The Message
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Service for February 22 First Sunday of Lent
Sermon for February 22, 2026 Pastor Val Metropoulos First Sunday of Lent
Today is the first Sunday in the season of Lent. Traditionally this season has emphasized restraint, confession, and recommitment to spiritual disciplines. The idea was to leave the old way of life behind and prepare to be baptized or if already baptized to recommit to that identity as God’s beloved child. That approach to Lent can be useful but not if the spiritual disciplines are an end in themselves. The point is not self-denial. The point is not US. The point of Lent and the point of denying ourselves, the point of all spiritual disciplines is LOVE!
Lent is the school of love reminding us who we are. Reminding us that we belong to God and God loves us for no other reason than love. Because God is love. We are filled to overflowing with God’s love. Lent begins with that love so that we can live our lives driven by love’s promise – a full, and abundant life, so that we can love.
We are invited on Ash Wednesday to live in this Lenten season engaging in spiritual disciplines “that confront all evil and resist whatever leads us away from love of God and neighbor.” We are invited to practice these disciplines so that we can love better. We love by confronting evil. We love by refusing anything that leads us away from loving God and loving neighbor. You’d think that would be easy. But look around. The world is in tough shape. Love is not the word I’d use to describe what is happening in Ukraine or Gaza or on the streets of our cities or anywhere that human dignity is denied or creation is destroyed.
It’s hard to love as God would have us love so we practice these disciplines again and again. Lent is a rehearsal for our lives of love so we practice! We practice through: self-examination and repentance, prayer and fasting, sacrificial giving and works of love—strengthened by the gifts of word and sacrament.
Love is the starting point, and love is the process we use and love is the goal; to know we are loved, full to the brim and overflowing so that we can practice loving ourselves and others, so that everyone knows they are loved and the world becomes more loving. Sounds a little like an inspirational Instagram post or a bumper sticker. But it’s a story as old as the Israelites’ exodus out of Egypt. It’s a story as old as Jesus in the wilderness.
Jesus had just walked out of the river Jordan, those baptismal waters where he heard the voice of God claim him, “You are my beloved.” His feet were still dripping as he followed that voice leading him into the wilderness. He trusted that voice that named him beloved and so he followed. After days of hunger the voice he hears is not of love but of challenge. Much like us, the loudest voice in his head is no longer the voice that named him beloved. The voice that drowns out the love is the voice that challenges that love, the one that challenges the idea that we are worthy of love, worthy of respect, worthy of being cared for.
Debie Thomas compares this story of Jesus’ temptation with the temptation of Adam and Eve in the garden. That first temptation by the snake was to be like God, know what God knows, if only they would taste of the fruit of the forbidden tree. Coming full circle, now the tempter wants Jesus to deny his humanity. She says the question the tempter asks is "Can you be fully human? Can you exercise restraint? Can you abdicate power? Accept danger? Can you bear what it means to be mortal?”1
Jesus has come to live as one of us, to love us by living the human life but the tempter wants him to bypass all that messy human life stuff and get straight to the power, straight to the glory. This is not the story of Jesus’ amazing ability to resist temptation as the Son of God. Of course, the Son of God recognizes the tempter and the evil intent. Of course, the son of God can resist any temptation. This is the story of the Son of Man resisting temptation, as one of us, fully divine yes but also, fully human.
These are temptations we face in our own lives. The first is the temptation of hunger. We are tempted when we are hungry for power, or recognition, or security to trust in our own ability to achieve them. The question is, “When we are in our own wilderness, can we return to our own belovedness and remember that even in our hunger we are deeply loved?” Can we sit with our hunger until we can learn what it has to teach us? Can we wait and learn what is the hunger behind our hunger?
“This is the invitation of Lent. To learn that we can be loved and hungry at the same time. That we can hope and hurt at the same time.”1
Sitting with our hunger, waiting in the knowledge that we are God’s beloved teaches that the food God gives us will never be manipulative or disrespectful. It won’t require that God’s good creation is violated. God’s food for us will not necessarily be what we want, but it will be what we need. It will feed us, it will be love for us and through us, and when we share, it will feed the world.
The second temptation targets Jesus’ ego. The tempter suggests that if we are God’s beloved, we should be important in the eyes of the world. We should be noticed. We should be powerful and respected. The question for us is, “Can we accept and even embrace Jesus’ version of importance? Can we refuse to do anything for the sake of praise, or to gain power, or to get our way?
As uncomfortable as it makes us, the truth is that when we follow Jesus our only power is in weakness. “Jesus is lifted up – but he’s lifted up on a cross. His power is the power of self-surrender for the sake of love.”1 Can we trust that when we live as God’s beloved, we will thrive in obscurity; in the quiet places, unnoticed, without power?
The third temptation targets the vulnerability of being human, living in a human body, easily broken. The temptation is to believe that if we are God’s beloved that we will be invincible; that if only we believe enough or we’re faithful enough, we will avoid the reality of the brokenness of life in these bodies. But “If the cross teaches us anything, it teaches us that God’s precious ones still bleed, still ache, still die. We are loved in our vulnerability. Not out of it.”
God loves us and so God walks with us in our suffering. We are not guaranteed a lifetime of safety but a lifetime of belonging. This is good news “because we are also the children of God who resurrects. There is no suffering we will ever endure that God will not redeem. The story of humanity is not a story that ends in despair. It’s a story that culminates at an empty tomb, in a kingdom of hope, healing, consolation, and joy.”
Three temptations. Three invitations for us to consider this Lenten season. Can we live in the beauty, the glory and love of being fully human and beloved by God exactly as we are? Can we live with the truth that suffering is part of our lives as God’s beloved and we are never alone in that suffering and that God will bring new life out of all the deaths we experience? Can we live simply, satisfied and even rejoicing in obscurity, refusing to work for praise, rejecting anything that would draw attention away from God’s love for us and for all people, and all creation?
Even in the desert, we are full to the brim and overflowing with God’s love even when it doesn’t feel like it! It is true. We are invited to live in that overflowing love, trusting God’s love for us and for all humanity, all creation so that we can love.
Receive this blessing as the beautiful, beloved human beings that you are:
“Carry with you from this day the awareness that you are merely human, and that that is fully holy. May the dust of the earth and the keeper of your soul remind you daily that life is a gift and love is the point.”2 Amen
1Debie Thomas
2 Pastor Matt Moberg
Service for February 15 Transfiguration of our Lord
Sermon for February 15, 2026 Transfiguration of Our Lord
The ground beneath us feels unsteady. Institutions wobble, authority is contested and trust feels fragile. Scripture does not avoid that unease. Across the readings, one question presses in: when the world feels fractured and loud with competing claims, whose voice carries weight enough to follow?
Mountains become the lens. They orient ordinary life and shape vision. They tell us what can be seen and what is hidden, and that difference matters. In the biblical story, Moses enters cloud and fire while the people wait below, unsure whether he will return. Psalm 2 exposes rulers who rage and posture, reminding us that not all power is real authority. Peter insists that faith is not a clever story meant to soothe anxiety, but testimony grounded in what has been seen and heard. Then comes the mountain where Jesus is transfigured, his face shining, his clothes blazing with light, joined by Moses and Elijah. The law and the prophets bear witness. Luke calls the conversation an exodus. Glory does not cancel suffering; it confirms the path through it.
The disciples want to stay. Peter wants to build shelters, to preserve the moment, to hold holiness in place. We recognize that impulse. We want faith that protects us from grief, conflict and cost. The Transfiguration interrupts that desire. Authority is not held in buildings, rules or captured experiences. It is given in a voice: “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.” Then the light fades. The mountain does not become a shrine. Jesus touches his friends and leads them back down.
Grace arrives without permission and cannot be managed. It overwhelms, then sends us back into the ordinary world, marked but still vulnerable. Faith is not private certainty but trust that carries us when the vision is gone. It frees us from needing to justify ourselves or save the world alone. It anchors us in presence rather than control.
What matters most is where Jesus goes next. He descends into crowded streets, sick bodies and places shaped by crushing power. Listening becomes action, alignment and movement. The story leaves us without guarantees, but not without direction. Glory appears and fades. A voice speaks and then grows quiet. What remains is a path downward and a question that refuses easy answers: in all this noise and fracture, whose voice will we trust enough to follow when the light does not stay?
God's Peace,
Pr. Jim Odden
Service for February 1 Fourth Sunday of Epiphany
Sermon for February 1, 2026 Pastor Jim Odden Fourth Sunday of Epiphany
Jesus begins the Beatitudes not with answers but with words that unsettle us. Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst. These are not gentle sayings once we let them land. They confront how we measure success, power and worth. Jesus is not blessing the obvious winners. He stands with those the world has already set aside and declares that God is at work there.
Paul echoes this when he speaks of Christ crucified, foolish to some and offensive to others. God chooses what is weak, low and despised, not to flatter us but to overturn our standards. We are taught to cheer the exceptional and the powerful. God keeps tending the margins, and in that strange, patient care something unexpected takes shape.
The Beatitudes speak into a world strained by violence that repeats itself, injustice that feels both undeniable and untouchable, and fear that hardens into suspicion. Into this, Jesus does not offer a slogan or a program. He offers a description of God’s kingdom already pressing in, a kingdom that does not flatter the powerful and does not abandon the wounded. Blessing is not a ladder we climb. It is a gift we receive. Grace meets us where we actually are.
This grace is not vague or floating. It takes shape in real lives and real places. It gathers around those worn thin by loss, bent low by systems they did not design, pushed aside by fear or neglect. God’s mercy steps directly into the mess of public life. This is not a dilution of the gospel. It is the gospel insisting on flesh, names and neighbors.
The Beatitudes teach us to recognize strength differently. Meekness is strength disciplined by trust rather than fear. Mourning tells the truth about loss and refuses denial. Hunger for righteousness is the deep ache for relationships made whole, with God, with one another and with the world. Mercy chooses people over positions. Peacemaking is the slow work of repair. Faithfulness may bring conflict, but it also brings belonging.
We live between gift and calling. Saved by grace alone, we are freed to bear witness to the One already at work. We go from here attentive, trusting that God is present among the lowly and the weary, and by grace we are invited to join in.
Service for January 18 Second Sunday of Epiphany
“Come and see.” Jesus speaks these words as an open invitation, simple yet profound, calling each of us into encounter with him. They remind us that Christianity is not a label, a résumé, or a set of behaviors. Too often, the word Christian has been stretched into a brand: Christian radio, Christian clothing, Christian home… yet none of these capture the life God calls us to. Faith begins not with what we do, but with the God who has come to us, and our works flow from that love, mercy and hope.
John the Baptist shows the courage of pointing others away from ourselves toward Christ. His witness is quiet, costly and often unnoticed, yet it is faithful. Isaiah’s servant and Psalm 40 remind us that waiting is a part of following God: patient endurance is not passive; it is hope held through uncertainty, grief and unanswered prayer. Sight without waiting is shallow; waiting without sight leads to despair.
“Come and see” is both immediate and patient. It invites the hungry, the lonely, the imprisoned, the broken, the confident, the sinner and the saint alike. Jesus does not ask for credentials, he asks for trust. To come and see is to step into relationship, to witness mercy, healing, justice and love in action, and to let that encounter shape our lives.
Disciples are formed not by obligation but by encounter. The truth we carry is lived, not polished, a quiet courage that names how Christ has carried us through fear, grief or shame. The rhythm of faith becomes clear: our works flow from love, our witness points to Christ, and our waiting draws us into God’s faithful presence.
“Come and see.” It is the heartbeat of Christian life, the call to follow, the invitation to hope, and the path to discovering who God truly is in our midst.
Service for January 11 Baptism of Our Lord Sunday
Sermon for January 11, 2026 Baptism of Our Lord
Hello church! It’s good to be back with you. What a year it has been! Already! We’re only one week into 2026 and it already feels like it’s been months. We live in trying times. There is loss and confusion. There is mourning and division. It can be hard to have hope in this moment in time. Yet here we are. We are called to be God’s people, to walk in faith in this place at this time together. I don’t know where we’re going exactly but I know who we follow and I know we go together! The people of God always go on this journey of life, together!
I hope it isn’t news to you that Pastors don’t have all the answers. We don’t have any more of a roadmap than the ones available to all of us. Everyone, lay people and ordained, we all have: the Bible. We have our relationship with God. We have our trust that the promised Holy Spirit is with us and we have each other, the body of Christ, called to love and support one another; called to hold each other accountable.
In this life, in all its beauty and terror, we have each other. Frederick Buechner wrote, “A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace. […] The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you. There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.1
Beautiful and terrible things will happen. “Don’t be afraid,” God says in giving us this gift of grace through baptism. Don’t be afraid, I am with you. In baptism we are brought into the church, made a part of the body of Christ so that we are immersed in that grace every time we are together, here in worship, in conversation with each other over coffee or over the phone mid-week, every time we remember our baptism, when we remember whose we are, named and claimed as God’s beloved, we are immersed in grace!
Like I said, Pastors don’t have any extra source of guidance than anyone else, but we are tasked with speaking and specifically we’re tasked with bringing the Good News of Jesus Christ into conversation with the world in which we live. This world. This world where beautiful and terrible things happen. So, I have a few thoughts for today.
Today, I’d like to focus on our identity and on a story. Our primary identity, the one that should orient us in all parts of our lives is the one given to us in our baptism. Just as Jesus was washed in the water of baptism and touched by the Holy spirit, we align ourselves with Jesus as Jesus aligned himself with us when he insisted on being baptized with those repentant sinners being baptized by John in the river Jordan.
So, let’s remember the words spoken at our baptism.
We begin in baptism hearing the responsibilities it entails as the Pastor says, “As you receive the gift of baptism you are entrusted with responsibilities to:
· Live among God’s faithful people
· Come to the Word of God and the holy supper.
· Learn the meaning of the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the ten commandments,
· Read the holy scriptures,
· And nurture your life of faith and prayer.
And then the rite of baptism states that we do all those things for a specific reason! We center our lives in the community of God’s people, we come to worship and the Lord’s Supper, we learn the meaning of our foundational writings, we read scripture and tend to our life of faith and prayer SO THAT:
· So that we may learn to trust God,
· Proclaim Christ through word and deed,
· Care for others and the world God made, and work for justice and peace.
Those things are the purpose of our baptism: “so that…” we may learn to trust God, Proclaim Christ through word and deed, care for others and the world God made, and work for justice and peace.”
That is our job description given in our baptism. We live the life of disciples, we claim the identity of Jesus follower, “so that…” we can trust God, we can proclaim Christ in all we say and do, we can care for our neighbors and creation properly and we can work for God’s justice, God’s peace in this world!
The next thing that happens in baptism is that we are asked to profess our trust in Christ Jesus, reject sin and confess the faith of the church.
The pastor asks “Do you renounce the devil and do you renounce all the forces that defy God? If so, answer, “I renounce them.” Join me in saying, “I renounce them.”
Next the pastor asks, “Do you renounce the powers of this world that rebel against God? If so, answer, “I renounce them.”
Lastly, the pastor asks, “Do you renounce the ways of sin that draw you from God? If so, answer, “I renounce them.”…
We renounce everything that could separate us from God: the devil, the powers that rebel against God and sin SO THAT “we may learn to trust God, Proclaim Christ through word and deed, care for others and the world God made, and work for justice and peace.”
We name what we will do and then we name what we reject in following this Jesus born of the virgin Mary, who was crucified and died and on the third day was raised from the dead and now reigns with God. We are baptized for a purpose, to live as followers of the one who taught us how to live, how to act in this world as God’s people.
Now, the story. Many of you have probably heard the story of the events of Christmas Eve, 1914 the first Christmas of WWI, when soldiers from opposing armies celebrated Christmas together. The film Joyeux Noël, French for "merry Christmas" tells the story of that true event. Joyeaux Noel is a movie, not a documentary so it expands upon the few known facts to give us a feeling of what it must have been like. It’s fiction based on fact that can help us in our own struggles to make sense of what it means to follow Jesus in tumultuous times. I don’t use this example to debate the necessity of that war or any war. I use it to help us sort out who God calls us to be and to help us discern when our trust in God is being used for purposes that are not God’s purposes.
On December 24th, 1914, German soldiers began singing Christmas carols in their trenches. The songs echoed out over the quiet battlefield. The sounds of war, artillery explosions and rifle bursts were silent, at least for a time.
British, and French soldiers across the battlefield began singing in response to the Germans. Thousands of soldiers across kilometers of trenches who had been fighting found themselves living a truce with enemy soldiers. While heads of state and generals continued plotting invasions, the foot soldiers lived for a short time a cease fire in honor of Christmas.
In the movie, each side is flooded with propaganda about the inhumanity of their enemies. Each side imagines the other as barbarians, and each side believes that that God will give them victory in the conflict. But in the film the men discover their shared humanity as they brave the distance across “no man’s land,” the wasteland between their respective front lines.
Soldiers meet in that in-between space, sharing photos of spouses and children. Wine or whiskey and cigarettes are exchanged. A game of football is played, and maybe most surprising, they gather together to say the Latin mass with one voice. Soldiers look to their left and right and see that the uniforms they’re wearing say that they are enemies, but the words of the Christmas Eve service reveal that they are brothers seeking the Prince of Peace.
They were told to hate each other, but they discovered that, in another life, they could be friends with those they were fighting. They reject the demand of the commanders to kill people they have no desire to kill.
The story ends with the description of how these bold actions were received by the senior military leadership. The soldiers on all sides were severely and publicly punished and condemned for fraternization with the enemy. The high commands didn’t care that these soldiers saw each other as brothers because of their shared Christmas, or what that might imply for the possibilities of peace.
One of the main characters in the story is the priest who presides over the midnight mass. When he returns to the rear, his bishop denounces him and strips him of his parish. The bishop is appalled at what he called a “cowardly” act. But the priest confesses with a tone of awe, “I think I offered what was the most important mass of my life.”
In Joyeux Noël, after the bishop finishes denouncing his priest, he goes into a makeshift chapel and delivers a sermon intended to inspire new recruits before they head to the front line. During his sermon, he confidently instructs them, “This war is indeed a crusade! A holy war to save the freedom of the world. In truth I tell you: the Germans do not act like us, neither do they think like us, for they are not, like us, children of God.”
He commands the soldiers to kill, because it’s okay to kill people who are evil, who are not, “like us,” those who have been chosen by God. "It is sweet and right to die for your country," he says.
Nations often justify their imperial ambitions as the will of God and religious leaders can become complicit with those ambitions. Those soldiers who crossed battle lines on that Christmas Eve to celebrate the Prince of Peace as if there was no war came far closer to seeing the true will of God. They understood their baptismal promises!
We follow Jesus, who was humble to the point of death, refusing to retaliate, forgiving everyone everything. We follow the one whose solidarity with humanity was and is complete. Jesus’ love, forgiveness and mercy is for every, single human being. But what that solidarity means is only understood in the context of the particularity of Jesus’ life. Understanding how he showed that solidarity is essential to understanding what it means for us today. Jesus lined up for baptism in the river Jordan along with all the sinners. He was sinless but humbly identified with us completely even to the point of death on a cross; forgiving those who tortured and killed him, forgiving us all.
We have seen many things done in the name of Jesus that have nothing in common with who Jesus was, what he said or what he did. People have been misled by the powerful in military, government or church leadership, like those military leaders in WWI who reprimanded the soldiers for seeing their counterparts as human beings created in God’s image.
Their church has failed them. Their governmental leaders have failed them. Their community failed them. They thought they were faithfully following Jesus, but Jesus is not a nationalist. Jesus is not a racist. He is not violent or hateful.
The church of Jesus Christ must name evil for what it is or we are complicit in the evil. Racism denies that those who do not look like us are created in God’s image. Nationalism denies that God can be found in every country. Violence destroys the humanity of the victim and the perpetrator.
But lest we think we are above reproach, we remember the truth that “every time we draw a line between us and others, Jesus is always on the other side of that line."2 Jesus is always standing with the outsider.
Jesus loves us and Jesus loves those who thought they were faithfully following him but so badly misunderstood his humility and his love for all people. Jesus loves us and Jesus loves every elected official and every police officer and every ICE agent and every protestor. Jesus loves us while weeping at the ways we have misunderstood his message and have been misled.
We are all created in God’s image and we are all beloved children of God. We are not all acting like it. None of us acts like it 100% of the time. But some of us have gone far astray and need to be reminded of our belovedness by the community.
Like I said, I don’t know where we’re going but I know the one we follow and I know we go together. We follow the one who said we would find him in the hungry and thirsty, in the stranger, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned. We follow Jesus together as the body of Christ formed in baptism by God’s grace, trusting that together we will discern the path of faithfulness and if we begin to go astray we will help each other to reject any lies that claim our allegiance.
When you come forward for communion today, pause to dip your fingers into the baptismal font and make the sign of the cross on yourself. For now, turn to your neighbor, make the sign of the cross on their forehead or on the back of their hand, or even on your own forehead and repeat these words: You are baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. You belong to Christ in whom you have been baptized. Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. Amen.
1 Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking
2 Nadia Bolz-Weber
7 pm Service for December 24 Christmas Eve
Here is my Christmas eve message:
While they were there, the time came for the child to be born. She gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
I am just an innkeeper. My wife and I work hard for what we have. Even on quiet days it takes both of us to keep things running, and with the census the place was bursting. I do not know what Caesar thinks he gains from this, but the roads were full and the doors never stopped opening. We made more money that week than we had in months, but neither of us sat down or slept much at all.
We had no rooms. We had said it plainly and posted signs in every language that mattered. Still they came, weary and hopeful, asking for space we did not have. Most faces blurred together, but one couple did stand out. They arrived after days of travel, the woman was close to giving birth, that much was obvious.
My wife spoke with them first. When she came to me she said they needed help. I told her we were full, as everyone else was. She said she had a feeling about them. I have learned that when she says that, I should listen. We had no proper room, but there was space in the stable below. I offered it before I had time to think. It sounded like poor hospitality even as I said it, yet they received it with gratitude. The night was still, the stars sharp and bright, one brighter than the rest. Somehow it seemed enough.
Later, as things finally quieted, I saw shepherds coming down the hill toward the stable. I feared trouble and went to see what was happening. My wife stopped me and told me the child had been born. The shepherds had come to see him. She said they spoke of angels and a message and a star that led them there. When she arrived, they were gathered around the manger in awe.
I stood back and listened. Someone said that on this night God had come to live among us, to give hope and to change everything. I returned to the inn in a daze, cleaning what was already clean, trying to understand.
I did not sleep much that night. A Messiah is supposed to come, but I never imagined it like this. A child in a barn. I heard later they named him Jesus…
A few weeks ago we spoke of hope as something that gathers when people draw close, not because all is resolved, but because waiting together keeps despair from winning. Luke gives that hope a body: not an idea, but a child laid where animals feed. God does not wait for us to make room perfectly. God joins us in the strain and the clutter.
So this is what has changed. We no longer wait alone. Hope has moved in. Fellowship has a face. And once God chooses to dwell among us, the work continues. Dishes still need washing, doors still need opening and neighbors still need room. That is where Christmas lives, in shared life that refuses to let the dark have the final word.
God's Peace, Pastor Jim Odden
Service for December 21 Fourth Sunday of Advent
Sermon for December 21, 2025 Fourth Sunday of Advent
This is the third Sunday of Advent and the third Sunday we’ve heard from Isaiah, each week another snapshot of God’s dream for creation, reminding us what it is that we’re waiting for. Again and again, Isaiah describes the time when the whole world will be healed from the wounds of hatred and violence. This is a vision of God’s dream for all humanity. Isaiah calls God’s people to wait — not passively but actively wait with courage knowing that God keeps God’s promises.
It takes an active faith to trust that God is not about putting band aids on the gaping wounds the world is suffering. God is determined to heal all of creation until every part of it is whole and has realized its original potential. When God’s dream is reality, creation itself will be transformed: The sandy desert will yield a harvest of abundance. Those who experience any disability will join in the dance of celebration with the whole of creation. In that renewed and healed creation, all those who long for God’s justice and peace will find their way to God. None will go astray, not even we who are fools will be lost as all return to God’s heart where there will be only joy and gladness!
Advent waiting longs for that reality to be true, here and now among us but it’s not a passive waiting. Isaiah and all the prophets make clear that waiting, for God’s people, is busy as we do the work of bringing God’s dream into our world. It is to care for widows, share with the poor, feed the hungry, and provide hospitality to strangers. “The ultimate promise may be far off, but the faithful can act on its behalf here and now.” 1
That is the background, the context within which we hear the story of Joseph and his decision to go against the social and religious norms of his time, to embrace this relationship with Mary and the unborn baby she carried. That understanding of actively waiting for God’s dream to become fully realized in the here and now among common human beings that Isaiah describes repeatedly, that is how Joseph and Mary understood the part they were playing in making the choices they made. They understood that every choice is a decision to participate in God’s dream or not; to do the next, right thing bringing God’s justice and peace in each action and every word … or not. They understood that God’s dream is not realized in one grand gesture but in the lives of average people, like us choosing to enact that dream in our own lives.
Matthew 1:18-25
Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit. 19 Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. 20 But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
23 “Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” 24 When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife 25 but had no marital relations with her until she had given birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.
When Joseph found himself in this messy situation, betrothed to a woman who was pregnant, he had no more certainty about what he should do than any of us would have had. He must have had the same doubts and questions we would have. What he did have going for him was the tradition of his faith at that time that says that God calls people to work with God in bringing God’s salvation, God’s dream into reality in our world. He had that tradition to fall back on, to help him make his choice when faced with an impossible situation.
Joseph didn’t know what would happen. He didn’t know the consequences of either choosing to accept Mary and her baby or reject them. Joseph had to act in the dark, not knowing the result of his choices; going against the norms of his culture and religion and law because God asked him to. Joseph had to imagine and trust a new story, despite his uncertainty and his fear.
In Gareth Higgins book, How Not To Be Afraid, he talks about the competing stories that shaped his childhood in Northern Ireland during the long time now called “The Troubles.”
Higgins says that one story that was told in Northern Ireland at the time was that you had to choose a side -- either support for the United Kingdom or support Irish re-unification. When you made that choice, you were accepting the premise that the "other side" had caused the conflict in the first place and that "our" side was merely defending itself.
But there was an alternate story of people who refused to live their lives according to that narrative. Higgins writes, "People were refusing to use violence to get what they wanted and were caring for the suffering and the bereaved. People were initiating conversations with their political opponents, including those who might harm them, and moving into neighborhoods where they didn't [technically] 'belong' in order to show that everyone belongs. People were laying aside vengeance in favor of cooperation."2
Those people were bravely making choices to participate with God in making God’s dream of justice and peace more fully a reality. In our time, many of us have grown weary and even exhausted from waiting. We’re tired of the same old arguments and the two steps forward, three steps backward that seems to be the reality in our world. We’re tired of seeing people suffer from lack of nutritious food and warm, safe housing in this richest of all countries. We’re tired of the drumbeat pounding out the rhythm of the tired song that we are a Christian nation, when there is nothing Christlike in how people are cared for or the violence that is used in the name of God and country. We’re tired of the injustice that dictates one future for privileged, white children and another future for the poor and people of color. We’re tired of people dying for lack of equitable health care and access to medicine. We’re tired of division and taking sides prevailing over acknowledging our shared humanity.
Isaiah and all the prophets who guided Joseph and Mary and Elizabeth and Zechariah and all the other ancestors in faith insist that we practice the Kingdom’s justice in our own time. It’s not history! It’s not a pie-in-the-sky dream! As followers of Jesus, it is supposed to be our story as we live it now, together!
Diana Butler Bass suggests that “Maybe if we are tired of waiting, it is because we don’t really understand waiting. Waiting isn’t about looking for miracles to fall from the sky. It isn’t about magic fixes. Waiting entails acting. Waiting beckons us to jubilation. Waiting isn’t quiescence. In the biblical tradition, it means looking clearly into the broken world and caring for what is wounded. It means facing down the powers of injustice with drum and dance. It means living the promises that God’s people trust with all their hearts.” This is our calling. This is the waiting that is our purpose in being here.
The brokenness of this world is real. The veneer of Christmas carols and glittery cards and candles and even the love of family and friends cannot cover up that reality. Many are suffering and we know that things are not as God would have them be. Things look dark and at times even hopeless, much as it must have looked for Mary and Joseph as they lived in the oppressive rule of the Roman Empire, as they were forced to find shelter outside among the animals, as they were forced to become refugees in Egypt. In this time, God calls us to live the promise that God’s dream for justice and peace for ALL God’s children, for ALL people is just waiting for us to live it, here and now, loving All people with open and generous hearts.
Living with the world’s great brokenness is so difficult. Please join me in this prayer from Kate Bowler:
o God, i am done with broken systems
that break the very people
they are meant to serve.
o God, harness this anger!
channel it into worthy action and show me
what is mine to fix and what boundaries to patrol
to keep goodness in and evil out.
blessed are we who are appalled
that brute ignorance can so easily dominate
over decency, honesty, and integrity.
blessed are we, who choose not to look away
from systems that dehumanize, deceive, defame, and distort.
blessed are we who stand
with truth over expediency,
principle over politics,
community over competition.
o God, how blessed are we who cry out to you:
empower us to see and name what is broken,
what is ours to restore,
guide us to find coherent and beautiful alternatives
that foster life, hope, and peace.
help us use our gifts with one another in unity.
Blessed are we who choose to live in anticipation,
Our eyes scanning the horizon,
For signs of your kingdom –
Heaven-come-down-
As we wait in hope
And act in courage. Amen.
1Diana Butler Bass
2Gareth Higgins, How Not to Be Afraid
Service for December 14 Third Sunday of Advent
Sermon for December 14, 2025 Pastor Val Metropoulos Third Sunday of Advent
At this midpoint of the Advent season, we hear from some of the most influential voices in Scripture. We hear from Isaiah, speaking words of hope to people desperate for God’s help as they live as refugees under the oppressive arm of Babylon. Isaiah describes the complete reversal that God promises those who have lost hope; the reversal that some will not live to see. It will be reality in the fullness of time, when the blind will see, the weak will be strong and everlasting joy will be reality for all those who are now suffering.
Then we heard from John the Baptizer, who asks the question we all ask at some time in our lives, “Who are you, Jesus? Should I commit my life to you or is there another path, another one I should follow?” And Jesus claims that this wild man, dressed in skins and foraging for his food in the desert, is the one who is preparing the way for us to find Jesus; making clear that our Savior is not to be found among the wealthy and socially acceptable. If we want to find the Way to God, we are to look to those on the margins, those who are suffering; those who are rejected by polite society.
And lastly, we hear from Mary, the mother of Jesus, who has learned from the angel that she is pregnant, and the child is God’s own son. In her great amazement, she hurries to visit her cousin Elizabeth to share this news. It’s in that homey setting that Mary proclaims the words of the “Magnificat” that have inspired generations of people facing oppression and hopelessness that God is on their side, raising up the lowly and bringing down the proud and those who think they are wise, from their places of power.
Scholars have seen this scene between Mary and Elizabeth as the first gathering of the church, the community of Jesus followers. Paul Duke says, “(This story) invites us to recall how much we need each other, to draw fresh courage from each other and to celebrate all that we share as bearers of the promise together. If these two women are a prototype of church, they certainly embody both how improbable and how subversive the church can be.
Mary’s Magnificat is that subversive song describing what God is doing in taking on the flesh of humanity, using Mary, an unremarkable, vulnerable woman to birth the divine into her humble world. Mary describes God’s turning the world topsy turvy through that incarnation: scattering the proud, bringing down the powerful, lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry with good things, and sending the rich away empty.”
That reversal of all that seems set in stone in our world was the inspiration in medieval Europe, for what was known as The Feast of Fools. It was a tradition that only lasted for a few hundred years until the church decided it was too irreverent and put a stop to it.
In those times the word “fool” was a synonym for humble. So, the Feast of Fools was an absurd role playing in which the social order was turned upside down.
Here's a description of the Feast of Fools from the book, The Medieval Stage. “Throughout medieval and early modern Europe, Christmas was a time for festive reversals of status. As early as the ninth century, a mock patriarch (the highest-ranking bishop) was elected in Constantinople” He carried out his duties as bishop by “burlesquing the Eucharist and riding through the city streets on an ass.” “As late as in 1685, (regular people, not priests) [lay brothers] and servants “put on the vestments inside out, held the books upside down, …. Wore spectacles with rounds of orange peel instead of glasses,… blew the ashes from the [censers] (incense burners) on each other’s face and hands, and instead of the proper liturgy, [they] chanted confused and inarticulate gibberish.”
“Cross-dressing, masking as animals, wafting foul-smelling incense, and electing burlesque bishops, popes, and patriarchs mocked conventional human pretensions. So did the introduction of an ass into the church, in commemoration of the holy family’s flight into Egypt, and the braying of the priest, choir, and the congregation during mass.”1
The Festival of Fools sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Chaotic, but fun! Messy, especially with an ass in church, but fun, as the people laughed at themselves. They understood that their attempts at worship, their attempts at understanding God and efforts to please God, were foolish. They understood that God’s ways are not our ways, that for all our certainty and pride and self-importance, God really works not through our wisdom, which is in short supply. God really works through the unlikely and the commonplace, the vulnerable and the foolish to provide safe space, sanctuary for all people, regardless of any distinctions.
What’s really important, what really changes the world is not our ritual or our beautiful music or our fine buildings. What is truly important is the sanctuary we find in God and then find in one another as we live out, even imperfectly, God’s dream for creation. Sanctuary is the gift of welcome and acceptance and belonging and safety. It can be powerful. It can be life changing. Elizabeth provides sanctuary for Mary which enables Mary to become sanctuary for God as Jesus, but also for Elizabeth. They see God in each other.
Sanctuary is an expansive word. We call this room where worship takes place, sanctuary. It’s the word used to describe a place where hurt and rescued animals find care. People find sanctuary in motel rooms and Red Cross shelters after hurricanes, or tornadoes or wildfires wreak havoc in their community. Some churches and synagogues, like Temple Beth Hatfiloh, in Olympia have provided sanctuary for years now, to people at risk of deportation.
Sanctuary is the gift of welcome and acceptance and belonging and safety. It is not just a place. It is also the people who create safe places for others.
Immanuel has been sanctuary for many people over the years. That sense of sanctuary has happened here and, in your homes, and in your conversations. You have opened your hearts and your space to people who need to know that God’s love accepts them. You offer sanctuary because you have found sanctuary in God’s expansive, all-encompassing love.
That sense of sanctuary has been named by some people in the LGBTQ community as the reason they return here. They have found sanctuary here, being truly welcomed and included.
Another group of people who have found sanctuary here are those who feel they have lost their spiritual homes or felt unwelcome in them as their understanding of God and the Bible, and the nature of their faith changed. When they realized that their theology was no longer represented in the communities which had once been sanctuary to them, it was like a foundation was pulled out from under them and they were in a kind of free-fall. But, in some cases, they found a place to stand again here at Immanuel.
The hungry and the lonely have found sanctuary here, receiving a delicious meal, prepared with love and serving with dignity all who arrive.
And, this space inside and out has been sanctuary, however imperfect as people living in cars are welcomed and offered safety in this space. We can count this congregation among the “foolish” recognizing our weakness in our humble attempts at welcoming those whom Jesus identified as his people.
These efforts are never without cost. But, if we continue reaching out with the gifts of welcome, acceptance, belonging and safety, if we continue to offer sanctuary to those who desperately need it, it will probably require even more from us. It will require us to be vulnerable, to be our authentic, messy, broken and brave selves. It will require that we are foolish. That ability to be foolish, in its ancient meaning, “humble”, is a profound gift in this world that glorifies the powerful, celebrates the ostentatious, and honors the accomplished. Being that foolish changes us and our world as we follow the one who took on our foolishness to draw us into God’s love.
Today, in remembering the Mother Emanuel tragedy that happened 10 years ago and as we remember the connections that the Lutheran world has with that tragedy, we embrace the foolish idea that, with God’s help, we can be sanctuary for those who are still living with the trauma of that violent act and take one small action to let them know that we love them, that we stand with them and we will do whatever we can to prevent a tragedy like that from happening again.
At the end of worship today, we’ll take a second offering that will be dedicated and sent to Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina for use as they see fit as they live out their work of providing sanctuary for those who need it.
May God use that small effort and magnify it among all the churches in the Lutheran World so that it is a sign of our humble repentance for our part in the tragedy that, for a time, destroyed that sense of safety and sanctuary at Mother Emanuel Church. May our humble efforts at being sanctuary through this gift, bring hope and healing in whatever small way is possible through God’s help.
Beloved ones, may we like Mary, go to each other and risk. May we like Elizabeth, receive each other and bless. May we find welcome, belonging, complete acceptance, and safety as we recognize the deep, deep love of Christ present among us. Amen.
1E.K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage
Service for December 7 Second Sunday of Advent
Sermon for December 7, 2025 Second Sunday of Advent
The Fellowship of Renewal Pastor Jim Odden
Advent settles over us like the quiet before dawn: a season when hope gathers in the heart and light slowly reaches across the shadows. It is a time of shared waiting, where fellowship itself becomes a sign of promise. One candle is lit, then another, until the glow of many small flames reminds us that God’s renewal begins in community.
Isaiah’s vision of a Spirit-filled ruler rising from a lifeless stump speaks to a people, and a world, that have known loss. From what seemed dead, God brings life. True leadership, Isaiah says, is marked not by power or pedigree but by wisdom, courage and care for the vulnerable. Transformation begins when God’s Spirit shapes ordinary people into communities of justice, humility and peace.
John the Baptizer continues that call, urging us to prepare the way; not through frantic effort, but by turning our lives toward the light together. Repentance, rightly understood, is not a private shame but a shared practice of renewal. When we face what is broken within and among us, space opens for mercy and reconciliation.
Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom imagines enemies at rest and creation restored. That vision becomes real whenever we act with compassion, confront injustice and build communities where all can flourish. Advent readiness is active: mentoring, serving, forgiving, advocating and encouraging hope where despair has taken root.
Advent teaches us to watch for God in the space between us. Christmas teaches us to greet the holy with open doors and generous hearts. Together they invite us into a shared life where grace is not an idea but a way of being: a fellowship that steadies us through this and every season.