This Great Experiment We Call Faith

Originally preached on April 16, 2023 at Trinity Lutheran Church in Reading, PA.

Gospel text: John 20:19-31; The story of Thomas experiencing Jesus post-resurrection.

Today’s gospel lesson has a lot to do with belief, and seeing and what ultimately sounds like needing proof that Jesus showed up to the disciples in the locked room. It is not always easy to take a story at face value. We, as humans, have skeptical brains and want some back up proof to understand and accept what others have told us. I’m sure each of us have had those doubts – maybe not about faith but about something – and we certainly have people in our lives who do have questions. Every time I read this passage, Every time I approach my faith, I try to make understand without seeing and feeling Christ’s wounds what being a Jesus follower is all about. My science brain starts trying to make sense of this story, and I might be with Thomas on this. 

Before shifting into a career in ministry, I worked on research biology within the environment. I loved it. I studied the health of streams in agricultural lands that primarily had cattle farms by checking out the bugs that lived in the water. It was a year’s long survey that helped analyze the effectiveness of efforts to repair the vegetation around the streams to see if the water quality got better for the insects and fish who lived there. I loved following the scientific method from a question, to hypothesis, setting up an experiment or figuring out how to best collect data and then analyze for the universal truth I was trying to prove. That’s just how my brain works, and I think that’s how Thomas’ brain works.

So beginning with the question: What is Jesus up to with his post resurrection appearances?

Now a hypothesis: Jesus is leaving us with two major takeaways: he commands us to forgive, and as a result Thomas is the first to proclaim Jesus as God.

Lets set up our survey in the Bible and locate when Jesus is appearing to the disciples. If this was a scientific paper, a lot of this information would end up in the introduction. We’re only days after his resurrection, the Passover celebrations are winding down and people are leaving Jerusalem. The disciples are hiding out of fear of the Jews – which is really the Jewish leaders at the time, likely referring to the leaders who were collaborating with the Roman Empire posed a threat to first Jesus followers. 

We have to be careful about our language here because so often we conflate this small group of people being referenced here with all Jewish people. We allow this small group to represent all of the Jewish community, even today, and down that road leads to antisemitism and hatred for our Jewish community members. That’s not okay. We can be smart in our reading and understanding of context and translation here in the Gospel to know who exactly the disciples are afraid of. And that is not our current Jewish neighbors who. The anti-defamation league put out a report  in late March that antisemitism is on the rise in the US, and we need to remember that Jesus was also Jewish and have compassion for our neighbors.

Back into the story and our scientific inquiry into scripture, we find out later that Thomas was not among the disciples who were in a locked room when Jesus appeared to them after the resurrection. Well, any good method for testing a hypothesis has a control group, a neutral who didn’t experience Jesus firsthand, and a group who does. 

We don’t know where Thomas was. He could have been in deeper hiding somewhere, out on a grocery run, or checking in on the state of the city after the events of the week for the rest.

Here’s the crux of this experiment: Jesus breaths the Holy Spirit on the disciples. We are looking to see how the disciples respond vs Thomas. This breathing the Holy Spirit on the disciples is the same word in Greek, the Hagia Pneuma, when God breathed life into humanity in Genesis 2:7. This is Jesus breathing eternal life into his disciples. Into us. Into this community, laying the foundation that forgiveness is central to this community. I like the way this is translated in the Message Bible: “If you forgive someone’s sins, they’re gone for good. If you don’t forgive sins, what are you going to do with them?”

Now Thomas shows up and I can’t help but wonder what the mood in the room was when Thomas, our control group, walked in? Were the rest of the disciples excited that they got to see Jesus, or spooked that he came through a locked door? Were they confused? I can imagine what the emotional whiplash might be: in the fresh grief of losing a beloved teacher, he appears before them. I am not sure if I would be comforted or challenged by his appearance.

Thomas’ reaction to their news is understandable. There are several moments of unbelief throughout the Gospels, including earlier in this chapter when Peter had to go check the tomb because he did not believe Mary’s proclamation that Jesus had risen indeed. So Thomas has his questions and wants to see himself. He yearns for a living encounter with Jesus just as his sibling disciples had. I can relate, and maybe you can too, to Thomas who can’t settle for someone else’s experience of resurrection, but sticks around in the hope of having his own. We can relate to someone who dares to confess uncertainty in the midst of those who are certain. To someone who recognizes his God in woundedness, not glory. When we look at Thomas, we see a man who yearns for a living encounter with God. Aren’t we all looking to experience Jesus’ resurrection too?

Jesus has charged the disciples to forgive, to go out and share that good news? Jesus first forgives them - for their abandonment, for their fear, for their paralysis. Then he charges them to go and do likewise. This is the point on which this whole great experiment of faith is hinged upon: Jesus has, died and rose again, and does that matter? How do the disciples respond? Once Jesus’ Holy Spirit breath is in each of us, how do we respond? 

Early in the Gospel of John people are invited to “look” and to “come and see” (see John 1). We are invited to learn about this ongoing experiment of faith, and like gravity, prove the hypothesis over and over again that Jesus is present in our lives. In John’s gospel, Mary Magdalene proclaimed good news to disbelieving disciples, and they’ve witnessed to Thomas, who was absent from the first resurrection appearance in the locked room. It is Christ centered community that helps to make the resurrection real to each of us – we see the evidence of Jesus’ presence —Today that might look like rejoicing together over a new job, surviving an illness, living in recovery, accomplishing a goal, ability to pay off debt, and so on. We point to the goodness of God with our lives, wounded and transformed. 

Like any classic experiment, our results are not quite what we expected. The result to experience faith isn’t that we stick our finger in Jesus’ wounds, but we understand that Jesus experienced this wounded world, and whenever we experience it, it brings us closer to Jesus.

But sometimes this is hard to see. Thomas is known in John’s gospel as the one “called the Twin” (11:16; 20:24; 21:2). Professor Johanna Haberer brilliantly describes Thomas as our “twin” in doubt and faith.* She points out that he is the patron saint of precise things: building, construction, architecture. All very STEM fields. Thomas wants to understand what he’s getting into and asks probing, analytical questions. He’s the same disciple who asked Jesus, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” (14:5), to which Jesus responded, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (14:6). Seeing/not seeing, asking questions, and believing/disbelieving are a part of Thomas’s personality; Jesus never reprimands him for this.

So here’s our conclusion this morning: and Thank you for coming on this journey into scripture with me. Jesus is big enough to handle our questions, our doubts, our unbelief. What we are left to figure out is how we respond to the proclamation of Jesus present, alive, resurrected among us? We are forgiven, which means we can share the good news that we are so incredibly loved by God that God sent Jesus to live with us, and the Spirit to inspire us. May the way we live our lives be evidence in this great experiment of faith.

Amen.

Scandal at the Well!

Originally preached on March 12, 2023 at St Luke’s Lutheran Church, Devon, PA

Texts: Exodus 17:1-7; John 4:5-42

Gospel Reading and Sermon begin at minute marker 30:00.

Grace and Peace be with you all from our God who lives among us. Amen.

Good morning. I am so grateful to be among you, proclaim the gospel at Pastor Matt’s invitation. As you heard earlier, my name is Mycah and I am currently on a final year pastoral internship in Reading, PA at a mission developed site called Common Ground Recovery Community. We work with folks in addiction recovery, and people who live with food and housing insecurity, and mental health struggles. Our ministry is focused on the intersection of twelve step spirituality and inclusive Christian faith, recognizing the brokenness of all people and sharing God’s loving Grace. My wife and I move to Downingtown, PA when I started seminary at United Lutheran in Philadelphia and have enjoyed living here for nearly four years now. 

Before I came to seminary, I worked in a church in Virginia as a Communication and Ministry Specialist. I had a lot of varied responsibilities during my time there, but part of my role was to support our new member class. 

Every new member class included a short Bible study on the story of the Woman by the Well from the Gospel of John (4:7-26). One of our longtime members was a woman a Biblical Storyteller, and she would preform this passage for us before we broke out into small groups to talk about what the passage might mean. The first time I went through this process as a new member myself, I was bracing myself for some tiresome anti-woman rhetoric. I’d heard it before, and maybe so have you.

I have heard this woman preached on time and again, and those interpretations had left me feeling a little jaded toward studying this passage with church folk. The woman at the well was immoral because her ethnicity made her less than Jesus and the disciples (implied racism), her marital status was in question (sexism), and not to mention the scandal of a woman being alone and approached by a single man (patriarchal scandal). I was in for a surprise when the pastor leading our class introduced new perspective and context to this scripture passage. We talked about the meaning of hospitality, and the importance of Jesus’ ministry to the Samaritan woman. The history of text reception of the woman at the well is steeped in unforgiving assumption, but by divesting Jesus and the woman’s interactions at the well of those assumptions, we can pull out important message: Jesus’ call to go out of his way to show care for all.

This is a long gospel reading, right? And at first glance, Jesus leaves us with a few more questions than he does leave us with answers. We open with this conversation with a Samaritan woman, alone, at a well. This is the making of an old testament meet cute – just like Moses and his wife Zipporah, or Jacob and Rachel. What could it mean that Jesus pauses to speak to this woman, alone, in the middle of the day, who happens to be a Samaritan?

This is a pretty scandalous scene, but not for the reasons that I grew up hearing, and maybe you did too. We might have questions about what it means that this woman was at the well in the middle of the day – could it mean that she was an outsider in her own community, not drawing water early in the day with the rest of the women, or that she was in great need of more water for some reason that day? We really don’t know. What we also don’t quite know is the significance of her five husbands – it’s not that she is promiscuous or immoral, but maybe that she is in a dire situation.

But this is not what made this interaction stick out to early Jesus followers.

She was Samaritan! Jesus is in Samaria! From the perspective of Jew’s at the time, Samaritans had all the history, but told the stories wrong. They worship the wrong mountain, one near them called Gerizim instead of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, and the temple there instead of in the Holy City. The book of Ezra details their ethnic background, being brought into this land during the Assyrian occupation while Israel was in exile. And somewhere along the way one of the Scribes changed the wording of the Samaritans from “we do sacrifice to God” to “we do not sacrifice to God.” The Jews’ refusal of the Samaritan’s help became the basis for excluding others from temple worship for centuries to follow. 

There’s a lot of ethnic and cultural drama between the Samaritan woman, and Jesus who is a Jew.

In fact, this is likely the most scandalous part of this interaction. It is not that she is a woman, but that she is a Samaritan, and Jesus asks for her help drawing water. He is inviting her to play host, inviting himself into a hospitality relationship that is still so sacred to this day. A Samaritan, hosting a Jew and drawing him water. Even with all the animosity, hatred, distrust, scandal between them, Jesus puts his trust in her.

But, in a very classic move by Jesus, just after asking her to give him water, he takes the role as host to offer her living water. Her confusion here is genuine because the Greek word for Living could also be translated as spring water, but how would Jesus know about a nearby spring that her people who have lived here for generations did not know about? We know the water Jesus is offering her is more than something that will quench her physical thirst, but nourish her spirit as well.

And as we get to know this woman, Jesus is not condemning her for any perceived promiscuity or forgiving her of her sin – that is something that we read into the text ages later – it is that Jesus is turning to her with compassion and inclusion. Despite her painful personal history, Our painful personal histories, despite their people’s history of hating one another, and the conflicts that stretch into the 21st century now, Jesus shares the Good News about God with us.

The woman even asks – Where should I worship God? On this mountain near here, or the one in the Holy City? She wants to settle this old debate, as if revisiting this specific history will settle generations of hurt. Jesus responds with inclusion. We will not need a holy mountain to praise God on, because the Spirit will be with us always. 

The geography matters here, right? And we still have conflicts over access to clean, drinkable water and other resources. 2000 years later and we are still asking Jesus the same question about where we should worship God. Where can we get a draw on that living water?

But how does Jesus respond? 

Scholar Karoline Lewis wrote, Jesus has to go to Samaria, not geographically, but theologically, because God so loved the world (John 3:16) and Samaritans are a part of that world that God loves. Jesus had to make that clear. The Spirit of God will be with them. The last place that the disciples and early Jesus followers would expect Jesus to go, there he went.

You see, Samaria was out of his way, and his disciples questioned why they would pass through this region when a safer, more direct, more welcoming route was available. 

But Jesus has to go to Samaria. Jesus has a message to share and that is that God so loves this world, that God shows up even in Samaria. Even in Devon, even in Reading, even in Kensington. Sharing the good news that God has come to be with the people.

Jesus has to go out of his way to make it clear that the last people we might expect to be objects of God’s love are right at the top of the list for Jesus to go see. To minister amongst. To raise up new disciples like the Woman at the Well and encourage her to share with her neighbors. 

That is who we are called to be. Jesus invites us, in this story, into the scandal of his inclusion. We are called to go out of our way to welcome people on the margins, who are at the well in the middle of the day for whatever reason, and also be the one to share out of our neediness. 

It is something we do at Common Ground, and something y’all have done with the Welcome Church in Philadelphia or participating in an upcoming blood drive. It’s something we can do every day. We, like the Samaritan woman have the opportunity to share the living water that is Jesus going out of his way to be with us. Something that satisfies our bodies and also our Spirit. That shows us a new way into the future where old historic divisions can be set aside to honor God amongst us by caring for each other.

So may we be an extension of Christ’s welcoming and loving inclusion for all. Amen.

Imagine the Beloved Community Jesus Imagined for Us.

Gospel for the day: Matthew 5:21-37

Recorded at Atonement Lutheran Church in Wyomissing, PA on February 12, 2023. The Gospel reading and sermon begins at the 20:00 minute mark.

Here is the sermon manuscript I had in front of me but it is not the exact words I preached:

Good morning, grace and peace to you from God our creator and Jesus our Christ.

This season of Gospel readings is from the sermon on the mount – one of the best stretches of moral teachings we get from Jesus in the gospels. This section might sound familiar to us, not just because it’s so quotable but because Jesus is doing some explaining about the Ten Commandments to the Jewish people living in Galilee under Roman Rule.

It is important to remember that Jesus came to the Roman-occupied Jewish people as the Messiah – But we’re going to put a pin in that for later.

Right now, we have some pronouns to unpack. The very first word spoken aloud by Jesus in this passage as we translate it is, “You.” So often when we read scripture, the translations we have of the Bible don’t quite capture the difference from Greek or Hebrew between a singular you, and a plural you. Sometimes I want to go through a reading for a Sunday and change all the plural you’s that I know are there to y’alls or yinz or yous people just to make it very clear in scripture who is being spoken to as a whole body or a whole church, not just as individuals. While the practice of our faith is yes, an individual pursuit at times, it is importantly also a community endeavor. Jesus is not just preaching on individual acts of faithful living, but a way of faithful Community living that is more important than a singular pursuit.

Now lets step into the deep end of this passage. The four major moral teachings Jesus is touching on here are anger, adultery, divorce, and oaths that on first glance might remind us of a transactional type of law & reward message. If I do good, say the right things, come to church every Sunday, pray just right, God will love me and I’ll be hashtag Blessed, as the social media trend goes.

Or “If you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment.”  “If your right eye causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.” Yikes.  What are we supposed to do with such dire warnings?

Again, when we read the ‘you’s’ here, remember that Jesus is speaking to the crowd. It is so easy in our 21st century thinking to think of Jesus’ teachings here as something that me, Mycah, needs to heed all by myself.

What if instead, Jesus is helping the multitudes who listened on that mountainside in Galilee and for the multitudes gathered here today imagine a whole new community. What if we are building an active beloved community who doesn’t commit murder because we learned that murder comes from anger, and anger’s ability to dehumanize our neighbor and justify violence but instead we go to that person and reconcile immediately. 

What if we are imagining a world where adultery, which was so often exploitation of vulnerable people and their bodies, was protected against? Jesus warned against divorce because it would bring so much shame to the woman and oftentimes leave her destitute on the street. She could not go home, and her husband would have removed her from his home, leaving her without resources or connection – thankfully that is not as often the case today, and we have community connections that support people in that situation. 

But there’s a lot of injustice in the world that strips away our humanity. Jesus had picked these examples to help us imagine what would the world be like if instead of abiding by unjust understanding of how we have understood our community, we began imagining something new. Something that doesn’t demand a transaction to earn love or faith or salvation. What happens if we read this as Jesus imagining a new way for us to live?

What Jesus was saying was radical to the Jewish people back in occupied Galilee. Here’s that pin about the Roman Empire: There was so much injustice under the empire. When Jesus was born, there were often revolts against the Roman governors in the province of Asia Minor where they were located. The people were hungry for a Messiah, The Messiah, to deliver them from under the Romans. Y’all see, the Jewish people knew what it meant to live unjustly under someone else’s rule. They had done so for many generations under the Egyptian pharaohs – and then Moses shows up and delivers the people into the wilderness on their way to promised land! Great!

But what does Jesus do when he shows up? He came to preach and teach. To heal and challenge social norms, but not smite the Roman Empire. Jesus imagined a new way of living in community. A new way of living that doesn’t demand transactions to be reconciled, or a community that needs us to earn our right to humanity. A new way of looking at the laws that were leading to injustices that stripped away people’s humanity, left people feeling less than whole, living partial lives, and imagined a way to live together where we make each other whole, reconcile with one another, as a community. To be the imagined beloved community that centers the love that Jesus had for each of us on the cross and in the resurrection. God created us with that inherit humanity. This new way of living is about loving God, and our neighbor as ourselves. All the laws and the prophets hang on these two commandments.

A modern way of thinking of how Jesus imagines a beloved community might be a twist on our focus on how Jesus says y’all instead of just you. Lets imagine what we would be like if we focused less on self-care and more on community care.

I was remembering my first week on internship recently, getting used to the commute from my home in Downingtown to here. I tend to take back roads by Honeybrook and Morgantown because it’s a bit faster and usually the only traffic I hit is Amish traffic maybe once a week. But my first week felt like a trial by fire commute. On my second day coming home, there was a literal car on fire on the highway, and then later in the week, I got rerouted through farmland around Honeybrook because of a silo catching fire. It was a devastating pilar of smoke to see as I watched my GPS continuously reroute me toward Reading. 

At one point, I could tell I was probably going the right way because I watched over a dozen men and boys on horses or push bikes fly past me toward the flames. Later, as I drove home and again the next morning when I was on my commute, I drove by the farm and saw the buggies lined up alongside several extra parked trucks and watched the silo get rebuilt swiftly day by day.

That was community care in action. 

I know I’ve experienced community care whenever I have needed to move or been able to help my friends move. I’ve been part of the community care team for friends with chronic illnesses or cancer diagnosis, driving folks to appointments or being there for care after procedures or on hard days. Community care is the work we do as a church, or through ministries like Lutheran Disaster Response who are currently on the ground helping relief efforts in Turkey and Syria after the earthquake or ministries more locally focused like Common Ground Recovery Community. It’s the work of the pastoral care team here at church checking in on folks.

Sometimes community care is scaled down. Sometimes it’s a shared meal or a thoughtful call or text. It’s connecting with one another to recognize the inherit beloved-ness that God created each of us with. 

Our actions as a community extend beyond the walls of this church, though they begin here. They begin when we hear the Word of God and the message of Love, Reconciliation, Grace, and Hope that Jesus brought into the world to all y’all. What we remember each time we partake in the feast at the communion table. 

How does the church become a place of divinely inspired community care? How do we change from a ‘you’ mindset to a ‘y’all’ mindset? It starts by remembering God’s love for us. For God’s saving Grace that he made a free gift of when God sent Jesus to live, teach, preach, heal, die, and be resurrected amongst us. Realizing there was nothing we could have done to deserve that but be made in God’s beloved image.

So we remember at the Communion table that this is a place to be fed and sent out into the world to be God’s hands and feet. Grace Pak once preached “Worship includes all aspects of our lives outside of the sanctuary. The relationships we have, how we treat each other, and what we say and do express our faith in God. Thus being worshipful “out there” inspires true worship ‘in here.’” (Grace Pak, The Abingdon Preaching Annual 2020, p. 16).

So imagine along with me the community Jesus might imagine for us today. Now, go and be part of that ministry in the world. Amen.

Waiting in Advent, you brood of vipers!

Advent – Waiting 

Matthew 3:1-12

Preached at Atonement Lutheran Church in Wyomissing, PA, and live-streamed. The Gospel and Sermon start around 16:30 minutes.

This is the sermon manuscript that I preached from.

        Advent is one of my favorite seasons of the year. I like to lean into the blues and light of the season. The twinkle lights everyone is putting up and added candlelight for the long nights. Here in church we see that too – reflected in the paraments and the trees. Advent is a period of waiting for Emmanuel, God with us – we do this at Lent as well. We use this time to contemplate that very idea of waiting – How do we wait for things? It’s not always easy. That pause between taking an important test and getting a diagnosis. The waiting between job interviews and the offer call. The exciting things we count down to as well – families who are expecting to expand via marriages, births, and adoptions. A trip we have been counting down the days to or seeing a loved one again after a long break. 

        One of my other favorite parts of Advent is John the Baptist. We don’t see him depicted in a lot of Christmas cards or on Advent calendars, but his presence is a vital part of this season.

Not every Gospel has Jesus’ birth story – but each one has John the Baptist. He is an important part of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. He is who his mom, Elizabeth, is pregnant with when Mary sings her song rejoicing in her own pregnancy with Jesus. He is the voice crying out in the wilderness about Rome’s rule over Israel, and the one who baptizes people in the Jordan River, including Jesus.

John is a rough and tumble kind of guy. He lives an aesthetic lifestyle out in the wilderness. He wear rough clothing and eats locusts and wild honey. He doesn’t wear fine robes or live in privilege in the city like he could, being the son of a priest and a holy man himself. Instead, he moves into the wilderness, proclaiming some pretty unpopular opinions against Rome and Rome’s governors. Opinions that will anger Harrod enough to call for John’s head eventually.

But there is something special about his relationship with Jesus. There is always a John the Baptizer calling us to be prepared before there is a Jesus of Nazareth. So what can we learn about and from this important figure who sets the prologue to our Holy Advent story?

Wilderness

Location is the first thing to notice. We meet John in the wilderness. What does the wilderness represent here? This landscape is a barren dessert. Why the lonely desert for our Advent reflections? First of all, the wilderness represents a lack of a safety net. Far away from a wealth of food or water, the wilderness is a place where we must rely on God. Our vulnerabilities, shortcomings, and insecurities have nowhere to hide out in the wilderness. Any idea of being able to solve every problem on our own is quickly shattered, and at the forefront is needing to rely on our community and God when we need help.

And it is here in the wilderness that John calls for people to repent of their sins. To leave the lives they once knew, repent because the reign of God in heaven has come near, and prepare for the Reign to come. There is something about the wilderness that brings us to our knees in repentance as part of our preparing for Jesus to be with us.

The word repentance has a lot of heavy meaning for us today. It reminds me of fire and brimstone preaching that doesn’t always include a lot of Grace which we really like as Lutherans. When we hear repentance used, there is usually a lot of shame, guilt, and condemnation wrapped up in the use of it. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I hear messages from some siblings of faith to repent because of my sexuality, calling me sinful despite being made in God’s wonderful image. Repentance has been weaponized as a moral tool to control people’s behavior and make us feel unable to have a relationship with God. 

        John is all about repentance however, and there is no getting through Advent to Jesus without John. So is there something about this repentance that might lead to relief, then?

  

The Greek word used for repent in this passage is metanoia, meaning “Change your whole self.” We can think of repenting, then, as understanding what went wrong and knowingly making a change in our lives. Understanding how sin operates in our lives, the choices we make or do not make, the things we say or do not say when we should. Sometimes we think of sin as these great big immoral actions we take that we totally separate us from God. Or breaking God’s law like the 10 commandments, or falling short. These are some ways to think about sin but don’t quite capture a Lutheran understanding. Another way is what Augustine describes: sin as curving in on ourselves and away from God; sin is not just some great big thing that destroys our relationship with God, but an understanding of those things that come between us and God. Not a relationship destroyed, but something that needs to be worked on. Mended.

So as we understand those things that cause us to curve in on ourselves, create barriers between us and God, we can then make a conscious decision to repent. To then be open to receivign God’s saving Grace through Christ on the cross which is there for us whether we repent or not. Overall, this is a practice – a spiritual practice – of noticing, reflecting, responding, and then reflecting again on our actions and our relationship with God. Easier said than done, right? But what helps is having an open curiosity when reflecting rather than a strict judgement which can lead toward shame and resentment; we are here to openly choose to listen for God’s will in our lives rather than choosing our own. That is what John is calling us to do. To reflect and be open to our relationship with God because Emmanuel, God with us, is on his way. 

Brood of Vipers

Now - John gets a bit heated in the gospels about this. He’s a bit of a hothead, a strong, prophetic voice that gets him into trouble later. He talks about being baptized in fire to the Pharisees and Sadducees, which were the religio-politico figures during Jesus’ time. He calls this group a Brood of Vipers and they are showing up in the wilderness to what? Act as they always have? Rely on their positions and ancestry to insist that they do not have to repent but want to be part of this community all the same? John knows who these people are, his father can be numbered among them, and he is not letting them get by on their connections, history, and nostalgia. John is holding their feet to the flame and reminding them that we all need to do this Advent work. John is leveling all of us, not raising one above another, but reminding us that when the one who is coming after him finally arrives, we will all be equal in his sight and all equally welcome in Christ. We are preparing for the way of the Lord in our own hearts, making the pathways easy to travel.

We are preparing our hearts, our lives, and this world for God to be here with us, what fruits will we bear? We are receiving this awesome free gift of Grace from God through Jesus’ coming to live among us; how will we respond? A quick answer to John the Baptist is to think of the Fruits of the Spirit from Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. 

Repentance is an invitation to a new way of life which is demonstrated by its fruits. Being a son of Abraham or being born again through moral standards isn’t enough - our lives must change and our actions must bear out that reorientation in response to God’s grace. Are we, like John, willing to prepare the way of the Lord this Advent?

 Amen.

Zacchaeus, Jesus, and the 12-steps.

October 30, 2022

Reformation Sermon at Lutheran Chruch of the Good Shepherd in Coatesville, PA

Luke 19:1-10: Zacchaeus & Jesus

Livestream: Gospel reading and sermon start at 25:00 minutes.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be pleasing to you, O LORD, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

It is so good to be back here at Good Shepherd. I cannot believe how nearly five months has flown by for us all since started my pastoral internship and since Alyssa and I adopted Minnie and Clio officially. For a while this summer I was telling time by cat milestones. By how willing Minnie and Clio were to explore the house. Then by how well or not they interacted with our other cat, Clem. I can safely say that after a few months and a lot of different tactics, we have reached a peace agreement of cat territories separated by a strategic tall baby gate in the house. All the cats are loved very deeply and doing well. 

My internship, as some of y’all might remember, is working alongside people in 12-step recovery programs and people affected by addiction in Reading, PA. The basis for our worshipping community is an understanding that the practice of the 12-steps as spirituality usually in an Anonymous program could bring a unique connection to God through a deep understanding of honest Hope and overwhelming Grace. 

Part of our weekly worship is a time of sharing. Whenever someone gets the microphone, we introduce ourselves by saying, Hello, my name is Mycah, and everyone greets the person back “Hi Mycah”. It is humbling to sit in a room where we are intentionally learning each others names, hearing one another’s stories, celebrate gratitude’s together, provide support when asked, and creating these sacred relationships in the presence of God by recognizing the way God is working in our lives.

The more I get familiar with the 12-steps, the more I have begun to understand how transformational these steps can be for people in Recovery and their loved ones, and the wisdom those of us not impacted by addiction and recovery can learn from our siblings in Christ who are.

As I read this week’s Gospel story about Zacchaeus and Jesus, I heard some of those themes I hear at my internship echoed here. Seeking a higher power, God. Making a fearless and moral inventory. Admitting wrongs and making amends.

We enter this Gospel lesson on the road. Jesus has set his path toward Jerusalem and toward the events right before his crucifixion. Jesus has spent time with some questionable company like a roman soldier, a ‘good’ Samaritan, tax collectors, and people with difficult questions.

Now along this journey is Zacchaeus – who happens to be a tax collector and rich. These tell us a few things about him. One, a tax collector is someone who was of the community, a neighbor, but working with the Roman Empire who was oppressing the Jewish folks. And because he was rich, we know he was good at his job. Perhaps similar to the unjust judge, Zacchaeus could be viewed as someone who was financially rich but spiritually and morally poor. Zacchaeus recognized his need for a higher power and was seeking Jesus out. Steps 1 through 3 are about recognizing our need for God and being willing to hand ourselves over to God.

Now, Zacchaeus’ neighbors might see him as a traitor to for the job he had. Zacchaeus could have had a huge desire to be in the crowd and learn from Jesus while Jesus was in Jericho, but feared being in the crowd because he was working with the empire. Very reasonably, Zacchaeus wanted to stick to the outside of the crowd – what would happen to him if the people he had collected taxes from who are undoubtedly mad at him, turned against him in the crowd? He is trying his best to be safe but still seeking his higher power, faith and understanding through Jesus.

Here is this huge crowd, and Jesus is undoubtedly somewhere in the center of the crowd, and Zacchaeus is somewhere on the margin of the crowd, of course he can’t see over everyone’s heads to see Jesus. While the text says ‘he was short’ – it is not quite clear in the Greek who was the short man in this situation. Here’s the thing – that’s a fun detail included by the gospel writer but there’s probably not a direct correlation to someone being short and having bad moral character. If Zacchaeus is the short one which historically he was assumed to be, it his height is not an inverse relationship to needing Jesus, and a tall man would need Jesus less.

But because the crowd was so large and no one is tall enough to see over all of it, Zacchaeus does what any normal middle aged chief tax collector would do and climbs a tree to get a good vantage of this famous teacher. 

Jesus spots the man in the tree and calls him by name to come down and Jesus invites himself to Zacchaeus’ home. A bit of a reversal of how hospitality works here. Usually it’s offered by the host, but here Jesus as the guest is reversing the role and inviting Zacchaeus into the role as host in his own home. At this point it is an honor to host Jesus, and the crowd grumbles. This guy gets to host our teacher? The one we believe is the Messiah? But he’s a rich tax collector. He is the least of all of us. In fact, we no longer consider him one of our own. Why would Jesus spend time with him? 

In response, Zacchaeus begins a fearless and searching moral inventory of himself to Jesus, steps 4 through 7, offering the ways he makes amends, Steps eight and nine. This is a very abbreviated version of those steps that take months, if not years to work through for folks. It is part of the tough spiritual work off Recovery. Zachaeus says he “will give back” according to this translation. Other Greek scholars would argue that he said “I give to the poor now, I give back fourfold whenever someone is defrauded”. It’s not a promise that Zacchaeus is making to Jesus upon meeting him, something he is promising to do in the future in response to Jesus’ sudden physical presence in his life.

While meeting Jesus and learning from him can be a conversion story like we get with the woman at the Well in the gospel of John, what we have here is Jesus’ presence revealing the amends Zacchaeus was already trying to make. This person who everyone thought was doing wrong all the time. Who people had prejudged because of his occupation, social and economic statuses, had been cast out of his own community, has actually been making amends to his community from the resources he had as a tax collector. Helping the poor and returning more when Zacchaeus has defrauded someone. Turns out Zacchaeus is a real Robin Hood figure disguised as an antagonist. He has been living out step 10 to continue to take moral inventory and when he messed up, promptly admitted it.

Jesus came to seek out the lost and save them – who is the lost in this story? Who needed saving? Was it Zacchaeus who had been seeking out Jesus in the first place? Or is it the crowd who needed to hear Jesus’ message? 

So often I think we hear about a person’s job, social status, money or life situation and pass judgement. Oh that person? They sure do need a little Jesus in their lives, while missing our own need for Jesus’ saving grace for ourselves. Zacchaeus knew he needed Jesus in his life. Zacchaeus had no illusions about who he was. Sure, he was rich and he had financial power as a chief tax collector but when it came to spiritual matters, he was seeking Jesus as a teacher and redeemer like the rest of us. Continuing to build a relationship with God is part of step 11. 

What is shocking is the crowd – the very crowd who is trying to walk with Jesus and learn from him, demonizing with false assumptions the very person Jesus is dining with. We are tricked into agreeing with the crowd, and sometimes applauding the very sin this story is condemning. Who are we to pass judgement when Jesus is revealing the good in people we least expect? Not just this tax collector, but also a Samaritan who acts out of kindness, the roman soldier seeking mercy, and the humble questions of faith from the people most lost.

How often have we met someone who is in recovery from addiction and passed judgement? Have we seen the judgement from friends and family when someone is bravely taking the steps toward recovery, trying to cast shame on the situation. There’s an awkwardness in not knowing how to act. How to support one another. Sometimes we turn into the judgmental crowd rather than meeting that person on the road to Jericho, offering a chance to be seen and connected like Jesus did for Zacchaeus who was making amends. 

Finally, perhaps Zacchaeus was ready for step twelve: having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, he will try to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all his affairs. 

I read in a book recently that over 23 million Americans are in Recovery from addictions. Can you imagine a world where we all continue to reach out to one another with compassion? Were we have a fearless and honest, and prompt response to making amends when we mess up? A community where we listen to one another’s stories and connect our stories to the stories of faith in the Bible? Jesus came to seek us out and save each of us in our own lostness. May we be willing to climb down the tree of our own faults and host our savior for dinner. 

Amen.

The Trinity and Their Promise to Us.

Holy Trinity Sunday 2022 - my last worship service & sermon with Good Shepherd before I begin internship. It has been my holy pleasure to worship and do ministry alongside the wonderful people of Good Shepherd of Coatesville, PA, and Messiah Lutheran of Downingtown, PA. 

Facebook recording from Good Shepherd of the sermon: https://fb.watch/dC3dkt2yDB/

Youtube recording from Messiah Lutheran of the sermon: https://youtu.be/j7wJxOaptMk?t=1027

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer. Amen. 

Happy Holy Trinity Sunday y’all! This is notably every pastor’s favorite Sunday to preach because understanding the Holy Trinity is so easy. For centuries, we have understood exactly who the Holy Trinity is, who is in the Holy Trinity, and how to talk about the Holy Trinity without falling into any accidental church heresies that lead to ex-communications and whole new Christian Traditions from forming. Easy peasy. When I said yes to Pastor Susan to preach on my last Sunday at Good Shepherd and Messiah, I didn’t realize what Sunday it would be in the liturgical calendar. But I’m sure Pastor Tim isn’t complaining now, Right? 

Notably Pastor Susan liked to throw me easy tasks like preaching on the Sunday after we all sprung forward and lost an hour of sleep or figuring out how to set up online worship in the earliest days of COVID. But really, her last gift to me and my spouse other than her wonderful friendship over the years and confidence was to leave us Minnie and Clio, her beloved kitty girls.

Now, if you knew Pastor Susan, you probably heard about the cats. She loved these two so much and Alyssa and I are doing our best to welcome them into our home with our already pre-existing cat, Clem. At almost two weeks into our cohabitation, we are all pretty glad our townhouse allows for each of the girls to have a floor of their own. They’re slowly starting to warm up to each other, but the one thing that brings them together is this miracle toy called a cat dancer. Pastor Susan had given us one for our cat years ago, and Clem goes wild for it, leaping and twisting and batting at little pieces of rolled paper at the end of an arching wire. It’s pretty graceful to watch, actually.

Minnie

Clio

Clem

And Minnie and Clio love it too. It’s the one toy we can play with each of them around the other to try and coax them into family time. Three cats are all brought together by one cat dancer. It’s pretty trinitarian. And while they might not be as close as we had hoped they would be, it takes time. They’re cats after all. We have made a point to let each of them know that they are not alone in trying to figure out this new life together and that they are so loved. Which is - What Jesus is starting to get at in today’s gospel reading.

We are in the middle of the farewell discourse in the Gospel of John. This is the part where Jesus knows he is going to die soon, and he wants to make sure he gets all his last thoughts and teachings to the disciples before he goes. Jesus is letting the disciples know what is to come and how to keep teaching and making disciples after his death. Jesus is that friend that keeps coming back when he’s heading out the door with “And one more thing!” He’s been doing this for three chapters already! I promise I won’t go on that long in my own farewell discourse today.

Jesus has so much he wants to tell the disciples before his death. He is trusting that the Spirit will be with us and to trust that the Spirit will guide us in our relationship with God as Jesus did. We know the Trinity are three and they are all in one each other. There is a relationship going on within the Trinity that Jesus is inviting us into and sustaining us with through the Spirit.

But the first thing Jesus tells the disciples before he gets on with the rest of his teaching is this: “I have so much to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” Wow. This is the farewell discourse after all, and as readers, we know that, and this is a tender reminder of care for people who are going to mourn their beloved teacher and faith leader soon. Doesn’t that feel familiar? Jesus gets us to hear the thing that is most important: the assurance that we will not be alone.

It’s hard to remember things in our grief, but Jesus is making sure we are left with this important message. When things feel too heavy to bear, we are not alone. For right now, we are not expected to get it all. This whole following Jesus thing takes a lot of time and Jesus knew that we would need companions along the way, and the comfort that we won’t have all the answers or do the right thing every time but remember these two things: we are loved by the Holy Trinity, and we are not alone. The Spirit is coming to be with us.

The Trinity is a mystery that is hard to put into words, and one of the great mysteries of faith that we as Christians have tried to make sense of for centuries. One of the best ways I have come to understand the Trinity is through Jesus’ teaching about relationship here between Jesus, God, and the Spirit. The Trinity is about the relationship based on love, and how wonderful is it that we find ourselves in the midst of them? Instead of trying to focus on the Oneness of the Trinity to understand the three: God, Jesus, and the Spirit as separate beings, Franciscan priest and theologian Richard Rohr writes that we “Start with the Three and see that this is the deepest nature of the One.”

Rohr describes the trinity as an invitation to a transformational dance. By focusing on the three to understand one thing about the Trinity, we can get sweep up in the dance together with the Trinity. The movement and flow. How dynamic and ever growing in our understanding we are when invited into the dance of transformational faith. I’m not an incredible dancer, but I think of those three cats of mine at home leaping through the air in this dance. Jesus tells us that the Spirit will declare things that are to come to us meaning, we don’t have all the answers yet, but we can keep engaging in the relationship with the Spirit who is with us and with the Trinity to hear ever more clearly the voice of our loving God.

When we focus on the three to understand one thing about the Trinity, we also understand diversity. Instead of pinning down exactly who and how God shows up in our lives, we can take a step back and listen to how the Trinity flows through creation around us, how they show up in the creative beauty of the world, and love and righteousness. Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer captures neatly: “Wherever God is, God is wholly there.” How we in the room can each reflect the whole love of God to each other. The whole love of God that abides in us through the Spirit because we know the story of Jesus. That whole love abides in me and in you and we are stronger because we know that each of us reflects that whole diverse love from the Trinity to one another.

Now because it’s Pride month and I am who I am, I have to talk about how we talk about the Trinity. I am using the pronoun “they” for the Trinity on purpose today. When thinking about the diversity of the Trinity, I remember my siblings in Christ in gender and sexual minority communities. As an LGBTQ+ person with many beloved friends who use they/them for their pronouns, this can be a playful and helpful way to think of the Trinity for us. I invite you into holy imagination with me to think of the Trinity this way. They/them is most often used in English to refer to a group of people, and on occasion to refer to someone without revealing their gender identity. More often now though, people do not identify with genders like man or woman but as non-binary or genderfluid and use they/them to refer to themselves on a regular basis.

The Trinity, who is three in one, also goes beyond gender to me. God is so great, how can I say God is not doing a new thing in their own gender identity? ‘They’ in the singular and plural explores our very understanding of who God is, how Jesus loves us and how the Spirit shows up in our lives to remind us we are not alone. They, the Holy Trinity, is with us always, never leaving us alone even when we feel unloved and isolated.

Jesus is even referred to as Divine Wisdom or Sophia, in Early Christian tradition. This idea connects back to the book of Proverbs where wisdom is personified as Lady Wisdom. Jesus, child of God, was not always referred to in masculine pronouns. I was introduced to thinking about God as our Mother in Heaven when I was a teenager and read the popular Christian novel “The Shack” by William P. Young. The book introduced readers to the Trinity like this: a Black Mother God, Palestinian Carpenter Jesus, and an Asian woman as the Holy Spirit. We can find diversity in the Holy Trinity and how we see the Trinity showing up in our lives. Just as God made us in God’s diverse image, there are many ways we can imagine the Trinity.

Kelly Latimore Icon of the Trinity

We also see how the Trinity values community. Everything about the Trinity reminds us that they are based in relationship. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and is God. Jesus was the Word with God in the beginning, and so was the Holy Spirit, calling creation into being which culminated in God walking beside the first humans. The Trinity was with humanity in the beginning, and they will be with us through Jesus’ own death and into life after resurrection. Jesus continues to remind us of the promise of the Trinity’s presence with us through the Holy Spirit.

The Trinity is an invitation to the transformational dance of faith, to diversity, and to community. The Holy Trinity’s presence in our lives is a reminder that we are not alone. And we are so very loved by our creator. May we bear that promise forward. Amen.

Raging against Advent

The simplicity of Advent is sometimes hard to capture.  It is not a sad, quiet time quite like Lent as we prepare ourselves for the Great Three Days of liturgy leading up to Easter.

It is similar like what winter does in nature, which may be why I struggle every year skipping straight over winter/Advent in my mind, and look forward to the joyous springtime that is Jesus' birth.  I really don't like how grey winter can be in Virginia.  The trees have lost their leaves, the sky takes on a bleak grey-like quality, and very rarely is there a sunny day that is not also too blinding without the shade of a good tree to contrast the brightness.  I waited at least a week after Thanksgiving here in America before I decorated for Christmas in my new home.  Festive music is still strictly forbidden from my car radio, and occasionally I will abide a holiday tune played in a store to make its jolly way into my heart.

I still rage against Advent in the way that I rage against winter in the northern hemisphere.

The Lord is with us (he is with us indeed) already!  Why should we have patience to sit through four weeks of Advent waiting for this Messiah when we've already been saved by grace?  Why does it matter that we have Advent specific music to sing during worship on a Sunday and we ignore the good Christmas tunes we all know by heart until after December 25?

My Advent wreath this year,
a sign of hope and light in winter

Taking a look into scripture history, the journey of Advent begins to make more sense.  The Jews of the Old Testament waited for hundreds of years for the One to come to earth.  There were many prophets who paved the way, many pains in communities who lived through diasporas and exodus' from their homelands, and many long winters to endure for this wonderful sign of Hope to feel even within our sights on the horizon.

So we wait today, thousands of years later, in the softness of our Advent.  Our four weeks of considering what waiting for Hope is like.  To sit in these long nights, pull our communities in close, and strengthen relationships to get us through the many pains we have today.

Some of us are not very pleased with the state of US and UK politics (among many many other issues of justice in many many communities around the world).  Some of us are very comforted by the current leadership lineup.  For some of us, these next four years are looking like the forty years the Hebrews had to wander the dessert before being allowed into the Promised Land.  We gather in our communities to seek comfort, this Advent.  To take a deep breath and gather our wits about us for the journey ahead.  Whichever path you're on, there are others walking beside you, praying beside you, and struggling beside you.

Advent is a time for acknowledging our brokenness, and acknowledging how powerful it is that our Hope came among us in our brokenness just as damaged, and said 'Peace be with you.'

And all I can say to that is Amen.

 

The Metaphorical AAA

After my YAGM year serving with St Chrysostom's Church Manchester, I took the time to travel to a few countries in Europe, say goodbye to the friends I made in the UK, and then traveled home to settle into the United States life once again.

First and Last group photo of the YAGM UK group. This is the amazing group of young adults who all acted as a support to one another throughout our year on that amazing little island.

There was so much that I learned, grew, and flourished in this past year, and now that I have closed the chapter on the last year of mission work, I find myself asking the Great Unknown before me what I should do next?

A group shot of a Mad Hatter Tea we had at St C's before I left.  My year in Manchester was made so special because of these people and so many more.

There was already a plan, apparently.  Before I left Manchester I had an un-looked for email from a pastor I had known at the end of my university days.  She asked if I would be interested in taking a new position at her church as a Communications and Ministry Specialist.  I took the calling, and now two months after I ended my service with St C's, I am beginning a new ministry with Muhlenberg Lutheran Church in the VA synod of the ELCA.  A short two hour drive away from home compared to the vast ocean I lived across the past year.

Getting here, though, has been a wild ride.

The day before I began work I intended to move down to stay with friends temporarily who live in town while looking for an apartment.  Other than some patience in the process of discernment and hiring with the church, everything about the last two months has been enjoyable.  Everyday has been a new kind of joy except possibly yesterday.

Yesterday was a bit of a growing moment for me.

We begin with the flat tire as soon as I woke up - unfortunate but not too big an obstacle.  A flat tire is a normal part of being a car owner, and getting it fixed is relatively easy thanks to my supportive Step-Dad.  Great, that was dealt with in barely over an hour, bags packed, and I'm on the road to meet Mom for lunch before I head out on the two hour drive.

I carefully drove out Interstate 66 for fifty miles, watching my speed and what I drove over to make sure no extra stress was put on my tires when all seemed for naught as I passed mile marker 10 and suddenly my car started jerking.  Great, flat tire again.  I throw my caution lights on and pull over on the side of a majorly busy highway to put the spare on for the second time that day, turn around, and drive back into Northern Virginia where I could meet my Mom after work and get a new set of tires.  Not really what I intended to do today, but it should be manageable and then I can be back on the road in no time.  An incredibly kind stranger who had been following me pulled over and helped me change the tire (Which we found had completely blown the inner wall), and even suggested somewhere to get a new set.

We now find ourselves at Costco, getting the back two tires replaced.  It took twice as long to travel the distance back East as it had taken to go West.  Along the way, though, I saw a dead black bear along the side of the road, various beautiful small towns full of civil war history, landscapes that were utterly gorgeous, and I had a good cathartic cry.

It takes the guys in the tire center forty minutes to get the job done, bless them, and my Mom is there with me to sooth my nerves and help me make sure all the paperwork is dealt with properly.  My carefully cultivated cool has been a bit tested by all of this, but thanks to some frozen yogurt recovered well.  

Getting ready to hit the road again, we find that this very troublesome day has not quite taken the last punch out of me yet.  This is a long story, and believe you me, it was much longer to live through yesterday than it is to type it up and have you read it.

My front brakes are making a horrible noise as I leave the parking lot, despite being changed the previous summer they are worn through, and as Mom and I discuss our options, I completely lose it.  She has selflessly offered to switch cars with me to deal with changing the brakes out and allow me to start my new job today without worry of transportation.

And all this could have been a nightmare that made starting work today seem like a bit of a bad omen.

Honestly?  I think it was the best reminder of the Metaphorical AAA I have watching my back through family and friends and complete strangers who all care so deeply for me and their community.

Who is your Metaphorical AAA?  Do you act as as the Metaphorical AAA for someone else?

Reflection from 17 June 2016

Packing

The date suddenly hits you
  

One month until you finish work, another few weeks before you leave - naturally you start winding projects to a close and packing your things.  There is so much to do, where do you begin?

You start with the immediate, making sure to take in every new moment and experience, tallying up all you've yet to do and all you've already done.  Then these lists take you back in your memory to the beginning of this journey.


Lets start over


Packing started the day you arrived, in a reverse way: everything was new and you had to take it all in somehow.  Sights, tastes, smells, new people, new work, new everything.  All of it at once and you were pushing all this excitement into every day, packing in as much as you could into a day.

It very soon stopped being new, and even though you're miles from where you began it all started to feel familiar, but you were given the chance to be unfamiliar.  Not unfamiliar with others, but with yourself.  Given the chance, you now have the opportunity to grow in a new environment foreign yet familiar to the one you came from.


But now you are at the end and you've still got to pack


How do you fit all of this garden of change into one suitcase, one backpack, one sentence when people ask you how your year was?  You want to ask them, 'Do you have a year for me to adequately explain?'

All you can do is smile when you answer, 'It was good, and I am still trying to unpack all of my experience that has changed me through the past year, though I did not bring nearly as much physically back as I left with!'  But the memories you packed into your heart along the way


They take up no room and weigh the heaviest of all.

Garden from Rocamadour, France

What More Can I say?

Wow.

What more can I say?  I have just had an amazing week with YAGM in Chicago, the amazing love and support that was shared during that week completely amazing me.  It was outstanding to witness so many young adults who are in the program, alums of the program, or fervent supporters come together to share such a profound experience.  

It was a bit  exhausting, too.  We had breakfast at 7:30am, and our last session ended at 8:30pm nearly everyday, with only a few hours to process all the intense sessions and delicious meals throughout the day.  There were so many uplifting people all in the same boat, though, so no one really felt how exhausted we all were due to the excitement each day brought us.

Ryan(L), Rebecca, Haley, Luke, Mycah!, and Nicholas(R)

Some of my fondest memories come from the times when my small group met, comprised of people who were all going to different countries (or in the case of our alum, had served in a different country), so we all brought unique perspectives to discuss with the other.  We also made it a point to have fun, heading down to the Lake Michigan beach on our first day to relax in the windy sun while talking about our journey's to that point (pictured right), or setting up someone's slack line (a wikihow article on what this crazy fun contraption is) to enjoy for some stress relief midway through the week.  We found a quiet space to practice meditation, and wrote each other encouraging notes to read in a few months when we need a taste of home.

Waiting for my flight to take off!

After all of this community building we constructed within seven days, it came to pass that everyone started to leave in their country groups to head off to serve, after having spent a week building us up in faith, spirit, and soul in preparation.  I had the interesting experience to be able to fly directly to my service site, and will head to my in country training in a few days.  It was a bit of a fiasco when I arrived to O'hare, but I suppose that's why YAGM gets us there so early!  I thought I was flying with British Airways, but as I found out an hour or so after I'd arrived while waiting for the ticketing counter to open, I was actually flying American Airlines which was located one terminal over.  So, hauling all of my luggage with me, I caught the tram to the other terminal, finally figured out how to check in, waited through the long security line and had a quick lunch, then waited around two more hours for my flight (as a fun joke, I had McDonalds in the airport for my last meal in America, if anyone was wondering).  My flight was then delayed by about an hour for departure, and we had a delay getting to the gate upon arrival, and then the line for boarder patrol was an even longer painstaking wait to get through than security had been.


The welcome I received upon arrival once I was outside the airport was amazing, everyone here in Manchester has made me feel very at home already, and I've just finished my first full day here in town.  I have already experienced hanging my wash up to dry, and had too many cups of tea to count.  The weather has been sunny both yesterday and today, which is a complete misconception of how it usually acts (so I am told).  Soon I will head to Leeds for in country training, and then back again here to Manchester to really begin my year of accompanying these wonderful people who are apart of Saint Chrysostom's Church.

I would like to invite any of you who are interested in receiving a more formal newsletter that will come out every couple months, please send me your email!

In peace, and with a cheerful smile,
Mycah 

P.S. Clearly I had a lot so say other than 'wow'!

Where One Chapter Ends, Another Begins

Dear friends and family,

            After four long and fun years at James Madison University, I have finished my degree with a Bachelors of Science in Biology!  I also received a minor in Anthropology and a concentration in Ecology and Environmental Biology.   My four years saw an ongoing research project with Dr. Bruce Wiggins (he and I are pictured right) in monitoring stream health quality through invertebrates (lots of little tiny bug larvae) after cattle have been fenced out and vegetation replanted around the water.  The summer before my senior year at JMU was spent at the same stream catching damselflies to look at their mating patterns.  Many of you know that throughout high school I was heavily involved in our theatre program, and during my time at JMU I stayed just as involved by working for our Preforming Arts Program backstage as a member of the Production Crew and a Stage Manager for Student Recitals.

School and life at JMU has kept me very busy these last four years, and now that I have graduated I plan on staying busy.  This past winter I applied to the Young Adults in Global Missions (YAGM) program through the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) and have been asked to go serve in the United Kingdom as a missionary through the Time for God (TfG) volunteer organization.  I accepted the offer and a placement site in Manchester, England; I am ecstatic to go live a year among a new people who will soon become friends!  My time spent there will be filled with assisting with the current church congregation and helping to grow the larger parish where I will be living.

The model for Global Missions in the ELCA is one of accompaniment, or walking together in a solidarity that practices interdependence and mutuality.  While the UK might not seem like an obvious location for a missions program, with the frame of mind of accompaniment we can realize that you can accompany people anywhere and everywhere.  Jesus says in Matthew 25:40 “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me” and this has always stuck with me to be supportive of everyone, especially those who seem as though they need or deserve it least.

This sort of journey cannot be undertaken alone.  I will continue to need the loving support and guidance that everyone has given me for the last four years at JMU.  YAGM supports their missionaries by backing us financially with $7,000 of the $11,000 needed to cover the cost of one volunteer for our year of service, and in return asks us to fundraise the remaining $4,000 on our own.  If you you would like to support me financially, send me an email at mycahlynne@msn.com for more information; if you have any questions or words of encouragement, I would love to hear them!

In God’s Peace,

Mycah