"Asleep No More" | Leveraging White Privilege to Help Heal Racial Injustice

Based on the Gospel of Matthew 8.18, 23-27, this 18 minute message, "Asleep No More," explores the call to wake up in the midst of the storm of racial injustice, especially after the killings in Atlanta on Tuesday March 16, 2021 and the rising threats and violence against Asian Americans.

So often those we need to lead us, those who can act to help us, are slow to respond to the pain and suffering of racial injustice. It's time to wake up, do what we can, and leverage the power, privilege, and insights we possess to help heal our land and build a better humanity.

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This is the third sermon I’ve prepared this week. I prepared one sermon for yesterday’s memorial service celebrating the life of our beloved Dave Pelz. The second sermon was for today. It was to be part of our Lenten worship series, “Holy Vessels: how we can heal and recover after such a challenging year” . . .

On Acuity (or recovering from pandemic brain fog): a spiritual meditation

Prolonged times of difficulty can affect our ability to think clearly. The mind dulls and creativity withers. This week’s healing story from the life of Jesus isn’t directly about the intellect but it is about the liberation our minds need when our functioning is impaired by trauma, stress, and challenge. Jesus came to set the captives free. Today, we pray for the divine touch to heal us, liberate us, and inspire us toward new solutions to our problems, new visions for human life, new ways of relating and caring for each other, and new expressions of creativity that nourish our souls and the soul of our civilization.

A meditation on Matthew 9:18- 26 and a poem by Ranier Maria Rilke (the author’s translation).

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Today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew is a story within a story.

The first story goes like this: A child has died. A family is in crisis. The father comes to Jesus. He’s bereft with grief. Now, he’s the leader of the synagogue, and Jesus, because of his unorthodox ways, is in conflict with the religious authorities. It may be risky for the synagogue official to seek out the unorthodox preacher. But he’s also a father and he’s desperate. He knows three things: his daughter is dead, his heart is broken, and Jesus does miracles. He needs one. And so he risks being ostracized to ask for a miracle. Now, notice a little rhetorical device the storyteller uses to shape the drama of the tale. The writer inserts the adverb, “suddenly,” here; it’s a literacy device that intensifies the emotional load of the story. . . .

Pastoral leadership for the 21st century: break the rules

A sermon exploring the kind of pastoral leadership the church needs for the 21st century. Risky. Daring. Egalitarian. And able to help disentangle us from the patriarchy that's held us captive for too long.

This was preaching on a live Zoom service upon the ordination of the Rev. Sara Tillema, Minister of Word and Sacrament.

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Sara, today we’re celebrating your tenacity and the patience that have helped bring your journey to his moment. Today, we’re ritualizing the beginning of a new journey as a Minister of Word and Sacrament, serving not only the part of the Christian tribe we call the Presbyterians, but also the much larger “holy catholic church.”

When I say we’re ordaining you as Minister of Word and Sacrament for the “holy catholic church,” I mean catholic, small “c”—the universal or cosmic church, not identified one with a particular religious brand or sect or communion. God’s church is bigger than that. For the whole world, the universe itself, is God’s cathedral, and every star and every sea anemone, every bee and every butte, every river and every redwood, every poem and every person is part of this grand mystery called the church. What we do religiously is just a way to awaken us as human beings to the truth that God is in fact in everything and is contained by no one thing, denomination, or religious tradition. . . .

The texts were John 2.1-11 and "Summer's Day" by Mary Oliver. And a performance of The New Rule by the 13th century Sufi poet, Rumi.

"Health Matters" | Toward a Vision for Community and Economic Justice through Healthcare

My sermon on February 28, 2021. Theme: Health care for all is not only a human right, it's a metaphysical necessity. We’re all interconnected, you see? When one suffers, we all suffer. When one is healing we’re all being healed. That’s what it means that the whole world, the entire cosmos is the Body of Christ, and we are, individually members of it. A sermon based on Matthew 8.5-13.

About a year ago, on Sunday, March 1, 2020, just before all this change and challenge fell upon us, I explored the implications of Saint Paul’s vision for the way human beings can relate to one another. We were reading a section from his Letter to the Romans. From that ancient text I was explaining the Christian vision for the truth that we are deeply connected, physically and spiritually. . . .

"Snowdrops" by Louise Gluck | when you do not expect to survive

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know

what despair is; then

winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,

earth suppressing me. I didn't expect

to waken again, to feel

in damp earth my body

able to respond again, remembering

after so long how to open again

in the cold light

of earliest spring—

afraid, yes, but among you again

crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.

In Snowdrops, Gluck turns to the metaphor of winter to express the state of emotional pain that feels nearly physical, that ends up inhabiting our bodies. Pain is bone-cold. It hardens the inner life. And fear freezes the animating river of our lives, until we feel we might as well be dead.

There are seasons in our lives when so much seems lost, unbearable, incurable, unfixable—when we feel we’ve made a mess of this or things have made a mess of us.

She reveals this inner state, “not expect[ing] to survive,” feeling buried. Dead. Not “expect[ing] to waken again.” And yet, like the iris or crocus or snowdrop, there is this resilience even in the coldest soul that senses somehow that what is buried can press through the ice and snow and taste even the “cold light of earliest spring.” She points to Easter even through the pain of Good Friday and the long waiting of Holy Saturday. Joy isn’t summoned. It may not even feel possible, and yet, somehow, there’s something in us that dares to “risk,” despite all we know and otherwise might feel—“joy / in the raw wind of the new world.”