Sermons
Here in Chicago, on lands previously cared for by the Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, as well as the ancient peoples that preceded them, we are called to ensure that our grain, our young, the people and places and ideas that we care for, are worthy of our repentance. We must ensure they are capable of responding to and healing the harm we leave behind.
“My words will not pass away” This is our zipline folks. This is when we jump off the ledge of the world we know and are carried off, being held by this enduring factor. The word made flesh that lives within us and sustains us through our most apocalyptic moments and stirs within us holy anticipation of what is to come: The kindom of heaven.
We are waiting for many things, some of which will come soon, like Christmas, and others that may or may not ever come. Paul's advice helps us to live fully in the present, grateful for all that God has provided for us. We may discover, in a paradoxical way, that we are waiting for what we already have. And yet we continue to sigh, and to beg, “Come Lord Jesus, come.”
As we work through the dark winter months that will give way to spring let us sing and write our own songs with evergreen hope. Like Sarah Evans and Claudette Colvin who didn’t know their song of resistance would inspire Rosa Parks, we might not who is listening in the audience and is being inspired by our song, but we can comfort trusting that because of our song the world will be ever more excited and enthusiastic for the headliner who is coming after us, the one who is making and will make all things new, the one in whom we live and move and have our being, the one, the only Jesus Christ.
As we begin this Advent, even though it feels like a never-ending Advent, we can look with hope to the promise of God who stops at nothing, not even death, to come and save us. God’s grace has made us ready for that moment. In the meantime, God sustains us, God strengthens us, and God our potter’s hands support us in our waiting.
As we draw near to one another on this darkest bluest night of the year let the name Emmanuel echo deep within your heart reviving your hope that your dreams are not dashed but restored in the presence of Christ who is with us always. This birth, against all odds, is the hope we’ve been waiting for, the one who makes us one, the Emmanuel, God with us, who will be with us always. The darkness has been redeemed, and on this night our collective dreams and restored faith can shine bright like a beacon in the night for all the world to see.
It is into this messy, vulnerable, unfair, mysterious, and scandalous world Christ comes. Emmanuel, God with us. God with us in the shame and doubt. God with us in the questions and ambivalence. God with us in the disappointments and confusion. God with us in a world or a life that is not turning out how we always thought or hoped it would. Through the imperfect story of Joseph and Mary, and their walk of shame, comes our very salvation and healing.
