Transformed into God's Glory - A Sermon for Epiphany

Ray Gaston's sermon for Epiphany can be listened to and downloaded here

Revd Sue Watson's Sermon for Christmas 2 on John's Prologue

Have you ever wondered why the beginning of John’s Gospel is so prized as a reading at Christmas? It’s the one Gospel reading we are told we must read at least once at the Christmas day services…

And yet, from all appearances, it would seem that John knows next to nothing about angels or shepherds, stars or magi. He doesn't appear even to know the name of Jesus' mother or her visit to her cousin Elizabeth – or at least, he doesn’t mention either of them! He gives us no family tree and no information about Joseph.

Why, then, is this particular reading a particular option for Christmas Day and again for this second Sunday after Christmas?

Well, it’s because John’s words in these first few verses of his gospel capture the heart, the meaning, and the benefits of the Christmas story - in a nutshell.

John’s tone is super confident: did you notice how he begins his writing by repeating the opening line of Scripture itself- “In the beginning…” – Genesis chapter 1, when God created all things from nothing.

God spoke and the world came into being : “Let there be light, and there was light; Let the earth bring forth vegetation…let us make man in our image” : God spoke and the Word spoken was the force behind creation itself.

And here in John, is the Word:”In the beginning…was the Word.”  Like the author of Genesis, John too is talking about creation, God's new creation in Christ, God made flesh.

This is poetry, with power! To explore it more closely, let’s use the five ‘W’s…What, Why, Who, Where and When.

First of all, what  is John telling us about what is happening through Jesus?

 Jesus, according to John, has been a part of creation from the very beginning. What is happening now is that God's eternal Word – the means through which he created everything and by which we exist - God’s Word is coming down to earth to take on human flesh. The most extremely significant event in the history of God’s dealings with us.

This is not the first time God has become involved in human history, of course. God has been at work in the world through covenants with Abraham and Moses, through the giving of the Law, through judges, kings, and prophets. Yet now God is getting more personally involved, as the very Word of God – the expression of who He is -takes on human flesh and dwells with us in our own human form.

Why is this happening?

Because, says John, the world that has fallen into darkness needs light! And so God comes, prepared to struggle, light against darkness, day against night. That struggle is captured in verse 5: "The light shines on in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."

Who does this affect?

It affects us all: this event, says John, is a new creation, a new beginning and a new beginning means new possibility for everyone! Even though many, including many who were close to him, did not recognize in Jesus what God was accomplishing, all those who do recognize and receive him are invited to become God's own children: verse12 “But to all who received him, who believed in his name he gave power to become children of God”. An invitation to something new.

 And John says we have the freedom to accept God’s invitation to new life: children of God are born not of blood (in other words, we won’t be subject to the frailties of human flesh forever), or of the will of the flesh (we are more than our desires), or of the will of humans (we will not always be subject to whim and will of others). We can become children of God freely, restored to God's original intention for us in creation.

Where  and when does this new creation take place?

 Not just in a manger long ago, but here, today, now! Perhaps this is why John gives such scant attention to the details of Jesus' birth. He is, ultimately, more interested in our birth, our new birth as children of God. According to John, that is, the main focus of Christmas is not really on Jesus' birthday at all; rather, it is on ours.

 Christmas is the day we celebrate our birth as children of God, it’s the keeping of all God's promises, and the beginning of the restoration of all creation.

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John may not tell us anything about the details of the Christmas story, but he does know about the heart and soul – the true meaning - of the Incarnation, of what it means for God to become human.

Jesus - who is the very embodiment of God's grace – becomes fully human, and as a result, we are granted the chance to know the unknowable God and recognize ourselves as children beloved of God. As verse 18 says: “No one has ever seen God. It is … the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.”

This is the gift of Christmas, a new identity, a new opportunity, a new humanity knowing God in our lives – a gift received through Christ. This is the gift of Christmas, and it deserves our full attention on this day and, indeed, throughout the year.

John's prologue is, in many ways, a hymn to the Word, the Word that created in the beginning, created again in Jesus, and still creates when anyone receives Jesus in faith.

This passage is packed with meaning and metaphor, and perhaps can best be understood more as a poetic testimony to the light, life, and living Word of God.

John’s opening verses sum up the reason why Jesus came to us as a vulnerable human being – as a gift, a chance to start again, to be a new creation.

 So today, we have an opportunity to contemplate more quietly than perhaps we have on Christmas day, the profound mystery of the Incarnation, the doctrine at the heart of Christmas and to which John gives witness.

And as we anticipate the New Year of 2016, with all its hope for new and better things, we can reflect more fully on God’s great gift of the possibility for new life, received through believing in his Son, the creative Word made flesh.

RADICAL DISCIPLESHIP: CALLED TO CHANGE - Preached by Annie Saunders Christmas 1

May I speak in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in Love

Today we look at both our readings. Let’s look at their context first to understand what it means when God calls people like Samuel – people like us – to radical discipleship.

In our Old Testament reading we encounter Samuel, great judge and prophet of Israel. It’s around 1150 BCE and he’s a small boy in the Temple. His mother Hannah dedicated Samuel to serve God so he lives in the Temple in the care of Eli the elderly chief priest. We read that Samuel ministered at the altar before the Lord and that as he grew, he was held in great favour by the Lord and by the people. Especially for his integrity. In the following chapter Samuel, still a little boy, hears God calling him in the depths of the night. And he responds – “Here I am”, each time.

Samuel goes on to become Israel’s great prophet at a time when the people are calling out for a king. Samuel tells them they are wrong – God is their King – why would they need a human king? And why would they want the unjust, unequal, hierarchical society which will come with kingship? The people get their wish and Samuel is forced to appoint Saul, then David as kings of Israel. Thirty or forty years on, during Solomon’s reign, David’s son, the development of power and the magnificence of royalty, court and the elite, has grown so much that social equality and justice are ideas of the past.

But Samuel, the prophet, was known throughout his life as a follower of the Lord who wanted the Israelites to build a just society – the one God wanted for His chosen people. A radical disciple of the Lord’s – called to build God’s kingdom, a thousand years before Christ came.

And so we come to our Gospel extract – Jesus as a boy in the Temple at Jerusalem. The family have gone to Jerusalem for the annual Passover feast. Jesus, about twelve years old, stays behind listening and talking to the priests and teachers in the Temple. His parents think he’s with other family in their party and don’t realise for a day, he isn’t with them. They return and find Jesus in the Temple, three days later. Jesus’ reply to Mary’s question is striking. Mary asks, “Son, why have you treated us this way – we’ve been searching for you in great anxiety?” Jesus responds, “Why were you searching for me, didn’t you know I must be in my Father’s house?” The original Greek translates literally as, “didn’t you know I must be in the things of my Father?” In other words, Jesus is saying He must be about God’s affairs, the things His Father is doing in the world and He must be doing what His Father is doing.

We are reminded of what Mary said God is doing in the world in the Magnificat: “bringing the powerful down from their thrones and lifting up the lower people, filling hungry people with good things and sending the rich people away, empty.” This is what God is doing in the world through Jesus’ birth, turning it up-side-down, to facilitate the creation of a kingdom of God, of Love, not power exercised by kings. This is Jesus’ mission – he already knows he’s been called by God the Father. Like Samuel, he is already separated a little from his family. Later there will be a wider family of disciples and church.

Jesus’ call from God is of course unique – He is the Son, a part of God Himself, born that first Christmas for His divine mission on earth. But you and I are also called by God, individually and as a community to fulfil Jesus’ mission on earth. Samuel, Jesus the Son, Peter, Paul, Mary Magdalene, young John, Matthew the ex-tax collector, all called by God to His service and to love and change the world. Called to radical discipleship.

Jesus was and is revolutionary – radical. We are called to grow like Him – so – God calls us to be radical followers, radical disciples of Christ, our friend and Master. What does it mean to be a radical disciple of Jesus? Well – let’s see – what doesn’t it mean? It doesn’t mean following sets of rules – radical disciples follow and love a real Being, Christ our Lord. It doesn’t mean doing good works to earn a place in Heaven – Jesus did that for us. Neither does it mean being a good person. None of us humans are good, only through God’s grace do we become the good beings, the saints we were created by God to be. Being a radical disciple of Jesus doesn’t mean being a member of an exclusive club – like membership of an elitist golf club. It does mean being a member of a wider family of believers, of a community of disciples and it does mean being inclusive of all sorts of people. Being a radical disciple doesn’t mean just a cosy spiritual relationship between me and God. It does mean loving God and ourselves enough for our love to seep, to percolate even shine out and be shared with others.

So what else does radical discipleship mean? It means living Jesus’ mission – loving God, serving Him, building His kingdom of Love and Justice around us in our world. It means living a life of service, forgiveness, mercy, of hope. A life in which we answer Christ’s call to us with, “Here I am Lord. Your servant is listening”, like Samuel. A life of radical discipleship in which we continually answer, “Yes Lord”, “Yes”, “Yes”, “Yes”.

Now I want us to think about us at Saint Chad and Saint Mark, about us as a family. Many of us have our own families big and small and those relationships are vitally important, part of our call to love. And then there’s us – this family, each of us here, each of us elsewhere for today. All of us belong to our wider Saint Chad and Saint Mark family. We are sisters and brothers, fellow disciples, followers, servants, friends of our Lord and of each other. So how do we as a community, as a family, answer God’s call to radical discipleship?

Let’s consider where we’re at. We’re all going through quite a time of transition. Since Ray started in October we’ve begun a period of change, a time of experiment, a time to give ourselves as a community over to the workings of God’s Holy Spirit. Allowing the fluidity which the Spirit brings to take place in what we do, how we do it, what we are and where the Spirit is taking us. What sort of changes? Well – changes in liturgy, change in the All Together service, change in music – less hymns – change in how we communicate information, changes in roles, change in how we relate to each other. Sometimes it feels like you can’t keep up! Change is difficult; creativity can be messy, think of artists, think of childbirth (or rather don’t think of childbirth), think of toddlers. And the Holy Spirit is very very creative. So, life in our family for us at present can, sometimes seem confusing, demanding, incomprehensible sometimes – but then there are surprises. And joy and laughter and love. And I’ve been seeing all these things recently.

So, for all of us, as we go into 2016, the question I ask is – so how do we grow together even more during this time of change and be radical disciples of Christ our Lord? The best description of how a community of followers lives, works and cares together is found in Paul’s letter to the Colossians in chapter 3. Our readers will come to our crib and read it for us:

“As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

God’s chosen ones, the people He calls, holy and beloved – that’s us. And at the centre of who we are as a community, at the heart of all we are and do – is Jesus. When we meet together to worship, let’s sing together with thanks in our hearts and worship Him with our hymns and songs together as His Saint Chad and Saint Mark family. His family of followers, His bunch of radical disciples who come together here to praise and love Him, our Lord, our Friend.

Amen

Becoming Mothers of God - A Homily for Christmas Morning preached by Ray Gaston

We meet here on this morning, this wonderful morning in which we remember the story of the incarnation our hope rooted in our experience of the Christ story; that God is here, God is amongst us, God is with us.

And we gather here to worship that God; to gather around this crib and marvel at the truth of the Nativity — the truth that out of the warm nurturing darkness of a woman’s womb God chose the ultimate message of faith, hope and love to be born ; that in the dark of night, God’s vision for the world became embodied in a human life, born of a woman and that in Jesus the truth that God IS present with God’s people was shown - the ancient message of the God of love and faithfulness and hope was revealed anew.

But as we meet to remember that event we are called to remain in the here and now, to allow that story to affect our story, to allow that truth to lead us into the truth of the meaning of our own lives.

As  a Christian Mystic of medieval times said

'What good is it that Christ was born all those years ago if he is not born now in your heart?'.

We are all called to be Mothers of God

Mary’s story should become our story, we are all called to be Mothers of God to give birth to the Divine through our faith, hope and love.

I love Luke’s gospel because it tells us so much of Mary’s story. And we should read it as our story too - a story for each of us as God calls us to give birth to God’s vision for the world in our faith, our hope and our love.

Can we welcome as messengers of God’s hope strangers who speak to us of God? Mary welcomed the shepherds to the side of the manger, can we listen as she listened to their message and as the gospel says ‘treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart’? Can we also find God speaking to us in those unknown to us, who surprise us in their ability to speak of God? Can we allow them to become to us bearers of God’s word?

As Elizabeth embraced Mary and supported her in recognising the message of hope she carried for the world, can we embrace one another - be Elizabeth to each other’s Mary - can we be stirred in the depths of our hearts to be excited by the faith, hope and love of another and encourage them as they tentatively begin to recognise that they have a calling to birth God’s faith, hope and love into the world? 

As the Angel comes to Mary at the annunciation - the Angel comes to us, calling us in this time and in this place to carry the hope of God in the depths of our being - to nurture fragile faith, to give ourselves to feeding hope and raising a vision of love in what can sometimes seem impossible circumstances. 

In a world where faith, hope and love often look defeated and useless we are called to dare to take the risk as Mary in her embracing of her call took the risk; as a young Jew in a remote outpost of empire, facing the scorn and violence of a Roman authority confident
in its worship of power and wealth and dismissive of the beautiful vision of her people. She held onto that vision of a God of faithfulness, hope and love - the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God of the One Mary raised, the God of the One we follow, Jesus of Nazareth whom we proclaim as God's Annointed One. 

As she put her hope in that God so are we called in our time despite the world’s scorn to join in daring to hope in the One God of faith hope and love.

Can we believe that in the backwaters of our lives our faith can really make a difference? Can we let God come to us in Jesus in what may seem to us all our insignificance? Can we hear the Angel as we are given our commission, to be people of the way and to give birth in our world to the truth of God's love and beauty?

O holy Child of Bethlehem!

Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin and enter in,
Be born in us to-day.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel!

'Stars and trees and waters stand still for an instant' - A Homily for Christmas Night preached by Ray Gaston

'The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light’, proclaims Isaiah in our reading tonight. The messianic promise is that oppression will be lifted and peace will reign, but what kind of peace and what kind of Messiah?

There is a strong strand in religious tradition that equates darkness with evil and light with good. It’s an influential strand that some believe dates back to Persian Zoroastrianism, with its coeternal spirits of good and evil and it lives powerfullytoday in Star Wars movies! This view was also influential in some of the heretical movements in the early church. But much of Abrahamic faith does not buy into such easy separations, such clear dualisms, for the paths that claim a root in Abraham proclaim One God who is Lord of all, One God who is both God of the night and of the day, of the dark and of the light. As the Psalmist proclaims: ‘the darkness and the light are both alike to you.’

And we gather here in the dark of night to worship that God; to gather around this crib and marvel at the truth of the Nativity — the truth that in the warm nurturing darkness of a woman’s womb God chose to be; that in the dark of night God became human, revealing the truth that there need be no separation between the human and the divine. As one ancient wrote: ‘God became human that we might become divine.’

The images of darkness and light that do run through our scripture — the images of Christ as the light that darkness cannot extinguish— are not there to set up the dualism between light and dark but to show that the phantoms of the night, the fear of the dark, are the creations of our imagination and a demonstration of the weakness, yes the weakness of evil. For God comes in the night to claim the night from the phantoms and fantasies of our mind that give power to weak and floundering evil. God comes in the night to show us that the dark is indeed God’s place too and perhaps the night is a holy and sacred time, a time of revelation, wonder and awe. The beauty of a real night sky — breath-taking beauty such as the night skies of the Middle Eastern desert — it’s only in such real darkness away from the false modern city lights that the true beauty of the stars’ natural light can be seen. Our city lights drown out the wonder of natural darkness and its intimate relationship with true light: the desert sky is darkness and light in a partnership of beauty revealing the wonder of God’s universe.

And so monks and nuns have, down the centuries, risen in the dead of night to pray; and in the early church not only monks and nuns but all Christians were encouraged to rise in the middle of the night to pray. The Early Church Father Hippolytus said:

Around midnight, rise and wash your hands with water and pray. If you are married, pray together… For those elders who handed down the tradition to us taught us that in this hour every creature hushes for a brief moment to praise the Lord. Stars and trees and waters stand still for an instant. All the host of angels serving him, together with the souls of the righteous, praise God.

And our brothers and sisters in Islam cherish the spirituality of the night too, for one of the last ten days of Ramadan is the Night of Power when Muslims believe the first words of the Qur’an were revealed to Muhammad. And on that night heaven is open wide and angels, one Muslim friend told me, descend in their thousands to the earth to hear the prayers of believers. And so many devout Muslims rise to pray at night during those last days of Ramadan in the hope of the angels hearing and taking their prayers to paradise.

And it was angels who came to those people of the night, the shepherds, to proclaim the birth of Jesus:

Do not be afraid; for see — I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.

… said the lone angel, to be followed by a host:

Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!

But what kind of Messiah? What kind of peace?

In a world in which dualisms of easy categorisations of good and bad, where opposites of the theories of the 'clash of civilisations' and easy dismissals and retreats from the Other often with deadly consequences abound - where in Bethlehem itself a wall of oppression, division and fear rises up - we are called to embrace this Messiah, this incarnate God who comes not to bring peace through conquest - the overcoming of the opposite — but through relationship. This God calls us not to set up easy opposites but to see our connection with the other, as light and dark work together to produce the beauty of the night sky. This new truly revolutionary Messiah, this Jesus, the God who is not a god in the way we think we know, calls us to live this Good News, to live this peace, the peace of Christmas, the peace of the night. To open our hearts to the Other, the different, and in so doing to be transformed and to transform, to become stars in the night sky, and as a human race to be what God made us to be: participants in Divine beauty, love and truth.

4th Sunday in Advent - Reflections on Mary Preached by Revd Sue Watson

I recently read an article in National Geographic magazine about how we in the West have treated Mary down the years, removing her from her roots: in our desire to give her honour and prestige as the Mother of God, we see her in blue, serene and calm, obedient and accepting…and perhaps, just maybe, some of these characteristics did apply to her…

But Mary lived in Nazareth, in Galilee. And Galilee was occupied by the forces of Rome and subdued by force. Just as an illustration of the level of this force, when Jesus was a young boy, the capital of Galilee, Sepphoris, a few miles north of Nazareth, was the scene of a violent rebellion, which the Romans put down- or so we read in an account from the time- with the force of over 20,000 crack troops, burning Sepphoris and abducting many occupants into slavery. No doubt the nearby villages – of which Nazareth was one - took their share of brutality in that pogrom,

Mary had to cope with living in that tension and with that risk – a young woman with at least one small child. She was probably much tougher than history has painted her: indeed, when we look afresh at the words of her great song of praise, the Magnificat, we can see the signs of those courageous, confident characteristics which saw her through the anxiety and the hard times in which she lived, and which were yet to come.

And her courage and confidence was founded on God.

Luke is the Gospel Writer who tells of the women in the narrative of Jesus’s birth. The announcement from the Angel Gabriel to Mary is there, the news of Elizabeth being pregnant when she was old and her husband Zechariah’s response is recounted and the visit of Mary to Elizabeth and their friendship is found in Luke too, and in no other Gospel.

Luke’s account draws out the links between Abraham and Sarah- the founders of the nation of Israel – and Elizabeth and Zechariah, two childless couples, until God intervened in their old age and through each of their children did great things.

Abraham was the Founder of Israel, the great patriarch, but now the child John who will be born to the older mother, Elizabeth, will be the last of the Old Testament prophets, and after him will come the greater one, the thong of whose sandal he is not worthy to untie, Jesus, born of a young virgin.

‘The age of fulfilment is beginning’, says Luke.

In Luke, angels make announcements, but though the words of the angel to Zechariah are similar to the words spoken to Mary when the Angel Gabriel visits her and tells her God has chosen her, Mary’s response to God is very different from Zechariah’s.

Zechariah, we are told, didn’t believe the angel and so, as a sign, he was temporarily struck dumb until after John was born.

Mary on the other hand, even though she asked how her news could possibly be true, graciously accepted God’s message and became a willing participant in His plan. And hearing the good news of her cousin Elizabeth, she sets off straightaway to visit her.

When Mary arrives at Elizabeth’s home, in a remote, unnamed hill-side village, far away from the centres of worldly power, Elizabeth prophesies: she is filled with the Holy Spirit and proclaims what Mary has not yet told her, and what is not yet visible to the eye: Mary is pregnant. Furthermore, through the Spirit she knows who Mary’s child will be, for she calls Mary “the mother of my Lord.” Her prophecy will soon be fulfilled when her own son, John, prepares the way for Him.

And Elizabeth blesses Mary for her trust and acceptance of God’s will for her: and in so doing, she begins a series of blessings that weave through Luke’s birth narrative and intensify all the joy, delight, and praise in the story. Mary, Zechariah, and Simeon will all add their blessings to this chain of blessing, praising God for what God is doing at this moment in history.

Mary is blessed not only for her status as the mother of the Lord, but also for her trust in God’s promise. Mary is blessed because despite all expectations her social status has been reversed: she will be honoured, says Elizabeth, rather than shamed for bearing this child. But she has also been blessed with divine joy because she has believed that God is able to do what God promises to do.

And so we hear the Song of Mary, a song which speaks of the topsy-turvey nature of God’s kingdom, already being shown in her, and which her Son will go on to expound in his ministry.

Mary sings praise to the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, who chooses her, an ordinary woman through whom extraordinary things will take place. This is the God of reversals, the one who regularly shows up where we least expect God to be – in a manger, on a cross, vulnerable, suffering - in order to scatter the proud, exalt the lowly, satisfy the hungry, and send the rich away empty. Mary's God is a God of justice and compassion, the One who hears the cry of the oppressed and the despondent of all generations, and responds, and so also deserves our attention; the God of Israel, the One who has been siding with the oppressed and downtrodden since the days of Egypt, the One who has been making and keeping promises since the time of Abraham.

This is no shy or retiring Mary – she is courageous, confident and well-aware of the suffering of her people.

And Luke’s birth stories are full of joyful song: the song of Mary- which we call the Magnificat - followed by the song of Zechariah, the Benedictus. Then there is the song of the angels heard by the shepherds out in the fields and the Nunc Dimittis, the song of Simeon, when he recognises Jesus at his presentation in the Temple. The joy of this special birth fills those around with the desire to sing praise to God.

And why? Because Luke understands, as did the Psalmists of Israel, that songs are powerful. Laments express our grief and fear so as to respect our deep and difficult emotions and at the same time strip them of their power to harm or incapacitate us.

Songs of praise and thanksgiving unite us with the One to whom we lift our voices. And hymns of courage and promise not only name our hopes but also contribute to bringing them into being, just as Mary’s song did, all those years ago.

Whatever your views about hymns- what you like to sing and what you don’t, know that when we gather together and sing to God, the hope and consolation of all nations, we, like Mary, are swept into God's divine activity to save and redeem our world. A few voices drawn together in song in late December may seem a small thing in the face of the wars and worries of the age, but surely no smaller than those two voices joined in the Judean hill country twenty centuries ago. Mary's God, we should remember, delights in taking what is small and insignificant in the eyes of the world to do extraordinary and unexpected things. So it has been, is, and ever shall be "according to the promise God made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever."

In a moment I’m going to ask Robert to play us a version of Mary’s song – you have the words on the sheet you were hopefully given when you arrived…it’s a chance to enter into Mary’s song of praise and joy at the prospect of God fulfilling his word in her.

Mary’s song and Elizabeth’s words and actions invite us to reflect on our own openness to the ways that God chooses to act in our world. What is God doing through unexpected people in our society today? Where is God at work through people whom we and our neighbours often exclude or treat as shameful? Will we listen to the Spirit’s prompting to respond when the outcast and despised, the disapproved –of and those on the edges of our comfort-zone show up on our doorstep? I don’t know…

May we, like Elizabeth and Mary, trust that God is coming to save and free us. May we, like them, give thanks that God has taken away our shame and then respond to God’s love by welcoming with open hearts those considered by the world as shameful. May we, like them, become a community of expansive love with support for each other as we hope and wait for his coming.

Sermon for Advent 3

This weeks Sermon was on John the Baptist and Jesus - Was John right about his Cousin?