Escaping the Demons & Tombs

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
June 24, 2007; 4th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 7, Year C
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 8:26-39) -- Jesus and his disciples arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me" -- for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) Jesus then asked him, "What is your name?" He said, "Legion"; for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.

Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.

When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, "Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you." So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.
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So now you know. It was Jesus. When he sent the demons into the herd of swine... It was Jesus inventing deviled ham.

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In his little book One Minute Wisdom, the late Anthony DeMello has a conversation titled "Unconsciousness":

"Where can I find God?"
"He's right in front of you."
"Then why do I fail to see him?"
"Why does the drunkard fail to see his home?"

Later the Master said, "Find out what it is that makes you drunk. To see you must be sober."

All of us are trapped in our own cemeteries of craziness like this Garasene demoniac. And Jesus offers us the power of exorcism so that we might be free, healthy and in our right mind.

We are good, respectable Episcopalians, for the most part. From outward observation, we don't look very much like this naked crazy-man chained to the tombstones. But if you scratch beneath the surface, most of us are rather trapped and shackled, often by circumstances of our own making.

Most of us live in comfortable homes with more than we need. But upkeep and mortgages, debts and desires may leave us actually possessed by our possessions. Most of us have jobs and relationships that we value. But how many of us are over-committed and too busy, leaving us anxious or desperately short of time. For many of us our lives are filled with good things; maybe more good things than we can adequately handle. We can begin to feel crazy, chained to the obligations and pressures that claim our freedom.

Our cemeteries are usually of our own making. We have expectations to meet. So many expectations. We tell ourselves, "There are things I have to do, especially if I am going to be a success." So we chain ourselves to our tombstones: "What do I have to do to be acceptable? What do I have to achieve to feel safe and secure. I need to be in control of my life. I need to control others. I need them to like me. I need to look good." These are our tombstones -- the compulsions and drives that make us crazy.

Every once in a while the voice of sanity whispers to us and says, "Quit. Give up. Relax. Just be."

The only expectation God has of us is to love. That's it. That's all. Nothing to accomplish; nothing to possess; nothing to protect or control. All of those other expectations are just distractions from our embracing the one God-given question: "How can I love?" (Robert J. Wicks, Living Simply in an Anxious World, p. 1)

Friday I found myself with some un-committed time. I had taken one of our dogs to the vet, and it took less time than I had expected. Wow! Three hours, no deadlines. My printed "to do list" was there right next to me, but before I looked at it, I thought I'd clean off a bit of my desk. Within a few minutes there was a phone call. A delightful opportunity to help someone. Then a door that needed to be unlocked. And somebody who dropped by. For a few hours, I was very relaxed, responding simply to the next best task. When the opportunity arose, I did what seemed best from the "to do list," but I remained detached from the rest of the list and its weighty pressure. Late in the day when I came up for air, I looked back. It seemed that the whole day had been given to me. Opportunities just popped up. When I needed to go back to the list, I could. When there was something more opportune, it appeared. But I wasn't forcing it, trying to control it. And I wasn't tired. It seemed like some of my demons had fled.

"Where can I find God?"
"He's right in front of you."
"Then why do I fail to see him?"
"Why does the drunkard fail to see his home?"
"Find out what it is that makes you drunk. To see you must be sober."

I know some of what makes me blind and drunk. It's my "to do list" and all of the unreasonable expectations that it represents.

What is it that makes you drunk?

"God really has only one expectation of us: to love." We replace this expectation to love and replace it with "the expectations to do, achieve, gain acceptance, control, be secure, or look good... They leave us lost until eventually we are willing in humility to embrace the only God-given question we must answer: 'How can I love?'" (Wicks, p. 1)

Most of us are so trapped in our cemetery of expectations, that we need a little help to get out. Some of you may remember Gene Moritz who was an Assistant Priest here at St. Paul's back in the early '80's. I knew Gene in Mississippi. He tells of a time when he was carrying a lot of anger. It was one of those "church things;" people hadn't treated him right. Gene shared his frustration with his spiritual director Sister Mary Abelard. She heard him out, and then she said, "Gene, I will carry your anger for you if you will let me." She explained. If he would give her his anger, just hand it over to her like a backpack, she promised she would carry it for him. She would be angry for him every day in her prayers, but he would have to give it over to her. He didn't have to be angry about this any more. She would do that for him. She promised to call him in a year to see if he was free from his anger, and to see if she could be freed from her promise to him. A year to the day, Sister Mary Abelard telephoned. "Gene, I've kept my end of the bargain. I have been angry for you every day. How about you?" Gene discovered, he was free of his anger. He laughed gratefully and freed her from her service. She had given him a profound gift -- to be free; to be himself again.

Notice that when Jesus comes to the Geresene demoniac, the only thing that he does is to give this tortured man permission to be himself rather than to be what these legion of demons have told him he is. Jesus gives the demons permission, and they leave. That is the effect of the presence of love. Love lets you be who you truly are, not what your compulsions say you must be.

Whenever I read the story about the Geresene demoniac, I don't just think about the demons that bind us nice, comfortable Episcopalians. I also think about those more frightening demons that imprison so many beyond their capacity to overcome. Many of these are the demons that are not of one's own making.

I'm particularly thinking of the demons of poverty and of mental illness; the demons that come in the wake of accident and sickness; the demons that follow the victims of violence and greed.

I think it is important to note that Jesus goes to the foreign country, the land of the Geresenes; that he enters the place of the dead and demonic. Jesus goes there to do and to be the only thing God calls us to do and to be: love. Once he is there, he attends to the singular need of the one person there. He lets God do what God does. He gives the oppressed man permission to be who he is, and the demons leave.

That is part of our calling also. We are free and therefore we can be fearless. We can go to the places of bondage and oppression, and we can fearlessly give people permission to be who they are, whole and free. But it is not our work. God is already there. God is already fully present with the oppressed. Our part is to participate in the work of liberation that God is already accomplishing. All we are asked to do is to love. Whatever results there may be, or lack of results, are not ours to account for.

That perspective makes it more possible for us to share in God's work of liberation. When we are no longer afraid of the demons -- we can approach the darkness and oppression of the world with confidence. If we weren't so afraid of the mentally ill, or terrorists, or immigrants, maybe we could find ways to love enough to participate in whatever it is that God is already doing to heal the world. Perfect love casts out fear. Because we are one with Christ we are free to go to the country of the demoniacs, free to enter the tombs. Having faced our own demons and given ourselves permission to be who we truly are, we can help God liberate other souls from their bondage and fear. We can carry another's angers and fears so that they might be freed.

Christ willingly casts out legions of bondage from our lives, and Christ invites us to share in that liberating work for others. It may be the most important gift we can give to a fearful and shackled world.

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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373

This sermon and others are on our web site at www.stpaulsfay.org
Please visit our partner web ministry also at www.ExploreFaith.org

Experiencing God

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
June 10, 2007; 2nd Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 5, Year C
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Galatians 1:11-24) -- I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus.

Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days; but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord's brother. In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie! Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ; they only heard it said, "The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy." And they glorified God because of me.

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There is an edge in Paul's voice today. "I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ." We know that he is talking about the vision he experienced on the road to Damascus. He started out on that road with the intention of arresting the followers of Jesus and he left that road being a follower of Jesus. He says, "God... was pleased to reveal his Son to me."

Then he goes on to say that he didn't receive instruction from the Christian authorities about his faith. He didn't study under them and learn what he was supposed to believe. Instead, he "went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards ...returned." Paul's faith is grounded in the experience of revelation. It's not something he studied himself into. Or you might put it this way, Paul's direct experience of Jesus gave him a fundamental faith in Jesus, not a faith about Jesus. It was personal, not just theoretical. It was felt, not just thought about. He had an experience that shook him to the core, then he thought about it. The rest of his life was oriented to that reality.


Walter Hurt was an intimidating professor of mine. He taught Apologetics at the General Theological Seminary. Apologetics is the field of study concerning the systematic defense of the Christian gospel. It is intellectually rigorous and rationally grounded in historical evidence and philosophical arguments. It's a head trip. And Walter was the perfect teacher for Apologetics. He was so smart, that when he preached, I didn't understand a third of what he said. But it was impressive. He was the professor who could make the rational, intellectual argument for the existence of God stick.

We had just finished a series of lectures on Thomas Aquinas' famous five "proofs" for the existence of God. Walter had been rigorous and thorough. The classic "proofs" had a few holes shot into them by Walter. The next topic was "the argument from experience." Oh, I thought. Get ready for a blood-letting. If the most persuasive rational, intellectual, philosophical arguments for the existence of God got such critique from Walter, wait until he gets a shot at some syrupy, subjective emotional speculation from history's vault of visionary crazies. This should be fun, I thought.

After a fairly tepid introduction to the "argument from experience" and his pointing out its obvious weaknesses – it is usually an individual experience without objective verification; how do you know if something subjective is true or delusional? – Walter shifted tone a bit, saying "But let me offer you something of a personal example."

Then Walter told our class about a time many years before when he was assisting at the altar with a priest he disliked. In fact, he said it would have taken energy to work his feelings all the way up to "dislike" for the priest. In a real sense he cared nothing at all for the man. Walter described the worship as a dull, routine Eucharist presided over by a dull, routine priest. In the congregation was an older man who was partially crippled and unable to mount the steps to the altar rail. He was a regular. Unfortunately, he was one of those people whose disability only exacerbated his bitter personality. He was cranky, offensive and mean-spirited. Walter said, "I really had no sense of compassion or empathy for him at all. It was as if in his crippling he had gotten what he deserved. His body truly reflected his being."

As was the custom, the priest picked up the cup and a wafer to take communion to the old man in the congregation. Now quoting: "As the acolyte swung open the altar gate," and at this point in the lecture Walter began to choke with emotion. His face flushed and his eyes watered. I watched this rigidly logical professor standing fiercely upright fighting to gain composure. "Even now the remembrance of it causes me to weep," he said. He took a deep breath, and in a hushed, cracking voice he spoke rapidly, "As the acolyte swung open the altar gate, I saw a heavenly light pour through the windows and ceilings upon that priest, and I saw him. He was Christ entering our world to feed broken humanity. And that crippled man -- he was all of us. Broken and hurting, waiting to receive life literally from Christ."

There was a few seconds of silence, as Walter recovered. "So you see I believe the classical apologia from experience is a strong argument for the religious possibility." Crisp, logical once again.


My favorite spiritual writer Dr. Gerald May is a psychiatrist who has conducted hundreds of in depth interviews with people from all walks of life, asking them about their spiritual experiences. He is particularly interested in what is called the "unitive experience." He describes a unitive experience as when "one feels suddenly 'swept up' by life, 'caught' in a suspended moment where time seems to stand still and awareness peaks, ...becoming at once totally wide-awake and open. Everything in the immediate environment is experienced with awesome clarity, and the vast panorama of consciousness lies open. For the duration of the experience – which is usually not long – mental activity seems to be suspended. Preoccupations, misgivings, worries, and desires all seem to evaporate, leaving everything 'perfect, just as it is.' Usually there are some reactive feelings that occur toward the end of the experience, feelings such as awe, wonder, expansiveness, freedom, warmth, love, and a sense of total truth or 'rightness.' After the experience is over, there is an almost invariable recollection of having been at one." (Gerald May, Will and Spirit, p. 55f)

Gerald May says that nearly everyone he has interviewed in depth, including people with some brain damage or schizophrenia, can recall at least one or two unitive experiences. One man told of a moment on vacation in the mountains when
everything had become quiet. The crickets and cicadas had silenced their chirping, and even the breeze stopped. All I can say is that moment was an eternity, and it was the moment of my birth. ...I had no thought at the time – everything was just there. I had no reaction except for a deep quiet and peace. This is hard for me to say, but as some point I remember thinking "There is a God, there is a God." And my life hasn't been the same since then. I still practice law, and I keep the same friends. I still worry about money and politics. I still snap at my wife when I've had a hard day, but I'm different. Somewhere deep down something has changed. Now I look for God – I seek the wonder of life, and while I appreciate being here on the face of this earth more than ever before, I also fear death less. I sit alone sometimes, and now and then I enter that moment again. (ibid, p. 69)

One of the privileges of being a priest is that sometimes people trust me with their stories of their spiritual experiences. This week a friend told me how coming to receive communion has always been an experience of the presence of God. Another told of a difficult period of life years ago when she was alone, recently divorced, separated from her church community, not knowing where to go or what to do. She reached out challenging God saying desperately, "Show me something." And deep within she felt a message: "Be patient. I am preparing something for you." About a year later she connected with the love of her life.

It is not unusual for the experience of the Spirit to occur in times when there is a void – an openness, emptiness, or vulnerability. We've just experienced the disciples' story of the ascension of Jesus – his leaving them, his absence – which opened the way for Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit. Contemplative practices seek to open our selves to God in silence and stillness to wait for the possibility of union. It is in the void that God tends to be revealed.

These moments of spiritual experience are powerful, yet they are also very fragile. They can be easily dismissed – I must have been delusional; an overactive imagination; that was nice, now but back to real life.

No! These moments of spiritual insight are our most real life. They reveal to us the deeper reality which is eternally present just below our ordinary consciousness, underneath our plain sight, just beyond whatever we are grasping. They cannot be manipulated or controlled, for God is free. They can only be appreciated and recalled.

I'm convinced our healthiest life happens when we orient ourselves around such reality. When we, like Paul, insist – God was pleased to reveal something to me. When we recall some moment, maybe only fleeting and obscure, when we received something not from a human source, nor taught, but received through a revelation from God.

I'll bet that if you think about it a while, you will remember such a moment. Treasure that memory. Honor it with the fierceness of Paul. That single experience on the road to Damascus was enough for him. He didn't need anything else. From that moment he knew who Jesus was and he oriented his whole life around that reality. It sustained him through troubles and trials and even through some chronic darkness he called his "thorn in the flesh" which never went away. The vision on that road was enough for his entire life. It was his resurrection. He was changed forever. He was truly alive.

What is your experience of the deeper reality? How is that experience resurrection and new life for you? Recall, remember, treasure that revelation. It is enough to sustain you for the rest of your life.
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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373

This sermon and others are on our web site at www.stpaulsfay.org
Please visit our partner web ministry also at www.ExploreFaith.org

Holy Trinity; Holy Ground

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
June 2, 2007; Trinity Sunday, Year C
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Romans 5:1-5) -- Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

(John 16:12-15) -- Jesus said to the disciples, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

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There is a phrase we use whenever we have one of our farewell liturgies at St. Paul's. When a parishioner is moving, we like to thank them for their ministry here and send them on to their new home with our blessing and affection. The last phrase we use as we bid good bye to our friends is this: "From now on, wherever you go and wherever you are, all of the ground between us will be holy." Many of us have been moved deeply by those words. Let me tell you where that phrase comes from.

In his book Reaching Out, the popular spiritual writer Henri Nouwen tells a story about one of his former students who returned to visit with him. "I have no problems this time, no questions to ask you. I do not need counsel or advice, but I simply want to celebrate some time with you," the student said. Here's how Henri described their visit.

We sat on the ground facing each other and talked a little about what life had been for us in the last year, about our work, our common friends, and about the restlessness of our hearts. Then slowly as the minutes passed by we became silent. Not an embarrassing silence but a silence that could bring us closer together than the many small and big events of the last year. We would hear a few cars pass and the noise of someone who was emptying a trash can somewhere. But that did not hurt. The silence which grew between us was warm, gentle and vibrant. Once in a while we looked at each other with the beginning of a smile pushing away the last remnants of fear and suspicion. It seemed that while the silence grew deeper around us we became more and more aware of a presence embracing both of us. Then he said, "It is good to be here" and I said, "Yes it is good to be together again," and after that we were silent again for a long period. And as a deep peace filled the empty space between us he said hesitantly, "When I look at you it is as if I am in the presence of Christ." I did not feel startled, surprised or in need of protesting, but I could only say, "It is the Christ in you, who recognizes the Christ in me." "Yes," he said, "He is indeed in our midst," and then he spoke the words which entered into my soul as the most healing words I had heard in many years, "From now on, wherever you go, or wherever I go, all the ground between us will be holy ground."
Henri J.M. Nouwen, Reaching Out, p. 45

Nouwen says this student revealed to him "what community really means." I would agree. I would say that they experienced a participation in the life of the Holy Trinity. I've spoken before of the Trinity as a Dance of Love: the outpouring of love from the Father in unreserved affection for the Son, and the Son's complete and full acceptance of the love from the Father, wholly received and wholly returned with a reciprocal love back to the Father. The love between them -- the Being of unifying love that makes them One -- is God the Holy Spirit. It is that Love which creates all that is.

We live in a trinitarian community. Each of us has our distinct being, and yet we are so interrelated and interdependent. When we open our focus just a bit, we can experience that we are all of one being. Whenever we become conscious of that spirit of interrelationship, we are led into the life of the Spirit, the Spirit of truth, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given us.

Last week I mentioned a book I am reading by the head of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins. Back in 1989 Dr. Collins had an opportunity to serve in a missionary hospital in Nigeria. He became overwhelmed by the volume of illness and suffering and the lack of resources to treat them. "Tuberculosis, malaria, tetanus, and a wide variety of parasitic diseases all reflected an environment that was completely unregulated and a health care system that was completely broken." He grew more and more discouraged.

One afternoon a young farmer came into the clinic suffering from the accumulation of a large amount of fluid in the pericardial sac around his heart. A symptom of tuberculosis, this fluid was choking him to death.

The only chance to save him was to carry out a highly risky procedure of drawing off the pericardial fluid with a large bore needle placed in his chest. In the developed world, such a procedure would be done only by a highly trained interventional cardiologist, guided by an ultrasound machine, in order to avoid lacerating the heart and causing immediate death.

No ultrasound was available. No other physician present in this small Nigerian hospital had ever undertaken this procedure. The choice was for [him] to attempt a highly risky and invasive needle aspiration or watch the farmer die. [He] explained the situation to the young man, who was now fully aware of his own precarious state. He calmly urged [Dr. Collins] to proceed. With his heart in [his] mouth and a prayer on his lips, [Dr. Collins] inserted a large needle just under [the man's] sternum and aimed for his left shoulder, all the while fearing that [he] might have made the wrong diagnosis, in which case [he] was almost certainly going to kill him.

[He] didn't have to wait long. The rush of dark red fluid in [his] syringe initially made [him] panic that [he] might have entered the heart chamber, but it soon became apparent that this was not normal heart's blood. It was a massive amount of bloody tuberculous effusion from the pericardial sac around the heart.
Francis S. Collins, The Language of God, p. 213f

There was a feeling of relief, and then elation. But as Dr. Collins continued to think about the future for this young farmer, he recognized how unlikely it still was that the young man would survive much longer. The likelihood of his continuing the necessary treatment, the presence of so many other pathogens, inadequate nutrition, the dangerous environment... The man's chances were so poor.

Francis Collins writes this:
With those discouraging thoughts in my head, I approached his bedside the next morning, finding him reading his Bible. He looked at me quizzically, and asked whether I had worked at the hospital for a long time. I admitted that I was new, feeling somewhat irritated and embarrassed that it had been so easy for him to figure that out. But then this young Nigerian farmer, just about as different from me in culture, experience, and ancestry as any two humans could be, spoke the words that will for ever be emblazoned in my mind: "I get the sense you are wondering why you came here," he said. "I have an answer for you. You came here for one reason. You came here for me."

Dr. Collins was stunned how clearly this young farmer could see into his heart.
I had plunged a needle close to his heart; he had directly impaled mine. With a few simple words he had put my grandiose dreams of being the great white doctor, healing the African millions, to shame. He was right. We are each called to reach out to others. On rare occasions that can happen on a grand scale. But most of the time it happens in simple acts of kindness of one person to another. Those are the events that really matter. The tears of relief that blurred my vision as I digested his words stemmed from indescribable reassurance -- reassurance that there in that strange place for just that one moment, I was in harmony with God's will, bonded together with this young man in a most unlikely but marvelous way.

Francis Collins and that young Nigerian farmer recognized that they were living together within the life of God, the Holy Trinity. Each of them had poured out themselves to the other, and they experienced the life that unites them -- the very life of God's Holy Spirit. Henri Nouwen and his student recognized that they were living within the life of God, the Holy Trinity. Each of them was still and silent enough to experience and recognize the presence in whom we live and move and have our being.

This is the life that we live in all the time. It is the atmosphere we breathe, the energy of our being, the union of all that is. We can experience the living reality of God whether we are active, like Francis Collins and the farmer, or whether we are still, like Henri Nouwen and the student. At all times and in all places, we are all embraced by a presence that loves us and breathes us into being. We are all one, in God.

What is true for them is true for us. We are here for one reason: we are here for one another. From now on, wherever we go and wherever we are, all the ground between us will be holy ground.

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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and it's life and mission, please contact us at
P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373

This sermon and others are on our web site at www.stpaulsfay.org
Please visit our partner web ministry also at www.ExploreFaith.org