"Daring To Hope." A Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent

"Peaceable Kingdom," by Edward Hicks.

"Daring to Hope"

Isaiah 11:1-10; Matthew 3:1-12

Here we are, in the second week of Advent.  For a lot of people, there’s so much to do, at home, at church and everywhere else.  There are gifts to be purchased and wrapped...cards to be addressed...cooking and baking to do...the house to clean... and decorating to do.  

            In the background, we have the news feed of our lives.  Mass shootings. Another child accidentally shooting himself with a gun he found in the house. Thousands of migrant children separated from their families and housed in cages. A migrant teenager dying from the flu. Impeachment hearings. Environmental degradation. Huge economic disparities between the uber-rich and those who struggle to provide food and basic shelter for themselves and their families. The list could go on….

            In the midst of all of this, Advent invites us to turn our thoughts to what it means that God came and lived as one of us in our world to show us God’s way?  Advent invites us to wait… to pay attention… to prepare the way of the Lord… and to live in hope. 

           In the Hebrew scripture lesson, we heard the prophet Isaiah singing a song of hope 700 years before the birth of Jesus, in a time when things seemed hopeless.  His message must have sounded as unrealistic then as it does now.

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie with down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them. . . .
They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain…

            The prophet Isaiah was probably writing in the period of the Syro-Ephramite war, when the dynasty of David seemed like a mere dead stump, compared to its enemies.  The nation had been defeated and humiliated by another national power.  Their government was weak and ineffective, and the people were dejected and demoralized.  In the midst of all that, how do you live in hope?   Isaiah’s words must have seemed terribly unrealistic—as unrealistic as Isaiah’s words seem to a lot of people today.

           Enter the Spirit of the Lord; a new shoot is coming out of the dead stump of the monarchy.  That’s what the Spirit of the Lord does—it brings life where things have been dead.  The Spirit brings forth new green shoots of life.

  

          Isaiah sings of a new kind of king—a king upon whom the Spirit of the Lord rests.  God’s Messiah will use his gifts to serve the people with equity and righteousness. What will the reign of the Messiah will be like?  The enmity that dominates the world is transformed into peace. 

   

         A great theologian of the last century, Reinhold Niebuhr, once wrote: “Do you want peace in this world?  Then work for justice.”  Until there is justice for everyone, there will be no peace.  For even a defeated enemy remains an enemy.  The only hope for peace is not the building up of more power to defeat and control—but power to make our enemies our friends. 

  

          Advent invites us-- dares us-- to wait in hope for the coming of a different kind of King, who will use his power to “rule the world with truth and grace” and transform creation into a world in which every creature can live without fear. 

  

          Can you imagine a world without fear?   No fear in Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan or Yemen…  no fear in Bethlehem or Jerusalem…  no fear in South Sudan.  No fear in homes from an abusive parent or spouse. No fear in our neighborhoods where innocent children have died to gun violence.

           “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”   This is the promise and hope of Advent.

            But hope is a fragile and fleeting thing. 

            Fast forward seven hundred years or so.  Two hundred years had gone by since the people of Israel had had a prophet in their midst.   They’re living under occupation, with the Roman army enforcing the oppression of the Empire.

    

           Suddenly, John shows up in the wilderness, looking and sounding a lot like Elijah, who was expected to return to prepare the way for God’s coming Messiah.  “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” he says.  “Prepare the way of the LORD.  Make his paths straight.”  

            John’s call to repentance and preparing the way is a call to turn around and look for and hope in God’s future, which is breaking in on them.  It’s a call to commit to see our world as God’s world    and our future as God’s future, because that’s what repentance is about.  

            And yet, more than 2,000 years later, amid the moral, religious, and political crises our nation and world are facing, we are still waiting and longing.   

            Every Advent John the Baptist shows up, because God loves us enough to hold us accountable to be who and whose we.  We are living in a broken, hurting world.  The people of Palestine still live under occupation in a conflict that looks hopeless to a lot of us.  Children in Flint and their families continue to deal with the long-term effects of lead poisoning.  In our own communities and communities around our nation, a parent can work 40 hours a week and still not be able to afford nutritious food and other basic necessities for their children. In our nation, consumerism and individualism rule. Our political system is broken.  The gap between the very rich and the poor continues to widen.            

            And so, we still long for a time of righteousness and justice and peace. 

            For a long time, I’ve felt drawn to the images painted by Edward Hicks, a Quaker preacher and artist, who was so inspired by the vision in Isaiah 11 that he painted at least 66 “peaceable kingdom” paintings.  

            A “peaceable kingdom.” Can you imagine it?  A time when broken creation becomes the completely harmonious creation God intended.  Predators-- wolves, leopards, lions, and bears will live in harmony with the domestic animals like lambs, calves, goats, and cows.  Lions will eat straw like oxen, and a little child will play over the holes of poisonous snakes.  The earth will be filled with the “knowledge of the LORD.”  

            Jesus has come to live among us, full of grace and truth, and called us to follow him, living God’s way of love.    

        

So… how are we to live?  How are we to live as a community of faith?  Do we give in to hopelessness and despair?  

            Do we dare to hope?  Can we trust in God’s promises?  Can we imagine a better world?  Can we believe in the possibility that injustice and oppression can be overcome, with God’s help?

            Jesus came and “proclaimed the reign of God: preaching good news to the poor and release to the captives, teaching by word and deed and blessing the children, healing the sick and binding up the brokenhearted, eating with outcasts, forgiving sinners, and calling all to repent and believe the gospel.”[1] 

            To those living under the oppressive regime of the Roman Empire, Jesus taught and embodied a different way of being in the world that allowed even the marginalized and the poor to reclaim their identity as children of God.  To people whose identities had been shaped by centuries of living under exile and oppression of conquering empires, Jesus demonstrated that the empire doesn’t have the power to define who you are.  

            What Jesus proclaimed as a transforming message of hope has been spiritualized and individualized and distorted.   Jesus didn’t come to be a personal savior for individuals, but to be the way, the truth and the life, to show us all a way to live into God’s dream for all of God’s people. He taught us to pray for God’s will to be done on earth as in heaven. 

            When we repent—when we turn away from the ways of the world and the empire-- and turn toward God’s way of righteousness and justice and peace, we find our lives changing.    As our lives are being transformed, we can no longer be content to exist under the old ways of the world.   

            Our faith teaches us that God’s intention is for us to live in Beloved Community together, in righteousness and justice.  But we look around, and we see there is still a gap between the vision and reality.  

            We wait and hope for the time when God will fully bring in the Kingdom… the kin-dom.   In the meantime, we live into the Kingdom of heaven—the kingdom of justice and peace, as we work for a better world that more fully embodies God’s dreams.

            Sometimes it’s hard to see how things can be different… or how the little things we do can make a difference.   But sometimes new life emerges from the most unlikely places, emerging as a tiny green tendril out of a stump that looked dead. 

            We live into hope in big and small ways when we change the life of a family by providing them with a goat or a flock of chickens with a gift to the Heifer Project.   When we shop ethically and buying locally as much as possible and stop using single-use plastics, we make a difference in peoples’ lives and the environment.  Making choices to care for the environment and giving to aid global and domestic causes all make a difference, and they witness to our hope.  

            When we engage the powers and principalities by contacting our elected officials about issues that matter, we are daring to hope that we can make a difference. When we volunteer in our local schools, when we tutor a child or teach an adult how to read, we are living into hope.

            We live into hope because the Christ’s reign is among us now as we live into God’s dream for us, working for justice and peace for all of God’s beloved people.

            In this season of waiting, God comes to us and nudges us: “Look! Look -- there on that dead-looking stump.  Do you see that green shoot growing?”

            Can you see it?

Rev. Fran Hayes

December 8, 2019

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[1] “A Brief Statement of Faith” of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).    https://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/oga/pdf/boc2014.pdf

"Idle Talk or Gospel Truth?" A sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church on Easter Sunday

"Idle Talk or Gospel Truth?"

Luke 24:1-12

         During Holy Week, we heard the powerful story of how Jesus offered his life in the ultimate act of sacrificial love and was crucified on the cross.  The women who had followed Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem had watched as the body of Jesus was taken down from the cross. They watched as Joseph of Arimithea took the body, wrapped it in linen, and placed it in a nearby tomb… and sealed in with a big stone that was rolled against the opening. They went home to prepare spices that would be needed to complete the proper burial of the body.

            There wasn’t time to finish preparing Jesus’ body for burial before the Sabbath began, so in the darkness, just before sunrise on the day after the Sabbath, the women head back to the tomb, bringing the spices and ointments they need to finish preparing Jesus’ body for burial.       

As the grieving women approach the tomb, they’re focused on completing the burial of Jesus’ body. But when they get to the tomb, they find that the stone has been rolled away, and the tomb is empty!  The women stand there, perplexed, not knowing what to make of what they see, when suddenly two men in dazzling white clothes are standing beside them.   They’re  terrified!    They bow down in awe.   But the men say to them, “Why are you looking for the living among the dead?  He is not here...  but has risen.  Remember how he told you--while he was still in Galilee-- that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again?”       

“Why do you seek the living among the dead?”  The women came to the tomb expecting to find the dead.  But this tomb is now empty, transformed by the resurrection.

            Apparently, then, the women do remember. They run back to tell the rest of the disciples what they have seen and heard.   But the other disciples don’t believe them.  The news seems to them an “idle tale.”   Actually, as David Lose points out, that’s a fairly generous translation of the Greek word leros, which is the root of the word “delirious.”  So, it seems they thought what the women were saying was crazy—utter nonsense.[1]

            And, if we’re to be honest, who can blame them? Dead men don’t just get up and walk out of their tombs. Resurrection breaks all the old, familiar rules that help us to understand how things work in the world. Then-- as now-- we often don’t know how to respond to the unexpected… things that don’t fall neatly into our preconceived ways of thinking.  So, Peter gets up and runs to the tomb to check things out for himself.  He stoops down and looks in, and he sees the linen grave cloths lying there empty.  Then he heads for home, amazed at what had happened. 

The first disciples were reeling with grief.  Their beloved friend, their leader-- the one person on whom they had staked everything, had just been tortured and killed.  Now his body had disappeared.   Everything that was happening that first Easter was new… unfamiliar…strange.   It was hard to take it all in.

          Each of the gospels makes it clear that the disciples didn’t come quickly to believe in the resurrection.  They respond with a mixture of emotions:  fear…great joy…amazement…and doubt.   It takes more than an empty tomb for the disciples to understand and to become believers. And yet the disciples do follow Jesus after the resurrection.  Some even follow him to their own deaths. 

            The tomb is empty, and Christ is risen.  Death does not have the final word.  Love and life are stronger than fear and death.   Everything is new.  Anything is possible with God. 

            This was a perplexing new reality.  But they follow in faith--without fully grasping the meaning of it all. 

            Isn’t that what a lot of us do?  You and I may not fully understand what happened on that first Easter Sunday long ago.  That’s why we call it a mystery!   Yet every now and then, if only for a fleeting moment, Jesus is especially alive and real to us.

            In the coming weeks we’ll hear some of the stories about how the Risen Christ appeared to his disciples.  They recognize him as the Risen Christ. Then he vanishes from their sight. It’s a pattern that’s common in the resurrection stories.  Jesus is there.  Then he’s gone.  Though they experience his presence, they can’t grab on to him and keep him there.  But they come to know the Risen Christ in powerful ways in their daily lives and work.

            It was not at the empty tomb that these people came to know the Risen Christ.  It was as they sought to follow him--as they experienced his power and love in their lives and among the community of faith-- that they knew his presence.  As they followed the Risen Christ, they were transformed into Easter people!

            In the days following Jesus’ crucifixion, the first disciples were huddled behind locked doors, trembling in fear.   But over time, they were transformed and empowered to witness to the Gospel.

             In the early days of the church growing numbers of people came together for prayer and to study the scriptures   and became more and more generous and loving in their relationship with others.  People looked at Christians and exclaimed, “See how they love one another!  See how joyful they are!”  And they wanted to be a part of that movement.  Even though, in the earliest centuries of the church, following Christ could bring persecution, the church grew like wildfire and transformed the world.

            Easter is perplexing. But Easter isn’t just about saying we believe in the resurrection. Easter is about saying “no” to the power of death and destruction that surrounds us. It’s about trusting in the sustaining power of God, who brings life out of death…and reconciliation out of conflict, as the scriptures tell us.  It’s about committing ourselves to the gospel claim that opens the door to new life—for ourselves and for acts of love and reconciliation in the world.

            Our Holy Week journey moves us from pain and suffering of Jesus and the pain and suffering in the world-- to hope. We see the continuing open wounds of structural racism, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression and injustice. We see Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Nativism, and other forms of hatred practiced more virulently and openly than at any time in recent memory. Every day we get more scientific information that shows us that we’re running out of time to avoid the most catastrophic levels of climate change. We also see crowd-funding campaigns for people trying to pay for medical procedures or even basic maintenance medications like insulin and hear stories of people who died because they couldn’t afford the treatment they needed.[2]

This week, we observed the twentieth anniversary of the Columbine School massacre and mourn that the United States now averages nearly one mass shooting a day.[3]  In one of the richest countries of the world, we don’t seem to have the political will to address the unjust policies that support growing income inequity and cruel immigration policies.

            Easter is a reminder every year that pain and loss and death don’t have the final word. The resurrection of Jesus Christ teaches us that there always is and always will be hope.

            The first disciples went to the tomb that first Easter looking for a dead Messiah.  But what they found was an empty tomb.   They were confused and fearful.  But within a few days, the followers of Jesus were telling the world that Christ, the King of Love, was alive and making all things new.

            We have come to the tomb and found it empty.  Like those first disciples, we have been given a mission and a message to tell the others.  We, too, need to look beyond the empty tomb...  and trust God to show us the risen and living Savior and the new life to which we are called. Like those first disciples, we are witnesses of amazing things.

            So-- what do we do about that?  Tune in-- same time, same place-- next Sunday and the following Sundays, as we discover together more about what it means to be God's Easter people in this new time. Easter isn't over at the end of Easter Sunday.  This is the beginning of Easter-tide, the season when we are led further into God's truth for God's Easter people…further into God’s new creation.

            In this broken and fearful world, “the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in Church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.”[4]

            Every act of love, every deed done in the name of Christ, by the power of the Spirit… every work of true creativity—healing families, doing justice, making peace, seeking and winning true freedom—is an earthly event in a long history of things that carry the resurrection out into the world and anticipate the final new creation.

            The good news for us today is that when we gather in Christ's name, Christ will be with us, calling us into to hope and wholeness and freedom.

            Christ is risen!

            Christ is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

April 21, 2019

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[1] David Lose, “If It’s Not Hard to Believe, You’re Probably Not Paying Attention,” at Working Preacher.   http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2498

 

[2] Jim Wallis, “Moving from Pain to Hope this Holy Week,” from Sojourners. https://sojo.net/articles/moving-pain-hope-holy-week

[3] German Lopez, “20 Years after Columbine, America sees roughly one mass shooting a day.” https://www.vox.com/2019/4/19/18412650/columbine-mass-shootings-gun-violence-map-charts-data

[4] “A Brief Statement of Faith.” Presbyterian Church (USA), 1990.

"Seeds of Faith and Hope." A sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church.

"Seeds of Faith and Hope"

Mark 4:26-34; Ezekiel 17:22-24; 2 Corinthians 5:6-17

            “The Kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.  The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.  But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest is come.”

            Karoline Lewis suggests that our lives are full of parables.  I think she’s right when she says that Jesus knew this, which is why he told parables to his followers.

            “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it?”

            Parables are a way to try to make sense of things in life, as we struggle for a way to be in the world.

            Jesus has announced the arrival of God’s kingdom, but to skeptical eyes, it seems that nothing has changed.

            Mark uses Jesus’ parable of the growing seed to encourage those in charge of the early church.   Some of these congregations were planted under adverse—even dangerous—conditions. 

            Most scholars agree that Mark’s gospel was the earliest written of the four gospels.  It was probably written around 70 C.E., shortly after the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, toward the end of the reign of the Emperor Nero.  It reflects a time of imminent persecution for those who professed the Christian faith, and Christians in Rome suffered particularly. 

            Mark’s gospel was written in a time of high anxiety.  Church leaders felt vulnerable and helpless.  So, it must have sounded like good news to be reminded that seeds are small and vulnerable, but can sprout and grow even in tough times.

            Chapter four in Mark has a series of seed parables, which teach us that God’s rule is something hidden… indirect… and surprising.   They tell us that the kingdom is near and breaking into the ordinary world where we live.   Mark wants us to know that God’s purposes—though hidden—are still present.  We need to move toward them—live into them with confidence.

            Mark gathers Jesus’ seed metaphors to help us discern God’s presence and work in small, surprising places.  In the parable of the growing seed, the seeds are a good image for how growth can happen in ways that are beyond our control or comprehension.

            In the parable of the mustard seed, a tiny mustard seed is contrasted with the size of the final tree.  Now, the fact is that a mustard seed doesn’t really grow into a tree.  The mustard plant is an annual herb that normally grows no more than six feet in height and would be considered a shrub, rather than a tree.  It’s in the imagination of the parable that a mustard seed can produce a tree with branches…and be similar to the imperial trees that symbolize kingdoms.   

            The people in the crowd gathered that day in Palestine thousands of years ago were likely familiar with the Ezekiel passage we heard today, in which images of tall, majestic cedar trees are symbols used to encourage people of Israel’s future greatness.  This would have been a comfort to Ezekiel’s original audience, in exile in Babylon.  The image of the noble cedar would have served to help encourage an oppressed people.

           

            In the parable of the mustard seed, Jesus makes an allusion to Ezekiel’s message and other Old Testament tree of life images, in which birds of the air nest in its branches, but re-works it. In Jesus’ parable, God’s promised action comes after everything worldly that claims and seems to be of great promise has failed. 

            The humble mustard seed that grows into a scruffy shrub may seem like an odd image for Jesus to have chosen, when he could have used the majestic cedar to make his point.  But Jesus wants us to know that things are different in the kingdom of God when it breaks into our ordinary daily lives.  The kingdom of God has its own time… and its own rate of growth… and happens in unexpected, surprising ways. 

            The mustard seed was a common image in ancient Palestine for “the smallest thing.”  Like the humble mustard seed that grows into a scruffy shrub, the followers of Jesus are a bunch of ragged folk-- full of doubts and fears, unable to comprehend much of what Jesus says or does. 

            We look at the news and we see images of children being torn away from their parents, children in cages.  We hear government officials quoting a scripture verse to defend policies of arresting people who are fleeing violence and danger and separating families at the border.

            We listen to the stories of people impacted by poverty and hear what it’s like to live without running water in your home and what it’s like to try to get or hold a job in Detroit if you can’t afford a car and insurance. 

            Some of you have told me you struggle with despair and have a hard time seeing the hope. Maybe some of us can relate to what Rev. Jill Duffield wrote in The Presbyterian Outlook: “What kind of people have we become?" We are doomed. I am living in a dystopian novel.”[1]

            But the scripture texts the lectionary gives us for this Sunday tell us that God does not see things as we do. They say that God looks upon the heart, not outward appearances. They say: “We walk by faith and not by sight.”  They say: “We are always confident.” The texts say: “The love of Christ urges us on. We don’t live to ourselves. We regard no one from a human point of view. Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation.” The texts say: “The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, tiny, insignificant, vulnerable--but explosive, with the potential and promise to nurture, shade, hide, protect the birds of the air and the beasts of the land…”

            So, I’m with Jill Duffield when she says, “I refuse to live as if I am a character in a dystopian novel. I won’t give up that easily. The texts won’t let me.”[2]

            There’s a tiny mustard seed of faith that won’t give up, that keeps sprouting through the cracks of our fatigue and doubt and cynicism and fear and hard-heartedness.

            This past week, we heard several powerful people invoking Romans 13 to say the Bible commands us to “obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order,” and then we heard from many parts of the faith community in response.[3]  Since then, for those with “ears to hear,” it’s been like a Bible study on social media.

            We heard from biblical scholars who explained how the verse from Romans was distorted when it was taken out of context. The Rev. Dr. Margaret Aymer Oget and other scholars reminded us that we need to consider the verse in the larger context, in which the apostle Paul argued that all commandments are summed up in the teaching “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Romans 13:9)[4]   The scholars have been reminding us that Paul continued, saying, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Romans 13:10) 

            Biblical scholars and others have been telling us that the first two verses of Romans 13 that say, “Let everyone be subject to the government authorities” have been quoted out of context over history to support laws and policies we now consider to be unjust and inhumane.

            At various times, very unjust and inhumane policies were the law of the land. For example, chattel slavery was the law of the land, and fugitive slave laws required people to return refugees from slavery as property to their "owners." People of faith and principle who provided assistance to them were breaking the law.  In the 1980’s, the same verses were used as proof texts against the end of Apartheid in South Africa.

            The issue of immigration in our country is complicated and requires the rigorous debate in which we are now engaged. Those who wish to invoke a biblical ethic need to be guided by this test of love. There is nothing loving about prying children from their parents’ arms when families are at their most vulnerable.
            Over the past few days, we have heard from various parts of the church.  The Catholic Bishops and others have been saying you can’t be pro-life and against immigrant children.[5]  We’ve heard from Evangelicals and mainline denominations and the National Council of Churches and the National Association of Evangelicals, denouncing the separation of families and speaking for just immigration policies.[6]
            These voices from around the church have also been reminding us that the Bible shouldn’t--and can’t--be used to argue against immigration. Passages from Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and the prophets teach us to care for the stranger and the immigrant: “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you. You shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.”[7][8] That’s just one reference, from Leviticus 19, but there are plenty of others.[9]

            Like Jill Duffield, like a lot of you, I don’t want to live as if I’m a character in a dystopian novel.  I want to live in faith and hope. So, I want to trust that the reign of God is bursting into history and resting on us.

            In the parables we heard today, Jesus once again lifts up the grace and power of God taking the smallest seed and transforming it into a great plant that provides shelter and sustenance for all. 

            I’ve been amazed and encouraged to read and hear the conversations about what the scriptures and our faith traditions teach us about immigration and how we are called to live. [If you’ve missed this and want to check it out, you could do a Google search of Romans 13 and find all kinds of commentary.  Also, I shared links to a number of the articles on Facebook and, just now, in the footnotes to this sermon.]

            I’ve been encouraged by all the interest in looking at immigration and some other issues through the eyes of faith.

            I believe Jesus is looking for hungry hearts, for people for whom the world’s answers aren’t satisfying, those who are willing to keep our imaginations open.  Jesus calls us to follow, and

promises: “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God.”

            Jesus wants us to know that we can trust the forces of God’s mercy and grace and love to bring in the kingdom of God.  Don’t be discouraged by the size of the beginning… or by drought or bad weather.  The kingdom of God will come.

            God’s Kingdom of grace and mercy will come, because God creates and gives it. The kingdom of God grows in hidden, mysterious ways.  We can trust God to produce the harvest—in God’s time and God’s ways.

            As disciples of Christ, we are called to make a difference in order for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.  With a bit of courage—and a lot of imagination, “looking twice” at the world around us—we can trust that God is at work growing the kingdom in the midst of our ordinary lives—even when we can’t see it. 

            We are invited to live mustard seed lives until all the birds of the air have a place to make a nest, until every nation cares for the poor, until nobody goes to bed hungry, until there is a lovely shaded place for all to live.

            We have been given the secret of the reign of God.  This is the Good News of the gospel. 

            Amen!

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

June 17, 2018

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[1] Jill Duffield, “Looking Into the Lectionary,” in The Presbyterian Outlook.  https://pres-outlook.org/2018/06/4thsunday-after-pentecost-june-17-2018/

[2] Jill Duffield, “Looking Into the Lectionary.

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/06/14/jeff-sessions-points-to-the-bible-in-defense-of-separating-immigrant-families/?utm_term=.15d09b518c7a

[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/06/15/what-jeff-sessions-got-wrong-when-quoting-the-bible/?utm_term=.31f55dbd6511

[5] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-immigration-catholic-bishops-moral-us-mexico-border-a8399016.html

[6] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/religious-leaders-implore-trump-white-house-stop-separating/story?id=55905666

[7] Leviticus 19:33-34

[8]

[9] https://relevantmagazine.com/god/what-bible-says-about-how-treat-refugees