 speaker Marilyn Kendricks is one of my pastors and I'm very honored that she has agreed to speak today. She's going to be sharing with us some of her story about her coming-to-faith journey. So thank you Marilyn, I'll let you continue to introduce yourself and set yourself up however you need to do so. Thank you Marilyn. So my earliest memories of church-involved music and all throughout my life I found God in the music. I was a shy child, painfully shy so I refused to go to Sunday school, that's ironic since I run it today. Regular school was difficult enough for me having to talk to kids and teachers and endure all the noise and of too many children in too small a space and so when Sunday came along I was not up to for another day of being social so I absolutely refused to go to Sunday school. So my parents let me stay in church. They were both busy however in church. Daddy was a usher and my mother was in the choir so I had to sit alone because my brother went to Sunday school and so I they sat me on the bench with Jimmy the organist. I sat beside him on that organ bench during service every Sunday and I watched his feet play the foot pedals and I listened to God's voice in the bass notes. I watched his hands skip from one keyboard to another with grace and the angels sang along. He pushed and pulled the stops and I felt God's tone change now flutes now trumpets Jimmy and the organ pushed the breath of God through those pipes and music came out. In that music my faith in God was born. I have no proof of God in this world but music is my best evidence and for me the organ music that opens my gateway to the heart of God the best are hymns. Old-fashioned hymns. Hymns seem to narrate my life from moment to moment and keep me always connected to God. I've always had favorite hymns but my favorite hymns change from day to day. One day I'll have a favorite hymn and another hymn comes along the next day to replace it like oh yeah that's that's my favorite hymn. But the hymn that has been my favorite theology hymn for the last couple of years has been oh God beyond all praising. So I will have a go at describing my theology using my favorite hymn. You'll have to imagine the organ. Oh God beyond all praising we worship you today. It doesn't say I worship you. In this hymn it says we worship you together collectively as a community of faith as the church. Our lived faith must recognize itself as a part of a larger world. Each of us needs the larger community in order to realize our own selves in faith. To speak with us and sometimes to speak for us to name what is just and to hold us accountable to one another. At the very core of my faith is an understanding that everything that we are, everything that we have is a gift from God. The wildly varied diversity of humankind is a gift from God. The call into unity of being one together as a whole human family is a gift from God. Love as compassionate, compassionate fires the desire to alleviate suffering is a gift from God. So we sing the love amazing that songs cannot repay because if we really think about it this amazing creation our very lives are awesome as in creating all so that we can only wonder at all the gifts we have from God. As you can see from me one of God's most special gifts is music. As a child I was sure sure that the sounds coming out from the organ had to be God's voice. I think I may still believe that today. For me music is my best reminder of all God's gifts and the blessings without number and the mercies without end. My first church experience was in Lower East Side Manhattan and it was foundational for me creating my understanding of the body of Christ as one of diversity. White people and black people and Hispanic people and Asian people were all there as people of God and where we were asked to love God by loving and serving one another. When I was 10 my parents moved our family away from Manhattan, away from that gloriously diverse church. I had come to understand how rare an experience that was. After I spent my growing up years in a veritable smorgasbord of Protestantism, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Baptist and Methodist, I challenge you to have more experiences than I have. Always seeking a community of Christians in line with my first understanding of the body of Christ. In my 20s I found a Christian community of radical welcome in the United Church of Christ. It was in this community within local CCC congregations that I found a community of Christians whose radical welcome aspires to live into the unity that would have all of God's people sing together, lifting our voices before God and waiting upon God's word. Honoring and adoring God, our great and mighty Lord. I have to admit that while my love of God and faith in God's goodness motivated me to search for this diversity that was my very first church experience, my introversion caused me to believe that a solitary personal private relationship with God would be enough. Indeed, when I first experienced the calls who ordained ministry somewhat late in life, I wondered if perhaps God was knocking on the wrong door. Maybe God was confused. Yet I've come to believe that with God this call came at just the right time. The writer of Leviticus tells us a little bit about that. I will give you your reigns in their season and the land shall yield its produce and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. There are, if you look hard enough, some real pearls in Leviticus. By the time I finished my studies at YDS, I had come to understand that my training in organizational psychology, my experience in corporate America, loving people into working relationships provided the necessary preparation for the soil of my soul. And so it was a partnership of faith and experience, a partnership of love of God and love of people that brought me to this ministry, that prepared me to joyously preach the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the good news is that Jesus Christ, with Jesus Christ, we have nothing to fear, nothing in this world, not even death itself. In a world full of worry and fear, Jesus asks in Matthew, and can any of you by worrying add a single hour to the span of your life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither spin nor toil. In the resurrection of Jesus, we are made to understand that death itself should hold no fear for us. And that is good news, especially as we get older. The flower of earthly splendor and time must surely die. It's fragile bloom surrendered to you, our God, most high but hidden from all nature, the eternal seed is sown. Those small and mortal stature to heaven's garden grown. For Christ, your son from heaven, from death, has set us free. And we through you are given the final victory. You know, as I looked for the sheet music for this hymn, I discovered that many versions omit this middle verse. And for me without this middle verse, well, this just wouldn't be my theology hymn. The middle verse perfectly conveys that God loves us and with, and we have nothing, not even death to fear. And that's good news. You know, the summer of my last year at YDS, I completed a one unit of CPE. And each of us interns was allowed to select one place in the hospital, one unit where we could focus our ministry. And I chose to work in the hospital's outpatient cancer unit. As one called the parish ministry, I thought that this unit would be a great preparation for pastoral work in a congregation. Wherever two or three have gathered, there will be cancer or some other life threatening condition. In that ministry in the cancer unit, I couldn't tell people that they would beat the cancer. But I could tell them that God knows their suffering, that God in Jesus suffered in the crucifixion, but that in the resurrection, God shares the secret that beyond death, there is life. Beyond pain, there is freedom and victory. I've heard it said there were no atheists in a foxhole. Well, I did find a few atheists in the cancer unit. But I also found lots of people who were sure that God was punishing them or that God was indifferent to their suffering. The gospel of Jesus Christ can be a balm and Gilead. But there's much more to Christ's teaching than that. For Jesus did much more than be born and die. He had a ministry and in that ministry he taught us about how we are to live into God's love. Then here, oh gracious savior, accept the love we bring that we who know your favor may serve you as we sing that much as we love to sing. Singing is not enough. We are to serve. I believe that answering Christ's call to the love of God with all your heart, soul and might and to love your neighbor as yourself means working for justice for all God's people. That's one way that we serve. And here's another reason that I made the informed decision to become a member of the United Church of Christ so many years ago. Working for social justice is central to our UCC tradition. And I've spent a great deal of time of my few years in ministry working for social justice. You know, I had the rare experience while I was at YDS to travel one summer to with the class to Tanzania. The class had a long complicated title. It was called Catalyst for Social Change, The Quest for Social Justice through music, theater and liberation theologies. Basically, what we had to do was connect with people, the folks living in Dar es Salaam in crowded dirty slums of the city and listen to their stories, understanding their challenges and concerns, and then write a play and perform the play for them in the open air free of charge, echoing back to them their concerns, their challenges. But the different thing was this play had no ending. Instead, for a good hour or two after the unresolved climax, the audience interacted with the cast working on how the play should end. The goal of course was to help them to understand their own agency, their own power to effect change in their lives. It was based on the work of Augusto Boal in his book, Theater of the Oppressed. That experience was a real life demonstration for me of how I think God works, not solving our problems for us, but setting the scene, providing all the gifts we need and then trusting us to come up with the answers that can contribute to human flourishing for all people. For me, that's social justice. Serving Christ is about working to undo the injustice of the world in order to usher in God's own justice. I've tried to serve Christ by raising awareness about the plight of America's incarcerated citizens, to raise awareness about the fact that in America, we have more people in prison than any other nation in the world. And that this mass incarceration of our poorest, darkest citizens is a result of a failed national policy called the War on Drugs. I believe that we're to work toward God's justice no matter what happens in our lives. I believe that we are called, all of us, to love God and love neighbor even in the midst of our own suffering so that we can sing whether our tomorrows be filled with good or ill. We are to keep working to bring about God's kingdom. We are to keep fighting the good fight, and we will triumph through our sorrows and rise to bless God still. I love that line. It reminds me that life will be filled with both joys and sorrows, and still God is good and worthy to be praised. Recently, though, I had my doubts. It was the day we heard about the brutal murder of nine people at Bible study at Mother Immanuel AME Church in Charleston. That was a hard day for me. And it was a hymn that brought me up out of that dark place where those killings had sent me. My God who lives in the music reminded me of Martin Luther, not King. The original Martin Luther who wrote a mighty fortress is our God. It was that line that goes, the body they may kill. God's truth shall triumph still that saved me that day. Yes, God is in the music and I am truly blessed with a sure knowledge of God living in the notes. A sure knowledge that the Holy Spirit is working both in the writing and the reading of scripture and if we allow it in our lives every day. So you know that for me every day is a good day to marvel at God's beauty and glory in God's ways. You know that living into this call from God has provided me with both a duty and a joy and allows me to make every day a sacrifice of praise. My gateway to the heart of God is music. So my question for you is, what is your gateway to the heart of God? Talk them on yourself.