Good morning! I am so glad to be here and to be with you on this beautiful day. I started coming to Emmanuel during the Pandemic, so I am just getting to know many of you who have been here much longer, as well as those of you who are relatively new like me. I initially came in large part simply because Emmanuel was open; worship was in person, and I needed that. I stayed because the love of God is taught, preached, sung, and practiced here.
Our theme this year is “Love our neighbor.” Versions of this command occur, of course, in many places in the Bible: in Leviticus (19:18), in the Gospels, in Paul’s letters. My favorite is in the Gospel of Luke, when a religious expert asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”

We have heard this story. A person is attacked on a dangerous road and left in the ditch. Supposedly-pious people walk past. The neighbor turns out to be a foreigner, whose views on religion those pious people would presumably not have approved of, someone they would probably have regarded as a sinner. What grabs my attention though is that the wounded person and the passerby have ceased to be strangers: they have become neighbors. It seems an odd term to use. Jesus, however, seems to be saying that where there is
compassion and mercy, nothing separates people. No matter whether we are the
person in the ditch, wounded and alone, or we are the passerby who stops to do
what he, she, or they can.

So, too, we come to Emmanuel with needs and wounds, and with resources
and gifts—gifts of song, of joy and humor; small and large acts in
planting and weeding the garden, greeting our puppet friends, financial
support for programing and for well-earned salaries, respectful help cleaning,
warming, or fixing up our belovedly-aging and healthy-breathing building,
offering a smile to someone who needs that kind notice just then.  All this and
more is our stewardship.

It is nice, of course, for the folks who have to plan a budget to have our pledges
soon. Even though we may need to spread our giving out through the year, to
know our intentions is helpful. We can, of course, also change that pledge,
give more or less as we want or need to. I pledge to Emmanuel as I do
because it is one more thread, one more tie, into the neighborly love of God, which
pours forth in and out from this place. Here we are invited to be the presence of God in the world by loving our neighbor. Our stewardship of Emmanuel is one way we can do this.

–Karen King, 10/9/2022