Proclaim by Word and Example

This sermon was preached for Sunday, February 23, 2025 for the seventh Sunday after Epiphany, and the last Sunday of Black History Month. The texts for this sermon were: Genesis 45:3-11, 15,  1 Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50,  Luke 6:27-38, and  Psalm 37:1-12, 41-42. This sermon draws from the work of Dr. James Cone, Dr. Delores Williams, and Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas.  Growing up in public school in Connecticut in the 90s, it’s funny to me now to look back at how Christianity stuck its way into my secular classrooms. There was Beethoven’s Ode to Joy and the African-American spirituals we sang in music class. There was that terrifying day in September 2001 when our teachers openly prayed with us. And then there was the Golden Rule, hanging up on a poster on my classroom wall, justified perhaps because it is not an exclusively Christian teaching, but has relatives in Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and most other major world religions. “Do unto others as you would have th...

This sermon was preached for the sixth Sunday after Epiphany, Sunday, February 16, 2025. The texts for this sermon were: Jeremiah 17:5-10,  1 Corinthians 15:12-20,  Luke 6:17-26, and  Psalm 1. I’m not ashamed to say that my husband and I checked off all the first-time parent stereotypes quite admirably at my eldest’s first pediatric appointment. We came with a whole long list of anxious questions that all boiled down to - are we doing this wrong? Now our pediatrician was one of those wise practitioners who had seen it all and he had seen my anxious perfectionism coming from a mile away.  Dr. Blumenthal told us something at that first appointment when my son was barely a week old that I still think about a lot - the goal, he said, is not that your child never cries. In fact, if your child never cries you are doing it wrong. The goal is to raise a resilient human adult. Sometimes that’ll mean tears. What, am I supposed to force them down into their carseat? Other ...

  This sermon was preached for the online virtual worship service of St. Andrew's for the fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 9, 2025. The texts for this sermon were: Isaiah 6:1-8,  1 Corinthians 15:1-11,  Luke 5:1-11, and  Psalm 138. In labor with my first child, my son, there came that moment when the midwife looked me in the eyes and said, “This next push will do it.” All of a sudden, the entire weight of the enormity of what I was doing - bringing a new human being into the world - came crashing down on me.  I just kept saying, I’m not ready, I’m not ready, I can’t do this. But I didn’t mean the pushing part, I meant all of it. I wasn’t ready to be someone’s mother. How could I ever have believed I could be someone’s mother. God bless my twin sister, who stepped in at that point, looked me in the eyes and said in her best matter-of-fact emergency room nurse voice, “Mia, this is happening.” She might have said something encouraging, too, like you’...

This sermon was preached for the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord (Candlemas), Sunday, February 2, 2025 at St. Andrew's, Ayer. The texts for this sermon were: Malachi 3:1-4,  Hebrews 2:14-18,  Luke 2:22-40, and  Psalm 84. Sometimes a song will come to me as a background refrain to my days. This week, I found myself singing a particular song to my two-year-old at bedtime; a praise and worship song I learned a decade ago in the Episcopal Service Corps. It’s called Beautiful Things by Michael Gungor. The lyrics are simple enough for my toddler to begin picking up on the words. But what I really love about this song is that it begins with questions. Just as with so many psalms, these questions meet us in our very human wondering and doubt, in our grief and despair.  The songwriter, Michael Gungor, wrote Beautiful Things with his wife, Lisa, in 2011, when he was 30 years old. “All this pain,” the song begins. Looking around at the poverty, violence and desperat...