June 28, 2026 Matthew 10:40–42 The Holy Ministry of Cold Water

Most of us imagine that if Jesus ever showed up at our door, we'd want to do something impressive. Perhaps we'd prepare a banquet, compose a hymn, or perhaps build a small cathedral in the backyard.

Jesus has a different idea in Matthew 10:40–42. He says that welcoming one of his followers is like welcoming him. Then he lowers the bar further and simultaneously raises it at the same time. He says that even giving a cup of cold water to one of "these little ones" matters to God.

A cup of cold water?

Not a theological dissertation. Not a miracle. Not a fundraising campaign honoring his most fervent followers.

Just water.

Jesus seems remarkably fond of ordinary things. Bread. Fish. Seeds. Lamps. Sparrows. And here, a cup of water.

Perhaps because most of life feels so ordinary. Few of us part seas or preach to thousands. Most of us spend our days answering emails, doing routine chores, washing dishes, holding doors, making phone calls, listening to friends, and offering small kindnesses that seem to disappear as quickly as they happen.

Yet Jesus insists they don't disappear.

The kingdom often arrives disguised as simple hospitality. A welcoming smile. A patient conversation. A casserole thoughtfully delivered to a grieving neighbor. A note of encouragement. A cup of cold water on a hot day.

The world celebrates many grand achievements. Jesus notices small acts of mercy, which is good news for us.

Because most of us have cold water available.

And according to Jesus, that's enough to begin changing the world.

Today, we may not encounter prophets or apostles. But we will almost certainly encounter thirsty people, people who are thirsty for kindness, attention, encouragement, dignity, or hope.

Jesus invites us to offer what we can and apparently, heaven keeps track of cups of water.

Perhaps the humor in this text is that while we worry about accomplishing great things for God, Jesus is standing by the water cooler saying, "Let's start here." Sometimes the smallest gestures become the clearest signs of God's presence.

Service 

June 14, 2026 Romans 5:1–8 Matthew 9:35–10:8 - Both Humble and Vulnerable Locked in God's Image

Romans 5:1–8 and Matthew 9:35–10:8 come from different times and authors, yet they remain united by a remarkable theme: God acts first in love toward people who are vulnerable, lost, and unable to save themselves. 

Last week two foundational Hebrew words describing God: ḥesed (חֶסֶד) and shema (שְׁמַע) were introduced in our Wednesday group. This week, I personally started reading Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. His words offer a different historical and scriptural lens for evaluating headlines. This is particularly valuable in a period when people are tempted to forget that there is more to life than politics and tribes.

Pope Leo's encyclical repeatedly asks humanity to consider what kind of future we are building and whether our technological, economic, and political choices serve human dignity and the common good. The Pope argues that technology must remain at the service of the human person rather than reducing people to data, efficiency, or instruments of power.

In Romans, Paul reminds us that Christ died for us while we were still sinners. Obviously, God's love is not conditional. It is ḥesed, a steadfast and covenant-based love that refuses to abandon humanity.

In Matthew, Jesus looks upon the crowds and sees people who are weary and vulnerable. His first response is compassion. That may be one of the most important spiritual disciplines for our time: learning to see people as Jesus sees them.

Jesus sees human beings, and the Pope's encyclical emphasizes this. As technology grows more powerful, we must not lose sight of the dignity of actual persons. Human beings are not problems to be optimized or obstacles to be managed. They are persons created in the image of God.

How is Shema achieved in what has become an Age of Noise? The Shema begins: "Hear, O Israel..." Today, whose voice, besides Walt Whitman or Allen Ginsberg, would begin by proclaining "Hear, O America..."?

We are surrounded by news, social media feeds, advertising, targeted algorithms, and endless commentary. Yet shema is not achieved by merely hearing sounds. It is listening deeply enough to some content of worth that changes our core lives.

The question for the Church moves best from: "What are we saying?" to "What does God want?" Jesus tells the disciples to notice the harvest and pray for workers. Before they are sent, they must learn to see and hear.

Perhaps one of God's invitations today is for communities to recover practices of listening. Both Romans and Matthew push against fear. Paul writes that suffering can produce character when God's love has been poured into our hearts.

Jesus sees a troubled world but does not despair. Instead, he sends disciples into it. Likewise, Pope Leo's encyclical is not fundamentally anti-technology. Rather, it is a call for responsibility together with moral courage in shaping the future. The question is not whether change will come, but whether change will serve human flourishing and the common good.

If these readings and teachings are heard together, several invitations emerge that I see this congregation involved in. We have practiced tangible acts of mercy and cared for the elderly and marginalized. I've seen members who have built relationships that resist isolation and instead form people who can discern truth amid confusion.  

As Christians I've witnessed those who receive God's love before trying to fix the world and become workers in Christ's harvest. They practice shema by listening for and following God's voice.

Can we pray for God to continue to challenge us to teach and model ḥesed? To help us learn shema, that we may hear God's call amid the noise of our age. To give us eyes to see the crowds as Jesus saw them: not as strangers or adversaries, but as beloved people in need of hope. 

May God continue to form all of us into a beloved community.

June 7, 2026 Romans 4: Matthew 9: Learning the Hebrew word ḥesed (חֶסֶד)

The great theme that links Romans 4, Matthew 9, and the Hebrew word ḥesed (חֶסֶד) is this:

God remains faithful when circumstances suggest otherwise.

In Romans 4, Paul points to Abraham, who "hoped against hope." Abraham looked at his aging body and Sarah's barrenness and saw every reason to conclude that God's promise was impossible. Yet he trusted not in the evidence before him but in the character of the One who made the promise.

In Matthew 9, we encounter the same pattern. Matthew the tax collector receives a call he does not deserve. A woman suffering for twelve years reaches for healing when all conventional hope has failed. A grieving father comes to Jesus after his daughter has died. In every case, Jesus acts where others see impossibility, impurity, failure, or finality.

I learned the thread connecting these stories is ḥesed, one of the richest words in Scripture.

There is no single English equivalent. It means steadfast love, covenant faithfulness, lovingkindness, mercy, loyalty, and enduring commitment all at once. It is God's refusal to abandon the relationship God has established. It is love that keeps showing up through action.

When Jesus tells the Pharisees, "Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice,'" he is echoing the prophet Hosea's use of ḥesed. God is not primarily looking for religious performance. God seeks hearts shaped by covenant love. It is like the Hebrew word for hear, shema (שְׁמַע), which incorporates what is being heard by the listener into what the listener does. There, again, is no English-language equivalent.

That word has particular relevance as Americans watch the ongoing tensions involving Iran. News reports this week describe a fragile and uncertain situation marked by military exchanges, cease-fire negotiations, diplomatic efforts, and fears of wider escalation throughout the region. At the same time, there are signs that diplomatic channels remain active and that leaders continue searching for a path away from prolonged conflict.

In moments like this, the public conversation often swings between fear and certainty. Some voices predict disaster; others promise easy solutions. Scripture offers neither. Instead, Abraham teaches faith. Matthew teaches mercy. Ḥesed teaches faithfulness.

Faith does not require pretending dangers are unreal. Abraham acknowledged reality. The woman with the hemorrhage knew her suffering. The ruler knew his daughter had died. Yet none of them believed that present circumstances had the final word.

Likewise, Christians are called neither to panic nor complacency. We are called to hope responsibly, pray earnestly, and remember that every Iranian civilian, every American service member, every Israeli family, and every innocent person caught in the shadow of conflict bears the image of God.

Romans 4 reminds us that God's future is often born in situations that appear hopeless. Matthew 9 reminds us that mercy is stronger than exclusion. Ḥesed reminds us that God's covenant love does not fail when human wisdom reaches its limits. Perhaps the question before the church today is not simply, "What will happen with Iran?" but "What kind of people will we become while facing uncertainty?"

Will we become people of fear, suspicion, and vengeance, or will we become people formed by ḥesed, people who pray for peace, seek truth rather than propaganda, refuse to dehumanize enemies, care for those who suffer, and trust that God is still at work even when the future is unclear?

Abraham's story says that hope can survive impossible circumstances. Matthew's Gospel says that mercy can cross every boundary. Ḥesed says that God's faithfulness endures even through war, anxiety, political division, and international crises.

And that may be the deepest promise of all: not that history will unfold exactly as we wish, but that the God who called Abraham, healed the woman, raised the girl, and welcomed Matthew still accompanies humanity through every uncertain chapter. In a season of geopolitical tension, the church's vocation is to bear witness to that steadfast love and to embody it.

 

May 31, 2026 Philippians 2:1-13 "Be Of The Same Mind"

Our scripture reading once again is timed appropriately, coinciding with what our congregation's vote this Sunday on a mission statement. In Philippians 2:1–13, Paul calls the church to “be of the same mind,”

 

On their face, those words may sound like a demand for conformity or the erasure of individuality. For those of us who have carved out identities that didn’t always fit cultural norms of past generations, our first reaction is to disagree with what Paul's words imply, 

Yes, they may seem to suggest an unsettling nod to conformity at first glance. Yet the deeper we enter the passage, the clearer it becomes that Paul is not asking people to become identical. He is asking them to become loving.

I loved my parents, and my wife, Mary, loves her family. Yet our generation lived different lives from theirs, following our own norms and values. We mapped a different script for honoring marriage, family, and showing our love. We sought our own freedom and authenticity. We honored our Lutheran heritage and pursued God both passionately and differently from our parents. I imagine the same will be true for our son. 

There is something holy in that passion that all of us have fully tried to explore. Human beings are not mass-produced souls. God delights in particularity. I always believed the body of Christ was never meant to be monochrome.

Paul points toward something even more radical than self-expression. He points toward self-emptying love with the astonishing center of this passage, which is the Christ: $\text{Though he was in the form of God, he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.}$

Jesus does not cling to status. Christ moves downward into vulnerability, humility, suffering, and service. In a world obsessed with protecting the self, Jesus chooses surrender. Jesus makes this a truly counterintuitive act.

And maybe that is what Paul means by “the one mind.” Not identical personalities.
Not uniform opinions. Not flattened individuality, but a shared willingness to love beyond instinct.

"The mind of Christ” often appears in the smallest, quietest rebellions against the norms of our culture. The world teaches anger; Christ invites empathy. The world trains us to criticize; Christ teaches us to understand. The world nurtures resentment; Christ opens the possibility of gratitude even amid suffering.

Paul’s words become especially powerful when we realize that Christ’s humility was not weakness. It was courage. Jesus did not empty himself because he lacked worth. He emptied himself because love mattered more than protecting status. The cross was not in conformity to the world; it was a defiance of the world’s entire value system.

Defying norms may be more than a valued personality trait. Rather, it may be better labeled a calling. This is defiance of tradition on behalf of compassion. It is choosing connection over contempt and mercy over superiority. 

And perhaps that is where Philippians 2 meets us most personally. This means that following Christ may indeed require becoming “a fool for Christ.”

A fool who forgives when revenge would feel better. A fool who listens instead of winning arguments.A fool who risks tenderness in cynical times.  A fool who keeps creating beauty in a world addicted to despair. A fool who keeps loving when love seems inefficient, impractical, or naïve.

Most of us aren't called to dramatic acts of heroism today. We may, however, be called to small, counterintuitive acts: to soften instead of harden, to understand instead of dismiss, to encourage instead of compete, to notice the lonely person, to apologize first, to remain gentle in a harsh moment. Two weeks ago, Pastor Emillie encouraged us to notice and lean into these smaller moments, and she prayed that faithfully in her sermon that Sunday.

These small acts may seem foolish in a culture built on self-protection. Paul insists they are actually the shape of divine life itself.

The final words of the passage hold both challenge and promise: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you.” The burden does not rest entirely on us. God is already at work within us, loosening our grip on ego, certainty, resentment, and fear. God is quietly forming in us the mind of Christ.

And so perhaps the goal is not becoming less ourselves, but becoming more fully ourselves through love without losing individuality, but rather surrendering the need to place ourselves at the center.

Maybe that is just holy foolishness. Daring to believe that tenderness is stronger than power and that love stronger than fear. And maybe following that foolishness is a true paths to heaven.

May 24, 2026 Acts 2:1-13 Lost in the Spirit of Pentecost

Reflection

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Sermon

What also struck me today was how naturally Pastor Emillie embodies the spirit of Pentecost itself. Pentecost is often remembered for the miracle of many languages being understood at once, but beneath that miracle is something deeper: the breaking down of fear and separation so people can recognize themselves in one another. 

There was something quietly beautiful about our congregation stumbling together through Spanish, Swahili, and Swedish. None of us sang perfectly, but perfection was beside the point. The act of trying mattered. It became a small expression of hospitality, humility, and shared joy.

And in many ways, that seems characteristic of Pastor Emillie’s ministry. She chose music the congregation had sung before in Spanish, Swahili, and even Swedish. Debi, Suzi, Craig, and I helped lead the singing, with Debi prompting us in Spanish and Pastor Emillie in Swahili. 

Emillie creates spaces where people do not feel tested or excluded, but welcomed into participation. Her opening story about not knowing to wear red on Pentecost may have seemed small, but moments like that carry pastoral wisdom. She instinctively senses the anxieties people carry into church, whether they are visitors, newcomers, or longtime members who feel out of step  , and she gently dissolves those anxieties with humor and warmth. Her laughter does not draw attention to herself; it invites others to relax and belong.

What continues to deepen week by week is the sense that her relationship with scripture is not academic alone, nor performative, but deeply lived. She speaks about the Bible with both reverence and accessibility, as though she genuinely trusts that these ancient stories still breathe and move among us. That trust becomes contagious. In her Wednesday Bible discussions, especially, people are not simply being taught information; they are being invited into a relationship with the text, with one another, and perhaps even with parts of themselves they had forgotten.

Different pastors meet us at different moments in our spiritual lives. That feels profoundly true. A healthy church community is not built on one personality or one style of leadership, but on a tapestry of gifts. Pastor Dayle offered intellectual expansiveness and theological reassurance. Pastor Ray inspired discipline, curiosity, and deeper immersion in scripture itself. Pastor Emillie seems to minister through presence as much as preaching through kindness and attentiveness, with an ability to make faith feel joyous and inhabitable rather than intimidating.

There is something healing about encountering a pastor whose love for scripture is matched by an equally visible love for the people sitting in front of her. Too often those qualities become separated. But when they come together, as they seem to in Pastor Emillie, the church begins to feel less like an institution and more like a genuine community gathered in grace.

May 17, 2026 Philippians 1:1-18 Embody the Gospel Message and the World Changes Forever; A Sermon on Paul's Sermon

I was surprised this passage was written from prison. There is no elf-pity here. No plea for escape. Paul speaks only with startling clarity about what matters most to him at this moment. The importance of Christ being proclaimed.

That conviction feels almost impossible in a world where we learn to measure our lives by our success and ease. We instinctively interpret hardship as failure. We assume when things are difficult something has gone wrong. Yet Paul sits in chains and says the opposite: the gospel is advancing.

Once again, as it was with Silas and singing, his imprisonment has become a pulpit.

Roman guards hear about Christ because Paul is chained beside them. Other believers become bolder because his suffering has revealed courage. Even rivals who preach from envy and selfish ambition cannot extinguish Paul’s joy, because his life is not centered on protecting his own image. He has surrendered the exhausting need to “win.” The only question left is whether Christ is being made known.

“What does it matter?” Paul asks. “Just this, that Christ is proclaimed.”

Paul’s letter to the Philippians begins not with doctrine, but with relationship. Before he teaches or encourages, he gives thanks. He remembers these people with affection and joy because they have become partners in the gospel together. Even from prison, Paul speaks the language of love. That alone tells us something profound about the Good News in that the gospel is never merely personal. It reshapes living with one another. 

Though equal with God, Jesus does not cling to privilege or glory. Instead, he empties himself, taking the form of a servant, walking willingly toward suffering and death on a cross. This is the scandal and beauty of the gospel: salvation comes not through domination, but through self-giving love. The Son of God kneels to wash feet. The Lord of creation accepts rejection. The Savior enters fully into human pain to redeem humanity from within.

All our human systems dictate to climb higher. Jesus descends lower and somehow, in that humility - in that downward mobility, the world is changed forever. 

That truth presses deeply into Philippians because Paul himself is trying to live in Christ's pattern. Sitting in prison, deprived of comfort and freedom, Paul still rejoices because the gospel is advancing. His life has become less about self-preservation and more about participation in the love of Christ. The humility of Jesus has reshaped Paul’s understanding of success. It reorients suffering and purpose for him.

Pastor Emillie's sermon drew attention to Olivia Mabiala Andre, a 19-year-old asylum seeker from the Democratic Republic of the Congo whose case drew national attention in the United States in 2026. Her case became controversial after U.S. immigration authorities detained her and her family in late 2025 when they attempted to seek asylum in Canada following the denial of their U.S. asylum claim. 

Because of the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement, they were returned to U.S. custody. Andre was then transferred through multiple detention facilities before ending up at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas.

In May 2026, a federal judge ordered ICE to release Andre, ruling that her detention was unlawful because the government had not properly established that she posed a danger or flight risk. She was reunited with her family in Maine while her asylum case continues through the courts.

Understandably, Pastor Emillie drew comparisons between her and Andre's situations. She preached how it easy it is to become self-absorbed and yet we must heed the Good News for us today, and that God is still at work in us. 

Sermon 

May 3, 2026 Matthew 6:24–34 Serving Mammon / Hadestown

In Matthew 6:24–34, Jesus names a tension that feels both ancient and immediate: you cannot serve two masters. You cannot give your heart to both God and the anxious pursuit of security. This is what he calls “mammon.” He turns, almost tenderly, to the human condition: Do not worry about your life… Look at the birds. Consider the lilies. Your life is more than what you can secure.

What will make this tension alive for me today? I have recently been immersed in reading Greek mythology, to explore a musical I was introduced to several weeks ago called Hadestown, based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice (follow the underlined link to see a plot synopsis and performances).

Pastor Emillie preached eloquently last Sunday about the importance of music in relation to our spirituality. Oddly, this "mammon", "two-masters tension" hums beneath the story of Anaïs Mitchell's folk opera.

At its core, Hadestown is a world shaped by fear of scarcity. As king of the underworld, Hades builds a kingdom on the promise of safety. The underworld, with its walls, the work routine, and Hades' order, provides protection from the chaos above. However, the cost is high. Workers trade their freedom for the illusion of security. They sing in rhythm, not because they are free, but because they are bound. It is a world where anxiety has become the organizing principle.

This is precisely the world Jesus warns against. “Do not worry about your life…” is not just naïve optimism. It is a refusal to let fear become lord. Worry, in Jesus’ telling, is not just an emotion; it is a kind of allegiance. 

When anxiety rules, it dictates our choices. Our relationships are affected, and our vision of what is possible narrows. We begin to believe there is never enough; never enough love, never enough time, never enough provision. Through grasping and hoarding, we build our own little Hadestowns, stone by stone. 

Eurydice embodies this tension. She is not foolish or faithless. She acts from hunger. She is cold and afraid. When she chooses to go to Hadestown, it is not because she desires wealth or power, but because she fears not having enough to survive. Her decision is deeply human. It is the logic of worry made visible: I must secure my life, even if it costs me my soul. The two Greek myths on which the story is based provide the drama that sears whenever we take Jesus's words to heart. It is hard not to be anxious.  

And then there is Orpheus. Orpheus lives by the logic Jesus gestures toward. He trusts in a song not yet finished, a provision not yet visible. He seeks first something beyond survival: beauty, love, harmony. “Seek first the kingdom…” Jesus says, “and all these things will be added to you.” Orpheus embodies that seeking, even when it looks impractical. For Eurydice, who is focused on survival in the moment, Orpheus's quest looks superfluous and foolish.

The tragedy of Hadestown is that even Orpheus is not immune to anxiety. In the final moments, as he leads Eurydice out of the underworld, he is given one command: do not look back. Trust. Keep walking.

And he cannot. He turns.

That turn is small, understandable, and devastating. It is the moment worry reclaims him. The question creeps in: What if she’s not there? What if this promise fails? What if I lose everything? And in that moment, anxiety becomes master again. The very thing Jesus warns about, this inability to trust in what cannot yet be seen, undoes the redemption and Eurydice being brought back from death

Matthew 6 does not promise that life will be free of hunger or hardship. Eurydice’s fear is real. The world is harsh. Jesus insists that worry cannot save us from that reality; it only binds us more tightly to it. It turns us inward. It narrows our vision. It makes us build kingdoms like Hades’, where control masquerades as peace.

“Consider the lilies…” There is a song called "Flowers" that Eurydice sings, where "lily white" is mentioned and remembered.

In Hadestown, Persephone carries the memory of another world. She remembers a world of seasons, abundance, wine, and sunlight. She is a living reminder that the earth was not meant to be ruled by scarcity. Her presence is like the lilies Jesus points to: signs that there is a deeper order, a generosity woven into creation itself.

The invitation of Matthew 6, then, is not to deny reality but to reorient within it. To live as if God, not fear, is the truest master. To trust that life is more than what we can secure. To walk forward without looking back, not because we are certain, but because we refuse to let anxiety dictate the story... if not constantly at least for a time.

Hadestown ends with a question: Is it a sad song? The answer is yes, and no. Because they sing it again. They try again. They hope again.

And maybe that is where the Gospel meets the myth.

Each day, we stand at the crossroads between trust and worry, between God and mammon, between the open fields of the lilies and the walled city of fear. And each day, we are invited to choose, not perfectly, not without trembling, but faithfully.

Are we fated to live out our tragedies or do we try again to keep walking and not look back? 

Sermon 

 

April 24, 2026 Acts 16:16-34 Learning To Trust Your Faith Beyond Your Predictive Fears

This reading exists in the uneasy tension between the machinery of power and the quiet, subversive life of the kingdom. This is a tension that refuses to settle into either despair or naïveté. Dylan's Ballad of a Thin Man's lyric comes to mind. "Something is happening, but you don't know what it is."

A reader cannot stand comfortably “against the empire,” nor does the passage let us hide safely within it.

This odd story opens with a fortune-telling, spiritually and economically exploited slave girl. When Paul finally casts out the spirit, he frees her from a system of profit built on her bondage.

We discussed on Wednesday, Paul's timing in casting out of the spirit and his motivation for doing so, since the story details only his annoyance at her.  Was this everyday exploitation so prevalent that Paul saw no need to cast out the spirit before? Someone in our group asked what happened to the slave now that she no longer had value as a fortune-teller? Neither Paul nor her owners expresses any concern about her future.  

In any case, the casting out triggers the accusation, the beatings of Paul and Silas, and the imprisonment under state authority that follows. Life in the kingdom does not remain hidden and harmless from the empire. When it touches real life, it collides with systems that benefit from things staying as they are.

Faithfulness often creates conflict precisely because it touches what is real. The prison emphasizes that following Jesus is not an escape from empire, but exposure within it. Paul and Silas, as they are beaten and jailed, are not outside the system; they are caught inside it at its most brutal.

And yet they choose to sing  This is not denial. passivity or retreat. It is a refusal to let the logic of the system define their inner life. This is one answer to Sarah's question posed in "The Hidden Roots of a Different Kind of Kingdom" blog post. Her question wax, “Which battles do I wage?”

Not every battle is fought by outward resistance. Some are fought by refusing to become what the system expects you to become. They are not bitter. They do not despair. They don't resort to violence. They refuse to be dehumanized. Midnight singing is not an escape. It is resistance of a different kind.

The earthquake opens doors and loosens chains. It looks like divine intervention, like power breaking in. But the story refuses to turn this into a triumphant escape. The defining moment is not the shaking, but that none of the prisoners runs away.

This is unsettling. If this were simply a story about liberation from oppressive structures, escape would be the obvious, even moral, outcome. Instead, freedom for many is held back for the sake of the jailer.

This is where the kingdom diverges sharply from the empire. Empire uses power to secure itself. The kingdom receives power and gives it away. The kingdom movement is contagious as well. Not only Paul and Silas, but collectively no prisoner escapes. 

The jailer is not like Pilate, referenced in the other blog post Sarah commented on, but he stands in that same space. He is a functionary of the Roman system and bound by duty, even unto death. When the doors open, he prepares to kill himself. That is empire logic turned inward: failure deserves death.

Paul stops him. “Do not harm yourself.”

Now all the details of the story converge: the abused slave, the unjust system, the imprisoned apostle, together with all the prisoners, and the Roman jailer. Instead of reversal or revenge, there is preservation of life. 

This is not an empire overthrown. It is a story of transformation at multiple points of contact.

This teaches how disruptive faith could operate in the kingdom. Paul does not ignore the slave girl’s condition to keep peace within the system. He shows the willingness to act where suffering is real, even when it triggers consequences.

This reminds me that inner freedom can trigger unpredictable resistance to corruption. It is breathtaking. Silas' and Paul's singing in prison is defiant, embodying a freedom that the system does not control. This is what Sarah described when she spoke of  “roots.” She was right, and here the root is strong enough to survive pressure, not avoid it.

Paul's saving the jailer is crucial. In a world that often divides into “empire” and “victim,” the kingdom introduces a third possibility: the transformation of the one caught in the system. This is a defense against self-righteous fighting. The goal is not to defeat enemies, but to recover people who, like the jailer, may then ask What must I do to be saved?” This is a question springing from what he has experienced

At times, we may romanticize suffering or martyrdom and feel that to truly follow Christ is either to suffer heroically or withdraw quietly. In this story, Paul does not seek suffering. The suffering comes as a consequence of action. And when he can later appeal to his Roman citizenship, he does.

Suffering is not a goal. Faithfulness is.

In her comment, Sarah imagines the Passion in reverse, a world where everything stops and is healed. Hers is a beautiful, compelling vision. Acts offers something quieter, and in many, many ways harder to accept. Not the stopping of the world, but the emergence of a different way of being within it.

A prison becomes a place to sing. A jailer becomes a brother. A night of violence ends at a shared table of mutual respect. In this tale the empire does not disappear, but for a moment, in household by household, it no longer has the final word.

Pastor Emillie stressed the importance of music in political movements, citing the real life example that inspired the film Safina! and other civil rights movements using songs like "This Little Light of Mine".  

Sermon. 

April 17, 2026 Acts 9:1-19 Paul's Conversion, His Call, or Both?

Was Saul of Tarsus’  encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. a conversion, a call, or both? 

While most call this Paul’s conversion, there are good reasons to question that term. Typically, Christians use “conversion” when someone moves from unbelief to belief or from one religion to another.

Saul passionately believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as did the early Christians. Saul was initially convinced Jesus’ followers were heretical Jews who perverted God’s word and will in the world.

It is appropriate to speak of Saul converting from one form of Judaism to another. Paul refers to himself as a Pharisee in Philippians 3:5–6. Likewise, Luke depicts Saul as a zealous and devout Jew who violently disagreed with the early Christians because of their teaching that Jesus of Nazareth was the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, whom God raised from the dead. This did not follow the traditional Jewish narrative Saul had learned from scripture.

This lies at the heart of Saul’s "conversion". Instead of seeing Jesus as a deceased leader of unfaithful and heretical Jews, Saul begins to recognize Jesus as the resurrected and living Lord.

Luke initially depicts Saul as perpetually growing more violent. In 7:58, Saul stands by as others stone Stephen. In 8:1, Saul approves of the murderers’ actions. By 9:1, Saul is literally “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” Saul pursues his victims. He instigates violent Christian persecutions in Damascus (9:2). Beginning in 9:3, however, Luke’s depiction of Saul changes.

Saul experiences a true theophany, (or a manifestation of God among humans), much like we see at other points in the Scriptures (like, for example, in Exodus 19:16–19; 1 Kings 19:11; Isaiah 66:15; or Acts 2:2). Saul sees a bright light, falls to the ground, and hears a voice calling his name (9:3–4).

Saul even recognizes he is encountering God directly by referring to the speaker of the voice as “Lord” (9:5). Saul is profoundly confused when he asks, “Who are you, Lord?” He recognizes both that God is speaking and that something does not add up. The voice asks, “Saul, Saul, Why do you persecute me?” (9:4). Previously, Saul was sure he was performing the Lord’s work, not thwarting it. After hearing this, that certainty vanishes. Compare this to Jesus breathing last week's message “Peace be with you.” 

Last week's "Peace be with you" was given within the disciple's fear. God's voice disrupts differently here. The pivotal revelation occurs in 9:5. The voice of God identifies directly as Jesus, when Saul is persecuting Christians. Jesus’ statements to Saul are multifaceted. If Jesus is speaking personally with Saul, it means Jesus is not dead nor far off, as some might envision in light of his ascension (1:9–11). 

Instead, Luke depicts Jesus as alive, speaking as God's voice, and intimately connected to his followers. Thereafter, Luke associates Saul with images of death (blindness, no food, and no drink (9:9). Yet, those images soon give way to images of life, such as sight, baptism, food, and strength (9:18–19a). This experience is related in Acts three times, another number associated with Jesus' death. 

Luke weds Saul’s “conversion” with his “call.” To speak of one without the other skews the biblical witness and can lead to theological imbalance. Ananias, a disciple in Damascus, likewise experiences a divine summons (like Exodus 3:1–4:17; or Isaiah 6:1–13). 

He initially responds like Isaiah, making himself available to the Lord (9:10), but then responds as humans typically do by making excuses (9:13–14; see Luke 1:18–20). 

Interestingly, the Lord commissions Ananias to relay the Lord’s commission to Saul (9:15–16). Importantly, Saul does not receive his calling directly from God (or Jesus). Instead, God works with and through a fellow believer to reveal God’s will to Saul. This speaks imperatively to essential witnessing to one another, as Pastor Steve preached last Sunday. Ananias’ obedience is pivotal for Saul’s understanding and subsequent faithfulness. One wonders whether Saul would have fulfilled his divine commission if Ananias had not been faithful in his. 

Saul receives a double commission. Saul will proclaim the good news of God’s work in and through Jesus to a wide swath of people (9:15). Yet, Saul is also called to suffer for the sake of Jesus’s name (9:16). Saul doesn't receive a peaceful commission. Saul’s suffering will serve God’s purposes as much as Saul’s proclamations.

In Acts 9:1–19, Luke introduces us to two distinct, yet interlocking, relationships. On the one hand, Luke wants us to recognize the importance of what will become a fundamental understanding of the Trinity. The voice of Jesus and the voice of God cannot be separated in Acts 9:5, and God’s commission does not take place apart from the Holy Spirit’s empowerment (9:17). 

At the same time, Luke wants us to recognize the intimate connection between Jesus and the church. When Saul persecutes the church, Saul persecutes Jesus. Jesus is not far off. Even in his ascended state, he is present and advocating for his people. Some think, “Christians are the only Jesus people will ever see.” Luke would disagree with them here.

When adequately understood, authentic encounters with Jesus change human lives. Those changes involve both conversion and commission. A genuine encounter with Jesus alters both our actions and our faith. 

God’s call to Ananias involved the potential for suffering. God’s call to Saul involved the certainty of suffering. Obedience to God’s call does not guarantee Christians (nor ministers) a life free from suffering.

Something is unsettling about how the Acts of the Apostles tells the story of Saul on the road to Damascus. We want clarity: was it a conversion or a calling? Luke insists on both, and in that “both” is where the Spirit does its most unsettling work.

Saul doesn't move from unbelief to belief. He is not empty of faith. He is full of zealous, disciplined faith. He loves the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Yet, in that very devotion, he is violently wrong. It is possible to be passionately religious and profoundly misaligned with God.

So Saul’s “conversion” is not a rejection of God but a reorientation toward God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ. The shock is not that God exists, but that God looks like Jesus. Crucified. Risen. Identified not with power, but with the persecuted. 

“Why do you persecute me?” Jesus asks. Not “my followers,” but me. In that moment, Saul’s entire world is fundamentally shattered and remade. God is not where Saul thought God was. God is in the very people Saul was trying to destroy.

This is treated like death for Saul. Blindness. Silence. Fasting. Saul is undone before he is remade, and the imagery is unmistakable. Before there is resurrection, there is burial. Before sight, there is darkness. Whatever else "conversion" means, it is a dying and rising. 

Paul is even renamed when he is born again. The story refuses to remain inward. It immediately turns outward, toward calling.

Saul does not simply gain new insight. Rather, he is given a new direction, and strikingly, that calling comes through Ananias of Damascus, as a reluctant, ordinary disciple who must overcome fear to participate in God’s work. The risen Christ chooses to work through the fragile obedience of another human being.

This should give us pause if we imagine that God’s purposes prevail regardless of our participation. Here, Saul’s future is mysteriously bound up with Ananias’s courage. The great apostle’s mission begins with someone else’s trembling “yes.” The church is not incidental to God’s work; it is the means by which God reveals, confirms, and sustains his call.

The calling itself is not romantic. In Acts 9, obedience leads directly into pain and misunderstanding. God reveals a deep presence, especially in the places where the world resists love.

There is an inseparability of God, Christ, and the community. The voice that speaks is the voice of God through Jesus, heals, and is filled with the Holy Spirit. To touch one is to touch all. To harm one is to harm Christ himself. Encounters with Jesus are never private spiritual experiences. They are always relational and consequential.

So perhaps the question is not whether Saul was converted or called. Perhaps the question is whether we allow it to be both. To be converted, again and again, from our certainties and inherited assumptions.

Pastor Emillie's sermon focused on Ananias of Damascus and his faith in following what God revealed to him. Her prayer was for us to emulate that kind of faith. 

Sernon

We bear Christ into the world. That path may include suffering because the risen Christ interrupts our lives, blinds us, and finally sends us through all those unexpected voices that continue to question, with such unsettling intimacy:

“Why do you persecute me?”

April 12, 2026 John 20:19–31 Scripture In A Time of Fear, Division, and Uncertainty

The Gospel tells us that the disciples are gathered behind locked doors “for fear.” Fear is the atmosphere of the room. Fear is the reason the doors are shut. Fear is what shapes their imagination of the future.

And then, without the doors opening, Jesus stands among them saying “Peace be with you.”

It is difficult to read this passage today without hearing echoes of our own fear and uncertainty framing so much of public life. Escalating geopolitical tensions, particularly the threat of military conflict with Iran and the resulting economic instability, have stirred global anxiety and shaken markets. 

Domestically, debates over public safety, youth unrest, and the balance between enforcement and care reveal a society unsure how to hold together its most vulnerable members. Politically, sharp divisions over budgets, governance, and national direction deepen a sense that we are living behind locked doors of mistrust and suspicion.

The disciples would understand this atmosphere.

They, too, were living in the aftermath of violence, disillusionment, and shattered expectations. The world they trusted collapsed at the cross, through brutal authority.  Hope was fragile. The community had scattered.

And so they locked the doors. Jesus does not wait for the disciples to become brave. He does not ask them to unlock the doors first. He enters as they are, fearful and confused.

This matters because our national assumption seems to be that fear must be mastered before peace can be known. That security must always come first. Regardless of cost certain nations nation must never be trusted with a nuclear weapon. We assume that strength must precede reconciliation. This also comes with the assumption that the side with strength holds moral high ground over its opponents.

The resurrection changes assumptions. Peace is not the reward for overcoming fear.
Peace is the gift given within fear. “Peace be with you” is not a calming slogan so much as a disruptive presence. It interrupts the logic of anxiety that dominates both ancient Jerusalem and modern America.

Jesus shows them his hands and his side. The risen Christ is not unmarked. Resurrection transforms violence. Jesus' wounds remain visible as testimonies of love that endured suffering.

In a time when our national life is marked by deep wounds, the temptation is either to deny wounds or weaponize them. But the Gospel offers a third way: To reveal wounds without letting them define the future. The body of Christ still bears scars, and yet speaks peace.

Thomas refuses secondhand faith. He wants to see. He wants to touch. He wants something real. Jesus does not reject him. This is crucial in a moment when many people are skeptical of the authority of institutions. When trust has eroded, doubt is not a failure; it is often a form of integrity. Thomas represents everyone who must say “I need something more than words.”

And Jesus responds not with condemnation, but with invitation.“Put your finger here.” The resurrection is not fragile. It can withstand scrutiny. It can meet us in our questions.

After speaking peace, Jesus says: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” This is the turning point where the disciples aren't just comforted, they are commissioned, rather than falling to the temptation either to retreat or to mirror the hostility of the world. Instead they are called to be people who have received peace even in systems shaped by fear.

Jesus breathes on them. And, like Creator's Easter service, this echoes Genesis, that breath of God that gives life. In the resurrection, a new creation begins through presence; through peace, and forgiveness.

Pastor Steve preached an astounding sermon on how important it was for us to bear witness to the Gospel's beloved story. He opened with the Artemis II Flyby story as a de facto Children's Sermon. He preached that we accept the news story as true even if we did not witness the event ourselves. 

We are not so different from those first disciples. We know the locked door, but Jesus is not stopped by locked doors. When we are fearful he forever sends Christians out with his assuring “Peace be with you.”

Sermon 

April 5, 2026 Easter: From Grave to A Garden

Over the years, we have listened carefully to the resurrection stories at Easter; Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each begins at the tomb. Each begins in grief. Each begins with women who refuse to let love end.

There is one consistent detail that is mentioned in each narrative. Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us it was dawn. Light was already breaking.

John tells it differently. Mary Magdalene came to the tomb while it was still dark.

This is not a small detail. In John’s gospel, nothing is accidental. This is the same gospel that begins: “In the beginning was the Word…” Echoing the first words of Genesis: “In the beginning… when the earth was formless and void and darkness covered the deep.”

Pastor Emillie's sermon emphasized that Mary comes in the darkness, and John here is telling us something more than the time of day. He is telling us where Mary was and where we are in times of grief. We are standing at the edge of creation when the world is unmade, when we grieve, and the cross seems to have shattered hope. When she discovers the tomb is empty, nothing makes sense.

In past years, the Easter sanctuary transformation happened at the Easter Vigil service. Now it occurs just before the Easter service starts. The bustling busyness of what is done is an exciting part of our Easter tradition now.   

This year, the Thanksgiving for Baptism emphasized John's recurring theme of creation and God's Spirit moving over the water. God has placed us in a well-watered garden. We sang Take Me to the Water in response to the Thanksgiving.

Pastor Emillie preached about what Mary would have felt in her time of grief by comparing it to what Emillie's family felt when her uncle died. Mary stands weeping outside the tomb. The mystery of the empty tomb was too much at first. She then encounters a man she does not recognize. Of course, a gardener, because John is telling us something again about the first creation in a garden. 

Once there was Adam and Eve, and through them the world fell into fracture. Now there is Mary and Jesus. A woman and a man in a garden again, but this time, the story is not about grasping or loss. It is about recognition. “Mary.”

And in that moment, everything changes. Light breaks. Not just in the sky,
but in the soul. “Rabbouni.” 

Teacher. The Lord of Life. This is the first morning of the new creation. The darkness has not been avoided. It has been entered and transformed. The resurrection is not only about one man rising. It is the rebirth of the whole cosmos. The chaos of Genesis is spoken into order again. The void is filled with life again. The garden blooms again. Pastor Emille preached that Jesus commanded Mary not to grasp this moment, but rather to go and spread the news. The first witness is Mary, who is so excited she must run to announce what all creation longs to say: “I have seen the Lord.”

The congregation responded with the hymn Sing Out, Earth and Skies and the Apostles’ Creed

For Offertory the choir sang Now the Green Blade Riseth, and this familiar hymn landed  deeply in continuing resurrection as creation, "life from buried seed."

After We Eat the Bread of Teaching and Taste and See for Communion we departed with a rousing, full-throated I'm So Glad Jesus Lifted Me. we left as witnesses of the garden restored and where death no longer has the final word.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Service  

April 3, 2025 Tridum Good Fruiday.Tenebrae Service

 

The darkest night

This service is usually better attended at Creator than Maundy Thursday, and this year was no exception. This was true of the services in my youth as well. 

It is easier, I suppose, to get caught up in the drama. There is also a tradition of focused attention on the last words of someone who is dying as if this summarizes a life. 

It makes me think what inscription Jesus might have wanted written, rather than Pilate's as the sign on the cross. Love you? With you? Remember me? Nothing?

This was also another Tenebrae service, like last year. A Tenebrae service features the gradual extinguishing of candles to represent the fading loyalty of the disciples and Christ’s journey into death, culminating in a "strepitus" (loud noise) symbolizing the earthquake/tomb.

Good Friday services are always hard for me. I feel the story is too big. I don’t have words to explain it, and don’t want to explain it. What was accomplished on the cross and in the resurrection? Love somehow sets us free, brings us through our Red Sea crises, breaks our hearts and gives us hope. I do feel the weight of it, wondering how to voice the reality of grief and good news both. 

Yes, we sang our traditional songs and heard the stories from scripture that we have listened to for years. We watched an artist's depiction of Jesus' last words at the beginning of theisservice. The altar was reverently stripped to close the service.  

We left contemplating death and the loss of hope it brings again. 

Rather than an Easter Vigil service, this worship will be our sole preparation for Creator's Easter service.  

Service

April 2, 2926 The Easter Triduum (or Sacred Triduum) Maundy Thursday - Mandatum Novum

Maundy Thursday always begins at the table and never stays there 

Last year I remember Pastor Emillie gave us a poem by a favorite poet of hers, Jan Richardson. It is called Circle of Grace and captures a very particular, special piece of communion that often eludes us, and it is worth talking about on this day when we commemorate that first table. 

 Blessing the Bread, the Cup
Let us bless the bread that gives itself to us
with its terrible weight, its infinite grace.

Let us bless the cup poured out for us
with a love that makes us anew.
Let us gather around these gifts
simply given and deeply blessed.
And let us go bearing the bread, carrying the cup,
laying the table within a hungering world.

Jan Richardson’s blessing names what we are almost afraid to say aloud: the bread comes to us with a terrible weight and an infinite grace. It is not light, sentimental fellowship. It is a costly presence. This is a table already leaning toward the cross.

And yet, year after year in your reflections, what emerges most powerfully is how the table keeps reappearing as more than a ritual of remembering, but as a living, contested space.

At Creator, that space is reclaimed in small, embodied ways: hands offering bread to one another, water poured over tired feet, scripture spoken in many voices instead of one. These are not just liturgical choices; they are theological claims. They say that the commandment, mandatum novum, is not an idea to be admired but an action to be practiced. Love must take on weight. It must kneel. It must touch.

And perhaps nowhere is that clearer than in the question that keeps echoing through all the Maundy Thrusdays I have experienced. Did Jesus wash Judas’ feet?

Scholars can debate the textual history of John’s Gospel, but the deeper question is not historical. For me this question is spiritual. If the love revealed at the table excludes the betrayer, then it is no longer the love that goes to the cross. The logic of Maundy Thursday collapses unless it includes the one who will walk out into the night.

Add to this the basin and towel, which become more than symbols. They become a crisis of recognition. Who is still at the table that I might prefer to exclude?
Whose feet would I quietly pass over?

Because there are other tables being built; louder, more public ones, where the language of faith is fused with power, identity, and exclusion. Bibles wrapped in flags. Accusations hurled in the name of righteousness. Claims of persecution that echo the story of Jesus while bypassing its substance.

Here Maundy Thursday becomes clarifying.

Jesus does not seize power. He does not weaponize scripture or call down judgment; he kneels in service. Most strikingly, he offers no promise of retribution to his followers. Pastor Steve reminded us that victory over enemies comes in renewed fellowship. The risen Christ is recognized not in domination, but in the breaking of bread.

That is the quiet revolution of this night.

It exposes how easily the table can be distorted into a boundary marker, who is in, who is out, who is pure, who is condemned. And it calls the church back to something far more demanding: a table that is carried into a hungering world, not guarded against it.

This is why the stripping of the altar remains such a powerful counterpoint. Everything is taken away, ornament, certainty, even the sense of presence. What remains is absence, vulnerability, and a question: What, of all we have built, truly belongs to the love Jesus commanded?

We are living that question in real time, especially in this season of transition, of calling new leadership, of discerning what to keep and what to release. In that sense, Maundy Thursday is not just a remembrance. It is a diagnosis revealing what is essential.

And perhaps that is where Richardson’s blessing lands most deeply:

Let us go bearing the bread, carrying the cup,
laying the table within a hungering world.

Not defending it. Not branding it, but bearing it as something fragile, costly, and alive. Because the truest sign that we have understood Maundy Thursday is not what happens at the altar. It is whether, when we rise from the table, we are willing to kneel.

Tonight's Maundy Thursday service reminded me of how much Creator worship has changed our worship over the years and what we still bring to services we feel is important. Susan provided beautiful banners behind the altar. Steve  and Claudia brought a pitcher and basin as a visual aid to remember foot washing. Pastor Emillie put together a liturgy meaningful to her and the congregation. Bill added to the reverence of the night with his inspired playing. 

This is a reflection of the love Jesus commanded. 

Service Recording