HEARTFELT THANKS THIRD SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY YEAR B JANUARY 25, 2015 BECKY ROBBINS-PENNIMAN CHURCH OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD, DUNEDIN, FL

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1 HEARTFELT THANKS THIRD SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY YEAR B JANUARY 25, 2015 BECKY ROBBINS-PENNIMAN CHURCH OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD, DUNEDIN, FL COLLECT OF THE DAY Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works. 1 CHRONICLES 16:8 14 Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make his deeds known to all people! Sing to God, sing praises to him; dwell on all his wondrous works! Give praise to God s holy name! Let the hearts rejoice of all those seeking the Lord! Pursue the Lord and his strength; seek his face always! Remember the wondrous works he has done, all his marvelous works, and the justice he declared you who are the offspring of Israel, his servant, and the children of Jacob, his chosen ones. The Lord he is our God. His justice is everywhere throughout the whole world. PSALM 95:1 7A Come, let us sing to the Lord; let us shout for joy to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving and raise a loud shout to him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the caverns of the earth; the heights of the hills are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands have molded the dry land. Come, let us bow down, and bend the knee, and kneel before the lord, our Maker. For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. COLOSSIANS 1:3 6 We always give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you. We ve done this since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all God s people. You have this faith and love because of the hope reserved for you in heaven. You previously heard about this hope through the true message, the good news, which has come to you. This message has been bearing fruit and growing among you since the day you heard and truly understood God s grace, in the same way that it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world. MARK 1:14 20 After John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee announcing God s good news, saying, Now is the time! Here comes God s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news! As Jesus passed alongside the Galilee Sea, he saw two brothers, Simon and Andrew, throwing fishing nets into the sea, for they were fishermen. Come, follow me, he said, and I ll show you how to fish for people. Right away, they left their nets and followed him. After going a little farther, he saw James and John, Zebedee s sons, in their boat repairing the fishing nets. At that very moment he called them. They followed him, leaving their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired workers. SONG OF THE DAY: Let us Talents and Tongues Employ Copyright notices: Copyright notices: The Scripture text (except for the Psalm) is from the Common English Bible, CEB, Copyright 2010, 2011 by Common English Bible. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Unless otherwise noted, all other content is original and copyrighted by Becky Robbins- Penniman, All rights reserved.

2 2 I love words, especially their etymology their origins and pedigree. Today, the day of our Annual Meeting here at Good Shepherd, I want to focus on two words or phrases: Thanks and You re welcome. In English, thanks comes from German danke, and it means, literally grateful thought. 1 In Greek, the language of the New Testament, the word we translate as thanks is εὐχαριστos [eucharistos] which means good grace or, more fully: that which affords joy, pleasure, delight, sweetness, charm, loveliness, good will, loving-kindness, or favor. To GIVE thanks is to pull all that together and go one step further and bless the people and things involved name it and call it gracious and holy. Now you can see why we call Holy Communion Eucharist. In the Great Thanksgiving, God and humanity join together in a glorious celebration of grace and blessing and good will and delight in and with each other. Yowza! Now you know why we celebrate the Eucharist every single solitary week several times. This tying together of thanks and grace is shown in Spanish and Italian, where thanks is literally grace : gracias and grazie; in French, it s merci, mercy, the sister of grace. For me, all this meaning behind the simple word Thanks is something I tuck in the back of my head, so whenever I say thank you to someone, someone, anyone, anywhere, I m spreading grace and blessing. It is an act of guerilla warfare in a world where evil and corruption stalk. Every time we say or receive thanks, we are spreading beautiful, wonderful, divine grace, blessing and mercy all over the planet and people don t even realize what we re doing. Like I said, guerilla warfare... take THAT, despair and darkness! In our first two lessons today, the Chronicler and the psalmist are cheering us on, inspiring us all to be thankful to God for all God has done: full of gratitude and pleasure and grace and delight for God s gifts - life and creation and each other; justice and inclusion in his plans for goodness. Then, in the New Testament epistle, Paul and other church leaders talk about thanks but are on a new tack: they don t tell the Colossians to give thanks this time (though, to be sure, they do so plenty of other times). No, this time they give thanks to God FOR the Colossians, for their faith and for bearing fruit in the world. Paul and the leaders are expressing joy, pleasure, delight, sweetness, charm, loveliness, good will, loving-kindness, or favor, grace and blessing because of the Colossians and how they live out their faith, that is, how they bear fruit. 1 All English etymology from The Online Etymology Dictionary, Greek etymology is from the word studies at and greattreasures.org/gnt/

3 3 Today, we want to do the same thing at Good Shepherd: your church leaders and I want to step into Paul s shoes and give huge εὐχαριστos, buckets of grace, heartfelt thanks, expressing joy, pleasure, delight and all that great stuff to you, the people in this place, for how you live out your faith, how you bear fruit. Some of you are long-time members, faithful people who have been bearing fruit here for decades. Some of you, like me, are more recent a few years or months, maybe even just weeks. Some of you are here for the first time and wondering, Lordy, why did I have to come on the day of their Annual Meeting?! But each one of you, in your way, is a source of grace and delight for which the leaders and I give thanks to God. In a minute, I will get specific about this, especially in acknowledging and naming the fruit you bear here. But first, a word about the second phrase I mentioned: you re welcome. When I was in seminary, we had to take a class seriously, we did that taught us how to be good pastors. One day, the professor asked us how we would handle it when people said thank you to us. We pious seminary students raised our hands: One said, I d say, No, thank God!' Another said, I d tell them that the Holy Spirit is responsible for anything good I do. Others responded, I d say, Oh, it was nothing, or the new one in the last 20 years, I d say it was no problem. And so on. The professor kind of rolled his eyes and said, This isn t about YOU. This is about the person talking to you, and that they are grateful for something you ve done. If you push their thanks away, or argue with them about who is responsible or whether what you did was worth anything, you re not only questioning their judgment, you re teaching them not to give thanks. If someone says Thank you for something you in fact did, the only appropriate response is You re welcome! Now, welcome is the second word I want to look at. Again, in English, the origin is the German, willkomen and it means your arrival here gives me pleasure. It s exactly the same in Greek. Now, it s common for people to respond to thanks with it s nothing in English, or de nada in Spanish. But, remember what my professor said? When we tell people who thank us it s nothing, then we re telling them they are wrong! I m not telling anyone how to speak their own language, I m just saying that words matter.

4 I know that the fruit you all bear in this place is not nothing, it s definitely something, something pretty wonderful, and you need to know that I know it s good fruit.

4 4 I know that the fruit you all bear in this place is not nothing, it s definitely something, something pretty wonderful, and you need to know that I know it s good fruit. What I hope is that when your leaders and me thank you, you ll be really glad to hear that, and respond with You re welcome. That is, us coming to thank you for bearing good fruit gives you pleasure. Yes, pleasure! in church! Imagine! My last point before we get specific: in church, we bear fruit because we have all responded, on some level, to the same invitation Jesus gave to Andrew and Simon and James and John: Come, follow me. Followers of Jesus are those who have, in ways great and small, changed their hearts and lives to trust the good news, who are agents of God s kingdom right here and right now, who, through God working in and with us, bear the fruit that furthers God s project of healing all Creation. So, today, like Paul, we want to give thanks for your fruit. Please get out the hand cut-outs and a Sharpie you got at the door; you should each have your own hand cut-out, but you ll have to share the Sharpies. First, write your name on the palm of the hand. Next, we each are going to name 5 ways we bear fruit, how we act as agents of the Reign of God. One of them will be the same for all of us: on the thumb, please write WORSHIP. Worship is why the church exists. We are people who worship Becky the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Everything else flows from that. Now, on the other 4 fingers, you get to name your own fruit. Listen for just a minute to some ideas of what you can write: Agents of the Reign of God in this place bear fruit by doing things such as: Acolyting Daughters of the King Adult Education Directory preparation Altar Guild Discretionary Fund Team Audit Committee Dominican Republic Mission Bagzilla DreamWeavers prayer shawls and Bell Choir Quilted prayer lap robes Bible Challenge Endowment Board Book Club Episcopal Church Women Brotherhood of Good Shepherd Episcopal Relief and Development Building and Grounds Eucharistic Visitors Card Ministry FEAST fresh food drive Care Bags for Migrant Workers Finance Committee Carpentry projects Financially supporting the parish s Chalicists operating expenses or capital projects Choir and Music Program Sponsoring Flowers Clothes to Kids Flower Delivery Coffee Hour Hosts Fellowship [by going to coffee hour] Cold Weather Shelter Furniture Thrift Shop [donating, working or Counting Team shopping]

5 Gardening and Landscaping Grace House Heather Haven Bible Study Holiday Decorating Holy Week Vigil Honeymoon Island/Friends of the Island Parks Inviting people to Good Shepherd Lectors The Little Thrift Shop [donating, working or shopping] Live Nativity Mardi Gras Parade Meals of Hope Mease Manor Service Mommy & Me Program Name Tag Preparation Wearing a Name Tag Nursery Attendants Office Receptionist Pack A Sack Painting projects Parking Lot fundraisers Pastoral Care Personnel Committee Photographers 5 Pillowcase Dresses POSH FROCKS Policy & Procedures Team Praying for each other, those on our prayer list, the church, the world Random Acts of Flowers Reconciliation [by passing the peace] Rib Fest both serving or eating. Shepherding Team greeters and ushers Shepherd's Hands [Lend a Hand/Need a Hand] Shepherd's Village SHINE Medicare information Shrimp Boil serving and eating Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper Sunday School Toys for Tots collection Treasurer Trunk or Treat Undie Sunday and Sock it to Me Sunday UPARC volunteer Vestry Vestry Clerk Website Worship Planning & Assistance If you really feel moved to write more ways you bear fruit on the backs of the fingers, go ahead. Remember, EVERYONE has at least these five: Worship, praying for others, reconciling, and fellowship, because we do those four every single Sunday. The fifth is saying "Thank you" wherever you go an act of guerrilla warfare spreading grace and mercy in the world. I ll be everyone can put that one down, too. [The people fill out their hands] Now, I want you to find at least two other people you may have to move around and, one at a time, read the favorite fruit you bear, one from your fingers just one. When you re done, the other two say Thank you! and you say You re welcome! Then you listen to the next person, until all three of you have gone. [The people share their fruits] During the offering, please put the hands you wrote on in the baskets so we can bless them and make them part of the Eucharist, the Great Thanksgiving, just the same as the other gifts. And now, let me close by giving, on behalf of the church leaders and me, heartfelt thanks to you: you and the fruit you bear are amazing. So, to both God AND EACH OF YOU, from the bottom of my heart, I say THANK YOU. Now, what do you say? [YOU RE WELCOME!]

Mission & Ministry Directory

Please Take Me With You Mission & Ministry Directory February 2017 Exalt Engage Enlighten Enjoy Empower Enterprise 639 Edgewater Drive Dunedin, FL 34698 (727) 733-4125 www.churchgoodshepherd.org E-mail