2025.03.23 | "Stories"
Blessed day, church. It's so good to be passing the peace again. Amen? There’s something healing about being together in community, sharing in the peace of Christ. Do you feel it? It’s a sense of belonging. Rest in that feeling. Hay algo sanador en estar juntos en comunidad, compartiendo la paz de Cristo. ¿Lo sientes? Have you ever had something happen to you that was so good you just couldn’t keep it to yourself? ¿Alguna vez te ha pasado algo tan bueno que no podías guardarlo para ti mismo? A moment of grace, a breakthrough, a healing? I know I have. And today, we’re going to talk about that—a story that’s too good to keep hidden, and the kind of healing that goes beyond just physical transformation.
Before we dive in, let’s take a look at the Scripture passage for today, where two blind men experience healing from Jesus. Let’s see what happened to them, and how it can teach us about the power of telling our stories.
The passage begins with two blind men who follow Jesus, crying out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” These men aren’t passive bystanders—they are active seekers. Matthew’s words are deliberate: “They followed him,” and “they asked for mercy.” Their agency and intention are highlighted, just as much as Jesus’ intervention. Nuestro pasaje de hoy comienza con dos ciegos que siguen a Jesús, clamando: “¡Ten misericordia de nosotros, Hijo de David!” Estos hombres no son espectadores pasivos, ellos son buscadores activos.
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2025.03.16 | Safe Keeping
I received some bad news recently. Perhaps you have already heard about this, but if not, I want to talk with you about it. About a month ago, I woke up to find out that I no longer exist. At least that is now the official position of the United States government. Over the last 14 years, more than 4,000 trans & gender-diverse people were reported murdered, 65% of whom were people of color.1 And now our government wants to strip us of our hard-won victories and make us disappear. In this time of extraordinary assaults on non-binary people, we need our allies to stand with us in our fight for human rights.
I was born with an intersex condition, raised in one gender & then transitioned to living in another gender. For a more than a quarter of a century, I have openly self-identified as a “Two Spirit” person. Now if you don’t know, Two Spirit is a term that the indigenous people of North America used to refer to the kind of human beings that exhibit “non-binary gender expressions.” It might imperfectly be defined as a kind of Gender Queer identity. Two Spirit is also used as a kind of umbrella term for individuals on the continuum of gender expressions. Such people have been part of the human family throughout time & across cultures. For example, there were:
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2025.03.09 | Treasure
Good morning church, welcome to the 260th Sunday of Lent. Could you imagine? For some of us it feels like we’re stuck in a moment and can’t get out of it. Sorry Pastor Ashley, we could have sang that U2 song today, but inspiration struck late last night. 260 Sundays happens to be 5 years. And today we commemorate 5 years since the pandemic lockdown, and so while we are definitely different than we were 5 years ago, we exclaim that we were and still are broken. While we have spent so much energy on community resilience and community empowerment, at times we find ourselves depleted, broken, and rough around the edges. As Bono says, “We’ve got to get ourselves together.”
Hoy conmemoramos los 5 años del confinamiento por la pandemia y, aunque definitivamente somos diferentes de lo que éramos hace 5 años, exclamamos que estábamos y seguimos estando destrozados. Si bien hemos dedicado tanta energía a la resiliencia y el empoderamiento de la comunidad, a veces nos sentimos agotados, destrozados y con los bordes ásperos. “Tenemos que recomponernos”.
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2025.03.05 | Shattered
Tonight, we begin our journey through the season of lent. Ash Wednesday, as the beginning of Lent, developed in the 5th - 6th centuries, and was mandated as a holy obligation in the 11th century. Although Protestants did not maintain this ritual for the most part, it has come back during the 20th century liturgical movement as an important time for reflection in which we reclaimed this symbol and ritual of our spiritual ancestors. It plays an important role in helping us make meaning in the brokenness of our lives—brokenness in ourselves, brokenness in our relationships, and brokenness in our communities and in our world. At times our lives feel as though they have been shattered. But God, through our relationship with Jesus, offers us the hope of healing, repair and transformation.
This is the essence of our readings tonight. In the reading from Matthew‘s gospel, Jesus invites us into relationship with him as a way of offering us rest and relief from our burdens and brokenness. And Henri Nouwen reminds us that only through returning to God again and again, and feeling God‘s faithful presence can we live with our brokenness and begin the search for healing and repair.
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2025.03.02 | Transfigured
Good morning, Beloveds!
Moments ago, you heard the recounting of the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus. What an amazing and powerful account it is! This vision, this experience that Peter, James and John had is considered “the mother of all epiphany stories,”1 and is found in all 3 of the synoptic gospels. Through their eyes we get see how Jesus’ identity as the Christ was revealed to his core disciples and, through them, to us. They were allowed to witness these events in order to strengthen their faith and ours. The passage is rich in imagery, with multiple layers of meaning, harmonizes with other scriptures and carries profound theological significance. It is a revelation that continues to unfold. There is far too much to unpack and I have had to leave out much of what the Holy Spirit shared with me, but I pray that you will find this reflection edifying.
Will you pray with me...
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2025.02.23 | FILL MY CUP WITH GRACE
We are called to live in a way that goes beyond what the world expects—an invitation to fill our cups with grace, and then to pour that grace into the lives of others. “Ama a tus enemigos, haz bien a los que te odian…”. Esto es un mensaje difícil, y a veces parece imposible, pero es el mandato de Jesús, que al amar a nuestros enemigos, podemos tener vidas más completas en Cristo. Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. These words are hard to preach, and even harder to live out. These words may feel impossible, but they are the counter-cultural path to a deeper, fuller life in Christ.
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2025.02.16 | Fill My Future with Vision
Good morning beloved! In the gospels, we repeatedly find Jesus among the marginalized, stigmatized and untouchables of his society. In every instance we see him respond to them without fear and without hesitation despite the fact that those around him usually try to block such interactions. It would be easy to dismiss this by saying “Well he was God in human form, the deity amongst us – what did he have to fear?” But the gospels also show us that Jesus wept, that he suffered and died an excruciating human death by way of public execution. He lived in a human body. He understood the risks, but he wanted to show us how to love one another.
Turn to your neighbor and say “I am made in the image of God.”
1
At the beginning of today‘s gospel reading, we see those described as sinners coming near to listen to Jesus’ message while the religious authorities stand on the periphery grumbling about his welcoming of these outcasts. Jesus responds by telling three parables. It is clear that we are to understand these as metaphors for God’s grace.
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2025.02.09 | Fill My Days with Meaning
In a superficial sort of way, this story of the calling of the disciples reminds me of my dad. Not because he was a committed disciple of Jesus—he wasn’t. But his vocation, the thing that gave his days meaning, was teaching. And the other thing that gave his days meaning was his favorite hobby—fishing. Teaching and fishing are the intertwined vocations at the center of this morning’s gospel reading from Luke.
My guess is that most of the sermons you might have heard on this text—and those from Mark and Matthew that are similar—have been about discipleship and how we should be willing to make sacrifices and give up everything to follow Jesus. If you come from a more conservative Christian tradition, you might have heard a sermon or two on the topic of fishing for people, urging hearers to go out and save souls for Christ. These interpretations aren’t wrong, necessarily, but they do fail to take into account “the real world [context] of first-century Roman Palestine.” (1) I have come to see that this story is less about winning disciples for Christ and more about Jesus’s invitation to a more meaningful life through embracing the reciprocity and abundance of an economy rooted in care for God’s Creation, and resistance to an economy based on resource extraction that profits the rich and elite.
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2024.02.02 | Fill My Wounds with Healing
Good morning beloved and may the peace of Christ be with you. Today we mark a special feast day, that of Candlemas, which not coincidentally falls mid-way between the winter solstice and spring equinox. Many traditions surround this special time in our earth's revolution around the sun. Immediately recognizable to us is Punxsutawney Phil. Do we know if he saw his shadow or not? Another tradition is Día de la Candelaria in which candles are blessed for use in homes for the last half of winter, tamales are made, completing the 40 days after Christmas, and baby Jesuses are blessed, celebrating baby Jesus being able to sit up on his own. Today you are invited to take candles that have been blessed into your homes, to continue letting our light shine brightly in the darkness. And after our service please stay and join us as we will have tamales ready for you to eat, to make, and to take! And you see those of you in the pews who got the Baby Jesus during our Tres Reyes festival!
Gracias a las Compañeras, hoy en celebración del Día de la Candelaria vamos a tener tamales para la hora de compañerismo después del servicio. También vamos a poder hacerlos todos juntos. Hoy vamos hablar de sanación y el momento en que Jesús tuvo que hablar la verdad a su comunidad. La gente acudía a Jesús con heridas en el cuerpo, la mente y el espíritu. Y los habitantes de la ciudad natal de Jesús interpretaron las Escrituras como promesas de un pacto exclusivo de Dios con ellos, un pacto que incluía promesas de liberación de sus opresores. Pero Jesús vino a anunciar una liberación, pero no se trataba de una liberación étnica o nacional, sino de la promesa divina de liberación para todos los pobres y oprimidos, independientemente de su nacionalidad, etnia, género o raza. Esto fue una buena noticia para muchos, pero para algunos, querían matarlo por decir estas cosas.
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2024.01.26 | Fill My Plans with Purpose
Scripture Reading: Luke 4:14-21
Good morning, Beloveds. I am grateful to have this opportunity to bring the message today! We have been using a liturgical theme titled "Six Stone Jars: the Economy of Jesus." I have come prepared to share my thoughts with you today around the sermon title “Fill My Plans with Purpose.” I will be exploring what we can do in the months and years ahead.
I have been unplugged for the last few days and want to note that this message was written before I learned about the mass deportations and other egregious acts that have begun taking place. I would have had more to say if I HAD known.
Friends, we are living in treacherous and dangerous times. The rotten core that this country was built on is boiling over. Authoritarianism and fascism are on the rise in this country. The forces of bigotry and hatred have been emboldened to openly spew their toxic rhetoric as if such ideas were completely reasonable. Public discourse has sadly become so murky and confused that these outrageous and vile lies are not just tolerated, but allowed to persist and grow. Some would rightly argue that this has been going on for a long time. But what is happening now has not been seen since it occurred in Germany between the world wars…
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2024.01.19 | Fill My House with Hoping
I don’t know about you, but it seems that just about every wedding I have been to, been in, or officiated at, something memorable has gone wrong. Not catastrophically so, like perhaps someone running off with the bride before the ceremony like the end of the movie The Graduate, but something memorable. I have watched several flowergirls or ring bearers have complete meltdowns, and I’ve witnessed more than one best man drop the ring while handing it to the groom. But I think my favorite wedding mishap story was at my cousin‘s wedding nearly 40 years ago. About 10 minutes before the ceremony was to begin, the groom leaned over to get a drink of water from a water fountain, and ripped his tuxedo trousers right up the back. Part of the video footage – and it is on videotape, not digital – is of my aunt sitting there in her mother-of-the bride dress, hastily stitching up the trousers to avoid further wardrobe malfunction. None of these mishaps was catastrophic; the weddings went on. They were joyful occasions, and we all had something good to laugh about afterwards.
So it’s not surprising to discover that first-century weddings were prone to mishaps as well. In our story from John’s gospel, the mishap is a big one: they run out of wine.
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2025.01.12 | Ripples
Baptism is a sacred moment of grace and initiation and while focus is often on the individual being baptized, what if the impact of this sacrament is not confined to the individual being baptized?
John the Baptist reminds us that baptism is not just an individual event; it’s an invitation to join something much larger than ourselves; to share and to make a splash doing it. In this sacred act, we are invited into a deeper relationship—not just with God, but with one another.
The act of baptism creates ripples. It sends out waves. And today, I want us to focus not just on the effect of baptism on us, but on how we, as individuals, shape baptism and the community we are part of through our own participation, through our own saying “yes” to God’s invitation, through our own shedding of chaff, and yes, wading in the waters.
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2024.01.05 | Another Road
In the months ahead, we will face difficult decisions. We may very well be asked to cooperate with systems that we know are not serving the common good, to remain silent in the face of abuses and injustice, or to participate in policies that harm the most vulnerable. But like the Magi, we are called to answer to a higher power, to a God whose vision for the world is radically different from the powers of this world.
Will we bow to the powers of this world that seek to control and oppress? Will we submit to the unjust systems that perpetuate harm and exclusion? Or will we, like the Magi, choose to take another road—a road of resistance, a road of disobedience to the powers that seek to destroy dignity of life, a road that aligns us with the God of liberation and justice? And though it may be filled with obstacles and set-backs, along the way we will celebrate joyously.
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2024.12.24 | THE STABLE: A PLACE OF LIGHT
So, as we stand on the brink of this new year, this new season, let us ask ourselves: How will we let our light shine? What will we do with this gift of light that has been given to us? Let us ask ourselves this holy night, “will we open our arms to God?”
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2024.12.22 | Bethlehem: A Place of Humility
Throughout this Advent season, we have been on a journey, on our way to Bethlehem. We started in Rome—a place of longing—and we heard again God's promise that even in the midst of trial and tribulation, there is hope. We journeyed on to Jerusalem—a place of waiting—and we found ourselves waiting for peace in a city whose name means “the place where peace is established.” We realized there that Christ brings not just inner peace, but a call to action, to be the peacemakers and strive to bring about the kin-dom of God here and now. Last week we visited Nazareth—a place of simplicity—and we heard again Mary's joyful “yes” to bringing the Light of Christ into the world. We watched with joy as our children reenacted their own creative journey to Bethlehem.
And now finally we find ourselves arriving in Bethlehem, a town just a few miles from Jerusalem, a small town whose name means “house of bread.”
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2024.12.15 | Nazareth: A Place of Simplicity
Since our “sermon” was the children’s pageant, there is no manuscript for today’s worship service.
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2024.12.08 | Jerusalem: A Place of Waiting
Good morning, beloved. I greet you all in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and I’m grateful to be together on this second Sunday of Advent. Today, we reflect on the theme of peace — paz, the wholeness that Jesus brings to our lives. And we do so while traveling on the path of Advent, "On the Way to Bethlehem."
Our Scripture this morning comes from the Gospel of Luke, a passage that introduces us to Zechariah and Elizabeth, a couple who have been waiting — waiting for a child, waiting for the fulfillment of God's promises. Just as their very names remind us, Zechariah is from the Hebrew “Zakar” or “to remember,” and Elizabeth’s name means “My God promises” making us, the readers, think: God remembers God’s promises. As we enter the story, we find them in Jerusalem, the holy city, a place of waiting for many people. Jerusalem was a place of anticipation and longing, a city that had long awaited the arrival of the Messiah.
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2024.12.1 | Lead Us on to the Light
Today is the first day of Advent and the start of our journey into a new year with Christians around the world. Throughout Advent and Christmas, we here at Eden church will be following a liturgical series created by the Worship Design Studio titled “On the Way to Bethlehem.” On this journey, we will travel from Rome, to Jerusalem, to Nazareth and arrive in Bethlehem in time for the birth of the miracle child, the baby king who is God enfleshed; Emmanuel, God with us.
As we prepare to embark on this journey together, I wanted to frame our collective understanding of why this journey is important by sharing some of Rob Fuquay’s reflections from the book that inspired the series. He writes:
“Any important journey requires preparation. (Careful consideration of such questions as) How will we travel? What will be our route? Will we break up the trip along the way? If so, where will we stay? What kind of weather should we expect? What clothing should we have? Will we need travel documents, other currency, inoculations?
For many people, the anticipation of a journey is half the fun. Doing all this work builds excitement about the places you will see and the experiences you hope to have. Our journeys shape us. We learn from them. We form and deepen relationships along the way. We have unexpected encounters that move us and provide memories that last the rest of our lives. One thing is for certain, we never return from a journey the same. (And) Some journeys even change our lives.
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2024.11.24 | Dreaming God's Dream
Sometime in the early 1830s, an enslaved young woman named Araminta Ross suffered a horrific brain injury. She was about 12 or 13 at the time, and her enslaver had hired her out to another farm as a field hand. She had gone into the village with the enslaved cook of the estate to help her purchase some dry goods at the village store. As she stood outside waiting for the cook, a young boy being chased by an overseer ran toward her and dashed into the dry goods store. The overseer picked up a two-pound iron weight that was used for measuring dry goods and threw it at the boy, but instead, the full force of this iron weight hit Araminta in the head so hard that it shattered her skull and drove the fabric of the shawl she was wearing on her head into the wound where it stuck. Apparently, Araminta had stepped in front of the young boy to protect him.
She was carried back to the farm, but she had no bed to be laid in, and so they laid her on the bench of the loom in the weaving room. No one tended to her. And the next morning, she was expected to get up and work in the fields. Which she did. But she was unable to sustain any work. As one of her biographers said of her, “the injury [caused] her often to fall into a state of somnolency, from which it is almost impossible to rouse her. Disabled and sick, her flesh all wasted away, she was returned to her owner. He tried to sell her, but no one would buy her.” Instead, her mother was able to nurse her back to health.
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