Word

in ,

Extend me some trust, as a fellow Christian. I will listen to your understanding of the word and you’ll listen to mine. I’ll tell you about Joseph and his fabulous coat, as he steps outside the expected norms of his day or maybe I’ll tell you about the a’dam and how God’s first human was neither man nor woman, like me. I will share the new joys I find in reading scripture and I’ll carefully hold the ones you want to share with me.

Because I love the Bible. And the Bible belongs to all of us.

Let’s trust each other with it.

 Let’s be worthy of that trust.

Read More

Light

in , ,

This means that we can play with light in worship. What would it look like for us to sit in the quiet and in the dark, listening for God together? How can we invite in different kinds of light in different seasons? Where is light too bright? Where could shadows be illuminated? Where could they be used to help us see the familiar anew? How can light and dark together invite us deeper into God’s presence?

Read More

Drunk on New Wine

in

See, the thing about self-denial is that you have to work at it. You are who you are. You have needs and wants. That’s all part of being a human, a spirit in a body, a body with a spirit, connected to the earth and all that lives upon it and to the Three-In-One who made it. You are good. Very good, according to the last verse of Genesis, chapter 1. In order to achieve the self-denial that was such a part of my youth and young adulthood, my time cosplaying as straight, you have to deny aspects of yourself that are good and very good. And that takes work. Soul-crushing work.

But soul-crushing work is not what we see here in the Pentecost story.

Read More

A Certain Kind of Way

in

I’ve been feeling a certain kind of way recently, and maybe you have too. It’s like my brain refuses to function, or refuses to focus, anyway. I sit down to get some work done and the minute I open up my email and all the other tabs and programs I need, a haze comes over me. It literally feels like whatever fluid my brain is floating in gets thicker. I can’t think. I can’t focus. I don’t remember what I need to do and trying to figure it out feels like trying to run through a pool filled with Jell-O.

Read More

The Need for Advocates

in

And this is what I want you to remember. This is going to be the take-away of the sermon today. Yes, we’re going to talk about fig trees and advocacy and farming practices in first-century Palestine, but at the end of it all, we’re going to come back to this truth: we all need an advocate. We never get through anything on our own. Everything that we have built and made and endured and survived, we have built or made or endured or survived because of others. And we have the chance to offer that aid to someone else every day.

Read More

The Need for Sleep

in

When you watch a lot of Law and Order: SVU, you notice a line that characters repeat over and over again. It’s a signal that something’s wrong, like when a character in Star Wars says, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” When someone’s about to break, or when someone wants the moral high ground, inevitably, a character says, “How do you sleep at night?”

Read More

Weighed Down

in

We need to be prepared to offer beauty and holiness to everyone who needs it. We need to stock up, as often as we can, so that we’re ready to share when someone is in need, because friends, we are the Body of Christ on this world. We are Christ’s hands and feet. Jesus doesn’t have any other flesh and blood on this earth but ours and so he can’t be on that dance floor, but brothers and sisters, siblings in Christ, we can. With enough contact with the living God, we can shine into this world begging for transfiguration and carry the love of Jesus into this world that sorely needs it. With enough practice, we can be enough like Christ to make a difference.

Read More

A Good Measure

in

And don’t get me wrong. This quote could very, very easily become an excuse for quietism, for “peacemaking” centrism. In the wrong hands, in the hands of the powerful, this quote could rob any revolution of its fervor, asking us to wait on those who are actively harming us to change their minds. No, this quote is convicting specifically because of who it’s coming from, and who it’s for.

Much like our gospel reading today.

Read More

Osmosis

in

See, in the beatitudes, these blessings that we read here in Luke today, in the sermon on the plain, Jesus insists that there is a kind of divine osmosis at work. Those who are hungry, without enough food, will be filled. Those who are poor, without resources or means, they will receive a kingdom. Those who weep will laugh. The concentration of comfort and privilege will flow until those who have not receive abundance.

Read More

Summoned

Now, I’m not saying that Isaiah gets it right here. I’m not saying that we need to speed along some future potential destruction. I’m not saying that we need to go out to the street corners holding signs that tell the world, “The end is nigh.”

I am saying that when someone is trying to tell the world that it’s going to hell in a handbasket because it’s not taking care of the poor and vulnerable, God and a whole host of angels are up there in the cheap seats shouting, “Yeah, you tell ‘em!” And when that prophet gets discouraged and says, “Who am I to do this? I’m just as bad as everyone else,” God gives them a kick in the pants and says, “Get back out there. Someone’s got to say this.”  

Read More

And I Still Don’t Know What to Wear for My Wedding

Once you’ve experienced who you really are, it’s so, so hard to go back to being what you were. You realize how much energy went into pretending to be something that you’re not, and you just don’t have that energy to give anymore. I can’t squeeze myself back into femininity. I can’t mold myself back into one-dimensional sisterhood. I can’t wedge myself into an oversized white ball gown with thick straps, a sweetheart neckline, and cathedral veil and be paraded down the aisle. I can no more switch back to she/her pronouns than a rehabilitated bird can be put back in a cage. And that’s dramatic, I know, but so is this change. I like myself in a way that I never have before. When someone uses they/them pronouns for me, it’s like hearing someone say my name for the first time. It’s like belonging in my body for the first time, ever.

Read More

"What do you want from me?"

This passage comes in a section of Mark I like to call, “Exasperated Jesus.” Seriously. First the disciples are arguing about who’s the greatest, then a rich man chases him around asking him what he has to do, then James and John want to “sit beside Jesus in glory,” and the whole while, Jesus cannot believe the stuff he’s dealing with. Jesus spends like three chapters walking around Judea, bouncing between Jerusalem and Jericho, like a mother with three kids under five. One says he’s hungry even though he’s got a snack catcher of Cheerios IN HIS HAND, another has just fallen and is wailing over the lightest of skinned knees, the other one has somehow inserted most of a toy car in their left nostril, and here’s Jesus, raising his eyes to the heavens, asking what could possibly happen next.

Read More

That There May Be a Church

When we follow the path of this building up to the ceiling of the nave, up to this boat we’re all in together, we must deal with the knowledge that we are not alone. God is not away up there. God has declared that God is with us, each and every time we gather together here. God has declared that a church may meet here in this place, and in this place, no one stands alone.

Because while sacred means set apart, holy shares an origin with the word “whole.”

Read More