Sermons from the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer

"How we are saved in the midst of this is going to look different for different people. For some people they are staying home and they needed this time to rest in a way they've never had before; being forced to slow down, being forced to not make their work or their busyness their god and that is important. But for other people, they're being deprived of work, they're being deprived of an income and some people don't even have a home to go to. So how salvation looks for each one of us is going to be different."

"Prayers are not a substitute for action or cover for a lack thereof. They are transformative. They are transformative for the one who prays and the ones for whom prayers are said. They bring us more consciously into experiencing the presence and the love of God. Prayer helps us clarify, center our thoughts, our fears, our longings. Prayer allows us to offer comfort and support to those feeling in great need. Prayer is when we turn our attention to God, and we acknowledge and are most open to that exchange of love. Love between God and ourselves and those we love."

"Psalm 23 is exactly what we need to hear in the most difficult times. Jesus the Good Shepherd will lead us. He will lead us like he led the blind man to healing and restoration. And he will come and find us, just like he went and found that blind man. He will come and find us, even when we can't find him. When we don't know where he's gone and when we don't know how to thank him for all the good things that he's done in our lives."

"The Israelites want to believe in God's presence. They want to believe that they are being cared for. But when they look around, they're filled with fear.

What will deliverance look like for us during this pandemic? I'm not the kind of Christian who believes if you just pray hard enough, a vaccine will just appear. Or that people will all of a sudden be safe. [...] What's fascinating right now is our job as people of faith is to interrupt our own lives, to make real sacrifices in the way that we are living, so that we can participate with our government workers, our healthcare workers, and with our community so that as many people can be cared for as possible in way that's practical. Our job is to reach out to each other in ways we haven't before. We are literally loving each other by staying away from each other."

Jesus' response to this [question from Nicodemus] is that this isn't just a tweak. This is new life, new birth, a new perspective. You do not earn the presence of God. You do not achieve the reconciliation of the world. You cannot get your act together enough to be saved. God shows up. God is in this world, present and active, moving and loving, bringing justice. Will you see it?

To receive we need to be willing to be vulnerable. We need to be willing to be open to what somebody else might bring us. To be open to that aspect of understanding of God's love that maybe we can't quite see for ourselves, but maybe we can begin to see through somebody else's eyes. Through somebody else's worlds, through somebody else's experience. We are called not only to go forth, but we are called to be receivers. We are called to be receivers of God's love.

Wilderness can sound kind of scary, like maybe a place we don't want to go. Maybe a place that's terrifying. And yet, wilderness is not inherently that. Wilderness is a place apart. Apart from our normal day to day. Apart from our comfort zone. Apart from where we find our regular busyness, where our mind usually goes, where we are most at ease. Wilderness takes out of all of that and takes us into a place separate, a place that's unfamiliar. A place that perhaps, we are more open to hearing God.

Hopefully this Lent, we're taking some time to consider the effects of the fruit that we consume. The lies that we eat. Adam and Eve ate that fruit, they saw and they knew the truth. That they were human. That they were naked. And that they were dust.

As a people of God we are beckoned, we are invited by God to take some time to reorient ourselves around the truth of the lives we live, to embrace our own mortality, and to embrace the temporary reality in which we currently reside. We are invited to deny any semblance of pretended stability and security and acknowledge that the true stability that we find is in the love of God and the true security is in our eternal belongingness to the one who makes us.

Jesus, who touched his disciples, who had compassion, asked them to rise and to not be afraid. It is that expression of God that I would experience in friends, in family, even in strangers. God's presence among us, in the simplest ways assures us that we are loved, that whatever path we walk, we do not walk alone.