I serve as pastor of the Church of the Holy Cross UCC in Hilo, Hawai'i. Formerly, I was the Associate Conference Minister for Proclamation, Identity, and Communication for the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ, or in other words: an ordained geek.
In a community made up of people from different religious backgrounds, the temptation to judge was hard to resist. Paul urged them to resist.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the fourteenth chapter of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans (Romans 14:1-12).
The Roman church was made up of people from quite startlingly different backgrounds. Some had been raised as Jews, others had been raised in the traditions and religions of Rome, Greece, Egypt, and for that matter, many other cultures around the Mediterranean world. They brought very different assumptions about what a faith life was supposed to be like.
Christianity, originating as it did as a reform movement within Judaism (and indeed continuing to attempt to be a reform movement within Judaism in Paul’s lifetime), nevertheless welcomed folks from these other traditions and expectations. And Christianity did not fully endorse or fully reject religions and religious ideas of Judaism or Greece or of Rome. There was a lot to learn and to adapt to and to reframe for both those coming from Judaism and those coming from other faiths.
As a result, they were feeling at their way through the expectations of this new religion that they were calling the Way of Jesus.
Also as a result, they were criticizing one another, and sometimes fairly harshly.
Paul’s advice was, “Do not judge one another.” Those who observe in one way, well, they observe these things in faithfulness to God. And those who do other things to observe, they do those things also in faithfulness to God. It is God who is going to judge in the end. It is not up to us to judge one another.
Well, it is certainly true that a society without any kind of judgment or discernment rapidly draws into chaos as people do this, that, and the other thing. It is also true that the apostle Paul deeply disliked chaos and, as we noted from last Sunday’s reading, had some pretty firm notions on things that were to be done and things that were not to be done. But in matters of faithful observance, Paul was far more willing to let God be the judge of the heart, to let God be judge of the intent, to let God be judge of the devotion, than to permit Christians to run around willy-nilly judging one another.
Leave that to God, said Paul, and in such a way we can build a religious community together that is supportive rather than a religious community that drags one another down.
“Do not judge your brother or your sister,” wrote Paul. We will all be accountable to God, and that is more than enough.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking.Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
In his commentary on Galatians, the fourth century theologian Saint Jerome told this story: “The blessed John the Evangelist lived in Ephesus until extreme old age. His disciples could barely carry him to church and he could not muster the voice to speak many words. During individual gatherings he usually said nothing but, ‘Little children, love one another.’** The disciples and brothers in attendance, annoyed because they always heard the same words, finally said, ‘Teacher, why do you always say this?’ He replied with a line worthy of John: ‘Because it is the Lord’s commandment and if it alone is kept, it is sufficient.’**° He said this because of the Apostle’s present mandate: ‘Let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the household of faith.’”
Jerome wrote nearly three hundred years after John wrote the Gospel, so it’s hard to tell whether he’d preserved an authentic memory, or whether he’d preserved a story that reflected the way people thought of John. It certainly honored teachings of Jesus. We honored the “new commandment” Jesus gave at the Last Supper by calling the Thursday of Holy Week “Commandment Thursday” – “Maundy” is an English shortening of the Latin “Mandatum,” which means “commandment.” Jesus also spoke of love as the basis of the “greatest commandments.” As recorded in Mark’s Gospel: “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
This wasn’t a new idea. The Babylonian Talmud records this story about Hillel the Elder, who lived in the century before Jesus was born:
“It happened again that a certain stranger came before Shammai and said to him: –‘I will become a proselyte providing you teach me the whole Torah while I’m standing on one foot.’ (Shammai) knocked him down with the builder’s rule in his hand. (The stranger) came before Hillel, who made him a proselyte. He told him: –‘What is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Go, learn (it)!’”
I note that when Paul spoke of love as the fulfillment of the law, he used the negative form that Hillel had, avoiding doing harm. In contrast, Jesus used the positive form, love your neighbor as yourself.
So what is the good of law?
The Apostle Paul had, in fact, spent a good deal of the Letter to the Romans arguing that the Law of Israel had become a problem. When there’s a standard, he said, there’s not just the risk, there’s the likelihood that people won’t meet it. And when they don’t meet the standard, they’ve fallen into sin. Without the standard, there would be no transgression.
Paul argued persuasively that the Law had failed to prevent people from sinning – it’s an impossible argument to counter. No legal system has ever entirely prevented people from breaking the law. People make unintentional mistakes, such as not noticing that stop sign at the corner. People make uninformed mistakes, such as believing that those entering a traffic circle have the right of way rather than those in it. And people make deliberate decisions to break the law, passing in no-passing zones because they think it will save them time.
Mind you, most people follow traffic laws fully informed and faithfully. Law brings a basic order that’s really useful. Law also gets into the specifics of things. Like most of us on this island, I try to “drive with aloha,” and I’m glad for all the others who do. If we had no speed limit signs, however, I’d have more difficulty doing it. I wouldn’t know, necessarily, whether the road ahead was straight enough for high speeds, or whether around this next curve there is a series of small curves which I may or may not be able to navigate safely.
Not to mention the challenges of a traffic circle. It’s one thing to drive one with aloha, but if you’re driving with aloha, who goes first?
Despite dismissing the Law as a saving force, Paul definitely believed in offering specific guidance. Nancy Lammers Gross writes at Working Preacher, “In the event we are not clear about what the law of love looks like, even after the gifts for ministry and the disposition of love as described by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and alluded to in Romans 12, Paul spells out for us what is singularly inappropriate with regard to the law of love as we prepare for the return of Christ: Avoid reveling, which is excessive partying and wild behavior; avoid drunkenness, debauchery, and licentiousness, which may be taken as reckless indulgence in immoral behavior; avoid quarreling and jealousy.”
Indeed, Paul’s letters are full of lists of things to do and things not to do. If you’re looking for guidance in what to do, read Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, and so on. Paul happily told people what to do two thousand years ago, and people like me have been happily telling people what to do using his words ever since.
In the end, yes. Paul was right. Love does fulfill the law, at least as long as the law is dedicated to avoiding harm to the neighbor, as long as the law is dedicated to lifting up the neighbor. As we also know, that’s not always the case. Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “When Paul reflects on the second commandment in Romans 13, he writes, “’Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law’ (Romans 13:10). But I can imagine [Maria] Skobtsova having a fiery argument with him about this. She would say, ‘How can you sell love that short?’ She thought of love of neighbor as a ‘dangerous thing’ that immersed a person in the world and in its suffering, stopping short of nothing. Her life itself was a parable about this commandment and her deeply uncomfortable answer to the question: How do you love your neighbor as yourself?”
Maria Skobtsova was an Orthodox nun who hid Jews from the Nazis in occupied Paris, and died in a gas chamber in 1945.
Love does not just fulfill the law, it goes beyond the law.
Poet Wendell Berry died this week. For decades his work has inspired people of faith, so I’ll close with his words:
“I know that I have life only insofar as I have love.
I have no love except it come from Thee.
Help me, please, to carry this candle against the wind.”
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching. Sometimes he makes them without intending to. Sometimes He hope they’re improvements. The sermon as written does not precisely match the sermon as preached.
When I served the historic Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ, I shared an office with my colleague Drew, who also worked in communications and publications. We managed to keep one another entertained when a joke needed to be told, and comforted one another when we were sad, and supported one another when there was simply a lot to be done and less time than we really needed to do it.
From time to time Drew and I would find ourselves really easily distracted. A random glance at some word and we’d be thinking about what a strange way that was to spell it. A name would float by and we’d be thinking about all the people we’d known with that name. The phone would ring and it would take ten minutes afterward to remember what we’d been doing.
We had a name for these days. Based on the dogs in the 2009 movie Up, who could always be distracted by the mere mention of the word, “squirrel,” we called them Squirrel Days.
“Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness and came to mount Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up.’”
From a work productivity point of view, Moses had little business turning aside to see this burning-but-not-consumed bush. I’m no shepherd, but here’s what I imagine I, as a competent shepherd, should do if I see a fire in the wilderness.
Move away from it.
Get downhill from it, if I can. Get upwind from it, if it’s possible. Do both, and take the sheep with me. Fire in the wilderness, as we know from our wildfire experiences here on this island and from the terrible disasters in Canada, California, and Maui, is dangerous. Getting out of its path – getting my father-in-law’s sheep out of its path – is the first, most urgent priority.
Turn aside to look at this great sight? I don’t think so.
Nevertheless, that turn to the side, that step in an unanticipated direction, that movement toward risk and not away, was as crucial to the deliverance of the people of Israel from slavery as any step thereafter. Without this step, there would have been no steps toward Egypt. Without this step, there would have been no steps into Pharoah’s palace. Without this step, there would have been no steps across the exposed bottom of the Red Sea. Without this step, there would have been no steps up Mount Sinai to receive the Law of God.
As Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “God notices that Moses has ‘turned aside’ and then calls to him. Imagine if Moses had ignored that little impulse, that desire to know more.”
Imagine.
Fortunately, Moses did get curious. Fortunately, Moses sought to learn more. Fortunately, Moses took a closer look.
Moses himself was probably not so grateful. Like the later prophets who left us their stories of call – people like Isaiah and Jeremiah – Moses had reservations about his selection as God’s ambassador. Given the message he’d been given, I’m a little surprised that he didn’t run away faster than Jonah. As Amy Merrill Willis writes at Working Preacher, “The typical commissioning scene involves the prophet’s objection to God’s commission. The objection highlights the prophet’s dependence upon God in undertaking sacred work and reveals an appropriate sense of humility. But Moses is not typical in any sense. Instead of one objection, Moses raises four (3:11,13; 4:1,10) before saying flat out, ‘O my Lord, please send someone else’ (4:13)!”
So, not so grateful. Gratitude aside, however, and request to be set aside set aside, he accepted the commission and he assumed the mantle of prophet, leader, and lawgiver.
Because he’d taken a closer look.
It’s time I asked the question: Have you taken a closer look? What do you need to take a closer look at?
Taking a closer look isn’t always popular. Some people these days eagerly ignore expertise. There is a movement of people frequently referred to as “sovereign citizens,” who have adopted a legal theory that essentially means nobody has to obey a vast number of criminal laws. They refuse or ignore the advice of lawyers if they’re brought to court.
It’s hard to tell, but it doesn’t seem likely that that will go well. It’s one thing to look at some documents you found on the Internet. It’s another thing to take a closer look at actual lawbooks, professional rules, and court precedents. I grant you that it’s a shame that law is so complicated, but it is complicated. So is medicine. So is automobile mechanics. So is software development. So are ecological systems. So is plumbing. So is theology.
I’ve heard this statement from before I started my professional education: “I heard of people who went to seminary and they lost their faith, so I didn’t go.”
Because yes, seminary was taking a closer look, and yes, I learned things in seminary that were different from what I learned in Sunday School. That’s OK. There’s a limit to what you can teach in Sunday School.
The British authors Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, and Jack Cohen described this as a “lie-to-children” in The Science of Discworld: “A lie-to-children is a statement that is false, but which nevertheless leads the child’s mind towards a more accurate explanation, one that the child will only be able to appreciate if it has been primed with the lie. The early stages of education have to include a lot of lies-to-children, because early explanations have to be simple. However, we live in a complex world, and lies-to-children must eventually be replaced by more complex stories if they are not to become delayed-action genuine lies. Unfortunately, what most of us know about science consists of vaguely remembered lies-to-children.”
[Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen, The Science of Discworld (New York, Anchor Books), 1999.]
The same might be said of auto mechanics, literature, carpentry, law, accounting, and, of course, theology.
You’ve got to take a closer look.
Just like Moses. As role models go, that’s a pretty good one. As with all Biblical figures, there are things you’d like to avoid – my God, that man could whine – but he took that crucial first step. He turned aside to learn more and it opened up the world.
As Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “The poet William Stafford called this kind of curiosity and the following that it leads to ‘the golden string.’ And unlike Egeria or Moses, he saw the ‘end of a golden string’ in everything, in every detail of human life that we notice enough to write down. For Stafford, the whole of the sensual world was alive with the possibility of the sacred practice of noticing. Which makes me wonder: what did I walk by today that I could have turned aside to see with curiosity? What ends of the golden string did I pass by?”
As you’ve probably noticed, I’m a photographer and, increasingly, a bird photographer, so for me some of the golden strings are the movement of feathers in greenery, the hops of clawed feet across the grass, the gentle glide of a floating body over the water. Those aren’t the only ones. I’m fascinated by people’s stories, so another golden string is the things people share about what they’ve experienced, what they’ve valued, what they’ve learned. The Scriptures themselves are a golden string – or a big set of strings – for me. So yes, I keep coming back to this story and looking for new things, because each new discovery in Exodus 3, or Luke 2, or John 20, or Romans 8, or Micah 6, or a raft of other texts invite a closer look each time.
What are your golden strings? What do you need to take a closer look at? What would fill your mind to learn more about? What will fill your soul to experience more deeply? What experience can you embrace and, by God’s grace, it will change the world?
I’m talking to you – not because of your impressive brain, compassionate heart, not the beautiful singing voice, rippling muscles, spiritual depth, perfect complexion, long hair.
You with the toes, are you listening?
This is the holy moment.
Take a closer look.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes to his sermon while he preaches, so the prepared text above does not necessarily match the recording of how he preached it.
The image is Moses Before the Burning Bush by Gebhard Fugel – Photo permission – Own work (fotografiert in der Ausstellung “Gebhard Fugel 1863-1939. Von Ravensburg nach Jerusalem”. Galerie Fähre, Altes Kloster, Bad Saulgau, 2014), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32072413.
The circumstances of our lives do not match those of those who first read Paul’s Letter to the Romans. We, after all, are not a congregation containing both Jews who had embraced the new Way of Jesus, and Romans who had once worshiped such deities as Jupiter, Vesta, Mithras, or Isis.
Mind you, we are a congregation that contains people from a number of different national and cultural backgrounds, and from several different religious backgrounds, some of which weren’t Christian. So… it’s still not the same.
We do not live under the authority of the Roman Empire. I grant you that those who wrote the US Constitution were substantially guided by the Roman Republic, and used the Latin “senator” in creating one of the legislative bodies. So… it’s still not the same.
But it’s close enough that Paul’s advice to “not be conformed to this age,” meaning the first century around the Mediterranean, is still good advice in the twenty-first century in the Pacific Ocean. We just can’t assume that the cultural pressures of the first century Roman Christians he addressed are the same problems we face. We also can’t assume that the cultural pressures of the twenty-first century are entirely different from the pressures they faced.
For nearly two thousand years Christianity has worked very hard to create a society in which it was easy to follow Jesus. I’m not convinced that we’ve been as successful as we’d like. Europe’s history of wars between its acknowledged Christian nations – not to mention repeated persecution of non-Christians or not-acknowledged as Christians – has echoes in lots of other non-Christian nations in the course of human history.
What are our cultural pressures? First and foremost, I think, there’s pride. Hubris. Arrogance. The conviction that I and I alone am right. The conviction that me and mine are the center. The conviction that my chosen community is the greatest, and by rights should be in charge.
As Elizabeth Shively writes at Working Preacher, “Paul has exhorted his audience to be transformed by the renewal of their mind; now they are to use that new mind to think rightly about themselves and each other: ‘I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think but to think with sober judgment … ‘(verse 3). Paul calls for a new way of thinking that takes account of others.”
I think that Paul addressed that advice about not thinking to highly of yourself as much to himself as to his readers, then and now. Paul was on his best behavior writing to the people he hadn’t met in Rome. He wasn’t so restrained in his other letters. His arrogance took center stage in parts of Galatians, even daring to call Simon Peter a hypocrite. He was self-aware enough to call himself a fool in Second Corinthians, but only after he’d demonstrated the foolishness of his own ego in response to criticism he’d heard. Yes. It was hard for him. I resonate with that from the inside. I think I’ve mentioned that I share that temptation to arrogance. It’s one of the few things I can claim to share with a saint.
Let’s face it, arrogance is a characteristic of Christianity these days. It’s not just the Christian nationalists, although their manifestation of hubris is, I think, the most dangerous of our time. In the United Church of Christ, I applaud our advocacy for marginalized groups while noting at the same time our curious reluctance to move beyond certain points, and I note that when the marginalized come into positions of authority, they are just as subject to the temptation of “I know it better than you” as their predecessors had been. I’d dearly love it if we could solve the problem of arrogance by replacing all the male leaders with female, or the straight leaders with LGBTQ, or elder leaders with young ones, or… insert your own preferred group here. Regrettably, it seems like our favorite prayer is not the Lord’s Prayer, but what Pearls Before Swinecartoonist Stephan Pastis called “The Genius Prayer” in a 2014 strip:
“God grant me the courage to change the things I cannot accept, serenity to accept the things I’ve changed, and the wisdom to know I’m different.”
It’s not the only struggle we have with our contemporary world, however. I think one of our strongest pressures is the temptation to put people into arbitrary categories and make assumptions about them based on those categories. I’m pretty confident that the first century members of the Roman church had a similar problem – Paul wrote powerfully that both Jews and Gentiles (whom he called “Greeks”) stood in the very same position with God, needing God’s mercy. In other letters he wrote of slaves and free people, of men and women, that God’s grace, love, and power were accessible to them one and all.
In the twenty-first century, we struggle with prejudices within ourselves, and we struggle with the systematic “isms” that enshrine prejudice in law, culture, and religious practice. We have made progress. In 2021 the Rev. Elizabeth Dilley, who supports authorization of ministers in the UCC, wrote, “…women now make up 52.5% of all ordained ministers in the UCC.” At the same time, I’m aware of Christian churches that have rolled back access to leadership positions for women, and others that have simply never opened them at all. On Thursday morning I read a social media post asking for Biblical support for the ordination of women.
People, as we understand ordination, there’s not that much Biblical support for the ordination of men.
In addition, we’ve got people openly calling for the repeal of the nineteenth amendment. That’s the one that enfranchises women in the United States of America, that allows them to vote. I thought that question had been settled for a century. I guess we’ll have to keep it settled.
More of a concern in the twenty-first century than the first is the temptation to individualism, to think that community is less important than the individual. It’s a heritage of the European Enlightenment, and one that was really important to undo the feudal systems of Europe and Asia, which were so arbitrary and oppressive. As with most things, it can be overdone, and it has been. Israel Kamudzandu writes at Working Preacher, “I think of Romans as a call to abandon the sin of individualism and to embrace the cross-cultural Christian life. The life to which Paul calls Christians in Rome, and consequently those in the 21st century, is a life that exhibits the essence of God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.”
It’s one that embraces the notion that community is important. It’s not just about me; it’s about us. I don’t have all the skills, I don’t have all the gifts. Somebody else can better find the ‘ohelo; somebody else can fix the plumbing; somebody else can handle the bookkeeping. Look at that list of gifts of the Spirit Paul gave here (he wrote other longer lists in other letters): prophecy, ministry, teaching, encouragement, generosity, leadership, compassion. Any one of us might have some portion of each. Some of us will have deeper reservoirs of one of those gifts, and when we share them in community, everyone does better.
Amy Frykolm, writing at JourneyWithJesus.net, composed a reworked version of Paul’s advice here, and it’s stunning, so I share it with you:
“So then, I ask you, my dear family, in light of all the mercy, compassion, and kindness that God has shown us, place your whole selves in God’s hands — mind, heart, strength — this whole embodied being that is you. Make that offering full of life and vitality, as living as living water. The depth of your spiritual understanding and your willingness will fill the heart of God with joy.
“And do not let the ways of this world — its greed, ambition, empty fulfillments — mold and shape you, make you like itself. Instead be transformed through the renewal of your perceptions. Seek every opportunity to see with new eyes, hear with new ears, try out new paths, feel things for the first time and let them sink into your heart. From your heart, your mind, your senses, and your intuition, let yourself be continuously renewed. In this way, you will know what to do, how to act, how to choose the good, the true, the beautiful, the holy, and the whole.”
From the Apostle Paul, from Amy Frykolm, maybe even a little bit from me, there’s advice for this age or any other.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching – sometimes he intends to. The sermon as prepared does not precisely match the sermon as delivered.
Moses took an important step – quite literally – when he saw the burning bush. He turned aside to look closer, and that is how the conversation with God began.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the third chapter of the book of Exodus (Exodus 3:1-15), Moses’ encounter with God over a bush that was burning and not consumed.
It’s the very beginning of the story that strikes me at this time. Moses was out doing a very ordinary thing. He was keeping watch over a flock of sheep. He saw the burning bush. He observed that it was not burning up. He said, “I must turn aside and see this thing and find out more why isn’t the bush being consumed.” That was what began the conversation with God.
It strikes me that what Moses did was to get closer to look deeper, to go and learn more than he had known. And that, it strikes me, is an essential element of life and of faith. Learn more.
It just isn’t enough to see that there is a bush on fire in the wilderness. It’s just not enough to make the further observation that it’s not burning quite as one would expect. It takes another step. It takes turning aside. It takes drawing closer to find out what is going on.
It’s a skill that is sort of unevenly taught in our educational system. At the very youngest levels, of course, you don’t teach that so much, because it is important to teach young children the very basics of what makes up a world and how people should live together in community.
But as we go on in education, it should be and it can be (in some places it is) stressed that we need to look further. We need to go deeper. We need to learn more.
So don’t accept the first thing that anybody tells you. It might be right. Quite possibly is right. But you won’t know and you won’t know more until you look closer, go deeper, learn more.
Do that in faith, do that in life, do that in family, do that in relationships. Go closer, look deeper.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
The apostle advised his readers to do the will of God as best they could – but also to be aware that they did not, could not know everything.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the twelfth chapter of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans (Romans 12:1-8).
Paul wrote that we should present ourselves in our bodies as a sacrifice to the living God, by which I’m fairly certain that he meant that all our deeds, our actions, and our words ought to be done with some notion of fulfilling the will of God, at least as best we understand it. Paul followed that with a caution, not to think too well of ourselves, which is very much a temptation if we see ourselves as following and enacting the will of God.
It is, I think, some of the most honest advice that the Apostle Paul ever wrote in his letters. I’m pretty sure that his besetting temptation was, in fact, arrogance. The temptations to think that he knew more than he did, to proclaim more than he knew. You can see it in a number of places in the letters, both where the Apostle Paul recognized it and drew back from it, and the places where he didn’t recognize it and did it anyway.
That’s advice that is good for Paul’s time, for Paul. It’s advice that is good for our time, for us, for me.
First of all, to be cautious about what we claim to know, to be careful about the things that we say, to make certain that we identify our opinions as opinions, our faith as faith, and to maybe not declare it quite so firmly as established fact. By all means, bring out that which supports your opinions, but know also that there is far more to know than any of us can know.
And of course, that first point still remains an excellent challenge for all of us, to strive to do that which God has called us to do, to love our neighbors as ourselves, to love God with all our heart and soul and mind.
Romans twelve. Romans eight is, by far, my favorite in this letter, but there are good words here to guide us in each day of our lives.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you are thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
The church office is closed on Monday, August 17, because the telephone system is not working and other local services are also closed. We will be happy to greet you in person (and hopefully on the telephone) on Tuesday, August 18.
