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About Emily

midwestern belle, Episcopal priest.

Easter Sunday Sermon

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John 20:1-18

Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Amen. 

Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb in the early morning – the other gospels speak of other women coming with her, and of them carrying supplies for Jewish death rituals. She goes to the tomb with expectations based on her experiences in life, formed by her religious beliefs, and rooted in her sense of reality.

She expects to find a cave with a dead body in it, the only earthly remains of her beloved teacher, and I imagine, as millions of women have done for thousands of years, she expected, after an awful weekend, a few quiet moments with her grief. 

That is not what she finds. I wonder if this has happened to you. If your expectations – how ever hopeless they might be – have been upset and disappointed. If you have faced a diagnosis, or gone into a job or even just gotten out of bed in the morning, and the reality that you walked into was nothing at all the way you expected it would be. 

Sometimes our expectations are surpassed – the weather is better than we could have hoped for, and the timings for the party work out like they’re a well-oiled machine. Sometimes our expectations aren’t met, the timings fall short and the presentation drones on, the work is so much harder and less fulfilling than we could have imagined, the house structure has so many more problems and so much more damage than we first estimated. 

And sometimes, our expectations aren’t too small, or too large, but they turn into something that’s not about Goldilocks at all. Our expectations are just on a completely different plane. I believe that’s what’s happened to Mary Magdalene this morning, and I wonder when it might be applicable to us, too. 

Mary Magdalene’s perspective wasn’t just adjusted this first Easter morning, her reality was obliterated and rebuilt. I wonder whether we’re open to having our expectations, our perspective, our very reality, obliterated and rebuilt, too. 

Here in the Gospel of John, we’ve read of the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Back in John 11, Lazarus falls ill, and Jesus hears of it – he’s one of Jesus’ best friends, the Gospel says – and rather than going to him right away, Jesus waits a few days. Then, as y’all know, when Jesus arrives at Bethany, Lazarus has been dead 4 days, which, in Judea as in Houston, is a long and hot time for a dead body to be lying around. Jesus raises Lazarus. Though Lazarus then dies again later, we imagine, of old age, there’s a hint, a sort of expectation introduced, that resurrection is something in the realm of God in Jesus’s reality. 

And yet when Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb this Easter morning, and when she finds the tomb empty, it doesn’t say that she wonders if Jesus has raised himself from the dead, like he did with Lazarus. Even though we see from Lazarus that resurrection is the sort of thing that God would do, her mind goes to grave robbers – which seems sort of strange to me, since Jesus was a poor and his followers weren’t wealthy either – there wasn’t any ransom or money to be gained from robbers taking his body. Surely, though, many more grave robbers were walking around in first century Judea than resurrected bodies, so we can imagine how Mary Magdalene would assume this to be the more likely culprit. 

I wonder how we, like Mary Magdalene, get caught up in the assumptions and expectations from our experiences, our beliefs, the roots of our realities. I wonder what things we allow to form our expectations, to dictate our perspectives. Jesus did this resurrection thing once to his friend Lazarus, but there are hundreds of grave robbers. That makes a lot more sense. 

What beliefs do we carry around? What expectations do we have that blind us to God the Gardener standing in front of us? What perspectives are we so married to that God may need to strike us blind in the midday on a road to Damascus? 

How might we miss the resurrection of the Son of God while we are determined to find a rotting corpse to wrap and sprinkle with spices? 

We find throughout Scripture that as God does the sort of thing that God would do – showing up on a mountain and purifying with water and energizing through fire – humans continue to do the sort of thing that humans do. And I must tell you, brothers and sisters, that what we do is get stuck. We are incredibly gifted at forgetting the miracles and ways of God in Jesus, we are unbelievably talented at misunderstanding and taking offense, we are so adept at considering ourselves the wise ones while everyone else must be adrift. These are the stories of Scripture – of God’s unfailing love in the face of our unfailing stumbling. And I don’t think we’ve improved much in the ensuing 2,000 years, whatever the Enlightenment says.

So when Jesus does appear and Mary doesn’t recognize him, she’s acting no different than any of us might. Hanging on to our assumptions, our expectations, that this strange man who has shown up at dawn at her teacher’s tomb has surely taken away the beloved body, the only earthly remains of this leader and friend, and she begs him to give back the broken bits of her beloved that she could cling to them for just a moment longer. That for one more hour, it could be some kind of familiar normal again, despite the death, despite the dark, despite the danger.

And what does Jesus say to her? He calls her by name. He brings to fruition the prophecy he gave of himself earlier in John when he said, “The sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out… I am the Good Shepherd.” Jesus calls her name and she immediately recognizes him. Finally, she can have the moment she has been expecting since she awoke in the dark this morning. She can cling to his body, still bruised, but no longer dead. 

Maybe her expectations were a little off, but we’re back on track now. It can be as if the last days were just a bad dream. Maybe we can even get back to the traveling and the preaching and the healing ministries, and just follow our Lord, the Rabbouni, like we did before. It is a wonderful Easter morning, indeed. 

But what does Jesus say to her now? “Do not hold on to me, Mary.” This is not like Lazarus’s resurrection when he is restored to you and life goes back to normal. This resurrection is the central event of all time, this event which you are the first to see and touch is the fulcrum of reality. This morning, Mary, is the embodiment of the truth of the universe. 

We cannot cling to the bruised bits of the past, or the crumbling structures that have come before. We cannot continue in the path of normalcy or expectations or assumptions that have led us to this point. Everything has changed because this God made known in Jesus Christ has by his resurrection to eternal life restored the path of the universe and the course of history and the direction of all creation. 

We come to church each Sunday as a little Easter, because we are people who get so stuck in our expectations and are so formed by the experiences around us and so bogged down by the assumptions that pummel us day in and day out. We need to be reminded this day and every day, and not just Sundays, that God in Jesus through his resurrection obliterated our expectations of what broken relationships mean and how addiction clings and who controls our future and in what we may trust. 

What freedom might you practice if God could really heal your wounds and your relationships? What might you say, and what might you keep quiet about, if God in Jesus breathed life into dead bones? How might you spend your time if God really holds power over death? What if sin were really defeated? 

Here’s the Good News, Brothers and Sisters. It is. Christ is risen. Amen. 

Let Me See Again

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preached at St Francis Episcopal Church, Houston, Texas, 27 October 2024

Jeremiah 31:7-9
Psalm 126
Hebrews 7:23-28
Mark 10:46-52

If God asked you, “what do you want me to do for you?” what would you say? 

I’m struck by what seems to be the immediacy of the blind man’s response – “let me see again.” he says. No waffling around, no mumbling or equivocating, not even an “if you please,” or a “could you possibly.” This man knows exactly what he wants and he isn’t afraid to ask for it. 

Indeed, we see earlier in the passage that when he hears Jesus of Nazareth is walking by, he starts shouting – he’s asking boldly, he’s got no pride, he’s not ashamed of putting himself out there or even begging. When people say, “hey, have some dignity, man,” he just shouts all the louder! 

I wonder what I’d shout about. I don’t have a major disability, I have a home and family and work. Maybe I don’t really need anything from God. I don’t want to burden him, and I’m doing okay on my own. I don’t need to use up his resources, his prayer-bandwidth or whatever. 

But don’t we all need God? For some of us, our physical maladies grate at us like an ill-fitting shoe, or maybe they feel like a millstone around our necks that we carry everywhere. For others of us, our family situation or close relationships strain at us every moment of the day, sapping our energy, feeling like we are walking through a swamp with every step. For still others, we have plenty of energy but our professional lives or other circumstances stoke a fire of frustration that causes us to kick against those goads and spend our energy fighting the thing that exists to keep us in line. 

Is there something in your life that is taking up all your headspace? What is the thing you think about the most? What would it look like to be relieved of that? 

I am struck that what the blind man asks for is something we could all ask for, really: let me see again. What might be blocking your vision? What thing will we not look at that’s actually making us sick? 

This reminds me of another healing story, one from the Old Testament. Way back in Exodus, the people of Israel are wandering around in the desert, and they end up – you guessed it– grumbling, and they are bit by a bunch of snakes for their sins. So now they’re all hobbling around camp, dying of snake bites, and they’re repentant and beg Moses for an antidote to the bites. God tells Moses to put a bronze snake up on a pole in the middle of the camp and that the people need to look at that snake, and then they’ll live. Let me see again. What might we be healed of if we could only see it? What are we suffering under right now that we can’t even see? Or what are we suffering under that we maybe don’t want to see? Is there something we’re refusing to look at, a possibility we don’t want to consider? And here’s the scary thing, friends, what if looking at it, the thing that is killing us, is the way to be healed of it? 

What a bold thing to ask: “let me see again.” Would you dare to pray it? Do you dare to see, again? To see the things you’re missing, or the things you’ve pushed away? Gosh that doesn’t sound good to me. I’m almost preferring blindness now. Do I want to walk through what might be required of me if I can see? 

This past week, I taught the Parable of the Prodigal Son to my 6th graders, and I have to tell you, the 11 year olds really identified with the older son. They resonated deeply with the dutiful one who didn’t get enough accolades. We talked, too, about the way the parable taught us about family, and I tried to lead them to imagine what varying consequences emotional versus physical distance might have in a family – if the younger son went off physically and was blind while he spent all the money, but then his eyes were opened and he came back physically and also had emotional closeness with his father. But what about the older son, I asked them. He had the physical proximity, but did he seem emotionally close? Did it seem he and his father loved one another well? Was the older son blind? Did he want to see? 

The psalm tells us, “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream,” and the psalmist begs, “Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses of the Negev.” As the younger son had his fortunes restored to him when he regained his sight, Scripture promises that we will, too. 

The sticking point is, of course, that the younger son was literally sitting in a pig sty when his eyes were opened. The bump in the straight path to healing is that the Israelites had to look an image of their would-be-assassin in the eye. One might even say that the older son had to swallow his pride and stop keeping score to gain his family back. “Let me see again.” 

But here’s the good news, brothers and sisters. Whatever the pain and difficulty, whatever the destruction or weight you carry, the psalm also tells us that “those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy,” and “those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.” 

Just like the cross, our pain is not, is never, the end of the story. When we can see again, we can face the truth of our situations, and find that God is in the middle of it already. God has already been calling to us, God has already asked, “What do you want me to do for you?” And we might even be inspired, then, to follow him on the way. 

Good News, Bad News, Good News

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Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Easter; Episcopal Church of the Ascension, Lafayette, Louisiana

Imagine with me for a moment what we might experience in the eschaton. 

It’s a big word, a theology-nerd kind of word, but brothers and sisters, it is also the orientation of our whole lives as Christians, and so eschaton is a word we ought to know and even a word we would do well to dwell on. Eschaton is a greek word that means “end.” It speaks of the last things, the ultimate things of God, the life together forever beyond here and now. That time when all things will be set right and every tear will be dried and peace will reign everywhere. 

That’s the eschaton. That’s heaven. What do you imagine it will be like? Who will you see there? What do you desire to do first? Try on the new crown made for your eternity? Bow down and kiss Jesus’ feet? Lay eyes again on your loved ones? Hug the necks of the people you admired in life but perhaps never even got to meet? There’s a story of a girl who asked a famous theologian if her dog would be present in heaven. He answered that if she needed that dog there in order for it to be heaven, then the dog would be just where she needed it. 

So, friends, I have good news, and bad news, and then some more good news. Are you ready? 

The good news is that for God, time isn’t linear, that even though for us, we experience one moment and then the next, and then the one after that, just one at time marching on till we die, God’s experience of time is bigger, more layered, to us – all mixed up. So even here and now, we humans, because of God dwelling in us, get moments and tastes of the eschaton, of eternity, of heaven. Perhaps you’ve had one or two. I remember the Sunday after my grandpa died; I had been there at his bedside and given him last rites an hour before he passed. He was surrounded by his four kids and his wife when he died on a snowy Monday morning in Minnesota. And six days later I was standing at the marble altar and as I led the congregation in the Lord’s Prayer right before communion, I heard my grandpa’s voice. I heard his familiar tones along with all the other voices, praying those sacred words. For a second it felt like I was among all the saints, standing in front of the throne of God, all of us worshiping and praying together. It was a time-outside-of-time moment. So the good news, brothers and sisters, is that though we find time to be a plodding march of present moments, sometimes eternity breaks in for a glorious span and reminds us that we made for more than common chronology. Heaven breaks in here and now, too. We are so privileged as humans, as temples of the living God, to experience such moments. 

So here’s the bad news. 

Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel lesson that he is shepherd of other sheep too. Sheep that “do not belong to this fold.” Jesus tells us that all the sheep of all his folds will be brought together at the eschaton, “I must bring them also,” he says. Everybody will be together for eternity in the great sheepfold in the sky. 

But I wonder if we’ll like those people. I sort of worry about the kind of people Jesus will let in to heaven. Will they, like sheep, be stinky? Will they, like sheep, be noisy? Will they, like real sheep, be a little thick in the head and exasperating? 

I can feel my body tensing up just saying these words! What will it mean, brothers and sisters, if Jesus is the shepherd of people who I think are not behaving well, or who have the wrong idea about what it means to follow the Good Shepherd, or who just don’t respect him the way he ought to be revered? 

The bad news is that we don’t get to choose. We don’t get to say who gets into heaven and who Jesus the Good Shepherd welcomes. We don’t even get to say here and now who God wants to be near to his presence. I suspect that there are people in this room today who don’t behave to believe the way we think they should, and even more there are people who God loves who aren’t here, but will be in the eschaton. But that all leads me to more good news. And that’s where we want to end up today. 

The good news is that we can start living with and loving those other sheep even now. We can get a leg up on heaven and have even more of those delicious moments I described at the beginning of the sermon when we seek out sheep of other folds, especially those that rub us the wrong way. 

The year between undergrad and divinity school, when I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church, I led morning prayer once a week at a tiny little parish in Durham, North Carolina. Part of the requirement for the confirmation class was to serve the poor every week, too, and you know how I love efficiency, so I’d lead prayer on Wednesday mornings, and then stay after for the homeless breakfast they served every day of the week. The uncomfortable thing about the breakfast was that we were all expected to cook together, and then to sit down and eat together too. We had to sit next to the stinky, often mentally-ill, most likely male, people-whose-skin-tone-didn’t-match-mine. It was a different fold all together than my Duke University office with a window overlooking the iconic chapel. 

But let me tell you what happened to my heart that year. There was a man named Keith who I first met as a freshman in college. He begged at the highway exit to campus, and I always dutifully locked my doors as I came to the stoplight. I avoided eye contact. His sign said, “Hi, I’m Keith. I’m homeless. Please help.” 

Four years later, I sat across from Keith while we both ate plates of grits and hard-boiled eggs. I looked him in the eye. I passed the salt. We ate together and prayed together. I met Jesus again through Keith and through Slim and through Ethan, with whom I did the dishes. Jesus promises to be found among those who are hungry and thirsty and in prison. He has other sheep not of this fold. 

I’m sure Honey would be thrilled for an uptick in hands for outreach ministry, and perhaps that’s the call that Jesus has laid on your heart this morning. But I have another challenge, too. What about the person who dares to show up even here, under this roof with you, but that you complain about? What about the people in your life who are exasperating, who don’t behave the way you think they ought to, who might even be noisy when you think they ought to be silent? I wonder if God in Jesus Christ draws near to those people, and whether he might be calling you to graciously, lovingly, bearing-with-one-another-ly draw near to them, love them for who they are right now, too. Amen. 

Good Friday

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You notice, don’t you, the anniversaries of important events? Not just weddings and birthdays, but funerals, anniversaries of difficult diagnoses, the dates when tragedy struck or an accident happened. Our bodies remember, too. 

And so I find it’s not a surprise that Holy Week and especially Good Friday, feels heavy the world over. There’s a cosmic echo we just can’t shake, this ultimate tension that is imprinted on our internal calendars, on the time keeping of the whole world; we know in a deep part of us that something happened, something big, on this day. 

Today we remember and re-enact the pivotal moment of time. Two thousand years ago, today was an experiment. What would happen if evil killed God? What would happen if God didn’t use his God-power and just stayed, just died, along with us?

The love of God incarnate had never been tested this way. What would happen to the fabric of the universe? Would God’s love win? What would that winning look like? 

It didn’t look the way the disciples assumed, with swords and uprising and political revolution. It didn’t look like the Pharisees expected either, with peaceable conformity and cultural-convention-concerned movements. I wonder if it is the way that we suppose it is, either. I wonder whether the hints of resurrection in our own lives, whether the victory of God in our  midst, is in a form that we recognize and celebrate and follow. 

I’ll be honest, brothers and sisters. The odds aren’t in our favor. More often than not in Scripture, the people have it all backwards. More often than not in Scripture, the disciples get it all absolutely wrong. More often than not in Scripture, the prophets are murderd and the world turns away from the truth and the principalities and powers and contemporary victories are on the side opposite God. 

Indeed, in the end, on this day, Good Friday, the disciples abandon Jesus. Peter denies Jesus three times. At Golgotha, there were the women, and according to John’s account, himself as well. All like sheep had gone astray, each one to his own way, and he bore on himself the iniquity of them all. 

How could it be that winning, that victory, could look like death on a cross? This is not at all how it ought to have been. Power is security and luxury and leisure. These are the rewards for work well-done. That’s the lesson that the Pharisees took from the Old Testament, surely. But that’s not the message that Jesus bears. 

Jesus’ method is the same as his message, and the God revealed in Jesus Christ came to be with us. For thirty years, for 90% of his life, he spent his time just being. Growing up with friends and loved ones in Nazareth. Learning the family trade from Joseph his father. Going to synagogue and growing in wisdom and serving his community. He spent 9% of his life, those three years of itinerant preaching, teaching and healing – some call it his active ministry, but I wonder whether perhaps the whole of his life is an active ministry. And when he was in Jerusalem, when he was on the cross, he did the bit that only God could do, no human could endure the cross for our sake, but him. He stretched wide his arms upon the cross that everyone might come within the reach of his saving embrace. 

We see God’s love in this: no matter the cost, God in Jesus Christ stayed with us. Even when death came to pierce his hands and feet, Jesus would not abandon humanity. Even when he was ridiculed and striped and given the death of a criminal, Jesus did not call upon the powers at his disposal to save himself – because to do so would be to abandon his humanity, to pull the God card and not stay with us as his creation to the very end. 

On that Friday afternoon two thousand years ago, the world ended and we feel its echo, its grief, even today. Everyone wondered then: is this what winning looks like? Perhaps we still wonder today – is this all there is, is this what winning looks like? Our bits of grief rub up against this most grievous day, our pain at brokenness, illness, injustice, loneliness in our lives, is irritated and cracked open at Jesus’s sacrifice this day. Grief touches grief, and there is no day in the history of the world more full of grief than this one. The fears and sadness and wrongness of all the world is held by Jesus’ arms today. 

And back then, on that hill outside Jerusalem, even those who believed that somehow God would make good of this tragedy could not imagine how to come out the other side of this darkness. 

And maybe that’s you today. Maybe you wonder how you will come out the other side of this darkness. Maybe the way ahead is just pitch and obstacles and grief too deep for words. Here is the good news for you: God has been there, too. God is there with you now. God will lead you through this darkness and  oblivion because he has trod this path before and it does not scare him. He has overcome death and brought life, and he will do the same for you in whatever temporal battle you are facing today, and at the end of your own life, and at the end of the life of the world. 

God’s Voice

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Scripture Readings (1 Samuel 3, John 1:43-51) Epiphany 2, Year A

“You will see greater things than these.” Jesus tells his new disciples Nathanael in our Gospel reading this morning. Nathanael, truth be told, wasn’t expecting to see anything great at all, not least something great from somebody with as dubious an origin as Nazareth. His expectations are low. He doesn’t think he can be surprised by the quality of offering from this Jesus character. It sounds as if Nathanael was not expecting to hear from God. 

And it’s the same in our Old Testament lesson, “The Word of the Lord was rare in those days. Visions were not widespread.” I wonder, do we live in a time in which the Word of the Lord is rare? Do we expect to hear from God?

I wonder if we get confused or mishear God, too. The great prophet Samuel, who ushered in King David –  a man after God’s own heart! – didn’t recognize God’s voice when he called. Samuel’s mentor, the priest Eli, didn’t recognize God’s voice at first, either. They assumed it was just a bump in the night, less than something to be ignored, they assumed it was totally imagined, nothing at all. 

I wonder if we dismiss God’s voice. I wonder if we attribute the stirring of the Holy Spirit to be less than a bump or a coincidence, I wonder if we dismiss the call of God as indigestion or as totally imagined, nothing at all. 

What are we missing out on if we are dismissing God’s voice?

What are we suffering needlessly, because God has given us a way out but we are too focused on our expectations in order to listen to him? 

What difficulty might we avoid, what joy and peace might we have access to, what confidence and strength might we enjoy, if we were attuned to the voice of God?

In our Gospel reading, Nathanael does not immediately recognize God’s voice, either. When Jesus starts to reveal intimate details, Nathanael relents and realizes there might be more going on with this Jesus, that there might indeed be something good to come out of Nazareth. 

Even later in Samuel’s story, when he goes to anoint the future king David, David’s father Jesse thinks that God’s calling of David is so unlikely he doesn’t present this 8th son to Samuel. Can anything good come out of Bethlehem? Can anything good come out of Nazareth? What could God be about, calling people from these places, calling these types of people? Is that even God’s voice? Is this voice to be trusted? 

How do we know if a voice is God’s? How can we understand the call of God and follow it? How can we trust? 

One of the things that strikes me in the readings today is that all these people who are hearing from God involve other people in the call. Nobody is hearing God’s voice off by themselves and then acting on it alone. Samuel brings in his mentor, his priest, his father-figure Eli, to ask what to do and what’s going on.

 Is there someone in your life who you look up to, who you have experienced as wise? Maybe they’re somebody to sit with in learning and discerning God’s voice in your life. 

Both of these stories, too, show a sort of testing of spirits in different ways; God calls Samuel several times before he responds, and I wonder if you’ve experienced that, too. How God will put the same opportunity in your path a few times until you accept it. In the Gospel lesson, Nathanael hears about Jesus from Philip, he receives Philip’s testimony, but then he doubts, he famously wonders, “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” 

It’s okay to question, to wonder, to doubt. God can handle our uncertainty. God is big enough to receive our questioning, God loves us enough to hold space for our wondering. The important thing in doubt and questioning, though, is sincere inquiry – I sometimes see “doubt” as a shield people use to avoid tough questions or examining their own assumptions. God is big enough to hold our doubts, but it’s disingenuous to just leave him carrying all our baggage. 

God longs for relationship, longs so much to be near to us that he came to be a human in order to be as close to us as possible, to enter our experience, to understand us and love us well, so how might we respond well to that kind of gesture, that sort of call? 

In each of these narratives, we see a sense of community discernment, we see an airing of doubt, and then finally, we see a resolution, a surrender and submission, an openness and an attitude of humble listening on the part of the person called. 

So whether you have a call on your heart today, whether you wonder if you’re hearing strange voices or you believe you have a Word from the Lord, or perhaps you’re straining to hear anything at all, what we can surely all do to prepare us for God’s voice is to adopt open ears and hands and hearts, ready to listen and to humbly receive. 

When I was 16, I went to a summer camp for theology nerds. I’d always been the most zealous for church of my parents’ children, I served on the worship team and in the children’s Sunday School. I loved to read books far beyond my depth when it came to matters of faith and philosophy (I infamously brought Aristotle on a spring break trip to Florida). When I came home from this summer camp, a very small voice suggested I be a pastor. It was a strange voice and a weird thing to say, and those around me dismissed the epiphany, just like Eli when Samuel came to him at first. 

So I wanted to be a religion professor, and that felt much more acceptable to me and to those around me – I wouldn’t actually be traversing that ground of being a woman in a world that had been ruled by men for millenia – though of course academia isn’t that much better! Near the end of my time in college, that voice came again. It reminded me how much joy I’d felt when mentoring young women in my sorority, and how it was the relationships and interactions that fueled me more than reading and regurgitating books. 

I still wasn’t sure about this voice, and thought maybe it meant I should be a college chaplain. That didn’t sound nearly so scary as being some kind of parish priest. But brothers and sisters, I remember the night I laid in my bed, much like Samuel, and the thought was placed in my head, “You will be a priest.” A few weeks after that, a dear mentor of mine wondered aloud to me whether my call was to blow hot air about women in ministry – which was my desired academic focus – or to just go be one. 

God’s call will keep coming, in different times and places and tones and harmonies, until each of us responds. This is true in our individual lives as well as our call as a worshiping community, and as a city, a nation, and a world. 

Openness, brothers and sisters. Being open to God’s voice sounding or looking different than we expected. Allowing our community to help form and inform us about how God is showing up. Allowing ourselves to be challenged and to re-examine our conceptions, which is itself humility. 

So this morning I leave you with the challenge and charge, especially as we celebrate this season of Epiphany, of revelations and of the flooding in of light to our lives: may we be open to the Holy Spirit’s call, may we be open-handed in our response, may God give us courage to humbly submit to his gracious will. 

Amen.