To begin, let's start off with a story and a teaching from the life of Jesus of

Nazareth. Mark chapter 8 will begin in verse 34, holy spirit come. Have mercy on me and

more than just mercy. I ask for grace, for your empowering presence. On me, in me

through me, on in and through every man and woman here, come, holy spirit come.

Mark chapter 8 verse 34, then Jesus called the crowd to him, along with his

disciples, and he said this, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves,

take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will

lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.

Well, good is it for someone to gain the whole world yet forfeit their soul or

what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? Our nation is built around the

myth of the rugged individual. In particular on the West Coast, we love to tell

the mythology of Lewis and Clark on the Willamette River or John Muir in Yosemite

or more recently in Elon Musk in LA, this lone man or woman off to make a name

for himself or herself in the wild of the West. This ethos is buried deep in

our psyche. We see it in the fierce anti-authoritarian, anti-commitment, don't

tell me what to do, Portland mantra. We see it in the disrupt the system and

tear it all down, the cultural violence of a Silicon Valley. We see it in the

celebrity worship of a Hollywood. We want so badly, in particular on the West

Coast, to believe that we are in charge of our own destiny. And yet as the poet

John Donne so wisely said, no man is an island. Sisters, I would argue, no lady

is either. You're maybe a bit ahead of us or leaps and bounds ahead of us, but

neither are you. The hard truth is we're all disciples or followers of somebody

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