The GLOW Show: Creation Story #1

What does the Bible say about creation and humans’ role as part of creation?  During the season of Easter on The GLOW Show, Pastor Sarah will explore biblical stories and passages that reveal God’s posture towards Earth, God’s call for humans as part of creation, and the ways Jesus’ ministry was deeply embedded in creation. Today, we explore the first creation story from Genesis 1:1-2:4a. Grab your Bible and enjoy!

Easter Sunday Sermon

Day of the Church Year: Easter Sunday

Gospel Passage: Mark 16:1-8

The stillness of this pandemic year, live streaming worship in the sanctuary with only a few people, Hope Hall largely empty, hours spent on the phone, on zoom, emailing, and texting instead of hours spent eye to eye at hospital bedsides, at the table in my office, in your homes, around tables in Hope Hall, or gathered for worship, the stillness of this pandemic year reminds me of the stillness of that first Easter morning.  When the sabbath is over, the disciples still fearfully locked in the upper room, the women go to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body with spices.  What they know is that Jesus is dead.  Two thousand years later, we may struggle to remember their perspective, that on Easter morning when they awoke, their friend and teacher was dead.  Suddenly, violently, unjustly dead.  A good man, a faithful Jewish man, one who welcomed and embraced people with great generosity of spirit.  Dead.  If what happened was only that a good man suddenly, violently, unjustly died in a Roman occupied Israel, people would have not proclaimed the good news of God’s saving love, no matter Jesus’ death, no matter Jesus’ preaching and teaching, no matter Jesus’ miracles and great love.  If what happened was only that a good man suddenly, violently, unjustly died in a Roman occupied Israel, most people would have shrugged their shoulders and moved on.  The disciples would have feared for their lives but eventually gone back to fishing and tax collecting.  The women would have mourned him and then returned to their families.  That’s it.  And when the women come to the tomb on Easter morning, that’s all they know.  Still, they come. 

They come wondering who will roll away the stone from the entrance to the tomb.  They come with spices.  They come even though it is dangerous.  They come not expecting a miracle, only a dead body.  They come expecting to honor and care for their friend and teacher.  This Easter, I am amazed by the women, their hope, their resilience, their courage, their steadfast love.  How easy it is to lock ourselves away, to avoid what is hard, to succumb to fear and lethargy.  They do not.  Instead, they practice resurrection.  Knowing only that Jesus is dead, they act with hope and courage, hope because anointing will make no difference at this point, courage because showing up at the tomb of a convicted criminal puts them at risk.  Only they will know that they’ve honored Jesus, but that is what they want.

This Easter, the women, with their practice of resurrection, inspire me. 

How do you practice resurrection?  What acts of hope and courage do you perform?  I invite you to think about it as I share how I do.  To practice resurrection for me means signing up for volunteer shifts at vaccination sites, taking part in the work that will bring stability and safety to the world.  It means for me keeping on with what I believe is important, even when I don’t do it well, trying and making mistakes, learning and growing.  To practice resurrection means for me not giving up on people, not giving up on anyone, seeing people’s beauty and gifts and just them, you, you precious, beloved children of God.  Our question of the day is: How do you practice resurrection?  What acts of hope and courage do you perform?  To read the community’s reflections, go to the Facebook live stream worship for April 4, 2021.

In a world bowed down by suffering and injustice of many kinds, will we act with hope and courage and perhaps a bit of foolishness?  Loving and serving and showing up for people is what Christ’s resurrection looks like here and now.  Working for justice, seeking peace, building loving community is what Christ’s resurrection looks like here and now.  Here we are this morning, driven to worship God, to serve others, to show up for our community, despite all the other things we could be doing today.  Though the Easter message of Christ’s resurrection may seem an irrational intellectual exercise, the resurrection of Christ is neither fanciful nor ephemeral. 

On that Easter morning, when the women come to anoint his body, Jesus is nowhere to be found.  The young man dressed in white tells them that Jesus is raised, that the disciples can find him in Galilee, the place where it all began.  The gospel of Mark tells us that the women are seized by terror and amazement such that they flee from the tomb and tell no one anything.  And that’s where Mark’s gospel ends.  But Christ’s resurrection had already changed the world for the women come to the tomb despite its senselessness, and fifty days later, the Holy Spirit will be poured out on all in Jerusalem to form the church.  Christ is risen on Easter morning, and Christ is risen among us.  We practice resurrection with hope and courage because, truly, Christ is risen.  Christ is risen indeed!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Amen.

Maundy Thursday Sermon

Day in the Church Year: Maundy Thursday

Gospel Passage: John 13:1-17, 31b-35

When Jesus gathers with his disciples, we already know that Judas will betray Jesus.  

Jesus had traveled and ministered with his disciples for three years, but he had never washed their feet before, an unsightly task for the Son of God. 

Jesus informs them: I am with you only a little longer...Where I am going, you cannot come. 

After three years, Jesus gives the disciples a new commandment and his last: to love one another. 

We do not know if the disciples sense change afoot, but we readers of the gospel of John certainly do.  Maundy Thursday ushers in change.  The disciples likely believe they will spend their lives accompanying Jesus in his ministry.  They likely expect that life with Jesus will only get better and better as Jesus ushers in the kingdom of God in glory and power.  Instead, Maundy Thursday brings grief.  Maundy Thursday ends abruptly with arrest and abandonment.  Maundy Thursday transports Jesus and the disciples to the cusp of something entirely new.

That cusp is possibly the scariest, most alive place we humans know.  March 15, 2020 when we announced to those who showed up for pancake breakfast that we would have to temporarily shut down the breakfast because of the coronavirus, and communication went out that we were canceling worship and all in person activities for at least two weeks.  September 11, 2001 when we woke up to images of planes flying into the World Trade Center towers.  The moment we ask ourselves: Is this the end of this relationship?  The day we step onto a plane or a bus or climb into our cars to travel to a different place and make a life there.  The day we begin college or move out of our parents’ house and we realize for the first time what it is to be on our own, making our own way in life.  The moment after the funeral, the necessary financial and legal knots untangled that we sit down and really take in: My dad is dead.  My mom is dead.  My spouse is dead.

This cusp is one of the scariest places we humans know because, on the cusp of something entirely new, we really do not know what will come next.  The scariest because we look into the future and don’t recognize the world: a world where terrorists fly planes into buildings, for instance.  This cusp is also one of the most alive places we know because, on the cusp of something entirely new, we cannot rely on what we’ve done before to guide us.  Standing on this cusp is a creative act, one that requires our full attention to the present moment.

This cusp is Maundy Thursday.  Jesus gathers with his disciples to wash their feet, to send them into lives of loving service, to give them a new commandment: to love one another.  He will go on to teach them and pray for them, and then, they enter a garden where Judas brings soldiers and police officers to arrest Jesus.  Suddenly, the disciples’ world stops, the way our worlds have stopped, and just as we have experienced, they are scared, perhaps panicked, disoriented.  In the gospel of John, Simon Peter and the disciple Jesus loves follow after the soldiers, police officers, and Jesus.  The rest of the disciples are not mentioned again until the third day.  Even though Simon Peter follows Jesus, when he stands warming himself in the courtyard of the high priest, Peter denies knowing Jesus to a bystander.  What will happen next to Jesus?  What will come of their lives?  Peter does not know.  The disciples who scatter do not know.  The world is askew; they are on the cusp of something entirely new. 

At this moment in history, we too are on the cusp of something entirely new.  A year ago, our collective life came to a sudden stop, and we had no idea what to expect.  Here we are again, at what I hope is the cusp of a post-pandemic world, a world that will not look the same as the pre-pandemic world.  In our own personal worlds, we may be on the cusp of something entirely new, a moment we will look back on, a time requiring deep breaths and courage and faith.  The world is askew, just as on that first Maundy Thursday.  On the cusp of something entirely new that they could neither control nor understand, the disciples hear a new commandment, a commandment to us dearly familiar: to love one another.    In the gospel of John, the very last act of Jesus’ ministry is washing the disciples’ feet.  He has lots to say to them that night, four full chapters of teaching we will hear in the coming weeks, but Jesus’ last command is embodied in his last act and it is simply to love. 

On the cusp of something entirely new, in a world that no longer feels secure or certain, at a time when we are forced to honestly say “I don’t know” more often than not, Jesus’ dearly familiar commandment is for us a guide.  I think about Jesus weighing that night: what will help my disciples move forward?  An act of love accompanied by a command to love. 

How do we move forward?  Most if not all of us get tangled up in the judgmental chatter of our minds, in the partisan chatter of the news, in the ceaseless worries and tensions and questions of this life.  On this cusp, we might feel bereft, like we just don’t know how to move forward.  But here, on the cusp that is Maundy Thursday, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet and commands them to love one another.  How do we move forward?  With love because God first loved us.  We discern the loving action, the deeply loving action, and then we do it because God first loved us.  Maundy Thursday shows us the love of Christ, love not as platitude but as dirty hands and aching knees.  We might be scared as we stand on the cusp of something entirely new.  Still, we are loved, and that love guides us always.  Amen.  

The GLOW Show: Mid-Week Lenten Worship 5

We gathered for mid-week Lenten worship in the courtyard for the last time on March 24, sang Holden Evening Prayer, and heard stories of grief and hope from both Luke 7 and a member of our own community, Steph Rodin. Enjoy, and sing along!

New Sunday Morning Schedule

Beginning Sunday, April 11, Sundays will look different at Grace than they have for the past year.

6:15 am Pancake Breakfast Volunteers Arrive / Kitchen

7:30-8:15 am Pancake Breakfast / Courtyard

9:00-9:30 am In-Person Worship / Sanctuary

9:30-9:45 am Sunday Spirit / Zoom

10:00-11:00 am Grace Time / Zoom

10:00-10:30 am Walk-Up Holy Communion / Courtyard

11:00-11:45 am Live Stream Worship / Facebook Live

12:30-1:00 pm Community Building Coffee / Zoom

In-person, indoor worship will be significantly different than what we normally expect on a Sunday morning.

• Worship will be 30 minutes long, and after, we will immediately adjourn to the courtyard for conversation, if desired, instead of talking inside the building.

• We will not be singing during in-person, indoor worship due to singing’s riskiness in transmitting the virus.

• We will wear masks at all times while inside buildings with the brief exception of the moment when we receive Holy Communion.

• We will be distanced within the sanctuary and sit only in designated pews.

• We will use the sanitizer at the door when arriving and honor physical distancing guidelines of six feet. That means no hugging, shaking hands, or touching of any kind.

  As we make this transition, please remember that every person gets to choose their own boundaries and take their own calculated risks. We each have our own comfort level related to Covid-19. However, when we are here at church, the guidelines above are intended to care for the members of our community who feel comfortable coming to worship inside. We will honor these boundaries for the sake of one another. Even if we personally feel safe hugging someone, for instance, that does not mean the other person feels the same.

Pancake Breakfast Reopening

The weekly pancake breakfast will reopen Sunday, April 11 with pancakes and sausage, juice and coffee served outside of Hope Hall from 7:30 to 8:15 am. Guests will be welcome to eat socially distanced in the courtyard or take their food to go.

As is the tradition, people of Grace serve the breakfast on the first Sunday of the month, so our first serving date is Sunday, May 2. Please arrive at church between 6:15 and 6:30 am; we will finish by no later than 9:00 am. Of course, please wear a mask, or one will be provided for you. In the past, we have served biscuits and gravy on the first Sunday of the month, instead of pancakes. This decision is still TBD; please share any thoughts or questions with Pastor Sarah, Evalyn Ehleh, or Gene Bell.

Seeking Outreach Coordinator for Summer 2021

Outreach Coordinator Job Description

Full Time / May 15-September 15, 2021

Position Summary:

The outreach coordinator will coordinate and oversee the summer heat respite program (modified significantly for public health safety).

Reports Directly to:  Solveig Muus, chairperson of the Outreach Team and Pastor

Position Requirements:

• Embrace the ethos of the Heat Respite program

Our Heat Respite mission statement: Our mission during the summer months is to provide a space for heat relief while building community through the sharing of community resources, meals, water, and ourselves in a place of being, belonging, and becoming.

This ethos is most clearly articulated by Roman Catholic layperson Jean Vanier who wrote: “In the midst of all the violence and corruption of the world, God invites us today to create new places of belonging, places of sharing, of peace and of kindness, places where no one needs to defend themselves; places where each one is loved and accepted with one’s own fragile abilities and disabilities.  This is my vision for our churches: that they become places of belonging, places of sharing.”

• Attention to Detail: Consistently attends to the many small pieces which must be assembled into an organized whole; comfortable with Microsoft Word, Excel, Publisher, Facebook, and email

• Integrity and Trust: Is seen as trustworthy by others; practices direct, honest, and transparent communication; admits mistakes; responds to situations with consistency and reliability; respects the autonomy of each individual

• Interpersonal Skills: Works well with people; uses diplomacy and tact; is approachable; avoids triangulation

• Emotional Intelligence: Demonstrates strong and appropriate personal boundaries in relationships; is emotionally and spiritually mature; can maintain a non-anxious presence in the midst of turmoil; not overly dependent upon outside affirmation; can stand in the presence of others’ strong emotions without taking responsibility for them or reacting to them externally or internally; does not hold grudges or bitterness; practices forgiveness and generosity in interpersonal relationships; values individuals’ gifts and accepts individuals’ limitations without demeaning them

• Personal Resiliency: Can shift gears comfortably; can comfortably handle risk and uncertainty; is flexible

• Project Management: Identifies the key objectives and scope of a proposed project; develops a thorough and realistic plan for achieving key objectives; implements action plans, communicates progress to team members and volunteers

• Quick Response to Emergencies

Principal Accountabilities:

·         Oversee the tracking and acknowledgement of donations of Grace Room items, food, and money given specifically for outreach programs

·         Along with the outreach team and led by the outreach director, brainstorm ideas for a heat respite program that works with Covid-imposed boundaries necessary to keep everyone healthy

·         Reach out to ministry partners with volunteer and giving opportunities

·         Coordinate with human service providers to meet the needs of heat respite participants

·         Recruit heat respite volunteers

·         Train and supervise heat respite volunteers

·         Serve as first point person for resolving conflicts and questions at heat respite alongside outreach director and pastor

·         Along with the outreach director, write occasional articles for the newsletter, announcements for Facebook, and information for the Grace website about outreach programs

·         Attend staff meetings

·         Attend Sunday morning worship at least twice per month to communicate with the congregation about the heat respite program

·         Attend monthly Outreach Team meetings (2nd Tuesday @ 6:30 pm) and quarterly Ministry Night

To Apply

Send your resume, cover letter, and at least two references to Pastor Sarah Stadler at pastorsarah@graceinthecity.com.  For questions, you may reach Pastor Sarah at the Grace office at 602-258-3787.

Sermon for Sunday, March 21

Day in the Church Year: 5th Sunday of Lent

Gospel Passage: John 12:20-33

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus speaks to the crowds gathered for Passover in Jerusalem, a foreshadowing of the week’s unfolding.  He says, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, if bears much fruit.  Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” 

I have a box filled with small bags of seeds under my bed, far from sunlight, saved from flowers and beans, arugula and kale grown in my garden the previous season.  These seeds will one day take root in my garden again, but for right now, they lay in a box in the dark.  They hold within them the capacity for life when coupled with soil and water and sunshine.  Truly beautiful and miraculous.  Early in my gardening days, I wondered why people grew such funny looking vegetables that no one knew how to cook.  Kohlrabi, parsnips, Jerusalem artichokes.  Through reading and talking with farmers, especially those who farm with organic heritage seed, I learned that seeds hold only so much capacity.  While some seeds can lay dormant for generations in the right conditions, others may fail to produce if not planted the very next year.  Seeds rely on people to put them in the ground, to grow the vegetable, and to save the resulting seed at the end of the vegetable’s growing cycle—in order to extend the life of the seed.  Without allowing the dormant seed to be buried in soil, without allowing the seed to “die” to use Jesus’ term, new life is not possible.  The seed cannot bear fruit without being planted, with “dying.”  The seed cannot bear more seed—which enables even more fruit in subsequent generations—without dying. 

Jesus compares a grain of wheat with his own life.  If he were to hold onto that grain indefinitely, forever saving it, using his almighty power to extend its life, unwilling to let it be buried in soil and touched by water and sunlight, it could never produce more wheat.  But a grain of wheat, a seed, that allows itself to be buried and then sprout and grow can feed the world.  So too with the life of Jesus.  Jesus lets go of his life—in order to bring life to the world.

I think about those seeds far from soil, water, and sunlight in the box under my bed.  I love having them, keeping them, sorting through them, knowing they are there for me whenever I choose to plant them.  So much richness in that box, a history of all the plants that have lived in my yard.  But if I keep these seeds in the box under my bed, they will never produce fruit, and they will never produce more seed.  They will simply lie dormant in the box under my bed.  If they lie there long enough, they may lose the capacity to produce fruit and more seeds. 

We might be tempted to hold onto our lives in a similar way.  To not risk.  To avoid difficulty.  To circumvent vulnerability.  You’ll get no finger pointing from me; I am so very familiar with this tendency.  I run up against my desire to control various aspects of my life...and only by the grace of God do I recognize the joy of letting go...sometimes.  Honestly, I wish I could just learn how to let go once and for all!  Maybe that is a spiritual practice for an upcoming season.  But in the meantime, I hear Jesus instruct the crowd: Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  I don’t think Jesus is instructing the crowd and us to despise our lives or despair of the world but rather to let go of our tight control on our lives.     

What I mean: I spoke with someone on the phone a couple days ago who shared that her husband has what she terms “crazy dreams” about business ventures and acts of compassion and places to move.  Of course we can’t do that, she said to me.  And maybe they can’t and shouldn’t given the circumstances of their lives, but how often do we each do this: dismiss out of hand dreams that God may have for us, a call God may have placed on our lives—because it doesn’t fit with our own plan for our lives?

What I mean: This same person, the woman whose husband has “crazy dreams,” said, “You know me.  I’m mainstream.  I’m conventional.  I don’t do those things.”  Sometimes, we get bound up in our identity.  For her: mainstream or conventional.  For any of us: perhaps our professional identity, our liberal or conservative identity, our idea of what it is to be a moral person.  Truthfully, while sometimes these identifies are life-giving, other times, these identities do not serve us when they stop us from considering God’s call. 

What I mean: In this pandemic, I have personally learned and heard many others articulate a recognition of how they used to use their time.  Do we want to go back?  Maybe not. Maybe we have discovered in all these restrictions ways of being that bring greater life to us and others.  When forced to let go of certain aspects of the lives we have cultivated, perhaps we have realized some pieces we will let go of indefinitely.  The opposite may also be true: perhaps in this pandemic, when forced into new patterns, we have come to recognize aspects of life that are truly life-giving that we need going forward.

Our question of the day is: What does it mean for you to let go of tight control on your life—that you might respond to God’s call?  To read the community’s response, go to the Facebook live stream worship for Sunday, March 21.

Our lives are like seeds waiting to be planted that they may bear fruit not only for us but for the world God so loves.  Planting our lives in the rich soil of God’s call is risky.  For Jesus, letting go in his life meant literal death...but we know that death is but a path to life.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

The GLOW Show: Mid-Week Lenten Worship 4

On Wednesday nights during Lent, we gather to sing Holden Evening Prayer, to read stories from scripture of grief and hope, and to hear from members of our community about their experiences of grief and hope. Tonight, we hear the story of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha from John 11 and from our own Ken Ehlen. Sing along!

Sermon for Sunday, March 14

Sunday in the Church Year: 4th Sunday in Lent

Gospel Reading: John 3:14-21

My home sits on a corner with the house right in the middle of a large lot.  Nearly four years ago when I first purchased the house, I started planting bushes and trees.  Rubber vines and bamboo first, then peach trees and citrus, then deciduous trees.  A garden of greens and beans, radishes and tomatoes.  After that came a brilliant bougainvillea, a yellow bells, agave, and a variety of cacti.  Later, a bank of wildflowers, a fig tree, a mulberry, a pomegranate.  Later still, a honeysuckle, flowers in pots, rosemary.  14 trees in all, a full foot of mulch on every inch of the yard except for the garden, a compost bin to supplement every planting.  And of course, chickens!  Right now, seven hens and three young chicks provide eggs and entertainment, but the chickens are not the only creatures living in the backyard.  Orange Cat sneaks her way over the concrete wall to nibble on garden produce, and Gray Cat settles into her spot across from the chicken coop door every day so routinely she could be going to work.  From time to time, Fluffy Cat makes an appearance atop the chicken coop.  Collared doves and hummingbirds, curve-billed thrashers and house sparrows, and these tiny birds whose name we do not know fly about, splash in the water dish, find refuge in leafy trees, compete with the chickens for food scraps.  Birds and bees, flies and butterflies pollinate flowers and garden plants and gift us with dropped seeds that spring to life in random places.  Before I settled into my home four years ago, I never imagined the life of the world, specifically the life of Earth, to be as complex, rich, and diverse as I do now...and this is just one corner lot on the boundary between a historic district and an industrial area in one of the largest cities in the United States.  

Of course, we know that the United States is just one nation among many on Earth and Earth just the beginning of the cosmos.  We can hardly fathom the expanse of the universe.  We put a man on the moon, but the moon is only 238,000 miles away.  Our solar system, the planets that rotate around the sun as we do, is generally measured in astronomical units or AUs.  1 AU is 93 million miles, the distance from Earth to the sun, and our solar system is about 2,000 AUs in diameter.  Our solar system hangs on an arm of the Milky Way galaxy which is 106,000 light years across.  The Milky Way galaxy is part of a “local group” comprised of 2 clusters of galaxies, and we are further part of the Virgo Supercluster, superclusters being groups of clusters.  In the observable universe, there are 10 such superclusters.  Physicists are still not exactly sure, but there may be multiple universes.  And there you have it, the cosmos. 

I share both an intimate portrait of a piece of land and the vast expanse of the universe because the most familiar and beloved verse of the Bible begins: For God so loved the world…  But how the Greek reads is For God so loved the cosmos…  As humans consumed by our own glory and, at the very least, our own activities, we can forget that God created more than simply us.  The life of the planet in its rich diversity teems.  There may not be life anywhere else in the universe, but planets of iron and hydrogen and methane and bundles of hydrogen and helium, called stars, extend beyond our wildest imagination.  This is the cosmos God loves.  We humans are but a small part of it.  Certainly, the creation stories from Genesis tell us that we hold a special place on Earth, that of tilling and keeping Earth, of stewarding its resources, but when we imagine the love of God for the world, what may fill our minds is our corner of the known universe, the people we know and love, the matters important to us.  Naturally.

When the gospel writer John composes his testimony of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, contrary to the authors of the other gospels, John begins at creation.  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.  And the Word was God.  Jesus, the Word of God, appears at the beginning of all time.  John’s scope is larger than Matthew’s, Mark’s, and Luke’s, so how very appropriate that, when John relates Jesus’ teaching to Nicodemus about the love of God, Jesus uses the word cosmos.  Jesus proclaims the good news of God’s love for the whole cosmos, for all creation.  God sends the Son into the world not to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.  The posture of God toward the whole cosmos is one of love, not condemnation. 

I wish there were a more sophisticated point to my sermon.  But quite simply, God so loves the cosmos, us and all creatures, plants and trees, vegetables and grains, sun and stars, moons and planets.  Our question of the day is: What difference does it make to you that God so loves the world and not simply you?  To read the community’s reflections, go to the Facebook live stream feed for Sunday, March 14.

We in our busyness, in our humanness, can forget that God created the cosmos, a cosmos of rich diversity and unending expanse.  We can forget that God created the cosmos, a cosmos that God so loves that God sent the Son into the world to save it.  For that, we say: Thanks be to God!  Amen.

The GLOW Show: Mid-Week Lenten Worship 3

During Lent, we gather to sing Holden Evening Prayer and reflect on the theme Mourning Into Dancing: Making Space for Grief. Tonight, we hear about the journey of grief and hope for the people of Nineveh from the book of Jonah as well as the journey of grief and hope for Grace member Lori Cecil. Listen and sing along!