Sermons

The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany

February 12, 2023

In bringing the Word today, Larry remembered Lisa Null and Merwyn Austin Nunes, asked a number of people to join him in reflecting on Black History Month, and invited the children into a brief show-and-tell. What follows is the automatic transcript from zoom of what was said, lightly edited for clarity

Larry: Thanks for that. So I always start off by saying, if you remember one thing that’s said today I’ve done my job. And I’m going to to start this sermon off just like I did 5 years ago.

I’m going to say, like 5 years ago, root for the Eagles.Yeah.

I’ve got a picture that I wanted to be on the screen, but it couldn’t be on the screen [holds up picture] This is my good friend Elizabeth Noll. She died on July nineteenth. I worked for her for 15 years. This woman and I was taking care of the lawn. It was the perfect job, because she didn’t want the managed look, she would have me. She would buy hundreds of dollars’ worth of bulbs, and I put them deep in the ground in the squirrels and the deer and the rabbits to dig them out and eat them. She didn’t care. She would just buy more, to love nature. She loved life, and so you know, so!

I was sad to see her go. She was a part of the Folklore Society here, you know, and she was a part of the Folk festival. She was Jewish, so she didn’t come to Carroll Cafe that often. But she did come one time, maybe once or twice, but it is their Sabbath, so mostly she wouldn’t do that. I actually asked her husband to come talk to the group today, he’s an orthodox Jew. And so throughout my years, working for them, I knew about the Jewish holidays because she would tell them to me, but I could never repeat them back to her. I didn’t understand the pronunciation, and I’m sorry.

Michelle knew her also, from the Hebrew home. Michele helped take care of this woman for the last 5 or 6 months or she was alive, so I asked Michele say a few words.

The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

February 5, 2023

Good people agree that we should seek peace, justice, and harmony in the world.   But what should we do when our efforts fail?  When carefully planned and executed strategies for change don’t work? When standing up for the right thing makes us a target of those in power?  When rulers and privileged people clearly care about nothing other than staying in power at any cost?  When social change movements falter and fail? 

What does Christian faith say to these questions?

The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

January 29, 2023

Holy One, Holy Wisdom, Holy Spirit, I trust that you guided my heart, head and hands as I wrote this offering, and pray you to be my guide as I offer it to my community. May the words I speak be received in love and curiosity by open minds and hearts, all in your name. Amen

Marjory reminded us a few weeks ago that epiphany means a sudden insight or flash of intuitive understanding, I hope we can always be open to such experiences.

Barry Lopez wrote: “I think when you’re young you want to learn the names of everything… But it’s the syntax that you really are after. Anybody can develop the vocabulary. It’s the relationships that are important.”  Lopez’s quote feels like an invitation to working with the relationships in the Beatitudes, especially in a time that calls us all to be open to epiphanies that enlarge our vision and our part in God’s creation.

The Third Sunday after the Epiphany

January 22, 2023

We were very disappointed that visa problems made it impossible for the young people from Bokamoso to visit us in person as they have done so many times in the past. Instead, Jim Cawley and Connie Sullivan, the Vice President and President of the Bokamoso Foundation, respectively, spoke to us about their own involvement with the program and their perceptions of how things are going. We also showed several videos of the young people singing, dancing, and speaking to us.

The Second Sunday after the Epiphany

January 15, 2023

Last week Marjory Bankson spoke to a well known but unique story in the bible. There was allusion to an astronomical phenomenon ascribed with significant supernatural meaning, and caused three wise men to embark on a journey, under a star that announced the arrival of the world’s savior. I thought of a contemporary parallel. Whereas their pinpoint sign was in the heavens, ours is closer to earth, in equal measure a phenomenon of nature. It shines quite brightly every day and portends a coming, but of a different sort. Its radiance is a bit strong as it warms things up steadily and slowly, like the gospel message spreading wide and far. I will not focus on the many catastrophes of that radiance which awaits our future, but instead on the need awaken to many of nature’s changing landscapes which is less than commodious.

People on earth live in their own reality. It is a social construction of how the world works and will never be complete since reality is subjective and multidimensional. However, there can be focus on an integrated whole, one with the sustainable grounding in the biosphere. Ideally it would be one we can rest true faith in. When we face this particular reality, we can begin to find ourselves not inside a polycrisis, but above it in an enlightened fashion. A true reality allows examination of our selves and its relation to things that sustain long term. It is without the techno contraptions we have put too much reliance and faith in. That reality will make readily evident our Homo Collosus nature of capitalist grooming, where we overshoot resources, land, energy and the biosphere’s carrying capacity, as William Catton describes. To me that radiant warming is a signifier of a call to reflect on our way of life, our assumptions, and the limits of our technologies, if not its nihilistic tendencies. It also is a call to be prepared and resilient, with guarded optimism.