August 19, 2012, The 12th Sunday after Pentecost

August 19, 2012

The 12^th Sunday After Pentecost, Year B, Proper 15

The Rev. Dr. Brent Was

          “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”

          That is a pretty fantastic statement. Abiding in a dead man and He in us. The whole passage for this morning: eating flesh and blood and from that gaining eternal life. A fantastic statement in and of itself, sure, but made even more fantastic by the fact that this and a few other passages in scripture combined in the ancient religious imagination to birth a sacramental understanding of the world that has occupied the center of the spiritual life of one of the world’s great religions for 2000 years. In particular for Episcopal communities since the revision of the Book of Common Prayer in 1979, the Eucharist has become the foci of worship and life in our parishes.  I want to say that it is important that we understand Eucharist, seeing that it is such a central practice of ours, but that is ridiculous.  No one understands the Eucharist and whomever tells you otherwise is selling you a bill of goods.   However, understanding some of the history and context and theology of the Eucharist can broaden our experience of this rite, can open us more widely to what is happening in the murky depths of mystery, and can prepare us to encounter God in Christ with the Holy Spirit here at this table, together.

         What are we doing in the Eucharist?  What is the Anglican understanding of what happens up here?  (That is a trick question; Anglican’s rarely talk of certainties).  To understand this we need to do two things, first we need to go back to 1559, and we need to turn to page 363 in your BCP.  So what happened in 1559?  Queen Elizabeth, a Protestant, ascended to the throne of England in the midst of a bitter religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics.  Henry VIII, the church breaks with Rome, then a Catholic is coronated and it goes back to Rome, then Elizabeth ascends.  She pushed through two acts of Parliament, the Act of Supremacy which placed the English monarch as the head of the English church (not the Pope), and the Act of Uniformity, which provided the structure of how the church would be operated, most importantly by revising and re-establishing the Book of Common Prayer as the primary source of church discipline.  Could you imagine our congress trying to sort out even the most basic theological questions?  The Parliament of 1559 didn’t fare well either.  Of particular importance was Eucharistic theology, in particular the theology of transubstantiation.  What is that?______

          Elizabeth’s first draft took the protestant view.  What would that be?  Look at your BCP, p 363, the paragraph under “the celebrant continues”…  Could someone read that sentence.  “We celebrate the memorial of our redemption…”  In prayer B, which we are using now, it has almost the same language but skips the words “we celebrate…”  So what does that mean?  Right, it is a memorial.  Memorial.  Memory.  We are remembering what happened so long ago, remembering Christ dying and rising, remembering Him breaking bread with His friends.  This is a Holy remembering, anamnesis is the technical term, it is a profound experience of a collective even cultural memory.  That is our Protestant heritage front and center.  No magic, no meat and blood but a simple, even dignified memorial of an event from long ago that is important enough to our collective and individual relationships to God that it stands remembering in a very particular way time and time again.  That was Elizabeth and the Protestant’s contribution to our Eucharistic prayer heritage.  Wonderful, but it would not be a very good story if it ended there.

          Some of the catholic-leaning bishops and their allies in the House of Lord’s took exception to this. Again, imagine our congress taking this on.  The catholic peers of the realm were not willing to concede that the Eucharist was just a memory; something more, something much more was going on according their religious sensibilities. 

         Look at the next paragraph on 363.  Would someone read the first sentence…  “Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood…”  Huh…  “…To be for your people the Body and Blood…”  Theologically, the understanding of the mysterious action of God in the epiclesis, the moment where we understand that the Holy Spirit sanctifies the elements we place before her, has come to be known as consubstantiation.  The words do not read simply “…to be the Body and Blood…” but rather “…to be for your People the body and blood…”   This is not (necessarily) expressing a doctrine of transubstantiation.  This language does not state that the bread and wine are confected into the real body and blood of Jesus.  The words we use are “the real spiritual presence of Jesus.” They, the creatures of bread and wine don’t change in and of themselves, (or at least we do not have to understand it that way), but they change in relation to us.  It is of the same category of relationship that we talked about last week, we have little to say about how the world is but we have everything to say about how we relate to it.  Whether or how the bread and wine themselves change is immaterial; that our relationship to those elements changes, however, is paramount.

         This is the quintessentially Anglican contribution to Christendom.  It is this type of theological realism that drew me to this church.  I say “realism” because we do not know what happens in the Eucharist, it is a true and holy mystery, so it would seem disingenuous if not presumptuous to have a single and definitive statement of belief in what is going on there.  In reality, this, our form of Christianity does not have much in the way of dogmatic belief.  There is no list of things we need to profess belief in.  Our “beliefs”, what ever that means, are reflected in the general understanding of the Nicene and Apostles creeds, but are made manifestly real in our practice.  If someone asks what Anglican’s believe, the most real and true answer you can give is hand them a copy of the BCP and say,  “What do we believe?  I am not sure I even know what I believe, but this is what we do.  This is how we pray.”

        So what does this matter to us, this morning, as we prepare ourselves to partake in this great sacramental mystery? In most ways, the history of the evolution of this Rite matters very little.  Sure it is incredibly interesting, but does it help us religiously?  Does it help us love God and each other better? 

         To my mind, knowing how others believe, or knowing how sets of beliefs and practices originated sort of helps me put myself in the context of the thing at hand.  It sort of gives the range of normative, not that we can’t find ourselves outside of that range, but it is good to know where others sit, we are in a community after all.  To me, that is helpful, because we are generally terrible about sharing what we believe.  We are not a testifying kind of people.

          Knowing how others have understood and experienced God in history can also expand our capacity for religious imagination.  Initially, when I came to the Anglican way, I did not think too much about the real spiritual presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  That was not where I was.  I was falling in love with the act, the memorial aspect of things, the fact that this ritual, using the same words that have been used for 2000 years by Christians across the globe in many different ways, but together in this sacrament.  There is a lot of momentum behind these words.  A chorus of ancestors gone before us, the communion of Saints gathered as the body of Christ here and now, and the as of yet unborn or even imagined… these words, this memory, this anamnesis binds us in God’s time to each other and to God in Christ.  My seeking mind could wrap itself around that and I was awed.  With that opening, though, my mystery mind, my Christ consciousness was tweaked, awoken, ignited.

          As I descended down the rabbit hole of the sacraments on the coat tails of memory, other things came into play. Questions, mostly unanswerable, became important.   “Why does it seem that nothing changes but everything is different in the Mass?” “Is this what they mean by an eternal and actual encounter with God?”  “Why do I feel predictably quiet (and better) at the distribution of the elements?”  And my fascination with it all grew.  And my satisfaction in it all deepened.

         Then I arrive here, at the altar with the holy pat on the head from a bishop that gives me the authority of the church to preside here, and I half feared that familiarity with the Rite would breed over-familiarity, that it could become rote, that proximity to the mystery would dull the wonderment of it all.  Not so, says this priest. The wonder of this event is striking, more striking the closer and closer I get; the more and more I receive communion the more and more I feel in communion with God, with you all, the world and everything. Gather round today.  I wish we had the space for every-body to join the kids up here, but gather ‘round the altar in mind and spirit. We have the real food and drink, come close.  Or in the words of Rumi, Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving – it doesn’t matter.  Ours is not a caravan of despair.  Come, yet again, come.  AMEN

August 12, 2012, The 11th Sunday after Pentecost

August 12, 2012, The 11^th Sunday after Pentecost

Year B, Proper 14

The Rev. Dr. Brent Was

            Good morning, everyone!  It is very, very good to be home.  We have been on vacation the past three weeks, a little time in the mountains of Vermont, a little time on retreat at a monastery, a little time on a lake in Maine, and all the while surrounded by our families.  It was a good visit, but was phenomenally hot.  In a very short order we seem to have lost our tolerance for humidity and we were wilting violets most of the time.  And Hannah Maeve learned to swim and ride a bike.  Returning to Eugene we have had the distinct feeling that that we have been returning home.

            It has been a complicated few weeks in the world.  Seventy people shot in a movie theater in Colorado on the 20^th.  The murders at the Gujarat in Wisconsin a week ago by a self professed white supremacist.  The nation’s corn crop is all but lost as the heat in July surpassed the record set in 1936, the height of the Dust Bowl and parts of the mid-West suffer though the worst drought in a millennium.  It snowed in Pretoria, South Africa, the first time in 45 years.  It has been lovely here, though.

            Then the Boy Scouts re-confirm their bigotry against gay folks and a fast food purveyor of bad chicken makes worse moral and business decisions also around human sexuality.  Mitch McConnell declares that the economy is racing towards a cliff’s edge like Thelma and Louise… I don’t disagree with the metaphor, though I would probably identify different causality that he might.  And the same day that McConnell said that and the temperature records for July were consolidated, and an overall shrinkage in the world’s economy was reported, I learned that a friend of mine, Mike Schut, Officer for Environmental and Economic Justice for the Episcopal Church, has been laid off and that office closed by General Convention due to lack of funding.  The irony of it, the staff officer for economic justice being downsized in the middle of the worst environmental crisis in US history!  It is all so disheartening.  Right when the need for that witness in the churches and the world is at its greatest we shutter that ministry.  Our Hebrew Bible selection for today fits just perfectly, the terrible story about Absalom getting his head stuck in crook of a tree then, if that is not bad enough, he is surrounded by soldiers who defy David’s wishes and finish off the helpless prince.  Absalom couldn’t win for losing.  Can we?

            Maybe it was too hot back home; maybe it was too many family picnics in a row with soggy paper plates and mosquitoes; maybe it was that the only news we heard was the really big and bad stuff, I don’t know, but I came home disheartened.  Truly, and I have not even mentioned the vitriol of the presidential campaign. What is going on in the world?  Our psalm is fitting today, too.  “Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord; Lord hear my voice, let your ears consider well the voice of my supplication… My soul waits for the Lord, more than the watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.”  Who here has ever stood watch?  The psalmist really gets it, right, no?  That is the feeling, the monumental waiting.  You have to stay awake, but you are bored to tears and exhausted beyond knowing and you cannot, must not fall asleep.  It is the most claustrophobic feeling I have ever experienced, sitting watch on my tank many years ago.  As the lieutenant I would do the 3 – 5 watch and I can confirm that it is in fact the darkest before the dawn.  The ways things have been over the past few weeks I can almost get that feeling if I let myself wallow in the state of the world.  “When is it going to change?” “When is that first glimmer of light going to break on the horizon?”  Am I alone in this?

            Then the week progressed.  On Wednesday we had our potluck outside, lovely as usual, everyone is welcome, then went over to Tugman Park for the vigil in solidarity with the Sikh temple, the Gujarat right down the street.  What, 300 folks joined together for the event? Resurrection was well represented there. Religious and community leaders offered words and there was singing and chanting and prayers. It was moving and the hosts from the Gujarat were incredibly hospitable.  Quite remarkable.  I was heartened.

            On Friday we went down for the 30^th coronation of Eugene’s SLUG queen.  What fun.  There were so many people there, hundreds, we saw Mike and Maron, and Kim Still, of course if right up in the middle of all of it.  Good clean, completely outrageous fun.  It is a community happening for the sake of community.  I was heartened.

            Then on Saturday, Eugene celebrated Pride down at Alton Baker Park.  How great for people who have for so long suffered indignities and injustices due to who they love and their gender identity to join together and celebrate themselves and their place in society.  There was a strong religious presence there, lots of Episcopalians and during the blessing and invocation for the festivities I shared my favorite retort to conservative Christian homophobes; Jesus said nothing bad about gay folks and nothing good about rich folks.  That was well received.  I was again, heartened by the sense of community.

            Just as the bad news of the world matches the grim Hebrew Bible readings, Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus follows the more positive trajectory of these past few days.  “…let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.”  This passage is about how we need to be in relation to one another in a very real way, in a very human way. Be angry, sure, we all get angry, but don’t let the sun set on that anger. Demons gnaw on us when we hold on to anger, it goes rancid.  Thieves, stop stealing.  You’ve got something to offer to this community so turn too.  Use right speech, don’t gossip or slander, don’t be all negative and critical but use your words to build up the world, use words that “give grace to those who hear.”  

            These words of Paul are so right on and they so mirror the heartening events so many have participated in these past few days.  What a healing response to a breaking world.  Of course there is anger.  Think of the bumper sticker, “If you are not outraged you are not paying attention.”  I am angry about a lot of things.  I am angry at that white supremacist who desecrated a place of worship and I am angry that he died so steeped in delusion and hatred that there is no chance for reconciliation.  I am angry at the people who buy the racist music he was involved in.  I am angry at the schools and the parents and the churches and communities that failed to teach him and so many others very basic ideas about right and wrong.  I am angry with the lobbyists in the pay of weapons manufacturers and the NRA and our political leaders who at this point couldn’t lead us out of a wet paper bag let alone protect this nation from itself and our misguided ideas about freedom and rights.  I am plenty angry and I am not even talking about climate change right now.  But you know, when we find a positive expression of that anger, when we take actions to raise up different values, different moral structures, when we meet violence with kindness and another cheek, that cycle of evil is maybe not undone, it is not that dramatic, but that cycle of evil is weakened. 

            The same goes for how we do right after we have done wrong; thieves have something to offer and need the opportunity for redemption.  It is the same in our speech, when used rightly, we may even give grace to those who hear.  We’re talking about redemption.  Brilliant.

            We have very little control over the world that we inhabit.  Ultimately we don’t have much to say about how our own city fares, it rains or it doesn’t and the Earth quakes or is still on someone else’s schedule.  We all know how much control we have over our families or even our own bodies: bupkis.  But listen to the words of Paul.  “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”  Everything he is telling us there, everything he is telling us to put aside, the bad feelings, ill intent, negativity… over that, we have ultimate control.  We do not control our worlds but we do, or we can, or we might be able to learn how to control our response to our world.  In the end, if there is a practical purpose to religion, that is it.  This is the product of Christ as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.  

Let us end with the eternal words of Reinhold Neihbur:

God grant me the serenity 
to accept the things I cannot change; 
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

            Living one day at a time; 
Enjoying one moment at a time; 
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; 
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it; 
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life 
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.  AMEN

August 5, 2012, the 10th Sunday after Pentecost

August 5, 2012

10^th Sunday after Pentecost

Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15

The Rev. Jo Miller

I am going to do a combination of teaching and preaching. Mostly

teaching I think. When our son was in grade school he had the burden of having both parents being teachers at his grade school. It did get to be a burden for him at times. When he was 34 and I was ordained to the transitional Diaconate I remember him saying: “This is not right.” He has gotten over it, I am still just mom. But the specter of the 10 year old as not only a TK but a PK

shadowed him for awhile.

The point being I will be doing a combination of teaching and preaching.  Actually, I invite you to open a pew Bible to Exodus 16. There isn’t one for each person so some sharing needs to take place.

First of all, Exodus is not a historical document in the strictest sense. It is an interpretation of Israel’s growing understanding of their faith, a growing understanding of the dynamics of Yahweh and Yahweh’s interaction with them. Exodus is first and foremost Torah which means instruction. The book has been voiced, compiled, retold, corrected, formed, and reformed over several centuries. If you listen carefully you can hear Sabbath instructions before the Sabbath was really established as practice and ritual in chapter 20 of Exodus. A number of additions to the writings in Exodus came from the priest during the Babylonian exile. It does not lessen its impact but adds to its beauty and its statement concerning God and people. One historian wrote that history is rewritten to suit the needs of the age, facts become overlaid with commentary. That is what we get with the first books of the Hebrew Scripture.  Most Biblical scholars believe that Moses did have a written form of the covenant it was much simpler, not as detailed.

As one reads through Exodus one will hear much moaning and complaining. They complain about their enslavement and their woes with the Egyptians. Yahweh hears their complaints and sends Moses to lead them. But who is Moses?

As is true throughout both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament God uses fallible humans. Moses is fallible just like the people he will lead save for one thing, he does learn to listen to the voice of God. He has his trials and tribulations starting with Exodus 2:11 when he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew and kills the Egyptian and hides the body in the sand. The next day he tries to break up a fight between two Hebrews but one of them was the man he helped the day before. The man says, “Who made you a ruler and judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian? Moses fled knowing the Pharaoh would find out. That reminds me of what a four year old in Head Start said when I corrected him: "You’re not the boss of me."

Moses also stuttered which was as much a social problem back then as it can be today. That is why Aaron is with him, to speak for him. Moses was fallible and yet used in a mighty way by God to unite a people.

In Chapter 15 after God destroys the Egyptian army in the Red Sea we read beautiful songs of joy and praise. The song of Moses is in our BCP for Morning Prayer. They sing and dance and are so happy with their freedom and their leader Moses. This lasts for a little while. Can you guess who they begin to blame when they get hungry and thirsty and the trip gets hard and long?  Moses. People do not change. Who is the first person most Americans will start to blame when struggles occur, when life isn’t fun, and it gets hard? The President, right? It usually takes 6 months and not two months.

Our reading picks up 2 ½ months after their deliverance. I love this part because we do this to our leaders to. Verse 2

2 The whole congregation of the Israelites

complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.

3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

The whole assembly of people were already getting tired of their trek to the promised land of milk and honey and freedom. Sometimes freedom does not fill the stomach. We read that God again hears their complaint and he speaks to Moses and tells Moses what is right in front of them that they cannot perceive because they had never seen it before, manna. God spoke to Moses, Moses listened, he then told the Hebrews that God’s abundance was before them.

A point of fact. The manna is a sweet, sticky, honey like juice that exudes heavy drops in May and June from a shrub found in the desert where the Israelites were camped. It melts in the heat of the sun after falling to the earth in grains much like coriander seed. When we do not know what to look for, when we are distressed, when we are struggling we often times miss the abundance that is in front of us that God has provided. We need someone who can hear and see what God has provided in order to see it ourselves. Otherwise we just wonder why God has forsaken us. We miss mercy, forgiveness, grace and love. As in the discontented murmuring that occurred in the desert the one in whom we live and move and have our being hears us. We do not always see or appreciate God’s economy in what is supplied . We like more than is needed, we like to hoard.

Moses gave them strict instructions with the gathering of the manna.  They could gather one omar per person which is about 2 quarts. They all had just enough for the day. Hoarding the manna did not work because it rots. The big lesson they had to learn was the dependence on faith.

Their understanding of Yahweh was evolving. As we read through the Scripture we see how the people mature in their understanding of the Divine.  The perfect religious symbol, such as manna or the bread and wine of our Eucharist are founded on an actual incident which has been retold, enjoyed, mulled over, and enriched by one generation after another until it comes to enshrine the combined religious experience of thousands of different people.  The Priestly writers added the hint of the Sabbath to this historical event because it helped build its foundation of religious practice and faith.

This story points to God leading, directing, hearing, and responding to people even when we grumble and complain and fail to see God’s abundance.  This account lifts the natural phenomenon to the level of a sign confirming Israel’s faith: It is the bread which the Lord has given. Manna has become a metaphor for God’s grace and providence. The feeding of the 5000 from last weeks story fits in here as does the story in 2 Kings when Elisha said of the barley and grain, “Give it to the people and let them eat, for thus says the Lord”. God's abundance is all around us; it often times takes one person to see and hear God's voice in relationship to the abundance before others can see.

Just for fun read chapter 17 vrs1-5 They quarrel with Moses again because they are thirsty. Moses cries out to God, “What shall I do with this people?” The story continues.

July 29, 2012, the 9th Sunday after Pentecost

July 29, 2012

9^th Sunday after Pentecost

2 Kings 4:42-44, John 6:1-21

The Rev. Jo Miller

The reading, the planning, the thinking, the birthing of a homily can take a number of twists and turns. This homily started on one tangent and then it took a U-turn and started over again. Why, you may ask. I stopped my thinking and started listening to what I had read. I listened to others around me. I listened to the spirit of the words written thousands of years ago.

2 Kings 4:42-44 is a short reading and it speaks for itself. A man came to Elisha the prophet bringing food from the first fruits of his crops, 20 loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. Elisha, who was taught to listen to God for guidance and wisdom, said “give it to the people, let them eat for the Lord says ‘They shall eat and have some left.”

Our pericope in John with the feeding of the 5,000 resonates with the passage in 2nd Kings. Commentaries and sermons for probably centuries have quibbled over this section as being strictly a miracle story of God increasing the small amount of food. Others have felt that the miracle was members of the crowd adding some of the food they brought to that which was being passed out so that all may have something to eat. But, there is something more than the miracles in both stories: Elisha listened to the voice of God and Jesus listened to the voice of God and then they responded with an open gesture of stewardship and hospitality.

Last Friday a small task group of women (a.k.a. the Wild Women of Resurrection) were discussing the ways in which the community of Resurrection can minister to the varied needs of the individuals of the community here at Resurrection. We also talked of the needs of others who attach themselves to Resurrection but do not participate. The words stewardship and hospitality were mentioned a number of times on that Friday afternoon. The passages in our readings kept coming to mind.

Our reading in 2 Kings talks about the life of a community gathered around the power of God. It offers the qualities that define the life of that community: stewardship, hospitality, and an expectation of abundance. Know this, historically at this time of the story there were wars between Syria and Israel and scarcity was the rule of the day. “DO CERTAIN THINGS EVER CHANGE?  Out of wars and scarcity we have the story of stewardship, hospitality, and an expectation of abundance.

This is how it works in this story: The man from Baal-Shalishah offers to God’s people not only his best, but also the initial product of his labor, trusting there will be more for himself and his family. He displays thanksgiving, faith, and a listening heart. From this act of stewardship springs a life of hospitality. Hospitality is the act of caring for one another either out of our abundance or out of our pittance. These acts are the life force that creates community and from these acts of stewardship and hospitality flows the abundance of God.

Look at the story in John. When Jesus sat on the hill and saw the large crowd that had followed him. Jesus said, how are we going to feed the crowd?  Andrew brings a boy who has five barley loaves and two fish. He offers his pittance. Jesus offers thanksgiving and with faith has the food passed around in an act of hospitality and they end up with an abundance.  Question: In these two stories could God’s abundance been demonstrated without the acts by the people involved?

Now I am going to add one more word here, distribution. What does distribution mean? Without distribution God’s abundance cannot be perceived by the most needy. Currently, the Christian Church in America is under siege by the politicizing of a small part of the Bible. As Christians we are not called to follow a particular political fad or trend and try to make it sound Christian.  We are called to follow Jesus. Through Jesus and the prophets we can see that God takes up the cause of the most vulnerable in society- those who are most in need, who are most neglected by the powers of this world. God’s power effectively calls into question the unchecked powers of the mighty upon these vulnerable ones.

As Christians we are called to follow Jesus, not the current powers in our nation. Jesus said ‘What ever you do to the least of these you do to me.’ We are called to follow Jesus by doing what Jesus did, caring for what Jesus cared for, by doing. At Resurrection we are doing a good job. We do reach out as a community to help the greater community. We are beginning to respond to the serving of Sunday breakfast. Tell me more of the things we are doing and could be doing for the others in our community that show we are following Jesus.

Perhaps the biggest part of our being able to follow Jesus in caring is the way we renew ourselves spiritually. Again, following Jesus we see over and over that he withdraws from the public limelight to reflect in solitude on his ministry. Faith communities also need to balance periods of intense social ministry with times of internal reflection on God’s call. In the middle of his three week vacation, Fr. Brent will spend a week at a monastery for reflection and soul care. This will enable him to continue to do the work before him.  There is much that can be done in which God’s abundance can be seen and felt but we need to take the time to listen and just be in the community. 

We need to take care of our own inner self where the spirit of the living Christ dwells. What we are told is that God’s abundance is capable of appearing in the midst of our needs. In the case of 2nd Kings and John the human agents of God’s working are one person’s generosity and one person’s faithful vision.

We are challenged to be present in the midst of human need and with our own generosity and faithful vision seek to meet that need. Sometimes our need is for silence, prayer, reflection, worship, companionship and in these times God’s abundance can also be seen. There are times when we need someone else’s stewardship and hospitality of time and love. We follow Jesus both ways.