“Now they know that everything you have given me is from you,” says, “[so] protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” In understanding that God, Jesus, and the Spirit are one, the disciples are, in turn, one with one another and one with the Spirit. And this deep understanding allows them to spread the good news in the right way—in a compassionate and loving way, full of great works of justice and healing…

Just as God cannot be shoved into small, binary ideas of male or female, God, and therefore Christ, cannot be forced into binary notions of seeing vs. blindness. Just because we no longer see him, does not mean he’s not there. And just because we are able to physically see in the world, does not mean we can truly see and know the truth, if we are not following the commandment to love one another. To really see, we need to practice the sacrificial love of Jesus by giving up, in our case, not our lives, but our ego, our selfishness; by not giving into fears of the unknown, by not letting our anxieties take over. And we will then be guided by the Advocate—our comforter, our supporter, the truth…

Soon, [the disciples] will have to carry on the healing work of justice and love that Jesus began. Soon they will have to spread the Good News and make sure the world knows that death can be defeated. They cannot linger in the past, they cannot mourn for too long because they will have to carry on the works…

Sheep has been used as a derogatory term for centuries, and its derogatory nature has certainly gained traction in the past decade or two. But our faith tells us that we need Jesus to lead us to greener pastures. Our faith tells us that we need to let go of the silly notion of power that we are always grasping at, and follow the commands of Christ. And those commands are not to prove yourself to be the best, the smartest, the strongest by any means necessary. Those commands are to love God, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves…

The bread that Jesus broke was not magic. His appearance did not change when he sat at the Emmaus table. And yet, it was in this simple action of breaking bread that that he was suddenly known. It was in the revelatory act of hospitality that his friends snapped out of their despair and their confusion and realized who they had been talking to this whole time, realized who was truly with them, miraculously, in the flesh…

They tried to bury him. But they didn’t know he was a seed. They didn’t know he would rise again and his message would propagate, proliferate, and spread, and spread, and spread, until it could be silenced no longer…

He’s ready because, as it’s written in verse 17 and 18, “I shall not die, but I shall live… [and God] did not give me other to death.”

I shall not die, but I shall live. As Jesus marches through the city he knows that he will be given over to death… and yet he will not die, but he will live…

It’s connection that will make us whole again. Ezekiel and his people longed for the day when they would be back together as one people, in one place, and God provided Ezekiel with a wild vision showing him it would happen, showing him that anything in possible when we keep our faith, and when we recognize our wrongs; and so, despite the deplorable ways they had been acting, despite what brought them into exile in the first place, Ezekiel saw a vision of his people rising from the depths of despair…

In our journeying through our crooked paths to this new future, we are creating it. We don’t know what is ahead, because it hasn’t happened yet. We can’t see the future. But we’re doing our best to make sure whatever ends up being ahead is a better world than the one we have now…

Because God is not a secret. God is present for all of us. God blesses all of us. Even when we doubt, even when we curse and challenge God—God keeps their promise—the promise of blessing over punishment, the promise of life over death…

It seems like God was trying a new parenting strategy— instead of threats of punishment, God chooses to bless Abram, seemingly out of nowhere. Abram trusts this new blessing God, and goes to Canaan. The result of this trust in God turning a new leaf, the result of these blessings, is that Abram would become the patriarch of an entire religion—he would help to usher in a new era and would help to vindicate God’s decision after the flood, to never, ever destroy us again…

But— we who accept the frailty are the strong ones. We who find the blessings in the so-called curse are the strong ones. We who understand that our mortality means we have to support and uplift one another are the ones living authentic, and in our case, good Christian lives…

“Let us desire the world as it is.” When Jesus was transfigured on the mountain that day, he didn’t actually change. His essence didn’t change, his being didn’t change. He was then what he always had been, and what he always will be—fully human, fully divine, our savior, Creator, Christ,  and Spirit, three-in-one. It was simply that he was revealed to his disciples, definitively, that this was the case. But in his disorientation, in his fear, and in his grief, Peter could only think of what had been—the transformative time he has spent with Jesus; he could only think of what would be lost with Jesus gone, instead of what could be gained with everything Jesus taught…

Guest speaker Jeffrey Hamelman, former director of King Arthur Flour Bakery, speaks to us about the inspiring work he’s been doing in Uganda.

We are called to live these words always. And in a world that rewards bombast over humility, military might over peace, ruthlessness over mercy, it’s hard to live the Beatitudes outside these doors…

They were four young men, toiling the day away. They could have been any of us. We can all, we must all answer when we are called. Because just as we could be Peter or Andrew, James or John, we could also be Alex Pretti, or Renee Good. This is not the time to stand down. This is not the time to despair to withdraw. Christ’s call is louder than ever right now—his call to love, his call to peace…

…we are all chosen by God. We are all servants of God. We are all gifted with the faith, the words, the grace to change the world, to turn unjust power structures on their heads. When we hear of violence and horrors halfway across the country, we can’t despair. We can’t shrug our shoulders and say ‘well, nothing we can do here,’ and therefore not confront these evils that are so present in our world. Because God’s gifts, God’s love, is too big, too infinite to confine ourselves to simply was serves us in the short term, to confine ourselves at all.

…to make this commitment, we have to pay attention. This isn’t something we can do casually in the background. This isn’t something we can do half-heartedly…

German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, points out that Advent, the season that leads up to this glorious night, is a season of waiting and preparation; and he writes that “our whole life…is Advent.” Tonight we wait and celebrate the arrival of a fragile human baby. Tonight we wait to celebrate the divine contradiction of a king, a savior, human and divine, born as such a vulnerable being. But if we are to really and truly live out the stubborn and persistent Christmas hope, we recognize that our whole lives are Advent…

…as we prepare to celebrate Christmas, to celebrate the birth of our savior, come to earth as a vulnerable infant, we are presented with a man who is anything but dominant or controlling. We are presented with a man who refuses to let a young woman be publicly disgraced, much less killed for what he, at that time, was sure was a grave indiscretion on her part. We are presented with a man who, upon waking from dreams, fully submits to the will of God, without a hint of pride or stubbornness. We are presented with a man who trusts and loves fully, with his whole mind and his whole heart. We are presented with a man who truly allows himself to be led by love, no matter what frightening or unbelievable places that love may take him.