- A scene from John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men.
- Why are we here? We love one another!
- We love our ministry!
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
- lay down your life (ψυχὴν) psyche, for a friend
- Many COVID heroes
Italian Priest in Italy gave up his ventilator for a younger person.
- Laying down our Souls, psyche for one another.
- That is what we have been to each other.
- We are here because we Remain in God’s agape
- As God loves Jesus, Jesus loves us. Remain in that love.
μείνατε—Remain, to continue to be present
- God’s commands and Christ’s are one in the same, Love one another!
- Jesus’ joy is in us too that our joy can be complete! Child’s need of a parent’s love.
- χαρὰ—-cause or an occasion for joy
- We are his friends.
- A 2010 study conducted at the University of Wisconsin found that 28 percent of people who attend church weekly say they are "extremely satisfied" with life. Only 20 percent of non-attenders make a similar claim.
The heightened satisfaction, the researchers discovered, comes from participating in a religious congregation along with close friends, rather than as a private spiritual experience, the study found. Regular churchgoers who have no close friends in their congregation are no more likely to report being "very satisfied" with their lives than those who never attend church.
--Ellin Holohan, "Friends may be key to churchgoers' happiness,"Â Healthday.com, December 7, 2010. http://consumer.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=647040. Retrieved December 1, 2011.
- 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.
Call to Celebration
Source of All Being, inhabit this sacred space of communion.
Love abides where you reside.
How can we capture the essence of a love like yours?
It transcends human comprehension.
Love is not possessive.
You allow space for love to create and reincarnate over and over again.
Love does not know scarcity.
It is abundant.
Love nurtures all of creation.
It is a mother to the motherless. Amen
Offertory
Infinite Love, we are grateful to be surrounded by those who embrace us as we are. Without reservation, we offer our gifts to you knowing that our stewardship expands the ministry of your kin-dom. May it be so. Amen