Episcopal Ramblings from North Idaho

Do Not Despair! Change IS Possible -- even for our nation

This sermon came forth in the wake of the public murder of Charlie Kirk in Utah and the murder of Matthew Silverstone and another teenager at Evergreen High School in Colorado. Yet another week in what has become our America.

It has been a couple years since I placed sermons on this podcast. We have relied on our worship videos to provide the path to hear sermons. But it is time again to make sure God's call to peace, reconciliation, respect, and lovingkindness rings out clearly above the fray and the ugly calls for retaliation and more violence.

So, some key points from this sermon are below. Listen fully.

America's rage addiction is bigger than its porn addiction. So, we have more dead. More blood. And ongoing easy ways to kill. All of this in a hothouse of increasing angry and scornful political rhetoric that we are taking into our own speech and thoughts about the supposed enemy that we now regard as subhuman, and so we hear the threatening calls for civil war. This is what we are becoming now, what we are making ourselves into... 

Do not despair. Change is possible. Turning is possible. Conversion is possible. The lost can be found and brought home. The persecutor and the violent can be redeemed and become beacons of light. The persecuted and the victimized can be strengthened and find new life again, and let light break through...

Love isn’t just all restful sweetness. Love is irritating. It takes so much energy. It takes so much laying aside my own judgements of worthwhileness. It takes so much willful choice to step out in care even with the possibility or likelihood of being taken advantage of or mocked or taken for granted or suspected... Love is like that. It is irritating. It leaves ninety-nine sheep to go and retrieve one lost and wandering sheep. It runs ready to embrace the wayward son who has squandered have the wealth, much to the annoyance of the begrudgingly loyal son. It is annoying in its vivid attentiveness, its readiness to know and learn and embrace, its willingness to share in experience, its utmost patience, its embarrassing loud cry to “Rejoice with me.”

"This is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners" (I Tim. 1:15). So, we seek the Shepherd who seeks us. We turn again home. And we seek others who are lost. And then, at every spark of light dawning, we shout, “Rejoice with me!”

 

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28              Psalm 14           1 Timothy 1:12-17          Luke 15:1-10

Jesus Makes a Declaration

Jesus makes a bold declaration that names his purpose and calling. It arises from his being claimed by God as beloved. What is your declaration, arising from God's love and all that has shaped you? Hear us as St. Luke's rises to say what is our declaration.

Advent 2: Deep-Rooted Peace

God's gift of Peace arises doesn't come as an escape route out of the world. True Peace comes when, with God's help, we take root and live fully in this world as it is, embracing it as we receive Christ's presence. Christ is with us as light in the midst of darkness, deep inner rootedness and firm calmness in the midst of storm and strife, stillness in the midst of uncertainty. 

Advent 1: The Light of Hope

Whether a brief matchlight, a steady torch, or a bright beacon, God's gift of Hope helps us see where we are, where we have come, and where we are going. Raise your heads! Lift up your hearts! Sing and shout of the God of life!

Reform or Unity? How about Love as the Most Important Thing?

Called to Act in Difficult Times

Friends, I have seen posts and emails, I have heard voices, speaking of people's growing anxiety, fear, frustration, and dismay at the stubborn resistance and threatening behavior that has taken hold in this region by those who oppose vaccination and masking as the best possible protective measures we have, all in the name of a notion of freedom that is only reactionary opposition – its own form of slavery.

Hear what Mordecai says to Queen Esther, as recorded in scripture: “Perhaps you came to this position for just such a time as this.”

Queen Esther must have heard this and recognized its truth and weight. Perhaps I am here for just such a time as this. But hearing and accepting this as true doesn’t solve the problem of what to do next. Mordecai helps Esther see her responsibility and the importance of what she can do for her people in this moment. But knowing THAT I should do something and have responsibility for just such a time as this doesn’t tell me HOW I should address the weighty issues and problems of “such a time as this.”

How shall we take up the call of God upon us in this moment, for just such a time as this?

Come and listen. 

Readings: 

Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
Psalm 124
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50

Healing the Chronic Sins of Favoritism, Privilege, and Prejudice

The Power of God's Dwelling -- Which Is YOU!

Power to Mourn, Power to Give Ourselves Away

This sermon is a continuation of a series on power.

In a world of usurpers, where power is seized and control is taken, where everything can become a contest for “winner take all” – God’s power breaks into the world through loving our enemies, through forgiving.

In a world where alliances are valued so highly, that being “right” and being on “the right side” takes over people’s minds and divides the world into “us and them” – God brings the wall-breaking power of raw self-offering as we find in Jesus.

2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33       Ephesians 4:25-5:2       John 6:35, 41-51

The Power of Speaking Truth and Giving Oneself in Love

In a world of abusive and manipulative power, the Holy Spirit brings us the power to speak truth in love and to give ourselves away in love. Do we have the courage and rootedness in God's love to do this?