“The image of Ieshia Evans captured the imagination of so many, because of the way it juxtaposed a courageous vulnerability with a world bound in systems of death and destruction. Evans’s galvanizing witness in that moment showed us a more human way to be in the face of great suffering and evil. “
Genuine amazement might seem like a rarity these days. Cause for wonder might feel aloof and out of reach – those moments when the impossible happens, when hope is answered, beauty dazzles us, when something feels miraculous. Like you, I yearn for these things.
“The gospel of Luke bounces from table to table, meal to meal, and while the details are omitted, I cannot help filling them in with my imagination. You can smell the smoke from the fish. Candlelight reflects off the slick oil in a bowl on the table. Bread is broken. There is wine in cups.
Why did Luke take such pains to include food at every turn in his gospel? Luke wants us to know that this Jesus is the same Jesus who died, who was buried, who has returned—changed yes, but still the same, wounded, hungry, and yearning to be with his people.”
“It never ceases to amaze me how easily the church, even our beloved Episcopal Church, slips into a kind of legalism, using scripture to lend credence to creating even more rules and rubrics, higher walls and thicker barriers, in a world already drifting apart, especially when all we crave is community, connection, and healing. We yearn to come together!”
“The spiritual greats of our faith tradition tell us that fasting is an opportunity to draw closer to God. In giving something up for a short season, we create necessary space to focus new or renewed attention on our connection with God. I wish I could say this has worked for me. But, more often than not, when I am fasting, I seem to become more keenly aware of my appetites, my hunger, my grumbling stomach or my fuzzy decaffeinated brain. So, how is it that we cultivate space for God? Or, more importantly, how do we cultivate the desire to find our way across the gulfs between us and the one who made us?”
“This is why we practice our faith together over and over with rituals and rites that affirm we are worthy of love and dignity, that we are created in the image and likeness of God. Because none of us can believe on our own, each and every day, that we are loveable and deserving of love. We have to hold this truth together in community, reminding and being reminded by one another, by the nearness of sacraments like Eucharist and baptism, by the stories of the saints and Jesus himself,.”
Craig’s eyes were filled with tears, while a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, and then I was swept up in that moment too, feeling all my own feels, in the candlelight and the fragrance of cedar and pine, and the music and the tears. It was, as the kids say, a whole mood! Well, ok, I’m told the kids don’t say that anymore. But, whatever. When I saw my dear colleague weeping and smiling, that was my first reaction, to resonate with it in all its emotional complexity. How could I not.
“… The call of God on our lives interrupts our allegiance to the often death dealing, sacrificial systems of the world. God’s call, interrupts the economies that exploit, interrupts the politics that prioritize power over generosity, that prizes our love of guns over the lives of our children, that puts “national interest” over the imperative to welcome strangers and immigrants. The call of the one true God, the God of Abraham and Sarah of Isaac and Rebekah and Leah, of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, is a call away from the all the plans we once had, interrupts the business as usual of the world and calls us into a faith that feeds the hungry, visits and cares for the sick, listens to the story of the lonely and the abandoned, that let’s Christ show up in all the interruptions of the life of ministry and discipleship…”
A Sermon Preached for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year A by the Rev’d Jered Weber-Johnson It seems kind of strange today for me during
“The way to God, is not a way that leads us out of this world. God can be known and experienced, God’s power can be shared and apprehended, God’s face is available to us, right here, and right now. Jesus says, he is the way and the truth and the life, and invites us to know him. So look for him, friends, by loving others, by serving, by seeing and knowing that each face around you is shimmering with the glory and grace of a God who loves you and all of creation with a fierce and unending love. Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have seen the face of God.”
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