Liturgy: John 14:1-4, 15-21 (September 29, 2024)

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Hymns

Hymn GTG #314, “Longing for Light, We Wait in Darkness”
Hymn GTG #301, “Let Us Build a House”

Hymn GTG #769, “For Everyone Born”

Sermon: "I Don't Belong Here", Isaiah 6:1-8 (June 4, 2023)

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The Narrative Lectionary takes a break over the summer, but it offers suggestions of scripture to take a closer look at, parts of the Bible that are glossed over or skipped entirely during the regular cycle. So, during the month of June, we’ll be looking at Isaiah, a book that’s long been called “the Fifth Gospel” in Christian circles because of the large number of messianic references contained within its pages.

Sermon: “Invited Home”, Christmas in July (July 24, 2022)

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Every Christmas Eve, I preach a brief message that ties our Advent theme together. But with so many people traveling to be with their families in December (especially after two years of extremely limited gatherings), I find that the people who receive my Christmas Eve message are often not the same people who have walked with me throughout Advent. Of course, I write the message with this in mind, but since the gospel we hear at Christmas is always worth repeating, we might as well revisit these words now, seven months later. So let’s listen again and take this opportunity to evaluate how well we’ve lived this Christmas message through the rest of the year so far. As a reminder, our theme for Advent was “Let us Build a House”, and we explored what it takes to build a home worthy of the long-awaited divine king.

Sermon: “Let Us Build a House: Home By Another Way,” 1 Samuel 20:27-28, 30-31, 35-37, 39-42/Matthew 2:1-12 (January 2, 2022)

(This is the seventh and final sermon in our Advent and Christmas series, "Let Us Build a House", based on the Advent theme from A Sanctified Art. The others can be found here, here, here, and here - the third and sixth were given by a guest preacher.)

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Since late November, we’ve been figuring out how to build the home that God calls us to build—God’s kin(g)dom—both for ourselves and for the world. On Christmas Eve, we heard the good news that God has come to dwell with us even though the home we’re building together still isn’t finished. We were challenged to welcome all that Christ is into our hearts (even the parts that make us uncomfortable) because God knows better than we do what it will take to see this project through to completion. We have the blueprints, and the architect has arrived to help us finish construction; the kin(g)dom is imminent. But as we enter a new calendar year with yet another wave of COVID making headlines, national unity still feeling impossibly out of reach, and so many unknowns ahead of us, we may start to wonder if maybe God has changed the plan on us.

Sermon: "Let Us Build a House: Invited Home", Christmas Eve Message (December 24, 2021)

(This is the fifth sermon in our Advent and Christmas series, "Let Us Build a House", based on the Advent theme from A Sanctified Art. The others can be found here, here, and here - the third was given by a guest preacher.)

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December is a month full of invitations. We receive them, of course, but we also extend them. In fact, around Christmas, we sometimes find ourselves inviting people to our home who otherwise wouldn’t “make the cut”. Normally, bringing your work home with you is stressful, but in December, some people find themselves inviting their coworkers to their annual Christmas party. The phenomenon of “Christmas Home Tours” inspires people to open up their homes to hundreds of complete strangers who want to admire their festive decorations. Several colleges have programs where locals can “adopt” a student who isn’t able to travel back to their own home for the holidays. In fact, someone from this very community (who shall remain nameless) admitted to me that his sister used to bring random people home for Christmas when she was in college, which he always hated. But for many people, that’s just what you do at Christmastime.

Sermon: “Let Us Build a House: Seeking Sanctuary”, Exodus 15:1-4, 10-13, 17-21/Luke 1:46-55 (December 19, 2021 -Advent 4)

(This is the fourth sermon in our Advent and Christmas series, "Let Us Build a House", based on the Advent theme from A Sanctified Art. The others can be found here and here - the third was given by a guest preacher.)

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Throughout Advent, we’ve been examining the process of building a house to help us better understand how we should be working towards God’s kindom: the sense of homesickness that inspires us to start building, the importance of a strong foundation that allows us to build something taller and sturdier than we otherwise could, and the understanding that, at least as far as God is concerned, our house needs to have enough room to include everyone. But in all the dreaming and planning and striving we’ve been doing over the past few weeks, there’s one fact about building that we haven’t yet addressed. The truth is, no matter how hard we work to build it, it doesn’t matter how big or tall or wonderful a house is if it isn’t SAFE.

Sermon: “Let Us Build a House: Laying the Foundation”, Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16/Luke 1:57-66 (December 5, 2021)

(This is the second sermon in our Advent and Christmas series, "Let Us Build a House", based on the Advent theme from A Sanctified Art. The first can be found here.)

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More than 400 years ago, Shakespeare put pen to paper and asked, “What’s in a name?” His character, Juliet Capulet, was trying to convince herself that names really don’t matter in the grand scheme of things…but unfortunately, she didn’t actually have much support for her hypothesis. Not only did her family hold a dramatically different opinion on the matter, but pretty much everyone else in the world would disagree with her, too. Across time and cultures, names have always been central to human identity, and we’ve always put great care into choosing them. Even surnames, which had been passed along according to the same archaic customs for centuries, have recently been subject to more careful discernment than ever before. Because, contrary to what Juliet would have us believe, the fact is that our names DO matter.

Sermon: "Let Us Build a House: Homesick", Genesis 12:1-9/Luke 21:25-36 (November 28, 2021--Advent I)

(This is the first sermon in our Advent and Christmas series, "Let Us Build a House", based on the Advent theme from A Sanctified Art.)

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Think about the last time you moved. The searching, the haggling, the financing, the packing, the scheduling, the physical and emotional energy expended, and after all that, the unpacking and updating documents and settling in. All that work is multiplied tenfold if you’re building a house from the ground up. And if you’re moving across the country? Forget about it. No matter the circumstances, I think we can all agree that moving house is a monumental task.

And yet, we still do it. People move from one place to another all the time. These days, it’s rare for anyone to live their entire lives in the same house that they grew up in; in fact, the average USAmerican moves more than 11 times over the course of their life.[1] People move in good times and in hard times—many even moved during the worst parts of the pandemic last year. Even though finding a new place to live can literally be a full-time job, even though fitting everything you own into boxes can feel impossible, even though leaving an old home behind can be painful, moving is still a near-universal human experience.

Sermon: "Expectations Defied: Home", Luke 2:1-5 (December 13, 2020)

(This is the third of five sermons in our Advent series about our expectations around the holiday season. The first and second can be found here and here.)

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“Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays/'Cause no matter how far away you roam/When you pine for the sunshine of a friendly gaze/For the holidays you can't beat home sweet home.” In just a few words, Perry Como is able to embody a seemingly universally human sentiment: home is a place of comfort, joy, and belonging. Home is where you can let your hair down and be yourself. Home is where we should be at Christmas, because home stands for everything that Christmas is.

Sermon: “Making Room in God’s House” (a.k.a., "Invitangelism", "Think Bigger", or "The Parable of the Architect"), Isaiah 49:1, 4-6/Psalm 40:1-4/John 1:35-42 (January 19, 2020)

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A new parable: there once was an architect who needed to design and build a house for her own family. She, her spouse, and their two children had been displaced by a natural disaster a few years back, but the time had come for them to return to their hometown, to rebuild and start again. She was full of hope as she sat down at the drafting table, but as she considered everything that needed to go into this new house—her spouse wanted a large kitchen, her son wanted a bedroom with enough space for all of his toys while her daughter wanted one as far from her brother as possible, not to mention her own need for an at-home office—she began to become discouraged. She felt that after everything they’d been through, she didn’t have the strength to create a new home for her family, one that would meet all of their needs and help them feel safe and secure again. But, they needed somewhere to live, so she did the best she could, and they began construction.

Sermon: "Rock of Ages: Our Commitment", Genesis 28:10-22/1 Kings 5:1-6, 13, 17-18 (April 7, 2019)

(This sermon is the fourth in our Lenten Series, "Rock of Ages", in which we're exploring how rocks can symbolize different characteristics of God and of ourselves.)

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Let’s talk about home. You may have heard the phrase, “Home is where the heart is,” meaning that a person’s sense of home is tied to wherever they feel an emotional attachment. While a lovely sentiment, this can lead to some confusing conversations—just the other day, I was discussing vacation plans with my husband and I said, “So we’ll go home on Tuesday, spend a week with family in Rochester, and then we’ll come back home.” It took a full ten seconds of his confused expression for me to realize what I’d just said. Home, it seems, isn’t necessarily an easy thing to pin down.

Why I Will Never Endorse a Dress Code at Church

Church is a very special place.

I get it, I feel it, I believe it.

It's a place for reverence and focus. A place where we put something else (God) before ourselves. A place that lends itself to a respectful attitude and appearance.

I'm on board with all that.

What I'm not on board with is when we use these assumptions about Church (worship, really) to impose our own desires, aesthetics, and priorities on others.