Tag Archives: Augustana Early Learning Center

Preaching, Sermons

A Sermon for Mental Illness Awareness Week – Mark 9:38-50, James 5:13-20, and Psalm 19:7-14

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church, September 29, 2024

[sermon begins after the Bible reading; the other two readings follow the sermon]

Mark 9:38-50  ohn said to [Jesus], “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” 39But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. 40Whoever is not against us is for us. 41For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.
42“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. 43If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. 45And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. 47And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, 48where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.
49“For everyone will be salted with fire. 50Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

[sermon begins]

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

Kids are silly and playful and smart. They inspire songs that get faster each time we sing them and one of them ends like this [wait just a sec, I have to show you this one], “Hip-hip-hip-o-potamus…hip hip hooray, God made all of us; hip-hip-hip-o-potamus…hip hip hooray, God made all of us!”

Every Wednesday here on the front floor in our Sanctuary, the kiddos of our (Augustana) Early Learning Center are led through Chapel by Deacon Shanna, Sue Ann, Pastor Karen, Andy, and me. We take turns week to week telling Bible stories, singing songs, and praying with the kids who have lots of their own stories to tell and questions to ask. Affordable and quality early childhood education and care are tough to come by in Denver and becoming tougher every day. But you all are a part of making it happen. The kids in chapel are adorable and challenging and they can be somewhat invisible on the protected first floor of the downhill hill side of our building – a full two stories below the level we’re on now. And yet they’re one of our congregation’s most significant outreaches to our community.

Last Sunday, in the verses just before our Mark reading this Sunday, Jesus took a child into his arms to teach his disciples that to be the greatest you must aspire to be the least and the last. In verse 37, Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” Jesus made the claim that children are sacramental, they are God among us.[1] He includes these vulnerable littles in God’s protection while he’s likely still holding that child.

He taught his disciples that it’s better to amputate, drown, or die than to put a stumbling block in between Jesus and the littles. By the way, those are not ways for us to hurt others. Jesus is commanding self-examination, not capital punishment. But that’s a whole other sermon. Equally as important, Jesus is not commanding self-mutilation or self-harm. That doesn’t jive with his teachings to love our neighbors as ourselves. This teaching, lit up with judgment, demands compassion from us – active compassion that shapes a world towards God’s vision of abundant life for vulnerable children and people. Children and people who are easily forgotten because they may not be in our line of sight, or we perceive them to be on a different level, or more to the point, on a lower level. Invisible in our day-to-day reality.

Invisibility brings me to the main point of the day as we spotlight Mental Illness Awareness Week coming up in the first week of October. Today our E4 Mental Health Team helps our congregation make the invisible visible. We light candles, pray, preach, and sing to focus on our loved ones’ and our own struggles with mental health. Next Sunday, our Health Ministry is inviting teens 14 years old and older, their parents, and other caring adults to watch My Sister Liv, a movie that spotlights one family’s story that includes Liv’s death by suicide. Research shows that talking about suicide reduces suicidal ideation which reduces attempts which reduces deaths. Subjects that end up off limits or taboo make healthy conversations about them more difficult. This is as true about mental illness as it is about money, sex, and politics. Healthy conversations start with at least being willing to raise the topic. It’s free to adult and teens over 14 years old. There will be childcare for those too young to be there. Come. Let Liv and her family teach us how to do things differently.

The movie will be followed by a short panel discussion that I’m on alongside mental health professionals. Why include a pastor in a panel about mental health? Because church has done a poor job on the issue of mental health. Some of that is because the culture hasn’t understood it either so there are Christians telling each other that all they have to do to get better is to have more faith or pray harder. Maybe even worse, Christians telling non-Christians that if only they had faith, then they wouldn’t be in the mental mess they’re in. Faith isn’t protective against mental illness. However, we do know that being part of a faith community offers relationships that strengthen our capacity to connect with each other about hard things like being mentally ill.

As church, we’re called to be a peculiar people who live a little differently into the future hope to which we’ve been called. God’s call into community is in stark opposition to the cultural value of rugged individualism that tells us we can fix ourselves through self-help. Which brings us to the fifth and final week of Bible readings from the book of James. James wrote about faith that makes demands of us. He was worried that if grace is too easy and too free, then the people most affected by our sin will be the powerless, the invisible.[2] There’s a reason why Lutheran Christians are partial to being saved by grace through faith. It’s because grace is God’s unconditional claim on us. We don’t make our way to God by any amount of do-goodery. If that were the case, how would we ever know if we’d been good enough? Trusting God’s grace IS the option. But James says, “Oh, so you have faith, good, nice, how about you show me.”[3] In our verses today, he’s done a solid job showing what faithful behavior looks like in the church. Pray for those who suffer. Sing with those who are happy. Anoint those who are sick. Forgive those who sin. Welcome back those who left.

None of us can do all the good things we’re called to do all of the time – to argue that we can is just absurd. But the beauty of the church is that we are a people who can take turns praying, singing, anointing, forgiving, and welcoming. This is as true for mental illness as it is for everything else. Opening up taboo topics acknowledges our whole selves before God and that God’s grace is enough to contain us. Talking about things that we’d rather didn’t exist reassures our children that we can talk about things that are true even if they’re hard. Our courage in talking about hard things means that our children don’t feel that they have to protect the grown-ups around them.

In the same breath, it’s also important that we help each other see the fullness of life. Sharing the events, relationships, and wonders that delight us and make us feel lucky to be alive are just as important to our well-being and the well-being of our children. The delight and wonder are an antidote to the overwhelming news from just about every part of the globe including here in the States. Delight and wonder don’t erase the challenges or the pain but they do remind us that life is a gift. They’re not rose-colored glasses. Delight and wonder are life illuminating glasses that reveal the goodness of life alongside the sorrow. The Hippo Song alongside the lament. The laughter of the small child embedded in the complexity of adulting.

We’re each differently equipped to offer help and support to those of us experiencing the lament of illness. If you yourself are struggling with mental illness, even still you can offer solidarity to someone else in a similar struggle – the laughter over a shared reality that is not at all funny is utterly priceless – a shared song that reminds us God is with us in the darkness and in the light.

In a minute, we’re going to sing a song not quite as silly as the Hippo Song but just as reassuring of God’s presence and love of us in the darkness and the light. During our song we have the choice to light candles that illuminate our prayers for the people we know who struggle with mental illness.

Our song reminds us that they are not alone, and neither are we. We are together and God is with us. Thanks be to God, and amen.

_____________________________________________________

[1] Philip Ruge-Jones, Associate Pastor, Grace Lutheran Church, Eau Claire, WI. Commentary on Mark 9:38-50 for September 29, 2024. Commentary on Mark 9:38-50 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[2] Matt Skinner, Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Discussion about Bible readings for September 29, 2024. Working Preacher’s Sermon Brainwave: #984: Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Ord. 26B) – September 29, 2024 (libsyn.com)

[3] Ibid.

________________________________________________________

James 5:13-20 Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. 14Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. 15The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. 16Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. 17Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. 18Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest.
19My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, 20you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

Psalm 19:7-14

The teaching of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure and gives wisdom to the simple.
8The statutes of the Lord are just and rejoice the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is clear and gives light to the eyes.
9The fear of the Lord is clean and endures forever;
the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
10More to be desired are they than gold, more than much fine gold,
sweeter far than honey, than honey in the comb. 
11By them also is your servant enlightened,
and in keeping them there is great reward.
12Who can detect one’s own offenses?
Cleanse me from my secret faults.
13Above all, keep your servant from presumptuous sins; let them not get dominion over me;
then shall I be whole and sound, and innocent of a great offense.
14Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. 

Sermons

Paradox of Powerlessness and Light – John 6:1-21

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on November 15, 2015

[sermon begins after the Bible reading]

John 6:1-21  After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. 2 A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. 3 Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. 4 Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. 5 When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” 6 He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. 7 Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” 8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9 “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” 10 Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. 11 Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12 When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” 13 So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. 14 When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” 15 When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

[sermon begins]

 

The Bible story today could be an early edition of “Where’s Waldo?” with Jesus as the hidden one.  We pick up the story after a healing.  Jesus is trying to stay one step ahead of the crowds.  They saw him heal.  They heard him teach.  He has drawn a following.  He leads quite a chase.  Perhaps not high speed, but a chase nonetheless.  He even goes so far as to head to the other side of the sea of Tiberius and climb a mountain.  No rest for the weary, though.  When he looks up, there’s the crowd.  The trek through the wilderness does not shake them.  The people simply keep following him.

As Jesus sits down, he looks up.  He sees the crowd.  I wonder what he sees when he looks at them.  They’ve been chasing him for a while at this point.  Do they look confused?  Jesus is a healer and yet so hard to pin down.  Do they look tired?  Jesus led quite a chase.  Have some in the crowd started to wonder why Jesus just can’t stay put?  He asks for the crowd to sit down.  There is a “great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down.”  Enough room for everyone to rest.

At the very least, the crowd must look hungry. Jesus talks to the disciples about feeding the crowd and the disciples’ confusion is understandable.  Where are they going to get the food to feed all of these people?

Andrew found a boy who has some loaves of bread and some fish but it’s not near enough.  Jesus “took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.”

Andrew says, “There is a boy here…”  It starts with this one boy.  The disciples become part of the distribution. Jesus handles the feeding of the crowd.  A tired, hungry, and confused crowd.

We often do a particular thing when we talk about children.  We talk about children as becoming something.  The conversation shifts to the future.  We ask questions like, “What will you be…?” The conversations infers that children are in formation now to become who they really are later.

Andrew’s comment, however, makes the boy and what he offers, quite immediate.  He says, “There is a boy here…”

A few decades ago, there was a growing urge within Augustana to begin educating children during the week.  A few Augustana people started thinking about how the congregation could begin and sustain an early learning center for the community.  Like Andrew’s observation about the boy, people at Augustana were saying, “There are children here, in the community…”  Here we are today, several decades later after those initial ideas.  Like the boy’s gift of the loaves and fishes, the Augustana Early Learning Center children have grown in number over the years.  This is one of the ways ministry works and is good reason to celebrate.

The theme of the day is celebrating Augustana Early Learning Center as a mutual ministry of the congregation.  We celebrate its conception, high quality learning, and accessibility to the community including affordable tuition and scholarships.  Additionally, we celebrate all that the Early Learning Center gives back to the congregation on a daily basis.  These children bring energy and a fresh way of seeing the world.  The staff along with director Chris Baroody give of their considerable years of skill and consistently highlight who the children are today.  The Early Learning Center is also a strong community presence and impacts daily life for so many children and families.  This is a lot of mutual ministry that is like the exponential effect of loaves and fishes.

The immediacy of who children are right now is evident across the whole of Augustana.  On any given Sunday, there are children on the steps of the sanctuary or chiming in during worship in the chapel.  There are children in Sunday School, and in choirs.  Children this month are collecting canned Chili for Metro Caring.  In the last few months they have put together personal care kits for refugees and portioned out beans and rice for Metro Caring’s grocery store.  Children actively shape the ministry of the congregation now, today.

In the midst of tension and heartache unfolding in Paris, and already too well known in Syria and Beirut, it is especially important that we take a moment to see the places of light.  And there is a lot of light in the children’s ministries.  Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.[1]

Often, like today for Alice, there is a baptism – a life changing encounter with water and the Holy Spirit.  A baptism into the death and life of Jesus.

In baptism, we are received in our powerlessness.  This is true whether we are a child or an adult.  If you read to the end of the Bible Story today, the crowds around Jesus want to make him king.  He left them before they could accomplish their goal.  In his absence, he said, “No.”   He said no to their ambitions and delusions of control.[2]   It’s easy to relate to the desires of the crowd around Jesus who want to make him king.  As video, photos, and information continue to come out of Paris, there is quite a crowd of people all around the world whose confusion is loaded with shock and grief.  In the moment of shock and grief, God is present by way of the cross.  For where else would God be but with those who are hurting and confused in their despair.  Conversely, there are a lot of people thinking about how to use power in response to the murders.

In the meantime, here…today, we are received in the waters of baptism and at the table of communion in our powerlessness, so much beyond our control.  The good news of Jesus is that the self-sacrificing love of God is given to us freely.  God’s love comes to us.  We don’t attain it or acquire it under our own steam.   There is nothing we do or leave undone that makes God love us any more or any less.   This is the gospel, the good news.

This is the gospel lived out in the ministries that assure children that they are loved and accepted for who they are today.  There is nothing they can do that makes God love them more or any less.  And this is the gospel promise for you.  There is nothing you can do that makes God love you any more or any less.

When you come to communion today, you receive the love of God unconditionally.  At the table of communion, Jesus says “no” to the way we try to use power, “no” to the way we hurt ourselves, and “no” to the way we hurt other people.  Then Jesus says “yes.”  Jesus says “yes,” you are loved unconditionally for the person you actually are…the person for whom Jesus died…for you, a beloved and hold child of God.  Jesus says “yes,” God’s love is for you and for world.  Strengthened by the love of God, we become light-bearers in dark places, serving where we are drawn to serve for the sake of the world. Thanks be to God.  Amen.

[1] Martin Luther King Jr.  http://www.thekingcenter.org/blog/mlk-quote-week-sticking-love-0

[2] David Lose.  In the Meantime: Pentecost 9B, Visible Words. http://www.davidlose.net/2015/07/pentecost-9-b-visible-words/

Sermons

Matthew 15:21-28 “When Stalin and Mother Teresa Agree on a Point”

Matthew 15:21-28 “When Stalin and Mother Teresa Agree on a Point”[1]

Caitlin Trussell on August 17, 2014 at Augustana Lutheran Church in Denver

 

Matthew 15:21-28  Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 22 Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” 23 But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” 24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 25 But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” 26 He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” 27 She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” 28 Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

 

 

 

Each of us grew up somewhere.  Some of us grew up on farms in the Midwest, others in cities, some in the South, a few of us in other countries.  Myself, I grew up on the East and West coasts – I like to say I’m bicoastal.  My husband grew up in a mid-sized Nebraskan town.  My kids are growing up as Colorado natives.  Some of you are likely 3rd, 4th, or 5th, generation Coloradans.

The point is, we all grew up somewhere.  This means our childhoods have a somewhere, a location, a place.  Chances are good that our place also has people.  Whether these people were good to us or not, our childhood places have people.   These people birthed us, taught us, fed us…formed us.  You get the idea.  As children, we grow up in the places of our people.  They become our people the minute we’re born into them.

Flipping it around, the minute someone is born they are born into us.  We become their people.  This happens at a lot of different levels all at once.  The child is born into a family, into a neighborhood, into a region.  On any given day, you might hear me say something like, “My people are heading over to a swim meet;” or “My people are going to lay low this weekend.”   However we acknowledge it, however much we like or dislike our people. Our people are there – intentionally and unintentionally forming us and us forming them.

In the previous stories to ours today, Jesus is moving between deserted places with the people he was born into, in his country of birth.  In the story today, Jesus is in a new place, the district of Tyre and Sidon, with a new people, the Canaanites.  And, oh, this Canaanite woman.  She wastes no time in getting Jesus’ attention.  The exchange that follows is shocking.  Did Jesus just call her a “dog?”  Biblical scholars wrangle with this text early and often.

In our wrangling with this text, we can see that the disciples want no part of this woman as they ask Jesus to send her away.  “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.”  Jesus doesn’t send her away but tells her that he is, “sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”  His place, his people.  Did he say this to voice what everyone else was thinking?  Might that also be why he made that “dog” comment?  After all, the Canaanite people are the people of mixed marriages and conflated religious practices.  They are not to be trusted nor visited.  They are unclean, impure.  Pick a nasty label and insert it here.  There is bad blood between Jesus’ people and the Canaanite people.

The Canaanite woman knows all these things – bad blood included.  And still, this mother shouts after Jesus and the disciples.  She demands their attention.  Not on her own behalf but on behalf of her child.  She and her child do not live in a vacuum – meaning they do not live only as two people disconnected from other people.  Oh no, this woman’s shouting has bigger implications for the whole people.

On a small scale, and maybe with less shouting, this congregation similarly brings children the necessary care they need.  Through the baptismal font, children are baptized in what can easily be interpreted or dismissed as a sentimental moment.  But it is oh so much bigger than that.  Through the waters of baptism is a demand that God keep God’s promises to this child.  Through worship, children are in the mix with their sounds, voices, and bodies included right along with the whole people of God here.   Through the Children & Family Ministry, children have Sunday School, Squiggle Time, Youth Groups and more to meet them where they are developmentally so that they may find words for their faith.   Through the Music Ministry, children sing and make music all the while connecting with God, each other, and tradition.  Through the Augustana Early Learning Center, children receive care and instruction Monday through Friday – some on full scholarship, some on subsidized tuition.  Through Augustana Arts’ City Strings program, neighborhood children receive violin and music instruction regardless of inability to pay.

As a congregation, we are similar to the Canaanite woman.  There are children in our care and we make every effort to do right by them which sometimes means doing the hard thing not the easy thing.  But what else might the story of her faith hold for us?  We do violence to this woman’s story if we simply rip her from the page and guilt everyone into advocacy.  Advocacy being the act of lending your voice to those who cannot advocate for themselves.  I think if we have any chance of seeing our story in her story we need to take a detour.

For this brief detour, I invite Oswald Bayer into our conversation.  Bayer is Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at the University of Tübingen in Germany as well as an ordained pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Württemberg.[2]  Stated very simply, Bayer’s argument for a Christian ethic goes something that goes like this:[3]

Everything we have is gift – from the basics of food and water to help in times of sickness and imprisonment.   The quintessential act of our dependence is over a meal; a meal of fellowship “where separation, isolations, and loneliness are overcome.”  We are truly dependent creatures – dependent on God and each other for everything.  In this dependence, we are able to see our “own fellow human beings simply as those who find themselves in the same situation.”  I especially like how Pastor Bayer puts this next part, “Thus the least of our brothers and sisters (Matt. 25.40) will not just be the others, strangers, with whom we are called to show solidarity…Rather, from the very outset we are those people…We are the same as them, for we too are in fundamental need.”[4]  In other words, those people are our people!

Jesus sits across the table from the woman who demands a place at it for herself and her child.  In Bayer’s words, this is a meal of fellowship that overcomes separation, isolation, and loneliness.  By extension, Jesus sits us at a table that overcomes separation, isolation, and loneliness.  And we are given a voice at this meal on behalf of our children.

Make no mistake, prioritizing children is not sentimental, nor is it easy.  This means that when our plans and systems fail children, we are free to launch into those conversations to help those children.  These conversations might happen in our neighborhoods, in our congregation, in our country.  These conversations are real, right now, as we talk congregationally about improving security in the Early Learning Center or group dynamics in Confirmation.  These conversations are real as we talk nationally and globally about children at the border, children in Ferguson (Missouri), children in Palestine, children in Liberia.

Some of us may believe that helpful action should happen locally and some may believe that it makes sense to focus helpful action globally.  However, local and global concerns are not mutually exclusive but part of the whole.  So simply pick a place to start and start helping.  We can so quickly fall silent when the children who need help begin to number in the hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands.  Along with falling silent, it’s a quick slip into inaction.

Dr. Keith Payne studies the collapse of compassion in the face of fear.[5]  In his work, he is triggered by similar comments from both Stalin and Mother Teresa.  Stalin reputedly said that the death of one person is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic; and Mother Theresa said, “If I look at the mass I will never act.” In Dr. Payne’s words, “When Stalin and Mother Teresa agree on a point, I sit up and pay attention.”[6]  The point is that in the face of great numbers of people suffering we end up doing nothing because of our own fear. We fear that we can’t possibly help them all so we end up helping none.  We fear that taking on so much pain crumbles our shaky hold on our own emotions so we shut them down and focus someplace else.  Stalin counted on it.  Mother Teresa acted in spite of it.  Most of us are neither Stalin nor Mother Teresa.  Regardless, pick a place to start helping children and go for it.

The Canaanite woman shouted at Jesus across cultural boundaries on behalf of her child.  In part, these are real boundaries of culture and race that take care and respect to navigate successfully across our differences.  But in total, these boundaries collapse under the weight of the cross.  What Jesus Christ does for you, Jesus Christ does for all.  The people you think of as your people who come from your places is an artificial category of location.

Christ’s death on the cross makes all people your people.

Because Jesus died on a cross for all people, including you.

 

 

Responding to the sermon, the congregation sings this Hymn of the Day:

Lord Jesus You Shall Be My Song As I Journey[7]

Lord Jesus you shall be my song as I journey
I’ll tell everybody about you wherever I go
You alone are our life and our peace and our love
Lord Jesus you shall be my song as I journey

Lord Jesus, I’ll praise you as long as I journey
May all of my joy be a faithful reflection of you
May the earth and the sea and the sky join my song
Lord Jesus, I’ll praise you as long as I journey

As long as I live, Jesus, make me your servant
To carry your cross and to share all your burdens and tears
For you saved me by giving your body and blood
As long as I live, Jesus, make me your servant

I fear in the dark and the doubt of my journey
But courage will come with the sound of your steps by my side
And with all of the family you saved by your love
We’ll sing to the dawn at the end of our journey

Les Petites Souers de Jésus and L’Arche community, 1961; Translation by Stephen Somerville, 1970


[1] Read about Mother Teresa at http://www.motherteresa.org/.

Read about Joseph Stalin at http://www.biography.com/people/joseph-stalin-9491723.

[2] Oswald Bayer. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Bayer

[3] Oswald Bayer.  Freedom in Response: Lutheran Ethics: Sources and Controversies (Oxford: University Press, 2007), 19-20.  In these two pages, Dr. Bayer offers a succinct argument for categorical gift over and above Kant’s categorical imperative. I recommend them to you if you, like me, are into that sort of mind candy.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Keith Payne. “Why is the Death of One Million a Statistic?” Psychology Today blog: Life on Autopilot on March 14, 2010.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Evangelical Book of Worship, Hymn 808.  (lyrics reprinted under OneLicense.net A-705796.)