I found the following quote in researching my sermon for 11/23 - it's from Take This Bread by Sara Miles, a wonderful book about her conversion to Christianity and subsequent call to start a food pantry in her church in the S.F. Bay area:
Some Christians thought the kingdom was about an afterlife, but I believed it was this world… The kingdom was the same old earth, populated by the same clueless humans, transformed wherever you could glimpse God shining through it.
Some thought it was about judgment, but I believed that in the kingdom, there was no separation of sinners from saved, righteous from damned. The pantry looked like the kingdom to me precisely because we were all thrown in together – a makeshift community so much bigger and more contradictory than any of us would have chosen. But each of us had come just as we were to this Table, drawn, without planning, to the shores of some lake where we'd heard miracles might happen. And we found the kind of abundance described in parables: food for five thousand, money multiplying like manna; oil pouring out profligately and the lamps burning wildly all night long, blazing through the darkness of our lives. (p. 222-223)
That’s a nice way to lead into Advent, where we welcome the light in the darkness. Join us for worship on Nov. 30th for the first Sunday of Advent.
