Sermons

Jubilee

November 20, 2022

[The following is a transcript of Larry’s sermon]

Good morning. After Cynthia’s sermon a couple of weeks ago, I decided that I would pick my own memorial service picture. Not that I’m planning to be going anytime soon, but I want to pick my own picture. If Erica could put that up for everyone. [photo of Larry with his arms around two little children on screen]

Oh, that’s me! Me and my 2 little darlings! And so the little boy on the left. His name is Everett. I was actually just a dog walker for some younger parents. And so Everett was born. I remember Mark took him to the Potomac speaker meeting one day, in Bowie. He was 11 days old. Mark had to go to bathroom. He said, “you want to hold him?” and I hesitated. But I did take the little guy in my hand. I meant he was 11 days old. So he’ll be 10 this week. He called me Uncle Larry for a long, long, long time, until one day he started going to school—and I would never forget the hurt—well, he just called me Larry. Yeah. So he’s figured it out. If someone has told him something you know. He knows that I’m not his uncle.

And then Amelia came along. Amelia’s 7 now, but she was like 3 or 4 then. And since we saw some of Sandra’s art, I want to show you some of Amelia’s art. [holds up abstract collage].

Jubilee

November 13, 2022

O God, may you touch my mind, heart, and mouth, that the words I utter are the words you have put there for me to speak, and may you and those present hear well what I offer freely. 

May it be so.

Both prayer and service to others reveal to us the tremendous truth that to be a person is to be a gift, and to give that gift is to receive the gift of being a person.”

-James Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, p. 98 (Inward/Outward)

I’m not sure that this is where I want to start, but I was, and still am, at such a loss as to how to proceed. What I do know is that I strive to be both gift to others, and a grateful gift recipient, and trust all of you to bear with me knowing I am flawed in my striving.

I was going to forego any biblical reference in this sermon as I was blinded by my fierce emotions around the subject matter of incarceration. I couldn’t see that there was a glimmer in our readings that should in fact be sited. Yet I read to you a small portion from Isaiah 65:17-19:

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.

Jubilee

November 6, 2022

Good Morning.  It is All Saints’ Day, and I am here on behalf of the Living Water Mission Group to honor those people from within our congregation and fellowship who have died this year, and to let you all mention other saints in your lives for us to remember, and thus keep alive in our hearts and minds.

I am not going to try to work in our lectionary reading.  It is one of those I could contort around to fit my own deep value of marriage as a way to really try to know another person deeply and thus love another as myself—but today I will skip to the last lines that God is the God not of the dead, but of the living, for to God all of us are alive. 

Jubilee

October 30, 2022

Note: Lucy Slater’s prayer for Peace and Justice follows Erica’s sermon text.

Over the last year and a half I have seen how speaking a truth can give it a life of its own. A word becomes flesh, if you will. And so I hold that power with care and hope as I stand here this morning.

Eighteen months ago, in April of 2021, I scrapped a sermon I had been working on for three months and instead preached about Derek Chauvin’s conviction for the murder of George Floyd and the need to do something about the epidemic of police violence against people of color in this country. I didn’t know what that something was, and so I stood here and asked for help. Shortly thereafter, Sallie Holmes, Lucy Slater, Amy Moffatt and I, AKA “the SEAL team”- preached together to ask this community what we ought to be doing to dismantle white supremacy.

Now, a year and a half later, what began as my desperate cry for help will officially be recognized and blessed as the Racial and Ethnic Justice Ministry Team following this sermon. The words that we spoke that Sunday have become: another 65 (plus or minus a few) weekly vigils, nearly 600 letters written for the Vote Forward campaign, a new statement on our website sharing our commitment to dismantling white supremacy, a tour educating us on the history of racism in this city, and maybe most importantly, a few hard conversations and opportunities to look inwards at our own shortcomings, misunderstandings, and blindspots. We hope this is just the beginning.

Jubilee

October 23, 2022

The seeds for this sermon were planted in 2019, shortly after I became a covenant member of Bread of Life Church, a sister church in tradition of Church of the Saviour. At the time, another member of the church was sounding a call to a new mission group there. The vision of this group was to welcome and accompany people coming home from incarceration; specifically at a residential facility that was slated to start construction in Adams Morgan neighborhood in early 2020.  But Covid became pandemic in March 2020; and D.C., fearing that tax revenues would plummet, cancelled funding for all projects like ours. 

As a way to stay with the mission while sheltering from Covid, I thought to write men who were in prison. I contacted the Interfaith Action for Human Rights, who I knew set people up with pen pals and provided initial training.  I  began writing Jason 2.5 years ago, when he was in a maximum security federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, in his 20^th year of a 72 year prison term, a ridiculously long sentence handed down under a distortion of the provisions of the punitive excesses of the 1990s so-called War on Drugs. I continue to write him as he’s moved down to a medium security prison in Tucson, Arizona.