While service and activism, particularly among students and young adults is surging (see the student-led climate strikes), the problems and challenges of the world can seem so daunting as to paralyze others. In this sermon, I explore how simple, ordinary forms of service are do-able and, when considered in combination with others, are immensely powerful. I also explore the role of small, democratic faith communities, like churches, mosques, and synagogues as places where the virtues of democracy can flourish (as subversive agents amid tyranny) and people can learn that if “each one does one thing” we can effect real change. Small communities can be incubators of larger society transformations. The sermon is based on Paul’s Letter to the Romans 12.3-13 and the Acts of the Apostles 2.43-47. Find the audio recording here.

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Today is the third and final sermon in a series we do each fall called “The Three Practices.” Each fall, as the year comes to a close and we look toward the year to come, we renew our commitment to the three basic spiritual practices . . .

How can the simple (though not necessarily easy) practice of sabbath help heal the world? Sabbath is more than taking time off. It’s a basic life orientation toward busyness and fullness. Sabbath is the habit of resisting the hurry and worry, the acquiring and protecting that drives the economics and politics of the modern world. Walter Brueggemann has said that “In our own contemporary context of the rat race of anxiety, the celebration of Sabbath is an act of both resistance and alternative. It is resistance because it is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods.” Sabbath is ceremonial, that is, it is a way we, as our ancestors did, seek to live more harmoniously with the rhythms of nature from which our lives come and to which they will return. Our key texts are Exodus 20.1-3, 8-11 and a reading from Thomas Berry’s book, The Great Work.

Things are not always going to turn out the way we want. There are things we can’t control. And there will come a time when each of us faces something we wish we’d done differently. We’ll feel like a fool or a failure. To flourish, you’ll need to keep going. Your life is worth it. You’ve got more inside you than you ever dared to dream.

In this second sermon in a three week series, I explore what it means to 1. Show up for your life, 2. Brave up when it gets tough, and 3. when you fall or fail, get back up. It’s a meditation on Luke 12.32-34 and a quote from Letters to a Young Poet: “Think of the world you carry within you. Attend to what rises within you and prize it above all that you perceive around you. What happens most deeply inside you is worthy of your whole love.” —Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) 

Find the text version of the sermon below . . .