http://www.standrewsshippensburg.org/

Grace Place Gardens, 21 N. Prince Street, Shippensburg, PA (2026)

06/14/2026

Here's my sermon for tomorrow. Looking forward to being with you. With care, Mother Barbara

The Collect of the Day is a prayer designed to collect our hearts and souls as a worshiping body of people and to draw together a connecting theme from our four scripture lessons for the day. Today, we are charged with two very important missions as disciples of Christ: to proclaim God’s truth with boldness and minister God’s justice with mercy.
In order to obey this directive, it makes sense to know what God’s truth is; we must understand God’s justice, as presented by Jesus in our gospels, and demonstrate God’s mercy in all times and ways, which brings forgiveness, reconciliation, and offering a pathway toward wholeness, for everyone involved. We heard this a bit in last week’s gospel, when the woman reaching out to touch the fringe of Jesus’ cloak, received mercy in her physical healing, and Jesus gathered the community around her, proclaiming that her faith has made her well. Physical, spiritual, emotional healing all comes from Jesus’s abundant mercy.
My hope would be that you each would imagine that God’s truth can be summed up in the simple word of LOVE—and of course, we know there is nothing simple about Love. It is essential in how we treat ourselves and others. And we do know from our scriptures, that love shows up in bold hospitality, as displayed by Abraham and Sarah, empowering others to carry forward the message, and the ministry of Jesus, as Jesus invites his disciples into this task and mission. And I would add, both our stories, of Abraham and Sarah and Jesus and his disciples also show another bold truth of God – that our hope in God is never misplaced. Our stories tell us that God is moved by and provides for our needs because of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
You will notice there is a progression in understanding in each of our stories. God shared with Abraham that he would be the father of many nations, with descendants as numerous as the stars above. Yet, so far, as he and his wife travelled to the promised land, the idea seemed more preposterous as the days went along. And then, suddenly three travelers, or angels as they are often imagined, show up and confirm the news that, within a year, they will return and Sarah will have borne a son. Nothing is impossible with God. And of course, she does, and the nation of Israel is born. Our hope in God is never misplaced.
And in Jesus’s understanding of his mission, he sends his disciples to go nowhere near the Gentiles or the Samaritans, but only to the lost sheep of Israel. There was a time when this is what Jesus understood his call to be—to restore the house of Israel, not to draw others into the grace of God. But we know, in a few later chapters of Matthew, that Jesus has his epiphany moment, when the Syrophoenician woman illuminates the broader and bolder truth of God, and Jesus realizes, it is to all nations he is to proclaim God’s invitation to the abundant life, one filled with love, one drenched with God’s mercy, one turned toward justice, one proclaimed boldly. By the end of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is sending his disciples, out again, to baptize people of all nations. It was an opening of a new understanding of Jesus. Nothing is impossible for God. Our hope in God is never misplaced. And in both these instances, the opening of the eyes and hearts and God’s faithful leaders, Abraham and Jesus, happened by God inviting others into the mix, to share the good news that always God draws us toward something more, something broader, something more inclusive.
So, your own baptism, when you were gifted by the Holy Spirit, and marked as Christ’s own, was an invitation to hope always, to know at your deepest place, that God is moved by and provides for our needs, that this was only the beginning, that God is always drawing us toward something more, something broader, and something more inclusive. Drawing us onto the way of Love.
If you think of your current life as all there will ever be; think again. Faith, as I’ve said before, is living into the art of possibility. It is always understanding that God is never done with us; that we are always to be growing and living and seeking and searching, and there is yet for us to discover as we live into and boldly claim that truth. Faith is an unfolding story.
Our bold truths of God, which we are charged with living boldly in our lives can be summed up in this way—it’s always and only about love; our hope in God is never misplaced; God is constantly inviting us to respond faithfully to the opportunities to discover more about God and who we are with God; who we are today is not who we will be tomorrow, if we are faithful, for every moment is a chance for transformation; God uses other people in our lives to show us the path toward becoming the fullness of who we are; when we laugh at what we think God is asking of us (like Sarah did), it is usually exactly what God is asking of us and its time to say “yes”; that often transformation happens with accidental encounters with others along the way; there is often an urgency to respond; we are usually asked to live into this mission when we don’t feel ready (such as the disciples not being able to take any of those items which would have made them feel secure, and therefore not as dependent upon God for their very existence); and all of this is to help us always minister God’s justice with mercy.
When we do this with boldness, it’s exhilarating! It’s joyous. It feels right in the depth of our souls – because we know we have co-created with God, building the Kingdom of Love. We have shown the world what the real church in the real world is all about – accountability with mercy, reconciliation even in the most broken places, strong and quick decisions to protect all the vulnerable concerned, and finding every opportunity to let Love lead the way. It’s a beautiful chance we each have in life. Let’s take it.
And to do this, we need to enter into the scene in the gospel where Jesus is going around to all the cities and villages, healing the sick, teaching and proclaiming the good news, but most importantly, also looking with great compassion and mercy at those who seemed lost – those who seemed helpless without a shepherd. And he looked them in the eye.
Suddenly, it wasn’t just “the crowd.” It was a group of individuals who had a deep need, a strong yearning, and a hope beyond hope that they, too, could be healed, in heart, mind, body, and soul – that Jesus was for them too. With God, all things are possible. Hope in God is never misplaced. God is moved by and provides for their needs because of this mysterious thing called grace.
These were people who had been pushed to the edges of our society; who were accustomed to feeling shame, instilled by others; who were told they are not worthy. But Jesus knew differently. Jesus knew that he could stretch out his hand and bring compassion and mercy into their lives.
These people who followed Jesus, not really knowing who he was or what he was about those who had long ago drifted away from organized religion or were pushed away, who didn’t need to know exactly what they needed. Jesus needed only to look into their eyes, to truly see the people, to see the ones who would never even imagine they would be worthy enough to be touched by Jesus’ healing hands. Jesus took time to hear their stories, to attend to their afflictions, to see everyone as God sees them, as beloved children of God, to notice what resonated between his heart, the heart of God, and their heart, to feel their suffering and take it within. This is what love looks like. This is the sacred space we are called to enter each and every day. This is the invitation to put ourselves in the path of grace, so we can allow God to shape our lives, so we can proclaim boldly that God’s good news is for everyone.
At the dismissal of our service, you are being sent out, to be the good news, to be bold in your love, to be constant in your hope, to be true God’s mercy, be faithful to God’s justice which will return the world to wholeness. Be changed and allow wholeness to emerge, for you and for all people, for that is God’s greatest hope for us and the world.

Amen.

06/11/2026

Finally, what we have all been waiting for has arrived. While it is not a steady stream of blueberries (yet), we sit knowing what will come. For many, this will be the first blueberry they have ever picked themselves and then eaten. For many, this will be the first blueberry that they have not paid for at a grocery store. For many, this will be an experience that will live in them forever. It is an eternal gift to be able to offer up the opportunity to experience such firsts.

06/07/2026

Here's my sermon for tomorrow morning. Please come and be with us! Sending blessings, Mother Barbara

The context of our story from the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Scriptures, is essential to understanding how our lives fit into the larger salvation history of humankind.

As you remember from last week, when we heard the poetic account of the creation of Gods’ world, and words that seem to always grab at my heart, and most likely yours, after the account of humankind, “and it was very good.”

However, as we all know, sin creeped into God’s glorious creation and God yearned to bring humankind back into loving relationship with all of creation, especially into God’s heart and flow of love.

So, the story of God’s call to Abraham is the beginning of our salvation story, designed to reverse the effects of human sin, and to bring blessing upon all of humankind. This is an important element to consider – God’s blessing is not just to Abraham and his family, as he faithfully obeys God’s command, to all humankind, because of Abraham’s faithful “yes”.

Now as Christians, we believe the invitation God offered to Abraham, to restore all of humankind and creation to our Creator, came to fulfillment in the person of Jesus, and is now lived out in us, through Jesus’s gift of the Holy Spirit.

God asked Abraham to leave behind all that he knew, (his land, his clan, his kin), and go to an unnamed and unknown country, to march out of his comfort zone, with merely a promise of blessing for the family he would yet have (although he was already 75 years old and with a wife who struggled to conceive) and to trust that he could indeed offer himself to a God who desired restoration and healing of the world, and that it all began in him.

Abraham’s yes, is as Mary’s “yes” to bear the holy into our world, as is Matthew’s “yes” to follow Jesus, and Jesus’ “yes” to the cross, and our “yes” to live out our gifts and talents for the healing of this world. Your “yes”, my “yes”, are no less significant in the salvation story of humankind, than Abraham’s “yes”. Our “yeses” are for the same purpose – to bring in the Kingdom of Love.

I know your stories well enough to know that you have faithfully said “yes” to the King of Love, that you have obediently shared your gifts and talents with our parish and our neighborhood, that you have formed healthy and whole relationships, which is at the root of the restoration of humankind to our Creator, and at times, removed yourself from unhealthy relationships too, for that is part of restoration as well, that you have fought for social justice for all people, and you have made decisions that have taken you out of your comfort zone, into places unknown and with the outcome clear – for you are righteous people. And I thank God for the opportunity to serve among you.

And perhaps most importantly, I have seen you understand exactly what Abraham understood, which is why he left his home and journey in faith – that the blessing promised by God was not just for him, but for all of us. As soon as we understand that God’s call to us is always bigger than us – always more than what may fulfill our lives, is always a reach into the future we cannot see or control, and is always a promise for all of humankind, then we have entered the salvation story of all time. Abraham’s story, Jesus’ story, becomes our story.

Abraham, his wife Sarah and his nephew Lot travel toward Canaan, and as we know the story, the journey is difficult, the land is already occupied, and there are struggles along the way. But when the Lord appeared to Abraham and said his offspring would inherit the land, Abraham stopped and built an altar, to signify the presence of the Lord, a meeting place with the holy, a place set apart, made sacred, to honor the presence. Perhaps Abraham built it also as a reminder to himself that he is not traveling alone, or perhaps he left the altar as a guidepost to those who would yet follow.

We know of other times in the scriptures, when an altar is used to denote an encounter with God, such as when Jacob had his dream of the angels going up and down the ladder, and he woke the next morning, built an altar, and said, “surely God is in this place.”

Having been in the Holy Land and knowing the desolate nature of the landscape, I can only imagine for his altar, Abraham was able to find but a few stones to pile together, then kneeling to offer a prayer and a full self-offering of his heart to God’s continued call birth a new nation, whose hearts could restore humankind to our Creator. It must have been a time of utter release, of gathering strength and resolve, and renewed commitment, for I imagine the altar not only represented Abraham’s awareness of God being there, but him being there for God also – perhaps his heart uttered, “Here I am Lord.”

As we follow the role of altars in the Jewish tradition, we remember them as places of the sacrifice of animals, offered as gifts to close that distance once again between the people and God. What Abraham began, later Israelites followed, with that desire to find a way of offering the best of themselves to find a path toward restoration into full union with the holy.

But in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus says to the Pharisees that he desires mercy, not sacrifice. So, we have an enormous shift. Suddenly now, the altar, that place of healing interchange between God and God’s people, is where love, compassion, and mercy abide, a whole different kind of sacrifice. Where life-giving energy is alive, where there is a transformation of our hearts, where we offer the depths of our hearts, and we are changed. Jesus illumines the truth that the reversing of the sinful break happens in our hearts. It is where we offer and receive great love. Suddenly, this faith has become very personal.

And as Christians, we can understand Jesus became that living altar. Jesus was where the great love of God met the human condition. In Jesus’ personhood, in Jesus’ heart, in Jesus’ healing, in Jesus’ miracles, that was where the altar of God resided. In each meal he shared with sinners, with each touch of his hand which healed, with each invitation he offered to follow him, in the tax collector booth where he saw Matthew in need of healing, in the synagogue leader’s daughter’s room when Jesus responded to the father’s urgent plea of the heart, and even in the fringe of his cloak, courageously reached for by the faithful woman desiring to be healed – in all the unknown, unnamed places, in all the places Jesus went out of anyone else’s comfort zone, Jesus, the living altar, abided.

And ultimately upon the cross, the living altar resided, that intersection of the great love of God with the human condition. Yet in the garden by the empty tomb, the new Eden, in Jesus’ words to Mary, where new life, new understanding emerged and erupted, the living altar was revealed. The living altar, which death cannot conquer, found itself behind locked doors, opening the eyes of those previously blind to the power of the living Christ, found wherever love, compassion, and mercy abide.

We correctly imagine the altar – the place of union with the God of love, compassion, and mercy, to be here in the church. It is where we celebrate the sacrament, which is what we enter to be restored to the God of love, to reverse the sinful nature of ourselves and all of humankind. It is the place where we sacrifice, or offer to God, our lives to be made whole by the love of Christ – and yet, I wonder, are we not also, in a profound way, a larger piece of the puzzle. I’m wondering what God’s call to us is to carry forward the salvation story.

Could it be, that through Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit, we are to be the altars in the world, a living sacrament, a way for people to enter the love, compassion, and mercy of God? By the way we live, by the way we give, by the way we love. By the way we reach beyond ourselves into a future that is unknown and beyond our control. Could it be that we are to recognize, honor, set apart and make sacred those places that we know “God is surely present here”? Are we to create the spaces for others to discover the truth of the living God, the Risen Christ, here in our midst? They may be spaces within our hearts, within our relationships, within our church family, or beyond.

I invite you to imagine all the places during your daily, oftentimes ordinary lives, when you are aware of the presence of God. How could you mark those places? Could there be a way that you set them apart so you can return to them again and again to soak in the glory and presence of the Lord?

I invite you to also imagine how you could create space, such as the serving tables at the community meal, or the pavilion at Grace Place, or your office at work, or the community garden where so much flourishes, where you could be the guidepost, where you could lead others to the holy. This is the deepest response to our call to be faithful to God. Always think bigger than us. Always imagine we are part of something more profound than our individual lives. Always knowing we have our part to play in the larger salvation story of all of humankind.

Abraham was called to be a father of a nation, who would know and love God, who would make right choices, who would be willing to bear the costs of just action, who would do their part, however large or small, to heal the rupture between humankind and God. Abraham knelt in the desert, gathered a few stones, said a few prayers, and taught us how to be faithful members of the household of God by acknowledging the presence of the Lord in his midst. Jesus was the presence of the Lord in our midst. And Jesus left us the gift of the Holy Spirit so that we can have that presence of the Lord in our hearts, so that we can be the presence of the Lord amid our daily lives. Abraham built an altar. Jesus was the altar. We now can build altars in our hearts and the hearts of all, and build altars all over the place, where we can live, and invite others to live, more fully as faithful members of the household of God. Let us with deep and faithful hearts respond to that call.

Amen.

06/03/2026

Just kids mastering grilled cheese flipping. That’s all!

This video was taken to prove to Mama that she could really flip grilled cheese with ease. The hope was that it would convince Mama, that she is ready to now make her own grilled cheese for herself, brothers, and parents.

This is Think Tank folks. A carved out time in the week to come together, learn life skills, and problem solve our way through experiences as a community in community.

05/30/2026

After an amazing day of "being the Trinity" at Grace Place with friends and neighbors, I will preach on the Trinity tomorrow at St. Andrew's. Please come. We'd love for you to be with us. Sending love, Mother Barbara

I read something this week offered by the Society of St. John the Evangelist, an Episcopal Religious Order, which brought something into clarity for me, and I couldn’t wait to share it with you. This religious organization offers what they call the Daily Word, where each day they choose a word and write something profound about it, in a sentence or two. One day this week they chose the word “Work,” saying the following:
Work is not bad, but work serves an end. Even the holiest work of your life is not your purpose – it facilitates your purpose. Your purpose is encounter: the welcoming of the eternal, living God into your midst.

So, think about this with me a bit. Some of us work now; some have worked most of our lives, some are looking for work, some yearn to choose the work that is right for us. But the brothers of SSJE say work serves an end – it is not your purpose in life. Your purpose, mine and, everyone’s is to come alongside, encounter, and welcome the eternal, living God here and now. Your only purpose in life is to meet God, in all places, in all circumstances, and in all times, and what we choose as our work, gets us there.

Let’s think this through a bit. If you are an artist, you may imagine your work is to create paintings, or create ceramic pieces, or weave beautiful tapestries, or knit baby hats for newborns in the hospital, but your work exists only so that, through those actions, you find God. So, it may be through your acts of creativity that you connect with the creator God. Or maybe, through your loving actions, such as knitting baby hats, you feel more connected to our loving God. Or if you create music, the offering of your heart, the inspiration of your improvisation, or connecting with that soulful place from which the music emerges, you have found God, deep within your soul. If you are a teacher, you may imagine your work as transmitting knowledge to others, or encouraging their own discovery of truths, but all this work, all this preparation and effort serves your purpose of engaging with God as you tend to the souls of those you shape through how you share the knowledge given to you.

So if we each look at what we do as a job, what work we spend our days doing, as a student, teacher, mechanic, engineer, parent, forklift operator, or the one who bags other people’s groceries at Giant, know that all this simply serves you so you can encounter, and be changed by God. I invite you to think about that. How does what you do during the day bring you closer to God? That’s our daily work – understanding the connection between what we do, or how we do it, as a way to connect us with God.

And many of us may find, that when our job brings us closer to God, it does the same for someone else. How we bag groceries, how we present ourselves to others, how we mentor and care for others, how we encourage others to dream, or how we read a bedtime story to our little ones, often enables them to encounter God. When this happens, we talk about this as our vocation. I am blessed that when I serve as your priest, I encounter God constantly, through our conversation, our shared ministry, the celebration of our sacraments – and very often it is clear, that those things I do which bring me closer to God, are opening the way for you to encounter God. That’s easy for me, because I’m a priest; but it is also true when you are a parent. As you love your children, you are sharing in God’s love for your children, and therefore every encounter with them connects you with God – and your children will know God and find God through your love. This is called living into our vocation. It is a beautiful way God created things to work out.

But it seems to me, that if our purpose in life is to welcome the eternal, living God who is here among us, it might be helpful to know what we are looking for, so we can open our hearts to God and be changed, moment by moment, into our true selves. And that brings us to the doctrine of Trinity, which we celebrate today. We may want to explore what we believe about God’s essence, or God’s nature, or how God moves in the world, or what happens to our heart when we encounter God.

The early church created what we call the Doctrine of the Trinity, meant not necessarily to explain or make clear what we believe about the Trinity, for foremost we believe the trinity is a mystery, but to help us understand both the specificity of the Trinity, as we know it, in God, the Father, who creates, God the Son, Jesus who lived among us, and God, the Holy Spirit, who dances among us, bringing us into something new; and also the unity and expansiveness of God – that these separate categories can be helpful to us to think about, but we know that these separate and specific parts of the trinity can’t possibly represent the fullness of God, which is ever expanding.

Over the many years when people have scratched their heads to try to understand what is essentially something we cannot understand and are merely asked to encounter (which, of course, we now know is the purpose of our lives) there have been images put forward to help us see how there is God who holds it all, and three parts of that same God that make up the whole, and then some.

Traditional images have been a triangle, with three corners, each essential for making the triangle what it is; each corner distinct from the other two. Or a three-leaf clover, following the same principle of each of part being needed to make up the whole, but each of these traditional images lack the sense of relationship, (which is the “then some”), which we consider to be what God is all about.

A week ago, I found an image of the trinity I love in love with. It is from John O’Donohue’s book “Bless the Space between us”. And it is about fire. He ends his poem/prayer with these words:
In the name of the Fire,
And of the Flame,
And of the Light.

The fire, representing the completeness and unity, that suddenly burst into life, and the flame we see, and then the light, that which shines in this world. We can imagine the Fire to be God (the creator) and the flame to be Jesus (the one people saw and encountered making the fire real to the world) and the light to be the Holy Spirit, that illuminates and allows us to see. We can’t have a fire without flame or light; we can’t have a flame without fire or light, and we can’t have light from fire without flame and fire. They are connected; distinct, but connected, and in relationship with one another.

This how we are to be with each other. Distinct, always. We are separate people, with different gifts, perspectives, ideas, and yearnings. And connected. Always. In relationship, needing one another to be made whole. We are never complete by ourselves. And our purpose in life is the same, and that is to be celebrated. We are all called to have as our purpose in life to encounter and welcome God into our hearts.

We are intended to know that we have been birthed from the womb of God; we walk hand in hand with Jesus, the part of God that was present on our earth; and we are to dance, heart to heart with the Holy Spirit, who makes our lives full of joy, hope, and love.

If we focus on what God is all about and the love between the parts of God, and see how that plays out in our lives, we will encounter God all the time. Our purpose in life will be met, but only to start anew the next morning.

We show the love between the parts of God in our love of God, our love between us and our neighbors, and our love between us and God’s creation.

We may not understand the trinity, but we will be living the trinity, and that’s what counts. We can do this by being love, by wanting to find, embrace, and be changed by the living God in our midst, and by understanding that it is claiming that our purpose in life is the same of everyone’s purpose in life – how we get there is unique to each person, but the purpose is the same – and that truth is a place of unity among all people, and that is to be celebrated.

This is important for us to know, because in our gospel story Jesus instructs his disciples, and us, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
We need to know what we are to tell others about God. If all you say, if all you show by example, that we are all connected in the same purpose, which is to encounter the holy, and we do that by loving God and loving each other, and loving God’s creation, you will be faithful disciples of Christ. And when we do this, in so many different ways, whatever the work is that is put before us, when you are seeking and welcoming the gift of Love in your life, Jesus is with you, hand in hand, God the Father is with you, creating new bonds of friendship and relationships, and God the Holy Spirit is with you, creating new lives for you—and for all those whose lives you touch.
You are living and breathing and loving and embracing the Holy Trinity. That’s faithful work. Amen.

05/28/2026

It’s SCAPE TIME!!!
Once a year, the garlic plant sends up a might green flower stalk. This flower stalk is called a scape. Just as the scape begins to curl on itself, you give it an encouraging pull, and out it slips from its inner domain. We do this, so that the garlic plant can shift its focus from flowering to bulb making. For it is a large the garlic bulb that we desire. Especially, when cultivating garlic seed. These scales taste just like garlic and you use them just as you would garlic cloves. They also store, freeze, and pickle well. This is a great news because when one garlic scape starts scraping, they all do. In no time at all, you find yourself with an arms length of garlic scapes that need consuming.

Come harvest your scapes at both the Grace Place gardens and the garden beds at Fort Street.

05/27/2026

After a very successful Memorial BBQ, we still had a decent amount of hot dogs remaining. This led to a spontaneous opening of a hot dog stand at Think Tank. The kids named the establishment Waffle House Hot Dog Restaurant. Yes, it is a bit of a mouthful, but we all managed to find one way or another to say it. Some kids cooked. Some took orders, while others delivered food. There even was a drive- in option with carhop service. Yes, roller skates were used to deliver food. There was also a beverage station that needed its own staffing. Number one beverage; lemon balm mint tea straight from the garden.At one point the kids almost unionized for better wages. There was also a group of seasoned men that sat in a circle, offering advice every now and again on: how to cook, how to handle hotdogs so they don’t drop on the ground repeatedly, what happens when you don’t wash a hotdog that has dropped on the ground, the importance of communicating without raising your voice, how to be better team, and how to run an establishment. We invited them back next week.

We also learned you can eat 10 slices of watermelon and still want more watermelon.

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