The American poet Maya Angelou wrote, “I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he or she handles three things:  a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.”  Last week my husband Phil and I were on vacation.  We drove up to our house in the Poconos after church on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, and after spending the afternoon doing yard work, we enjoyed a nice evening on our front porch, relaxing.  When it was time for bed, though, I realized that my suitcase never made it into the car.  It wasn’t lost—when we drove home the next morning to retrieve it, it was right where I left it, next to the staircase, just as I suspected it would be. What surprised me, though, was how well we took that in stride.  I was really looking forward to vacation because I could sense in myself that my emotional shock absorbers were pretty well shot.  It’s been a long year, you know?  I was running low on patience, resilience, decision making ability, flexibility…all of the qualities needed to handle life in a waning pandemic.  Discovering on the first night of our trip that I had no clothes to wear could have sent me over the edge.  But instead, Phil and I somehow found a way to laugh about it.  The only explanation I have for that is grace!I don’t think the Apostle Paul ever had to deal with lost luggage or tangled Christmas lights, but he had for sure experienced his share of rainy days, and he definitely knew something about foibles and flub ups.  Instead of letting life get him down, he advised another approach.  “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you:  Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.”  We could paraphrase this by saying, “Lighten up!  Don’t take yourself so seriously!” We can imagine how this piece of wisdom went over with the Christians in Rome.  After all, they were Romans!  They lived in the most sophisticated city on earth.   They were on a serious mission from God—pioneering the Christian faith in a place where worshipping and understanding a variety of competing gods was a big part of the culture.  To be a Christian in Rome was akin to being a student at Harvard, where the best minds are engaged in the pursuit of knowledge and power. It is to this group of erudite, passionate people that Paul says, “Do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought.”  In other words, lighten up!  Don’t take yourselves so seriously!  Yes, you are gifted by the Spirit.  Yes, you have an important role to play in a very important mission.  But much of life will be beyond your control.  Be thankful that the be all and end all of the Christian faith is NOT you!  As one of my seminary mentors used to say, “The job of Savior has been filled.  You didn’t get it.  I didn’t get it.  So relax.  Trust.  Enjoy!”  Or, as writer Anne Lamotte put it, “Only one six-billionth of this is about you.”Do not regard yourself more highly than you ought.  I have to tell you, I have been struggling with this during the pandemic.  This week I went to see an ENT because I have a deviated septum and have decided it’s finally time to consider surgery so I can breathe better through my nose.  The nurse took my vital signs and asked how I have been doing.  I started to tear up, thinking about the members of our congregation who have passed away, the families that have had to mourn in strange circumstances, the toll the pandemic has taken parents trying to juggle work and childcare, the small businesses struggling to stay afloat, the residual effects of all that isolation on some of our more vulnerable members—all of it.  I said, honestly, this has been a hard year for me and my congregation.  She said, no, I meant with your breathing.  How has your breathing through your nose been?I started to laugh.  What else could I do?  There is an elephant in the room, in every room I find myself in.  The elephant is grief.  It’s sadness.  It’s fatigue.  It’s frustration.  It’s fear.  It’s anger.  It’s uncertainty.  The elephant in the room is not the suitcase I accidentally left at home, or the deviated septum that constricts my breathing.  Those are problems we can fix.  The elephant in the room is the unnamed problem or set of problems that we don’t know how to fix.  These problems are on my mind so much, I’m not even aware that they are there—until someone asks me how I am doing, and I unconsciously answer from the most honest and vulnerable place inside of myself. My guess is, these problems are on your mind, too.  There are elephants in your rooms as well.Lucky for us, Paul was something of an expert when it came to problems he didn’t know how to fix.  I cannot think of a better person to look to for wise counsel when it comes to being in situations beyond our control!  Over the course of his missionary career, Paul was shipwrecked.  Imprisoned.  Blinded, remember, when he first met Christ?  His whole walk with Jesus was characterized by having to rely on God’s power rather than his own.  He was a walking testament to having FAITH in God solve every problem, as opposed to relying on his own strength and wisdom.  Instead of thinking of himself more highly than he ought—and taking on responsibility for problems that weren’t his to solve—he trusted God. As Pastor Karen said last week, if there’s one thing Paul wanted his readers to do, it was to HAVE FAITH!  And this faith that we are called to is not faith in ourselves.  It is faith in the God who is, who was, and who ever will be.  As the old hymns says, this is our Father’s world.  We can rest in the thought that God is always at work for good, and God will bring to completion the good work God has begun!  When Paul says to present our bodies as living sacrifices, one way of looking at that is for us to relinquish the sense we carry that it’s all up to us to get things figured out.  We can sacrifice our desire to be in control, to be in charge, in some sense, to be the hero–and instead, just worship God.  In other words, we can lighten up!  We can relax!  We can have some fun.  We can go ahead and laugh at our predicaments, our foibles, our flub ups, and even at times, our misery. “For by the grace given me, I say to every one of you:  Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.”  In my soberest of judgment, I know it is not up to me to heal my grief.  I know it is not up to me to heal our congregation, or our denomination, or our nation.  In my soberest of judgment, I know my only job is to name the elephant in the room, and openly share the desires of my heart with God–and then be open to the healing, joyful energy God offers new every morning.What a gift this scripture lesson is to us!  In your soberest of judgment, you know it’s not up to you to heal your own grief or anger or anxiety.  It’s not up to you to heal your family, or your community, or to save everyone who needs saving.  The job of Savior has been filled, and I didn’t get it, and neither did you.  Your only job is to name the burdens you carry, presenting yourself as a living sacrifice, and open yourself up to the joyful, merciful energy God offers new every morning. And when those new mercies come, they come bearing gifts.  Right after Paul tells us not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought, but use the measure of faith God gives us, the very next thing he talks about is using the gifts God gives us.  Whatever your gift is, offer it generously, cheerfully, diligently—NOT begrudgingly, not with a sense of obligation, not with any fear of judgment.  Offer it as worship, and what is at the heart of worship if it’s not enjoying time with God? Maya Angelou died in 2014, but if she had lived during the pandemic, she might say, “You can learn a lot about a person by how they handle three things:  quarantine, confusing protocols about mask wearing and social distancing, and interruptions in the supply chain.”  Like rainy days, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas lights, the circumstances of the pandemic have the power to frustrate us, steal our joy, even make us question our faith.  Add to that the very real grief of losing loved ones, missing out on important life events, increased loneliness and isolation, and all the other realities of COVID 19, we may find ourselves carrying a much greater burden than we realized.  But Paul suggests two ways we can ease our burden.  The first is to lighten up, to let God do the heavy lifting for us.  And the second is to enjoy being part of the body of Christ, where each person has a unique role to play. Last Saturday, I went to a bridal shower for my niece Bethany.  When I asked my sister, “What can I do to help?”, I was assigned the job of making cupcakes.  But not just any cupcakes.  I was assigned the job of making cupcakes that I found in a magazine, decorated like brides and grooms.  Let me just tell you:  I was very happy to help with the shower.  But I was feeling a lot of pressure that my cupcakes would not look at all like the photo in the magazine!  So I asked for help from my friend Kathy, who has a lot of experience with this kind of thing.  She asked her niece Stephanie who loves to decorate cakes, for her ideas.  Add to that two young ladies who put the finishing touches on minutes before the shower started, and Voila!  Through that group effort, 36 bride and groom cupcakes graced the dessert table at the shower.  Maybe not as fancy as the ones in the magazine, but not too shabby, either! Now I know cupcake decorating isn’t a spiritual gift.  But it’s the same principle Paul was talking about to the Romans.  As smart as they are—none of them can do this whole mission of God thing alone.  As sophisticated and eager as the Roman Christians were, they were not any better than anyone else.  We all need each other!  When we delight in that truth, and generously use gifts God gave us in concert with our brothers and sisters–beauty emerges. That is, in a nutshell, what is happening at Lima.  Our staff members have been amazing this year, the ways they have adapted and adjusted and done their very best to serve God and use their gifts in old and new ways.  Key volunteers have, week in and week out, kept the church running smoothly.  Our Trustees and Church Council have worked together to guide the Lima ship during this stormy season with respect and poise and collaboration.  It’s like an orchestra, each member playing their own instrument, all keeping in rhythm with the heartbeat of God.  It has indeed been a hard year.  But the way the people of Lima have worked together is a joy to behold.“Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.”  Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he called every weary and heavy-laden person unto himself, and promised us rest.  Maybe this is what he meant when he said his yoke is easy and his burden is light.  Our mission as Christians, to be the hands and feet of Christ in the world, is serious.  But we don’t have to take ourselves so seriously.  Our foibles and frustrations, our trauma and grief, our anger and despair—these may be weighing very heavily on us.  Our sense of responsibility and desire to solve problems and control life—this may be weighing very heavily on us.  But being weighed down isn’t God’s will for us.  Paul offers a different way of being in the world:  lightness.  Don’t think of yourself more highly than you ought.  Enjoy using the gifts God gave you.  Enjoy being part of the body of Christ where others get to use their gifts.  And have faith!  Amen.