God After... IV: God After Smith and Hutton
June 16, 2024 • Katie Lancaster • Psalm 121, Isaiah 40
What happens when you see the earth, not as a univocal creation, created all at once but instead as forming over a timescale we can hardly comprehend? For one it opens up the timescale so that Darwin can begin to imagine the possibilities of species developing over an infinitely broad timescale. But there’s something more about this geological breaking open of time—toward what is called Deep Time—that makes Hutton and then Smith lifelong though often unnoticed partners in our understanding of the very foundations of the world. And it makes me wonder if in part, the ancient prophet Isaiah saw a kind of Deep Time, a geologic process unfolding such that, “Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground level, the rugged places a plain.”#_ftn1 Geologists too like Isaiah, see valleys raised up to mountains by earthquake and tectonic plate, and rough ground made plain by the weathering of wind and water. There is they say, “a sermon in stone.” Or as Jesus says “even the stones cry out.”#_ftn2 #_ftnref1 Isaiah 40 #_ftnref2 Luke 19:40
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.”
God's Odd Benedictions V: The Merciful
March 10, 2024 • Katie Lancaster • Matthew 5:1–7
In late 2015, Pope Francis designated a year of mercy. He called it a Jubilee of Mercy. I love this. 1.3 billion people energized, motivated, galvanized, ignited in the direction of mercy. A time for all to go out and offer mercy, to live out the mercy that God has for us. Pope Francis says that “The name of God is mercy”, that the very name of God is mercy, and he says “Jesus of Nazareth by his words, actions, and entire person reveals the mercy of God.”#_ftn1 Jesus of Nazareth is the living face of our God of mercy. The very character of God, the very nucleus of God, the core identity of God is mercy. #_ftnref1Pope Francis. "Misericordiae Vultus." Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, Vatican City, 11 April 2015.
Jesus' Grandmothers, V: Mary
February 11, 2024 • Katie Lancaster • Luke 2:41–52
A sermon series on Jesus’ grandmothers, and yet Mary is no grandmother. No. She is Theotokos. Bearer of God. Hagia Maria. Saint Mary. Panagia. Most Holy. Purissima. Most Pure. Our Lady of Tenderness. She Who Shows the Way. Throne of Wisdom. Mater Dolorosa, Mother of Sorrows. Her’s is a much more direct lineage to Jesus, the only one whose DNA courses through his veins. From that long pregnant walk to Bethlehem to her place at the foot of the cross, she is a woman of deepest joy and most weighty sorrow. She is not a grandmother to Jesus, but Mary propels us back toward the grandmothers of Jesus all the while allowing their stories to speak into his family tree, showing us again Mary’s place in this most holy pedigree.
New O Antiphons, V: O Jesus Christ, down in the winter solstice...
December 17, 2023 • Katie Lancaster • Isaiah 9:2–7
Every scripture passage we read today too, has an undertone of sorrow, a sense that the world is in dire need of saving. And it is. In the beginning, there was complete chaos, says the book of Genesis. Isaiah says, The people walked in great darkness. The people lived in a land of deep darkness. John Calvin says we are to imagine that they “looked as if no ray of light had ever shone on them.” Or says the Gospel of Luke, the force of empire was so intense that when Joseph took Mary to Bethlehem she had to travel against doctors’ orders at the end of her third trimester for four days on foot from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and by the time she got there, there was no room in the inn.
Joy Anyway, IV: Joy at Work
August 20, 2023 • Katie Lancaster • Philippians 2:12–18
In this sermon series on joy, we are no doubt trying to highlight the kind of joy found in the book of Philippians, and the title “Joy Anyway” is a reminder that joy is not achieved at some level of purity, where we can hide away with joy and ignore the hard stuff, but instead, that an integrated joy, an authentic joy is found, most fundamentally, here. Here amid the everyday, here amid the chaos, here amid the hard days, joy is made possible, and in fact, joy is most critical in that tender space of impossibility.