…the humanity of Jesus also includes his birth and his childhood. Which means the humanity of Jesus includes this awe and this wonder, this sense of real possibility. The humanity of Jesus includes the joy and innocence of childhood.

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason,
There’d have been no room for the child.

“After Annunciation” by Madeleine L’Engle

That action of writing “His name is John”— that was proof God had wiped away a lifetime of disappointment that led to years of bitterness. It was proof that Zechariah truly believed. He was no longer a discouraged cynic—he was now a believer, prepared to foster his son’s greatness, prepared to raise him in love and in joy, truly understanding, truly believing, that his son would set the stage for a new era…

So there are two suggestions here, two pieces of advice— and they’re crucial, though it proves a pretty thin tightrope to walk— Luke is telling us to both not let the worries and anxieties of this world paralyze us; but also to be ready so that we aren’t caught off-guard when this end, the second coming, when this “great final Advent” as Bonhoeffer says, comes at long last…

In our psalm for today, there’s no theological or scholarly consensus as to what verse 3 is referring: “As for the holy ones in the land, they are noble / in whom is all my delight.” Some think the holy ones are angels, or some other divine or supernatural force. But what if they’re just… good people? What if we look for the holy ones among us?

 And so we have to meet those threats and whatever comes head-on in our community, in whatever small, but not insignificant way we can. Because no matter what, no matter who is in the white house, this community is what we have, and that’s where our power lies. We work with what we’ve got, and we’ve got each other. We will be there for the queer folks in our community. We will continue to help the poor, to support the prisoner, to lift up the oppressed. That won’t change. But we might have to work a little harder. We might have to show up more. We have might to be creative…

God’s shadow is all over the book of Ruth. It is in the obvious places—in the return of food to the land of Judah—but it is in Ruth’s loyalty. It is in Naomi’s laments. It is in Orpah’s farewell kiss. God’s shadow, for better and for worse is always on this earth. We can always feel God’s shadow; we cannot always feel Godself, God’s presence…

Imagine a world in which we never have to feel anything other than that incredible sigh of relief when we enter a room in which we know the people in that room truly understand us—a world in which we are all wise enough and enlightened enough, full of enough love to give everyone the grace they deserve, the way Jesus give us that unconditional grace…

Jesus suffered the human condition. And that’s what makes Jesus a perfect savior. God is perfect. But God wasn’t a perfect God for humankind until Jesus… until God experienced the human condition through Jesus…

This passage, in my reading, isn’t about magical healing powers. This passage is about the power of community, of togetherness; the power of trust. It’s about relying on one another in spite of missteps, in spite of misunderstandings. It’s about keeping one another uplifted during trying times…

And of course it’s not really about material things. It’s about status and power. It’s about feeling like we’re better than our fellow humans. It’s that corrupting earthly wisdom that does that  drives us to be this way, that makes us always want to one-up our neighbor… while Jesus calls us to uplift our neighbor, so that we are all on the same level...

Ted Chiang compares using programs like ChatGPT to write to “bringing a forklift into the weight room.” Without putting in the effort to really listen for the truth and listen for connection, we don’t work that compassion muscle. And we lose it. We lose the ability to empathize and connect...

If we want people to contribute to society, if we want people to contribute to us as a faith community, we need to work. Faith without works is dead. Church without works is dead. Democracy without works is dead. Love without works is dead...

James seems to believe that if we follow this perfect law, we can, indeed be perfect. We can be like Christ. Now, I always found comfort in the fact that perfection is an impossibility for us deeply flawed humans, and I still do… but what if we’re selling ourselves short? What if we really should strive towards perfection? What if we’re actually called to become perfect, and in turn to perfect this deeply imperfect world?

We have this loving, supportive, compassionate, quiet space in which we can give our brains a break from the outside world and we can give them rest and reset so that we can better hear the truth when it’s revealed to us. We can depend on one another and we can use this space to breathe...

We are all given unconditional love and grace. But if we don’t meet others with that same love and grace we’re given, what good is it? If we take those gifts and bury them or wrap them and hide them away, who does it help but ourselves? And what’s stopping us from spreading that love and grace around? Maybe a society that doesn’t care about us and makes us not want to care about others in it; maybe expectations that we’re scared we won’t live up to. There are so many reasons we might be tempted hide our God-given gifts...

The point is humility and understanding that until we bring about an earth as it is in heaven, we will all be guilty of adding to the inequality and sin of the world. Some of us will be more victims of this inequality than perpetuators; some of us are more perpetuators than victims. But we’re all guilty...

Some parables are meant to be taken as allegories. This is not one of them. You’re meant to imagine this literally. You’re meant to imagine a wise person building a house on a rocky, high ground, and you’re meant to imagine a foolish person building their house on sand just waiting to be taken by the tides...

Two Sermons for Independence Day from our annual combined service with the First Universalist Society of Hartland, on Matthew 13:44-46 and "Ghazal: America the Beautiful" by Alicia Ostriker

...we should do what we can to sacrifice some of our own needs and wants for the good of others, but certainly not our entire lives. And so when Vuillard ends his book with “martyrdom is a trap for the oppressed,” he’s saying that this is kind of uprising is futile. We cannot change the world for the better with the same violence and force that brought us to this place.