Today's sermon

 For the first time since being at Trinity, Milton, I preached without a manuscript.

I used to do it a lot--but as I got older I decided I should 'write it down' so I wouldn't forget something.

But today I knew the lessons so well that I knew what I wanted to say.

It started like this: "Sometimes God says to us: 'Pay attention!'"

Then I told the story from Samuel where God speaks to Samuel four times.

The first three times, the boy runs to his master, Eli, and says, "Here I am for you called me."

The first two times Eli tells him he didn't call him, to go back and go to sleep.

The third time, Eli says, "if he calls you again, you shall say, 'Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.'"

That works.

The rest of the sermon was about God's call to us in the Psalm and in the Epistle.

Finally, in the Gospel from Mark, Jesus says, "The sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the sabbath."

He is telling us that religion is to enlighten us to be the hands and voice and ears and energy of God in the world--not to be limited by religion or made a servant to religion.

I also ranted for a while about the Evangelicals who try to shame people into 'obeying' the church rather than 'being' the church.

But I'll leave that out here.