Pastor’s message 2/8/23

What’s Worth Salvaging

I subscribe to a meal delivery service, and last week, the bag containing one of three meal kits was
soaked. A small plastic bag that contained a pre-made, cream cheese base for a soup had torn in
transit and now soaked all the other ingredients in the bag.

I reacted with a shrug of the shoulders and resignation that the meal was lost. I confess that my first
instinct was to throw it all away —until I looked more closely. Nothing else was bruised, torn, or
broken. Messy and sticky on the outside, yes, but on the inside the ingredients were whole and fresh
and ready for cooking. The meal was not beyond repair. Its pieces simply needed salvaging. I
washed everything, one piece at a time, dried them, and placed them swaddled in a cloth inside the
bowl.

Life can get messy. We mere mortals have torn places within us, we sometimes feel torn by others,
and we tear at others. Sometimes we can’t see what is whole because of the mess of what is broken.
How easily we forget that the body of Christ is made up of broken and torn people whom He felt
were worth salvaging. Shouldn’t we do the same?

There is no better time for the body of Christ to focus on two immediate tasks, two lessons from
yet-unprepared soup. One is to remember our baptisms. We are cleansed one by one, and baptism is
the outward sign of what Jesus has done in the hearts of those who believe. The other is to wash one
another’s feet. Before he went to the cross, Jesus cleansed one foot at at time. These were the same
feet that would flee from him in abandonment in his hour of need. Yet they were worth salvaging.

Beloved, you are worth salvaging today. You are not beyond repair. Remember your baptism. Be
thankful. Let us not be quick to judge, but instead let us be quick to kneel, to plunge our hands into
the water and find a way forward. In our brokenness we are whole, and in our cleansing, we have
been made free.

all good things to each of you,
Dr. Darian

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