Meanwhile, someone “sowed good seed in his field, but while everybody was asleep an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest.”

Jesus explained this to his disciples when they came to him and asked him about the weeds in the field. Note they did not ask him to explain the wheat along with the weeds. In their minds the wheat is normal. It is the weeds that throw them. Where you put your focus is important. Jesus backs up and starts with the sower. “The one who sows is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom.” So far, so good. God in Christ plants and nurtures good seed. But then an enemy sows weeds that are the children of the evil one, and its hard to tell them from the wheat!

The crowds who first heard the parable would have shook their heads at the householder saying to leave the weeds alone. They likely would have understood the weeds to be darnel, which is a plant that looks like wheat, that hides out in wheat, but that is poisons in the end. Farmers in Jesus’ day would uproot it when they found it, so they did not risk having it get mixed into the wheat at harvest time. The crowds would hear Jesus saying that the householder does not want to take a chance on pulling up any of the good wheat as taking too much risk to protect a too little of the good wheat. But this is a parable. Jesus is saying look at the field. The wheat and the weeds do not always look that different. Are you sure you can tell the difference?

I heard a story of a woman named Solitaire. (1) She was born in the 1960’s to hippie parents and named after a character in a James Bond novel. In 1985, a few months after graduating from high school, Solitaire had a stroke. Her mother rushed her to the hospital. But instead of receiving medical attention, the nursing staff accused her of being on drugs. Whether it was because of her name or her age, she “looked” like bad seed to them. While the staff argued with Solitaire’s mother, the young woman collapsed and went into a coma. When she came out of it three days later, the doctors admitted that she had a stroke, but the neurologist treating her was convinced that she had taken something to cause the stroke. When her toxicology screen came back clean, the neurologist accused her of being on birth control pills, because in some younger women birth control pills can cause blood clots. Solitaire was feeling terrified and too weak to defend herself.

At this point Sister Maura, the principal of the Catholic high school Solitaire had attended, walked in the door. Solitaire describes Sister Maura as a big woman with a deep, commanding voice and a very strong presence. Sister Maura walked into the hospital room, took a look at the situation and started yelling. She backed the neurologist up against a wall, grabbed his white coat collar and made it clear that her student wouldn't be abused under her watch. After a few minutes the doctor muttered something, slumped back against the wall, and then left the room very quickly. Then Sister Maura quietly turned around, sat down in a chair next to the bed, took out a rosary and began to pray. After that the staff treated Solitaire with more respect, like a patient instead of a suspect.

Solitaire looked like a weed. In reality, she was a tender wheat sprout. Fortunately, Sister Maura made sure she was allowed to continue growing.

Because this parable is interpreted by Jesus for the disciples, we often think of it as referring to the church. Can you look at the person next to you and say who is wheat and who is weed? That by the way is one of the reasons we have the passing of the peace. More than blessing our friends, it is an ancient ritual for blessing even those we don’t like. But Jesus says the parable is bigger even than the church. Jesus says the field is the world. The admonishment to not act judgmentally toward others extends to everyone inside and outside of these walls. Who can you think of that feels like they are just taking up space in the garden of life? Leave the judgment up to God. It is not your job. To save the world or to save the church is a gift of God’s grace and mercy.

Because I cannot resist a good story, I have another parable of the wheat and the weeds for you from Barbara Brown Taylor.

One afternoon in the middle of the growing season, a bunch of farmhands decided to surprise their boss and weed his favorite wheat field. No sooner had they begun to work, however, than they began to argue—first about which of the wheat-looking things were weeds and then about the rest of the weeds. Did the Queen Anne’s lace pose a real threat to the wheat, or could it stay for decoration? And the blackberries? They would be ripe in just a week or two, but they were, after all, weeds—or were they? And the honeysuckle—it seemed a shame to pull up anything that smelled so sweet.

About the time they had gotten around to debating the purple asters, the boss showed up and ordered them out of his field. Dejected, they did as they were told. Back at the barn he took their machetes away from them, poured them some lemonade, and made them sit down where they could watch the way the light moved across the field. At first, all they could see were the weeds and what a messy field it was, what a discredit to them and their profession, but as the summer wore on they marveled at the profusion of growth—tall wheat surrounded by tall goldenrod, ragweed, and brown-eyed Susans. The tares and the poison ivy flourished alongside the Cherokee roses and the milkweed, and it was a mess, but a glorious mess, and when it had all bloomed and ripened and gone to seed the reapers came.
​
Carefully, gently, expertly, they gathered the wheat and made the rest into bricks for the oven where the bread was baked. And the fire that the weeds made was excellent, and the flour that the wheat made was excellent, and when the harvest was over the owner called them all together—the farmhands, the reapers, and all the neighbors—and broke bread with them, bread that was the final distillation of that whole messy, gorgeous, mixed-up field, and they all agreed that it was like no bread any of them had ever tasted before and that it was very, very good. Let those who have ears to hear, hear. (2)

1 Autumn Barnes, Too weak to advocate for herself, a young woman is saved by a nun Heard on All Things Considered. https://www.npr.org/2026/07/15/nx-s1-5891054/too-weak-to-advocate-for-herself-young-woman-saved-by-nun accessed 7/16/26.
2 Taylor, Barbara Brown. The Seeds of Heaven: Sermons on the Gospel of Matthew (pp. 49-50). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.

That is the beauty we encounter in the Isaiah text. That is why it is one of my very favorite passages. God announces, “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” As we go through life, we scatter seeds. In terms of being God’s word, it is easiest for us to think of these seeds as the words we share that we learn from the Scriptures. God does not make what is meant by the word so limited. All creation gets involved. God says, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,” and also “For you shall go out in joy and be
led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap there hands.” All of creation gets involved. The rain and the snow water the earth. The trees burst out in green, the mountains and the hills burst out in song. How that happens I am not sure, and I do hope it is a little less extravagant than when Mt St. Helens exploded.
When it comes to people, in this same Isaiah passage God says, “Let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them.” And a little further on, “Thus says the Lord: Maintain justice, and so what is right, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance will be revealed.” That all sounds high and lofty, and I believe, it is only the beginning. There are all the little things, like rain and snow that simply watering the earth. People do simple things that carry the creative power of God’s word at work in the world. There is the woman sitting by the stage weaving a simple banner, the father making lunches for kids before leaving for work, the teacher saying the same thing to the same students for the fiftieth time this year and hoping that this time it will sink in, the firefighter cleaning the truck between calls, the quilters gathering on Tuesday morning to sew for others and to check in with each other, the elder volunteering at the food bank. These are all ways that God’s word goes out, and it will not return empty.
Actions small and great are like sowing seed of goodness in the world. Jesus tells the parable of the sower who went out to sow to the crowds, and then later he interprets it to the disciples as about the different types of soil. But what about the sower? And what about the seeds? We can find ourselves in many different places in this parable.
In the parable Jesus talks about what happens to the sower and the seed. We only know Jesus is also talking about people as soil because he interprets the parable later that day. He interprets it for the disciples, who are the ones who are going to be sent out to spread the word. Is he telling the disciples the same thing that God spoke through Isaiah? The word will be sent out, and you may not see the results. After all, we all know that plants do not grow fast enough for you to see as you sit there and stare at them, but they will grow fast enough to accomplish what God intends. Are you the sower and you need to hear that it is your job to scatter God’s love extravagantly, even wastefully, knowing that God’s grace and mercy will find the hearts where it needs to grow? Have you ever had someone come up to you and say something like “years ago you were kind to me, or you did this for me, and it made a big difference in my life.” And you are thinking, you were a complete jerk to me. I thought you couldn’t stand me. Then you realize that God is truly at work scattering seeds through you even when you do not see that grace at work.



Or are you the seed whose purpose for existence is to grow and be new life for creation. This is pretty good if you are the seed that lands on good soil. There conditions are great to thrive and become all that you were supposed to be. In part because other critter’s manure has become your compost. Or you can be the seed that the bird came and ate up. Then you may be added to the manure and dropped somewhere else, a new place to do your best to grow into the plant you are intended to be. Maybe you are the seed that lands in rocky ground, and you are not able to send roots deep, and you get scorched by the sun. But those seeds also become part of the ecosystem. That is how soil is made. Plants die and become compost and in God’s own time, new soil. Or you may be the seed among the thorns. The thorns win out for now, but like mosquitoes, God will find a use for them somehow.
Or are you the soil receiving the seed according to where you are in the ecosystem of life. God as the sower can look at the soil and know what is to become of it. The rest of us, not so much. We just need to trust that God knows what God is doing when tossing all that perfectly good seed all over creation. Are you able to look at someone and tell what kind of seed they are, or is that best left up to God’s own judgement? One of the speakers at the conference told us about her great Aunt Martha. Aunt Martha, who everyone knew as A Martha, was known for two things. One was her pound cake. A Martha was generous with her poundcake. It was rich, and dense and abundant. A Martha was often baking it and sharing it with everyone around her. The speaker knew about A Martha’s pound cake at an early age. It was only as she developed some maturity that she learned the second thing that A Martha was known for, and that was her apron. Her apron had two pockets. In one she kept a small bottle of gin, and in the other she kept a pistol. During temperance, A Martha had a still, and a home that she would rent out rooms… by the hour. That part of A Martha’s life was only shared with the next generation as they became old enough to understand how it was part of how their beloved relative was woven together.
One story that was shared about A Martha is that she was Catholic. Because she had a wheelchair, she was considered a shut in, and she came up on the young priest’s visitation schedule. He called and asked her if she would like him to bring her communion the next day. She said yes, but come early in the morning. The young priest showed up the next evening. A Martha looked at him and said, “I am too sloshed to receive communion.” And she sent him away. He did come back the next day, in the morning, and she received communion then. A Martha claimed her own dignity when that young priest showed up in the evening, and she determined she was not prepared to receive communion at that time. If you will, her soil was not ready then. But the priest came back when he was told was the right time, and bread was broken. What kind of soil was A Martha? Like all of us, I expect she was mixed, sometimes hard, sometimes rocky, sometimes thorny, sometimes deep, rich, nutrient filled good soil.
When you are the sower, sow joyfully. When you are the seed, trust God to provide the water and the soil that is needed for you to be who you are called to be. When you are the soil, grow abundantly. In all you are and do, God’s word will accomplish God’s purpose and succeed in the thing for which God sent it.

​As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of this nation I am thinking about what it means to be free. I often ask myself: is it freedom from or freedom for? That is kind of the chicken or the egg question. One will not work without the other. Freedom from is freedom from someone or something imposing their will on you that is contrary to your own desire. Freedom for is agency. That is the ability to...

...make your own decisions. At our nation’s founding we wanted freedom from the king imposing taxes without 
representation. We wanted freedom for determining what was to become of this great continent.

On a more local level freedom from can be freedom from debt, freedom from oppressive working conditions, or freedom from hunger. Freedom for is freedom to choose how to spend or not to spend money, freedom to choose how to spend time, and freedom to decide what to eat or not to eat. I had a conversation the other day about survivors of domestic violence. We can think of freedom from as being freedom from abuse, or we can think of it as freedom for, that is agency, to choose to leave an abusive situation or to stay in it. Emotionally it is hard to stand by and watch someone stay in a toxic relationship, but when so many other choices have been taken away from them, sometimes the best support you can give is to respect their right to what seems to everyone on the outside a bad choice. 

All this wraps me back to: what does Jesus mean when he says if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed? Especially in the Gospel of John, freedom is from sin, and freedom is for eternal life. Then we get to spend time considering what is sin, and what is eternal life?

Again, in John’s Gospel, sin is primarily unbelief. It is looking at what God is offering in Christ and saying to yourself-- that cannot be right. It is rejecting hope that God’s purpose is for abundant life. Eternal life offered by Christ is hope and confidence that the power of death is broken in the cross and resurrection of Jesus, and we 
have hope that we will be with Jesus after we pass through death. But more than that, it is faith and hope that we are with Christ in the here and now. The freedom the Son gives is freedom from lack of hope and freedom for living like what little good you are able to do in this life makes a difference. You are free to be who you were meant to be, and that is someone with meaning and purpose. 

This week’s text ends one of Jesus’ discourses with the statement “whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones…none of these will lose their reward.” You are free to give a cup of water, and if you have ever handed someone cold water on a hot day, you know how life giving that is for both of you. 
​
Blessings as you celebrate freedom,
Pastor Jessie

God loves each one of us, and there is nothing you can do to change that. Baptism is an affirmation of God’s claiming us as God’s own. 
“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3-4). 

This newness of life seems to be bursting all around us this time of year. Creation is shaking off the dormancy of winter and exploding into blossoms. In the church sanctuary the baptismal font is filled with glass pebbles instead of water for the season of Lent. You are invited to take as many as you want to put in your pocket, or on your windowsill, or anywhere else you want to remind you that you are baptized. In a few weeks the font will once again be filled with water. Then you can splash in it and remember life abounds.

There are still storms to come. As I write this, the weather forecasters are teasing us with the probability of thunder and hail tomorrow, most likely when I am driving home in the evening. Maybe I should put one of those glass pebbles on the dashboard. Get away from me, fear and distress. God loves me and that overcomes everything.

​                   Peace be with you. May you continue to walk with confidence that God is with you. 

The season shifts. The days are finally getting longer. (There are morning people in this world, and there are night people. There are people who love the quiet darkness of the winter, and there are people who long for the light and the beginning of new growth that is soon to emerge. I am married to my opposite in both cases. Mornings cannot be addressed without coffee, and I take joy in the lengthening days.)

In the other Washington, soon a new Congress will be sworn in as well as a new President. We do not know what the future holds. In God we have hope that we are moving toward greater love, greater peace, greater joy. A favorite quote made famous by Martin Luther King Jr is “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

I believe that is where the writer of the letter to the Hebrews is going. We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. They are all those heroes of our faith, Abraham and Sarah, David the King, Elijah and Elisha, Moses, Paul and his traveling companions, Mary and Elizabeth, Grandma Grace. All of these show us the way as we race into the new day. We are moving into Epiphany. The Magi come seeking the infant Jesus bearing gifts. We read as they approached, they were overwhelmed with joy. They entered the house and paid homage to Jesus. Here, while Jesus is still in infancy, already the world is finding hope in him. The light is shining in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it. The whole world is seeking and finding life in the Christ child. We are not alone in this. We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.

​So let us run the race that is set before us. As we transition to whatever is to come next, we leave the known and what we think is stable for the unknown and what may well be unstable. As we transition into this next chapter, we do so with the risen Christ in our midst and the comfort of the Holy Spirit all under the watchful eye of the loving Father, who loves us and holds us and sustains us. Blessings to you as we transition into the next Season that now lies before us.

Peace be with you, Pastor Jessie

Your memories of Thanksgiving may be as wonderful, or they may be not so much. If not the holiday, then think on other meals where hospitality was 2 extravagant and wonderful food and drink were abundant. That is a taste of the kingdom of heaven on earth.
Thanksgiving is on my mind now. I was thinking about a thanks giving verse, and of course it is a song that comes to mind. “Give thanks with a grateful heart. Give thanks to the holy One. Give thanks….” That popular song is based on Psalm 9:1.
I will give thanks to you, Lord, with all my heart;
I will tell of all your wonderful deeds. 
That is how I feel as I consider we have been on this journey together for a year now. I began as your pastor on All Saints Day—a day that seems like a thin space between us and eternal life in the near presence of God. We anticipated the Advent of Christ together, and we celebrated the coming of the Christ child—God with us, Immanuel. Then Epiphany and Lent, where we gathered with our friends at United Lutheran, until we came to Easter and the glorious celebration of the resurrection only to settle into the long green season of growth. I am thankful. I am especially thankful this year for our life together.
We shared all these seasons. There was joy, and there were moments of grief and profound sadness as we said goodbye, or rather ‘until later’, to some of our community. We weathered the challenges as a small part of God’s family. Family is what we are, and this becomes more and more evident as we look towards the end of this month and the gathering of family at Thanksgiving. It is a time to look back and count the numerous blessings that we have received from God over the course of the last year. Friends, family, meals prepared, and meals shared, those many small blessings that remind us that each one of us is a beloved child of God. We look forward also to the New Year that is to come and the holiday season that begins again with Thanksgiving. 
I am thankful for your care and support. I am thankful for your love for each other. I am thankful for the light you are to the world where you find yourselves, and I am thankful as we gather each Sunday to be fed with Word and Sacrament, and really awesome music. Thank you all. Thank you, God, for bringing us together. I pray for our continued journey together that we will share in joy, hope, peace and life in Christ.
Peace be with you, Pastor Jessie 

I know that riding a tandem bicycle with my husband builds us up both physically and spiritually. So why is the first verse that comes to mind when I think of tandem riding “Do not be mismatched with unbelievers” (2 Cor. 6:14a)? Why not something that sounds more positive like “Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing” (I Thess. 5:11). The reality is both are true.

​When we were dating Maitland and I were riding our bicycles out on the Centennial Trail out of Snohomish. He says, “Look at that. Isn’t it beautiful?” and points to a custom made tandem on the trail. I looked at him and said firmly, “No.” 

Now he and I both knew the “no” had nothing to do with the beauty of the tandem. It was “no, we are not going to get one.” 

After seven years of marriage one morning we drove to Seattle to “look” at a tandem I saw on the shop’s website, and we came home 2 with it. Why did it take seven years? It took that long for us to build the trust to work that closely together. Then there is the little matter of who gets to be in control. Tandems are sometimes called divorce bikes. The tandem shop owner reworks that and calls them relationship accelerators. Wherever your relationship is headed when you start riding a tandem, it is going to go there faster than it would have otherwise.

Back in those early days on the Centennial Trail, I was the more experienced bicycle rider. Maitland was and is stronger and faster, but he had to learn bicycle safety and trail etiquette, like moving off the pavement when you are stopped for a few minutes, and announcing when you are coming up behind a walker or another rider you are about to pass. Then there was the challenge of matching our riding styles. Strong as an ox, Maitland turns the pedals more slowly but powerfully. I spin faster in a lower gear and can do so all day, but I do not have much power. On the tandem, he is the captain, the one in front who steers and shifts the gears. I am the stoker, the one in the rear, who provides my share of the power. As we moved to tandem riding, Maitland worked on spinning the pedals faster, and I slowed my cadence down to be in rhythm with him.

We work hard on being matched. One of the great things about tandem riding is we can hear each other well without having to turn our heads or raise our voices. Maitland is constantly telling me what is up ahead as far as hazards go, like other riders, walkers, dogs, stop signs. I also tell him if I spot something, like a deer on the side of the road. Saying it works much better than just screaming, which is my natural reaction to dangers. 

We have been riding the tandem together now five years. We are to the point where we can sense how the other is feeling through the pedals. There are days when we are energetic, and the feeling is crisp. There are days when energy is low, and let’s just tool along and have a relaxing ride. 

​So what does all this have to do with faith? As we work together we are also aware of the beauty of God’s creation around us, the blessing of our own lives and health and the opportunity to be there, and an awareness that God is with us as we navigate the way. Build each other up. Respect what each other brings to the table, or to the bike. Be considerate of each other’s needs. Recognize when the other is having an off day and do not be overly critical. Pull together. Learn together. All good things for us to keep in mind in all of our relationships. May you also have happy trails and happy riding.

​“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” (Ps. 19:1)

​I will get to the heavens, but first I want to share God at work on the earth. Last evening a doe wandered into the field in front of our house. As my husband and I watched out the window, it became clear that she had a new baby with her. The little one could not have been more than a day or two old. It was tiny with spots. They grazed for a few minutes. Then the doe’s head went up.

The two moved more toward the center of the field, and the fawn settled into a depression in the grass. The grass is high enough that it could no longer be seen. About that time a coyote ran across the top of the field about a hundred feet away. There are bushes lining both sides of the field, so we had no way of telling if it was circling through the bush towards the deer. For maybe twenty minutes the doe stood next to her baby with head up watching the bushes. We slipped out onto the porch and stood there watching with her. Eventually she seemed confident that the coyote had run off. The fawn came to its feet, and the two of them ran off down the drive. We look forward to seeing the momma and her baby again soon. The coyote, not so much.

Scott Hoezee writes about a more dramatic display of God’s awesome creation that does have to do with the heavens: Perhaps many of us have had occasion to witness the approach of a storm over a large body of water. Having lived my whole life near Lake Michigan, I have seen gathering storms over that vast lake (people who come from Europe and see Lake Michigan cannot believe it is called a “lake” since it looks more like an ocean from the shore!). Such storms begin slowly. The western horizon out in the direction of Wisconsin begins to darken. The darkness spreads and you begin to hear the first rumbles of thunder (sound travels remarkably well across water so you hear the thunder out over a lake much earlier than over land). Then the lightning begins to appear, a chill wind kicks up and before you know it, the full power of the storm is upon you. (It is a good time to get off the beach too!) The waves kick up, the thunder is loud and seems to echo forever, bolts of lightning strike the water and the temperature can drop 25 degrees in mere minutes. Hail sometimes falls. All in all, a fearsome, even frightening and dangerous spectacle.

Our Tuesday afternoon group is studying the Psalms. First we learned that there are more Laments than Psalms of Praise. The Laments show up a lot less in our Sunday worship. They can be comforting in distress, or they can be tough reading. I find myself thankful that at this point in my life, I resonate with the Psalms of Praise more than the Laments. I also totally get that as we are walking along side of each other in troubled times, the Laments speak our heart song.

We are now in the time after Pentecost. This is the long green season of slow growth. I hope and pray in this season we will watch the baby critters grow and rejoice at the beauty and power of God at work around us. I also know that whatever comes our way the Lord is with us. May you be blessed to see the hand of God at work this day and this season.
​-Pastor Jessie McKenzie 

May holds Mother’s Day and a week later, Pentecost. I associate Mother's Day with family and also my favorite rhododendrons blooming at my old house. The rhododendron flowers are white with purple and pink and lavender, lining the driveway on bushes taller than me. A week later the red of Pentecost explodes along with the red rhododendrons with its own vibrancy. All of creation seems to be proclaiming that the Spirit of God is stirring things up. That stirring up is happening in community.

Part of me is still traumatized by COVID. The trauma for me is that it kept us apart. People were told that being together could end life. We also knew that being apart dulled the color of our lives. We need each other. Now as we are able to be together again, I for one value more than ever what we share. Like the flowers that are blooming, we bring our own color and vitality to the garden. We may be white with purple in the middle, or bright yellow daffodils, or the red of Pentecost, maybe a rose. Or we may be the sturdy brown trunk that holds up the blooms, or the many shades of green leaves. 

It is only a week from the bouquets of Mother’s Day to the flames of Pentecost. There again the dominant theme is that the Spirit is there bringing together the variety of people. Differences become part of the beauty as we are able to listen and understand each other. 

What kept us apart no longer has power. The power is in the love of God holding us together. We may spread the fertilizer a little too thick, or we may not be able to tell just yet what is a weed and what is a future vegetable for the dinner table. For now let us just be together and celebrate the color all around.

May you be blessed this season by the beauty of creation and the beauty of the faces surrounding you. 
-​Pastor Jessie McKenzie

The women who had gone to the tomb fled in terror. They were seized with awe, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. They had followed Jesus for three years, growing in hope that “the kingdom of God has come near.” Then Jesus was taken from them and crucified.

​Three days later they are struggling through the ordinariness of life, going to the tomb to anoint the body with spices, as was the custom. They fuss over who would move the stone away so they can enter. Then God once again breaks through the ordinariness of life. The young man, an angel in the tomb, says in essence, “Remember Jesus told you three times that he would be crucified, and on the third day rise again. He got up and has gone ahead of you to Galilee, like he 2 said he would.”

The women respond by running away. I suspect we would have also. But that is not the end of the story. It is the beginning. If the women have fled in terror, who is left to carry on the work of Christ? This unsatisfactory ending to the Gospel points right at you and me. Jesus has gone ahead to Galilee. Galilee is where he proclaimed. “Believe and turn around, the kingdom of God is at hand.” Galilee is where Jesus called the disciples, broke boundaries between people and healed the most vulnerable, made whole those who were possessed by the demonic, taught the disciples to be disciples and live their daily lives. There is no place you can go that Jesus has not already gone ahead. Are you ready to put aside your own fear and embrace the life that Christ has given you? Christ is with you in the messiness and the beauty of your own Galilee. May you know his presence as you go about living your life.