Too Light a Thing

Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 49: 1-7 and Acts 2: 1-21 Sermon Title: Too Light a Thing Preached on May 23, 2021 Week before last I had an incredible opportunity. It was career day at the Marietta Center for Advanced Academics and I was one of the featured guests. Honored to have a table right beside Dr. Bob Harper and his daughter Mandy who were there to tell those kids what being a dermatologist is all about, I laid out my Greek and Hebrew Bibles and my preaching robe, prepared to inspire some 5th graders to become a pastor. Interestingly, I think that examining moles and protecting people from skin cancer made a lot more sense to most of those kids than anything I had to say. One of those kids saw my robe and thought I dressed up like Harry Potter for a living. Noticing how many kids were confused by my vocation, about half-way through the morning, Bob asked if the kids had asked me any interesting questions, and they had. “Have you really married people?” on wanted to know. “Yes, I have.” “Have you ever cried at a funeral?” Absolutely. Or the most interesting, which was asked in just the faintest whisper: “How likely is it that someone could be possessed by a daemon?” That was a hard question to answer. I told her it was very rare, though if she wanted to talk more about it, she should give me a call, and I gave her a business card, which felt like a cold response, but I’m not used to being asked that kind of question. Presbyterians don’t often talk about such things. Among the Christian denominations we’re sometimes called the frozen chosen. We don’t talk much about hell or daemons. We don’t often clap either, we rarely lift our hands in praise, we tend to be so science led and rationally minded that we leave things like exorcisms and snake handling to those who speak in tongues. I’ve heard a woman speak in tongues only once. We were both chaplains at the Metro State Women’s Prison, and the Holy Spirit fell upon her, and she began to prophecy. For me, this was an otherworldly experience. As a white, southern, college educated, Presbyterian, speaking in tongues is not in the repertoire, however, speaking in tongues is neither foreign to Scripture nor to the Christian tradition, so today we celebrate it a little bit. Today is called Pentecost Sunday, which is a lesser-known holiday. Earlier this week Sara asked me if we were going to sing more hymns nobody knows. Yes, we are. The Pentecost hymns aren’t as popular as Christmas carols but we still have to sing them. This is the second Sunday in a row where the Church celebrates a less popular holiday. Last Sunday we celebrated Ascension Sunday, the day when we consider that line from the Apostles’ Creed: “the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven,” and today we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit given to the disciples not long after Jesus ascended. It’s called Pentecost and it’s worth celebrating too. Today we read in the second chapter of the book of Acts: They were all together in one place, and suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Can you imagine? That’s what today is all about. This momentous event. It’s a day worth celebrating, but that doesn’t mean it’s familiar or understood, for while there are plenty of Christmas movies on the Hallmark channel, no one is making any Pentecost movies. I can imagine why that is, but our brothers and sisters in the Pentecostal Churches would love a few good Hallmark movies about Pentecost, so I’ve been kicking some ideas around. Imagine a movie with a plot like this: An old man gets his house cleaned every day by a woman who speaks only Spanish. They can’t understand each other, but then one day the Spirit comes and he can speak so that she can understand. They fall in love and live happily ever after. Or a Dad has trouble connecting with his preteen daughter. He tries to sound cool, saying things he’s heard her say to her friends, like “pop-off” and “yeet” but it doesn’t work, until the miracle happens and suddenly all her daughter hears is how much her Dad loves her. I could keep going with these movie ideas. I have more, however this is what I want to emphasize. What we’re celebrating today is not only that the disciples are suddenly able to speak in languages they didn’t know before. That’s part of it. The other part is that the crowds there could understand. In the words of Rev. Anna Traynham of Shallowford Presbyterian Church in Atlanta: the miracle isn’t that people spoke. People speak all the time. The miracle of Pentecost is that people were understanding each other. That’s truly a miracle. These disciples had been all together in one place. The Spirit came and they were all given this incredible gift, but the gift didn’t just enable them to speak in languages they’d never spoken in before. They were speaking and the crowds were understanding. It’s there in verses 5 and 6: “Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.” It’s not just that the disciples could speak, it’s that others were able to understand. And so I ask you, shouldn’t we spend more time thinking about Pentecost? For how many among us are capable of speaking? How many out in the world have something to say? How many puff themselves up with their proud opinions? Who get on their soap boxes and will spout off at any captive audience? Plenty will, but Pentecost is different, because the Spirit enabled these disciples to speak in a language that the nations of the world made sense of. Now, back to Career Day at our daughter’s school. As I said, there were kids there who didn’t know anything about being a preacher, and a lot of them were a little wary of me once they found out who I am and what I do, so I had some free time. Fortunately, also with me on career day at Cece’s school was Roy Vanderslice’s daughter Rebecca. Roy and his wife Joan are longtime members here. Rebecca and I were talking about her dad, who will not only invite you to ride in his Tesla, he’s also a language student. Knowing that, I showed Rebecca this app on my phone that’s helping me to learn Spanish and I suggested she get that for her Dad for Christmas or something. She told me that he wouldn’t want it, because he doesn’t really want to learn another language. He just wants to know four or five words in all the languages. When he meets someone, he wants to be able to say, “please, thank you, and nice to meet you” in the language that they speak. Can you believe how beautiful that is? That’s a slice of Pentecost. The disciples spoke in a way that each person understood. People were so honored that God would go this far to speak to them in their mother tongue that they stopped and listened. That’s the miracle of today, and it’s a miracle that matters in a world where so many keep talking while their words fall on deaf ears. How often has it been this way with you? You spoke without fully appreciating who you were speaking with. You were talking but there was no understanding. It happened once with me while I was in handcuffs. Last Sunday I alluded to having been arrested as a college student. That’s sort of true. What happened is I got in a little bit of trouble with the campus police for climbing into a condemned building on campus. Then, by the school paper I was assigned to interview one of the officers who caught me, and for the picture I asked him to put me in handcuffs. I thought it would make a neat action shot. The trouble was that he’d used the handcuffs so seldom that he didn’t have the key. After someone took the picture, for hours I was in the handcuffs as he looked around the public safety office for the key. Then he thought maybe he had left the key at home, so he drove me there in the squad car. And this was the weirdest thing. (Yes, it got even weirder). It was when we got to his house that I really learned who this man was. Every wall of his house it seemed like was covered in certificates of recognition for his public service. Every wall, certificate after certificate, “with appreciation,” “in celebration of,” “with honor and distinction.” I tried to read them all while he looked for that key, which he never found. He never found the key and eventually a locksmith had to cut the handcuffs off of me. I remember it like it was yesterday, not just being cut out of handcuffs, but that I had been writing about this man without really understanding who this man was, and it basically took a miracle for me to get it. That’s Pentecost. A holiday we need to celebrate, for how often do we fail to understand each other? How often in this world do we fail to understand what it’s like to be a police officer? I tell you our country’s lack of full understanding doesn’t stop people from talking. Some criticize the police without understanding how hard their jobs are. Far too many talk about race without any knowledge of what it still means to be black in America. Some think they know. They really think they know, so they talk but as they talk the divide gets wider because they speak without understanding. So, what does the Spirit do? It gave the disciples the words, the words that the world could understand, which is absolutely a miracle that our society needs today. Just think about what’s happening in school boards across our state. Maybe you’ve read about it. Crowds of angry parents show up to talk over each other. If you don’t say what one wants to hear he’ll shout you down without taking the time to listen. It sounds like life as usual in our world today. Meanwhile, there are little girls in our schools who are wondering how common it is to be possessed by a daemon. What Pentecost reminds us of, is that communication, real communication, requires love. That’s what happened so long ago. These disciples weren’t talking so that they could advance their own agenda. These disciples were up there trying to communicate to the world how much love God has for every one of them, and when I say every one, that’s what I mean. Salvation to the end of the earth. Only, let it start in our own homes. Celebrate Pentecost and dare to try and understand your spouse. Dare to love her well enough to really listen. Dare to lovingly speak to the police officer who is a human too. Dare to acknowledge the racism that still surrounds us. Dare to speak of love that the walls which divide our world might come tumbling down. Dare to believe that the salvation of this church is too light a thing, and that the Spirit calls us to the 800,000 out in Cobb County, half of whom have yet to understand the love of God. Be slow to speak. Be ready to listen. Work to understand. And may your words be always abounding in steadfast love. Amen.

The Next Book

Scripture Lessons: Ephesians 1: 15-23 and Acts 1: 1-11 Sermon Title: The Next Book Preached on May 16, 2021 Today we honor graduates of high school and college, and we have an eerily appropriate pair of Scripture Lessons for the occasion, for today is what the Church calls Ascension Sunday, when we celebrate that moment when the Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven and the disciples stood and watched, staring off into the sky even after he was gone from their sight. I think about those disciples today in light of what graduation means, and I think about how maybe they were realizing that for the first time they were really left all on their own. That’s a significant feeling: realizing that you’re all on your own. Some people feel that, and it makes them excited. But I doubt they were excited, maybe they were terrified. I don’t know for sure, however I imagine that what the disciples were feeling was something like what I was feeling when my Mom left me at college. That day my Mom helped me get moved in, she attended a few of the orientation meetings, and then over lunch she said, “Well, I’m about to start crying, and once I start, I’m not sure I’m going to stop, so I’m leaving. I love you so much. Bye.” Then she gave me a hug and left. I remember watching her walk away. It was an eerie feeling. She was gone, and this was back in the old days before cell phones, so she really was gone, headed back to Marietta, Georgia while I stayed in Clinton, South Carolina, left up to my own devices. Among other things, that afternoon I set up the answering machine in the dorm room. That’s about how old I am, and Jesus leaving the disciples was something like that. Maybe you’ve heard of helicopter parents, who sort of hover around even after their kids go off to school. Jesus lifted from the earth, he was airborne, Scripture tells us, but he really left, so the disciples really were back on the earth trying to figure out how to keep the Church going without him. Do you have any idea what that would have felt like? Some people don’t, though I imagine most people do, and having had that feeling several times myself I want to stay in that feeling for a moment to really think about it, and to compare the feeling those disciples must have felt with what growing up and becoming an adult is like. What I know that every parent wants is to prepare their kids for life, so that they can get along on their own. Many parents question how successful they’ve been at doing so, but parents, compare yourself to Jesus for a moment. No one can do better than Jesus at anything, and when Jesus left were the disciples really prepared? Do they seem ready? Are they anxious to spread their wings? How responsible do they really appear to be? I remember well enough how prepared I was for college. Honestly, I was not prepared much at all. Having really focused my schedule to do as little academically as possible during my last semesters of high school, on my first days of college we took a few tests as a part of freshman orientation, and I tested right into remedial English. Apparently shop and weight training weren’t the classes I should have been focusing on in High School, because this wasn’t English 101 that I tested into. I wasn’t ready for that. I tested into this class that was something like “learning English as a second language” and our professor was helping us with comma placement and when to preface a noun with “a” or “an”. In addition to my weak English skills, I had never written a check. I had never done my own laundry. I had never taken a car to the mechanic. I had never been arrested, either, but soon enough I learned more or less what that was all about. My point here is this: even the disciples don’t seem particularly prepared. Jesus leaves, and they don’t know what to do without him. They’re just standing there looking up at the sky, and so parents, you have to say to yourself in these last few weeks before your chicks leave the nest, “If Jesus couldn’t get the disciples ready for life on their own, I need to cut myself some slack.” It’s impossible to completely prepare a person for independence, because there are some things in life that you won’t ever learn how to do until you have to do them on your own. Do you know the hymn, Jesus Walked this Lonesome Valley? It goes like this: Jesus walked this lonesome valley; He had to walk it by himself. Oh, nobody else could walk it for him; He had to walk it by himself. And then it goes: You must go and stand your trial; You have to stand it by yourself. Oh, nobody else can stand it for you; You have to stand it by yourself. That’s right. And in doing so you’ll find the strength that you didn’t know you had. You’ll learn to rely on a power that you never knew was there. You’ll begin to walk on your own. You’ll run, without waiting for someone else to lead the way. Once Jesus ascends into heaven, the final lesson can be taught and the final preparation is complete, because the disciples are now having to do what Jesus had been doing for them. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. tells his version of this same story in one of his sermons. He was in Birmingham, which you might know, was such a violent place during the Civil Right Movement that some folks called it Bombingham. Dr. King’s life was threatened. He was in danger, and he couldn’t sleep. The thought of that brick which had been thrown through a window of the house he was staying in kept him up. He knew that not only was his life at risk, but that of his wife and children as well, who were staying in the house with him. Sleep alluding him, he went into the kitchen, made himself a cup of coffee, and there he thought about how much he wanted to talk with his father, who was miles away back home in Atlanta. He couldn’t depend on his father for comfort in this moment because his father was too far away, but in this moment in realizing how far away his father was he bowed his head in prayer and he asked God for help, and he felt as though he was possibly doing this for the first time all on his own. Now I don’t think that Dr. King meant this is the first time he had ever prayed. I feel sure that he had prayed plenty of times before, but you don’t know that you’ve been leaning on your parent’s faith or your grandparent’s faith until you’re bowing your head before almighty God in a state of deep, personal need. The old preachers used to say that God has plenty of children, but he doesn’t have any grandchildren, because just being related to someone who has faith isn’t enough. You can’t inherit faith, you have to have your own, and so being in the proximity of the miracle worker isn’t enough to prepare the disciples for what they must do. Being the son or daughter of a preacher, Sunday School teacher, or a missionary isn’t enough. Life doesn’t always care who you’re related to. Your bloodline isn’t going to get you into the Kingdom of God, you’ve got to walk that lonesome valley on your own. You’ve got to walk it by yourself. Nobody else can walk it for you. Nobody else can study for you. Nobody else can take the test for you, either. Think about what’s happened when parents have tried. You’ve heard about the testing scandals. Our girls have been watching Full House reruns, and all I can think about when I see Aunt Becky is how she helped her kids cheat on the SAT. Come on Aunt Becky. You can’t do that, because not only will they get caught, but you’re also preparing them to fail at life. Now listen, I’ve had a lot of growing up to do. There was a time when I absolutely could not force myself to maintain my automobile. I was 21 years old and thought I was too busy to get the car fixed, especially because I had to get together with my friends from college for the weekend in Charleston. I left late at night, and somewhere in-between Columbia and Charleston the transmission started smoking. It was late, I was in the middle of nowhere, and the car quit on me. It just gave out. I made it to the shoulder and cut the engine, then tried to crank it again hoping it had reset or something. It hadn’t. What do you do next? This was in those days before there were cell phones, it was dark out, my car broke down, and I had on cowboy boots. What do you do in a situation like that one? You start walking. Because nobody else is walking for you. After four miles I made it to an exit that had a pay phone. I called a wreaker and asked the dispatcher if the wreaker could pick me up at the exit before picking up the car. She said, “Sir, it’s a tow truck, not a taxicab.” I’ll remember that line for the rest of my life. But I learned that lesson the hard way, because sometimes that’s the only way thick headed people ever learn. Didn’t Jesus tell them what they should do? Didn’t he? Hadn’t he already told Peter? Hadn’t he already taught Thomas? Hadn’t he already showed them all? But the only way they’re going to do it on their own is if he leaves them behind. Now, I don’t think Jesus wanted to leave them any more than my mother wanted to leave me at college, but she loved me too much not to help me learn that most important lesson, and in leaving me one chapter of my life came to an end. Just when that chapter ended, another one began. That’s maybe the most important thing to remember: the main character, the one everyone else depended on, leaves but the story keeps going. Our Second Scripture Lesson began: “In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught.” You might know that the author of the book of Acts is also the author of the Gospel of Luke. In the first book the author wrote to his friend, Theophilus, to tell him “all that Jesus did and taught.” Acts is the next book, and just because Jesus leaves, that doesn’t mean the story ends. It means a new chapter is beginning. For many of you, this month is full of celebrations to mark the end of the first book. In the midst of all that celebration, give thanks to God and be ready for the beginning of the next one, where you are the main character. And as this next book begins, don’t be afraid. Keep walking. And remember always who you are and remember always who is with you, even if you can’t see Him. You are God’s own with a new story to write.

There's a Difference Between Watching and Doing

Scripture Lessons: Deuteronomy 30: 11-20 and 1st John 5: 1-6 Sermon Title: There’s a Difference Between Watching and Doing Preached on May 9, 2021 Our Second Scripture Lesson is a good one for today, with today being Mother’s Day, because the focus of the passage I just read is love. That sounds nice. Love is nice, but as every Mother in here knows, love isn’t just nice. When I think of love I think, not only of a mother’s love portrayed in a Publix commercial. I don’t just think about a warm dinner or a cup of coco. I think about this one afternoon when Cece was a baby. She was in a stroller and we were walking back to Sara’s parents’ mountain house, when a baby bear walked by in the distance, followed by his mother. Love is nice, but love will kill somebody, right? A mother’s love is not just warm, wholesome, and gentle, and so when I read that word love which occurs in our Second Scripture lesson five times, I think about how love is an intense and active emotion. Love is a verb, and there’s a difference between talking about love and really loving. That’s why I titled this sermon: there’s a difference between watching and doing. We’ve been watching so much lately, confined to our houses. How would we have made it through this pandemic without TVs and computers? But love calls us to do. Love calls us to fight. We have to remember that, especially as Christians. I once heard a story about a Sunday School teacher who was giving her young students a tour of the church, and before they went into the worship space, she let them know how she expected them to behave. You can imagine that at their church it was something like our Sanctuary, a place to be entered with reverence and respect, therefore, before they went in, she asked her students to be quite and to walk slowly. “And you know why we must be quite and must walk slowly when we’re in the Sanctuary, right kids?” One of them, maybe 7 years old, says, “Yes mam. We must be quiet in the Sanctuary, so we don’t wake up all the people who are sleeping.” That happens. So, I admire most those who preach briefly, eloquently, and passionately. I subscribe to the preaching philosophy of Charlie Chaplain, the comedian, who once advised preachers to begin their sermon with a good joke and wrap up a really strong ending, and those two parts (the joke and the ending) should be as close together as possible. That’s good advice. But when it comes to preaching, I also subscribe to the thoughts of the great Danish Philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, who famously compared the worship space to the theater, and the preacher, not to an actor, but to a director. Kierkegaard wrote that the Sanctuary and the theater, look alike. Both rooms have a place for the director, a place for the actors, and a place for the audience. In the theater the director is backstage, the actors are on stage, and the audience is in the rows of seats where they are hopefully, well entertained. Here's the difference. The worship space is different in the sense that the audience is always God. Think about that for just a moment. The audience is God. I’m one of your directors. Up here, we are the ones who tell you when to stand, what to do, and try to inspire your worshipful thoughts. And this must always be absolutely clear: While you are sitting in the pews, you are not here to be entertained, because this is a place of worship. What we do in here is offer praise to the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of this world. Have you ever thought about it like that? The question is not just whether or not you get anything out of the service. The question is, what did you give? What did you offer God? There’s a different between watching and doing, both in worship and in life. Something I’ll always remember is how years ago, I was in Tim Hammond and Jimmy Scar’s Sunday School Class, and Tim told us that he doesn’t watch movies, because he doesn’t like to watch other people live their lives, he’d rather be out in the world living his own. I like that, because it’s true. We are not passive observers but actors on the earth, and before our short time here is over, we’ve been called on to play our part, to run our race, to glorify God and enjoy him forever, to love God and obey His commandments. In addition to our two lessons for today, Scripture is clear on this point in several places. In the Bible we are warned: Don’t be hearers of the word, but doers. Don’t just memorize the 10 Commandments or notice when your friends violate them but follow them yourself for your own good. In so doing you choose life. The author of 1st John is adamant on this point. Just two weeks ago we read: “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” That’s a good, clear, sound, and transparent admonition, which reminds us that Christianity is not a spectator sport, but a way of life marked by faith, hope, and the greatest of these: love. That’s the truth, and that makes us different from all the screeners and spectators around us, who are busy watching rather than doing. And being different from all of them is OK, because loving also requires distinctiveness. Now, not everyone wants to be distinctive. I haven’t always wanted to be. I remember being in Sixth grade and wanting more than anything else in the world, to be just like everyone else. To avoid being distinctive. I don’t think I had any opinions of my own. I don’t know what kind of shoes I actually liked. I just wanted the kind of shoes that everyone else had, even though they cost about $125. I remember asking my Mom to buy them for me. She wouldn’t, and probably said something like, “Joe, don’t you know that you don’t need those shoes to be special. You’re so special just as you are.” That’s love talking, and maybe love won’t get you through Sixth grade, but it will get you through life, and in this life, we cannot be afraid of what makes us distinctive. You may know already that the word “distinctive” is the key word Jeff Bezos used in his last letter delivered to Amazon shareholders He said that there are all these pressures to conform to this world, and conforming, while it might make life temporarily easier and less conflictual, it actually leads to death. Quoting a book called, “The Blind Watchmaker,” by Richard Dawkins, Bezos reminds us that, Staving off death is a thing that you have to work at. Left to itself the body tends to revert to a state of equilibrium with its environment. Our bodies, for instance, are usually hotter than our surroundings, and in cold climates they have to work hard to maintain the differential. When we die the work stops, the temperature differential starts to disappear, and we end up the same temperature as our surroundings. This is a powerful quote, and I’m thankful that Dr. Jeffrey Meeks emailed me the article about Bezos where it’s quoted, because it points to our Christian calling, which is: to be set apart, to be distinctive, to be citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven even while living in established countries on the earth, and the only way we’ll be able to do it is if we know so well that we are loved and accepted by God that we stop working so hard to be loved and accepted by the world. Right now, the Church is getting all torn up again about who is in and who is out. Who can be loved and who can’t be? In the Marietta Daily Journal, I read about a preacher who spoke right to his son before the congregation during the worship service, “Son, I want you to know that your father wouldn’t kiss the bishops ring or kneel to the liberal theology sweeping this denomination which is really no theology at all.” He said this to his son to thunderous applause, and it made me very afraid and worried, because the most loving things are done when God is the only one there to applaud. Love so often comes without an obvious reward. Just yesterday I heard a sermon about that from Rev. Chelsie Wait who is one of the pastors at Ebenezer Baptist Church. She told a story about a 10-year-old boy whose mother asked him to do some chores around the house, even though he really didn’t want to do them. Finally, she said, “I’m going for a walk, and when I get back, they had better be done.” Well, she walked back in the house and they were. The whole house was clean, but there was a note on the counter, which turned out to be a bill. Took out the trash - $5.00. Cleaned the windows - $25.00. Vacuumed the kitchen - $10.00. Scrubbed the toilets - $35.00. The total came in to $75.00, which this mother wasn’t going to pay. Instead, she wrote a bill of her own to her son: Carried you around in my womb for 40 weeks – free. Labored for 5 hours – free. Changed all your diapers – free. Fed you, soothed you, even in the middle of the night – free. This is what love is. Love is active. It is doing, not watching, and so often it is done without celebration or applause. Mothers know that, perhaps better than anyone. Fathers are still learning it. I started picking up our girls from school on Wednesdays, and for the first two times I couldn’t remember to bring my numbers. When I finally got it right with my pick-up numbers proudly displayed, I pointed them out to Ms. Williams who runs the pick-up line and who is the twin sister of Stacy Jenson, one of our newest members. Expecting her to applaud for having showed up well prepared she said to me, “What do you want, a parade, for doing the minimum of what’s required?” I do, because some of us want a parade, but mothers know that love doesn’t often get you a parade, and most of the time love requires sacrifice, instead, which is much more like the love of God than anything else. The Lord, who sacrificed everything for us, his love looks like a mother’s love in the sense that to love a child, you have to allow a part, maybe several parts, of yourself to die. You have to let your independence die because a little child is completely dependent on you. You have to let your freedom die, because you aren’t free. Everywhere you go your heart is tied to someone else. You have to let your privacy die because you can’t even use the bathroom alone if there’s newborn in the house. My children walked in on me when I was in the shower yesterday, and a little part of my dignity died, and their eyes are still burning. But that’s what love is, and so those who don’t know much about it aren’t dying necessarily but that hardly means they’re living. In this terribly superficial and divided world where it can be so difficult to know what to do and what to say and where it becomes so easy just to conform, I realize that the love our Second Scripture Lesson calls us to is an active and risky thing: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey His commandments.” As you think about that verse, think about how loving feels, and the next time you are faced with a choice between staying quiet and safe or speaking the truth of your heart you’ll know exactly what you should do. I remember those times I listened to love and risked something. It was scary, but love is scary. It’s the difference between doing what is easy and doing what is right. It’s the difference between doing what is popular and what is true. It’s the difference between slowly dying and really living. It’s the difference between watching and doing what we are called to do as his disciples. On this Mother’s Day think about those women who have loved you, and don’t just think of their hugs. Think about their terribly dangerous and sacrificial love and go and do likewise. Amen.