Encountering Others

We are the ones to see and treat each person and each encounter as holy, to go out of our way to love our neighbors as ourselves, we are all connected. Do you hear Christ even now? 

I am being bullied, stand up for me.

I am separated from my children, help me.

I am failing in school, tutor me.

I am Muslim, welcome me. 

I am homeless, listen to my story.

There is no such thing as those people. There is no such thing as other people or other people’s children or other people’s problems.

Watch the video used during the sermon:

Paying Attention

When Moses notices the burning bush he could have said, “oh wow look at that,” and just kept going with his sheep. Or “that’s interesting but I don’t have time to check that out, I have an agenda to keep, I’ll come back later.” Or he could have been busy looking down at his phone and glanced up and thought, meh, and gone back to the captivating cat video he was watching.

The point is if he had decided to just keep on going with his sheep or if he had decided to come back later, he wouldn’t have been Moses. He would have just been another guy, just another shepherd. Instead, he is paying attention and turns aside to see the great sight of God and because he does, he becomes this great partner with God who gets to work with God to set people free.

Waking Up To The Presence Of God

If I could summarize what the spiritual life is, I would say it is learning to see. It is earning to see the holy in the ordinary - learning to see that everything is spiritual.

The Bible is a collection of stories, poems, letters, written by people who experienced God, people who saw God and were so transformed by what they saw that they wrote about it, they passed it on to help generations that followed to see God too, to learn how to see God’s presence in our world, in our lives every moment.

Because the Biblical witness and experience and reason all point to the truth that everything is sacred and that our journey towards becoming our best selves is really about learning to see the holy everywhere. Learning to see.