The first time I ever felt alone, I was eight years old. For the whole of my remembered life, my family had lived in Greenbush, Minnesota, and a month before the dreaded alone date, my parents sat me down—along with my sister—and told us that we would be moving to a town called Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, three hours away. While my sister graciously accepted this news, I told my parents through tears that it was fine that they were moving but that I would be staying in Greenbush. Moving day came, December 26, and lots of people from church came to help pack up the moving van. After avoiding the moving van and pretending that I wouldn’t be moving, I finally succumbed to reality and got in the van.

You—just you, you apart from whatever material things you have or don’t have—you are a gift to us all, just by being yourself and sharing yourself here with us as we pray and break bread and sing and talk together.

ELCA pastor Heidi Neumark in her brilliant book Breathing Spaces describes her 19 years of ministry at Transfiguration Lutheran Church in the South Bronx. Just as has happened in many cities, the neighborhood around Transfiguration Lutheran had transitioned from one socio economic status to another, from one ethnic and racial composition to another, from dealing with certain social problems to others in the years before and during Pastor Heidi’s time at Transfiguration, namely 1984 through 2003.

You may know that I have been trying to bike more and drive less. Because my biking is primarily for the purpose of transportation, I have slowly been figuring out the best routes to get to the places I normally go.

In the swirling mass of Good Friday images: crown of thorns, blood, nails

In the chaotic movement from Pilate’s headquarters to the Place of the Skull to the new tomb in which no one had ever been laid

In the cacophony of “Crucify him” and “Hail, King of the Jews”

In the barren emptiness of “I am thirsty” and “It is finished”

It is difficult to know how to make sense of this day.

Vulnerability is not weakness.  

Serving others is not weakness.

Washing another’s feet is not weakness.

And while these are true, what’s wrong with weakness?

I’m going to start by telling you something that might be shocking.  I dislike how many Christians do evangelism.  

At its Greek root, the word evangelism simply denotes the practice of sharing the gospel.  While that practice is certainly something we want to do, we want to share the gospel, the details about how we share the gospel are important, at least to me.  

Just as people of other religions do, many Christians believe that we have a corner on the market of truth.  Right?

By the power of God, the Israelites had escaped slavery in Egypt, successfully crossed the Red Sea, fled from the Egyptian army, and found refuge in the wilderness and even manna each morning laying on the ground like dew to feed them.  They didn’t know it at the time, but they would wander in the wilderness for forty years while they searched for the promised land.  They would soon receive the Ten Commandments and a host of other laws.  

In the meantime, the people were thirsty.  The wilderness into which they had been spewed was much like our own desert landscape here in Arizona: dry, harsh, prickly, sandy, home to a plethora of insects and reptiles.

Perhaps because of Jesus’ words today or perhaps because I simply like to be positive, I have always tried to avoid feeling angry. I clench my teeth, speak carefully, reason well, seek solutions, and understand the other person’s actions in the most charitable way possible. I want to say upfront that trying to avoid feeling angry isn’t always helpful because the holding in of anger creates bitterness and usually comes out later in unintended ways.

In our reading from the prophet Micah this morning, God instigates a case with the people of God.  God wants to know why the people have wandered from God’s way when God had delivered them from slavery and saved them.  In response, the people wonder how they might repay God—with burnt offerings, with calves a year old, with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of oil, with their firstborn children…?  Seemingly exasperated, the prophet Micah reminds the people: God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?