Angel calling!

What is your calling?

We often think about ‘calling’ as being something very specific to clergy, to being called to the ministry of the church, and yet we are all called into something, somewhere.

Our Gospel reading for this last Sunday of Advent when we remember Mary as we light the Advent Wreath, speaks of the specific and very holy calling to be the mother of God; but let us not forget Joseph’s calling alongside her.

Mary had not sought out her calling, it was visited upon her as she was preparing for her wedding to Joseph. An angel visited her with the ‘good news’ which she then had to try and explain to her parents and her fiance. Joseph, unsurprisingly, did not find it an easy explanation to receive: that his undefiled virgin bride-to-be was expectant, not by him, but neither by any other man.

Joseph was asked to receive this news before he had received his ‘calling’, but here it comes, and he too receives a visit from an angel. It is believable that Joseph was a man looking forward to parenthood, that he was ready to settle down with a wife and family, indeed the plans were already in place with the betrothal.

It is less conceivable that in such a patriarchal society in which the continuance of the family name was enshrined in Levitical law (should a man die before his wife was able to provide a son and heir, his brother would fill his shoes and his bed, until a son was provided for him), that Joseph was looking forward to becoming a stepfather to an unknown man’s child. Indeed Joseph is already making plans to break away from his cuckolding wife-to-be and the child she is carrying.

Joseph’s call changes all that. He too has a visit from an angel, although his angelic message arrives in a dream. This angel reassures Joseph of Mary’s faithfulness to him, and that it is right for the marriage to go ahead, but more than that, the angel assures Joseph of his holy calling to be a part of this heavenly plan.

Not only is Joseph to keep Mary as his wife, to love and protect, to cherish and honour her and whatever else was included in middle eastern marriage vows, but he was to be part of God’s plan, and it is he who should give Jesus his name. In some ways this will give extra credence to Mary’s story, that her son is God’s son, for the name that Joseph will be seen to choose means ‘God is with us’. In other ways of course, it will affirm people’s suspicions that Joseph himself did not sire the child, after all, it was normal for a child to be given a family name, not such a holy one.

Mary and Joseph receive their callings through the visit of angels. Saint Paul received his through a vision in which the resurrected Jesus spoke to him, calling him first to repent and then to become an apostle to the Gentiles, to those not of the Hebrew faith. Paul’s calling was to call others to the truth which Joseph had to learn through the angelic visions, that Jesus is indeed God’s son, and in the letter he wrote to the church at Rome he reminds them of their calling to belong to Jesus, to be loved by Jesus, and to be his saints here on earth.

The call on Mary and Joseph’s lives was finite, as all parents are called to a specific task, to care for this child until he was old enough to take on his own calling. Of course parenting isn’t that simple, we don’t stop loving or caring for our children even when they leave home. It is only death that can terminate such a calling, and then perhaps, only in this life. For each of us who receive the call to be saints, it is an eternal calling. We are called to respond with faith and trust, as Joseph and Mary were called to respond. We are called to be outspoken at times, declaring truths it seems that no-one else will ever believe, and truths that may well be costly to us.

St Paul knew that the Roman Christians would struggle, for he too had struggled with persecution, false accusations, illegal imprisonment, and physical beatings. Paul knew that at times the story we are all called to carry will be hard to believe, and so he prays for that church, for all who are called to be saints, the very message that the angels bring, a blessing of grace, and peace.

Lent 3:There but for the Grace of God go I.

This third Sunday of lent sets us some disturbing readings, and some tough challenges.

At the beginning of the Bible passage for this Sunday Luke refers to some pretty horrific tragedies in which people have died, people are asking Jesus what caused the atrocities. It is a perennial question of faith – why suffering?  Why did the tower fall killing so many people? Why were those worshippers attacked during prayers? What had they done so wrong to deserve death? When things go wrong, we want to know why. We want to be able to point the finger and find a sinful cause for such suffering – perhaps then we can reassure ourselves that we are less sinful and less likely to suffer.

Jesus doesn’t give any such comforting answers:

Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all suffer.

The truth is, terrible things happen, whether they be human acts of violence or ‘natural’ disasters, and people suffer. Sinful people and innocent people alike, and also those who fall somewhere in between. If we think that we can escape such atrocities by living ‘good’ lives we are fooling ourselves. The one who attacked the Galileans whilst in an act of worship, was Pontius Pilate – he who would eventually order Jesus’ own torture and death. Belonging to God does not give us a get of jail free card when it comes to suffering, and neither does our own behaviour.

However, this does not mean that we are not responsible for how we live our lives – what we do really does matter. Jesus brushes aside the comments about others’ suffering and their potentially sinful cause of it and urges those present to look to their own state of being with God.

Although we cannot prevent ourselves form external attack,  we can prepare ourselves to live in a state of grace with God. Lent is the perfect time for us to follow this advice: to look internally at what is good in the way that we are living our lives and what is less than healthy. There will be things that we each need to repent of, ask God’s forgiveness for, turn away from and leave behind.

As Craddock writes:

Jesus turns away from such attempts at calculation, not only because they deflect attention from the primary issue: the obligation of every person to live in penitence and trust before God, and that penitent trust is not to be linked to life’s sorrows or life’s joys. Life in the kingdom is not an elevated game at gaining favours and avoiding losses. Without repentance, all is lost anyway.

This all sounds like hard work, as if we should be hanging our shaved heads in shame, wearing sackcloth and eating beans and cabbages as we work out our repentance and ensure our safety in the kingdom of heaven.

But God just isn’t like that. Our God is a God of love and grace as well as a God of justice and goodness. There is no place for sin within God’s kingdom, but as we would all fall short, the kingdom would be rather a lonely place if only the perfect could gain entry.  Grace and mercy however, ensure that everyone will be able to find a welcome – everyone who has taken the time for a little soul-searching and honest repentance that is.

Jesus weaves a parable to help explain this heavenly grace:

This is wisdom for each of us on our own spiritual journeys. We need to be prepared to seek forgiveness for the times when we have not lived up to God’s expectations of us – when we have not been ‘fruitful’; when we have not shown  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness,  gentleness, or self-control. The forgiveness that comes with repentance and confession is the second chance that the gardener gives the fig tree, it is the resurrection of new Easter life.

However, this parable wasn’t intended to be an individualistic meditation. A fig tree was a place of prayer, and the vineyard was God’s own garden. Jesus is sending a warning shot to the people of Israel – those who had been planted within the vineyard, who had been tended and cared for, whose purpose was to be a people of prayer, but who had never shown the fruit, or perhaps had ceased to bear the fruit that should have come naturally to them.

We can look at this story and consider it to be a piece of history, or we can continue to treat it as a parable, a riddle with a hidden meaning. Perhaps some of our own churches are like the barren fig tree? Perhaps some of our places of worship have forgotten how to be truly prayerful – how to enter deep into God’s grace and mercy, rather than simply repeating prayers by rote and ticking off the holy boxes each Sunday. Perhaps we see our Christian community as a private club or self help group, rather than a place of true worship, of giving our all to Jesus in love and service to others.

If that is the case then we need to seek repentance. We need to stop looking around for external reasons as to why our church is no longer growing, why no-one is attracted to joining us. Perhaps we need to endure a season of manure in order to grow and blossom and bear fruit once more – perhaps we need to allow Jesus to minister to us, to cajole us, challenge us, stir us up?

Perhaps we are scared of all that and simply want to be left alone to contemplate all the other reasons why church is ‘in decline’. Perhaps we would much rather consider others’ short-fallings than our own – it’s less painful that way.

The thing is, the church of Christ isn’t in decline. Where people are willing to live out their own callings and respond to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, the church is continuing to flourish – even if in different and more unusual ways than before. When God’s people are willing to spend time in prayer, time being ‘fertilised’ by God there is growth and there is fruit.

This lent, let’s challenge ourselves: yes we need to repent for the things that we have done or left undone, the times when we have strayed away from God’s calling, however, we also need to look forward, to where God wants us to grow, and how he wants us to serve and worship him and lead others to do so as well.

Something to listen to:

Some questions to think about:

• What failures have we had in our own gardens, and what may have been the cause?
• How do we deal with our own ‘failures’?
• Do we find it easier to point the finger at others or to find fault with ourselves?
• How do you feel when it is reported that the church is in decline?
• How can we ensure that we as individuals and as a church are bearing fruit?
• Consider the following comment from Fred B. Craddock:

There is still time. God’s mercy is still in serious conversation with God’s judgement.

Something to do:

Plant some seeds (preferably fruit or veg). As you prepare the soil take note of the texture of the earth. Take a look at the dirt of your fingers. Think of the things that you need to repent of. Water and tend to the seed, as you do pray that fruit will also grow in your own life. As the shoots start to appear, as the plant blossoms and grows and ‘bears fruit’ look back to the day that you planted it and see how you have also grown.

Something to pray:

A Lenten blessing:

Christ give you grace to grow in holiness, to deny yourselves, take up your cross, and follow him; and the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, be upon you and all those you love, today and always. Amen [Common Worship]

Romans: A Living Grace

When I first looked at my notes for this portion of Paul’s letter to the Romans, my thoughts were pulled in the direction of Iraq and the situation faced by the Christians there at this time, but now I am struggling to make the connection. There has always been persecution for religious reasons, living in the west we are generally oblivious to it, we are rarely affected, although someone might dare to point the finger at us and make us feel uncomfortable as they make their accusation: ‘call yourself a Christian, do you?’

There’s something of this in what Paul says about ‘not doing the good I want, but doing the evil I do not want to do’. How often do we give people the opportunity to use those words? Personally I find that far too often I am responding out of my own desires, selfishness or even pain rather than from God’s love and grace, and so I find it encouraging that one of our heroes of faith did too. Normally Paul is so sure of his faith, so full of energy, so willing to sacrifice everything for his love for Jesus, willing to be beaten, imprisoned and to give his life. Paul always spoke out for what was right and never hid when life got tough. Peter was the ‘human’ one who often got things wrong, but his love for Jesus shone through. Paul was the shining example who always got it right and even had to correct Peter from time to time. But here is his confession. Paul didn’t always get things right. And it is through his mistakes that Paul (and Peter too) learned how much more God’s grace has to give than the letter of the Law.

So how does this tie in with the persecution of Christians in Iraq, or anywhere else for that matter? Persecution comes when people of faith cling too closely to the law of their religion and lose all sense of grace – those who do this we tend to call fundamentalists, I’m sure they call themselves something else and see themselves differently too. Paul experienced it amongst the Jewish Christians – the Judaisers – who sought to circumcise every new male believer, regardless of age (read more here) and force them to adhere to the letter of the Law. A law which Paul continues to argue is defunct. In this portion of the letter Paul tries to explain that, just as the laws regarding marriage only apply to a couple when  both husband and wife are alive, so we who call ourselves Christians, having shared Jesus’ death on the cross are no longer bound to the religious laws from before Jesus’ death. We now belong to the new life of Jesus’ resurrection, a life of grace and forgiveness, guided by God’s Holy Spirit.

The thing is,we will always have this internal conflict. We will always face times when we have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, and we will need to decide how best to act. There are times when we will have to discern whether we are following God more closely by sticking to the letter of the Law (regardless of the true needs of those around us) or the Spirit of the Law. There will be times too, when it is tempting to hide behind Laws because they give us ‘permission’ to act in ways that are not really true to God’s heart. The only way we can be saved from this eternal, internal, battle Paul suggests, is by recognising and accepting the love and freedom that comes through the grace of Jesus Christ.

 

Father Abraham (Galatians 3: 1-18)

Opening of the Epistle to the Galatians, illuminated manuscript for reading during Christian liturgy. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I was training for ordination, we were taken on a day-trip to Southall! There we visited a Mosque, a Hindu Temple and a Sikh Gudwara.

When we were in the Mosque we had time with one of the leaders, and found ourselves in a conversation about forgiveness. The Islamic view we were told, was that you can only ever hope for forgiveness to be given one day, and in the mean time you have to keep working, keep earning God’s favour.

Whilst we were there I had an image of Jesus cradling a woman dressed head to toe in a yashmak, it was obvious to me that she had just died, and Jesus was whispering to her, ‘How could you be so close and yet so far, how could you not know how much I love’.

I was reminded of this as I was reading through today’s section of Paul’s letter to the Galatians.

The judaisers, the Jewish Christians who believed that the Galatian Christians needed to convert to the rules and regulations of Judaism, as well as accepting Jesus’ grace and mercy, seem to be saying the same thing. That we can only hope, we can only keep working, rather than simply accepting Jesus’ overwhelming love and then responding in kind. Of course the irony for all the Abrahamic faiths, is that Abraham, the great patriarch lived a life free from religious rules.

English: Abram’s Counsel to Sarai, c. 1896-1902, by James Jacques Joseph Tissot (French, 1836-1902), gouache on board, 6 x 8 1/8 in. (15.2 x 20.7 cm), at the Jewish Museum, New York (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Abraham, the one who was accounted righteous because of his faithfulness, did so 430 years before the Law was given to Moses.

The faithful acts that Abraham was judged righteous on account of, were his response to God’s call. God called Abraham, and Sarah, to follow him into the unknown, into the unsure and they did.

Abraham and Sarah followed, stepping out into the unknown, listening hard to God’s voice for guidance, for there was nothing else to turn to. No book to look up, no rules to adhere to…

And now the Galatians have been invited to follow in Abraham and Sarah’s footsteps. To listen to Jesus’ voice and respond to his invitation to follow him, to journey with him on a faith-filled adventure; and the Galatians have responded with joy to that voice and have sought to follow Jesus. Which has also brought Paul much joy. Now however, Paul is saddened and angered that the Galatians have been ladened down, overburdened, by those whose heads and hearts are so full of rules and regulations and the need to make themselves right with God, that they are incapable of receiving, truly receiving His love and grace.

Paul accuses the Judaisers of ‘bewitching’ the Galatian Christians.

The question for us as 21^st Century Christians is, are we following Jesus’ call on our life? Have we been made righteous through faith just as Abraham and Sarah were, or are we constantly trying to earn our place in God’s heart?

Have we been ‘bewitched’ into placing a higher importance on the things that God doesn’t value and led astray from the things that are vital to our faith?

As we study the epistle to the Galatians, we have the opportunity to re-examine our own relationship with God, and whether we are truly following Jesus, and whether or not our walk with Him will lead us to being justified by faith, and not works!

Justification by faith: A license to break the rules? (Galatians 2: 15-21)

The Gentiles Ask to See Jesus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Jesus was a rule breaker.

Jesus broke rules wherever he went. He ate with those who were unclean, he healed people on the Sabbath, he spent time with women – unaccompanied, treated Samaritans with respect, declared that children should be seen, heard and valued.

Jesus was a rule breaker, and he encouraged his disciples to break the rules too.

Gentiles were welcomed into the holy family, circumcision no longer held the same power of belonging or of covenant, and all foods became clean. The rules that separated cultures and tribes were smashed apart. Jesus broke the many cultural and religious rules of the Jewish faith and replaced them with a handful of simple ones: reinforcing the Shemar – to love the lord your God with all your heart with all your mind with all your soul, and to love your neighbour as yourself; and introducing two new ones – to be baptised in the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit, and to break bread together in remembrance of him.

So can we tear up the old rule book and do whatever we want, because Jesus has given us the freedom to do so?

I’m afraid not.

Jesus has released us into a life of grace and holy living, unbound by needless and petty rules and regulations so that we can joyfully serve him. As one commentator explains, ‘participation in the gospel, not adherence to the Law is the source of life and righteousness’.

Paul has devoted his new found freedom in Christ, to sharing this love and grace with those who have formerly been excluded by the laws of the Jewish faith. The Gentile church is one such group of new followers who have experienced this freedom and have chosen to become part of Jesus’ gospel life.

Some of the Jewish Christians though are struggling to get their heads around this. These followers of the way of Christ have had the rules of Judaism drummed into them, they (the men at least) have been circumcised at an early age, they know that they belong, and participation in the gospel is something that can be built on top of these adherences.

For the Judaisers, the rules and rites have to remain. And the gentile Christians, the Galatians have to conform.

Or do they?

What Paul seems to be saying is that no rules have to be kept. As Christians we have a freedom, a license to do whatever we want, and for some of the Galatians this has meant returning to pagan practices.

The poor Galatian Christians are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Should they conform to the pressures of the Judaisers, those who are seen as the elders of the new Christian church, or should they try and find their own way between their licentious pagan backgrounds and the freedom that Paul seems to be proclaiming?

Of course neither are right, and Paul is trying hard to explain that Jesus is offering another way.

Paul is speaking about justification by faith. Keeping rules cannot justify our wrong actions or thoughts or misplaced hearts. There are no brownie points to be earned. We do not earn heavenly credits by giving up bacon, only wearing single fibre clothing, and doing absolutely nothing except go to church on the Sabbath. We cannot earn favour with God. We already have it.

When Jesus was baptised, it wasn’t so that he could start afresh, it wasn’t so that he could die to sin, it was to show with all certainty that he was prepared to walk with us, to do whatever it would take to bring us back into relationship with God. And that is what we echo when we are baptised or bring our children to be baptised. We are promising to walk with Jesus throughout the whole of our lives, seeking to put him first, to love the lord our God with all our hearts, with all our minds, all our souls.

For Jesus, this meant walking all the way to the cross, and as he was crucified, the huge temple curtain that formed a barrier between God and his people was torn in two.

The old way was gone. A new way of life and love and worship had come to stay: a gift from God that cannot be earned.

The only thing that we need to do to enter into this life of grace is to accept it. To step out in faith and believe that God really does love us, that his Son really did die on the cross and in doing so tore down that curtain that has kept us in need of working our way back into righteousness.

This must have been difficult for the Jews to grasp. That all their hard work, their fastidious keeping of the laws now stood for nothing, was worthless.

The Law had had its place once, but had now been superceded by Jesus’ own loving actions and gift of grace.

And for the gentiles it must also have been a bit of a surprise to discover that the God who had kept them excluded by the various rules and regulations given to the Jewish people, actually wanted to have a relationship with them, and there was nothing they could do to earn it.

No other god behaved in this way: gods always wanted some kind of sacrifice or ritual.

And in a sense Jesus does too, but not as has previously been experienced.

If we love God and put him first in our lives, everything else should fall into place. Of course we will make mistakes, of course there are times when we act out of selfishness and greed and hurt and jealousy, and we will need to seek forgiveness for doing so, but the more time we spend in prayer and worship with God the more we will become like his son, the more we will be able to love others, the more intolerant of injustice we will find ourselves, the more we shall want to love and serve our neighbours, whoever they may be.

It will not be easy, but this is the only sacrifice that God wants from us, these are the only rules that need to be kept, because if we are able to keep these then our hearts will be right with God.

So let’s continue to welcome families as they are baptised into our churches, as they are welcomed into God’s family. Let’s continue to meet around the Lord’s Table, to break bread together, and to welcome all who have been baptised, regardless of age, to join us.

And let’s seek to be a loving community reaching out in love and worship to Jesus, and in love and action to his people, and not value one over the other. Then we shall find that we have been justified by faith.

Read Paul’s words here

Integrity before God: Circumcision and hypocrisy (Galatians 2 1-14)

I had a friend who moved from Bristol to Liverpool for her studies. When she came home it was noted that her accent had changed. To her university friends she had a thick West Country accent, but when she came home it was notably Scouse. Especially when she said ‘chocolate’.

In many ways a change of accent is due to repeating what we hear, and we can’t help it, however I have noticed in myself, that depending on whose company I am in, I am more or less careful about dropping my consonants.

But what has this to do with Paul and his letter to the Galatians?

Rubens, 1605 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well, if I’m truly honest with myself, the change in the way I speak has a lot to do with wanting to fit in. Ideally I would be so comfortable with who I am, and the fact that God loves me and took delight in creating this rather mixed up person, that I wouldn’t care about the way I speak, only about the thoughts that were being expressed. And when I find myself changing my accent I wonder if that says something about my integrity.

Paul is really very keen on integrity, and is particularly sharp at picking up on hypocrisy. This is his main concern with Peter, and the stem of his anger at those who have been putting so much pressure on the Galatian Christians that they have turned away from the Gospel.

In Paul’s view Peter is being a top notch hypocrite. Paul takes us back to the meetings and conversations that he had with Peter and some of the other Christian elders. After 14 years of experience in ministry and preaching the gospel of Jesus and growing churches with Gentile Christians, Paul has met the elders to discuss the thorny issue of circumcision.

For the Jewish people, circumcision was not only a sign of obedience, but the ritual act of belonging: a physical, outward sign of an inward grace, a sacrament if you will. Now gentlemen, you may wish to cross your legs at this point:

if in order to come to church this morning you first had to undergo a medically unnecessary procedure involving a sharp knife and the most sensitive part of your body, I’m guessing that you would be a little reluctant. This is how the Gentile population would have felt about circumcision; understandably it was quite a stumbling block to receiving the gospel.

Paul’s experience with Greek Christians enabled him to see that this ‘law’ of faith was no longer necessary, and indeed when he met with the church leaders who were Jewish and had themselves been circumcised at a few days old, they had agreed. I’m sure Titus, who travelled with Paul, was quite relieved of this.

An agreement was made. Circumcision was not wrong, but neither was it necessary. The sacrament of belonging for a Christian is not circumcision, but baptism. Anyone who has been baptised in water and the Holy Spirit is a full member of the Christian church, and should be fully included.

We still hold that to be true today, which is why we are seeking to find a place of belonging and participation for our baptised children at communion.

However, some, called ‘Judaizers’, those who believed that in order to follow Jesus you had to become a Jew first, were going against this agreement, and Peter isn’t helping.

Peter who had been present at the meeting, who had shook hands with Paul, was going against his own principles, and Paul is finding the hypocrisy unbearable. Paul has challenged Peter in the past about his table manners.

Another of the Jewish rules was that Jews and Gentiles should not eat together. Jesus, however put an end to this. Jesus, himself ate with all sorts of people, saints and sinners and he was accused of eating with drunks and prostitutes. As a disciple accompanying him, Peter would have done so as well, and there is a wonderful account in Acts of Peter’s vision of a table cloth full of ‘unclean’ foods being offered from heaven.

Peter has been known to eat with Gentiles quite happily in the past, now he is shying away. Scared of offending the Jewish Christians, uncertain of his own identity in Christ and as a leader of this new church, Peter has been swayed and now he is swaying others with damaging affect.

Maybe it is fear that is preventing Peter from doing what is right and hiding behind now redundant laws? Just as he had hid when Jesus was arrested and denied knowing him, now Peter denies that the Gentiles are equal to the Jews and in that equality are clean enough to eat with, to break bread with, to be in communion with.

It is clear to Paul that Peter needs to repent and to do so publicly so that the damage he has caused can be undone. The trouble is the small mistakes that we make can have huge repercussions. We all need to be wary that our words and actions speak volumes about what we believe.

When we refuse to welcome somebody into the church or bar them from eating with us, then we are sending out messages about God’s love for them. When we go the extra mile to welcome someone then, again, we are sending out messages about God’s love. When we do or say something that builds up someone else’s faith even if it is costly to us, then we are acting with integrity and courage.

The truth is, that anything we do or say, must be worthy of being said or done to Jesus himself. If not then we must not do it. Simple as that.

And yet, it is so difficult to act with integrity, so difficult to avoid hypocrisy, when it feels that everything we say or do is being judged. And we are judged, I’ve had someone comment on my long blonde hair (‘not right’) and my weight (‘disgusting’) in public, and if we are honest we judge others too.

The truth is that we are loved and called by God, and his is the only opinion that matters. If we need courage to stand up for what is right and true, then maybe we should spend more time in praying, offering God the tricky situations in our daily lives, the ones where we know that we will be challenged, the ones where we will be tempted to fit in rather than stand up for the truth of the gospel.

The really sad thing, is that while we are spending time debating who is welcome and who isn’t, and what people need to do to conform (and there’s plenty of debate in the church right now), God’s Kingdom is not being proclaimed.

When Paul and Barnabas and Titus met with James and Peter and John, and they agreed to preach the gospel to the Gentiles without need for circumcision, only one thing was asked of Paul, that they remember the poor.

Whilst we are getting in a pickle about whether or not children should be admitted to communion, or women should be ordained bishop, others are dying of starvation, or getting into debt, finding themselves homeless, struggling to live without the richness of God’s grace.

As Christians, God’s call on our lives is to take the good news everywhere, to baptise, to make disciples. Not to form holy huddles that make us feel good about ourselves because we keep all the rules.

Are we being challenged today? If so how can we make amends? How can we leave this place of worship walking in integrity, using all that God has given us to share the love and freedom and grace that we have received from Jesus himself?