was going to handle the predestination passage.  I made a joke about maybe being sick that Sunday, and we laughed, but he came back and said “you ARE going to have to deal with it at some point.”  And you know what?  He’s right. 

 

I think the word is scarier to us than anything else.  The phrasing Paul uses, and the TENSE used – the past tense – gives all the impression that Paul is talking about something that has been established and set in stone and is unchangeable. 

 

The first thing that needs to be said is that Paul is speaking in a way that is trying to define God, or God’s activity.  By definition, human language – whatever language – is ultimately inadequate to the task of speaking of God.  We are finite, God is infinite.  We are limited in our knowledge, our perception, our understanding, and our capacity of conceptualization when it comes to God.  And God is none of those.  I would suggest that we need to be reminded of that as a type of disclaimer before delving into this or any other in depth conversation about what God is about the business of doing.                 

 

That having been said, and understanding God to BE infinite, all knowing, and all powerful, it should likewise be understood that God does, in fact, know who will choose to follow him and who will not.  That is primarily due to the fact that God is not limited to a linear experience of time – in other words, God does not experience time sequentially, like we do.  For us, fifteen seconds ago is in the past, now is in the present, and fifteen seconds from now is in the future.  God is outside time – beyond it, above it, unbound by it.  To an observer within the timeline, it would almost seem to be the case that, in translating that understanding that God knows who is going to believe in him and follow him back into “linear time speak” (so to say) we would say ‘he knew from the beginning of time, he knew before we ourselves did’ which is accurate, but can be misunderstood.  Yes, from our perspective, God DID know from the beginning of time what the end of time would look like, but the key phrase is “FROM OUR PERSPECTIVE”.  WE add the sequential element to that thought. In God’s time, God just knows, period.  There is no timeframe because time does not exist in eternity. 

 

I believe Paul is expressing the fact that there are those who will choose to follow Christ and live for God, who will make a difference in this world for the Kingdom of God, who will eventually pass from this world to the next, and be glorified with Christ in heaven – regardless of what suffering they go through in their lives here on earth.  The heart of his argument here is what comes at the conclusion of the passage – beginning in the very next verse – verse 31. 

 

The question he poses in verse 31 connects what has come before to what comes after.  First, He’s presented the idea that the Spirit helps us in times of weakness and that he intercedes on our behalf with “groans and moans too deep for words”.  Second, he summarizes the fact that our salvation is, in fact, a “done deal” – something God already knows.  And here he gets into the third part – what, if anything, can separate us from the Love of God?  The short answer is: Nothing, but I like the way Paul says it much better, because that is what is CAUSING the Spirit to intercede for his brothers and sisters reading his letter in Rome.  They HAVE, in fact, EXPERIENCED hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword.  They are still facing the probability of being confronted with any and all of those.  The resounding conclusion that Paul comes to is one that has given comfort and courage to generations of Christians all over the world. 

 

³⁸For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. ”                                  

 

So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton on July 27, 2008? 

 

I’ll pose it to you as a question:  what are we?  If we take these verses to heart, we could be either conduits or dams of God’s love.  The first providing a channel through which the love of God flows freely, the latter being a bottleneck for it, keeping it from spreading across the world and who knows, probably changing it into something resembling the coming Kingdom of Heaven.  Which would we rather be?  If we already know that nothing in all creation can separate US from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, then do we even dare CONTEMPLATE the outcome of hoarding God’s love for ourselves and NOT sharing it as freely and as openly, as frequently and as unashamedly as possible? 

 

Just as nothing can keep us from the love of God, nothing can keep us from doing that – absolutely nothing.         

 

Let’s pray.  

Bearing Witness

 

Sunday, July 20^th, 2008

Proper 11/ Ordinary 16 A/ Pentecost +10

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Romans 8:12-25

Theme: Setting ourselves free to will and to live

 

 “¹²So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— ¹³for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. ¹⁴For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. ¹⁵For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” ¹⁶it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. ¹⁸I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. ¹⁹For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; ²⁰for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; ²³and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? ²⁵But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

 

 

We continue this morning in Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, picking up where we left off last week.  And this passage speaks directly to what our faith family is living through alongside the Coates’ since Thursday.    

 

That phrase at the beginning of verse 18:  “the sufferings of this present time” came to mind yesterday as I stood by Helen’s bed in the hospital.      

 

I realize that can mean many different things to each of us, but it was made patently clear that at one point or another those sufferings, whatever they are, give way to ‘the glory to be revealed’ to each of us. 

 

Paul was writing a word of hope and encouragement to a people who had undergone what for us would be unimaginable persecution and suffering, who were still reeling from it.  It is unclear if they were still undergoing the worst of the persecution – this passage would seem to indicate that they were still dealing with SOME degree of it – but it IS clear that they were intimately familiar with the suffering he is speaking of. 

 

Let’s back up a little bit, to verse 14:  (read vv 14-17) Paul is saying something incredibly comforting, incredibly empowering, incredibly liberating.  To people who had felt abandoned – who may have actually BEEN abandoned by their families after their decision to become followers of Christ, he is saying that they do still have a heavenly parent – a loving God who has taken them as his own.   To those who were LIVING out the reality of being slaves to their Roman masters, Paul is saying that though they might be slaves here on earth, they are not just not slaves in the eternal realm, but they are children – beloved children – of the master of creation – and in being children, they become heirs – fellow heirs with Christ – and heirs of what?  Heirs of the unspeakable riches that come with being loved and known and accepted completely by a God who defines love through giving himself up for us.  

 

The hymn “Family of God” carries that phrase in its lyrics:  “Joint heirs with Jesus as we travel this sod, for I’m part of the family, the family God.” I can hear my cousin Rob and Uncle Babe standing next to the piano as Aunt Elaine played it, singing at the top of their lungs.  We hardly ever had a family gathering that didn’t somehow, someway wind up with part or all of the family standing around a piano somewhere, singing about being a part of a family beyond those of us gathered there. 

 

That phrase ‘Abba, Father!’ that Paul quotes in verse 15 is one that I’m sure has been explained time and again as we’ve read and studied Jesus’ use of the term;  Abba is the word for ‘Daddy’ in Aramaic.  We can hear it as one of the earliest words to form on the lips of babies in first century Palestine:  (Abba, Abba, Dada, Dada).  It is the sound of complete trust, complete devotion.  It is the sound of the absence of fear. 

 

That is the relationship that Paul was praying for the folks in Rome to have with God.  By extension, that is the relationship he wants US here today to have with God.  One that we KNOW and UNDERSTAND to be with a loving, caring, giving God who WANTS to be in relationship with US at LEAST as much as WE want to be in relationship with HIM.

 

And it is for that love that Paul reminds us our spirits bear witness alongside the Spirit of God to the world around us – not only TO the world, but also BESIDE the world.  He speaks of Creation as being in the process of giving birth – how much more graphic can you get than to talk about groaning in labor pains? – And what is being birthed in creation is what is being birthed in each of us – the Kingdom of God! 

 

And here is where he is speaking to us today:  he says that Creation is not the only thing that is groaning, but that we are as well – we who have the first fruits of the Spirit – in other words, we who have … for lack of a better way to put it, a more DIRECT communion with the Spirit of God – groan towards the redemption of our bodies, waiting for that adoption by God. 

 

That speaks to the hope we live in.  The promise of God’s presence gives us hope in what would otherwise be hopeless situations.  It brings us peace in the middle of terrible circumstances.  It calms our spirits in the face of life-changing trauma.  It gives us patience when by rights we could be knocking down doors and walls and yelling and screaming for answers. 

 

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton? 

 

It means that we live out the hope, the peace, the love, the patience, the kindness, the gentleness, the self-control that we read of as being the fruits of the Spirit – that same Spirit of God that we live out of that makes us children of God.                       

 

Let’s pray.  

Life and Peace

 

Sunday, July 13^th, 2008

Proper 10/ Ordinary 15 A/ Pentecost +9

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Romans 8:1-11

Theme: The act of living in the Spirit

 

 “¹There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ²For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. ³For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. ⁵For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. ⁶To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, ⁸and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. ⁹But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

¹⁰But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. ¹¹If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

 

We continue this morning in Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, following his discussion/exposition/argument/presentation that is one of the most if not the most compelling explanations of what the life of a Christian can be like – SHOULD be like – in relation to sin and righteousness, law and grace.

 

The opening sentence of today’s passage – that first verse of chapter 8 – “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” is one that we need to come back to time and again and again – if for no other reason than to remind us of just what it is that the Grace of God has done for us in the person of Jesus Christ.  That single sentence sums up what the RESULT of accepting the Gospel of Jesus Christ does for us on an individual level – “there is therefore now NO condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” He didn’t say you’ll only receive half the condemnation you deserve, or a quarter, or a tenth … there’s no room to waffle with this one.  No condemnation is NO condemnation. 

 

I happen to be one who believes that all our emotions are God-given, anger and guilt, grief and sorrow included.  I believe there is an appropriate use – a necessary function – that those emotions play in our emotional health and in the healthy dynamics of our relationships.  What I also believe is that in the brokenness of the world as it is, the challenge we face in putting those emotions IN those appropriate contexts and healthy dynamics is MUCH more difficult – not impossible, but much more difficult – to achieve than if the world weren’t so skewed. 

 

Why am I saying that?  Because the phrase ‘No condemnation’, in its absoluteness, COULD grow in us a sense of being able to live a consequence-free life, and that is FAR from what Paul is arguing. 

 

Paul is speaking in spiritual terms, primarily.  He does go on to continue to juxtapose – to contrast and compare – the spirit and the flesh – and further down in these verses he spells out in words what we saw so clearly … ACTED out in Judson’s baptism at the beginning of the service this morning.  Dead to the body of sin, alive to life in Christ.  Having the LIFE of God in us THROUGH the indwelling Holy Spirit, we truly do become new creations.  Despite the fact that we still may sin, that is not what is counted when God looks at us.  What is counted is whether or not we have taken on the presence of Christ in our lives. That supersedes every other measure that we or anyone else may try to impose on us through guilt, or shame, or coercion of any kind.

 

That is what I believe is fundamentally the greatest hurdle to people accepting the Gospel – and the reason Christ said we should be as children. 

 

Have you ever received an extravagant gift from someone you hardly know?  Say, someone just out of the blue pays off your mortgage, or sets a new car in your driveway, or maybe for these days, sends you a gift gas card for the car you already own – and the card never runs out, and you never see a bill. 

 

Now, have you ever seen a child who had a problem receiving a gift?  As we get older, it may come pretty quickly.  But have you ever seen, say, a three, four, or five year old who turned down a gift that was offered to them? 

 

That is the secret of the Gospel, if it has one.  It is a gift so extravagant that the only way we may BEGIN to understand it is by accepting it as though we were just beyond our toddler years. 

 

Because the gift of life and peace IS huge.  It IS beyond our ability to grasp the depth of love that compelled it.  And it IS again what we solemnly celebrate and proclaim when we gather at this table, with this bread and this wine.                           

(Communion)

 

Let’s pray. 

 

Wanting and Doing

 

Sunday, July 6^th, 2008

Proper 9/ Ordinary 14 A/ Pentecost +8

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Romans 7:15-25a

Theme: The struggle to overcome sin

 

 “¹⁵I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. ¹⁹For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. ²¹So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. ²²For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, ²³but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.

 

I remember the day I took my faith commitment and put it out there in a way that I couldn’t always control.  It was the spring semester of my freshman year in college.  I don’t remember the exact date, and the act was somewhat minor, but with long-term consequences.  I bought one of those silver plastic fish that you stick on the back or the bumper of your car.  It was a simple one – no Greek letters spelling out Icthus or anything like that – it was just the outline – the two arcs that form the body and tail of a fish – that tradition tells us was the way early Christians identified each other. 

 

After I put it on, I realized really quickly that how I drove my car and acted behind the wheel was going to need to … align with what that symbol MEANT to ME.  Not that I was an aggressive or rude driver, but I became acutely aware of the need to let what I displayed on my CAR be reflected in how I behaved ALL THE TIME. 

 

I drove that car for another two years after I put that symbol on the back of the trunk.  It was a 1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme – two doors, and a giant engine.  My next car was a 1978 Honda Civic Station Wagon.  It DIDN’T end up with a fish on the back of it. 

 

During those years I was, as I’ve shared with you before, working out what *I* believed and why … and putting the decal on my car was a step in that process. 

 

When we encounter something new, or maybe something old, but in a brand new way, at least in my case, I found I needed to explore all the ramifications of that new thing, or the new view of the old thing.  In the case of my faith, I tended to go to the extreme … or the perceived extreme, in order to explore what it meant to hold to that view, to make that particular stand, to be counted as one of ‘them’ – the radical, the committed, the ‘true believers’. 

 

There was a big push for holiness, a REALLY big push for it.  Being holy meant speaking the truth fearlessly.  It meant keeping yourself apart.  It meant avoiding those places and practices that could lead to temptation and sin.  It meant diving into a deep pool of study and prayer and discipleship.  And it was exhilarating. 

 

But there was this THING that kept happening. 

 

Regardless of how good my quiet time had been, regardless of how deep the Bible Study had been, or how sweet the fellowship had been, or how pointed the message had been, I still sinned. 

 

And what confounded me then still confounds me just as it did Paul.   

 

Every day I struggle with sin. 

 

Every single day. 

 

Some days it is easier than others.  I’ll be busy or preoccupied, or focusing on something outside myself and the day will simply go by in a blur, and I’ll get to the end of the day and though I may be tired, there’ll be a sense of contentment that I don’t always recognize the cause of.  And occasionally it will occur to me that it was more what DIDN’T happen rather than what DID.

It’s not that I didn’t sin.  I still do.  It is just not in the more obvious ways that are available to us as humans. 

 

But the TYPE of sin is not the issue.  The issue is the FACT of sin. 

 

Paul is voicing the struggle that we face each day as Christians.  We do what we least WANT to do, and DON’T do what we MOST want to do.  That is basically what the passage boils down to.  We still struggle – sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully, with sin in our lives. 

 

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been following Paul’s argument to the church in Rome about what their – and by extension, our – relationship is to sin after we’ve made the choice to become Christ-followers.  He underscored the fact that through the act of baptism we publicly present the inner reality which is taking place in our lives – that is, that we are dying to an old way of living and being raised in a new life – one that is powered by the Holy Spirit and guided by the risen Christ.  And after he makes what are very strong arguments for this, he comes along and throws this one at us. 

 

He – Paul himself – the missionary to the gentiles, the single most influential person in the rise of Christianity after Jesus himself – confesses that he still struggles with sin. 

 

So if the whole point of being a Christian is to overcome sin, then why is he sitting there writing after nearly three decades of work and suffering for the Kingdom of God, telling us that he HASN’T overcome it??

 

Well, maybe the whole point of being a Christian ISN’T to overcome sin.  Yes, it is a huge PIECE of it, but it is not the single sole purpose of becoming a follower of Christ. 

 

You see, the whole point of becoming a Christian is to re-engage our relationship to God through Jesus Christ.  I mentioned last week that the life of faith is traditionally called a pilgrimage, a journey, and it is just that. 

 

Here Paul is, near the end of his life, and he is still calling himself a wretched man and his body a body of death.  And yet, he has accomplished so much in those nearly three decades that he is and always will be the measure of a life given freely to Christ for the sake of the Gospel. 

 

What Paul seems to be telling us is that yes, sin matters – sin is still a part of us by virtue of the fact that we live in mortal bodies and they are weak.  There is going to be no getting away from that on this side of heaven.  It will always present a struggle, it will always be a foe.  It will always be looking for ways to undermine us and cut us down and tell us we’re not really worthy of what Christ has done for us, so we should stop acting like we are and on that point I would actually concede it partially.  We SHOULD stop acting like we are more worthy of what Christ has done for us than the next person WHOEVER that next person may be. 

 

Jesus didn’t distinguish between sins.  Gluttony, gossip, and murder are all in there together.  There’s no “these you can get away with, these you can’t” verse in the Gospels or any of the rest of the New Testament.

 

The reality of our lives as Christians who sin is that, though we struggle to overcome sin, and sometimes do, and other times don’t, God still loves us and remains in relationship with us – as Paul says – Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! 

 

So, what does this mean for us here at Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

 

It is that ‘Through Jesus Christ our Lord’ part that is critical.  We do it all through him – and through the Holy Spirit.  We learn from what Scripture tells us he did and said.  We allow the Holy Spirit to resonate with that story into our own stories – the ones of our lives – and we draw from that resonance a strength, a determination, and a sense of what it is to be living in a state of Grace in the presence of a God who IS Holy, who IS other, and yet who DOES want to know us and wants us to know HIM.  It is through his command to love each other IN SPITE OF THE FACT OF SIN IN OUR LIVES that we begin to live out within our family of faith community what God wants us to live out into the rest of the world, because it is a vision of what God meant the world to be to begin with.  Grace doesn’t abound because we let sin abound in our lives.  Grace abounds because God is a patient, loving, caring, engaged God who wants to get to know God’s children as they grow up and as they grow closer to God.  And it is that same grace that we are called to share with the world.         

 

Let’s pray. 

 

 

May the Lord bless you and keep you

May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.

May God give you grace never to sell yourself short;

Grace to risk something big for something good;

Grace to remember that the world is now

Too dangerous for anything but truth

And too small for anything but love.

So may God take your minds and think through them,

May God take your lips and speak through them,

May God take your hearts and set them on fire

Through Christ our Lord.

Amen.                                 

                                      -William Sloan Coffin & H. Stephen Shoemaker