In every circumstance, God is near. Always we begin again in the grace and peace of Jesus Christ.

Wisdom begins in the awareness that God is God, and we are not, and that God is good. Wisdom then encourages us to live our lives from there, as we discover together ways of living that lead to more life.

God is God, and “loves all creation equally and desires justice for all.” In love, God calls the prophet to stand apart and speak to the powers a word telling them that they must change.

“Why... in our justice work... does it always feel like we are beginning again?” Because the powers never relent. But here’s the good news. Neither does God. God never relents in pressing on toward the freedom and thriving of all people.

As part of our series Always We Begin Again, we considered the beginning of each of the four gospels. The gospels tell the good news of Jesus in a bright array of voices, including ours.

God builds into creation a rhythm of creative action, followed by rest, renewal, and restoration.

At Pentecost, the Spirit fills everyone gathered with a spirit of boldness, a spirit of generosity, and a spirit of real and lasting community.

In the forty days leading up to the Ascension, Jesus and the disciples had the chance to say good-bye – part of the aliveness that they experience in Resurrection. In Resurrection, no good-bye is ever final.

The Apostle Paul walks around Athens and notices a temple to “An Unknown God.” The God who is beyond our knowing, reaches out to us, in the Risen Christ, and is close at hand.

In the days after Resurrection and Pentecost, the community had everything in common, sold what they had, and gave to any as they had need. The Resurrection experience of radical sharing in community is alive with possibility.

This Sunday, we considered the familiar story of the two disciples who encounter the Risen Christ on the Road to Emmaus. The Risen Christ is alive in the world in the steady, sustaining rhythm of human companionship – sharing life’s journey – walking and talking – companions on the way.

Like the women headed to the tomb, we know what it is to wake up in a bad-news world. On Easter morning, there is a different kind of headline: Christ is risen! The Good News is alive in the world, and so are we.

Palm Sunday is a protest. The people follow Jesus, shouting and embodying together Good News. Holy Week is how that Good News then gets lived out.

God creates, commands, and impels an ethic and moral order that center the protection, care, and well-being of the most vulnerable.

As a woman washes Jesus’ feet, we see her lavish love, in response to God’s, inviting us to live out our own.

At a banquet, Jesus tells a story about a banquet. The Good News is... all are welcome. The invitation is for everyone. The response is ours to make.

The Good News is that God’s love for us in Jesus Christ catches us by surprise – because God always loves us and the whole world more. What Jesus does in his testing in the wilderness and at the wedding at Cana should catch us by surprise. It’s not the way the world works – but it points us to the way the world ought to be.

Jesus teaches us how to be fully human, and then invites us to be salt and light for the world.

The Beatitudes describe how God is infusing the world with good. They give us a lens – that draws us into a vision –that comes to life in the lives we live. What we learn with Jesus is nothing less than how to be fully human.

Jesus invites us to ask questions – to seek understanding beyond what we know now; to learn and grow; and to learn to live together in the complexity of the things we can’t yet comprehend.