Then the king will say to those at his right hand, "Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Matthew 25:34

I hope that none of you ever has the need to appear in court – the attorneys in our midst aside. But if you do, I would hope that the judge deciding the case is like the county Superior Court judge I met some years ago. The circumstances of the case were complex, with a number of different interested parties in the court room. The judge took in everything that was presented, asked some very pointed questions, was not taking any guff from anyone, seemed even-handed, with a dry sense of humor which he used to good advantage to create the best outcome for all concerned. With his bow tie and his bushy eye brows he reminded me of a cross between former NY Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Garrison Keillor. At the end of the day, I was grateful for the judge’s ruling that was compassionate and just, sorting out a tangled situation.

The imagery that Jesus uses in the extended metaphor of this morning’s Gospel is about sorting out, about judgment. In all of the parables and other teaching stories that we’ve been hearing this fall, Jesus has been preparing the disciples for the coming fulfillment of the Kingdom of God. That reign of God on earth as it is in heaven is inaugurated with Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension, and lived out and spread in and through the lives of all who have followed him ever since. Christ’s return in glory to our world will be the final event which will draw God’s kingdom together, the consummation of God’s purpose for God’s Creation.
Judgment, sorting out, making things just and good and right are part of God’s Kingdom, part of what we look for in Christ’ return, a major Advent theme. We long for God to set our world to rights, to sort us out, to have the world reflect the goodness and justice of God. That is part of what we look for and pray for in this Advent time.
And so we have this metaphor, this extended word-picture, of judgment and sorting out: the king with all the nations, all the people of the world gathered before him, sorting them – just as a shepherd sorts sheep and goats from each other at the end of the grazing day. How will the king decide? By the way the people have acted toward one another, have cared for one another – especially “the least of these.” That is what the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures have always called God’s People to – to care for the sick, the widow, the orphan, the poor, the stranger and sojourner in our midst. It is the standard of behavior that Jesus expects of his followers; all we who have been baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection and are now his brothers and sisters; it is a family trait. And caring for the least of these is what God looks for and hopes to find even in the hearts and lives of those who don’t claim to follow Jesus, at least not in any formal way. God loves each person that he has made – tenderly, passionately, sacrificially, with joy and delight - and calls us to do the same, to the best of our ability.
But that kind of love and compassion is not what the forces of the world values or rewards. The powers-that-be decry weakness, vulnerability, humility, kindness, generosity, sacrifice, beauty of soul, anything that is not utilitarian; that has been true throughout human history.
For Jesus to talk about judgment in this way is not to separate faith from works, not to say that believing and doing are two different things. Jesus teaches and incarnates a life centered on God and God’s reign, a seamless garment of faith and works. We know we can’t buy our way into God’s good graces; we are already there. Jesus was born into human life because of God’s great and endless love for us. That love is a gift, and it is also a responsibility. When our life is centered on God we are focused in worship and prayer and we are drawn to express and enact that faith and love in caring for others, for the Creation, for this world God has made.
This is hard work – make no mistake about it. It is one thing to make a declaration of our love or concern for those who are impoverished, or incarcerated, or ostracized, or ill. It is quite another thing to take the time to know people who are hungry, thirsty, in need of clothing, in prison, who are sick, who are strangers. Dorothy Day, one of the founders of the Catholic Worker Movement in 1930s which operates hospitality houses to care for destitute and broken men and women, often had her patience sorely tried by volunteers who came to work at the houses: well-meaning people with romantic views of what they could do to help the poor, but then complained when they themselves got tired or stressed or dirty or hungry. Dorothy knew deep in her soul that when she was providing a bed for a homeless person, serving food to someone who was hungry, visiting a person in prison, sharing their condition, their reality on some level, that she was serving Christ, repairing God’s world, and making his Kingdom a reality; but it was face-to-face, skin-to-skin, and it was supported and infused with prayer, worship, and sacrament – and no small dose of taking the measure of her volunteers and herself before God.
This vision, this image of Jesus as the King who judges and sorts out the world is important for each of us to grasp, or (better yet) be grasped by. It challenges us to take stock, to look within, to examine our schedule or calendar, and then look outside ourselves and widen our circle until we can see and know people who are hungry, thirty, naked, strangers, sick, in prison. When we do that, we will see and know and love Jesus in a whole new way – as the King who was, and is, and is to come, and as the homeless person sleeping on the sidewalk. As John Chrysostom, the Archbishop of Constantinople in the late fourth century said, “If you can’t find Christ in the beggar at the church door, you will not find him in the chalice.”

Come, Lord Jesus, and be our Judge, and redeem us with an outstretched arm. Amen.

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
First Sunday before Advent
November 26, 2017

His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.' Matthew 25:21

Have you ever been given something of great value? It might be a beautiful piece of jewelry, or a lovely painting. It might be a rare book, or the trip of a lifetime. You might even have received a financial inheritance or a house. Or the gift could have been something that was harder to put a dollar amount on, but was no less precious – a family photograph, your great-grandfather’s tools, the cast-iron frying pan your grandmother always used to make Sunday dinner, a chance at an education, a friendship, the way you were taught to throw a baseball or cast a fishing rod and the person who taught you, the stories of those dear to you through the generations, your faith. We all have things we value because of what they represent, what they mean to us, and in many cases, cannot be assigned a dollar amount.

Sometimes when we receive such a gift, we recognize that we are only keepers of the gift, stewards, that it does not ultimately belong to us, but to our family, or to the ages, or to someone else whose interest and care would show that they are suited to receive it. That understanding is the back story of Jesus’ parable today.

Like many story tellers in the oral tradition he uses a multiplier of three. The master has three servants or slaves. Each slave is given a certain amount of money. The master goes away on a long journey without leaving any particular instructions about what to do with the funds, but does return to settle accounts eventually. The first slave has doubled the value of his master’s money. The second slave has also doubled that value of the funds. But the third slave has done nothing, and indeed, has been frozen into inaction by fear. And the third slave is judged very harshly by the master.

In thinking about this parable, we in the English-speaking world sometimes get a little tripped up over the use of the word talent, because in English it’s all about personal skills and aptitudes, rather than money. But in first-century Palestine a talent was a unit of money, equal to fifteen years of a laborer’s wages. So, these are huge amounts of cash that Jesus is describing. We might even wonder why the slaves didn’t just take the money and run?

We need to hear this parable in the looming shadow of the Cross, because in the chronology of Matthew’s Gospel, we are hours away from the Last Supper, and Jesus’ betrayal by Judas, and his agony in the Garden before his arrest, and his trial and Crucifixion. And yet, Jesus continues to take things apart for the disciples, and put them back together again in new and strange ways.

He tells this parable as a critique against the scribes and the religious teachers and the Pharisees who had been given the great gift of God’s Law and the Temple – signs and vehicles of God’s life-giving presence for God’s People, and (through them) to the rest of the world. And yet, they had taken what was meant to be holy, filled with joy and life, and turned it into a rigid system of rules and punishments, which pushed anyone who could not keep them further away from God than ever. The first two slaves who took what had been entrusted to them and developed it are the disciples – all those willing to take a risk on Jesus, to trust that he was the One sent from God to bring God’s purposes to fulfillment, to join Jesus in being a light to the world.

But for the third slave the parable speaks of harsh and dire punishment, being thrown into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is where we may start to get a little nervous, wondering how we might be judged, or where the Jesus of love and compassion has disappeared to. We always have to hear and read these apocalyptic parables in the larger context of everything else we know of God, “the maker and lover of the world” who sent Jesus to embody and show us that love. Judgement, then, becomes a theme in the whole symphony; a strong color in the whole painting; but never the last word.

So, what about us, we who follow Jesus? In what ways is the Lord taking things apart and putting them back together again for us in strange new ways? We know that the relationship between Church and society is not what it used to be. We know that our culture keeps pushing faith and the public practice of it further and further to the margins – something very optional to be pursued on your own time, if you can find the time. Sports, work, school events, family events, business travel, all happen on Sundays now, as well as Saturdays – all throughout the weekend. Churches have lost the un-official protected status that we once had, and for many people an hour of quiet and peace with parents and children and spouses all being in one place at the same time may only be possible on Sunday mornings – which doesn’t include church.

There’s also a disinterest, maybe even a distrust for many people, of human community outside one’s own family. Community is hard, it takes investment of time and effort and a willingness to show up and be a least a little vulnerable with one another; and we are a society that has become so fearful of vulnerability for so many reasons.

All of these influences, among so many others, have changed the context for our faith. We are not in the same place we used to be. Our church and our society are not the same as they were for our parents and grandparents. There is much to lament about that, and there is also much to be grateful for. As a woman, I could not have been ordained as a priest fifty years ago, as one example.
So here we are, in a new spiritual and cultural landscape, a fresh opportunity to live and share the message of God’s love and care for the world and its people. It’s a chance to practice the Way of Jesus with greater clarity than we may have had in the past when being (at least a nominal) Christian in America was not so challenging, to share with Jesus in being the light of the world.

Every Sunday we are sent forth in peace to love and serve the Lord. Those are not empty words. We all have a mission from God, and that mission requires something of us. It requires courage, humility, honesty about what it’s like to be human. It requires listening to God and others – real listening, not formulating your answer or argument in your head while the other person speaks. It requires hope, and joy, and trust. Like the first two servants in the parable, we have to use our faith to create more faith – in ourselves and to offer it to others. It’s no good burying our trust and love for God in the ground and hope that others will come along and find it.

We don’t know what the outcome will be – who might receive what we have to offer - and we can’t do it alone, but we don’t go empty-handed. We have faith, we have Scripture – the words of life, we have New Life in Christ, we have each other, and we have the Holy Spirit to go before us like a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire. God is calling us, each in our own way, to be light-bearers and Good News-sharers in a world which needs the Lord so badly.

Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, go with us and before us, for the day is at hand and the evening is not far behind; be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in Scripture, in the breaking of bread, and in the hearts of those we meet each day. Grant this for the sake of your love.  Amen. (adptd. from BCP)

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Second Sunday before Advent
November 19, 2017

[Jesus said to the disciples,] "Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom…. but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. Matthew 25:1, 4

Almost every clergy person and church organist I know has his or her favorite awful wedding story. Some of them are quite funny. Others make your head hurt. Sometimes members of the wedding party, or an over-bearing relative, or a professional photographer who acts like the service is just a stage set for his stunning photos, or (God help us) a secular wedding planner who treats clergy and musicians like the hired help at her command, do things that show they have no clue and no respect for the sacred and spiritual nature of the service. Probably the most common bad manners at weddings are when the bridal party arrives late – very late, and the organist has played nearly a whole recital, and recycled her music several times, leaving the guests in a seemingly endless holding pattern, and the priest and groom wondering if the bride has bolted.

The parable Jesus tells this morning is about bridesmaids waiting for the arrival of the bridegroom at a wedding feast. A first-century Jewish wedding had customs that are different from ours today, but not so different that we don’t get the picture that Jesus is painting. The bridesmaids – the young, unmarried girls – were supposed to be waiting outside, in the lobby, for the groom to welcome him to the wedding reception. They waited, and they waited, and the groom was seriously delayed – enough that the girls all fell asleep. When they are finally wakened by hearing the groom on his way (maybe the best man texted them?), half of the bridesmaids had no more fuel for their oil lamps and ran off to the oil-dealers to stock-up. But while they were gone, the groom arrived and proceeded into the wedding feast with the wise and prepared bridesmaids, leaving the others shut out of the party.

There are a few things to remember here. First of all, this parable has lots of heightened imagery and rhetorical flourishes that immediately move us beyond any real-world wedding. A second point is that wedding imagery was used many, many times throughout the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) to describe the relationship between God and God’s People. Theirs was to be a relationship of love, devotion, and joy.

The final perspective to keep in mind is that Jesus is telling this parable to his disciples, privately. For the last six weeks (with the exception of last Sunday) every Gospel reading we have had has come from those few days in Jesus life between his entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and the Last Supper, most of his time teaching in the Temple, the holiest site in all Judaism. But now Jesus and the disciples accompanying him had left the Temple and withdrawn to the Mount of Olives just outside the city. And the disciples had asked him when it was that the Temple would be destroyed, and when Jesus would come into his own as the rightful sovereign of God’s world, and when would be the end of the present age of human rule – pagan and Roman, violent, corrupt and foolish in its rejection of God’s ways and God’s claim on the life of created order. Jesus answered their question in a number of symbolic stories and sayings, including this parable.

What should we hear in Jesus’ instruction? What is the take-away for us, nearly twenty-one centuries later?

Those who wait in attendance on the Lord Jesus – that is, those who love and follow him – need to be ready for the fact that God’s time is not our time. Our expectations and desires about the accomplishment of the Lord’s purpose do not and will not always match up with God’s way of doing things. Jesus told the disciples that the fulfillment of God’s plan (the wedding feast) might well take longer than they expected or wanted, but that they should be ready at any point to spring into action and welcome their Lord (the groom) with joy, prepared to move ahead with God, and not be left outside the proverbially door because we got complacent, or inattentive, or gut thought that we’d have plenty of time. The oil in our lamps, our spiritual fuel, needs continually re-filling so that we can be ready when God says, “Let’s go.”

Of course, there is a whole question here about the return of Christ – how, when, what will it be like – and most of that we will have to leave aside for now. But it is important to remember that the Lord’s return is an article of our faith. We proclaim it in the Creed every week: “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” As Christians we know that heaven and earth are intimately bound up together, and that nothing that God has made will ever be lost to God. And so we look forward to Christ’s return with eagerness, anticipation, and joy.

But we can get weary, and spiritually sleepy and sluggish, and oh so tired of waiting. Sometimes that causes us to give up, to say that life will never follow God’s pattern, other times we actively neglect our souls and the Holy Spirit’s life within us, and in other cases we lose interest and wander away – our attention grabbed by too many shiny objects that make all sorts of glittering but false promises.

So here we are, in the 21st century A.D. – anno domini, the year of our Lord – and where is he? We are getting weary of waiting! And many of us probably look at the world around us and say, “Anytime, Lord. The world surely needs you now.” But if we are faithful, we wait – not withdrawing from the world in a sulk, not cooling our heels in the corner. We wait, and watch; our sight enlightened by the oil of the Holy Spirit who says that God keeps God’s promises. We may not be ready for the full banquet, but we get a foretaste of it – an appetizer, if you will – God’s Eucharistic feast. We wait and work – not for Christ to rescue us – but to prepare the world in goodness and wholeness and justice to be ready to receive its true Lord and Sovereign.

And what keeps us from getting weary and giving up? It is through our prayer, our dwelling in God’s Word, our praise, our gathering together as a community and in smaller groups to encourage one another, to support one another, to feed one another, to fill one another’s lamps with the power of the Spirit’s hope and joy and strength. We live in the in-between time; between Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, and his return to bring God’s purposes to fruition in all God’s glory. We have a role to play in the redemption of the world, and God’s counting on us. Let us remain ready, watchful, and prepared. The best is yet to come.

Let us pray.
Dear Lord, help us to put aside the distractions of this world’s many gods, the things that weary and weigh us down. May the flame of your Holy Spirit burn bright within us, that we may be a light for others, and stand ready to greet you with joy. Amen.

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
November 12, 2017

Jesus said: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:3

This past Monday I started an exercise challenge called Planks-giving. I’m part of a group of thirty-two people from many different places in the US. Every day between now and November 23 we will all practice the exercise move called planking, and each day add a little extra time until, at the end, we’ve worked up to holding a plank for a minute and ten seconds in three different positions. We all check in with each other every day via a Facebook group. The other part of the challenge is to post something each day for which we give thanks – hence the catchy “Planks-giving” name.

In real life, I only know three of the people in the group, but that does not stop me from appreciating their support and encouragement, offering my own, and getting a few tips and reminders from the group – either about the exercise or about gratitude, although connecting with them in person and in real time would be much better.

In a number of ways, this on-line group has parallels to the Communion of Saints, whom we celebrate today. The Communion of Saints is made up of all those who have gone before us in the faith; all those who have loved, followed, worshiped, and served Christ in this life, have died, and now live in God’s eternal presence. Some of them are people we know – from Scripture, from Church history, from our own personal lives. To some of them we have attached the formal title “saint.”

You only have to look around at the church walls to see the symbols of some of those named saints, the Twelve Apostles: Peter and his brother Andrew, James and John the sons of Zebedee, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon, and Matthias. You may also have your favorite saint from history, who may or may not have the title “saint”: Mary, the mother of our Lord; Margaret, queen of Scotland; John Donne, the Anglican priest and poet; Martin Luther King, jr., Baptist preacher and civil rights leader; Theresa of Avila, sixteenth-century Spanish nun and mystic; John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin and the patron saint of the Community of St. John Baptist in Mendham. And then there are those you know personally – a grandparent, a teacher, someone whose Christian faith and life are a profound example for you. And of course, there are all those who names are now known to God alone.

In this community of the sanctified, the holy ones, we remember and give thanks for their life and witness to Christ, and we covet their prayers on our behalf. From them we can take inspiration, and encouragement for the Christian life – a much greater and more important relationship than the one I have with my Facebook exercise group, but they share some similarities and parallels.

What is it you need to be a more faithful follower of Jesus? Do you need courage? Do you need wisdom, or understanding? Do you need strength, or patience, or compassion? Do you need healing, or sobriety, or persistence, grounding in truth, or joy? All of these are part of the pattern of holy living, and we can look to the examples and stories of the saints to learn how they met these challenges. And if there is a particular saint you feel drawn to, almost as a mentor, you can ask them to pray with you to God for what it is you most need.

It’s important to be clear about the difference between what we need and what we want. We want many things – some good for us, some not so good for us. We can and should be honest and transparent with God about all of it, but our prayer will be much more satisfying and effective if what we are asking for is something we really need: food, clothing, shelter, work, friendship, love, health, rest, connection with God and our fellow human beings. God made us with these needs, and Jesus taught us to pray for them, our daily bread – and so we should.

But the summary of Jesus’ teaching that we call the Sermon on the Mount begins with “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” These Beatitudes, these states of blessing in nine different circumstances, are all about what it means to live a Christian life, and are the character traits and faith traits Jesus wants us to work on and develop. These are also what we are to pray for: to be poor in spirit, to be open to grief and mourning, to be humble and meek, meek, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to be merciful, to be pure in heart, to be a peacemakers, to be willing to be persecuted for righteousness' sake, to not lose heart when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on Jesus’ account because when that happens you know you are standing alongside the saints and prophets.

This is all so different from what the world tells us we should desire, and long for, and strive for. The world prizes status, acquisition, the raw exercise of power that is often increasingly violent, being the center of attention, wealth for its own sake, cunningness, sex not as a gift of God but as unbridled desire, an attractiveness that has nothing to do with character or inner beauty. To face this each day, and to stand against it is often hard, and wearing, and so we need the prayers and witness of the saints – those in God’s realm we call heaven, and those who walk this way with us here and now.

The African proverb says that it takes a village to raise a child. It takes a community of faith, the Communion of Saints, to help us follow Jesus each and every day as we pray for and with one another to be faithful witnesses to the way, the truth, and the life into which we were baptized.

To God be the glory. Alleluia. Amen.

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
All Saints’ Sunday
November 5, 2017

A religious lawyer asked Jesus a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ Matthew 22:35-36
 
In the wider world of Protestant Christians – and especially for our Lutheran brothers and sisters – today, the last Sunday in October, is an important day: Reformation Sunday. It marks the day (actually October 31) that Martin Luther tacked to the Wittenbug town notice board, in preparation for his university lecture, his list of 95 points of disputation with Church teaching and practice. This one act all by itself did not create the great Reformation of the Church in Europe in the 16th century, but the public conversation and positioning that came out of this event was the catalyst that moved Reform past the point of no return. And this year is the 500th anniversary.

In our Anglican tradition the Reformation took a different shape and tenor than it did on the Continent, but all Churches born of that movement shared some basic core commitments:

• That the Bible should be accessible to all people – lay, as well as ordained – by being translated into their language.
• That the Holy Spirit can and does speak directly through the words of Scripture to any faithful Christian.
• That the Church’s worship should follow a Biblical pattern, as close to the New Testament experience as possible, at least as far as the Reformers had good knowledge of early Church practice.
• And that the Holy Spirit speaks to and through ordinary Christians for the renewal of the Church and for the good of the world – even if that means being disruptive at times.

At the heart of the Reformation was a desire to connect with what were understood to be core values and practices that had been lost or obscured by the institution of the Church over the centuries.

What we know now, 500 years later, is that some of their historical, and liturgical, and Biblical scholarship was a little off; and some of the concerns that seemed vital for 16th century people are no longer topics for discussion. But the core principles remain, and the Holy Spirit continues to enliven and renew the Body of Christ through the prayer, Scripture reading, public worship, and faithful living of ordinary followers of Jesus.

This morning’s Gospel passage takes us to the very heart of Jesus’ teaching, right to the core values and practices and truth. 
Jesus has been approached by a scholar of the religious Law. He was part of the Pharisee sect, and they had heard that their great rivals in early first century Judaism, the Sadducees, had tried to publicly stump Jesus and show him up, but he had turned the tables and silenced them. I think the Pharisees were then hoping to gain the upper hand in the same game by asking Jesus which commandment in the Jewish Law was the greatest.

It was meant to be a question with no right answer; faithful Jews considered that all 613 points of the Law constituted the whole religious Law, and the whole Law must be kept. But as we have seen over and over in this portion of Matthew’s Gospel that            we have been reading this fall, Jesus’ wisdom and groundedness in God’s perspective enables him to move right to the heart of the matter, and not get stuck in other people’s agendas.

Jesus says that the most important commandment is to love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. He doesn’t say believe, or fear, or obey – but love God with your whole being. It’s a reflection and a response to God’s love for us, always there ahead of us, welcoming us in – ready to heal us, hold us, gives rest, purpose, meaning, direction, reproof, and forgiveness. But love is not just a feeling, a sentiment. Loving God is an active trust, centeredness, and loyalty to the Lord.

Jesus goes on to say that the second most important commandment is to love our neighbor in the same way we love ourselves. He doesn’t say tolerate your neighbor, or have warm feelings toward them, or put up with them, or separate yourself from them – I do my thing and you do yours. Loving our neighbor means seeing their value and seeking their well-being as much as you seek your own. And, of course, Jesus is saying that we are to love and care for ourselves. This is the core of what God requires of us – to love God, and to love our neighbor.

Is this hard to do? Sometimes it seems easy and flows naturally; but just as often it seems very hard. And yet, we know that we can do all things through Christ who gives us the strength to do them. It is a life-long project, a continual reform of life. As we keep loving God and neighbor, as we all practice this, as all Christians practice this, our actions, our practice are like the stones cast into the pond which ripple out far beyond us – in ways small and large. Each one of us will have our own ways of loving God, and our own ways of loving our neighbor; that’s a good thing because no one of us has the whole picture, and the world needs all our efforts together.

But the core value, practice, and truth that Jesus calls us to is the same, and when we live and move and have our being in that core place with Jesus we will be refreshed, and reformed continually, and be agents of reform and refreshment for God’s world.

Let us pray.
Grant, Lord God, to all who have been baptized into the
death and resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ, that, as we
have put away the old life of sin, so we may be renewed in the
spirit of our minds, and live in righteousness and true holiness
by loving you and our neighbor; through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen. ~ BCP, p. 252 edtd.

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
October 29, 2017