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well last Tuesday morning as you were here, setting up the drums and situating the choir and Professor Helsel was making sure her words were in order and that the table was set. I was downtown at the

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Palmer events center, eating a breakfast taco. I was in a room full of business people from all over Austin who had come to hear a panel of journalists talk about journalism and politics. Now you remain

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remember that this was the morning after the first presidential debate. So there was fresh and plentiful fodder for discussion, but the panelists were neither pundits nor commentators . They were professional educated people that committed their lives

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to the practice of journalism, but their conversation sounded a lot like many I have had with some of you, with pastors and with friends about the situation of the institutional church these days. Now put your

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, put your past your ears on and listen to what some, some of what these journalists said. How we get our news has changed in unprecedented ways and continues to change. The newspaper is no longer

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the institution. People look to to find out what's happening in the world. People have direct access to so much information that they form their own opinions. Newspaper editorials and endorsements have very little influence anymore.

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They said they were struggling with how to do their work with how to hold on to traditional journalistic ethics , even like verifying the facts in the face of pressure to be immediate, transparent, fast trending or

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else irrelevant. They said that the new things they are doing is they run the paper now seems like the best way to hold this space until the future becomes clear. Sound familiar, you hear echoes there

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. We in the church, we're not alone and asking questions about our institution as it has changed and will change and wondering what the future holds. So if we are what we used to be and we're

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not what we're going to be, who do we be? I know that's not grammatically correct, but I really like the way it sounds. Who do we be in Mark's Gospel this morning? We overheard

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an exchange and interchange between jesus and some of his followers who are not quite tracking with the leader. I imagine this scene as a kind of an out take, you know, from a tv series,

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it's the kind of thing that a good editor will tell you to delete because it does not advance the plot and it really it really doesn't because it's very indeterminate, right? It brings no forward movement.

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It ends with the question, do you not understand ? And no, nope, nope. They don't understand, They don't understand who jesus is and they don't understand why he is talking about yeast embarrasses and

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Herod. They know how many baskets were left over , but they don't really know why that matters now . I wish, oh how, I wish that Mark had made this a scene to move the story

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forward. I mean he set it up perfectly for jesus to just come in with that pithy summit of statement that leaves no doubt about who we are to be. But Mark doesn't do that. He leaves

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us with two things, bread and memory, How many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect that first time? How many baskets? The second time ? Now, whether the disciples realized it or not

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, we all know that jesus made sure everyone had enough to eat well, more than enough. So now here in this time and place, many of us have taken that up as the cause of jesus

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to make sure everyone has enough enough bread, enough justice, enough rights. We raise awareness of food deserts and refugee camps and title one schools, all places where there is not enough bread. We protest

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to protect people who have come to this country because they cannot supply bread for their families in central America . And we want this bread to be made from Fair trade grains and cooked by bakers who are paid

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a fair wage. We want equal rights for every person and we pretty well know what those rights should be, or so we seem to pretend. So social justice then, for many of us is who

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we be. But if social justice is all that we are, we are at risk beware the yeast of self righteousness and the yeast of hypocrisy. Now there's no question that the call to do justice resounds

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throughout the christian faith, and there's no question that there is much injustice to correct, there's much work to be done, and there's no question that much work is being done. In fact work for justice

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is being done by all kinds of people, even many who are not christians by all kinds of secular institutions and for all kinds of justice, it's as if the word of the Lord had just busted out

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of the walls of the church. So social justice is who we be, if social justice alone constitutes our identity, how are we any different from the other social institutions that work for justice For more than

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20 years? I started to say 20, but it's more than 20 I have been a close observer of teenagers and people in their twenties and I've been a student of the growing scholarship about them and I

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want to give you one of the headlines, many of these young people and most in the main line , love to do service on behalf of the marginalised vulnerable people and on behalf of our dear imperilled planet

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. Yet very few of them are able to articulate a connection between the life of service and christian faith . Doing good is over here and christian faith is over here. I mean, let's face it,

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christian faith, hard to understand, hard to talk about service, relatively easy to do, even when it's hard, you feel good about it. Now . I I I say this not to indict teenagers

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and people in their twenties, because as social scientist , christian smith says, who do you think they learned this from? Or from whom do you think they learned it? Mhm. They learn this from

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the adults in their lives. And so this is what I say, Maybe we have forgotten and we we have forgotten. We get that jesus fed people , but do we still not understand that? It

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is not just about the bread. Now, when I made it back from downtown last Tuesday in time for worship, I was grateful. I was grateful to have a place to go and let the questions

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rest as questions and may be reminded of who I am, because here with each other. Each week , after each week we rehearse the connection between christ and the life of service. We remember who we

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are in faith by the words that come out of our mouths and buy the bread and wine that go into our mouths. And by this sacrament we are reconstituted. We remember here that we are people at

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risk of hardened hearts, blind eyes and deaf ears . We remember that our call Yes, includes justice and also includes walking humbly. It includes keeping our hearts supple through repentance through prayers without ceasing through taking

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the mote out of our own eyes. And we remember that it is not on us to get everything straightened out now. Like the journalists I heard speak , I know that we actively wait for the future

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and like social justice advocates, we work for justice with fervor and and we have bread and memory and taking the bread at the table. We participate in the love that energizes the very atoms of the universe

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. We remember that we are not the source of ourselves and we celebrate that we celebrate with joy. We were made for joy. What can we do when we go from here but share because remember We

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have 19 baskets of broken pieces yet to give away