Sermon: “Lighten Up for the Journey” July 5, 2015

The Lessons:

The First Lesson: Ezekiel 2:1-5
The Psalm: Psalm 123
The Second Lesson: 2 Corinthians 12:2-10
The Gospel: Mark 6:1-13

The Sermon: The Reverend David Gunderson

If Jesus Can Be Believed (a poem by The Reverend David Gunderson)

Jesus said that religion is distilled to this essence:

love God with all your attention, and consent to see

God everywhere, in all things, even in oneself—

and you must consent to see,

for nothing happens without your agreement.

Love the actual presence, not ideas about God

but the shimmering within all things, the one source

of the sacramental world, where you are—

the same space as your breathing,

where you will die; and where you are

neighbor and kin to all,

where you see the actual bond

extend to one whole family—

for the sake of your own happiness love it all, no exceptions;

let your heart do something now unknown, or mostly forgotten;

let your heart listen to what it cannot yet hear,

and do what it does not yet know it wants to do, which is to love

each creature, no one left out,

even the smooth and the cruel and the oblivious,

who refuse their own liberation and insist it is a virtue;

and even to bear the injuries they inflict in their distress.

That’s it. Now we come out from behind the rood screen;

the real mystery is not there.

The real mystery is always out in the open

for everyone to see.