As you hopefully know, I lead a Bible study on Tuesday mornings which goes over the reading for the coming Sunday, usually focused on the Gospel. It’s hopefully helpful for the people who attend and watch on Facebook to dig more deeply into the passages. And it is very helpful for me. In addition to the study time to prepare, it is helpful to talk about it.

This week, I looked at it and realized this is the shortest Gospel passage we have in the three-year lectionary cycle; three verses, 88 words. At first glance we readily see the familiar agency that Jesus imparts to his Apostles, his “sent ones,” which extends also to those given the spiritual gift of prophecy, which is not fortune telling but speaking God’s will, as well as the righteous who are doers of God’s will.

We had a wonderful Vacation Bible School this past week. We had over thirty children participate. That included almost all of our congregation’s children who were in town, plus a number of friends and other kids from the community. We also had a large number of middle and high school youth volunteer to help and of course a strong group of volunteers. We must thank co-leaders Amy Gammons and Meghan McLaughlin who led it all wonderfully.

On Thursday, our theme was “God is Love”, and we talked about how God’s greatest demonstration of love is Jesus dying on the cross to save us from our sins, and was raised from the dead for our salvation. That is what theologians refer to as, “The Big Enchilada.” It is the core of the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ. We teach it again and again with the hope and expectation that it will sink into the very foundations of who these kids are. God loves you. God saved you. God will never let you go. If the kids remember nothing else from this week, we hope and pray they will never forget that.

Back at the start of the pandemic, one of the big medical schools (I’m not sure which) produced a graphic cartoon to show how highly infectious diseases like respiratory viruses spread. It showed a large box with dozens of blue dots bouncing off each other. Then one red dot entered the box. When it touched a blue dot, that dot turned red, as did any dot it touched. Every red dot turned any blue dot it touched red. Soon, most of the dots turned red.

That’s how cold and flu bugs spread across the world, although not ever at 100%. Its principle applies to ideas as well. Ideas stick to people and spread quickly, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. They can sweep across cultures. Ready examples are in popular music. The Beatles got so popular that their live performances were drowned out by the audience’s screams. Or K-Pop – which is a Korean dance music craze that began about 10-15 years ago and remains wildly popular.

Often, when faithful people encounter hardship and tragedy, we reflexively say something like, “God has a plan” or “Everything happens for a reason.” We trust God, even when we cannot see any good in the situation. There’s a gap between those two a mile wide and we cannot see any connection, but we remain faithful. This morning’s scriptures bring us to consider how our faith intersects with our lives. Our most difficult trials, our deepest losses and hardest decisions can and should reinforce our faith in how God fills that huge gap.

When we say, “God has a plan,” that doesn’t mean he is actively laying out your life as a particular maze for you to find clues and grope your way through, and heaven is your reward at the end. When we say, “Everything happens for a reason,” it’s not as if God has designed your life as an obstacle course with tragedies and disasters tailored just for you. As Lamentations 3:33 says, “for he does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone.”

The creation story in Genesis describes God bringing chaos into order, step by step. When he creates humanity, he goes a further step. The key verse is Genesis 1:27, which is perhaps the most important sentence ever written “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.”

We come into the picture, in the image of God, and God immediately includes us in his work. We are to continue to bring order to the chaos. We see words like “dominion” and “subdue” that evoke a sense of control, but they are also infused with stewardship. It is not our creation to use as we see fit. It is God’s creation into which he has invited us to participate as co-creators.

You are so complicated.

When Charles Darwin developed his theory of evolution, the best science of his time regarded the cell as the fundamental building block of life, from single-cell organisms to highly developed plants and animals. The human beings are very complex at that level. There are roughly 200 different types of cells in our bodies that must work together in astonishingly intricate ways.

But there’s more. Much, much more.

Within each cell, each individual cell, are trillions of individual molecules and 10,000 to 20,000 different proteins in a given moment. There are up to 400,000 distinct structural types of proteins in the human body.

Graduation Sunday is always bittersweet. We are so very blessed by the young people in this church, as well as their families. Year after year, we celebrate our graduates’ extraordinary character and goodness, which attest to how very well-grounded they are in their faith. That is largely a product of God’s hand on them, their families and their church.

      This morning, we join Jesus and the Disciples at the Last Supper, during which, for five full chapters of John’s Gospel, Jesus is preparing and reassuring His friends for His imminent departure and death. In the midst of what must have been an anxious time for the Disciples, Jesus makes a mystifying promise to them… that He will not leave them, but will give them “another Advocate” who will be with them forever. And… whoever this “another Advocate” is, He will actually come to live in them… forever! Even 2,000 years on, we strain to fathom the wonder of all Jesus promised them (and us) on that evening before His death.

          So, especially on this Sunday when little Oliver Joseph is baptized and receives his own Gift of the Holy Spirit “Advocate”, Jesus gives us an ideal moment to reflect upon who God’s “another Advocate” is. Today is Olive’s new-birth day, and he will be “sealed and marked as Christ’s own forever” …  and everything will change for him.

Meg and I were on vacation out of the country last week. Before boarding our flight home, they checked our passports six times before we boarded our plane for the flight home. Six times, and three of those included scanning them electronically.

We had no problem with that. We appreciate the security assuring our safety and well-being. But six seemed a lot, and all of that to ensure that she was her and I was me, that we belonged on this flight and were cleared for international travel. And that we pose no threats to others’ safety.

I’ve been vetted way more deeply than that along the way to ordination and for each position I’ve held in the church, including being your rector. You need to have confidence that I didn’t just show up and take this job without education, training, experience, background checks and character references and on and on. Our identity matters.

Laura and I have always enjoyed watching nature at the lake where we live. We see alligators, otters, fish, ospreys, hawks, and Bald Eagles. We enjoy them all, however, our favorites are the ducks. Wood ducks especially. We even put cracked corn on the beach every day to entice them to come near. We have 5 wood duck boxes which are occupied at this time of year. While I’m pretty-much sure that it is pure luck, we occasionally catch the baby ducks plopping down from the box immediately after hatching.  Momma duck is down on the beach under the box encouraging the babies. Shortly after, we see the mother with her brood of babies in the shallow water at the edge of the weeds. While sitting on the screen porch on our upper deck last Sunday evening we saw 2 groups of 10 to 15 baby ducks with their mothers. One group on the neighbor’s beach and one on our beach. Before long they all came together, all mixed up together. Laura was concerned that they would get lost with the wrong mother. As we watched, each mother moved away into the water, each began calling and within seconds, the mixed-up bunch became two separate groups just like before. Each mother moved her babies away to a different weed patch.