WRITTEN THINGS
Sermons • Songs • Etceteras
 "Saint Martha Taming the Dragon" © Sue Ellen Parkinson, 2021 This was the first sermon I ever preached, on November 3, 2019 at the annual women's retreat for Redeemer Lutheran Church in north Minneapolis. It can also be read with greater context at Church Anew's blog. Gospel Text: Luke 10:38-42 Seven years ago, just a couple months into my seminary career, I was invited to preach my first sermon at my church’s annual women’s retreat. I was super hesitant, but when Pastor Babette asks you to preach, you do it. Not because she’s bossy but because she’s the boss who usually knows what you need to do before you do, and so she is how you figure out what you need to do. Of course I said yes.
When, a few days later, a member of the planning team told me the weekend’s passage was Luke 10:38-42, about Mary and Martha, I visibly cringed and invisibly gasped, because seriously? Another women’s retreat concentrated on this story of Martha the distracted busy-body who needs to be more like her sweet sister, Mary, always sitting at Jesus’ feet when there’s work to be done? Gag. I am an Enneagram 4 and the youngest of four sisters, and I need exactly no one and nothing telling me to be more like my sisters (sorry, not sorry). Still, I decided that if I was ever going to be a preacher-pastor I'd have to preach some texts I don’t like and I might as well practice with women who love me. So I dug in, intent on finding something new and powerful for Mary and Martha, and discovered this incredible public theologian named Mary Stromer Hansen who literally wrote the book about these sisters and this passage. Her stunning, elucidating work helped me to love this text. It turns out that what we’ve been handed (especially women and Queer folks) is full of garbage mythology and patriarchal projections onto history which strip two radical sisters of their agency and place within their context. Reality, as usual, is much more complex and far more beautiful. So I invite you to come with me into this flashpoint in Martha's life -- and stay close, because it involves a good bit of Greek.
2 Comments
“If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” These are the words of Indigenous Australian artist, author, and poet Lilla Watson who, in 1985 delivered that timeless and transcendent message at the UN Decade for Women Conference in Nairobi just four years after I was born, in 1985.
It wasn’t until many, many years later, probably about 10 years ago, that I read her words for the very first time. And when I did, they vibrated and echoed in my bones like a trumpet through a canyon, and I understood -- viscerally, if not yet intellectually or practically -- that she was preaching the Law of Love and speaking gospel truth. Her words recast Scripture for me in a way that utterly transformed my theology, my actions, my whole person, and grounds me still to this day in a vision of Christ and eternal salvation through the lens of Mutual Liberation in the right here and now. So I was thrilled to find today’s epistle is Galatians 5:1 and 13-25 which opens with this trumpeting proclamation from St. Paul: “It is for freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to your own enslavement… You were called to freedom, beloved siblings, not to give you an opportunity for self-indulgence, but that through love you may become slaves to each another.” Across that canyon of two thousand years and countless empires raised and felled, Paul’s words resounded and rhymed and were echoed in Lilla Watson’s. And both, of course, were echoes of what Christ said -- and didn’t say -- in today’s gospel. But to hear them like the bell they are, I want to go back a bit for a birds-eye overview lest we forget how we got to the Samaritan village in the first place.
Blessings, beloved siblings, and Happy Birthday to the Church of Christ! Today we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, the Birthday of Christ’s Church by the Power of Mother Spirit, and the Third in a Trinity of High Holy Days in the Christian Liturgical Year.. With the Holy Mother and the Midwives, we witnessed the Very Good Love of Eternal God made flesh at Christmas. With Mary Magdalene and the women who stayed, we tasted the everlasting goodness of the Bread of Life, the Living Water who is Christ, Resurrected at Easter. And today, with the 12 Apostles, a few other men, and at least a hundred Women, according to Acts 1, we are Born anew of Breath and Fire, formed into One Body — the Body of Christ, and His Second Coming— by the Indwelling of God’s Eternally Hovering Holy Spirit. Our Beginning, Our Brother, Our Breath: One God, now and forever.
Today we are invited to cease any efforts to wrangle the wind and instead practice presence: To dwell within the ineffable who dwells within us by the promise of the Son who was indwelled by the Father in whom he also dwelled. If it all sounds and feels chaotic and confusing: congratulations and welcome to Pentecost! We are in Very Good company as we enter the scene and witness Spirit, who comes more like a crashing hurricane or a raging fire than a balloon that flits and floats and weightlessly falls into the eager arms of those She has come to transform. Before we go further, a word about my use of feminine pronouns for Holy Spirit.
I’ve been thinking a lot about fashion this week. About what we wear, what it means, and what it communicates to others. And this week was chock full of fashion statements from across the world. Which may sound unrelated to scripture, but I promise you it’s not, so stick with me. Last Monday was the annual MET Gala fundraiser where celebrities dress -- or, more precisely, are dressed by some of the world’s most distinguished designers -- in extravagant, over-the-top suits & gowns, paying homage to the year’s theme. And with five Black men chairing the Gala for the first time ever this year, its theme was, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” and the dress code was “Tailored for You.” Inspired by Monica L. Miller's book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, the Gala was an unapologetic, emphatic celebration of Black dandyism, which “is at its core,” Ty Gaskins writes, “a fashion revolution, a movement steeped in history, resistance, and pride. … a cultural statement, an act of protest, and, above all, an enduring celebration of individuality.” And wow, was it ever all that! Then on Thursday, in a much different but no less extravagant event halfway across the world, white smoke billowed from the chimney of the Sistine chapel, and Cardinal Robert Prevost was named Pope Leo XIV. In the eternity between the release of white smoke and Pope Leo’s presentation on the balcony, I openly wondered to my clergy sisters why it was taking so dang long, while the former catholics among us explained that popes wear really big outfits so it takes a long time to get dressed. And when he finally did step onto the balcony in different robes than Pope Francis had worn, we listened intently to MPR’s discussion of how some popes choose their robes as they do their names, both a reflection and declaration of who they are and intend to be as pontiff. Pope Francis, you may recall, was always robed in the white minimalism of his Jesuit roots which spoke to his intentional kinship with the poor and powerless. The new Pope -- the first born in the US, progeny of Black Haitian and Creole ancestors, whose spiritual roots lay in the Augustinian tradition -- chose to wear more traditional papal garb: a cardinal’s white cassock with attached red pellegrina, under the same ornate red and gold stole donned by Popes Francis, Benedict, and John Paul before him. It was kind of a let down, if I’m honest. But even prior to the week’s events, I was already on a journey into the significance of fabric and flesh which began as I thought about Peter and Tabitha in our Easter stories. In last week’s Gospel, when he recognized Jesus on the beach, Peter's immediate reaction was to cover his nakedness and jump in the lake. That reminded me of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden where they were unclothed and unashamed until they believed the lie that God was withholding goodness and beauty and fullness from them, and ate the fruit. Then, as Genesis 3 tells it, “Both their eyes were opened, they realized they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together to make coverings for themselves.” When God called out looking for them, and Adam said they were naked and afraid and so they hid, God’s reply was a simple but telltale question: “Who told you you were naked?” I guess they didn’t know how perfectly clothed they’d always been in God’s love and goodness.  “First Station: Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane” ©3TTman (2010) This sermon was preached on Maundy Thursday (April 17, 2025) at Gethsemane Lutheran Church, and was based on Luke 22:39-54 in the Garden of Gethsemane. It was followed immediately by the Stripping of the Altar during which Pastor Amy sang "Ah Holy Jesus." The full service may be viewed here. The sermon & song alone are below and on YouTube. What if? These past few days, I’ve been swimming in a deep sea of What Ifs? Even though I know it’s wiser to deal with what is; Even though I know that, especially in the face of chaos, loss, and grief, what if’s are almost universally more destructive than they are helpful…. I can’t stop myself.
Because this is The Night to which Lent leads us all, and this is the place where all our time and energy given to fasting and self-reflection, to contemplation and prayer culminates; the place where our story both ends and begins: In the garden with the disciples who have just been washed and fed; and given Jesus’s final and foremost Commandment to love others as He loved them. Here, the disciples will make the choices on which the rest of the dastardly story turns. And we, too, will be asked to decide who we are, whose we are, and what we’ll do when the Ruling Powers come for Christ among us. So I’ve been wondering what they might say now -- these twelve men who spent three years living and serving and ministering with Jesus, and learning how to Be from God Incarnate. What if they could go back, knowing what we know? What would they do?  © Joel Whitehead This sermon was originally preached on Sunday, April 6, 2025 at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Hopkins, MN. The full service may be viewed here. The sermon alone is below. Gospel: Luke 19:1-10 Good morning, Beloved of God. Have you ever met someone who’s appearance, titles, or social status had you thinking they were one kind of person, only to learn they were the precise opposite? Or maybe you’ve been the person others assumed certain things about -- They saw your clothes, or your hairstyle, heard your accent or learned your job title, and their expression changed or they said, “Oh, you work there?” Have you ever heard people whispering about you behind your back, spreading rumors that couldn’t be further from the truth, while you had no way to set the record straight without making everything worse? It’s like when people find out I’m a pastor -- you, the bald lady? With tattoos up her arms and on her chest? Piercings all over her head? A PASTOR? Or this meme of Martha Stewart with Snoop Dogg -- “One of these is a convicted felon.” We all know who those who’ve never heard the backstory will assume is the One, right?
If you’ve ever categorized others or been categorized by them, and judged poorly according to untrue or inaccurate labels, then you’re in good company with the man at the center of today’s gospel. His name is Zacchaeus, which by the way means “Innocent and Pure” -- put that in your pocket -- His name is Zacchaeus and from the jump, Luke wants his readers to know what the crowd knew about him: He was an agent of the Roman state who, having risen in rank to chief tax collector, was living high on the wealth he’d stolen from the poor public.  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.  "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. 
"I Got You" ©Jen Matthews
This sermon was originally preached at on February 9, 2025 (Fifth Sunday after Epiphany) at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Hopkins, MN.
The service may be viewed in full here. The sermon may be viewed below.
LECTIONARY READINGS:
Gospel: Luke 5:1-11 First Reading: Isaiah 6:1-8 Psalm: Psalm 138 Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11.
Good morning, Beloved of God. Because today is all about how and when and to whom the Call of God comes, I want to start with the plain truth, that this week has been one of the longest years of my life. I have been overwhelmed by all that’s happening in the world and in this nation. Paralyzed by the enormity and rapidity of changes being made. I am deeply concerned for the safety and well-being of myself and my disabled family members, for my Black, Indigenous, Asian, and immigrant neighbors, trans and Queer friends and family, and so many colleagues for whom the growing litany of executive orders are indeed threatening to undo them. I am afraid -- afraid of speaking too boldly for fear of causing offense, and also ashamed of my own cowardice to speak Truth in a moment that demands clarity of vision, purpose, and direction for the sake of the most vulnerable. I don’t always know what to say, what to do, or how to do it all in love. And I am just as scared as a lot of you are.
None of this bodes well when you’re trying to write a sermon about the three call stories of the three radical church answers today’s lectionary texts.  "Baptism of Jesus" ©Gheorghe Virtosu (2017) This sermon was originally preached at on January 12, 2025 at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Hopkins, MN. The service may be viewed in full here. The sermon may be viewed below. Baptism of Our Lord Sunday Lectionary readings: Luke 3:15-22, Isaiah 43:1-7, and Acts 8:14-17. If I were to whittle down everything I'm about to say to five words, it would be these: Beloved, Be Loved. Be Love. If you’ve heard me say that before, it’s because these words have been the anchor of my life, my personal mission statement, for years now -- ever since October of 2014, in fact, when a dear friend asked me to write a song from one of her poems reflecting on the fragmentation caused by the years of abuse she suffered as a small child. As I wrote, I grieved -- and the song became a conversation between her truth of what is and my hope that her Beloved self would learn to Be Loved. And as almost always happens when I set about writing a song or a sermon, the words that come are as much if not more for my own hearing than anyone else’s.
So those words-- Beloved: Be Loved -- became the rooting affirmation of my life. And the invitation to Be Love, which so seamlessly follows, became its guiding aspiration.  "Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness" ©2013 Kehinde Wiley | Seattle Art Museum This sermon was originally preached at on December 8, 2024 at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Hopkins, MN. The service may be viewed in full here. The sermon may be viewed below. The Gospel texts for the Second Sunday in Advent are Luke 1:67-79 and Luke 3:1-6. Good morning Gethsemane and welcome to the second week of Advent. Having just closed a year in Mark’s gospel, and coming now to the beginning of a new one, I want to begin by orienting us within the framework of Luke, because each gospel is written a particular way for a particular audience in a particular place. Matthew, we know, was written by and for Christian Jews who’d broken communion with Pharisee-led Judaism; and Mark’s addressed a community of readers within the Roman Empire but beyond Palestine and the reach of Jewish Customs.
In contrast to both of those, the Physician Luke is a highly-cultured, well-traveled Gentile convert, educated in classical Greek philosophy, literature, language, and logic whose general audience are Greco-Roman Gentiles. More specifically, though, according to the opening dedication of his gospel, he writes to and for the Most Excellent Theophilus, a high-ranking man of considerable wealth and status — possibly a governor or other political leader — who’d been financially supporting Luke’s dear friend the Apostle Paul, and who had learned a little about Jesus, but needed some assurances from a trusted source. And having himself investigated everything carefully from start to finish, Luke sets out to provide an orderly account of Jesus’s life and ministry, with a literary elegance and artistry his highborn friend and wider Greco Roman audience would appreciate. It is, in equal measure:
 image: “Zechariah and St. John the Baptist" Medieval Georgian fresco from the Monastery of the Cross, Jerusalem This sermon was originally preached on October 20, 2024 at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Hopkins, MN. You may view the service here. Today's gospel is Mark 10:35-45. I’ve been thinking a lot about stories this week: Stories we tell, stories we believe, stories we know to be true and the ones we wish were true — or may yet become true.
And how, in today’s Gospel, Jesus is telling a story in which the life of the disciples hinges on just a few words. Words that are a doorway into another way of seeing, of being, where the history they’re all currently living through is just prologue to the New Creation they’ll write together. "But it is not so among you." So begins a yet-unwritten post-apocalyptic epic where worlds are resurrected, redeemed, and rebuilt; full of restored relationships and radical reciprocity, of deep reverence for how all life — from the deepest roots in the earth to the wildest winds hovering over distant planets on the cusp of life’s first breath — cooperates in communion in order to create, rather than destroy. We’re still in the prologue, though — the part in which Jesus’s backward teachings about greatness precede his days-away triumphal entry and crucifixion. The part in which power and greatness are measured by the ease and scale of the destruction done. And where the disciples, God help them, still think they have a chance at defeating the empire and transcending its “greatness” on its terms. We know that this story which began with John the Baptist declaring, “Prepare the way for the LORD; Make straight the path before him,” will end with that Lord’s death march, crucifixion, and burial; with a boulder removed from his empty tomb, and a trio of terrified women fleeing from the one who brings word of the impossible: Resurrection. And From a narrative standpoint, Mark’s gospel is the best kind of prologue, because it begs a turn of page. But we’re not there yet, and the disciples aren’t even close to being able to metabolize that fantastical a story.  "Jesus Teaching the Disciples 2" ©Das Plenarium This sermon was originally preached at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Hopkins, MN on September 22, 2024 The livestream of our service may be viewed here (with the excerpted sermon at the end of this entry). Today's Gospel text is Mark 9:30-37 . Good morning, Gethsemane. Before we really begin, I want to share something that’s come to mind multiple times this week as I’ve pondered today’s text, which is simply this: In today’s gospel, what we will see is that while disciples are fighting over who’s the G.O.A.T. … Jesus is inviting them to follow the LAMB.
GROAN. It’s okay to groan. I just really had to get that out of my system. But in all seriousness, because today’s text is so deep and so rich, and so much more than goofy but irresistible one-liners, I’m not going to waste any more time; I’m just gonna take us straight into the Word, because I want to go slowly and move with attention and intention from the shallow end into the heartbeat pulsing at the deep center where I know, we’ll see ourselves -- and also Jesus.
Good morning, Gethsemane! Couple questions: Have you ever had a conversation with someone that was just a disaster of miscommunication? When, because you are speaking two different languages, either literally or metaphorically, the conversation goes all the way off the rails? It happens all the time in big ways and small ways and sometimes on purpose. Like when my son Elijah says “thank you” in German -- Danke -- and I immediately reply Shein because of that old Neil Diamond song.** It drives him bonkers because he’s told me over and over that the appropriate response to Danke is bitte schön. But that is, of course, why I do it: It’s a game we play, and I love it. I think he does too, though he probably wouldn’t admit it.
It happens in hilariously scripted and honest ways, too, when two people think they’re talking about the same thing but clearly aren’t, like in that old Abbott & Costello “Who’s on First” bit. And, of course, it happened a lot while we were in El Salvador, as I tried -- and failed -- to pull enough Spanish from memory to be conversational with our beloved siblings who don’t speak English. Sometimes, I knew just enough for them to get what I was saying, and to laugh as we all acknowledged I know un poquito Español. Other times, everything was lost in translation and we had no choice but to communicate through smiles, laughing, dancing, and that sacred unspeakable language of the soul that connects us when words cannot. But there are other times, still, when the misapprehension seems intentional. I’ve seen it a lot on social media where it’s so easy to hide behind avatars and forget that we’re relating to real humans on the other side of a screen. It’s easier, sometimes, to double down on ridiculous arguments even after we’ve been proven wrong, than to admit our mistake and move on. We try to save face but end up cutting off our own nose to spite it! I suspect that in today’s text -- which is the culmination of Jesus’s Bread of Life discourse in the synagogue at Capernaum -- that intentional misapprehension is at play, and Jesus knows it. 
image: The Bread of Life © 2016 Mike Moyers
Good morning, Gethsemane. You probably don’t know this about me, but as a born-and-bred Denverite, I grew up traveling to Crosslake MN at Christmases or in the summer to visit my grandparents who owned a little motel right on the lake. When family came, the motel was all but shut down to travelers and became instead the Courts Family Rambler Home. It was awesome. Those vacations were my favorite, not just because they were always big family reunions involving all my seven aunts and uncles, their spouses, and all us bazillion grandkids, but because driving into Crosslake and crossing the bridge to their motel on the other side, always felt like coming home.
I haven’t thought about those vacations in a long time, nor even my grandparents really, and never in such depth -- but when I began to wonder about what made Jesus’s bread so special in today’s text, it wasn’t the sourdough sensation of 2020 that sprang to mind and lingered. Nor was it the memory of thinking my mom was sending me to school with cheap wheat bread when all I wanted was other kids’ fancy expensive wonder bread -- I know better now; God bless her. Instead, what swirled into my mind and stayed is the memory of standing in my Grandma kitchen up at that Crosslake motel and jockeying with my cousins for the first slice as she pulled a loaf of fresh, hot bread from the oven -- which would be devoured in literal minutes by us minions at her back. That bread was made of some kind of magic: It was the softest, warmest, spongiest, sweetest bread ever, from all eternity. Not even Garlic Texas Toast -- a true delicacy to my still uncultured taste buds -- could compare to my grandma’s bread smothered in her homemade rhubarb jam.  This sermon was originally preached on July 7, 2024 at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Hopkins, MN. The livestream of our service may be viewed here. Today's scripture text is Mark 6:1-16 Good morning, Beloved of God. As always, it is good to be together today and it’s my hope that you were able to enjoy this week’s holiday with family and friends, on the lake or at home. But I have to admit that, for me, the day was as dispiriting as it was rainy. The truth is, it’s become increasingly difficult in recent years to celebrate the 4th of July when, as James Baldwin said, “you know and I know that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too early.” To be brutally honest here -- and I mean this from the deep love and desperate hope that agitate me daily: Between climate chaos, the rising costs of living, stagnant wages, corporate greed, multiple ongoing genocides, and the impending season of political chaos that looms over everything right now here in the US, I am left with nothing but to confess I find little to celebrate. Instead, I find a deep need to gather, grieve, rage, and together in community IMAGINE SOMETHING MORE SACRED, something beautiful and liberating, that will compost this mess into life-growing gardens.
Because -- and I will recite these words of Maya Angelou’s over and over, like a prayer and invocation, until they sink all the way into the marrow of our bones as Christ’s body in this world -- None of us are free until all of us are free. There are very few all-or-nothing truths I will plant my feet and dig my heels in on, but it is my firmest belief that all us humans, and all that lives, really, are intrinsically, inexorably, and indivisibly connected to God and each other by breath and water, and so we only get free together -- and this, we do, in the fundamentally interdependent community of the Beloved by cultivating in the here and now the upside-down Kin-dom of God that Jesus preached and the Disciples spread, and whose seeds we see planted in today’s Gospel.  image: "Queer Pieta" (Michelangelo x Amy Courts) This sermon was originally preached on June 9, 2024 at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Hopkins, MN. The livestream of our service may be viewed here. Today's scripture text is Philippians 1:3-6, 12-27 . It serves at the first of a four-sermon series through the letter to the Philippians on "Finding Joy in the Ordinary." A preface: This sermon did not come easily. In fact, it didn't really come at all. After literal days of mulling and chewing and writing all the notes and ideas and plans, and spending eight focused hours into the wee hours of Sunday morning when I finally gave up, I still showed up to worship with maybe five of the paragraphs you read below. So I invited the Spirit to move as She willed, to speak as She wished, and this is what came out. For this reason, it's longer by a lot and doesn't read the way my typical sermons might. But it is precisely what was needed, and even garnered applause at the end -- which never happens. Thanks be to God and the Spirit! So good morning! I wasn't kidding when I said that Louis could preach today because it would probably be better than what I came up with in the last 20 minutes. The reality is this week has been a mess, I have been way too in-my-head, trying to find exactly what I needed to say and find -- There's a lot of verses on this page! Where, what am I looking for?! What am I going to find?! That has been the stress, along with like driving to and from other states, so I am here, we are here together, and that is the good, that is the good beautiful, joyful thing that I am clinging to right now, even as I beg the Spirit to come and be with us and breathe through whatever it is that comes out of my mouth. Amen.
So today, we do begin our sermon series through the book of Philippians on Finding Joy in the Ordinary, and I get to start us off by simply acknowledging that joy is often hard to find. Pastor John mentioned a couple weeks ago -- last week? -- we did this Enneagram thing. How many of you know the Ennea- Anybody? There's like three of you and half of you are staff. It's this personality thing that kind of shows you where your passion is, where your focus can be, and kind of what drives you internally. And for me, I am an Enneagram 4: I am the Individualist. I am the Creator. I want everything I say to be perfect and special. And I love sad things! I love feelings, I love big feelings, I love getting really deep -- really deep -- in the yuck and pulling it apart and going, “Where is the life here?” So that's what I get to do today. We'll see if it actually gets done! The reality is that especially within the the Queer community, of which I am part, in the United States we know deep in our bodies and our bones how hard it can be to find joy and to be full of joy in a world that so often hates us and wishes that we would just not be this. Paul knew it too. The people that he spread the gospel to and who took that gospel and spread it further -- they knew this in their bodies and their bones. And so I am going to begin at the end of Paul's teaching here, in verse 27 where he says, “Only live your life in a manner worthy of the Gospel, so that I will know you are standing firm in one Spirit, striving side by side with one mind, for the faith of the gospel." And I start here because this is the instruction, the commendation, that anchors everything else that Paul is going to say to the Philippians in the coming chapters. And it can anchor us as well, as we move into the rest of it, and as we move into our days. 
"Jesus as a Mother Hen" © Maryanne Christiano-Mistretta
This sermon was originally preached on May 12, 2024 (Mother's Day) at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Hopkins, MN. The livestream of our service may be viewed here (with the excerpted sermon at the end of this entry). Today's Gospel text is John 17:6-12 .
“Feminine face of the Holy One, you are known by many names, but all of them mean Mother.”✧ Hold us now in your tender care.
Good morning, Gethsemane, and blessed Mothers Day to all of you here, whether you come in celebration or sadness, closeness or estrangement, grief or joy in relation to your own mother or to motherhood. I know that as often as this day is full of joy and gratitude for the mothers among us, it can also be fraught with much complexity, heartache, and loss. And so I offer that opening invocation from Mirabai Starr, even as I honor all the ways you enter worship on this particular day, and invite you into the comforting warmth of the Great Mother, Birther of All Creation, from whose eternal womb all that is has its being, in whose care all find comfort, and who comes to us this day in the prayer and passion of Jesus the Christ. I offer all this as one in need of it, because, in truth, I am tired, overwhelmed, and depleted of energy by deep grief over the escalating genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank; by my profound joy over my son who just entered teenagehood (God bless me); and by general exhaustion from the busyness of life within a capitalist economy that says our worth is not intrinsic, but depends on how hard we work and for how many hours and dollars we do it -- which puts stay at home moms in an undervalued, unappreciated category, and those of us who work in the center of the particular tension between whatever it means to be a good, unpaid mom, or a paid-but-not-present-enough one. It’s difficult not to feel strained and depleted in an economy that worships and depends on labor for its own sake, and views rest as laziness. |
Archives
January 2026
Categories |
RSS Feed