SERMONS
Sermon 11/10/19: Full-Bodied Resurrection (Pr. Ben Adams)
Our God is a God not of the dead, but of the living, and through faith we know that our redeemer lives. The resurrection with all of its mystery might not give us the instant gratification of heaven or an immortal soul, but I believe it does more to impact the way we live in our bodies here and now, because we trust and hope that at the last our resurrected whole selves see God. And it’s that full bodied future hope that becomes embodied present love.
Sermon 11/3/19: Saints Who Struggle
Believe me, I know, it doesn’t always feel like a “saintly” life. There is struggle. Martin Luther, in the middle of his reforms said that where there is faith, there is always struggle. And for this struggling saint, that’s good news. Doubt, feeling overwhelmed, wondering if God is out there are the marks of every saint, including my friend Scott from youth group. When we feel our most low, and wonder if we’ve lost our faith, God names us as the most faithful. Blessed are those who struggle.
Sermon 10/27/19: Taking A Stand
Here we stand. Not better than other people, not more or less sinful than other people. Here we stand, with a common human need for grace, mercy, and forgiveness. Justified not by our actions, our works, our good deeds—as important they are. Justified by a God whose power is made known in weakness. Whose love is revealed in suffering. Whose presence is always surprising. Whose image continues to be revealed in those different from us. Whose mercy never ends.
Sermon 10/19/19: The Heart of Persistence (Pr. Brooke Petersen)
We need to be reminded to pray and not lose heart. We get tired, our pleas fall on closed hearts and ears that refuse to listen. We get redirected or told we are too loud or too angry. We get frustrated and we break. We show up to protests and it’s hard to carry our signs and chant our chants anymore. And, so this parable is a reminder to us that it isn’t something lacking within us that we need to get right. We aren’t weak because we feel that the work of justice is hard. We don’t lack faith because we lose heart sometimes. God’s promises to us are written on our hearts, and our God, as persistent as a widow crying out in the street, will stand with us as we cry out to every unjust judge and every unjust system. Our God will join God’s voice with ours as we confront powers that do not fear God and respect no one. Our God will link arms with ours as we call for a world that is better, that is holier, that is full of more goodness, and more peace. Our God doesn’t just know that we cry for justice, our God demands it alongside us.
Sermon 10/20/19: Worn Out (Pr. Craig Mueller)
God is the persistent One who is unrelenting:
desiring your wholeness, but also the healing and well-being of all creation.
When you are worn out, when it is hard to have hope for the future,
when you don’t have the energy to stand up for the widows and marginalized ones in our day and time,
God never gives up. God keeps on.
God’s forgiveness and mercy and grace never run out.
This divine persistence changes your heart,
softens your heart, opens your heart
so that you can get up tomorrow and begin another day.
Sermon 10/12/19: Something's Happening Here
In giving thanks to God by seeking the welfare of even those who attempt to hold us in captivity, we are promised that in that radical act we will find our own welfare. Something happens here when we give thanks by living free even in the face of oppression. Something happens when we look inward and thank God for what new facets of our identity we find. Something happens when we respond to our own healing by running back to God at this table and giving thanks for all that God has done.
Sermon 10/13/19: Borders
Jesus shows up at the borders. Where we build walls or draw lines of division, God dwells and erases anything that divides us and them. The Holy One breaks down barriers that divide and embraces everyone. Jesus hears the cries of all who call out for mercy and heals those who recognize and thank the healer and those who do not.
Sermon 10/6/19: Returning to Real
Being known. It’s almost scary to think about, almost like it feels like being found out, but the truth is that God knows every part of you that you try to hide from the world. Those parts of yourself that you think are unlovable, unredeemable, unmanageable, God knows those parts and blesses them. Self-consciousness may be a weight around each of our necks, but having places to lay that weight down is necessary. So whether its with your pet at home after a long day, or here at church, trust that your real self is who God created you to be, and whenever you allow your real self to be known it’s an act of praise and thanksgiving to God who fearfully and wonderfully made you. It may be the curse of self-consciousness that sets us apart from other animals, but it’s these other animals that set us back to our real selves and reveal who God is to us.
Sermon 10/6/19: Listening to Trees
No manuscript is available for this sermon. Please enjoy listening to it via the audio file provided.
Sermon 10/5/19: All You Need Is All You Got
All the faith you need is all the faith you already got. And as we gather around this table where there is enough for everyone, and when we affirm that in the bread and wine, is the body and blood of Jesus, we affirm that all we need is here. There is no striving, straining, or work that needs to be done to earn this meal. All it takes is for you to take your place and God’s table is prepared, and with open empty hands outstretched, receive the gift of God’s presence.
Sermon 9/28/19: Slaying Demons
We know that the devil’s time is short, and while it isn’t easy to persist in the face of the devil’s wrath we know that St. Michael and all the angels are on our side in the battle. Moreover, God has prevailed through Christ over the forces at work against the purposes God, those demonic, satanic, dragons that are raging everywhere from gun violence, to environmental destruction, to racism, to that voice in your head that tries to convince you that you are not enough. Those forces and the voice of the accuser are coming from a desperate, defeated place, and we through the power of God in Christ can and will overcome those forces and ignore those voices trusting in the victory of Christ.
Sermon 9/29/19: Angels Aren't Cute
So who or what is the enemy, then? What would you say? Sin inhibits us from realizing our full human potential. And one prime example is when we dehumanize others. We talk about dismantling the structures of racism. Think of Michael’s spear as a dismantling sword. Power systems need to be dismantled as we seek the common good, not only for the human family, but for our very planetary home. Yet, in Revelation, Jesus is the nonviolent Lamb whose victory is marked by suffering love. The Satanic power of violence is cast out of heaven in the cosmic war. It may be angel day at church, but everything points to the cross of Christ and the victory of Easter.
Sermon: Middle Manager Service
Let us imagine Jesus talking to us today about the systems (or empires) that oppress us and those around us. How can we middle-managers act shrewdly today to give honor to the earth? To challenge a system that works against our black and brown siblings? To welcome the stranger standing at our border, people who have risked everything out of their own desperation for a better life?
Sermon 9/15/19: A Stick, A Fence, A Cross
A snake on a wooden stick. Christ lifted on a tree. Matthew Shepard dead on a Wyoming fence. Yet, the human heart is resilient. Lift high the cross. Trust the promise of baptism: that out of death, God births life. Reverence the holy cross. As Luther urged, trace it on your body at day’s dawn and days’ end. Bow as it passes. Eat and drink its mystery each Lord’s Day. Let this sign of beauty be for you, the very heart of God.
Sermon 9/8/19: Are We In Bondage
Yes, you are free from the bondage of sin. You are no longer enslaved to the false gods of materialism and accumulation. And that has everything to do with the future of the earth and the growing list of endangered species. Because of divine forgiveness and mercy, you are set free. Set free to take risks for the sake of the gospel. Set free to take risks for the sake of our beloved earth. Set free to take risks for the sake of the most vulnerable among us. Like the Israelites, in baptism you walk through water, from bondage to freedom! Your call is to bring others with you.
Sermon 9/7/19: Relationally Reshaped, Reformed, Resurrected
There’s no softening it or explaining it away, discipleship, carrying our cross, will ask of us, a lot of us, and as earthen vessels filled with the breath of God it will bend us, crack us, spoil us, but God our potter is ever creating us anew until we fully live into the kinship we share as members of the family of God. It’s a kinship that extends beyond our homes to the farthest corners of our cosmos. Relationally reshaped, reformed, resurrected we are made one in Christ.
Sermon 9/1/19: The Holy Table and the Bargaining Table
We come, because after Jesus’ death, as before it, there is this meal. A bargaining table for a contract negotiation can be a holy place when justice is served. What we Christians know about justice, about community, about how to value work and workers, we learned from the prophets of ancient Israel and the Rabbi from Nazareth. At the table, from the beginning, and now for folk like us – who did not know Jesus, who never heard him preach or see him heal, folk who still know of fear and hate and hurt – still are filled with a vision of the Kingdom of God, and with a power that changes lives and heals a world.
Sermon 8/24/19: Good Posture
The healing of the woman in our gospel story today is certainly good, but Jesus does not heal this woman in order to restore her posture and realign her with a broken world that bent her in half in the first place, but rather, Jesus heals this woman to reveal the ways in which the inflexible, oppressive rules of this world must be bent so that all people can be set free. The healing and freedom that Jesus offers the crippled woman, even though he must bend the rules to do so, is an invitation for the rest of us as well to assume a flexible, open, graceful, Christ-like posture towards creation, our fellow siblings, and towards ourselves, all of which are being bent over by the demonic forces of this world.
Sermon 8/25/19: Tell Me Your Story
This is our call story. That we have been freed from what burdens us, we are turned outward from our selves and our own failings and phobias and doubts to proclaim this healing, this transformation that we have experienced to the world. And in the face of whatever doubts or fears or disqualifications we or the world might throw out, God’s promise stands strong. God reaches out to us whenever, wherever we stand in those dark times, touches us, and promises to be with us. To give us the words. To never leave us.
Sermon 8/18/2019: Complicated Relationships with Mothers
Mary is the Mother of all the living. Yet through baptism God calls us to be mothers as well. Everybody gets to be Mary. We are all full of grace. All highly favored. All called to be God-bearers, bringing to birth justice and joy in the world. Whether we have been mothers or not, whatever our gender, whatever complicated relationship we have or had with our mother. And like Mary—at our falling asleep, at our death—God promises to bring us to the glory of our eternal home.