Sermon
God After...I: The God Who Is and Who Was and Who Is to Come
May 26, 2024 • William A. Evertsberg • Genesis 1:1–5, Revelation 1:8
It’s Trinity Sunday. It’s not as theatrical as other church holidays—like the fire, wind and ruddy paraments of last week’s Pentecost, for example. It’s the only festival of the Church Year that is devoted to a doctrine, rather than to a person or an event, like Christmas or Easter. But once a year, the Christian Church pauses for a day to remind itself about the nature of our God. And what it says is that God is Three.
What’s Saving Your Life Right Now? VII: The Practice of Living with Purpose: Vocation
May 19, 2024 • Christine V. Hides • Matthew 22:34–40
Kenilworth Union Church roots its mission in two verses: Micah 6:8 and the Greatest Commandment from Matthew’s gospel we just heard. These are carved in stone over the cloister walk. When Jesus was asked this trick question, he knew the answer because he grew up learning scripture. Maybe his youth leaders said something like what we say every Wednesday night at youth group: here in this church we have one rule and it is the only rule we need. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Love God. Love neighbor. So simple and easy to remember. Barbara Brown Taylor isn’t the first person to point out that we can love God and love our neighbor no matter what we are doing: playing soccer, taking out the trash, having recess on the playground, going to school, or working as an investment banker or making milkshakes at Dairy Queen.
What's Been Saving Your Life? VI: The Practice of Walking on the Earth: Groundedness
May 12, 2024 • Katie Snipes Lancaster • Exodus 3:1–12
This message might have just as easily been received elsewhere. Maybe Moses didn’t have to go into the wilderness to hear, to see, to take off his shoes, and receive what was holy. Maybe he didn’t have to go beyond the mountains with a herd of sheep, into a wilderness beyond the wilderness in order to meet God. This is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is the one who numbered the stars. The one who ordered the planets. The one spoke the words “let there be light” and there was light. This is not a God of the margins, but of the center, a God about whom this whole story is written. But Moses isn’t paying attention. And it takes a burning bush to turn him toward God.
What's Saving Your Life Right Now? V: The Practice of Paying Attention : Reverence
May 5, 2024 • William A. Evertsberg • Revelation 4
We know that reverence is one of the things that is saving our lives right now. We know what makes us flourish. We know what’s good for us. We know what we need, because every day as we scroll through our media, we encounter a swollen, grotesque, vainglorious ego scowling out at us from the screen, reverencing nothing and respecting no one, and we know instinctively that that is exactly what we don’t want to be. It’s ironic: to live large, to live up to the towering stature of our full humanity, we remind ourselves now and then that we are in fact small, contingent, unnecessary creatures, living only by the grace of that Crafty Wizard who threw a hundred billion galaxies across vast eons of emptiness. And so now and then we pause from our daily round to hear something like George Frideric Handel’s "Dettingen Te Deum", a staggering paeon to the matchless majesty of God Godself, the “luminous deep being a lofty light,” as Dante puts.#_ftn1 #_ftnref1Dante Alighieri, Comedy, Paradiso, Canto XXXIII, ll. 115ff.
The Practice of Pronouncing Blessings: Benediction
April 28, 2024 • Katie Lancaster • Numbers 6:22–26
In 1979, archaeologist Gabriel Barkay was excavating the funeral site of Ketef Hinnom in West Jerusalem, and came across a small piece of silver amid the debris pottery and other artifacts. He describes them as about the size of a filter on a cigarette, it being the tobacco heyday of the 1970s and all. Two pieces of silver about the size of a pencil eraser, the size of a tic tac, the size of a ladybug. It wasn’t solid silver, but instead, a silver scroll. Unroll it and in tiny script are the words of the blessing I read to you today. It is from 600 BCE. Think of the artistry. Who pounded the silver? Who chose which blessing to include? Who took a small carving tool to write the text? Who rolled the silver into a small amulet? Who wore the amulet with its holy blessing? The blessing of the wilderness was held dear, embraced, honored, retained, remembered, condensed, and passed on. The blessing of the wilderness, or rather the blessing in the wilderness, was transmitted, entrusted, bestowed generation to generation, so that we might hear it. “May YHWH bless you and keep you.”
What's Saving Your Life Right Now? III: The Practice of Encountering Others: Community
April 21, 2024 • Sarah Champlin • Matthew 25:24–40
Each community I’ve been a part of has helped me uncover a little more of that secret. I expect this gradual uncovering will turn out to be a lifelong journey but here’s what I’ve learned so far: when we offer space that invites people to be fully, freely themselves—they show us God. Jesus tells us clearly when we feed the hungry—we feed him. When we welcome the stranger—we welcome him. Within every person lies the spark of the divine. Our practice of welcome, of community, helps us draw it out of each other. Christine Pohl another community connoisseur, believes that hospitality is at the heart of Christian Life, drawing from God’s grace. She says that we respond to the welcome that God has offered us and replicate that welcome in the world. When we replicate that welcome, we can’t help but see God everywhere.
What's Saving Your Life Right Now? II: The Practice of Getting Lost: Wilderness
April 14, 2024 • William A. Evertsberg • Exodus 2:11–25
What’s your Midian, and did you ever have to spend forty years there? Fill in your own blank: forty years in Flint, forty years in Fayetteville, forty years in middle management, forty years in retail, forty years waitressing, forty years working for someone like Steve Carell in "The Office", forty years in a tedious marriage, forty years in a wheelchair, forty years tending a disabled child, some unexpected caesura in the middle of your intricately choreographed life?
What's Saving Your Life Right Now? I: The Practice of Waking Up to God! Vision
April 7, 2024 • Squire Prince • Genesis 28:10–19
It may seem elementary, but I want to start our reflection today with a question, have you ever wanted more out of God? I mean yes we come here on Sundays, we sing, one of the ministers speaks a few words of hope to us, we rub on Minister Doogie, and then we go home. At some point you have to wonder, is that all there is, God? Isn’t there more? I mean what happened to the God of five loaves and two fish? What about the parting of the waters in Exodus? At Least you can turn this cup of water into wine…. I mean coffee, God! Barbara Brown Taylor in her book "An Altar in the World" helps to remove the scales from our eyes to the greater dimensions of God’s presence in the world around us. She points out that all of us in a sense, have a longing for an experience with the one we call God, and maybe that experience, that treasure, that Divine Spirit is right under our noses. A priest once asked Barbara to come speak at his church, and when she asked what he wanted her to talk about, he simply said “come tell us what is saving your life right now”#_ftn1. #_ftnref1Taylor, B. B. (2010). An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. HarperOne.
Two Quiet Josephs
March 31, 2024 • William A. Evertsberg • Matthew 27:57–61, Matthew 28:1–10
When you come to the end of all four Gospels, no matter what Gospel you’re reading, you’re going to see an obscure, minor actor with a walk-on part who appears out of nowhere, disappears just as quickly, and is never heard from again. His name is Joseph of Arimathea, and he is the guy who talked Pilate into handing over Jesus’ bruised, beaten, battered, bloodied body from the cross and then loaned him his own personal grave so that Jesus could have a proper burial. I say ‘loaned’ rather than ‘gave’ because as it turns out, Jesus wouldn’t need his borrowed grave for long. Now who is this Joseph of Arimathea and what makes him more important in all four Gospels than the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Magi, the Shepherds, and Zacchaeus? Joseph appears quadruple the number of times as those other events. Who is he and where did he come from? Where is Arimathea? But that’s just the point—no one knows. There are some educated guesses, but no one’s sure. This cryptic character comes out of nowhere and is never heard from again.