Matthew 10:26-39 NRSVUE

26 “So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered and nothing secret that will not become known. 27 What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. 28 Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell (gehenna). 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 And even the hairs of your head are all counted. 31 So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

 

32 “Everyone, therefore, who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven, 33 but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.

 

34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword.

 

35 For I have come to set a man against his father,

and a daughter against her mother,

and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law,

36 and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.

 

37 “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, 38 and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

 I told you last Sunday that I only know one thing about being a Christian right now.  That everything I’ve learned about being a Pastor and leading churches for the last 30 years no longer works since COVID.   

If you want to read the whole sermon, it’s on the Church website.

The only one thing that I know is:

My neighbor is the person who needs me to be a neighbor to them.

The person who is lonely, hungry, hopeless and harassed.

Because Jesus  “had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Mt 9:36)

Christ compels me to be a neighbor to the people who need me.

Clearly I cannot be a neighbor in the Biblical sense… in the tale of the Good Samaritan sense, where Jesus asks the young lawyer, who was a neighbor to the man who was left beaten by the roadside.

Quite frankly, there are too many people being left by the roadside right now, for one Pastor, one person, one church to help them all.  

I mean, the last point in time count I saw for SE Portland counted 2000 unhoused folks here in SE.

We can’t help them all.  But we can help the people whom God places in our path.   

And we do.  There’s a reason that I’m willing to go down to part time to stay here at Montavilla United Methodist. Church – you are good neighbors… in the Biblical sense!

But a funny thing happens when you decide to become a good neighbor.

Especially when you decide to become a good neighbor to “the hopeless and the harassed,” as Jesus described them.

The people who are doing the harassing, or benefiting from their hopelessness get mad.  And it’s not fun.

This is what Jesus is talking about in today’s reading.

So last week,  our reading was the story of Jesus sending the Apostles out 2 by 2 on their first mission without Jesus being right there with them.  They don’t know it yet, but Jesus is training them to be the Church without his physical presence.

After the initial directions from last week’s reading, Jesus just keeps talking, and talking, and talking.  And Jesus is STILL talking, still giving them directions… it’s a miracle that they remembered all those directions!  He goes on and on and on…  And Jesus is STILL talking when our reading for today starts with the instruction to have no fear.

And the reason Jesus says to have no fear is because in the previous 2 paragraphs… Jesus really talked A LOT!

…in the previous 2 paragraphs, in Verses 16 through 25, Jesus is telling them that helping the harassed and the hopeless is going to make people MAD.

Big mad.

Family members will turn on one another.

People will get arrested for speaking up for what’s right.

Some people will even be killed…

They’re going to call you names… like “Woke,” or “Demon-crat,” or “fake Christians.”

My Congresswoman, Maxine Dexter, who has attracted attention for trying to exercise her right as a member of congress to inspect ICE detention facilities.  The most common insult that I see for her, is that they call her a “man,” because she’s too busy trying to help people to wear makeup and skirts.

In verse 25 Jesus says, and I’m paraphrasing here…

Jesus says, “They called me Beelzebul, they’re going to call you worse names.”

So, have no fear of them.

Have no fear of them, Jesus?

So Jesus.  

You’re telling me, in Matthew 10, verses 21 and 22, that:

21 Sibling will betray sibling to death and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, 22 and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. (Matt 10:21-22)

So, have no fear.

Now, I have a lot of faith.

But times like these scare me.

I don’t enjoy being called names, but I can handle it.

I’ve got my big girl pants on!

I don’t want to be arrested or killed, but I can’t live with myself, as a person of German ancestry, if I don’t stand up for those being kidnapped off the streets and placed in camps.

So have no fear… that’s a tall order, Jesus.

I can show up afraid.

I can speak up even when my voice shakes.

We’re willing to do things that we don’t know how to do yet, like build affordable housing!  Even though it’s scary.

But having no fear is next level stuff.

And honestly, I think what we fear the most is not arrest or knowing what to do or to say, or even death.

I think what we fear the most is loss of relationships.

I think what we fear the most is being perceived as mean or divisive.

*divisive* is a big word right now.

Because we Methodists are nice!

I used to say in my community organizing work,  “We’re Methodists, we play nice with everybody!”

And we are nice.

We’re nice enough to be kind and compassionate towards those who are harassed and hopeless.

But when we choose to be nice to those who are harassed and hopeless, the people who are doing the harassing, or benefiting from their hopelessness, or think that they will benefit, get mad.  

Even though nobody really benefits from oppression, not even the oppressors, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” as Jesus said in Mark 8:36.

And that brings us to verse 34 of today’s reading.  It’s in the middle of the reading in your bulletin.

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth.” (Mt 10:34)

But Jesus, we totally think that you came to bring peace on earth and good will towards men!  We sing about that in Christmas carols!

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth.” (Mt 10:34)

35 For I have come to set a man against his father,

and a daughter against her mother,

and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law,

36 and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.

I think that this is what we are most afraid of.

This is what we are most afraid of.

Pastors are far more afraid that their congregations will hate them, then we are of being arrested.

Family members are far more afraid of ruining Christmas than we are of being turned in to Department of Homeland Security by our brother-in-law.

We want to keep the peace, because we want peace for ourselves.

We want peace in our families, peace in our neighborhoods, peace in our churches, peace in our country.

But peace that is bought at the cost of turning a blind eye to suffering is not peace.

Protecting our lives and our lifestyle at the cost of the lives and living conditions of the very people whom Jesus commanded us to care for – the least of these – the immigrant (because the word translated as stranger means a person not of your country),  The least of these whom Jesus says we are to care for as if they are HIM are:

• The hungry and thirsty
• Immigrants
• Those in need of clothing
• The sick
• And the imprisoned.

According to Matthew 25:35-36

And the intent of that list is obviously that the Least of These are whomever is harassed and hopeless under whatever administration happens to be in power at the time.

So Christ also calls us to care about:

• Autistic people
• Trans people
• Pregnant people
• Farmers
• Unhoused people

And the list of those suffering right now goes on and on

And as I’ve said several times already.

When we care.  When we do something to help.

When we follow Jesus.

The people doing the harassing or who think they benefit from the hopelessness of the Least of These, get mad.

And the opinions of some of those people matter to us.  A lot.

Take a look at verse 37 – 39.

37 “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, 38 and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

This is hard folks.

This teaching is just plain hard.

But Jesus calls us to be divisive.

But, not out of hate for those whom we disagree with.

Jesus calls us to be divisive out of love for those who are harassed and hopeless.

Jesus calls us to love God and love whatever neighbors God puts in front of us to love, even when people call us names.

But don’t be distracted by their hate.

And when we get distracted, because we will get distracted, because it sucks when people we love, who claim to be fellow Christians, are calling us names.

Remember that the cross that Jesus asks us to take up is love.

28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  (Matt 11:28-30)

That’s in the next chapter.

So we’ll stop here for today.

Matthew 9:35 – 10:8 NRSVUE

35 Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

 

10 Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. 2 These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee and his brother John; 3 Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus; 4 Simon the Cananaean and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.

 

5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not take a road leading to gentiles, and do not enter a Samaritan town, 6 but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 7 As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ 8 Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.

I heard y’all had a wonderful service led by United Women in Faith last week!  I was at Adult Renewal Retreat at Camp Magruder with 13 people from Haven Dinner!  The first year we had 5, last year we had 9, this year 13, and there are 8 other people who are regularly involved in Haven Dinner who weren’t at the retreat and one of the people we met at camp wants to join us, so  Haven has grown from about 5 to about 22 people in 3 years.

In a time when most churches are declining, we can say the harvest is plentiful in Haven Dinner.  But the harvest doesn’t look like it used to.

On Saturday night at camp, while watching the sun set, Troy, the Camp Manager, and I were talking about our common problem as church leaders.

We do what we do because Jesus has inspired in us compassion for the crowds because people are harassed and helpless.  People are in need of a community where they are safe and accepted.  A community they can turn to when they need a friend.  A community that gives them the opportunity to be a part of something bigger than themselves, where they can do some good while experiencing belonging.

If only there were some kind of group… 

a group of people who gather on a regular basis… 

Like some kind of…. Church…

The problem, as Troy and I discussed, is not that we need to create these communities from scratch, or build sacred places set aside for the intentional practice of Beloved Community in nature… some kind of Church Camp, maybe….

The Problem is not that we don’t have good Churches and Good Church Camps.

The problem is that people don’t know that our Churches and Church camps are good.

And by good, I do not mean that we are perfect, or that we never do harm.  I mean that we are intentionally trying to do no harm and do all the good we can.

People don’t know that our churches and camps are good because other churches and even our past selves have done harm.

I asked permission to share this story.

This is a true story.  This is Torben’s story.

Torben was raised in a conservative branch of the church.

And Torben is autistic.  

Not the, I’m a little socially awkward kind of autistic.  

The, it took a long time to learn how to talk kind of autism.

The, very literal thinking kind of autism.

There are good things about growing up in the conservative church.

Like there are very clear directions on what you are allowed to do and what you are not allowed to do and clarity is kindness when you’re autistic!

And you belong to a community who is required to be nice to you, even when you’re a little different.

And there are bad things.

Like punishing teenagers with 2 days in isolation at camp because they kissed another teen.

Torben felt shunned and rejected for the rest of the week at camp after those 2 days.

But the main event of that camp was the dramatic enactment of the end times. 

The kids were told that in the end times, which they were taught were coming soon, so they needed to be prepared!

In the end times, it would become illegal to be Christian so they needed to practice hiding from the government.

So the church paid some police friends of theirs to come at night, wearing their uniforms and tactical gear, and bang on the doors and shine their flashlights in the windows and pretend to be searching for Christians.

Riding right past that ethics violation…

The camp leaders had taught the children to hide and be silent while being searched for by the government during the Tribulation part of the end times.

Also, riding right past the fact that there is no prophecy of a Tribulation of the end times in the Bible.

This was what church was like for young Torben.

A place where you were told that you were a part of the right group and everyone else was evil.

Torben thought this whole thing didn’t seem right, but, if they said anything they’d end up in solitary confinement again, so they didn’t say anything.

And the church told them again and again, and again, that if they ever left the church the devil was coming for them.

So when Torben left the church in their teen years,  everyone they knew turned their back on them.  Their church friends weren’t their friends anymore.

Friendless, and with time on their hands, Torben was recruited to be a drug mule.  Torben didn’t know they were a drug mule.  They just knew that a guy paid them really good money to deliver packages across town.  When the FBI picked them up in a drug sting, Torben genuinely didn’t know they were doing anything wrong, because they were autistic and just following directions.  So the FBI told them to not go back to work right before the big drug bust.

So Torben concluded that everything the church told them was right.  Torben had left the church and therefore Satan had gotten them into drug running.  And now they were evil and there was no help for it.

Which led to substance abuse and some more bad situations.  But God placed some helpers in Torben’s path.  I would say God, because I believe in prevenient grace, but that’s not quite how Torben would say it.  Torben would say that they got long COVID which permanently damaged their heart, and in the process of getting the help they needed to be physically healthier,Torben also got emotionally healthier, and learned how to be a peer support person.

And one of those helpers, invited Torben to Haven Dinner.

And we all encouraged Torben to go to camp with us.

And at the end of the week, Torben shared in the gratitude circle that they hadn’t needed to take their short acting anti-anxiety medications all weekend and they were shocked because they didn’t realize that church camp could be a safe place.   

Before Haven Dinner, before Montavilla United Methodist,

They didn’t realize that a church could be a safe place.

The harvest is plentiful!

But the workers don’t know what to do!

Because, as Troy put it,  everything we were taught about how to run a camp or a church doesn’t work anymore.

Not since COVID. 

I’ve read the church growth books.  How to organize your systems and volunteers and staff and overcome the problems created by fast growth.

I’ve designed successful children’s and youth ministries that had children dragging their parents to church because they didn’t want to miss Sunday school.

Back when I was a church musician, I could confidently state that I would increase worship attendance by 11% in my first year, because I did that in every church I worked in.

Now, I only know one thing.

My neighbor is the person who needs me to be a neighbor to them.

The person who is lonely, hungry, hopeless and harassed.

Look at our scripture for today – the last paragraph, starting with verse 5.

Jesus tells them to start easy by starting with their own neighborhoods.

Jesus tells them, don’t try to talk to the people you already know don’t want to talk to you.  Don’t talk to the gentiles — which meant the non-Jewish people – the Greeks and the Romans or the Samaritans who were the former Northern Israelites.  Jesus went north and talked with the Samaritans and the Syrophoenician woman.  God likes to save the hard jobs for Godself!  Then later, God sent Paul.

Verse 7 – and as you go proclaim the good news.  And help people. For free.

 Now, I don’t usually begin Haven Dinner by saying, “the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”

I’m also not a doctor and to my knowledge I have not cast out any demons or raised the dead…. Lately.

But I can tell you this.

Several months ago we had a bunch of Havenites who were out of work so we had a lot of resume writing and job applying sessions.  And the Mission Team shelled out less than $100 so that several people could take the online bartending class and exam for $11 each.

Now everyone has a job who was a part of that group.

Only one of them is bartending – as a side gig in the evenings.

But you choosing to believe in them made a difference.

You, Choosing to invest in them made a difference.

Knowing that they have a community – a church – who cares about them enough to take an $11 risk on them in an economy where a good burrito costs $12.

That *shows* them that the Kingdom of Heaven is here.

That you allow the camp scholarships that you created in days in plenty to be used to pay for them to experience the goodness of Camp Magruder.

That shows them that the Kingdom of Heaven is here.

That in a time when this church is struggling financially – we’ll talk about that more in next week’s Town Hall meeting – that you are still choosing to prioritize Haven Dinner and Family Promise and the Sewists Collective – ministries that bring in no money – yet you are choosing to prioritize them, because these ministries are changing lives.

Did you know that 16 people attend the sewists gatherings?

This is why we are experiencing an unusual harvest.

An unusual harvest that doesn’t look like church used to look –

An unusual harvest that doesn’t fill the pews on Sunday morning.

An unusual harvest that proclaims that the Kingdom of God is here 

with more than words.

The harvest is plentiful,

And there aren’t a whole lot of us, and we don’t really know what we’re doing.

But we are bringing in an unusual harvest of crafters and Queers… the kind of outcasts and oddballs that Jesus hung out with.

The kingdom of God is here.

And we’re a part of it.

Amen.

Matthew 28:16-20 NRSVUE

16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

This is one of the most selectively interpreted passages in the whole Bible.

You can pretty much identify what kind of Christian someone is by which parts of these 2 verses they emphasize.

There are the people who emphasize going to all nations, often white people, who think their job is to conquer the world with Western Christianity.  Colonialism has done a lot of harm in a lot of places.  Like it’s basically the fault of Methodist and Presbyterian missionaries that LGBTQ+ folks are demonized in colonized places, like much of Africa.  White missionaries taught that all of the indigenous religions were “Devil Worship and Demonic,” and since Queer folks are often drawn to religious life,  the Queer clergy of those indigenous religions became associated with “Devil worship,” so now in many colonized places, being LGBTQ+ is considered demonic.  Despite the fact that there have been Queer Clergy in Christianity since the beginning!  

But there’s also good things about going to all nations.  In places like Tonga, South Korea and Cambodia,  organizations like United Methodist Women introduced Feminism into those very patriarchal cultures.  Feminism being the very simple idea that women are equal in the eyes of God.

There are baptists, whose focus is on baptizing everyone.  “Getem’ wet and getem’ saved!”  To which I would annoyingly counter to my Lutheran friends, that if the goal is merely baptism, then why not create “Operation Baptismal Font.”

Load up a bunch of bomber aircraft with tanks of Holy Water and hose down the whole Earth while playing the baptismal liturgy on loudspeaker.  “I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!  A-men!”

Of course, baptizing people without their consent is religious abuse, so I would never actually recommend “Operation Baptismal Font”…although infant baptism is, precisely, baptizing people without their consent.  We are substituting the parent’s consent for the child’s consent, which is why we follow it up with Confirmation, so that young people can make their own commitment when they are old enough to decide for themselves.

Baptizing people, with consent, and confirmation are a good thing, but it’s the beginning of our membership in the church, not the end all and be all of our faith.  Baptism is something, it isn’t everything.

And then there’s the names in which we Baptize people into the church.

We Methodists like all of orthodox, Appostolic, Christianity  are Trinitarians, so we baptize in the names of the Trinity. The World Council of Churches says that I MUST Baptize in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or they will kick us Methodists out of the Council of Churches.  But this kind of exclusively male language for God leaves out the rest of the Biblical Witness where God also describes Godself as, 

• El Shadai, which translates to – The Many Breasted One
• A Mother Hen who gathers her chicks under her wings
• And the Tetragammanon –  Yahweh – which is an abbreviation for 
• “I Am Who I Am”

Father was meant to convey a familial relationship, not to identify God’s gender as exclusively male.

God uses, male, female and ungendered descriptions for Godself, so I think the most accurate pronouns for God are They/Them or God/Godself, which is why we use “Our Creator” instead of “Our Father” in worship.  And I typically Baptize people in the name of Creator, Christ and Spirit.

But once again – which parts people emphasize or de-emphasize tells you a lot about what kind of Christian they are.

There are those who focus on teaching them to obey.  

We often see this in “high-control” forms of Christianity.  

Like Complementarianism – that’s the official term for versions of Christianity that believe that women are subservient to men.

They’re they ones who LOVE quoting Ephesians 5:22-24

22 Wives, obey your husbands as you obey the Lord.

23 The husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the head of the church people. The church is his body and he saved it.

24 Wives should obey their husbands in everything, just as the church people obey Christ.

First of all, Paul was kinda dead when Ephesians was written in about 90 or 100 AD.  So the Paul who wrote letters to the women whom he left in charge of the Christ Communities that he founded, obviously didn’t write the book of Ephesians.  So this passage is quite different from the mutuality that the authentic Paul wrote about in Galatians 3:28 and 1 Corinthians 7.  

Ephesians chapters 5 and 6, including the instruction that slaves should obey their masters (Ep 6:5-8), are not the teachings of the authentic Paul, but the household codes of behavior in First Century Roman Culture.

These hierarchical teachings are the result of A beleaguered church deciding to “go along, to get along,” within Roman culture.  Showing us, that from the beginning, Christians sought ways to temper the radicalness of Jesus’ message in order to survive in the world.

And yet, Ephesians also contains chapter 4 verse 12, my favorite Biblical basis for my job description as a Pastor – to “equip the saints for the work of ministry.”

So we don’t want to throw this baby epistle out with the bath water, but there’s a lot of bathwater in the book of Ephesians.

So those of us who question high control forms of Christianity, then ask, obey what?  A small group of insecure men?  No!

We are to obey EVERYTHING that Jesus (because Jesus is the one speaking in this passage!) …

We are to obey EVERYTHING that JESUS commanded us.

Which, If you were here last week, or the past few weeks, as I preached my way through the last part of the Gospel of John you might remember that Jesus said in John 13:34, “I give you a new commandment…that you LOVE one another.

Or as Jesus put it in Matthew 22 and Mark 12,  Love God and Love your neighbor – All the Law and the Prophets are summed up in these two commandments.

Which can be summed up in one word.  LOVE

We are supposed to disciple people into Jesus’ Way of Love.

And that’s hard.

Because, have you met people?

So some Christians put the emphasis on remembering that God is with us always.

As it says in Romans 8:38-39

38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

And on those days that are really no good, awful, kinds of days, Romans 8:38-39 is a wonderful verse to remember.

And there are Christians who put their focus on, “to the end of the age.”

The people who are eagerly awaiting the return of the Messiah.

This can be a fear inducing, harmful, cult of doomsday preppers.

The people who are preparing for the tribulation and the rapture – which are not  Biblical things!

Or this can be people who are focused on following Jesus with intensity.

People who are trying to live as if today is their last day and they may face God tomorrow.  So they do their best to love God and love their neighbors – which is Biblical.

But the reason that I titled this sermon, Everything, is because I think we need to read this passage as a whole and take everything in this passage seriously.

The Greek that gets translated as “go therefore” actually reads closer to

As you go about your life, disciple people.  

People of all nations, not just fellow Jews, not just fellow Americans, not just fellow middle class white people, not just bible studies for church people…

…we are called to disciple all the people.

We are also called to baptize the people we disciple into the family of God, the church, the Beloved Community, The Way.  Jesus called it The Way.  It doesn’t really matter what we call it – the idea is that Baptism is a right of initiation – a ritual where we consent to letting Spirit mess with our lives.

And we baptize in the names of the Triune God – none of which are expansive enough to fully contain the expansive identity of God!

And we are obligated to teach or disciple (same thing) teach those who have consented to join the movement to obey EVERYTHING that JESUS commanded us – which can pretty much be summed up as love.

And because loving one another, not just our favorite people, but all people is hard — I mean, you’ve met people.  Sometimes we are a delight and sometimes …not so much.

Because the rule of love is hard, 

We need to remember that the Great I Am is with us always, all the way to the end – whatever that means.

Because, seriously, any theologian who thinks they can tell you exactly what the end will be is trying to sell you something.

 And this is Methodism.

To fully embrace both the Great Commission – as people often refer to this verse, and the Great Commandment of Love.

Not to Cherry Pick which parts we like and which parts we don’t.

Because, let’s be real, us Progressive Methodists love to love our neighbors, but we are afraid, yes I said it, we are afraid, to make new disciples. 

But as we talked about last week – In Acts chapter 2:43-47,  “day by day, God added to their number those who were being saved,”  because day by day” the people gathered together with “glad and generous hearts,” to love their neighbors by sharing food and meeting people’s needs.

And friends – I am not kidding, when I say that every single time Haven Dinner meets to share food and share our joys and concerns, God is adding another new person!

We make disciples by obeying what Jesus commanded us to do – which is to love our neighbors.

There is no separation between the Great Commission and the Great Commandment.

The Great Commandment is right there in the Great Commission – in the part where Jesus tells us to obey everything that Jesus commanded us.

As the Mandalorian would say,  This is the Way.

Love is the Way.

So…

As you go about your life, wherever you are, whomever you are with, make disciples by obeying the commandment of love, whom we can then Baptize into the Way of God, and teach to obey what Jesus taught us – which is Love, and it’s not going to be easy, so remember, God is with us, always, to the very end.