In this sermon we begin a series inspired by a book called What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk With Howard Thurman by Lerita Coleman Brown. We use Thurman’s famous quote to jumpstart our reflections on what it means to live in the spirit of the resurrection. [The quote: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is more people who have come alive.”] In this sermon we talk about what it means to experience the presence off God in the Eucharist, how that is primary means by which we nurture our communion with God even though, as I share from my own life, we might experience holy coincidences or moments of divine intervention in strange ways.

In this sermon we begin a series inspired by a book called What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk With Howard Thurman by Lerita Coleman Brown. We use Thurman’s famous quote to jumpstart our reflections on what it means to live in the spirit of the resurrection. [The quote: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is more people who have come alive.”] In this sermon we talk about Thurman’s experience of Halley’s Comet and what his Mom taught him there, Brennan Manning’s words about grace, Jesus’ questions to Peter and how he never stops asking them, about what it means to know that you belong to God and how that is at the center of the journey of faith.

Good morning, Santa Monica Nazarene -

I’m here with another audio recording of my weekly Call to Worship email. And today I wanted to share a quote from J.R.R. Tolkien’s second book in The Lord of the Rings series (the book’s called The Two Towers, in case you were wondering). But it’s a quote I’ve been thinking about ever since I read it that I think might help us prepare our hearts for worship today.

To set the stage a little bit… at this point in the story, Sam and Frodo are reflecting on how far they’ve travelled in their journey to destroy the Ring of Power. (It’s okay if you don’t know what that means. Just know that that’s the main goal—destroying the ring of power—and that it requires a long and dangerous journey to do so.)

But there’s this moment when Sam starts reflecting on what it means to go on an adventure. And I love what he says. It’s kind of a long paragraph, but it’s really good. And so he says,

“And we should’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting, and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually—their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t . . .”

Sam is maturing a bit, here, in his thinking about what it means to go on an adventure. His younger mind saw adventure as something you pursued because life was boring. However, now he understands that adventure sometimes finds you all on its own and you have to then decide whether you’ll embrace it and go on the journey.

As I think about this quote, I like the idea that we are dropped into stories. That adventure finds us. That life finds us. And we have to decide whether to embrace it and to go on the journey. It makes me think about God and creation and what it means to be alive. That we are dropped into the story of God and that God is calling us onto a journey towards communion with him.

There’s always some mystery to the life of faith. We’re called to follow Jesus, but the details of that journey aren’t known to us. And we can always choose to turn back. Or we can be like Sam and Frodo and venture out further and come to discover more and more that the good tales never end, as they say, and that we actually want to be a part of them.

As you prepare your heart for worship, I pray you would know that when you woke up today you landed in the greatest of all stories and that it is calling to you.

See you at 10:30am for worship!

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Scott