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Dear MRC Family,

Pentecost blessings to you in this season of Ordinary Time

A while back we had some sweet potatoes in the cupboard that were starting to sprout. So, on a whim I decided to plant them in our Community Garden, even though it was very late in the growing season. I didn’t expect much to happen, but after a bit, I started seeing some shoots come up through the soil. When the potatoes started to put their runner vines out, Jamie and I faced the little root nubs down and covered them with a bit of soil. To be sure, there’s a whole lot more one is supposed to do to make sweet potatoes grow, but I just left them to do whatever they would.

 

Last weekend, Lisa Van Savage and I shut down the garden for the season. (Lisa did most of the work, for sure.) We harvested the rest of the tomatoes, mostly green, thirty-five pounds in all! I went to work pulling up the sweet potato vines. Once cleared, I dug around in the soil, just in case, and to my utter delight and surprise, there were sweet potatoes! I was so excited that something had grown when I had done very little to assure that would happen.

And, of course, this got me to thinking theologically, because . . . me.

Sometimes, beloved, we have to take a chance, do something on a whim, and see what God grows for us. What God grows in us and with us. Scatter those seeds, plant some stuff — whether carefully or on a lark — and see what the Spirit will do and where she will go. It just takes a curious “What if” attitude on our part, believing that God is, and always will be, faithful and can do far more than we could ever ask or imagine.

Come to worship this Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost to see what God can grow in you. Tom is leading us in our hymns and the Joyful Noise Adult Choir will sing the Anthem “Love Grows Here.” I am preaching from Isaiah 9.1-7 —Wait? Isn’t this an Advent text? We’re not in Advent, yet! — and my sermon title is How the Light Shines. We will come to God’s table of wide-open grace and celebrate the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper together by intinction. Also, I have our Consistory nominating form to give to you, and we will be filling them out in worship, so be thinking of who you would like to nominate to serve on Consistory next year. We will be electing two Deacons and two Elders for 2026. If you are unable to be in person, we will be streaming live on our YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/@mrcafabulouschurchoflove1611.

 

In closing, last night I took my harvest and made maple-covered sweet potatoes in the crockpot. And do you know what? Those were some of the best sweet potatoes I’ve ever tasted.

 

Keep following and bothering Jesus, beloved

 

With gratitude for the privilege of being your pastor and the holy call of loving you,

 

Pastor Trish

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