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The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. And also with you. Well, good evening and welcome to midwinters of 2008 and to this evening service, which always begins our cycle of several days of midwinter lectures. I want to begin by apologizing about the weather.

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Groundhog says we only have six more weeks of winter, so I encourage you to hang in there. Spring will come. I picked up our preacher from the airport last night, and fresh from New York City, he said to me, why don't you call these the mid-summer lectures? It's a good question.

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We're told that when H. Richard Niebuhr gave the Curry lectures, In 1940, whatever it was, there was a freak snowstorm and four feet of snow on the ground, but not this year. Let's strive to enjoy this strange period of mild weather here in the beginning of February.

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Speaking of strange occurrences, Lent comes to us this year in the earliest possible moment that Lent can ever come. In fact, I understand from David Evans that in our lifetimes, Ash Wednesday will never come this early again. But it does come. Is that, what did someone say?

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Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. It does come this coming Wednesday, and we have added an Ash Wednesday service to our midwinter lecture schedule. It will be at 7.30 in the chapel.

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And our guest preacher this year will preach a third sermon on that occasion. I am very excited about this year's lineup of lecturers and our preacher. Our Curry lecturer, who will arrive later this evening, is the Reverend Dr. William H.

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Willimon, a former chaplain at Duke University and now the bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. It'll be my privilege to introduce him before his first lecture tomorrow. And so I will not say a lot more about him now, but let me just say that Will Williman is a graduate of Wofford College and Yale Divinity School and earns the Doctor of Sacred Theology from Emory University. I will say more about him tomorrow.

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Will Williman has lectured once before at Austin Seminary, not the Curry lecturer, but some other lecture. as has our Jones lecturer for this year, Dr. Dorothy C. Bass.

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Dr. Bass, a graduate of Wellesley College, Union Theological Seminary in New York, and Columbia University, and Brown University, where she earned her PhD in American Civilization, directs the Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith, which is a Lilly Endowment project. based at Valparaiso University, a wonderful Lutheran school that develops resources to help contemporary people live the Christian faith with vitality and integrity in changing times. Many of us have read and appreciated in recent years the work that Dorothy Bass has done in the area of Christian practices.

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Books like Receiving the Day and Practicing Our Faith and the youth version of that book, Way to Live, She's also written with her husband, Mark Schwinn, who was also involved at Valparaiso University, a book called Leading Lives That Matter. And she and Craig Dykstra are about to publish a book called For Life Abundant, Practical Theology, Theological Education, and Christian Ministry. A Lutheran scholar, Dorothy Bass, is on the board of a wonderful retreat center in the northern Cascade Mountains of Washington State called Holden Village.

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And it was there one summer a few years ago that my family and I had the privilege of first meeting Dorothy. Dorothy, are you here yet? Dorothy had a delay, so I think she's on her way by car from Houston to Austin. And so like Will Willeman, she'll be arriving later, and we will enjoy welcoming her back to Austin Seminary tomorrow.

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The very Reverend Philip W. Turner is an ethicist, teacher, scholar, missionary, seminary dean, which is Episcopalian for seminary president, and author. He is a graduate from Washington and Lee University and Virginia Theological Seminary, and earned the PhD from Princeton University.

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After serving for a decade in missionary work in Africa in the 1960s and early 70s, Dean Turner began his seminary teaching career at our neighboring school just a couple of blocks away, the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest. He taught ethics for five years at ETSS before going to a similar position at General Theological. Seminary in New York, where he served for 11 years.

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And then he served as dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale until his retirement in the late 1990s. He returned to Austin and became a great gift once again to the Episcopal Divinity School here as he served a very crucial interim deanship until just very recently. And it was there that I had the privilege to begin a friendship with Philip Turner. Philip, you are here, and it's an honor to have you here tonight.

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We look forward to hearing you as our Westervelt lecturer. Our preacher for this year's midwinters is my very dear friend, the Reverend Dr. John M. Walton, who is pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in the city of New York.

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John is a graduate of Macalester College and Union Theological Seminary of New York, and earned the Doctor of Ministry degree from San Francisco Theological Seminary. He is a protege of both Raymond Brown and Edmund Stimely, and is known far and wide as one of the finest Presbyterian preachers we have. I would add that he is such a fine preacher precisely because he is such a fine pastor.

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And he has served as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of New Canaan, Connecticut, the Setauket Presbyterian Church on Long Island, New York, the Westminster Presbyterian Church of Wilmington, Delaware, and now the First Presbyterian Church in New York. He has published numerous books and articles. He has lectured and preached extensively at such places as the Joe R.

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Engel Institute of Preaching at Princeton Theological Seminary, the Washington National Cathedral, the Princeton University Chapel, the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, and other prominent places too numerous to mention. John Walton is simply one of the most talented people I know, and I want you to know that we have a treat in store for us tonight and in the days ahead. John, we welcome you to our pulpit. Our time together this year is penetrated with the awareness of loss, and we look around this year and note that two members of this seminary community are not here.

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Our dear friend and former president, Jack Stotts, died 2 Thursdays ago, January 24th, and a service in witness to the resurrection will be held on this coming Sunday, February 10th at 3 o'clock at Central Presbyterian Church here in Austin. As we prepared this year for midwinter's, we arranged a display to be set up, remembering Jack, and it'll be set up, is set up, in the Vickery Atrium of the McCord Center, and I hope that you will take time to appreciate that display. Among other pictures of Jack, there's also a continually running interview that Jack had with Judy Fletcher, our Senate executive, about six years ago, in which he reflected upon the presidency of Austin Seminary.

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And I hope you'll take time to enjoy and remember Jack in that moment. I'll also wish to lift up Jack's memory in remarks that I will make at the Austin Seminary Association banquet on Wednesday in Stotts Hall. In tonight's service, we are remembering that one of the contributions made by this giant of our church was his chairmanship of the committee that produced our most recent confession, a brief statement of faith.

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It was intended to be brief enough to be used liturgically, and we will proclaim that statement in worship tonight. We are still trying to absorb the news of just yesterday that Professor Stanley Hall died suddenly at home yesterday morning. Stan has been struggling for several years with a debilitating disease, but had stubbornly continued to teach and participate as he could in the life of this community. He had turned in his grades from the fall semester and was looking forward to teaching in the spring semester beginning next week.

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We did not expect him to go this soon. As the Gene Brown Professor of Liturgics, Homiletics, Stan taught a number of generations of students in the love of the liturgy. As a matter of fact, a couple of years ago, we had a student who was presiding at worship here one day, and I said to her afterwards, I said, you have a wonderful presence in the leadership of worship, and she responded with three words. Stan Hall rocks.

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That's the way a lot of us felt about Stan Hall. And we will lift up his name and his witness tonight as well in the prayers of the people. And I commend to you, I display honoring his memory that either has been placed or will soon be placed in the narthex of this chapel. By the way, Stan and his wife, Gail Snodgrass, set up

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a fund called the Hall Memorial Fund, which was intended to honor the memory of Stan's parents, Dr. Alan S. Hall, Jr. and Violet R.

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Hall. It is Gail's wish that now that fund honor the memory not just of those two, but also of Stan. This fund will support an annual public lecture at Austin Seminary, addressing some aspect of the liturgy in the church from historical and theological perspectives, and will reflect on the current life and worship of the churches in light of this knowledge.

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We will have liturgical scholars coming on an annual basis to give the Hall lecture, and if you would like to contribute to the Hall Memorial Fund, we encourage you to be in touch with the seminary's Institutional Advancement Office. When this service is over tonight, I would invite you to join us for a time of fellowship and refreshment in the Vickery Atrium of McCord Center. And now, let us prepare ourselves for worship. .

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. . Let us stand. The Lord be with you.

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And also with you. O the depth of the riches in wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are God's judgments, and how inscrutable are God's ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor, or who has given a gift to God to receive a gift in return? For from him and through him and to him are all things.

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To God be glory forever. Amen. Let us therefore present ourselves to God as a living sacrifice. Come, let us worship the Lord.

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Let us pray. Loving and everlasting God, in whom we live and move and have our being, we have gathered this night to meet you in your holy word and in the company of all the saints to worship you. For you are the beginning of all things, the life of all things. In you we become, in you we hope, in you we live.

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Fill us now with your Holy Spirit, that we may celebrate your glory and worship you in spirit and in truth, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. My help comes from the Lord The maker of heaven and earth My help comes from the Lord I lift my eyes unto the hills From them will my help come My help comes from the

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He will not let your fault favor in. He who keeps you will not slumber. He who keeps Israel will win us longer or sleep. The Lord is your keeper.

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The Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day. Or the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all evil.

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He will keep your life. Our Lord will keep your going out And your coming in From his heart what heart evermore Thy help console the Lord The will of heaven and earth Let us pray. God, source of all light, by your word you give light to the soul.

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Pour out upon us the spirit of wisdom and understanding, that being taught by you in Holy Scripture, our hearts and minds may be opened to know the things that pertain to life and holiness, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. A reading from 1 Kings.

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Now Elijah, the Tishbite of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, As the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, There shall be now. neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word. The word of the Lord came to him, saying, Go from here and turn to eastward, and hide yourself by the Wadi Cherith, which is east of the Jordan.

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You shall drink from the Wadi, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there. So he went and did according to the word of the Lord. He went and lived by the Wadi Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the Wadi.

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But after a while, the Wadi dried up because there was no rain in the land. A reading from 2 Corinthians, the 9th chapter. The point is this. The one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly.

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And the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each of you must give as you have made-up in your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion. For God loves a cheerful giver, And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.

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As it is written, He scatters abroad, He gives to the poor, His righteousness endures forever. He who supplies seed to the sower, and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing, and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us. For the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints, but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God.

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Through the testing of this ministry, you glorify God by your obedience to the confession of the gospel of Christ, and by the generosity of sharing with them and with all others. while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God that He has given you. Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift. This is the word of our Lord.

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Thanks be to God. Lord, let my heart make good soul, Open to the scene of your word. Lord, let my heart make good soul, Where love can grow and peace is understood. When my heart is hard,

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break the stone away. When my heart is cold, orbit with a day. When my heart is lost, lead me on your way. Lord, let my heart, Lord, let my heart,

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It's so good to be here. I see friends out here. I have ministered with some of you, Anne Ledbetter, Patrick Wilson, good friend. Ted Wardlaw and I have known each other for 20-some years, and it's good to be among you.

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I don't know what has led to this time, being here together, but I'm grateful for it. I don't know how much you know about my congregation. It's located in Greenwich Village in New York City, so I bring you greetings from brothers and sisters there.

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are Presbyterians in New York. It's sort of a bohemian part of town, as you know. It has a reputation that way, so I felt very comfortable getting on the plane to Austin. transferred in Houston.

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I noticed a lot of people with Birkenstocks and tattoos and scraggly beards. It felt just like home. I was maybe the only New Yorker in Texas yesterday rooting for the Giants, but I understand. stand there was a game, I got to see none of it.

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Absolutely not one play. When I left the plane, the pilot said, well, the score is 14-10. The Patriots are on top. There are two minutes left.

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And it really looked bad as far as I was concerned. I thought, well, this is Good Friday. This is the end. I got off the plane.

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Ted greeted me. We got in the car. He called Kay. The news was the giants had won.

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I couldn't believe it. I didn't believe this news. It was suddenly Easter. And I said, I cannot believe this.

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can't be true. Until I touch the bruises in Eli Manning's hands, I will not believe. So I'm still not quite sure. Nonetheless,

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Thank you for allowing me to share this time with you. I pray that this may be a fruitful time for our spirit and soul and body. Let's begin with prayer. May your gospel, O Lord, come to us not in word only, but also in spirit and in truth and with much assurance.

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Amen. Sometimes the preacher has to read the text with a CSI investigator's eye. You're on the lookout for something left behind or something embedded in the passage that looks a little different, something that catches your attention. You use the equivalent of an exegetes blue light inspection and spray the evidence with a solution of one part luminol, one part word study,

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a smattering of form, criticism, and every tool and swab in your library. Take that rope, for instance, that's left hanging off the side of Jericho's wall from Rahab's apartment. The one that she used to lower the two Israeli spies, the ones who made their getaway and took word back to Joshua. One of the kids in our church school drew that rope one time when asked to draw a picture of a biblical story.

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And most of the kids drew a cross, Noah's Ark and the animals, Jonah in the belly of the whale, but this kid drew that wall in Jerusalem. The gates closed, night falling, and a single rope hanging over the side from the top floor window. Now there's a biblical scholar in the making. Or what about that strange scene toward the end of Mark's gospel and the arrest of Jesus in the garden?

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It happens right after the guards lay hold of Jesus. Mark moves the action into fast forward. First, one of the disciples takes a sword and cuts off the ear of the high priest's slave. And Jesus tells everyone to put away their swords.

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And then, as fast as a wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl, Mark remembers that there was someone there who was wearing nothing but a linen loincloth. And in the heat of the action, when the temple guards grabbed for him, they caught him only by the ephod, which came off in their hands, leaving the man to run away naked and the soldier with a cloth in his paw. Now, who knows what that was all about?

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Every now and then, There is a loose thread in the Bible, a detail that is noted but not explained. And many a doctoral candidate has found rich material for exploring the consequential and the inconsequential among them. One such detail is found in that story of Elijah on the lamb, running from Ahab, king of Israel, in the 17th chapter of 1 Kings.

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The characters in this story are almost archetypal. They are of such a caricature that they appear like soap opera heroes and villains. The weak-kneed Ahab is beguiled by the charms of a foreign woman, an ambitious and ruthless Jezebel by the name of Jezebel. That saucy queen who worshipped the Canaanite god Baal.

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and who built an altar and a temple for him in Samaria, provoking the anger and ire of God. Baal was the god of the storm, and so of the rain, a necessary element for fertility. In the event of drought, Canaanite religion held that Baal had been defeated by death. When there was rain, Baal was alive, turning the tables on death.

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So you can understand why the God of life itself, the source of all living things, had little patience with such nonsense as Baal worship. Onto the scene of history walks Elijah, the Tishbite, appearing from nowhere, a prophet on a mission from a place forgotten, Tishbe, a town on no one's map. a place that no one knows. Elijah takes on Ahab eyeball to eyeball in retribution for the temple to Baal that Ahab has built and declares, as the Lord, the God of Israel lives before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years except by my word.

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Elijah had barely gotten the words out when the Lord told Elijah to take a powder and get out of town as fast as he could. Go from here and turn eastward and hide yourself at the Wadi Cherith, east of the Jordan, God said. And God went on, You shall drink from the Wadi, and I have commanded ravens to feed you there.

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I have commanded the ravens to feed you there. And it's with that promise and those words that a thread appears that bears examination. Something wrong with the picture that deserves a squirt of Luminol and a squint with the magnifying glass. I mean, for the life of me, I cannot imagine why it is that God would appoint ravens to provide food for Elijah.

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Just think of it, from the raven's beak to the prophet's mouth. Yikes! It sounds like something you'd see on Fear Factor. How many raven scavenges can you eat? If I were God, I think I would have at least waited to spring this unpleasant surprise on Elijah until after he got to the wadi, and not before he started on his way, lest he dissuade the old prophet from going at all.

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Or short of that, if I'd been the recorder of 1 Kings, I think I might have simply excised the detail about the ravens from the story for the sake of decency or at least decorum. I mean, who wants to get fed by these birds? Ravens, after all, were the buzzards of the Middle East, the carrion scavengers of Elijah's world. The scriptures have no truck with these creatures, which is why it seems so strange that they are given this duty of distinction.

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and why it may be worth our figuring out what they're doing in the story. Ravens get bad press in the Bible. In Genesis, Noah sends a raven to search for dry land, but the raven stays out of greed, leaving Noah in the lurch. Psalm 147 and Job 38 suggest that ravens leave their young crying for food and neglect the duties of parenting.

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In Leviticus 11, 15, ravens head the list of detestable birds, and God's people are forbidden to eat them. They are an abomination, the scriptures tell us. And in Proverbs 30, 17, the raven is depicted as a sadistic creature gouging out the eyes of its victims. With a record like this, why do you suppose God would feed Elijah with such lowlife?

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Elijah, after all, is God's chosen man on the scene, the one prophet who stands up to Ahab and calls a spade a spade. The scholars compare him to Moses in stature, and the writer of First Kings connects the dots through the desert from the tents of Moses to the hiding place of Elijah. How odd, then, that Elijah would be fed by such an abominable bird. Except that in Luke 12.24, the ravens get a remarkably favorable presentation.

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The words of Jesus as he preaches a Sermon on the Mount, consider the ravens. he says. They neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. In the mind of Jesus, they are examples of faithfulness and beneficiaries of God's grace.

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William Hutto, writing on this text, says, The raven Abominable, unclean animal that it is, elevated to the service of the Lord. These ravens are Jesus' model for faith in the providence of God. You get the point, don't you?

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It is the unholy ravens that are appointed to a holy vocation. And therein lies a tale. There isn't a one of us here who has not at some time wondered about the call that is ours, the vocation to which we are ordained with all of our flaws and imperfections, our inadequacies and failings, and come to the conclusion that either God has a great sense of humor, or if the ministry is really in the hands of none better than us, the Church is of all people most to be pitied.

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I look around the presbytery and wonder at my colleagues, some of them greatly gifted and obviously so, and others deeply flawed and clearly misfit for such a high calling. These are decidedly people in whom God sees more than is apparent to my untrained eye. I remember in seminary my polity professor saying to us that the presbytery would be our church, that our best friends would be our fellow presbyters and colleagues, that we would be like brothers and sisters to one another. Obviously, he had not been to New York City Presbytery, which most of the time behaves like Pentecost before the Holy Spirit came.

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We spent three hours last Tuesday debating parliamentary procedure without a motion on the floor. And 2 meetings before that, we spent an hour and a half debating whether or not to receive the minutes from the previous meeting. How can God's church go forward with such as this? I think about myself

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And what an imperfect vessel I am, the person who goes home at night, weary from the church, gets up in the morning, the one that looks back at me in the mirror as I stand there shaving. The one whose fuse is short and whose weariness with the church gets out of control sometimes. This fellow that I barely know, whom everyone describes as long-suffering and calm on all occasions, is that really the fellow in the mirror? This is the same one who counsels people that they're working too hard and that they need to spend more time with their family, but who is himself at meetings most weeknights till 10.

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This is the same person who prays with folks at the hospital and in worship and in counseling, but whose own prayer life and devotional time is sorely lacking. Maybe, like me, you too have wondered what it is that God saw in you of social, of redeeming social value, worth putting to work for the sake of the commonwealth of God, ravens that we are. We have good company in this self-doubt and awareness of our own imperfections, Remember Isaiah's reaction to his vision of God in the temple?

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God, so great that just the hem of God's garment filled the temple. There in the temple, Isaiah was struck with an enormous sense of inadequacy. Woe is me, he said, for I am one of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips. And yet keenly aware of his own imperfection, Isaiah responds to God's need of a messenger by saying, here I am, send me.

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St. Paul, arguably the most eloquent theologian the Church has ever produced, reminds us again and again of the inner struggles of his life. That dark stain that haunted him, that comes out in his descriptions of his interior life, Words like cast down, in despair, afflicted, thorn in the flesh.

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For Paul, life in Christ's service was a life of struggle against his own imperfection. There is hardly a remembered preacher who has done any good for the human soul, who has not borne the humanity of his or her shortcomings in one way or another. Some years ago I heard Dr. Gardner Taylor describe Martin Luther King Jr.

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and his observations of King during the Civil Rights era. Taylor said that there was about King a certain shadow, a brooding pensiveness that never seemed to lift from his spirit, an inner tension that was expressed in the solemn cadences of his pulpit oratory. And now, of course, we know as well that Dr. King had his human side, astraying from his marriage vows that haunt our memory of him.

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Edmund Steimely, with whom I studied homiletics at Union in New York, perhaps the most effective Protestant preacher in the latter part of the 20th century, was a man given to a tough outer presence, gruff and impersonal at times, barking at students. I once heard him ask a quivering first-year student to explain what it was that he wanted to say in his long, rambling, incomprehensible sermon before the class. The student gave a one-sentence answer concisely stating what he wanted to say, and Stimely responded, then why the hell didn't you say it? But Stimely's gruff exterior was a cover.

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for his enormous sense of inadequacy. When he first arrived at Union Seminary, his office was located on the third floor, sandwiched between Reinhold Dieber on one side and Paul Tillich on the other. He anguished day after day, located between the walls of these two theological giants, intimidated by the fact that he did not have an earned doctorate. It was the darkest period of his professional life, he said, and he spent the first year of his time on the faculty at Union struggling with deep depression.

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Barbara Brown Taylor describes her own struggles in her book, The Preaching Life. There are voices that come to us from inside ourselves, she says, reminding us what we will never be, never do, never have, No one has ever explained to my satisfaction where this relentlessly critical chorus comes from, but it never ceases to tire of telling me how clumsy, lazy, weak, spoiled, thick-headed, ridiculous, and doomed to failure I am. That from her, whom every reflective American preacher of our generation, women and men alike, have quoted and still quote,

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in spite of her most recent book, Laying Aside Her Priestly Calling. It is, I suppose, the Achilles' heel of the preacher, that we are so aware of our weakness, our raven-like nature, the inadequacy of the messenger, when compared to the magnificence of the message that we are meant to bear. It is, I think, the means by which God keeps us honest if we will only pay attention.

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If we will only pay attention. We celebrate the Lord's Supper rather frequently at Old First, and I wash my hands on those days before I go into the sanctuary. It seems the right thing to do before handling the bread and the cup. But the truth is, there is nothing that I can do to wash my hands in the deepest sense of the matter.

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which is the truth that the gospel wants to address. God has done what we could not do in giving us a Savior to provide for us all that we need and even more. Cleansing of the sinner, bread for the journey, refreshment for the soul. There by the Wadi,

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Elijah is sent to be fed by the ravens and strengthened for the journey that will lie ahead of him. These ravens seem like such an unlikely bird to be sent on such an important mission, but they are what God has. So they are pressed into God's service to do more than that of which they are capable for the sake of one whom they do not fully comprehend. And such is our story as well.

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That God uses what we have, inadequate ravens that we are, even that in us which is not perfect, not welcome, not lovable, for the sake of a greater task, which is to do more than that of which we are capable, for the sake of one whom we do not fully comprehend. The point is not that we be lovable or perfect, or that we feel able, or even that we fully understand what it is that we do, but that God's people be fed with the food that God will provide. Look what God did, after all, with Moses stuttering. Jacob's dishonesty, Paul's thorn in the flesh, Peter's denials, Nicodemus' questions, Mary's tears at the tomb.

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In weakness, we are made strong. There is a telling moment when Jesus preaches in his hometown of Nazareth, a place where his sermon did not bear much fruit. He quotes a proverb common among his people. Doubtless, you will say to me the proverb, physician, heal thyself.

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That which you did in Capernaum do also here in Nazareth. But of course, if you know the story of the ravens, if you know the story of the ravens, you will know that the point is not that the physician must first heal herself, but that she go and heal whom she can. Ravens, Take wing.

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This is not about you. This is about God. Get on with it. Feed, nurture, sustain, and heal whomever you can.

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Please stand and let us affirm our faith from the brief statement of faith. In life and in death, we belong to God. Through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, we trust in the one triune God, the Holy One of Israel, whom alone we worship and serve.

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We trust in Jesus Christ, fully human, fully God. Jesus proclaimed the reign of God, preaching good news to the poor, and release to the captives, teaching by word and deed, and blessing the children, healing the sick, and binding up the brokenhearted, eating with outcasts, forgiving sinners, and calling all to repent and believe the gospel. Unjustly condemned for blasphemy and sedition, Jesus was crucified, suffering the depths of human pain, and giving his life for the sins of the world.

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God raises Jesus from the dead, vindicating his sinless life, breaking the power of sin and death, delivering us from death to life eternal. We trust in God, whom Jesus called Abba Father. In sovereign love, God created the world good, and makes everyone equal in God's image, male and female, of every race and people, to live as one community.

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But we rebel against God, we hide from our Creator. Ignoring God's commandments, we violate the image of God and others and ourselves, accept lies as truth, exploit neighbor and nature, and threaten death to the planet entrusted to our care. We deserve God's condemnation, yet God acts with justice and mercy to redeem creation and everlasting love. The God of Abraham and Sarah chose a covenant people to bless all families of the earth.

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Hearing their cries, God delivered the children of Israel from the house of bondage. Loving us still, God makes us heirs with price of the covenant. Like a mother who will not forsake her nursing child, like a father who runs to welcome the prodigal home, God is faithful still.

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We trust in God the Holy Spirit, everywhere the giver and renewer of life. The Spirit justifies us by grace through faith, sets us free to accept ourselves, and to love God and neighbor, and binds us together with all believers in the one body of Christ, the Church, the same Spirit, who inspired the prophets and apostles, rules our faith and life in Christ through scripture, engages us through the word proclaimer, claims us in the waters of baptism, feeds us with the bread of life and the cup of salvation, and calls women and men to all ministries of the church. In a broken and a fearful world, the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing,

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to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples alongside us, and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace. In gratitude to God, empowered by the Spirit, we strive to serve Christ in our daily tasks, and to live holy and joyful lives. even as we watch for God's new heaven and new earth, praying, Come, Lord Jesus, with believers in every time and place, we rejoice that nothing in life or in death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

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Amen. Take us as we are, O God, and claim us as your own. So let our lives be used to make your saving purpose now. Bless us for your service, Lord, no power it departs.

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Will ever give us strength evil to make those who give wise. The Lord be with you. And also with you. Let us pray.

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Almighty God, in life and in death we belong to you. We gather again in this sacred space as students, as faculty, as alums, as friends of the seminary. and ponder the beatitudes that have been bestowed upon us in this place. Some of us receive our daily bread here.

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Others of us have not been here for a while. For all of us, there is something holy here, some burning bush from which came a call, some site at which we wrestled with an angel, some office or library carol or chapel transept in which we wept and yet were visited. Some fierce moment in which we were turned upside down until the pocket change of what we thought was faith rattled to the floor and was replaced with something new. There is something holy here, O God, something formative, which we approach again with gratitude and gladness.

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And we thank you for friendships rekindled, for new ones that may be made in these days ahead, for any glimpse or experience that assures us that you still have business in this place. And maybe it is also the case that we are particularly aware tonight of how thin that membrane is between earth and heaven. We acknowledge that in life we belong to you. And as we think of two brothers so recently with us, your servants Jack and Stan, we also acknowledge because you raised Jesus from the dead, vindicating his sinless life, breaking the power of sin and evil, delivering us from death to life eternal, that therefore in death too, we belong to you.

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And so we praise you for that vast communion of the saints, which Jack and Stan have now joined, who lean over the railings of heaven itself to take part in our worship as we glorify you. They encourage us now in the walk that lies ahead for each of us, and so we exclaim with joy, O blessed communion, fellowship divine, we feebly struggle, they in glory shine, yet all are one in thee, for all are thine. Enable us, we pray, to hold fast to the blessed memories of their witness,

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of their courage, of their stubborn relentlessness with regard to things that mattered, of their moments of tenderness to those students and colleagues with whom they came in contact, of their fidelity to and nurture of their families, of the ways in which they gave their lives to your gospel and to your church. And just as they are now lights that will shine brightly but from another shore, Turn our attention now, we pray, to those other lights all around us. Make us ready to hear and receive what our guests have brought for us in these days ahead.

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And make us ready as well to hear and receive one another until we recognize your face dwelling in these other faces. Bless this seminary and bless all of our sister seminaries and our communion and throughout the body of Christ, all over the world, as together we strive to impart the apostolic tradition from one generation unto another. Come and companion our church, we pray, that the spirit of partisanship and rancor may be overwhelmed by the light of your truth

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and love until we see not enemies, but neighbors. Bless as well our nation and all nations, and bless our leaders, and watch over those who this night are in harm's way. Speed the day when our wars will be over, and bombers and machine guns will be beaten into tractors and lawnmowers. And now, O God, in the growing quietness of the evening and the deepening shadows of the night, grant us sleep and rest.

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With the stilling of the day's doings and the end of coming and going about us, make us to be sleepy with heavy eyes and tired limbs. As your creatures are lying down in the wood, as the bird is quiet in its nest and the wild thing in its hole, As the stream is still in its bed reflecting the great expanse of stars above, may we in our sleep reflect our confidence in you and our assurance in your constant peace. In our sleep, give us that deeper communion of our souls with you who restores unto health.

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All of this we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. And now as our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to say with the confidence of children, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.

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Save us from the time of trial, and deliver us from evil, for the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever. Amen. Go into the world in peace.

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May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you and with those you love forever they need, now and forevermore. Amen.