February 16, 2025 - Septuagesima

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

I’m the last person to ask for advice about plants. I’m not sure if it’s overwatering, underwatering, a lack of fertilizer, or putting them in the wrong places, but not even a cactus that would make it in the barren desert is safe in my care. So don’t take my advice about plants, but do listen to Jeremiah and the Psalmist, they have something worth listening to. Jeremiah says “Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals… they shall be a like a shrub in the desert… But blessed are those who trust in the LORD… they shall be like a tree planted by water.” And Psalm 1 declares that those whose delight is in the law of the LORD are “like trees planted by streams of water… everything they do shall prosper.”

February 9, 2025 - The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphanny

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Woe is me! I am lost.” Those words of the prophet Isaiah describe well what many have been feeling over the past several weeks. Another translation puts it as, “I am undone.” These days, there are two camps that most people identify with. One is just so sick and tired of the nonsense and division of politics that they have little to no tolerance for hearing about it at church. They want a respite and a shelter from all of that. They want church, and specifically the sermon, to speak about eternal truths instead of temporal realities. The other group wants to know that the Church sees the eroding of our democratic norms, they are perhaps afraid for themselves or someone they love, and they want assurance that God is aware of injustice, that this is a community that stands for something, and that our faith is relevant in our modern world.