Sermon: Sunday, October 25, 2015: Festival of the Reformation & Service of Leave-Taking

Today our hearts are breaking as we say our goodbyes to a home that has sheltered us, that has nurtured us, that has seen members of our families married and buried. Here in this place, within these walls, at this font and around this table, we have encountered the living God, and we have been changed. Without this place, we would never have grown strong enough to leave this place. Facing our death, year after year, we have come alive. We are being reformed. We are free, so who knows what will happen next?

Sermon: Sunday, October 26, 2014: Reformation Sunday

If the reformations of the past in science and society have anything to teach us, it is that there is life on the other side of these upheavals. It’s too early to know with any certainty where the church will be on the other side of this moment of evolution, but if we can pull back from our obsessive interest with describing what is and look at the signs of what is becoming, we might be encouraged to notice that there is a movement taking shape at the intersection of religion, politics, economics and identity. People around the world are crying out for new ways of ordering their life together in ways that are ethical, sustainable, and hospitable. More and more we want to find ways to live with dignity in the presence of diversity, to engage difference rather than to simply tolerate it.