“I don’t have a problem talking with you about giving money at All Saints Church. Because while money is really important, it is also sign and symbol of what I really want to ask you to give and that is your lives. Give your lives, give your whole selves for love. That’s where the joy is! Don’t hold back in fear. Together, we can do it. God has us and we’ve got each other.

“I want us to move our money from fear to love because I want us to move our lives from fear to love. Life is too short and too beautiful for us to be prisoners of fear. Love calls us through joy and sorrow – and yet even the sorrow can be a window to joy when we walk through life together.”

Sermon by Mike Kinman at All Saints Church, Pasadena, on Sunday, October 6, 2019.

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Donate to support the mission and ministries of All Saints at https://allsaints-pas.org/donate/donate-now/.

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“If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Uproot yourself, and plant yourself in the sea,’ and it would obey you.
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Every morning, I take one tiny low-dose aspirin.
I have done this every morning for nearly nine years. I will do it for the rest of my life.

Every morning, I hold this tiny pill in my hand and I remember
… this is a day I thought I wouldn’t have.
… this is a day that odds say I shouldn’t have had

and I ask myself: “How am I going to use the gift of this one day?”

This tiny aspirin, small, insignificant … this is my mustard seed. It is that incredibly small thing … which can lead to extraordinary things … if I trust enough to let it.

Nine years ago this month, I was sitting at a dinner when I began to have trouble speaking, it felt like my tongue was sort of dead in my mouth. When that feeling wouldn’t go away I went to see a doctor. He looked at my tongue. Did a couple of basic tests right there in the exam room and then said:

“Well, it’s either a brain tumor, a growth or something weird.”

And I said, “What’s something weird?’

“Oh, you know, MS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, something like that.”

And so I said, “Uh … is there any chance that it’s something, you know … less serious?”

And he shook his head and said, “Nah.” And then he sent me out to be scheduled for a brain MRI the next morning and sent me home.

Let me hit pause here and say to any doctors in the congregation … please never do this. This was not helpful. Do not just say “tumor, growth or something weird” followed by “see you later!” Because in the space of one sentence, my whole life had changed. In the space of one sentence, everything I had just assumed – that I would live a normal life, watch my kids grow up – all of that was now up for grabs and frankly, wasn’t looking so good. I’m amazed I was able to drive home without crashing. AlI could think about was a friend my age with two kids who had woken up with numbness in his left foot, and 16 months later he was dead of a tumor on his brain stem.

Next morning was the MRI … and then 30 hours of waiting for results. I was a wreck. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. All I could think was ..

My wife is going to be a widow.
I will never see my children grow up.
My church will have to find a new pastor.
I’m 41 years old, and this is it.

And as I lay in bed in the middle of the afternoon, trying to rest but wracked with anxiety, I realized I was at the foot of the cross. That had always been an image … but now it was real. The place where we come face to face with death. And it was not a fun place to be. It was a terrifying place to be. And … in the middle of that fear, I remembered. I remembered that the promise of the cross is that we never, ever stand there alone. That Christ is always there with us.

So, I called a dear friend and prayer partner, Dahn Gandell. Dahn is one of those people who is just a nuclear-powered pray-er. The kind of pray-er who you just know when she starts in God is thinking … damn, it’s Dahn … I’d better pay attention or I’m gonna be in trouble!

And even though we were a thousand miles apart, I remember it like she was right there in the room. And after we prayed, I asked her a question. I said, “Dahn, if I die, will you be with me at the end holding my hand and holding Robin’s hand.”

And she said, “Of course.”

“And will you make sure she is OK, my family is OK and my congregation is OK?”

And she said, “Of course.”

And then I took a deep breath and I let it out.

And then I felt it.

I felt what St. Paul calls “the peace that passes all understanding.”

It wasn’t that I was OK with dying. I wasn’t.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t still scared. I was.

And… deep inside, I felt this peace.

Because I knew that even if that which I most feared happened … and it very well might … that there was nothing to fear. Because God, through Dahn and others, would always be with the people I loved.

And God would always be with me.

The rest of the story is the kind of remarkable I still don’t know what to do with. As some people I know enjoy saying, my brain scan came back negative, so they ran a bunch of other tests and eventually discovered that I had a dissection, a tear, in my left carotid artery … and that a clot had formed an aneurysm there. Now, normally the first symptom of this would have been either major stroke or death … but because the aneurysm happened to impinge on a tiny nerve that created a very specific symptom … the left side of my tongue going numb … that made me go to a doctor so they were able to catch it before that happened.

Now even then, there was a really good chance of that stroke happening. The clot was so close to my brain they didn’t want to operate on it, so I went into the hospital and they put me on blood thinners. Several days later, they sent me home and told me I would have to be on blood thinners for the rest of my life, but six months later, when the CT scan showed absolutely no trace of the dissection, the clot, anything … they told me I could go off the blood thinners … and that all I had to do was take one low-dose aspirin a day. That’s it.

And so, every morning, I take one, tiny low-dose aspirin.
I have done this every morning for nearly nine years.
I will do it for the rest of my life.

This tiny aspirin, small, insignificant … is my mustard seed. It is that incredibly small thing … which can lead to extraordinary things … if I trust enough to let it. And it has changed and is changing my life.

Because every morning, I hold this mustard seed and I remember that this day is a gift that I didn’t think I would have … and I get to treat it as a gift.

Every morning, I hold this mustard seed and try to remember that I don’t need to be afraid. Not because nothing scary will happen to me. But because something scary might very well happen to me. Only it is nothing to fear.

Because I have been to the foot of the cross. And when I got there, I was not alone. Christ was there. And what Christ showed me in that moment, that moment I would not trade for anything … is that no matter what, we have God, God has us, and we have each other.

And because of that, there is nothing that together we cannot face.

Because of that, we never, never, ever need to fear.

Because of that, together, we can embrace each day with joy for the gift that it is!

And that conviction has become my driving force.
That conviction is why I came to All Saints Church.
It is why I am standing in front of you this morning.

Today, we launch our 2020 giving campaign, and so I’m supposed to be up here talking about giving. I know that we are all coming from different places when it comes to giving. I know we have gotten many different messages about wealth and giving throughout our lives. And I know we are in many different financial situations from wealth to debt. And I know that when we think about money a primary emotion many of us feel is fear.

So yes, I hope you will give and give generously to All Saints Church. Because your giving is crucial. Because right now we are building the foundation for the future of this congregation and we are facing rising costs just to keep doing what we are doing.

And … there is so much more.

So much more that is about being freed from fear and being freed to love,.

So much more that is about what my mustard seed has been teaching me with each passing day.

We are being lied to every day.

We are being sold lies of fear and hopelessness.

We are told whom to fear and what to fear.

We are told we need to hold onto what we have out of fear.

We are told we should not love for fear that we will be hurt.

That we should not trust for fear we will be betrayed.

That we should not try to be extraordinary for fear that we will fail.

We are told we cannot make a difference so there is no point in even trying.

And these lies of fear and hopelessness are killing us. They may not physically be taking away our lives, but they are surely taking away the love, the hope, the joy that is the reason for living.

And every day, I look at this mustard seed in my hand and I remember – if even for a moment – that those are lies. That this day, this year, this life can be extraordinary.

That I do not need to be bound by fear.

That no matter what happens, even if the worst comes down – and since no one gets out of this life alive, I probably should say even when the worst comes down — we will be holding each other’s hands because we have God, God has us, and we have each other

Every day, I look at the mustard seed in my hand and I remember – if even for a moment – that the antidote to the lies is love.

The antidote to the lies is trust.

The antidote to the lies is trusting that love is greater than the fear.

And that is what we are about at All Saints Church. We are about the truth that love is greater than fear.

Jesus says: ““If you had faith, if you had trust, the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Uproot yourself, and plant yourself in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

We are capable of extraordinary things. We know it. We have seen it. We feel it deep in our bones. And … we want desperately to trust it. We want desperately not to believe the lies of fear and hopelessness. To trust that our life is not just about the daily plodding from one day to the next. That there is a deeper meaning and purpose. That we can make a difference that makes a difference.

Walt Whitman sings that the answer to the meaning of a life so full of confusion and misery is “that you are here – that life exists and identity. That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

That is true! That’s the life we want! That is the life we can have!

Mary Oliver ponders the fragility of life on a summer day and sings:
“Doesn’t everything die at last and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?”

That is true! Together we can do something extraordinary. Be a part of something extraordinary. Make our lives extraordinary.

Days roll by and it seems like there will always be plenty of them … until there are not. And then we realize as one we love is taking their final breaths or as we take our final breaths that we would trade all we had for just one more ordinary extraordinary day.

When my first child was born, an older friend said to me of parenthood, “You know, the days are long, but the years are short.” That’s true of life.

The days turn into weeks into years into a lifetime. And we cheat ourselves every day when we let them speed by. We cheat ourselves when we don’t look at what our deepest desire for love looks like.

And it doesn’t have to be that way. We can have the love we desire and that love can be the joy of our hearts, the joy of our lives!

I don’t have a problem talking with you about giving money at All Saints Church. Because while money is really important, it is also sign and symbol of what I really want to ask you to give and that is your lives. Give your lives, give your whole selves for love. That’s where the joy is! Don’t hold back in fear. Together, we can do it. God has us and we’ve got each other.

I want us to move our money from fear to love because I want us to move our lives from fear to love. Life is too short and too beautiful for us to be prisoners of fear.

Love calls us through joy and sorrow – and yet even the sorrow can be a window to joy when we walk through life together.

This is the life we can have. And … the moment is now. And … we don’t have a moment to lose.

Because you see, we are all, always, running out of time. And while that should not tempt us to fear, it should move us to urgency.

There is no time for us to hold onto what we have in fear. Because what makes our lives extraordinary is when we let go of what we fear to lose and instead open our arms wide to hold on to each other in love.

I want you to give your money and your life to this community of love over fear at All Saints Church because we need each other deeply not just to get through the world we are in but to change the world we are in.

Because giving is where the joy is. And life should be about joy.

Because the powerful play is going on, and together we will contribute a verse.

Because we do have just one wild and precious life … and I am here to tell you that none of us is guaranteed one more day … and together we can spend each day of that wild and precious life in extraordinary ways if we break free of fear and give ourselves to love.

That is why we are All Saints Church. Because together we are the mustard seed that reminds us that each day is a gift that we might not have had … and we get to treat it as a gift.

Because together, we are the mustard seed that reminds us that we do not need to be afraid.

That this day, this year, this life is extraordinary.

That we can free our lives from fear and move our lives toward love.
That no matter what happens, in the end, we are always holding each other’s hands
because we have God,
God has us,
and we have each other.
Amen.