When you remember me it means you carry something of who I am with you. That I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. (Frederick Buechner) Believing that to be true, that Jesus has left some mark on each of us and all of us, this evening we remember who he was and what he did and the mark he has left on our lives.

Why is it that sometimes the most straightforward and the easiest to understand becomes the most complicated?

What did Jesus do?
He healed.
The paralytic.
The man possessed by spirits.
The woman who was bleeding.
Blind Bartimaeus.
Zacchaeus.

What did he do?
He fed those who were hungry.
The 5000.
The disciples on the shore and on their way to Emmaus.
Those who were searching.
The woman at the well.
Nathaniel who asked if anything good can come out of Nazareth.

What did he do?
He extended a welcome to the excluded and the disenfranchised.
The women who interrupted Simon’s dinner party to wash his feet.
And the woman who pushed her way through the crowds to just touch his robe.
The children who the disciples tried to keep away.
Those who were sick or blind or deaf.
And, he included the stranger.
The Samaritan.
The Canaanite woman.
The Roman officer whose son was dying.

What did he do?
He challenged those who misused authority and power.
The religious elite.
The Roman overlords.
Those who acted in his name, but who then used that authority for their own ends.

He made the circle which encompassed God’s children larger.
As a colleague said,
Moving the margins until there are no more margins.
That is what Jesus was about.

What did he do?
He healed.
He fed.
He welcomed.
He included.
And those of us who follow Jesus, are left with this question.
Is our call to stand on the sidelines and watch?
Or, are those of us who have heard his voice and who dare this night to eat the bread he offers and to share the cup he blesses and who day in and day out say we follow in his footsteps to do what we have seen him do?