Some of you may know that since we have an interim organist, yours truly has been selecting most of the music except for the choir anthems. As I was looking on the web for mother’s day church music, I noticed that someone suggested the song, Harper Valley PTA.

Instead we sang a familiar tune with strange new words about a fourth century saint who may be obscure to many of you. Monica, mother of three from North Africa, would probably not be remembered except that she was the mother of St. Augustine AND the mother of Perpetua. Perpetua you ask? Well, yes, Perpetua would be martyred as a young adult; literally fed to the lions in the coliseum in front of a crowd. So Monica, the obscure, North African mother would change the course of world history through her own powerful faith and her children.

Although raised by Christian parents, her pagan husband prevented the baptism of their three children. Their eldest son, Augustine, would eventually go to school in Carthage where he adopted the Manichean belief. Have you ever noticed how even children who are close to their parents will often adopt habits, beliefs, and lifestyles that are totally foreign or even offensive to their parents? Monica was dismayed at her son’s choice of this crazy, Manichean religion. After seventeen years, she would eventually follow him across the Mediterranean to Rome and then to Milan before he converted to Christianity.

One of my favorite children’s stories is “The Runaway Bunny,” a 1942 book by Margaret Wise Brown. The book is a dialogue between a young bunny and his/her mother. The child-bunny fantasizes about going to all these places, and each time the mother bunny says she will follow the little bunny or be with the little bunny. Here are some excerpts:

Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away.
So he said to his mother, “I am running away.”
“If you run away,” said his mother, “I will run after you.
For you are my little bunny.”

“If you run after me,” said the little bunny,
“I will become a fish in a trout stream
and I will swim away from you.”

”“If you become a fish in a trout stream,” said his mother,
“I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.”

“If you become a tree,” said the little bunny,
“I will become a little sailboat,
and I will sail away from you.”

“If you become a sailboat and sail away from me,”
said his mother, “I will become the wind
and blow you where I want you to go.”

“Shucks,” said the bunny, “I might just as well
stay where I am and be your little bunny.”

And so he did.
“Have a carrot,” said the mother bunny.

Because of their religious differences, Augustine tried very hard to run away from his mother. He was in his twenties and took passage on a boat to Rome without saying good bye to her. Soon, she followed him to Rome only to discover he had already left for Milan. She followed him to Milan. Eventually the Bishop of that city would change Augustine’s heart. Augustine converted to Christianity and the world was changed as a result. Monica passed away six months after her son’s conversion. She died in a foreign land after spending several years following her son.

There is an old Spanish proverb that says “An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.” I still haven’t figured out if that means that I equal about ten pounds of a mother, but I do know that we are both in the love business. Jesus tells us that “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” This is what mothers do.

Like it or not, we develop our first understanding of God’s love from our mother. This may or may not be a good thing, but develop we do. Healthy mothers sacrifice themselves for their children by giving of their time, their money, and as in the case of Monica, even their choice of place to live.

Some of us may have had less-than-ideal mothers and childhoods. Even in these situations, you may find love like a rose on a thorny bush. In many respects, a healthy church community can fill in the gaps for people with less-than-ideal families of origin. When you walk in the door of a healthy faith community for the first time, some people will say they feel like they are finally “at home.” I think what they are experiencing is a lack of judgment, a sense of acceptance, a smile, a touch, – in short, love.

Yes, healthy mothers and healthy churches are in the love business and our job is very simple: spread the love. Mothers do this by sharing their love with their children and grandchildren. In our church community we provide a safe place for those who have been wounded by other churches and even their families. Unlike places that talk a lot about Jesus and the Bible, we don’t talk a lot about what Jesus says, we simply try to do what he does. We share the love, or in the words of Jesus, we “love one another.”

Muskogee has afforded a number of career and lifetime firsts for me. For example, last week I got the 8:00 service to laugh twice during the sermon. Also last week, I managed to get into an argument with a homeless person about scripture. There were several lessons in that encounter, not the least of which was security for our staff. As I left a while later for pastoral visits, I was concerned for the safety of staff and volunteers at church, knowing that there was a mentally unstable homeless person out there who now had a grudge against me.

The other lesson, surprisingly, was about stewardship. This former truck driver came into the office needing a pair of eyeglasses. With a few calls and emails we found someone who could take care of this man’s needs. He returned to the office and we told him the good news. Next he plopped down in my office to chat. I asked him how he managed to get into his current predicament and where he was going after he finished his time at the Gospel Rescue Mission. He evaded the first question, smiled and said “I will go wherever I go.”

Then he started asking me questions like “If you lost everything you had, would you be sitting here smiling?” He seemed arrogant about his state of bliss and my inability to get down to a zero level. I told him it would be impossible for me to lose everything because the last thing I would have to lose would be my faith in a redeeming God. He smiled with his arrogant smile and quoted Philippians 4:19 “My God will fully satisfy every need of yours.” He quoted this scripture in a way to justify his lack of concern for where he will go or what will happen to him. Because he believed God would provide for all of his needs, he was off the hook for responsibility or accountability. He didn’t like my reply.

“But you have only cited half the verse.” I said. “It is not about God as a servant to my needs but the entire verse is talking about God’s power on earth through Jesus. The verse ends with “according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” This did not make the homeless person happy. In fact, he went from calm to ballistic. He was agitated in the chair. He got up. He pointed an angry finger at me and said as if to convince himself, “God will supply all my needs.” And he walked out.

How was this encounter connected to stewardship? Here was a person who was rescued by the inappropriate application of scripture. This man was led to believe that because part of a sentence from a book told him that God would give him everything he needed, that he did not need to do anything to receive such blessings. For him, the Bible was the book that sanctified his anything goes philosophy. For him, the Bible said all he needed to do was believe what some authority figure told him, and he would have a wonderful life.

I could see where he was going with this proof text of scripture, and I would have nothing to do with it. Lines were clearly drawn. I was still willing to work with him for his new eyeglasses, but he walked out. I am sure he thought I would go straight to hell. I prayed for him. He sauntered down the street with two bad knees.

How does this apply to stewardship? Stewardship is not just about what we choose to give back to God. It is about how we care for what God has given us. Belief in a “vending machine God” as this homeless person did, is both a very primitive stage of religious development and bad stewardship. God is not a vending machine where we punch the button “God, I need some place to stay tonight” and God provides. You punch another button that says “God, I need food today” and God provides. God doesn’t work like this. To believe in this god is to engage in the magic thinking of three year olds.

The distinction in stewardship is the same old battle between the private religion preached by evangelicals around the globe, and the public religion of Jesus. Private religion puts God in the position of the eternal giver of blessings, gifts, and meeting the demands of people who way “God will provide all my needs.” The public faith of Jesus says that we are to respond in gratitude for what God has given us. And out of gratitude, we are to pass on the blessings to others.

Real stewardship invites us to look at what God has provided us already: our lives, our health, our families, our community, this church, our jobs, and so on. We give thanks for what we have been given. Our celebration every Sunday is a service of giving thanks for the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. What part or our own lives and our selves can we give up in return for what Jesus has given us?

Our Epistle from the first book of John refers to something we exchange at the altar rail every Sunday. John tells us, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” At the rail, you will hear “The body of Christ, keep you in eternal life.”

Those who are into private religion, the faith of God meeting my needs, and the faith of personal salvation, will hear this as a proclamation that if I believe in all the words about Jesus, then I will live for eternity. But in the public faith of Jesus, eternal life is not about eternity. It is about living FOR something right now. Living FOR what God wants you to be. Living FOR the benefit of others.

Do you live for the betterment of this church, this community, your schools, your children, your grandchildren? Do you live for moving our community to a more sustainable environmental practice? Do you live for justice with the poor and disadvantaged in our community? Do you live for improving the health and well being of other people here? If these are part of your hopes, dreams and daily life, then you are living in eternal life right now.

When you receive the wafer in your hands, and you hear the words “The body of Christ keep you in eternal life.” This is a nudge to put your life in the service of others.

Living FOR the betterment of other people is what all Christians are called to do. We are Christians because our focus is outward towards others. This is not a private religion of me and Jesus and my salvation. This is a faith of making God present for other people in ways that improve their lives.

After Judas hanged himself, the disciples wanted to bring a new person into their circle to replace Judas. All things being equal between several candidates, they drew lots, believing that the hand of God would determine the selection of the lot. Matthias was chosen because of this process.

You should know that the Greek word for clergy is “kleros.” It is the word used in this passage for “lots.” The notion of becoming a clergy person is that your vocation as clergy is your lot in life. God chooses the one to be ordained. All we have to do is respond. That is really true for all of us; ordained or not.

Once I tried to get the bishop to declare the first Sunday after Easter, “Missouri Sunday,” but he wouldn’t go for it. If you are from the Show Me State, today is your day. Thomas had to have been a Missourian because he told the other disciples, “Unless I see where the nails went in his hands and the wound in his side, I will not believe.” In other words, “show me.”

But there is so much more today than just seeing and believing. Next Sunday is Earth Day, a day when we celebrate our common stewardship of the earth. Our psalm today reflects the universal brotherhood of mankind. This psalm has been a popular Israeli folk song since the 1940s. And of course on this first Sunday after Easter, we hear about the very early Christians, how “the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.”

I would guess that over the centuries, a swimming pool of ink has been spent on the story of Thomas, about not-seeing and believing, and about the power of belief itself. This may be one of the touchstones where we start moving down that slippery slope – that dangerous territory where we tell the world that being Christian is all about what we think and say instead of how we actually behave and what we do.

That disconnect where we say one thing and do another is dangerous and unholy. Maybe it is time to leave Thomas alone and focus on concrete terms of what it means to live together in harmony. The psalm talks about oil used for anointing kings, but instead of the tiny dab we get at baptism, there is so much of this expensive oil that it flows down to the bottom hem of the clothing. What a mess. The metaphor conveys a sense of abundance and the messiness. Living together in harmony is not easy. It is messy AND in God’s dream for us, it is abundant.

Next the psalmist goes on to say that living together in unity is a blessing like dew in the mountains hundreds of miles away that overflows so much it can provide water in the desert. The unity of humankind ordained by God is described as oil and water – two things that don’t mix. Could they be Democrats and Republicans? Christians and Muslims? Rich and poor? What could we do at Grace Church in Muskogee to demonstrate how we actually live together in unity with each other and with the greater Muskogee community?

Our local newspaper carries articles every day on the front page about meth lab busts, growing marijuana in the garden, violent crime, and the decay of education. All of these things are signs of people living separate lives, apart from one another in dis-unity.

Could those of us sitting here provide a concrete antidote to the toxic front page news just one day a week for a year? Could we deliver fifty two examples of living together in unity? Can you imagine a weekly press release? “Grace Church builds community garden” “Grace Church creates basketball court” “Grace Church beautifies corner with rain garden and landscaping” “Grace Church restarts meals programs” “Grace Church launches new GED and ESL programs” “Grace Church Youth make a difference teaching others.” The heart of this parish has always reached out to the community, but could we actually organize and get others involved so that we make a difference right here in Muskogee? Could we put some good news on the front page just once a week for a year?

I must confess to you that I have recently written about plugging the holes in our programs so that Grace Church provides opportunities for all ages to get involved. If you look around, you can see there is plenty of room for more people to join us. But maybe this is the second place where churches lose their way. The first place is when churches emphasize words and thoughts over behavior. The second place is when the primary goal of church programs is to increase membership. Both of these practices are hypocritical and both are major reasons why the public stays away from churches.

I am suggesting that we return to a much more basic idea, an idea where the return on investment may not be an instant increase in church membership. I want to plant a seed in your hearts which is a song that Jesus must have sung as a child while doing chores with his mother. It is a very simple idea, and it is God’s dream for us. “How good and pleasant it is when people live together in unity.”

There is a strong caveat here. Living together in harmony does not necessarily mean doing things FOR other people in the sense of well-off people giving charity to the less fortunate. When we sit down to eat during Servings of Grace, we are living together. We may also have the mentally ill with us posing challenges. This is the messy part. God’s dream for humanity is not people of the same social and political class coming together to say a bunch of words on Sunday. God’s dream is messy where Christians and Muslims, gay people and straight people, rich and poor, black and white, and all kinds of different people are able to live together in harmony.

One day a week for a year; could we actually do it? Could we actually get on the front page of the local paper once a week with some good news for a change? I wonder.

For many of us, instead of opening our hearts to prayer, Sunday school, or for Jewish children, Hebrew school,l can have the effect of silencing our natural instinct to prayer. It’s like the story of a simple shepherd, who every day would offer his personal prayer to God: “God, I love you so much, that if you were here, I would give you half of my sheep. If it was raining and you were cold, I would share my blanket with you.”

One day a great rabbi was walking by the field, and he heard the shepherd praying. He ran up to him, and said “Do you call that praying? Are you kidding? What would God do with your sheep? Of what use would a blanket be to God? Here, let me show you to pray properly before you further dishonor God’s holy name!” The rabbi then gave a brilliant lecture on the structure and meaning of the various prayers, and explained what to say and how to say it to the poor shepherd.

As soon as the rabbi left, the shepherd sat there stunned. He didn’t understand a word of it. But he knew the great rabbi was quite upset that his prayers were not proper. So he stopped praying.

For too many of us, that’s where the story ends. Fortunately for the shepherd, there is more to his story

Up in Heaven, God noticed the silence, and said “what happened to the beautiful prayers of my humble shepherd?” He decided to send an angel down to go and find out what was wrong. The angel found the shepherd, and the shepherd told him the whole story of his meeting with the rabbi. The angel said, “what does that rabbi know? Would you like to see how we pray in Heaven?” The shepherd instantly agreed and the angel whisked him off to Heaven, where he saw a Heavenly Host standing and proclaiming: “God, I love you so much, that if you were here, I would give you half of my sheep. If it was raining and you were cold, I would share my blanket with you.” The shepherd happily went back to his prayers, and God happily listened.

Now I must make a confession to you: I am that rabbi.

Professionally educated with way too many degrees, I am more comfortable lecturing than listening. I can be more comfortable leading in front than praying a humble prayer in the back. I need to learn from that shepherd. I sometimes let competency and knowledge blind me from the prayers and holiness right in front of me. Sometimes what I see and hear in the world may not fit my preconceived ideas, so I reject the shepherd’s prayer because it is not like mine.

But there is much more to this than my confession. In many respects the Episcopal Church is that rabbi as well. The world out there is the shepherd saying his humble prayer. The good news is that God listens to the prayers from the Episcopal Church AND God listens to the prayers of the humble shepherd.

How often do we look down upon other worship expressions because they are unusual? How often do we encounter prayer and worship that we reject because it doesn’t fit our preconceived ideas?

I am not suggesting that we have to reshape our practices of prayer and worship along the lines of other churches. Could we learn from the shepherd? Could we appeal to more people with an additional, simpler service?

The world is full of people who say they are “spiritual but not religious.” They want to pray like the shepherd without an educated priest or rabbi telling them how to pray. They already know the simple truth of what we have missed: The Lord is the shepherd.

The world has changed profoundly in this generation. Like the rabbi, our beloved church has been stuck doing the same thing for too long while the world passed us by. Maybe it is time for us to listen to our youth and listen to the world out there so we can learn how to be a church in this generation.

Maybe if we sit down and really listen to what they are saying, we can learn something from our children. Maybe.

It was a typical day for me. The main phone line to the church was broken. The Internet connection was down. I had a class to teach at Bacone at noon and just enough time to get to the hospital to see someone who was really concerned about her state of health. My cell phone was ringing and the telephone repair person showed up. He needed to have several doors unlocked and the upstairs attic stairs rolled out for him. After getting the repair guy set up, I locked the office door and started to walk to my car. A homeless man stopped me needing money to wash his clothes. I had only a single dollar bill in my pocket to give him, and I did not have enough time to go inside to check my office drawer for any cash. I spoke with the man for a couple of minutes, all the while distracted by the fact that I needed to be at the hospital. It was a terrible feeling of being rushed and not really being present for the person who was in immediate need. In retrospect, I thought of today’s gospel and how it is with the poor. When the person in need is standing right in front of you, it can change your plans and your priorities.

It is common to turn on the news today and hear all kinds of talk, one way or the other, about government programs for the poor. We hear name calling and language we would not apply to anyone in person, all used in reference to the poor. They are out there somewhere, not really human, just nameless faces who put a burden on taxpayers. Yes, some of us as physicians, judges, lawyers, and clergy work professionally with the poor. But how often do we actually stop our busy schedule and change our plans because of the needs of a poor person?

But that is exactly what happened to Jesus. “After sternly warning the leper he healed, Jesus sent him away at once, saying to him, ‘Say nothing to anyone. Take the offering for cleansing that Moses prescribed and present yourself to the priest. This will validate your healing to the people.’ But as soon as the man was out of earshot, he told everyone he met what had happened, spreading the news all over town. So Jesus kept to out-of-the-way places, no longer able to move freely in and out of the city. But people found him, and came from all over.”

Who can blame the poor leper? He must have been blown away by his healing. Yet the leper, who had formerly been forced to hide from society, is now freely able to interact in society. Meanwhile, Jesus is forced to withdraw from society. Some translations say that he kept to “desolate places.” Jesus and the leper trade places in terms of where they live and how they can interact with society. How many of us in helping the poor have been forced to change zip codes?

The very real, tangible aspect of God incarnate in Jesus is that God experiences human suffering the same as any of us. Without hesitating, Jesus heals this leper. The consequence is that Jesus is effectively banished from society. It is all well and good to talk about Jesus being fully human and fully divine. But when Mary proclaims that God has lifted up the lowly; God has lifted up the poor; God has set the prisoners free; this lofty ideal demands energy and commitment. It changes the plans Jesus made, and he suffers as a result.

We do not need to enter the politically charged fracas about “concern for the poor” or “safety nets.” We need to come to grips with the very simple, very direct demand that when a poor person or family is standing in front of you, it can change your plans for the day and it can change your life. This work is inconvenient. It is messy. We sometimes get scammed. But we must do it risking the scam, risking the inconvenience, and risking the possibility that we might be changed.

Following a set of rules is easy. You either follow them or you don’t. But we all know that real people seldom fit into easy categories. Following Jesus is not easy. It is messy. It is uncertain. Things don’t always work out the way we expect them. We will likely find surprises along the way both pleasant and unpleasant.

Last week I was invited to teach a class on ethics at Bacone College. Towards the end I gave a quick test about career priorities. There were six items on the list: Money, Advancement, Authority, Fame, Knowledge, and Integrity. I asked them to rank the top three items in priority order. Of course, integrity should be first on any list because without it nothing else matters. Of the college students, only one out of eleven ranked integrity in their top three.

There is an institutional equivalent to this test. We can be like some church bodies and hide behind a bunch of rules. We can proclaim that these are the Bible-based rules for you to get into heaven. Just follow these rules and you will be saved. You should know that we do not do this at Grace. At the other extreme though, do we get too wrapped up in tradition and doing things decently that we miss the poor people right in front of us?

I wonder if a church with integrity would really try to follow Jesus in everything. Would we allow our carefully planned days to be disrupted by someone else’s problems or praise?

We are called to follow Jesus. We are called to baptize more people than we bury. And we are called to share the teachings of Jesus with others. I think we will grow as we do these things. I think we will have fun. I just hope that we don’t get so busy that we miss the poor people right in front of us.

For several decades the Episcopal Church has been in a tailspin nationally. Average Sunday attendance nationwide has declined to around 60 per church, which is below the level to support one full-time rector. The majority of mainline Protestant churches have serious financial difficulties. Very few church leaders seem to be getting serious about growth. Grace Episcopal Church in Muskogee is surrounded by big growing churches, yet our growth seems to just plod along. If we choose to let things get us down, it would be easy to be pessimistic.

But just before Christmas I noticed one of the most hopeful things I have heard in a long while. The report came from a Harvard Business School professor’s studies about a hotel on a different continent owned and run by a deeply religious family from a non-Christian religion. In spite what seems to be huge cultural and religious differences between the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai and Grace Episcopal Church in Muskogee, I found the report incredibly positive, hopeful, and reason enough to be optimistic about our future. The optimism in this story, however, blooms from the ashes of a tragedy.

On November 26, 2008, terrorists attacked several locations in Mumbai, India. One of the attack sites was the Taj Mahal Hotel, where gunmen walked into the lobby and started shooting. In the midst of chaos, panic, and terror, ALL of the employees of the hotel risked their lives to save the hotel guests. Kitchen employees formed a human shield to help guests evacuate. They lost their lives as a result. The telephone operators were evacuated to safety, but chose to return to the hotel so they could call guests and tell them what to do. Waiters, room cleaners, and busboys, who knew all the back exits for the hotel, chose to stay in the building during the siege until their guests were safe. The general manager of the hotel lost his wife and two sons in a fire set by the terrorists. In spite of his terrible loss, he stayed at the hotel, helping guests get to safety.

Often, during a crisis, one or two heroes will emerge who risk their lives to help others. But in the case of the Taj Hotel, something much deeper was going on. These employees risked and some of them lost their lives in selfless acts of kindness and mercy to help people they did not even know. They did not think of themselves as heroes. In fact they were selected for and trained for their self-giving character.

A Harvard Business School professor happened to be working on a project at the Taj Hotel about nine months after the attack. He kept hearing stories and references to these incredible acts of mercy and kindness, so he decided to study the hotel to see where this extraordinary behavior came from.

A main thing was recruitment. When the hotel looks for low level employees such as maids and bellhops, they avoid big cities and turn to small towns where they develop relationships with local schools. They ask school officials to hand select people with qualifications the Taj Hotel is looking for. They do NOT look for students with the highest grades. They are recruiting for personal characteristics such as respect and empathy. They recruit for respect and empathy because those human values are very difficult to teach. In the same way, they do not hire hotel managers from the top business schools because those graduates are primarily motivated by money. Instead they look for managers from second tier business schools, again screening for personal integrity and empathy.

This is a highly unusual strategy in modern day India, where earning top grades and attending top schools is a national obsession. The Taj Hotel does the opposite of the rest of India. Instead of recruiting for top grades, they recruit for positive character traits.

The Taj Hotel is owned by an enormous conglomerate company which is run by an extremely religious family. They plow two thirds of their profits into a charitable trust for use in social justice projects. The hotel and all of the operating companies run by this family have a fine reputation for customer service. For example, when a hotel guest compliments and employee for any action, the hotel management rewards the employee behavior within 48 hours with a gift, cash, or even a promotion.

In a very real sense, the hotel employees on that terrible day in 2008 were performing the behaviors they were selected for and trained to perform. In other words, there was a system in place that selected for and formed people to behave in positive ethical ways. The hotel was a community that enabled and sustained positive ethical behavior.

In a very real sense, isn’t that what we strive to do at Grace Episcopal Church in our Sunday school and all of our Christian formation activities? We form children and adults around the Golden Rule. What we strive to produce at Grace is positive ethical behavior.

Many of you have been attending Grace Church much longer than me. You can look back at the generations and count all the kids you have seen grow up here. You know that most of those young adults have turned out very well with healthy productive families of their own. You know that many of them are active in giving back to their communities. They are the living fruits of our labor and God’s labor here at Grace Episcopal Church.

It took a Harvard Business School professor to demonstrate that positive ethical behavior can be instilled in an entire organization. If you have attended Grace for any length of time you have observed that already. We have been doing that for more than a century.

Nathanael asked Jesus how he knew him. Jesus replied that he saw Nathanael under the fig tree. After his confession of Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus said, “You believe in me because I saw you under the fig tree? … You will see greater things than these.”

Grace Episcopal Church has contributed so much value to the lives of children and adults for generations in this community. What we are called to do now is to grow and share that love. Jesus calls us too. And we will see even greater things.

At our annual meeting later this morning we will elect several new vestry members. One of my long-term goals here at Grace is to change the image of vestry service from an obligation of drudgery to a formative opportunity for Christians who enjoy having fun. As you know, however, vestries often get a bad reputation for focusing on the wrong things, often small stuff. At another church, I had a vestry member with a wry sense of humor. One time, when the vestry got wrapped around the axle on some $39 item, he chimed in with the observation, “That’s about as important as pimples on prom night.”

A long-standing problem in the Episcopal Church from top to bottom has been the tendency to focus on small stuff and ignore the big stuff. I won’t depress you with statistics because they are about the past and we need to be about the future. But just look at the opportunities around you. Look at all the space in here for new friends, old friends, guests, visitors, newcomers, and all kinds of new people.

You don’t need a Ph.D. in theology to understand the big stuff of the Bible. It is right there in the Gospel you just heard. What does Jesus tell us to do? A) Baptize people, and B) teach THEM what Jesus has taught US.

What if we took everything we did at Grace Episcopal Church and held it up to the Great Commission? What if we asked the question about every issue, “How does such and such help us either baptize new people or teach people what Jesus taught us?”

If we used the Great Commission as our yardstick, how would that make us different than we are now?

We would value the outsider, the stranger, the guest, the newcomer, more than we value our members. I am convinced that God sends messengers (angels) to us all the time. Many times we turn them away because they are different. At the peace we would seek out people we do not know and we would work to develop new relationships, new friendships.

We would value non-Christians more than Christians. We would do this, not because we want to add X new members to our rolls this year, but because we are excited about showing them about what God is doing in our life and in the life of this community.

I know, I know. Episcopalians are about as eager to talk about what God is doing in their life as they are to volunteer for a root canal. Most of us do not have the vocabulary or skills to talk about God, so we leave people with the impression that God must not be doing much here and they go somewhere else where they can find that excitement.

I ask you. Do you think God is at work in positive ways directly in Grace Episcopal Church in Muskogee? If we cannot convey to new people our own sense of excitement, then I guarantee you people will go somewhere else where there is much less to be excited about. What if we spent this year intentionally building the skills and vocabulary to work with newcomers and guests? What would happen if new people came to this church a year from now and after a while simply said, “Oh wow”?

There is no silver bullet, no magic elixir to grow a church. All I can do is be your cheerleader and point out to you all the good things that are happening here. You get to decide if God is behind this or not. As you think about this question and as you pray about this question, you get to discern if maybe you have experienced “Oh wow.”

And if you have, I invite you to learn how to pass it on.