 The Weeping Angel at Lakeview Cemetery, Cleveland, OH. photo by Elizabeth Rawlings by Rev. Remy Remmers
This week’s first lesson, Jeremiah 31-4-14, is one of my favorite passages. It is a salvation oracle in the midst of the trauma of exile. The people of Israel have experienced traumatic event after traumatic event. They are living in trauma trying to process what has happened to them, the role of God, and if salvation is possible. Jeremiah is the longest book in the bible and covers many different traumatic events that happened to the people of Israel. In the Book of Consolation (Jeremiah 30-31), this lectionary reading shows the impact of their trauma while trying to hope together as a community. Just a quick note before we begin: if you look in other translations for verse 8 you will see a different word than what the CEB has for disabled; that word is considered a slur by many. You should substitute in the word disabled. Also, you should look at the hymns for the slur; it is frequently used because it rhymes with name. Remember, it is always a good time to talk about disabilities and ableism in your context. To give some brief historical context: at this time, the northern kingdom has been conquered. The land of Israel had also been conquered with the capital city Jerusalem overthrown and raided. Officials had been captured; some executed publicly and others taken into exile to unknown futures. The people of Israel individually and communally would be living with trauma. They experienced back-to-back reversals of fortune that left them eventually in exile. This would impact any oracles composed during this time. Trauma changes how people and communities think and express themselves. The Book of Consolation is this break in the book of Jeremiah that Jeremiah brings in a word of hope from God. “The oracles that follow will develop that intention in some detail, with eloquence, hope, and sensitivity to the pain that the people have experienced.”[1] The people cannot experience hope unless they feel like their pain is being honored. Even when their pain is being honored, hope is difficult. The book of Consolation works within this narrative, piecing together the community with their part in God’s salvation. This hope must exist within the frame of the grief of the past. “Before hope can speak, survivors of disaster have to find language to tell of it; they have to grieve accumulations of loss and begin to place the catastrophe into larger frames of meaning.”[2] The Book of Consolation is an attempt to find this language. It is centered in the language of their traditions and in their grief. One of the ways that Jeremiah does that is through his word choice. In verse 7 the verb ‘shouts’ also appears in Lamentations as cries of need.[3] This choice in word deeply acknowledges the emotional space that the people in exile inhabit. This is juxtaposed with gladness. These two are held deeply in tension which is what allows this phrase to work. Telling the people of Israel that their emotional space is valued and welcome at the start of this oracle is a move that works well. Gladness will come, but Jeremiah honors the cries of need that he hears. This makes this oracle more manageable and meaningful for the people of Israel. Further, Jeremiah meets the people in trauma by acknowledging the reality of their condition. They cannot go back to who they were before, so God will bring them back as who they are now. “The survivors returning to Zion will form a procession of the forgotten, the disabled and the vulnerable.”[4] During the times of raids and exile some undoubtedly have become disabled. Often as a demonstration of strength and dominance over a conquered nation people (especially high ranking) will be publicly deformed or blinded.[5] While these words could be metaphoric, historically there are more people that are blind or have physical impairments as a result of being conquered. This metaphor could have come from the reality that people were more aware of their conquered status because of these physical signs. They return as a great company and not as an army. This return to Zion is phrased like a procession. They will be gathered from their various points of exile and be led back into Zion. This Oracle ties together their trauma and a sense of liturgy. “Flowing from their worshiping life will come a new society of economic and spiritual justice… Those usually judged least suitable for leadership – the feeble and the vulnerable, the lowly and the wounded – will become the center of new life.”[6] By guiding them in their trauma back to Zion, God declares who is valued in this new community, and who they should be depending on. This procession reminds the community how to live into the covenant by reminding them who needs protection in their community. God gives them positions of leadership in this renewal of the kingdom of God. This Oracle of Salvation is in the midst of trauma in how it was composed, and how the people of Israel received it. The oracle met them at the emotional space that they were at because of their trauma. Metaphors that held up the need for the dependence of God were lifted up because none of them felt like their current situation was manageable. They were not brought back as a military but in a processional led and cared for by God. In this procession new life and new hope can begin. As we dream of returning to churches, what will we have learned from this pandemic? Everything should not and can not ‘go back to normal.’ There is so much grief and loss throughout the country. How are you acknowledging that in your space? Does the way you hold hope for the future leave room for grief? [1] The New Interpreter's Bible: General Articles & Introduction, Commentary, & Reflections for Each Book of the Bible, Including the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994.,805 [2] O'Connor, Kathleen M. Jeremiah: Pain and Promise. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011., 103 [3] Keown, Gerald Lynwood., Pamela J. Scalise, and Thomas G. Smothers. Jeremiah 26-52. Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1995. [4] O'Connor, Kathleen M. Jeremiah: Pain and Promise. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011., 106 [5] See Jeremiah 52:11 for an example [6] O'Connor, Kathleen M. Jeremiah: Pain and Promise. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011., 105
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 By Regina Heater
Ah, the first Sunday after Christmas. This is what a pastor-mentor always called a “low Sunday:” low energy, low attendance, and low prep. There’s a reason many churches designate this a “carol sing” Sunday, after all. Conveniently, the texts for this Sunday offer easy justification for this practice - both Isaiah and the Psalm are about rejoicing, and easily “create space” for a meditation where one extols how singing carols is in the spirit of the texts as we continue celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas. There’s also plenty of space for rejoicing and even rest in the Gospel text. After all, both Simeon and Anna had actively and watchfully waited a very long time for the One who would change their lives. Recognizing the Savior in their midst, they rejoice and Simeon even says “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word.” This phrase, known as the Nunc Dimittis, begins Compline prayer in the Daily Office. It’s a signal that the work of watchful waiting is complete. Take a breath, take a rest, rejoice. The Savior is here! In the state of the world in 2020, we have an innate understanding of how we both must rest and can’t rest. We know we are never doing enough to usher justice into the world; we are simultaneously weary from both witnessing the constant injury to the world and the work of repairing it. In these days after Christmas, in one of the most exhausting years we’ve experienced, let’s take a cue from Simeon and recognize the Savior in our midst; let’s take a cue from the Medieval Church and mark the Twelve Days of Christmas as best we can by limiting the work and upping the revelry. You and the people charged to your care might think, “But Regina, I still have to work! There’s still so much to do! We can’t just *stop* until Epiphany.” A friend reminded me once that absolutely nothing has to be done to perfection and it’s the lie of capitalism that tells us that unless we do something perfectly, it’s not worth even attempting. This goes for everything, whether it’s Christmas cookies, justice work or taking a nap. A disruptive preacher can take the declaration of Simeon and create the framework for rest with the encouragement to pursue it, then live into it and model it for yourself for a few days as best you can. One more thought about Simeon and Anna. Each time I read this text, I think of how Simeon and Anna didn’t just recognize the Savior - they believed in him. They believed in what had been prophesied about him, about how he would utterly change the world. Simeon takes the child in his arms and blesses him, further proclaiming the things he would do. I wonder: what might happen if we took the idea of recognizing what was in our midst and blessing it? Each person who gathers with us has a place and role in bringing about the Kin-dom of God. After a season of watchful waiting, perhaps a word of blessing and prophecy over our people is not just appropriate, but necessary. The Savior has come, yes - and in coming to us has empowered us to embrace our role in furthering the Kin-dom of God. The Spirit rests on us as it did Simeon, and through our declaration of faith (and our affirmation of baptismal promises) we are called to the same things Jesus did - the things Simeon saw as a blessing as he cradled the child. As you rest and as you rejoice this Sunday, take a moment to also speak a blessing, acknowledging the essential role each of the faithful have in the continued work of the Kin-dom.  A reconstruction of an ancient Israeli house from the Semitic museum at Harvard. by Rev. Collette Broady Grund
In my 16th year of ordained ministry, I may finally have run out of sermons based on a traditional reading of the Christmas Eve story from Luke’s gospel. So I’m wondering, is this the year to (gently) disabuse people of the notion that the Holy Family was relegated to the unholy barn out back for Mary to give birth with only the untrained Joseph by her side? Part of me thinks no! Perhaps in this hard year, my people will want the comfort of the familiar nativity scene complete with its lily white Jesus and immaculately groomed postpartum Mary, under the adoring gaze of some equally well-groomed animals. But the other part of me (which is winning in this moment) thinks that in a year where so many hard truths about our lives have been revealed, maybe it is exactly the moment for a more truthful telling of Jesus’ birth narrative. Because honestly, this truth is not hard at all, it’s just different. And jaw-droppingly beautiful. I won’t go into all the details here, because you can google it, but if we read Luke’s story in the context of first century Palestine, a new picture of Jesus’ birth emerges. Mary and Joseph were invited into an already crowded house (it was the upstairs guest room that was already full, not the inn) by a family of strangers who saw that Mary was about to have a baby away from home and decided to help. There on the lower floor of their house, where courtyard merged with kitchen and living space and animal sleeping quarters, Mary was attended by women from that home and neighboring households who knew what she didn’t about birthing babies. Meanwhile Joseph likely helped feed the animals and watch the children while he waited for news about this baby who was and wasn’t his. And when he was born, the women helped Mary wrap Jesus in clean cloth and learn to nurse, while the men refreshed the hay in an old manger so the new mother could have a safe place to put Jesus and sleep. This means that the miracle of the Christmas story is not only about God taking on human flesh and being born in an inconvenient time and place, but about the radical hospitality those families in an unknown neighborhood of Bethlehem gave to a family they didn’t know was holy. They simply saw an enormously pregnant stranger in the early stages of labor and knew they couldn’t turn her away. And because they didn’t look away when a stranger needed their help, they witnessed the birth of God in their own living room. The hospitality of this family extends even to a bunch of the town’s shepherds, who came in the middle of the night telling crazy stories of angels in the sky. “Why not?” that holy householder must’ve said. “Come on in, the house is already overflowing!” We often call Mary, Joseph and their baby the Holy Family, but it would be entirely appropriate to call the family that housed Jesus’ birth holy, too. And for that matter, to call all the families that practice radical hospitality holy: * The holy family in my congregation who found a homeless mother and her three children in the Fleet Farm parking lot and took them home to feed them and keep them warm until the local shelter opened for the evening. * The other holy family in my congregation who not only raises four children of their own, but welcomes both daycare and foster children into their home and treats them with love equal to their own. * The holy families who’ve accompanied migrant children separated from their parents at our country’s border. The miracle of Christmas persists not only because of Jesus’ ongoing presence in the world, but through the radical hospitality of all those who see a person in need and say, “Why not? Come on in.” That Bethlehem family then becomes one in a long line of holy families who extend radical hospitality and inadvertently welcome God’s own presence into their midst.  Annunciation, Ethiopien d’Abbadie 105, fol. 5, (photo: Bibliothèque nationale de France) by Rev. Priscilla Paris Austin
The fourth Sunday of Advent is one of my favorite and most frustrating Sundays of the liturgical year. In many settings, the lectionary texts will take a backseat to the Children’s Christmas program. As happens during Holy Week, the Sunday before the major festival is laden with the burden of making sure folks hear the whole story, just in case they don’t come back during the week. In some ways I love this opportunity: gathering families, creating memories with them that center on the story of Jesus’ birth. And I get frustrated because in our rush to the manger, we can miss the richness of the day’s texts. Because, truth be told, no one in the pews will hear a thing the preacher says after “little Suzy and Amal” appear as Mary and Joseph. This year, when Christmas programs will be anything from simplified or techni-fied, or from over-produced to non-existent, the burden on the disruptive preacher is: how do we honor the contribution and learning of the children, while still challenging folks to see Jesus in new ways? My encouragement is to embrace the essence of the texts for this Sunday, as they provide a lovely opportunity to move from individualistic worship of God or the way we’ve always done the Christmas program to the communal liberation of God’s kin-dom come and the gift and freedom for the Christmas program to be different. What follows are some connections you can ponder between the text and your Christmas program. • 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 1 - David wants to build God an opulent cedar temple, and Nathan tells him, God is with you, do what you want. But God sends a different message: Why should you build a temple for me? I didn’t live in a temple when I brought my people out of Egypt, and I don’t live in one now. A tent has always been my home wherever I have gone with them. God doesn’t require extravagant offerings. God is with us, the people. This is what God has always done and will always do, whether in a tent or a manger, in Christmas programs that are pre-recorded or via Zoom, in a live nativity scene in the church parking lot and the simple advent wreath on our kitchen table. Wherever the people of God are, God goes with us. • Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26 - The psalmist sings God’s praise - “God’s love can always be trusted, and his faithfulness lasts as long as the heavens.” While Christmas programs may change format and performers, while our personal preferences of what it will look like will not be met, while technology may or may not cooperate, while the world tests our discernment of what is “Fake News,” the Good News is what the angels declare and the psalmist has said before: God can be trusted, then, now and always. • Romans 16:25-27 - Paul’s letter to the Romans speaks first to the good news he brings, but moves to the Good News that has been proclaimed through the ages. The eternal God commanded his prophets to write about the Good News, so that all nations would obey and have faith. The message is for ALL nations. • Luke 1:26-38, 46-57 - The angel appears to Mary with a message that starts with her and points to Jesus but is really about saving the whole nation of Israel. The angel greeted Mary and said, “You are truly blessed! The Lord is with you.” Mary was confused by the angel’s words and wondered what they meant. Then the angel told Mary, “Don’t be afraid! God is pleased with you, and you will have a son. His name will be Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of God Most High. The Lord God will make him king, as his ancestor David was. He will rule the people of Israel forever, and his kingdom will never end.” In Mary’s response, consider including verse 57 to remind people that Mary made this declaration, not in the solitude of her room, but in the presence of her cousin Elizabeth. By being together, they both were affirmed that their individual stories were part of a larger narrative written by God. The Lord has used his powerful arm to scatter those who are proud. God drags strong rulers from their thrones and puts humble people in places of power. God gives the hungry good things to eat, and sends the rich away with nothing. He helps his servant Israel and is always merciful to his people. In Mary’s declaration of thanks to God, she proudly speaks God’s promise that is bigger than herself alone: a promise to turn the world upside down, to defund the police, to restore economic balance through reparations, to bring freedom and liberation to all in need. May your people come to worship on the Fourth Sunday of Advent expecting it to be all about the cute little sheep, and leave knowing their call to share the good news with the world.  Photo by Nechirwan Kavian on Unsplash by Elle Dowd
The season of Advent echoes with the words of the prophets. From the Hebrew Bible to the Second Testament, to our own streets here and now, there are people who have seen the vision of the world that is breaking in among us and are - despite our resistance - trying to get our attention. Through their poetry, their songs, their megaphones, they turn our heads, forcing us to face the injustice and suffering we often try to avoid staring at head on. This 3rd Sunday of Advent is practically a buffet of prophets, especially if the preacher chooses to use the option of Luke 1:46-55 as the Psalm of the day. Each prophet’s voice offers something different, because God’s word is incarnate according to each time and place, and because God’s prophets are not cookie cutter versions of one another. Yet there are strands that connect each of these readings; a clear call for justice for the oppressed and an exhortation to live differently in response to what God has done. Notable, too, is that each one of these prophets has an obvious impact on Jesus, himself. As we are preparing for Jesus’ birth, this Sunday helps us to learn about his influences by studying the voices that formed him. ------ Isaiah The words of the prophet Isaiah are notable in and of themselves, but they are particularly notable because they are later used by Jesus himself in Luke 4 as part of his inaugural address to the synagogue in Nazareth. Jesus, quoting Isaiah, uses this text as a kind of mission statement to tell his hometown what his ministry is all about. He declares that the Good News is particularly for the oppressed, that captives will be set free, and that prisoners will be released. Each petition of this prophecy is powerful. If you spend time meditating on them, you could easily make connections to our modern context. For example, in a year where over 282,000 people have died of COVID in the United States alone, there are plenty of people who are mourning and in need of God’s comfort. As more and more of us know people personally who have suffered because of the virus, or even died, we see so clearly the ashes of mourning we are sitting in. The longing we feel to trade in signs of mourning for a celebratory garland is palpable. As businesses close, people lose their homes because of the pandemic, and Downtown looks more like a Ghost Town, the prophet speaks of ruins being rebuilt and repaired. And in a country where over 2.3 million people are incarcerated, a rate higher than anywhere else in the world, there are many families looking at empty chairs this holiday season, yearning for release for the captives. The words of Isaiah resound in our streets, voices from our own prophets chanting, “Defund the police!” End the prison industrial complex. End the police state. End mass incarceration. Give liberty to the captives. Release the prisoners. We often strip this prophecy of its power in our own day by acting as if these words are merely a metaphor. But they have not always been read this way. A proclamation of release for captives was radically comforting in Isaiah’s time when heard by a community suffering under exile and displacement. They were radical and challenging to those in positions of power in Jesus’ time. The people in Nazareth didn’t consider these words simply metaphors. They took his words so seriously that they were angry enough to attempt to throw Jesus off a cliff. If our preaching of these words doesn’t comfort captives and challenge the elite to the point that we are worried we might be thrown off a cliff, then maybe we aren’t doing them justice. The Magnificat Mary, Mother of God, is another prophet present in today’s reading. We so readily tame Mary, praising her for her humbleness or her obedience. But we forget that Mary is as much of a disruptive prophet as she is a gentle mother. So often these things go hand in hand. As a mother, a preacher, and a community organizer, I often tell people that each of these roles “use the same muscle” for me. These identities are not in conflict with one another; they are integrated and related. I am a community organizer BECAUSE I am a mother. I am a pastor BECAUSE of what I have learned from activists in the streets. And I am not the only one. When I think of Mother Mary, I think of Brittany Ferrell, an activist I met during the Ferguson Uprising. My mind flashes back to a familiar image of her; a megaphone in her hand, her daughter, Kenna, on her back, the words of Assata Shakur on her tongue. “It is our duty to fight for our freedom!” A modern Madonna and Child. Those of us who have children or who care for children are fierce when it comes to advocating for the ones we love. Mary knew that caring for her child was about more than preparing a Pinterest-worthy nursery or putting together a crib. The way Mary prepared for the Christ-child to be born was by building the world that all children deserve; by defiantly proclaiming that God was overturning tyrants, lifting up the poor, feeding the hungry, and starving out the rich. This is how we must prepare, also. It is important that this protest song escaped Mary’s lips in response to a proclamation from another woman, Elizabeth. This is one of the few powerful moments in scripture which passes the Bechdel test. Two named women (Mary and Elizabeth) are having a conversation together which is about something other than a man. It is about justice. Women and mothers have often spoken bold words to one another. Perhaps after the whirlwind Mary experienced with her visitation by Gabriel she needed the comfort of another woman’s company. It is in response to Elizabeth’s own revolutionary utterances that Mary begins to sing. Just as Jesus was influenced by his ancestor, Isaiah, he was also very clearly influenced by his mother, Mary, and his aunt, Elizabeth. I imagine Mary singing this rebel song to Jesus as a lullaby. With a prophetic mother like Mary and a radical auntie like Elizabeth, how could John and Jesus turn out any differently? John the Baptist Reviewing Jesus’ life, we can see how much of his work was influenced by John the Baptist. After all, their relationship began before birth, when they recognized one another in their mothers’ womb just moments before Mary sang the Magnificat. John did not conform to social conventions. He made the powerful uncomfortable. A few verses after our reading in John for today ends, John will baptize Jesus into this spiritual renewal movement. And Jesus will go on to follow the transgressive path that John walked. He will be a dissident - like John - and because of this, he will be arrested and killed like John. John, like Jesus, was also influenced by the prophet Isaiah. When the religious leaders asked John, “Who do you think you are, baptizing and preaching like this?” John quotes Isaiah, calling himself, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness,” borrowing credibility and authority from his ancestor. John’s role in these verses is one of preparation. He was readying the world, like Mary did, for the coming Christ. He takes on the role of an amplifier by pointing to Jesus and telling people to listen to him. He uses his power as an influential (albeit strange) figure in his community, not for his own glory, but to further Jesus’ mission and ministry of love and liberation. --------- During difficult and polarizing times it is easy to feel like the strong, clear message of the prophets is too much to bear as preachers. When we are anxious we tend to turn inward. We think of our own preservation. We become risk averse. It may feel safer to leave proclamations of toppled tyrants or prison abolition to more comfortable times in our congregations. But it is important to remember that these words were not written for comfortable, easy times. They were first given to people suffering in exile, people suffering under occupation. They were spoken and recorded for times just like these, when people were poor and hungry and anxious and angry and on edge and desperate. They were terse, audacious words spoken when tension was already high and by people low on privilege, with little protection and a lot to lose. 1 Thessalonians admonishes us, “Do not despise the words of the prophets.” Our challenge as preachers is to commit to resisting the urge to water these words down in order to make them more palatable (or our jobs more secure). Our role in this time of preparation for Christ, is to cherish the words that Jesus also cherished and repeat them in a way that is dangerous and liberatory.  Photo by Jake Blucker on Unsplash by Rev. Michelle Magee
Where I live, in California’s Central Valley, much of the ground was razed around the end of the nineteenth century with the invention of the Fresno Scraper by James Porteous. Yes, it was a fertile valley with rolling hills and natural waterways but people found it would be easier to farm if it were flatter. So, they flattened away. The land produced amazingly well, but it was utterly changed. Canals have not kept up with the irrigation needed and now the thousands of pumps bringing up water from the underground sources are sinking the land and causing tap water of some communities to be tainted with arsenic. Isaiah speaks of leveling mountains to fill in valleys, the gospels repeat this claim. I don’t know if Porteous had a Biblical background to feel he was doing the Lord’s work when he invented that machine to flatten the valley. Certainly many people have felt over history that using the land however they want is part of their right, to the point of abuse that we see today in overharvesting of fossil fuels and destroying wilderness preserves. I am confident however this is not what Isaiah was going for. Israel, as an agrarian society, surely made small changes in the landscape as they farmed, but the passage is not speaking of farmland, it is talking about building a path, a wide path, a superhighway, so that God can come easily to the people- and more literally so the people could more easily journey back from their exile. This hearkens back to the idea of the wide way of righteousness -- tsedeq – just and right living, described in the Torah as a wide path. The leveling is a metaphor, not justification to razing creation for self-seeking purposes. In fact, the sense of harmony and co-creation with the land is an important part of the shalom, the peace that kisses righteousness in Psalm 85’s exquisite poetry: Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; Righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Fruitfulness will spring up from the ground, And righteousness will look down from the sky. The poem reveals the truth of how in order to have shalom, we need tsedeq . In Spanish there is no separate word for righteousness. It is justicia, justice, which kisses peace. In several places of the First Testament tsedeq is an adjective meaning just or fair. To me, the English word “righteous” is displaced from our vocabulary and daily lives. It is justice, not only the kind administered in courts, but the kind lived day by day, that can lead to the wholeness and peace of shalom. When a society has fairness woven in, when it has accountability, right actions, and right relationships, then there will be true peace and harmony. Yes love is a necessity, but the kind of love that embraces truth, not the cheap kind that papers over or avoids reality. It is tsedeq that looks down from heaven and tsedeq that walks before God, preparing the way in the final verses of the psalm. Another beautiful thing about this exquisite poem is how the earth and the heavens come together. It is because of God that this happens, but it does not happen without the cooperation of those below. Into that cooperation enters the creation itself. The right relationship is with God, and neighbor, and the land, and the land and God and neighbor bless one another with an embrace; a kiss. “Make straight the way of the Lord!” is the pronouncement of, “a voice” in Isaiah, quoted by Mark. John the Baptist called people to repent, be baptized, confess, be forgiven. To turn around and find God’s grace waiting to meet them. If our repentance is a part of preparing a wide way for the Lord as Mark suggests, how are we called to repent in Advent 2020 to move toward tsedeq? There are many things we can, and should, repent of: repent of not valuing Black and Brown lives; injustices in our economy and healthcare; self-centeredness and so much more. Let us not forget the Earth itself and how we treat it, we must repent of that as well. The right relationship with the land, respect for creation, is essential to the true shalom that God wants to cooperate with humanity to bring about. I just saw news that some Portuguese young people are bringing a suit against several European countries for not doing enough to protect the environment. Protests against pipelines and global warming have been going on, and continue, often led by First Nations people (who often lead the way from their rich tradition of honoring the land). Local movements seek policies for better sustainability. Preachers may want to research what local ways churches can join in making right relationship, tsedeq with the earth around them, and name some of these ways humans and the creation work together with the divine as inspiration for our turning around, our repentance, this Advent. It is the beginning of the good news that Mark announces, a story unfinished because we have a part in this story. We cannot underestimate our role in what God wants to do- but God also participates with us. Therefore we can boldly act- and boldly preach of the broad way of encounters and holy kisses; tsedeq that becomes the shalom God desires for all of us with all creation. |
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