First Presbyterian Church Of San Anselmo

God calls us to welcome all God's children.  As we welcome children, God welcomes all of us.

The Welcoming Body of Christ works for the freedom of all bodies so that, individually and together, we can all be all that we are created to be, in love. The body of Christ is not complete until all bodies are free.

In the rhythm of all our coming and going, in our gathering and going out and gathering again, Jesus says: “I am the bread of life – I will always welcome you in. Trust into me.” Moving forward together, we act in vulnerability and courage in the midst of the unknown; we experience authenticity; and we build trust.

With discomforting Scriptures, the Spirit unsettles us and challenges us to see and name how we participate in systems that oppress, to change, and to join God's work of welcome and justice.

The welcome we return to God must be as loving and liberating as the welcome we have received – a welcome that names and dismantles every system that holds anyone anywhere down, a welcome that leaves no one behind, a welcome that sets the whole world free. 

Jesus rejects inhospitality, welcomes everyone, and insists that we do too – through the spiritual practice of hospitality. The practice of hospitality invites us to approach every encounter (in our families, church, community, and nation) with a commitment to welcome:  What are the barriers here?  What does hospitality require of us?

We are how love shows up in the world – God’s love for the whole world, embodied in humanity, in us.

God has chosen to be Christ for the world, and in that choice, God continues to choose us again and again.

God calls us to be part of God's creation work; may we take the call.

God’s own life is life lived in community – in community and mutuality – reaching out to us, and inviting us and the whole world in. Our life in Christ is life in community, reaching out to the world with Christ's healing touch in our hands.

At Pentecost, in a moment of shared witnessing, we find the life of Christ alive in us. Moments of shared witnessing are not just about what the audience sees and hears; they are also about the story we then tell – the lives we live – the song we sing.

The Risen Christ Ascends with a blessing and an assignment for the here and now.  Here we go!

First John 4 offers us a topography of where love abides – how we locate ourselves and move around in love, as we abide in God, and God abides and us.

Stories about bread take us deep into the heart of the most basic human need.  And we find God there. In the bread we break, the Risen Christ makes us bread for the world.

We are Easter people, called and empowered by God through the Spirit of the Risen Christ to be bold, live out our faith, and challenge the powers that oppress.

In stories of sharing broiled fish and cinnamon toast, we see this: Resurrection is an everyday, embodied experience of the Risen Christ – embodied in us. Witnesses are those who see and go out and live what they have learned and loved, for the blessing of the whole world.  

Resurrection opens up the power of life to overturn death and its forces, and the choice to center ourselves in that reality. To live lives of resurrection hope that pour compassion and love and justice and forgiveness and healing into all the world’s wounds. 

In Resurrection, the Risen Christ blesses us with life, and invites us to go and tell the story with the lives we live. When the Gospel of Mark tells the story of Resurrection – in language spare and startling – “He is risen!  He’s gone ahead to meet you.  Just like he said.  Go and tell the others” – it invites us to write ourselves into the narrative.

In Palm Sunday, the cross, and the empty tomb, Jesus blesses the world by declaring a new reality with his body. This is what Jesus is doing on Palm Sunday, inviting us with his body, gathered with our bodies, to proclaim the Good News he has come to make real.

As we listen to the lament of Psalm 22, of Jesus from the cross, of the prayers of Celtic spirituality, and of our own world, we find our way to this blessing: God blesses us with tears to shed with each other, the presence of God in the midst of our suffering.