ELCG Podcast

In the Christmas story—and in the God to whom it points us—all of our stories find their center and their place. The baby in the manger holds them all together.

While life may give us a few opportunities for assenting to God in momentous ways, it is in fact mostly made up of much smaller and far more ordinary occasions for saying yes—for responding to what writer Roger Owens calls “the divine summons of this moment.”

Sure, to be an oak is to be rooted and stable and steadfast. And maybe it is also to be deeply connected to others—to be bound in webs of mutuality, sharing, and concern.

Yes, the angel says, much is fleeting and uncertain. But here’s what’s not: God’s promise, God’s faithfulness, God’s word of grace to us.

"O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!" Isn’t asking for that a bit unrealistic, a bit bold? Maybe—but maybe it’s still just what we need.

We do, it turns out, have something to work on while we wait, in this time like in any other. The problem is, we might wish for a different set of instructions – one that asks a bit less from us.

Listen up, church, Jesus says. You have one whopper of a precious gift in your collective hands. What are you going to do with it?

We all know we’re supposed to practice gratitude; what we can easily forget is just how good it is for us.

Remember that we are not left alone or without direction. Jesus’s words—those strange and gracious blessings—keep pointing the way to life, and Jesus promises to walk with us as we stumble along.

This was never just Moses’s story. It was always the story of freedom, far bigger than any one person, and when Moses’s chapter was finished, there were other chapters to be written.

it is often easier to spot God’s presence in our lives looking backward, tending to those places where an encounter, a phone call, a landscape, a book was in fact a vehicle for grace, a gift we profoundly needed

We want answers, and when they don’t come on our timeline, we can get restless. We can grow weary of waiting, and we can find ourselves trading the living God for something more manageable.

Freedom is the thread running through all the commandments—even, and maybe especially, when it comes to the one about rest.

Preached in the English-Speaking Congregation of the ELCG on 27 September 2020.

Yes, Moses is telling the Israelites to stand firm and not run away. But he’s also calling them to much more than that.

That’s what good and meaningful rituals do: help a community to remember, in the fullest sense of that word.

Moses’s story gives us another angle for looking at the question of home, of identity, of where we belong. Moses, the perpetual stranger, finally finds his home in the calling of God, and in the profound relationship it opens up for him.

It’s five women's simple acts of brave humanity that open up a way out of slavery and death. And it’s acts like that that can still open up new ways forward today.

Sermon, 16 August: "When Justa meets Jesus," by Rebecca Daniel by Geneva Lutheran

Sermon, 9 August: "Overcoming fear," by Wesley Ariarajah by Geneva Lutheran

We may not know how to pray, but that’s all right: God has this covered.

Sermon, 19 July: "In hope we were saved," by Andy Willis by Geneva Lutheran

Yes, Paul says, you really are free. And God’s grace has a hold on you now, and it won’t let you go until its work is done.

Sermon, 5 July: "Understanding what it means to be human," by Rev. Dr. Simone Sinn by Geneva Lutheran

Present yourself to God this way: with trust that grace is real, that you’ve been joined to Christ, that in his death and resurrection, the power of sin has been broken.