Many of you have probably noticed the paper chain that’s starting to spread across the back of our sanctuary. For those of you who haven’t made it to our Wednesday evening services yet, this chain is part of what we’ve been doing on Wednesday nights. Each link of the chain is a prayer, and every week the chain grows as we add more and more prayers. Every week, there are different interactive prayer stations around the sanctuary, as a different way of engaging with the text and with the practice of Lent. The prayer chain is meant to be a community practice of prayer that shows how our prayers connect us to each other – and how what we do together here leads out into the world.
This idea of interactive prayer stations for Lent was actually part of the project work I did at my internship congregation down in New Mexico. Each week at the midweek service, at least one of the stations we had set up would be some kind of activity to help people to dig into the text for that week in a more tangible, hands-on kind of way.
In our gospel reading for this morning, we catch a glimpse of Jesus in a very sassy mood. The pharisees come to him with death threats from Herod, but Jesus basically just brushes them off. He calls Herod a “fox” and tells them to say, “Look Herod, I don’t have time for you right now. I’ve got work to do. But hey, I’ve got an opening in three days, so if you still want to kill me, you can come on down to Jerusalem and do it then – because we all know that no prophet can be killed outside of Jerusalem, amirite?”
But his snarky comments are immediately followed by a tender, heartbroken lament: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” Despite his sarcastic remarks, we see in Jesus the image of God as a mother: a mother whose heart is breaking over the way her children have rejected her and turned away from her. God the mother has had it up to here with her wayward children, but she still loves them so much it hurts.
This past Saturday, I was sitting in a coffee shop working on my sermon for Sunday. I’m kind of a chatty person, as you’ve probably noticed, and easily distracted, and I ended up striking up a conversation with a woman sitting at a table near me. We’ll call her Danielle. It pretty quickly became clear to both Danielle and me that this was one of those conversations that God himself seemed to have arranged. Danielle had been looking for a new church home and was grateful to unexpectedly find herself in conversation with a pastor. And she shared with me some of the struggles that she has been facing recently.
She shared that her 23-year-old son – we’ll call him Tyson – is addicted to meth and that she and her husband had just taken him to a treatment center earlier that week. She talked about the pain she felt at seeing her son being slowly isolated from everyone else because of his addiction. She said that the other members of their family had already given up on Tyson – even his own father. He was angry at her for taking him to the treatment center, but she was worried that he was going to end up dead if he didn’t go. She talked about how hard it can be to love someone who is addicted, and how challenging it is to walk the line between loving someone and enabling them.
Our gospel reading for today is, objectively, kind of a weird story. The transfiguration is one of those moments in Jesus’ life that always seems mysterious to me and a bit beyond my comprehension. As best as I can understand it, Jesus walks up a mountain with some of his disciples, glows for a bit, has a brief conversation with a couple of ancient Old Testament prophets (as one does), and then they all walk back down the mountain together. It’s weird.
But, as strange as this story is, it’s got one of my favorite Peter moments in all of scripture. Peter has a very human reaction to Jesus’ transfiguration. When Jesus is revealed in all his heavenly glory and Moses and Elijah show up, Peter’s first reaction is, “Uhh, uhh…. tents! Yes, that’s it, we must build tents! One for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah…” And I love how Luke is like, “he did not know what he was saying.” And even God Almighty is like, “What are you talking about? Tents?? This is my son, my chosen. Shut up and listen to him!”
Christians around the world began their observation of Lent yesterday on Ash Wednesday. Lent is a season of repentance and return to God. It’s a season in which we confess that we have not lived up to being the people God created, redeemed, and called us to be. We have not loved our neighbor as ourselves. We have been neglectful in our care of creation. We have been selfish and have hardened our hearts to the suffering of the vulnerable around the world.
We read the words of the prophet Joel, who implored his people, “Return to the Lord your God, for God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” We are called to turn back to God with our whole heart, to experience God’s grace and love anew – not unlike the prodigal son returning home to his father’s joyous welcome.
Many of you have probably noticed that I have a couple of tattoos on my arm here. This one here was my very first tattoo; it’s probably hard to see from where you’re sitting, but the design is a rose sitting in the center of a cross. I got this tattoo the day after I turned in my candidacy paperwork to start the process of becoming an ordained pastor. It has a lot of meaning for me.
I took the inspiration for this image from my time out at Camp Carol Joy Holling, both as a camper and later as a counselor. There was a beautiful confessional rite that we would do sometimes, especially for our evening worship. We had this big, wooden cross that had a nail hammered into it so that the pointy end faced outward. And the way it worked was that everyone was given little slips of paper and invited to write their confession – whatever sins or troubles were on their heart – and then stick it up on the cross on that big nail. Then, once everyone’s confessions were on the cross, they would light the little bits of paper on fire. And as we watched everyone’s confessions go up in smoke – almost like incense to God – the edges of the papers curled inward and formed the shape of a flaming rose. It was beautiful, all ashy gray and fiery orange – such a powerful image.
Our gospel reading for this morning picks right up where we left off last Sunday. If you remember, last week, we saw Jesus just beginning his ministry in Galilee and making his public debut in his hometown, Nazareth. We heard the very first words that Jesus speaks as an adult in the gospel of Luke – and he reads these words from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
And at the beginning of our gospel text for today, we hear him say again, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” That’s a pretty bold claim! Like we talked about last Sunday, Jesus is laying out the scope of his mission: he has come to bring good news to the poor, to liberate captives and the oppressed, to give sight to the blind, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. And the people are all for it – Luke says that “all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth”
But then this story takes a really unexpected twist. Jesus predicts that the people will reject him and what he has to say. And sure enough, by the end of this story, he manages to make them so angry that they actually grab him and try to throw him off a cliff! What happened??
Many of you know that I was a music major in college at Nebraska Wesleyan – and as part of that, I got the chance to sing and play in a whole bunch of different music ensembles, including the university symphonic band. I played flute in the band for four and a half years. Now, there were a LOT of flute players in the band. We easily outnumbered many of the other sections, especially the percussion section. And every once in a while, we would play a piece that needed a lot more percussion players than it did flute players, so our director would make some of us switch.
I was second or third chair flute for most of my time in the band, so I usually didn’t get tapped to play percussion – but one time, we played this really unusual and just bizarre-sounding kind of modern piece of music, and I got sent to the back to the percussion section. The part I was given for this piece was to bow the vibraphone. Yes. I had to bow the vibraphone – I was just as confused about it as you look now, haha. Literally, I had a bow like you would use to play a violin or a cello, and while I pedaled the vibraphone, I had to run the bow along the edge of the right keys at just the right angle and it gave off this kind of weird, spooky, resonant sound.
You probably already guessed this, but I was really, really bad at it. I could not bow the vibraphone to save my life. And adding to my trouble, I never had any idea when I was supposed to play. I’d have rests for like 50 measures and then I’d have to play like two notes on the vibraphone. I mean, I can barely count to begin with, so to keep track of where we were over 50 measures of really weird-sounding music was basically impossible. So I just kind of went rogue and played it whenever I felt like it – whenever it seemed to me like, “Oh, this part could maybe use some vibraphone.” Half the time I couldn’t even actually get a sound out of it. It was pretty terrible. After we played that piece, I asked the director, “Please don’t ever make me do that again” – and I played flute in the band for the rest of my time there!
I watch a fair bit of Netflix when I’m at home, and one of my favorite shows to watch is the Great British Bake Off. Any other fans of the show here? It’s a great show – it’s shot in Britain, as you might have guessed. Twelve amateur bakers from around the country gather together and, over several weeks of baking challenges, the show’s judges narrow down their numbers until they’re left with one winner. It’s amazing to see the stuff they come up with – fantastic creations made with intricate combinations of flour, eggs, sugar, water, yeast, and all kinds of other baking ingredients. And what I find even more amazing about the show is how the judges evaluate all the different bakes. They’ll just look at something someone’s made, or maybe slice it open, and just by looking at it, they’ll say, “Oh, that needed 5 more minutes in the oven,” or “You should have added one more egg,” or “You should have added the sugar at such-and-such stage.” It’s amazing to watch. They’re like baking wizards. And it really underscores how every single component of that recipe is needed – it’s needed in the proper amount and at the proper time. When you do it wrong, it’s a mess, but when you get it right, these ordinary ingredients become something much greater than just the sum of their parts.
When I was in college, I struggled a lot with depression. It impacted my studies; I just felt really overwhelmed sometimes, and then I felt guilty because I wasn’t getting all the things done that I was supposed to be doing, including my coursework. I would know things had gotten really bad when I started actively avoiding my advisor. She was a lovely woman whom I admired very much – but when I was falling behind, I just couldn’t bear to bring myself to go talk to her, especially because I was usually doing particularly badly in her classes. I knew I should be doing better and I knew that she expected more from me – and I was just so afraid that she would think less of me.
But then something would happen: I would run into her unexpectedly or I would be required to schedule a meeting with my advisor for some reason, so I would see her. She’d call me into her office and every time, I braced myself, expecting to get a well-deserved chewing out or, worse, that she would just look at me with profound disappointment. But instead, each time, she was unfailingly kind and understanding. She listened to me and heard my feelings of anxiety and worthlessness and guilt and she helped me make a workable plan to get through the rest of the semester. She reminded me that I was more than the work I did or didn’t get done. I always left those meetings with her feeling better and freer, feeling like I’d gotten another chance to try again.
Today we celebrate the feast day of Epiphany. What comes to your mind when you think about what an epiphany is?
The word epiphany comes from ancient Greek and means something along the lines of a sudden appearing or revelation. An epiphany is often a sudden moment of insight, an “aha!” moment. In a moment of epiphany, things suddenly become clear, especially when before there has been darkness and doubt.
The Christian festival of Epiphany celebrates God’s revelation in the midst of darkness and doubt. Even though Epiphany marks the end of the Christmas season, it carries forward a lot of the same themes of Christmas. We continue to celebrate the incarnation of Christ – who is, in himself, the revealing of God in human flesh. On Christmas Eve, we read in Isaiah that “the people who walked in great darkness have seen a great light”; and today we read, “Arise; shine, for your light has come!” Epiphany is the revelation to all people that God faithfully keeps God’s promises.
In my sermon a few weeks ago, I shared a little bit about what Christmas was like with my family when I was growing up. To me, it was always a magical time. I told the story of how my brother and sister and I always had to wait at the top of the stairs with our mom while Dad went downstairs to “get his camera” – I still remember the thundering sound of our feet on those creaky old stairs with their ugly brown carpet as we raced down to see what “Santa” had brought us.
My parents always made Christmas special. My mom in particular had a way of making the holiday magical – it seemed like our house was always full of cutout Christmas cookies and felt Christmas crafts and the sound of Christmas carols. And on Christmas Day, we would all gather at my grandma’s house – a whole motley crew of cousins and aunts and uncles, all celebrating and feasting together. It was perfect.
Our gospel reading this morning contains one of the most famous – I’d even say infamous – texts in all of scripture. In this passage from Luke, right off the bat, we get the sense that something unusual is coming. This is a story about two women – the whole passage, all seventeen verses, details their conversation – and when you consider the time that it was written, it’s amazing that it was written down at all! Luke tells us that Mary traveled to the “house of Zechariah,” but Zechariah doesn’t even show up in this story. If you were here a couple of weeks ago, you can probably guess why that is! (Exactly right! Zechariah was stricken mute when Elizabeth’s pregnancy was announced). This story is about Elizabeth and Mary – not about Zechariah and not even about Joseph.
In this passage from Luke, Mary sings a song we could arguably call the very first Christmas carol. You have probably heard these words before. If you’re familiar with Holden Evening Prayer, then you have definitely sung these words before! This is the song that we call the Magnificat. Magnificat means “magnify” in Latin – it’s the first word of Mary’s song in Latin.
Last Sunday, as you might remember, we spent some time talking about the season of Advent. We talked about how Advent is intended to be a season of hopefulness and of joyful expectation. In retrospect, I realized that the sermon I preached last week might actually have been even more fitting to preach today! Today is Gaudete Sunday, from the Latin word for “rejoice.” It’s the Sunday of joy. Today we lit the rose candle in our advent wreath. Historically, Advent has been considered a kind of mini-Lent – a season of solemnity and fasting and penitence. And even though the church has moved more toward seeing this as a season of expectation and preparation, it’s still good to be reminded that we are waiting for something joyful: the coming of the kingdom of God, Christ’s reign of justice, peace, and love on earth.
Psalm 23 is an old favorite psalm for many of us. Of all the psalms it’s by far the most popular choice for funerals – and for good reason. The image of God as a shepherd leading us is very comforting. And the poetic reassurance that God is with us – even in the valley of the shadow of death – makes days like this one easier to bear.
But I think that Psalm 23 is a particularly fitting psalm for us to read today as we remember our dear sister Elaine – because, in many ways, Elaine perfectly embodied this psalm.
When I was a little girl growing up, the time leading up to Christmas was my favorite time of year. Like most kids, I was excited at the prospect of getting a long break from school, and most of all, I was excited to get presents! My family always had a very strict protocol about the proper time for opening presents. We waited until Christmas morning. My brother and sister and I would wake our parents up at an ungodly early hour and be told to go back to bed a few times before they finally got up. My dad would then shuffle downstairs to get his camera while the three of us waited with Mom at the top of the stairs, until Dad was ready for us to come down. I have no idea what all Dad was actually doing downstairs – but I do remember that it always took foreeeeeeever for him to give us the go-ahead to come down. Maybe it just seemed like an interminably long time because I was so small and impatient (as opposed to large and impatient, like I am now). But I vividly remember sitting at the top of that long, narrow staircase in my pajamas, waiting with my brother and sister, our little butts scooched right to the very edge of the top stair. I remember the electric feeling of excitement in my whole body, like a coiled up spring, just waiting to bounce down those stairs as fast as my little legs could go.
This waiting, this excitement and expectation, is what the season of Advent is all about. We are waiting with bated breath – not knowing yet what exactly we will find at the bottom of the stairs, but trusting that it will be marvellous and worth the wait.
Today the church celebrates the festival day of the Reign of Christ – or Christ the King Sunday, as it’s also known. Hopefully by now you’ve noticed that we’re also celebrating a wedding today! These are actually themes that go together very well. Today we celebrate that Christ is our one true ruler. We remember that our true citizenship is as citizens of his kingdom – we are all citizens of the kingdom here.
The kingdom of God is spoken of throughout scripture as a place where there is no more mourning or crying or pain, where there is no more death, where the poor and the lowly are lifted up, and where all creation lives in perfect harmony and love. And one of the most common images used in scripture to talk about the kingdom is the marriage feast.
Today, we celebrate the marriage feast of Joshua and Esperance. Today they make their vows of love and faithfulness to one another in the presence of this assembly. And the celebration of their marriage actually has a lot to teach all of us about God’s kingdom of love.
Once upon a time, there was a woman who woke up one morning, looked in the mirror, and noticed that she only had three hairs growing on her head. “Well,” said the woman to herself, “I think I’ll wear my hair in a braid today.” So she carefully braided the three hairs together, got dressed, and went out and had a wonderful day.
Our texts for today are full of chaos and trouble. There are times of anguish, conflicts with cosmic enemies, destruction, war, earthquakes, famine, and pain. These are texts that point us ahead toward the future unraveling of creation – the end of all things.
These seem like kind of jarring themes for us to be focusing on now. Right now, the rest of the world is gearing up for the bright season of Christmas – with candy canes and silver lanes already aglow! In contrast, the end of the Christian liturgical year – which actually ends next Sunday – is a bit darker and a lot more apocalyptic. As the days get shorter, we are preparing ourselves to begin a new year with the season of Advent. We are still waiting in the darkness for a light to shine.
I joined the Peace Corps when I was fresh out of college. I wanted to travel and see a different part of the world. And I also genuinely wanted to help others, to give some of the abundance of what I have received to other people.
What I didn’t expect about this experience was how much I would receive in return. Over the four years that I spent in the Dominican Republic, I got to meet lots of amazing people. And I found that, more often than not, the person receiving the generosity and help of others was me! I almost had to laugh one time when my community received a bunch of canned food from a ministry group that had come down to the island. I’m sure I probably thought, “Oh how nice that other people are also sending help to this poor community.” Imagine my surprise when members of the community showed up on my doorstep to give me food – because I lived alone and didn’t have any family in the community.
But I think their generosity was most fully on display when my dad and my aunt and uncle came down to visit. We started our visits at one end of the community and spent an entire day going from house to house until we reached my host family’s house at the other end. Every single place we went, a banquet was spread; we were offered coffee and pop and cookies and cakes and sweets. This community that had lovingly accepted me was so eager to welcome my family. But I knew what it must have cost them to offer these things – many of them offered us much more expensive treats than I knew they bought for themselves. It was humbling to receive such incredible hospitality.
I thought of my Dominican friends as I was reading through our texts for today. Today we read a couple of stories that are also about hospitality and about extreme generosity.
In our first reading, we follow Elijah to the town of Zarephath, where he meets a poor widow. Elijah asks her for water and she gives it to him. But when he asks her for bread, we learn that she is literally gathering sticks to go prepare a last meal for herself and her son before dying because they have so little left to eat. Elijah asks her again for something to eat and promises her, “thus says the Lord God, the jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.” This woman sees that Elijah is a messenger of God – and she trusts in God’s promise that God will provide what she needs. And God does indeed provide! With just her handful of meal and her little bit of oil, she and her son and Elijah are able to eat well for what may have been years! Immediately before this story, Elijah actually prophesied to King Ahab that there would be several years with no dew or rain! So through her act of faithful generosity, this woman goes from preparing for her own death and the death of her son to having renewed life and renewed hope. God saves the lives of three people through her meager offering. And her son’s life is actually saved again immediately following this story. After getting sick, her son dies and God, working through Elijah, raises him to life again. All throughout this story, God brings life and hope where before there had only been the certainty of death.
God is the giver of all good gifts. And as the widow discovered with Elijah – and as I discovered in the Peace Corps – when we faithfully respond to God’s call to give of ourselves and our possessions, it can be an opportunity for God to bless us even more richly. I know we’re veering dangerously close to prosperity gospel territory right now, but I promise that is not where this sermon is heading.
Giving deeply connects us with God and with other people. Like with my Dominican friends, our mutual generosity and hospitality built up strong friendships, even across cultural and language barriers. I mean, I don’t need to stand up here and tell you all about what it feels like to give of yourself to the people you care about. I watch you do it all the time! You visit the sick and the homebound and do service work in the community and share food with one another. And any time there’s a new illness or a death or some other tragedy, at least four or five different people reach out to me to make sure that I know about it, so that the people who need care from their pastor can receive it.
You are faithful givers. And like Elijah and the widow, you have seen that generous giving can lead to outcomes you didn’t even think were possible. I know that’s true – because I wouldn’t be here otherwise! St. John’s definitely falls into the small-but-mighty category of congregations. And I know that when you entered the call process you were looking for a part-time pastor, or to share a pastor with another congregation. But even in the midst of times of transition, and even with a relatively small member base, you continued to give – you continued to generously invest your time and your money and your presence in this community. And I am here – your full time pastor – because of what God did with your faithful offering.
God takes the things that we give in faith and makes amazing things happen – even if all we can offer is a handful of meal or a couple of copper coins. And when we give to the church, and the church gives to the synod, and the synod gives to churchwide, God grows and grows those gifts into something much larger than they ever could have been on their own. Our small gift can open us up and connect us with people all over the world. Generosity opens us up to the reality of other people’s lives and it invites us to be transformed by it, to receive even as we give.
That brings us to our gospel reading. It’s typical for us to read this passage as a story about a poor woman’s noble sacrifice, but that’s not actually how Jesus presents it. This story doesn’t end with a “go and do likewise.” If anything, it’s a cautionary tale. This is a story about a community that is failing to connect with others and to be transformed by their faithful giving.
Jesus has a lot of harsh words for the religious leaders and the wealthy people in this passage. It’s not like they aren’t being generous. They are making their offerings, just like the widow, but they’re missing something. They are oblivious to the need of a neighbor on their very doorstep. The gifts they give probably help keep the temple’s lights on, but they are not allowing that giving to transform their hearts or their lives or to connect them with other people. Jesus denounces them for being more interested in making themselves look good than in genuinely doing good.
Why does Jesus point out this whole little scenario? We might be tempted to think that this is another case of Jesus telling us that we need to sacrifice everything we own and become poor ourselves – kind of like how we often hear the story of the rich man we read a couple of weeks ago. But again, I don’t necessarily think that that’s what Jesus is asking us to do here. After all, we know that God is the giver of good gifts. God has generously given all things to all people, so that no one will be in need. God wants all of us to have enough.
So instead this story raises the question: why do so many people not have enough? If God has given all things to all people, why are some left with nothing but a couple of copper coins or a handful of meal to live on while others have an abundance to give from? Why do some congregations struggle so much to hire a single pastor while others can afford multiple staff people? Why is it that when we assemble the school kits and quilts and health kits every year we never have to wonder whether there will be enough people who need them? We already know there will be. How did things get so out of balance from the way God created them to be?
I think that faithful giving calls us to more than just distant, abstract giving like the wealthy people in our gospel story. It calls us to be truly invested in the lives of our siblings around the globe. It calls us to be charitable and also to wonder why there is so much need for our charity.
Faithful giving is about much more than just giving of our money or our stuff or our time. It asks that we be involved with our whole hearts and invested in the wellbeing of our neighbor, even when it means wrestling with difficult questions of justice. This is the kind of generosity that opens us up to transformation and connection with the whole family of God.
We can give with boldness and faith, trusting that God will provide. And we can live with the expectation that God – the giver of all good gifts – will continue to do wondrous things with all that we give.
When I was in seminary in Chicago, I took an intensive class with a small group of people from all different faith backgrounds. One of my classmates was finishing his studies to become a Catholic priest and a monk. He used to describe the monastery he was going to live in to us. It sounded beautiful, but the one thing that most stuck with me was his description of the communion rail around the table. They had a polished wooden railing – like a lot of sanctuaries do – that ran all the way around the chancel in a big semi-circle. All the brothers could fit around it together as they gathered for communion. Outside the sanctuary, on the other side of the chancel wall, the circle was continued in stone, and it came together to make one big ring around the table. On this side of the circle was the monastery’s cemetery. Every time they gathered for communion, this circle reminded the living brothers of the monastery that they were also gathered with the dead brothers of the monastery. And they remembered that no matter which side of the wall they were on, they were all part of the one, same community.
Many of you know that, before I moved to Schuyler, I spent a year living in Las Cruces, New Mexico, doing my final year internship at Peace Lutheran Church. Las Cruces is in the way south part of New Mexico, just north of El Paso, Texas, which makes it less than an hour from “old” Mexico. It was an awesome and eye-opening experience to get to live in the borderlands for a whole year.
One of the most important things I got to do at Peace during my year there was to help develop a refugee hospitality ministry. We welcomed some of the many, many people from Central America who have come to the US seeking safety from dangerous situations in their home countries. These folks presented themselves to Border Patrol for asylum, and after processing them – getting their information, contacting their sponsor, and giving them an ankle monitor and a court date – ICE actually would actually drop them off right at the door of the church. And we’d take it from there. Continue reading “Sermon: Blind Healing the Blind”→
Our gospel text for today seems to illustrate the old saying: There’s no such thing as a stupid question… but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots. James and John ask Jesus to let them sit by his side “in his glory,” and even Jesus is like, “buddy, I don’t think you really know what you’re asking.”
“Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
I think that this verse from Hebrews is a pretty accurate summary of all of our readings for today. From Amos’ dire prophetic warnings to Jesus’ disturbing conversation with the rich man, these are all very challenging texts. And like a sword, our gospel text for today cuts us open to our very core. Mark has been pulling no punches – we’ve been working our way through some very difficult passages together over the past few weeks, on hell and death and divorce, and the hits just keep on coming. Let me just say again for the record – I did not pick these texts!
This morning, we continue our journey through the gospel of Mark. We’ve been walking with Jesus and the disciples on the way to Jerusalem and the cross. And it seems like the closer we get, the harder Jesus’ teachings become. In the last few weeks, Jesus has told us we must be last of all and servant of all; he’s told us that we must lose our lives in order to find them; and just last week, he told us that if our eyes or hands or feet cause us to stumble, we should cut them off!
This is the Day 