WRITTEN THINGS
Sermons • Songs • Etceteras
 Morton Bay fig tree in Perth ©Rfunnell (flickr) This sermon was originally preached on Sunday, March 23, 2025 at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Hopkins, MN. The full service may be viewed here. The sermon is below. Gospel: Luke 13:[1-5] 6-9 Good morning, Beloveds. So, for those who don’t know, I am the youngest of four girls born within six years of each other. My mom and dad, who was a pastor, were well-known and beloved in our community, schools, and churches, and my sisters were all smart, gifted, dutiful daughters who excelled at most everything they tried, which means I was born and raised simultaneously in the shadow of giants and under a microscope. At school, I was always welcomed as Melani, Michelle, or Charis’s sister and weighed against the standards they set. And anyone who saw or heard that I was a “Courts kid,” immediately clocked me as “Sam and Mary’s daughter,” a pastor’s kid, and graded me accordingly.
The problem was, I’ve always been the black sheep, from birth and even before. My conception was a profound and shocking accident -- or, like my mom always corrected me -- a miracle so determinedly willed by God that nothing could prevent me from becoming, and believe me they tried. I was born. Instead of being the boy they all hoped for, I was just another girl, but a weird one who dressed oddly, was overly-sensitive, and was insufferably dramatic. So I worked hard to fit in: I was a model student who excelled academically. A model PK who immersed herself in church and theology. And within our family, I became a shapeshifter, moving like smoke or water to fit into and fill whatever cracks, clefts, and crevices were left after everyone else took their place on the family stage. But I still didn’t. So I worked even harder to self-differentiate and become a person with her own name and identity instead of one who only existed in relation to someone else. I figured if I was gonna stick out like a sore thumb, I might as well paint the nail too. Instead of joining choir, I joined marching band. Instead of joining theater, I joined winterguard. Instead of singing the songs my sisters already sang better, I made up my own. I earned a degree in theology and then took my songs and myself to Nashville. And over time, I excelled at being different. But those times when I failed to meet the standard crushed me and stuck with me. The pressure to succeed was heavy, but the burden of failure was unbearable -- especially when my failure wasn’t something I did, but something I was. So, I think, friends, that I know something of what our beloved Fig Tree is going through in today’s gospel, and I bet some of you do too.
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 "Elegy" ©Jules Olitski (2002) It is Lent 2017. I am the office administrator at Redeemer Lutheran Church in north Minneapolis where I am a decidedly agnostic Lutheran still very much in the process of composting old beliefs, unsure if any type of faith might ever grow again. After two years in the congregation and one on staff, Pastors Kelly and Babette Chatman still faithfully welcome my unanswerable questions and deep doubts. They ask nothing of me but myself. Wounds are beginning to heal, scab over, and even scar. But I am fallow ground.
We are at our mid-week check-in and I am lamenting to P.K. how distant I still feel from Easter or any kind of resurrection hope. Everyone around me is marching triumphantly toward Sunday morning; I seem to be marching toward a sure and un-raisable End. I tell him I’ve long-since surrendered to the disintegration of my faith and am committed to letting it run its course, but I am scared. What happens when faith dies? I have had so many of these conversations with P.K., but I am still taken aback when he simply asks, “Why?” “What do you mean?” “Why do you lament feeling distant from resurrection? Why are you afraid of a dead faith?” The Apostle Paul’s words from I Corinthians 15:14 ring in my ears as I stumble over my own: “Well…? Because…? You know…isn’t that the whole point of all this?” He shrugs. “Amy, you can’t rush resurrection.”  "Neighbors" by Steve Prince • Inspired by Luke 10:25-37 • Ink on paper
First Week of Lent, 2025
This meditation was originally given at on the First Wednesday of Lent - March 12, 2025 - at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Hopkins, MN. The service may be viewed in full here. The meditation, which is loosely based on the transcript that follows, may be viewed below. Lectionary reading: Luke 10:25-37 Artwork at left is shared with permission of by Sanctified Art.
Tonight I want to talk a little more about what it means to be and have neighbors, and what “neighboring” can look like in real life, because, as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said when he preached on this text, that’s what Jesus did in this parable: He removed the Greatest Commandment from the thought exercises of theologians, and gave it bloody skin and broken bones instead. I’m going to dwell a lot on Dr. King’s lessons here, but first I want to tell you a story from my own life about a night that found me as both a neighbor to someone in crisis and as the someone in crisis who needed a neighbor.
It was sometime early last winter when my family and I were all jolted awake in the middle of the night by a major crash in front of our house. Someone had driven into the light pole and wrapped the front of their minivan around it, knocking it over.  Miércoles de Ceniza | ©rpphotos (flickr) This sermon was originally preached on Ash Wednesday (March 5, 2025) at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Hopkins, MN. The service may be viewed in full here. The sermon may be viewed below. Gospel Text: Luke 9:51-62 Good evening, Beloveds. We are gathered tonight to confess our limitations, to renounce all pride and pretense, to remember our mortality as we embark on a 40 day journey following Christ to the Cross, where humanity’s faithlessness and duplicity will be laid bare and laid waste in Christ’s passion. I have always loved this season of the liturgical year, not because it ends at the Resurrection, but because it takes us to the very foot of the cross. To where the blood spilled by the powers and principalities of the earth and ether alike pools at our own feet and we are forced to reckon with the folly and fragility of flesh, and our brazen will to conquer it.
It is a journey to the deadest of centers, the holiest of in-betweens, that dark day when what was is gone and what will be has not yet risen. When God is dead, and we must bear its totality. It is not sexy. It is not hopeful. It is just, in the guttural poetry of Leonard Cohen, a cold and broken hallelujah. “Even here, even now, when all is lost and not yet found: God be praised.” These 40 Days are a practice of faithfully walking toward the most ruthless truth that whatever accolades or appraisals, felicities or failures, friends and foes we accumulate across however many hours or days or decades we have on earth, we are dust, and to dust we will return. No one — not even God Incarnate — escapes death. |
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