Recent Sermons

‘Discernment is a team sport’

Scriptures

● Isaiah 6:1-8

● 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

● Luke 5:1-11

Our text from the First Testament today is from Isaiah, in which the prophet is presented with a vision of God surrounded by cherubim and seraphim. He experiences being touched with hot coal as a cleansing ritual and offers himself to the Divine as the messenger they need to the kingdom of Israel. This passage is something of an introduction to his role as prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah, in which he will speak of social justice, the duty to the people around you, and the importance of honouring God through mercy as well as sacrifice.

Simon Peter’s experience of being called probably seems much less dramatic by comparison - a stranger gives him some advice that turns a bad day at work into an extraordinarily good day - but the impact is similarly profound. When Jesus miraculously fills his empty nets, Simon somehow knows he is in the presence of the Divine.

If this was all there was to their stories, I doubt we would know their names. A man having a vision or dream of God, or someone whose fortunes are transformed so completely in a moment that they believe it could only have been a miracle. They could have been consigned to the Daily Mail Online archive of history with everyone who has seen Jesus, Mary or Elvis in their morning toast.

One major reason they are not is simple: their calling led to action. They became people who embodied the values of God and shared the message they were given. In doing so, they inspired generations and changed the world. From the disciples of Isaiah living in exile in Babylon who completed the text that we now read as a single book to the congregations and individuals receiving letters from Paul and his followers and engaging in the debates that he set up with Peter about what it means to be a Christian.

I want to spend some time now looking at the world and the people that were around them, and around Paul, when they received those calls.

Even though we think of them as men acting alone, and a lot of the early part of the book represents him as a lone agent, Isaiah was written by a group of people who could well have been disciples of the prophet. He starts from a very individualist experience of being cleansed and called by God, but the message cannot reach the people of Israel and would not reach us here two and half millennia later without the community that took up his message, wrote it down, shared it and even expanded on it.

Peter is almost never alone. On the testimony of the Gospels and Acts, he was often with the other apostles during Christ’s earthly life, and building his community and the church around south-west Asia. 

And we know that Paul had amanuenses (personal scribes) writing his letters for him. The main evidence for this comes from moments in his letters when the text tells us he is writing in his own hand and from a lovely moment at the end of the letter to the Romans where the voice switches and it says, “I, Tertius, the writer of this letter, greet you in the Lord”. Paul also names people in his letters that are either carrying them between churches, reading and sharing them, or acting in leadership in the churches and communities he has influenced.

By working and living in community, each of these men allowed their message to be influenced and changed. Paul is one of the few figures in the Bible who we can identify clearly as a single author of any text. There is a scholarly consensus that he did write most of the letters that bear his name, including 1 & 2 Cor. Although his letters are probably the earliest texts of the NT, they were created somewhere between 700 and 500 years after Isaiah and so there can be said to be much more version control compared to any of the writings in the law, prophets, histories and psalms that make up the first Testament - especially when you take into account that some of the First Testament scrolls had also been translated into Greek and the texts from which they were translated are sometimes less complete than the Greek ‘Septuagint’ version.

Even so, we cannot point definitively to Paul’s letters and say they are the work of one composer. The influence of Tertius and his other amanuenses is not easy to detect, but one assumes they did shape the work. In Candida Moss’ excellent recent book God’s Ghostwriters, she argues that no scribe is ever truly faithful to the words that are dictated to them. Many a PA or Executive Assistant has discreetly tidied up the boss’ grammar or added a diplomatic adjective to soften a message, after all, and we are well used by now to the idea of books having editors. We must also remember that the texts were copied over and over again by other enslaved scribes who may have added their own notes and marginalia that were gradually incorporated - there are several examples of this in the Gospels. Neither the ending of Mark’s Gospel nor the encounter in John between Jesus, the woman dragged before him accused of adultery, and her accusers can be found in the earliest copies of these texts. Who added them, and why, will long be a mystery.

Professor Moss’ work is an excellent synthesis of social history, archaeology and text criticism and it deserves serious consideration. It is also a reminder that the Bible has never been a complete and univocal text. There is no such thing as the ‘original text of the Bible’. My NSRVUE does not have a verse 37 in Acts 8, for example, but a King James or New King James translation will. Acts 8 contains the story of the Ethiopian court official who converts to Christianity under the influence of Philip who was brought to him by the HS. 

The text I have reads, “36 As they were going along the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” 38 He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him.” In the New KJV there is an extra interaction between Philip and the court official, and it reads like this: 

“See, here is water. What hinders me from being baptized?” 37 Then Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” 38 So he commanded the chariot to stand still.

The scholarly consensus is that a scribe probably added the text we know as Acts 8:37 to improve the narrative or add theological weight to an argument about baptism - without it, we see Philip baptising an individual who has not professed a particular faith in Christ and it seems to me probable that this was controversial. After all, debates about what constitutes ‘proper’ baptism have exhausted church scholars for millennia.

Those of you who have heard me speak before will know that I came to theology after an undergraduate degree in archaeology and I find the puzzle of human written and material culture fascinating, but I want to reassure you that this is not just an exercise in my particular intellectual curiosity - I hope it challenges you to broaden how you think about the fascinating selection of texts we call the Bible.

There are no lone actors in the Bible. Even Christ surrounded himself with his apostles, disciples and friends. He did not write his own Gospels, but left it to the survivors of his movement to share the message. Through their God-given gifts and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, generations of people have written, transcribed, performed, commented on, translated, and compiled these texts into the books we have in front of us. It is not disrespectful of the Bible’s status as a holy texts to acknowledge the flawed and complex people that created it - I believe that if we are to take the Holy Spirit seriously we must accept divine wisdom in every step of its creation. That also means accepting that there is no “correct” version. Whilst I like the NRSV for its scholarship, many find their peace with the text in the beauty of the King James Version. I believe God has a purpose for our theological diversity. After all, if the early church hadn’t had a range of views on circumcision, food laws, and the role of Christ in salvation we would not even have a New Testament!

The world and the church are changing around us at a pace that rivals that of the early church witnessing to their movement and building community within an expanding Roman Empire. I know I don’t need to tell you that churches worldwide are finding it harder to call people to traditional ministry, and traditional denominational structures are changing. I believe that the way this movement we call the church will survive is if creative people share the responsibility of leadership and make careful and honest decisions about how they will steward their energy and the church’s resources to share the Gospel. 

The Bible is a group of texts in relationship with each other and every text is about relationships within the community it describes. The God of the Trinity, the God of relationships, does not need you to struggle on alone. So when you have a moment in your life when it seems God is calling you to something new or radical, don’t be afraid to look around you for the people who can help you to understand what that means. I hope they will challenge and surprise you.

Amen.

© Rev Kate Harford, Feb 2025.

I want to begin with some reflections on language.  There are many words and phrases in English that are broadly evaluative.  To apply one of these expressions to a person or to a thing is not just to describe that person or that thing, but to offer an evaluation of some kind too.  And we can divide these expressions into two broad categories: there are the positive ones, the ones that are used to commend; and there are the negative ones, the ones that are used to disparage.

Here are some terms of commendation: ‘kind’, ‘compassionate’, ‘easy on the eye’, ‘delicious’, ‘soothing’.  And here are some terms of disparagement: ‘selfish’, ‘callous’, ‘a real eyesore’, ‘disgusting’, ‘annoying’.

But there are puzzling cases too—cases that are not so straightforward to classify.  For instance, what about ‘nice’?  I don’t mean in its sense of ‘precise’ or ‘subtle’, as when we talk about a nice distinction—although there might be some puzzlement about that case too!  I mean in the sense it has when we describe a person as nice.  Most of us, I think, regard this as a compliment.  But it can also be used in a rather damning way, to suggest a kind of feebleness.  Football pundits often use it to criticize a player who is not up for the metaphorical fight—or possibly even not up for the literal fight!

Or what about the word ‘photogenic’?  It’s never been entirely clear to me whether or not describing someone as ‘photogenic’ is complimentary.  On the one hand, it is nearly always taken as such.  On the other hand, it can be heard as a way of saying that photographs of the person flatter them.

Or what about the expression ‘like a child’?  The English language nicely—note my use of the word ‘nicely’, by the way!—the English language nicely gets round that equivocation by giving us two separate alternatives: ‘childlike’ to commend; ‘childish’ to condemn.

Or what about the phrase ‘doesn’t suffer fools gladly’?  You’ll often hear this said of people, particularly in the past tense in obituaries, with a tone of respect and admiration.  But if suffering fools gladly means treating stupid people with patience and kindness, then the Gospels abound with examples of our Lord doing precisely that.

The phrase ‘suffer fools gladly’, as many of you will know, comes from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians.  And if you’re interested, after this morning’s service, it’s worth going back and having a look at what exactly Paul is doing with the phrase.  But, be that as it may, it’s a familiar phrase from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians that has prompted these reflections of mine—a phrase that occurred in the epistle reading from this morning’s lectionary.  I am talking about ‘being all things to all people’, a description that Paul willingly confers on himself.

I say ‘willingly’.  A more hostile way of putting it would be to say ‘smugly’.  At any rate Paul obviously feels no shame in applying this phrase to himself.  Yet for many of us, particularly when we think of the phrase being used in connection with politicians, it has negative connotations.  It calls to mind that wonderful Groucho Marx line: ‘Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them... well, I have others.’

Do these negative connotations apply in Paul’s case?  Is Paul compromising his principles in an effort to please?  I am sure we would all agree that he isn’t.  There is a kind of pragmatism at work here, but only to ensure success in getting a vital message across.  Instead of flaunting his freedom from Jewish law, Paul has conformed to it when among Jews, in order to get his message across to the Jews. Conversely, when among Gentiles, he has stressed the irrelevance of Jewish law—though of course he remains only too conscious that a Christian must live under some law, the law of Christ.  In short, he has been prepared to accommodate himself to everybody, in an effort to connect with them and to put them in touch with what really matters.

It’s not particularly mysterious.  Admittedly, in practice, there may be difficult decisions about how much accommodation of this kind is possible without some compromise of principles, and I dare say that we all occasionally succumb to the temptation to conform to other people’s ways of doing things as a way of trying to win them over when it is not the right thing to do.  But the idea that Paul can describe himself as all things to all people and feel no shame is not, as I say, particularly mysterious.

But I think there’s a more interesting and related question in the background.  In what ways might God be said to be all things to all people?  Here I’m reminded of some things that Helen said in her wonderful sermon last week.  And I hope you will forgive me if some of what follows repeats things that she said then—but I think they bear repetition.

In what ways, then, is God all things to all people?

In what ways was Jesus all things to all people?  Let us reconsider the passage from Mark that was read earlier.  Here, very early in Mark’s gospel, we see Jesus engaged in many acts of healing. We are told that everyone in Capernaum was gathered around his door, and that all those who were physically or mentally ill were brought to him to be cured.  It seems relentless and exhausting.  It is perhaps not surprising that Jesus wanted some time to himself early the following morning, when he could be alone to pray.

But the passage begins with some contrasting intimacy.  In verses 29 – 31, one of Jesus’s many acts of healing is described in more detail.  This time the invalid is identified: it is Simon Peter’s mother-in-law.  And we are told how Jesus took her by the hand and lifted her up, to the point that she was well enough to act as their hostess.

The juxtaposition of this story with the subsequent account of Jesus curing so many others puts us in mind of that familiar point—a point that has become all too familiar in recent times—that whereas one death is a tragedy, a hundred thousand deaths are a statistic.  But there is of course a happier variant too: whereas the healing of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law was a cause for special joy and celebration, the curing of the many others was a blended backdrop to the Gospel narrative in which Jesus went about doing good.

The third lectionary reading gives us something similar.  In Isaiah Chapter 40, verse 26, we find  a reference to Him who brings out their host and numbers them juxtaposed with His calling them all by name; not one, we are told, is missing.

God is all things to all people.  God can meet each one of us, in our own particular circumstances, with absolute undivided attention.  Absolute.  Undivided.  God focuses all of God’s attentive love on each and every one of us; all of it.  There is no need for any sharing of resources here.  Moreover, God is infinitely adaptable to the unique contours of each and every one of us; God is all things to each and every one of us.

I am reminded of a sermon that our former minister Susan once preached at St Columba’s, in which she memorably and beautifully described God as both utterly faithful and utterly promiscuous.  For, at the same time as God is meeting you, in your own particular circumstances, with absolute undivided attention, God is meeting me, in my own particular circumstances, with absolute undivided attention, and is meeting hundreds of thousands of others, in their own particular circumstances, with absolute undivided attention.  That gives hope to each of us as individuals.  But it also gives hope to all of us as a community.  We can know that God cares as much for each of our brothers and sisters as God cares for us; and we must also know that God is calling us into solidarity with our brothers and sisters for that very reason, so that, with God’s help, we can respond together to the challenges that we confront.  This not only gives hope, it gives the kind of hope that is of course so crucial in the particular circumstances in which we have found ourselves over the past year.  Thanks be to God.

Amen

I want to begin with some reflections on language.  There are many words and phrases in English that are broadly evaluative.  To apply one of these expressions to a person or to a thing is not just to describe that person or that thing, but to offer an evaluation of some kind too.  And we can divide these expressions into two broad categories: there are the positive ones, the ones that are used to commend; and there are the negative ones, the ones that are used to disparage.

Here are some terms of commendation: ‘kind’, ‘compassionate’, ‘easy on the eye’, ‘delicious’, ‘soothing’.  And here are some terms of disparagement: ‘selfish’, ‘callous’, ‘a real eyesore’, ‘disgusting’, ‘annoying’.

But there are puzzling cases too—cases that are not so straightforward to classify.  For instance, what about ‘nice’?  I don’t mean in its sense of ‘precise’ or ‘subtle’, as when we talk about a nice distinction—although there might be some puzzlement about that case too!  I mean in the sense it has when we describe a person as nice.  Most of us, I think, regard this as a compliment.  But it can also be used in a rather damning way, to suggest a kind of feebleness.  Football pundits often use it to criticize a player who is not up for the metaphorical fight—or possibly even not up for the literal fight!

Or what about the word ‘photogenic’?  It’s never been entirely clear to me whether or not describing someone as ‘photogenic’ is complimentary.  On the one hand, it is nearly always taken as such.  On the other hand, it can be heard as a way of saying that photographs of the person flatter them.

Or what about the expression ‘like a child’?  The English language nicely—note my use of the word ‘nicely’, by the way!—the English language nicely gets round that equivocation by giving us two separate alternatives: ‘childlike’ to commend; ‘childish’ to condemn.

Or what about the phrase ‘doesn’t suffer fools gladly’?  You’ll often hear this said of people, particularly in the past tense in obituaries, with a tone of respect and admiration.  But if suffering fools gladly means treating stupid people with patience and kindness, then the Gospels abound with examples of our Lord doing precisely that.

The phrase ‘suffer fools gladly’, as many of you will know, comes from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians.  And if you’re interested, after this morning’s service, it’s worth going back and having a look at what exactly Paul is doing with the phrase.  But, be that as it may, it’s a familiar phrase from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians that has prompted these reflections of mine—a phrase that occurred in the epistle reading from this morning’s lectionary.  I am talking about ‘being all things to all people’, a description that Paul willingly confers on himself.

I say ‘willingly’.  A more hostile way of putting it would be to say ‘smugly’.  At any rate Paul obviously feels no shame in applying this phrase to himself.  Yet for many of us, particularly when we think of the phrase being used in connection with politicians, it has negative connotations.  It calls to mind that wonderful Groucho Marx line: ‘Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them... well, I have others.’

Do these negative connotations apply in Paul’s case?  Is Paul compromising his principles in an effort to please?  I am sure we would all agree that he isn’t.  There is a kind of pragmatism at work here, but only to ensure success in getting a vital message across.  Instead of flaunting his freedom from Jewish law, Paul has conformed to it when among Jews, in order to get his message across to the Jews. Conversely, when among Gentiles, he has stressed the irrelevance of Jewish law—though of course he remains only too conscious that a Christian must live under some law, the law of Christ.  In short, he has been prepared to accommodate himself to everybody, in an effort to connect with them and to put them in touch with what really matters.

It’s not particularly mysterious.  Admittedly, in practice, there may be difficult decisions about how much accommodation of this kind is possible without some compromise of principles, and I dare say that we all occasionally succumb to the temptation to conform to other people’s ways of doing things as a way of trying to win them over when it is not the right thing to do.  But the idea that Paul can describe himself as all things to all people and feel no shame is not, as I say, particularly mysterious.

But I think there’s a more interesting and related question in the background.  In what ways might God be said to be all things to all people?  Here I’m reminded of some things that Helen said in her wonderful sermon last week.  And I hope you will forgive me if some of what follows repeats things that she said then—but I think they bear repetition.

In what ways, then, is God all things to all people?

In what ways was Jesus all things to all people?  Let us reconsider the passage from Mark that was read earlier.  Here, very early in Mark’s gospel, we see Jesus engaged in many acts of healing. We are told that everyone in Capernaum was gathered around his door, and that all those who were physically or mentally ill were brought to him to be cured.  It seems relentless and exhausting.  It is perhaps not surprising that Jesus wanted some time to himself early the following morning, when he could be alone to pray.

But the passage begins with some contrasting intimacy.  In verses 29 – 31, one of Jesus’s many acts of healing is described in more detail.  This time the invalid is identified: it is Simon Peter’s mother-in-law.  And we are told how Jesus took her by the hand and lifted her up, to the point that she was well enough to act as their hostess.

The juxtaposition of this story with the subsequent account of Jesus curing so many others puts us in mind of that familiar point—a point that has become all too familiar in recent times—that whereas one death is a tragedy, a hundred thousand deaths are a statistic.  But there is of course a happier variant too: whereas the healing of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law was a cause for special joy and celebration, the curing of the many others was a blended backdrop to the Gospel narrative in which Jesus went about doing good.

The third lectionary reading gives us something similar.  In Isaiah Chapter 40, verse 26, we find  a reference to Him who brings out their host and numbers them juxtaposed with His calling them all by name; not one, we are told, is missing.

God is all things to all people.  God can meet each one of us, in our own particular circumstances, with absolute undivided attention.  Absolute.  Undivided.  God focuses all of God’s attentive love on each and every one of us; all of it.  There is no need for any sharing of resources here.  Moreover, God is infinitely adaptable to the unique contours of each and every one of us; God is all things to each and every one of us.

I am reminded of a sermon that our former minister Susan once preached at St Columba’s, in which she memorably and beautifully described God as both utterly faithful and utterly promiscuous.  For, at the same time as God is meeting you, in your own particular circumstances, with absolute undivided attention, God is meeting me, in my own particular circumstances, with absolute undivided attention, and is meeting hundreds of thousands of others, in their own particular circumstances, with absolute undivided attention.  That gives hope to each of us as individuals.  But it also gives hope to all of us as a community.  We can know that God cares as much for each of our brothers and sisters as God cares for us; and we must also know that God is calling us into solidarity with our brothers and sisters for that very reason, so that, with God’s help, we can respond together to the challenges that we confront.  This not only gives hope, it gives the kind of hope that is of course so crucial in the particular circumstances in which we have found ourselves over the past year.  Thanks be to God.

Amen

Don’t know how you are all feeling, but I found last week particularly difficult. Of all the weeks since the start of this pandemic, if I’m honest, I would say that I felt quite depressed and I think that was down to two things. It was because we had reached the milestone of 100,000 deaths and also because, on Thursday, it was Holocaust Memorial Day. Both of them reminders of things beyond our ability to comprehend without feeling overwhelmed and saddened. One a warning of just how serious the pandemic is, the other a stark warning of just how inhumane human beings can be.

But just as it was getting to me, I did what we were being invited to do on Thursday evening for Holocaust Memorial Day, and that was to light a candle and place it in the window so that it could be seen from the street. And as I did so, I turned off the light in the kitchen and felt the calmness that you get when you light a candle. And I saw that some of our other neighbours had also lit candles and placed them in their windows. A candle can be such a powerful presence: both a sign of remembrance, but also for hope. As Anne Frank said, “Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.” Or in the words of St Francis of Assisi: “All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.”

We have to remind ourselves that we are still in the season of Epiphany, the season of light and enlightenment, when Jesus is revealed as the Christ, the messiah promised long ago, the saviour of the world. That single candle in the window reminded me of one of the memorials at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, which remembers all the children who perished in the concentration camps in the second world war. At its heart is a single lit candle, surrounded by hundreds of mirrors which reflect its light as a voice reads out all the names of the children, one by one.

We can so easily be overwhelmed by the scale of suffering in the world. And yet, as every politician reminded us as they announced what they called the grim milestone of reaching 100,000 deaths, each one of those deaths represents a person. And beyond them are the countless friends and families who will grieve their loss. Each one is a person, of infinite value and worth, whose loss is not just a loss to those who knew them, but a loss to us all.

So where is the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, in the midst of all of this? What does the Bible say to us today? We start with the message of Christmas in the midst of a world in torment, a world as full of beauty and wonder as it is suffering and struggle. That’s where we begin as Christians, because it is this which gives us hope and a purpose. The God who created the world, the universe, and everything in it, will not let suffering and evil have the last word. The word of God is love and that stands out in the darkness of life, like a solitary lit candle in the window at night. The God who made us, is the God who will save and redeem us. And the God who made everything in the universe, every living thing, cares for each and every one.

Each and every one is of infinite value and worth to God. Over 100,000 people now rest in God for eternity, each and every one of them. God does not work to the world’s values: a person winning £100,000 in the lottery would not expect to receive their winnings in £1 coins. A person making a deposit in the bank to the tune of £100,000 would not be popular if they turned up with £100,000’s worth of coins. Yet to God, each and every one is as precious as the next. Multiplying that up by 100,000 or 100 million would not increase the love that God has for us.

This is not how we operate as members of the human race. We are forever judging ourselves against each other, not always to strive for excellence, but to establish our superiority over and against each other. Be it wealth and possessions, intellect or strength, moral superiority or unchallengeability. But, says Jesus, this is not how it should be with us, whoever is greatest must be servant of all.

So, when a man with an unclean spirit makes himself known in the synagogue in Capernaum where Jesus is teaching, Jesus stops what he is doing and takes the time to deal with him and heal him. You can imagine the scene, the congregation has gathered to worship, they have settled down to listen to Jesus’ teaching and a man interrupts the moment. Worse than that, he is unclean, for it says he had an unclean spirit. His behaviour is unacceptable and gets in the way and he is unclean, he shouldn’t be there, he should keep his distance and keep out of the way: hands, face, space! But who were they to call the man ‘unclean’? Jesus sees what is wrong with him and liberates him from the spirit that has taken hold of him. This man matters to Jesus as much as he matters to God. Who are we to call anyone ‘unclean?’ And the people remark that the teaching of Jesus carries with it an authority that they had never known before, because his actions match his words, there is a consistency there. Jesus began his ministry with the words of Isaiah, ‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has called me to bring good news to the poor, to set the oppressed free.’ This story in Mark’s gospel is the first public act of Jesus. It takes place in the synagogue, a place of worship, on a sabbath and it is a demonstration that Jesus is filled with spirit of God, who cares for each and every person, each and every living thing.

In the West we are obsessed with cleanliness. Look at the shelves in the supermarket and count the number of cleaning products, for doing the laundry and the washing up, for cleaning our cars and for cleaning ourselves. And now, in the middle of the pandemic, we are even more obsessed with keeping clean, with washing our hands and keeping our distance… and rightly so, for everyone’s protection. But here Jesus is offering us another kind of cleanliness… another kind of holiness… one which brings liberation to each and everyone. And Jesus, the Holy One of God, is offering us a different kind of holiness. Not kept apart for occasional show, but a holiness which meets people in their need, which touches lepers, cuts through cultural prejudices, a holiness which is not about being set apart, but about being set apart for a purpose.

So this morning, I want to offer you a candle in the dark: hold on to the hope we have in God through Jesus Christ. Hold on to the knowledge that good will prevail over all that is evil in the world, all the prejudice and injustice, for love always has the last word. And love teaches us that we too are holy, for we have been set aside for a purpose, to bring hope and healing to the world. We are not being asked to take on the world’s problems single-handedly. Instead, we are to remember that God loves each and every one and that is where we start, to care for each other, for those around us, to do what we can to make the world a better place by following the teachings of Jesus and the example of Jesus. The Jesus who spoke with authority, for his actions matched his words, even to the point of interrupting his teaching to reach down to a man in need. To be kinder and gentler, to be more compassionate and more loving.

Amen