I like to say that I have pedestrian habits. I like to go running and walking.
Since cell phones and texting while driving have become so common place I’ve had to pay extra attention for distracted drivers. Every week or two I have to dodge a car whose driver is busy paying attention to something other than the road. Sometimes they are parishioners! Or maybe they were aiming for me…
I’m just as bad. I get distracted while driving and start weaving down the road.
Most of us live like we drive.
It seems that we are a distracted people and we pay good money to stay that way.
How do we pay attention to God?
Or perhaps a deeper question would be how does God pay attention to us?
How does God call us out of our distractions into paying attention?
The Moses story continues today with the final plague of Egypt and the command to remember the Passover. It is a story about God getting the attention of both corrupt and abusive Pharaoh and a fraught and beaten down people.
The Gospel lesson about dealing with conflict is really about paying attention to each other.
The reading from Romans is about truly paying attention to God’s commandments by loving our neighbors as our selves.
Since at least the second century the Church has called this attentiveness of God “the means of grace.” The means of Grace are Word and sacrament: scripture, Baptism and Eucharist. They are the three primary ways that God gives us attention, the three primary ways that we come to know God.
We are a deeply scriptural and sacramental Church that is why we call our newsletter “The means of Grace” and why our vision statement says that we exist as a parish to proclaim and celebrate these means of Grace, The word and the sacrament of God in Christ embracing the world.
That is why we are here. Jesus is God embracing the world, setting us free from ole pharaoh and all that enslaves, corrupts and destroys God’s creation.
Our worship revolves around these things, the word and the sacrament, the ways that God gives us attention and calls us out of our distraction to paying attention to being alive, to being set free.
Today is really the ministry Sunday of this parish, things get going: Sunday school, three Sunday liturgies, children’s choir, we intensify our attention upon word and sacrament.
How will we respond to God’s gift of life giving attention, of being set free? Worship and ministry are how we respond. Both worship and ministry are all about telling God thank you, we give God thanks for embracing the world in Jesus Christ by worshiping God and by giving ourselves to ministry.
Ministry is more than volunteerism and community involvement, ministry is how we tell God thank you for Jesus, and ministry builds up the church, it edifies the body of Christ, it builds community. We are set free for ministry, the ministry of freedom.
Over the next month we are going to hear every Sunday from several ministries of Grace Church and how they are about giving God thanks. They are meant to get us to think about how we respond to the gift Jesus. What is our ministry? How do we support the ministry and purpose of this parish? How do serve this liberty that we are given in Christ?
Today we are reminded, our attention is called forth.
Are we paying attention or are we living our lives like distracted drivers?