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It’s Independence Day weekend, a time celebrated with parades, fireworks, and family gatherings. How are you celebrating this weekend? Will you be out of town? Or will your family be visiting you at the beach? Will you be out watching or setting off fireworks? Or are you like me—staying home and listening to the fireworks go off from the comfort of your home? Wherever you go or however you choose to celebrate this weekend, don’t forget to take pictures with Flat Jesus!

For me, the Fourth of July also marks my fifth year here at Surfside United Methodist Church. My first Sunday here was on a Fourth of July weekend (I think that year, the Fourth actually fell on a Sunday). In my first sermon, I asked, “What is one of the most important things in ministry?” And the answer wasn’t grace, programs, the church building, the sermon, the pastor, the people. It wasn’t even love, the Bible, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, or God.

The answer was relationships. For what good is a relationship with God if we don’t nurture it? And what good is the church to us if we don’t have relationships with one another? For what good is reading the Bible if our lives have no relation to it? It is in relationships that love is shared and unity is formed. It’s because of our relationships that we are the United Methodists—and the United States.

Remember our text this morning from Luke 10:1–11 and 16–20, when Jesus sends out the seventy disciples. They go into people’s homes with nothing, and in their vulnerability, they invite the homeowners into relationship. Through those relationships, the household is blessed by the peace and good news of the kingdom of God.

But not everyone welcomed this open invitation. Some rejected the disciples and refused to be in relationship with them. And instead of encouraging the disciples to force their way in, Jesus tells them to simply leave—for they had not rejected the disciples, but him. And so, those households missed the opportunity for blessings, healing, and peace. I believe this is what happens every time we miss an opportunity to build relationships with others; we miss God’s grace. So let us do everything in our power not to miss those opportunities. Let us choose relationships.
 
Pastor Tae Park