107 Concord Road, Wayland Massachusetts 01778

Kaj Munk was a Danish Lutheran pastor and writer (his first name rhymes with “high”).  A man of strong and controversial religious, political and social opinions, he supported Danish underground resistance to Hitler. When he defied a Nazi order prohibiting preaching a Christmas  sermon, he was arrested by the Gestapo. The next day his body was found in a ditch.

…do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Ephesian 4: 26

We’re reading in Ephesians during these summer weeks. Sunday we come to some practical teachings. How shall we live?  What kind of people should we be? How might we adjust our behavior to conform to the example that we have in Christ?  If we are Christians, then we should allow the spirit of God to direct us into Christian behavior. Right?

The passage for Sunday continues, “Let no evil talk come out your mouths, but only what is useful for building up…so your words may give grace to those who hear….put away bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander…be kind to one another…”

Sunday Jonathan and Aidan Moretz will play for us. Heather will lead us in singing the hymn of the day, based on the appointed psalm.

The prayer group meets Sunday at 11 am. Carol Green will put note cards and a box in a mailbox marked “Prayers”. Write your prayer concern or request there for Carol to bring to the prayer group.

Wayland Food Pantry:  canned fruit.

A woman of deep and extraordinary spirituality and devotion to Christ, the order she founded followed a rule of manual labor, prayer and almost complete silence. The legend of the founding of the order tells of a wealthy young Clare attending the Palm Sunday mass in the Cathedral. Following an ecstatic vision she walked out of the church, gave up her fine clothing, received a simple robe from Francis and began a life of pure devotion to Christ.

Another legend of St Clare has it that when she was too sick to attend a service in the church she could see it on the wall of her room. Therefore in 1958 Pope Pius XII named Clare the patron saint of television.

It’s a good day to thank our own wonderful music director, Kathryn Welter, along with the other musicians who lead our worship by playing the organ and the piano, Bob Holmgren and Ron Riggert. There are a number of other accomplished musicians at Peace; that’s part of what makes our church a special place.

As a congregation we gather to sing.  We encourage our young people to be musicians, to sing and play musical instruments.

We are all music makers. When I attend a Catholic Mass and see a cantor singing in front while the rest of the congregation stares ahead silently as if they are brain dead, I see a problem for the human spirit and a problem for the church. My Reformation blood boils.

Great music is our Christian heritage. We need to claim it and be thankful.

We are all music makers. Sing. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be ashamed. You’re not too cool. We’re all singing together. Music is a gift of God. As a child of God, music belongs to you personally, so sing, play an instrument and encourage a young person in your life to study music.

As a New Testament figure in the art and imagination of the Christian world, Mary Magdalene ranks behind Jesus, Mary his mother, and John the Baptist. Legends of Mary Magdalene abound through the Christian centuries, some of them conflated from the several women of the same name. There are up to seven women with the name Mary in the New Testament. Magdalene (from the village of Magdala on the sea of Galilea) must have been the leader of a group of women who accompanied Jesus.

In church teaching and in the life of the corporate church, Mary has been set aside. This is a simplified way of putting the matter: John the Baptist represents the ascetic, prophetic, legalistic side of Christian teaching. Church people, Lutheran church people included, like the moralistic, righteous and self-righteous John the Baptist.  They (we) like what he said and we find it easy to accept or reject him. Fundamentalists and atheists, who are like opposite sides of the same literalist coin, think of the Christian faith in absolute terms.

Mary Magdalene represents the earthly, sensuous, emotional, ambiguous, committed part of Christian experience. According to the gospel record she is faithful to Jesus and is around even when events are painful and confusing. She makes mistakes, but she is unfailingly present.

Just as I tell you that Protestant Christians need to reclaim Mary the Mother of Jesus, the wider Christian Church needs Mary Magdalene as well, as much as it needs the Blessed Mother. When things don’t go as expected, we will find Mary Magdalene there beside us. It may take hundreds of years to bring her back. I’m praying it won’t take that long.

In Scandinavia St John’s eve is an outdoor holiday and a celebration of life-in-renewal. Bonfires are lit to “assist” the sun as it begins to lose potency and, of course, to provide a visual focus for an all-night party. In a related ritual, fires are lit six months from now to “help” the sun increase its light and, again, for the party.

The Nativity of Jesus and the winter solstice is a consumer holiday for Americans like us, not a celebration of the earth. The Nativity of John the Baptist, at the summer solstice, is virtually unknown.

Maybe a hundred years from now our grandchildren will gather as Christians, outdoors, on this night, for a celebration of the eternal Logos (Christ), who according to John’s Gospel was there in the ancient pagan practices of greeting the light and begging it to stay.