We look to Jesus for life and salvation, but we are to look not in miracles and amazing acts, rather in the life with the Triune God he comes to initiate and teach and into which he longs to draw us.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Time after Pentecost, Lectionary 10, year C; texts: Luke 7:11-17 (18-23); 1 Kings 17:17-24; Psalm 30; Galatians 1:11-24

Sisters and brothers, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

One of the many iconic moments in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz occurs after Dorothy and her friends return to the Emerald City at the end.  They’ve done all the wizard asked, and now he is brusquely sending them away without the promised gifts.  While Dorothy protests, her dog Toto trots over to the side of the audience hall and pulls aside a curtain, behind which stands a man talking into a microphone and working many gears and levers.  “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” the voice of Oz booms out.

Of course – and I apologize if this spoils the movie for those who haven’t seen it yet, but really, it’s been out for 74 years, so you’ve had plenty of time – of course it turns out that the Wizard of Oz isn’t the huge, frightening head with the booming voice and the special effects that hovers above the throne.  The wizard is the very ordinary man behind the curtain, and the “Wizard of Oz” that everyone has known and feared is all projection and mirage.  He has no actual magical talent.  “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” has become a byword for things that appear to be greater than they are but which are really illusion and deception.

Which makes Jesus all the more interesting and compelling.  Because Jesus, it seems, is the opposite of the wizard.  Jesus actually has power, is able to do amazing things.  He can even raise people to life who once were dead.  But if we listen to Jesus, the message we hear is “pay attention to the man behind the curtain.”  Jesus repeatedly seems to refocus people away from his miraculous actions and toward himself, his teachings, the life he is calling people to live.  The miracles, the wonder, these seem incidental to Jesus’ mission and goals.

It’s refreshing, actually, compared to the world experience in which most of us are well used to being told not to look too carefully behind any curtain.  But it’s no less challenging.  The miraculous things Jesus actually does can be so compelling to our interest, we can often think they’re the only point, and never get to know the man behind the curtain.  Never get to talk to him, listen to him, and learn what he really came to do.  Never fully commit to following him, walking with him throughout our lives.

Actually, on a Sunday where all four of our readings from God’s Word speak of miraculous transformations, it’s pretty powerful to realize that in at least three cases, those transformations point to something far more important behind the curtain, and invite us to come and see ourselves.

In all four of these readings, the miracle leads to praise of God, and even more, in three of them it leads to listening to the truth God needs heard.

When Elijah raises the woman’s son, she praises God (which is good, since she blamed God when her son died), and says she knows the truth about Elijah now.  “You are a man of God,” and – and this is the important thing – “the word of the LORD in your mouth is the truth.”  Now everything Elijah has told her about God is something she can trust.  She can believe that he tells the truth, because God has used him to raise her son.

The same happens with Jesus.  Because he raises this young man, people praise and glorify God for sending such a prophet.  They see Jesus the way the widow sees Elijah, confirmed now as a servant of God.  And when word of this gets to John the Baptist in prison, he decides to follow up.

It’s a little odd at first to consider why John has to ask.  After all, he’s the one who pointed Jesus out first as Messiah, the Lamb of God.  It was his job.  But it’s likely because it was his main job that he needs to act on his doubts.  He’s in prison, and probably aware that it’s likely Herod will have him killed at some point.  And Jesus isn’t preaching the fire and brimstone John preached.  He’s preaching grace and inclusion along with his call to repentance.

For Jesus, the reign of God is extending to non-Jews and Jews, and welcomes even “sinful” people.  But he’s doing miracles, too.  So John wants to know the truth.  That’s why I had us hear those verses – the appointed Gospel ends with the miracle.  But we also need to hear the rest, the truth.

Jesus starts out his answer to John by saying, “Go and tell John what you see and hear.”  And he gives the laundry list of miracles: the blind see, the deaf hear, even the dead are raised.  The implication is that who else would he be, if he’s doing things like this.

But the final statement is the real answer: “the poor have the Good News preached to them.”  This is the whole point for Jesus.  Look at the signs I’m doing, sure.  They’ll tell you I have power from God.  But the important thing is that I’m bringing Good News from God to the poor.

This preaching I’m doing, the way I’m showing is of God, this is Good News, John.  Blessed are you if you don’t take offense at it.  It’s not fire and brimstone, it’s not axes and judgment.  It’s grace and welcome, and yes, invitation to sin no more.  But it’s Good News: to the poor, to the Jew, to the Gentile, even to the wealthy.

The miracles are not the point, not even this amazing resurrection.  The point for Jesus is this: God is now among you, and is calling all of you, all people to a new reign of God, to the Good News of God’s way.  It’s the way to life.  It’s more important than anything else.  Even than having a child raised from their coffin.

Jesus isn’t ignorant.  He knows this is going to be the sticking point for many.

We all like a good miracle.  We all know the desperate desire for such things.  And he provided them, again and again.  But if you look at the record, not only does he often downplay and even discount his miracles, telling people to keep quiet about them.  He most often doesn’t seem to plan any of them.  They just happen.  Usually because he’s the Son of God and loves people and can’t walk past suffering.

Look at today’s story: he comes to the city of Nain for who knows what reason and just runs into a funeral procession.  Because he feels compassion for the bereft widow who now has no son to support her, he raises her son.  It almost feels like an accidental encounter.

This is important to understand because of our desperation.  When I first preached this text it was in my first parish, and we had just experienced a horrible event in our very small town of 600 people.  One of the recent high school graduates, who was also even the prom queen, had been killed in a traffic accident a week after graduation.  She belonged to another parish, but there were only three churches in town, and everyone, everyone was grieving.  You hear a Gospel like this on the next Sunday and the only question is, “Why doesn’t God do that anymore?  Why doesn’t God raise dead children anymore?”

And with the number of children who have died tragically in only the past six months, from Newtown to Boston to Oklahoma, or the tens of thousands who have died of hunger and disease and war, this is no small concern.  Add to that our concern and love for the suffering of all sorts of other people, loved ones, people on the other side of the planet, people of all kinds.

If our proclamation about Jesus is that he heals all these things, we’re back to the Wizard of Oz, because while he certainly can heal all these things, there are millions of times that he doesn’t.  And if such miracles are the point of his coming, then either he’s not very good at what he is supposed to be, or he doesn’t care about us like he did the people of his day.

But in fact, the miracles were never the point.  They were the outflowing of love from the Incarnate Son of God because he couldn’t walk past pain.  But the point of his coming was to show us God, to be with us as God in person, and to lead us into a life of love and faith with the Triune God in whose hands all life rests.  To show us a way of life which can live in a world of tragedy and pain and find abundance and joy.

To show us that even in this world we can know grace and hope, even if all our requests for miracles aren’t granted.  And in dying and rising, to forever give us the Good News that no matter how or when our lives end, or the lives of anyone, that is not the end, and there is life in a world to come.

But Jesus wants us to follow him, not his miracles.  To commit to him.  Because with him there is life.

His miracles only help establish his credentials, so we can trust our lives to him.  Like Elijah, because we can see what he has done, including rising from the dead, we know he is from God.

But the point of that knowing is then to follow him.  To invite him to lead us in our journey of life, guide us, show us a way of life.

It’s the same thing Paul is doing in this word from Galatians.  He tells of his miracle, that one who violently persecuted Christians was transformed by God into a great preacher for Christ.  And look what he says: “they glorified God because of me.”  Once again, the miracle leads to praise of God, not the person.  And the reason Paul tells it is to establish his credentials for the Galatians so they will listen to him and do what he says.  Not so they’ll be amazed at the miracle.  So they’ll trust that he brings them the truth from God.

Just as the widow trusted Elijah.  Just as Jesus invites John, and all of us, to trust him.

This isn’t an easy lesson for us to learn.  We long for the ending of all suffering and pain, and if God can shortcut that through the power of the Son of God, we’re all for it.  But we can’t avoid the truth that very Son repeatedly wants us to hear: life with God is possible and real and available, and it isn’t about getting or not getting miracles.

It’s about – and this is a wonder beyond wonders – it’s about living in a full, life-giving relationship with the Triune God who made all things and who loves us.  It’s about having God’s grace as a constant companion in our journey of life, sustaining us even in our suffering, giving life and meaning and purpose to our existence.  It’s about walking with the man behind the curtain and learning his way, and finding it’s a way of rich, abundant life.

I think Jesus would understand our desire to see such miracles as these all the time.

His compassion is likely pulled greatly at the suffering we inflict upon each other and this planet.

But that’s the reason he needs us to pay more attention to him than to these things.  The way of God he brings us will lead to life for all, and bring grace and healing to this world in profound ways.  We know this.  We’ve seen it happen before, and will again.

And we’ve seen that the salvation we have in Christ Jesus is something we can experience and know every moment of our lives, even as we rejoice in the hope of the life that is to come.  Following him, committing to this Way, that’s our path.  And it’s the path of life for us and for the world, the way that turns our wailing into dancing, and clothes us with joy.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

We can come up with plenty of reasons why we are not worthy to be loved by God, forgiven by God, welcomed by God.  But Christ, whose love defeats death and our own unworthiness, calls us beloved.  Worthy.  And it is so.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Time after Pentecost, Lectionary 9, year C; text: Luke 7:1-10

Sisters and brothers, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

George Herbert, an early seventeenth century Anglican priest, gives us this poem:

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
                        Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
                        From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
                        If I lack’d anything.

A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:
                        Love said, you shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
                        I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
                        Who made the eyes but I?

Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
                        Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
                        My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
                        So I did sit and eat. [1]

There is a question of worthiness that flows through this story.

This centurion, assigned to Capernaum by the occupying Roman government, is a remarkable man.  The Jewish elders of the town plead his case, plead his worth to Jesus.  “He loves our people.  He built us our synagogue.  Help him, if you can.”  This centurion might not be unique in supporting local religion that is not his own faith; the emperor Augustus recommended such behavior because it helped keep people in order.

But there’s more here, isn’t there?  “He loves our people,” they said.  This is no cynical bureaucrat, seeking to appease a restless populace.  The community of people whose oppression is visibly symbolized by his very office argues on his behalf to one of their own, a miracle worker of the Jews.

So why doesn’t he see that same worth, at least not when it comes to what he asks of Jesus, recognizes in Jesus?  Is it just that this centurion honors Jewish custom by not asking Jesus to risk becoming unclean by entering a Gentile home?

Like Naaman the Syrian, whom Jesus mentions in Nazareth a little earlier, the centurion sends people as go-betweens, respecting Jesus’ authority.  Unlike Naaman, he seems to consider himself unworthy of direct contact with the Jewish prophet.

The first group of advocates, the Jewish elders, speak of his worth.  But then he sends his friends, who downplay his worth.  “I’m not worthy to have you come under my roof,” he asks them to convey to Jesus.

This is such a strange, unexpected thing to hear from the representative of an occupying army.  Where’s the arrogance?  Where are the demands?  No, this one doubts his worthiness to receive Jesus.

But there is third assessment of worth here, that of the Incarnate Son of God.  Jesus heals this man’s slave, he sees worth and value in the centurion, even if the centurion does not.  He made the slave.  He made the centurion.  And he says, “worthy.”

We’re getting used to hearing this from Luke about Jesus, but it’s still surprising.  When Jesus preached for the first time in his hometown he emphasized God’s grace to foreigners.  His friends and neighbors were enraged.  Why would he say that about unworthy people?

But this goes back even to before his birth, Luke tells us.  And when Jesus was a baby, Simeon said that he would be a light to bring light to the nations, and the glory of God’s people Israel.  All would be in this love of God, this kingdom he was bringing, Jews and non-Jews.  So Jesus declares even this foreign soldier and this unknown slave worthy of God’s grace and love and healing.

And there is also this: even though he felt unworthy, he did trust Jesus’ decision and authority.  “If you say this will be so, it will be so.”  And Jesus says he is worthy.

This question of worthiness flows through the Rev. Herbert’s poem.

Love, who is Christ, bids welcome to a feast, but the speaker holds back, feeling guilty, sinful.  When Love notices the hesitation, the speaker claims there is no guest worthy to be here.

What follows is so beautiful, as Love argues with the speaker about his own worth.  “I made you.”  “Yes, but I’ve messed that all up.”  “But I took that blame.”  “Then I should serve you for that.”

But Love insists: no, you must let me serve you.  Feed you.  Come, sit, and eat.  In spite of any perceived unworthiness, the speaker is invited to face this fact: he is loved by Love himself, by the Christ whose love saves all.

The only one who can declare someone worthy is the One who made and redeemed that one.  And Love, Christ, says, “you are worthy, indeed.”  So the speaker relents, and eats.

So again, there is this: though he feels unworthy, he trusts in Love’s invitation.  And Love says he is worthy.

This question of worthiness seems to flow through the heart of our lives.

It’s dangerous to imply that everyone at all times feels similar things, because that’s not true.  But I suspect that there are few people who, when they consider God, always and at all times believe themselves to be worthy.

We come here because we long for God’s love and grace and healing.  Because here, in this place, we have felt welcomed by God’s grace.  People here speak of Mount Olive being a place where many who have been wounded by the Church and by the world have found healing and grace in the love of God.  I doubt there are any here who can’t identify with feeling such grace and welcome here.  I know I can.

But it’s not always easy to believe we’re deserving of that.  How many of us would like every thought, every action, every personality trait we have to be brought into the open amongst the people here?  I wouldn’t.  How many of us, when we confess our sins in silence before liturgy are grateful that it is done in silence?  I am.

We long to hope that we are welcomed with open arms by the Triune God, even by others here, but in our inmost hearts we aren’t always sure we can ask for that.

There are times the law of God needs to come to us from the outside, breaking through walls of denial, but many times at our core, we can feel the sting of God’s law without even being told, we can hear an inner voice saying that we’re not what we should be, what we were meant to be.  That maybe we’re not worthy to be here this morning.

It used to be the stereotype that churches were full of holier-than-thou types, people who insisted on their own righteousness.

That has not been my experience as pastor.  Again and again, when I talk to people I get a sense that there’s at least a part of everyone that recognizes the view of that poet, a part that recognizes the fretting of the centurion.  Even the most holier-than-thou person typically uses that bravado to cover up an inner fear of not measuring up.

Simply, we desperately want to know if God’s face is turned to us in love or against us in anger.  We want to know if we’re worthy of God’s love and grace.  But like the poet and the centurion, we might be tempted to turn away, or avoid seeing Jesus in person, just in case the answer is what we fear it might be.

But then we come here, and are welcomed by the very Son of God.  We begin to see in Christ that the face of God is love toward us and toward the world.

It’s almost more than we can grasp: we come to this altar, to the Meal spread before us, and are welcome.  We hear the voice of the Incarnate Son of God, who made us, say “you are worthy of my love.  My forgiveness.  My healing.”  Worthy to bear the same flesh the Word of God put on himself.  We hear the voice of the Crucified Son of God, who died for us and rose from death, say, “I have made you whole, healed what is sinful, taken away your judgment.  And I love you.”

No one can say we are truly worthy but the One who made us and redeemed us.  And here we find that he says, “worthy.”

And in this place, Love, the Christ, speaks through all these people around us, these faces who say to us in our deepest fears: “you are worthy of God’s love and grace.  You are loved.”  Who serve now as Christ to us, and to the world.  In whose eyes we see love and welcome, not judgment.  Who take seriously the Word of God, the Incarnate, Crucified and Risen One, and repeat his words to us again and again and again until we believe them: “You are worthy.  You are welcome.  Come, and eat.  Be healed.”

So then there is only this remaining for us: Can we accept this?  Can we, too, though unworthy, trust Jesus’ command?  Trust his judgment?  Can we trust Love’s invitation?

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
                        Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
                        From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
                        If I lack’d anything.

A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:
                        Love said, you shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
                        I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
                        Who made the eyes but I?

Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
                        Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
                        My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
                        So I did sit and eat.

Amen and Amen.

[1] George Herbert, from The Temple, 1633.  George Herbert: The Complete English Works; Everyman’s Library: Alfred A. Knopf: New York, London, Toronto; copyright 1908, 1974, 2005; p. 184.

The Triune God is like a riddle and a mystery that we cannot fully comprehend. And like all good riddles it is in the mystery itself that we are drawn to God.  In this mystery we proclaim that through the Triune God all things are possible.

Vicar Neal Cannon; The Holy Trinity, year C; text: John 16:12-15; Romans 5:1-5

Sisters and Brothers in Christ, grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Today is Holy Trinity Sunday, and being as how the Trinity is one of the most complicated concepts of the Christian faith I thought that we should do some mental stretching with a couple of riddles.

What gets wetter and wetter the more it dries? A towel.

I can run but not walk. Wherever I go, thought follows close behind. What am I? A nose.

What goes around the world but stays in a corner? A stamp.

Some of you may like riddles, others not so much. But for all of us riddles are like a bug in our brain that we can’t get out. We humans have an intense desire to know the answer, to solve the problem. But if you are like me, then knowing the answer to the riddle is far less interesting than being in the mystery of the riddle. In fact, for me, actually knowing the answer makes the riddle seem silly, maybe even a little bit boring.

Our God is a little bit like an unsolved riddle; mysterious and sometimes cryptic. Our God is a God that is impossible to figure out, box up, or define. The Old Testament is full of references to God’s unknowability.  For example, when Moses asks for God’s name, God responds to him, I AM WHO I AM or in some translations, I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE. How’s that for a riddle?

Later Moses approaches God again and asks to see God’s glory. And God infamously responds, “‘I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.’  But, he said, ‘you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.’”

As Pastor Crippen said in his sermon last week, this is not a God that we can control. And what’s more, in many ways this is not a God that we can fully know. This is a God who shows us God’s back, wrestles with us in the dark, and whose face we cannot look upon and live.

On this Holy Trinity Sunday there seems no greater riddle in all the Old and New Testaments than the fact that we Christians claim a God that is Triune in nature; three and one. This is to say that we believe in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as completely separate and individual, yet completely One God. Solving this riddle seems impossible.

Recently I saw a great satirical YouTube video about the Trinity, where two cartoon Irishmen ask St. Patrick to unravel the mystery of the Trinity with a simple analogy.  Every time St. Patrick tries to define the Trinity as a three leaf clover or as how water exists as both ice, vapor, and liquid, in a bantering kind of way the Irishmen explain exactly how these analogies are a heresy of one kind or another. Ultimately, St. Patrick resorts to merely reciting the Athanasian Creed, essentially throwing his hands in the air and admitting there are no adequate human analogies, rather The Trinity JUST IS HOW IT IS.

It feels like God often chooses to come to us in mystery and cloud, and darkness. It feels like God often comes to us in a riddle, only it’s a riddle that we can’t solve and don’t fully understand.

And I can’t help but think that God comes to us in mysterious ways because the more we realize that we don’t understand God, the more we actually want to know God. The more of a riddle that God is to us, the more we desire to be close to God’s very presence. Maybe, God actually desires to be a mystery to us.

This is not to say that we can’t understand anything about God. Our Scriptures, creeds and doctrines actually tell us the story of those things that God has revealed to us. But understanding that God never fully reveals Godself to us simply admits that we don’t know everything about God. God is Triune because God is I AM. We say that while we don’t fully understand how, we believe that God revealed Godself in Jesus Christ, and God continues to reveal Godself in the Holy Spirit who comes to us now.

This means that God has mercy on whom God has mercy, and God will have compassion on whom God will have compassion. It means that the Spirit goes wherever the Spirit goes and reveals whatever the Spirit reveals and we as humans can’t control it, don’t understand it, yet say that it’s true.

After all, in the Gospel of John Jesus tells us that there are some things that we are not ready to hear, and then tells us that when the Spirit of Truth comes the Spirit will guide us into all truth; meaning that right now, we don’t have all the answers and we don’t own the truth. There are things that we haven’t been able to understand and there are things that God is still telling us about what God’s plans are in the world.

Despite this, many branches of Christianity expect that we have perfect doctrine and that we know all the right words and have said all the right prayers in order to be accepted by God and communities as “true believers.” So Christians for centuries have tried to rationalize their beliefs about God and put the infinite in a neat little box. For example, many Christians even today insist that the world is 6,000 years old despite scientific evidence to the contrary. And so when dinosaurs were discovered many Christians claimed that God was merely testing our faith. And, at one point in our history the Pope put Galileo under house arrest for claiming that the Earth was not at the center of the universe, because it went against doctrine.

And it’s not that other Christians are the only ones unable to hear the Spirit of Truth. We have to ask ourselves, what am I unwilling to hear? Are we really ready to know who made our iPhones and Nike shoes? Do we really want to know where our food comes from, or are we content with how things are?

The point is that God is always bigger than our imaginations, bigger than us; that God has done, is doing, and will do things in this world that we have not yet even imagined. And so maybe the Triune God, who comes to us in mystery, wants us to embrace mystery itself.

Embracing mystery is much harder than embracing easy answers. Embracing mystery means not relying on ourselves or our own knowledge or works, but rather relying on something we don’t understand and sometimes isn’t fully here yet. For example, Paul writes in his letter to the Romans that we are justified and forgiven not by our own works, but through Jesus Christ. And in our reading today, Paul says something that is rather peculiar, Paul says, “And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

Now think about who Paul is talking to for a minute. Paul is addressing the early Christians who are being persecuted by the Romans for their beliefs and essentially tells them to hope. What’s odd about this, is that hope, by its very definition is not certain. We hope that someday we’ll win the lottery, but we don’t know that we will. We hope that we’ll have nice weather this summer, but we don’t know that it’s coming. We hope that two years from now we’ll be promoted or still have our jobs but the truth is, we don’t know.

Note that Paul doesn’t try to explain their suffering and evil. He doesn’t tell them that they are suffering because they are sinful or because of a particular ideology. Too often in the world Christians have tried to explain evil as if God allowed 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina to happen because of one group or one sin. What’s more, Christians have used the Scriptures as a way of saying all the things that God can’t do – slaves can’t be free, women can’t be pastors, gay men and women can’t be married – rather than submitting ourselves to all the things that God can do. But the truth is that explaining evil is just another way that we try to put God in a box by explaining things that we don’t understand.

Paul doesn’t do this. Instead, Paul opens our imaginations to hope in what God does through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Paul says that because the Son of God suffered, died, and rose for the world, we learned something about God. We learned that this mysterious God isn’t seeking to destroy us, but desperately wants us to be in community with the Trinity.

And so when tragedy, and death, and sadness enter our lives – when tornadoes destroy and bombs explode and jobs are lost – Paul says that we too can have certain hope even when we can’t answer the question, “Why is this happening?” We don’t have to search for answers and blame evil on certain “other” groups or on ourselves. No. Because of what God has done we can say that evil exists AND the Triune God’s love for us is certain, even if we don’t understand how. As Paul says later in I Corinthians, “For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.”

And it is in the riddle of God’s Triune mystery and in these words, that the Holy Spirit dares us to see God as bigger than our imaginations, bigger than our limitations, and yes, even bigger than our creeds and doctrines. In these words we admit that we see God only in part and submit ourselves to the not yet imagined things that God is doing in the world.

So through this Spirit we see the unexpected things that God has done, slave and free are equal, women preach and prophesy as men do, and gay and lesbian couples can love and be loved by God and the world in the same way as straight couples. Therefore, let us open our hearts and minds to the infinite possibility of God.

I AM WHO I AM, says the Lord.  What a great mystery.