In the book of Acts, we encounter this story about the Apostle Paul and his big speech in Athens to a lofty, spiritual, highly educated community of people who prided themselves on being “thinkers,” people who thought about things in big ways, abstract ways, who studied and wrote poems and prose. They were a people who loved to know things. They were also a religious bunch, and worshipped many gods and saw their lives, their entire beings, as having divine purpose. Everything was interconnected, and so when Paul sees shrine for an “unnamed god,” it was through this image, this symbol, this way of knowing and worshipping for the people of Athens, that is how he decided to introduce the crowd that had gathered to the resurrected Jesus. Because, as Paul firmly believed, the image of the unknown god can actually illustrate an important truth not only for the folks of Athens, but even us, the folks of the United States, some two thousand years later: the Good News, the Gospel of Jesus, will always meet people right where they are, no matter the setting, the language, or the everyday concepts that are unique to them and their circumstances.1

Every time I read this story, I cannot help but reflect on the moments in life where I was introduced to Jesus and maybe didn’t know it at the time. Now, I may not have encountered Jesus through a statue for an unnamed God, but I like to believe I met Jesus through a woman named Laurie, who taught me week after week in Sunday school, in VBS programs, on Wednesday nights and so many other times I lost track, that God’s love was grand and that even children, especially children, could know and understand and encounter the love of God. I think I met Jesus later on in life too, when I stood atop an Irish hillside, staring out at a field so green, so vast, dotted with cows and sheep and trees, and a dear, dear friend who stood next to me whispered, as we were both lost for words to understand such beauty: “you know, God could have put us in a blank white void and we would have never known the difference. But God gave us this.” I’ve met Jesus time and time and time again at the communion table, sometimes in the form of grape juice and a wafer, at other times fresh-baked bread and wine. I like to believe I met Jesus in my great-grandmother, who, without fail, always had a table overflowing with food waiting for us when we would come by for a visit. I’m pretty sure I met Jesus in the college professors who dared to invite me to imagine a God who was bigger and beyond the box I had subconsciously been taught to put God in. I know I met Jesus when I rocked a little boy from Iran to sleep in a church nursery on the south side of Cleveland, Ohio, while his mom was in the next room over, doing all she could to learn English and to try to make a home for her and her family here as refugees in the United States. In countless ways, experiences, people, and even symbols, I have met Jesus in a way that affirms what the Apostle Paul was saying to those who had gathered to hear him speak: the God of all creation has come near to be among us, and desires to not be some “unknown god” but a known God in that nearness, through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

When did you meet Jesus? Maybe like me, you can look back on your life and point out several times where, in a moment, God felt unknown to you, but now, you see how God has been revealing Godself time and time again. Maybe at a specific place, like in a church pew or beside a bonfire at a camp. Maybe with specific people, a teacher, a neighbor, an unlikely friend. Maybe you’ve met Jesus in some of the symbols around us: the changing of the seasons each spring and the promises that life is once again anew even after the brutal death of winter. Maybe you meet Jesus in the sacraments of communion, in the bread or cup, and the waters of baptism. Maybe scripture itself has helped take a God who was unknown before into a known God in your everyday life. Maybe you have been introduced to Jesus through music, sacred or secular. Or maybe, it is in the abundant goodness of Moravian sugar cake that you have come to know the abundant goodness of the God with us.

This story of Paul sharing the Gospel with the people of Athens also always makes me think, by what means might we introduce others to Jesus? How will we choose to make the risen Jesus known? How will we look at the world around us, the culture in which we live, the moment in time we occupy, the language we speak, how might these parts of who we are help us to imagine ways to share the ever expanding love of God with those who still do not yet know the God who came to live among us, in the flesh, who lived, died, and rose again because there is absolutely nothing, not even something as final and ferocious as death that can keep God from being with us? The Rev. Dr. Matt Skinner, a professor out of Luther Seminary in Minnesota, notes that Paul wanted everyone listening to know that “salvation doesn’t exist in some pure, unadulterated form with no connection to human languages, cultures, and our foundational assumptions about the world.”2 The Gospel message that Paul preaches, is an embodied one, an alive one because it is the Good News about an embodied, a living God. And in this season of Eastertide, we joyfully celebrate this Good News because it is in the resurrected life of Jesus that our hope resides.

God does not just want to be known to us for knowledge’s sake or for some twisted sense of vanity and power. No, God wants to move from being unknown to known in our lives because God has made a promise to all of creation through the resurrection of Jesus. Through Jesus, through the work of the resurrection, God has promised to restore what has been broken, to change what has been stuck and stagnant, to bring justice and righteousness into our embodied way of life. Knowing God is not merely this lofty, spiritual endeavor, but an enfleshed, life-long, lived experience. Because we believe that ours is a resurrected God, a living God, we can also believe that in countless ways every single day, God is connecting with people like you and like me, making the change from being unknown to known. God is in places and spaces, revealing Godself through symbols and sacraments and people. Ours is an enfleshed God who we get to know through particular and unique and also universal ways that connect with who we are. Because, beloveds, first and foremost, we are known by God.

So wherever you might find yourself this morning, maybe as someone who has known Jesus for decades or maybe as someone who feels as though you actually have never quite known Jesus, wherever you are, hear this good news: ours is the God whose love is always drawing closer and closer, making Godself known to you in a way that connects with exactly who and how God made you. And this is certainly very good news, thanks be to God, amen.

I wrote this poem of lament in 2019 as part of a seminary homework assignment, where we had been asked to write an honest lament that mirrored the psalms. Back then, this poem was written in lament for those who had senselessly lost their lives in state-sanctioned violence and for those the Church had caused so much harm. I still lament that with each passing year, this poem remains far too relevant.

If you are like me and are also feeling like getting biblical and tearing your clothes in mourning, flipping tables in righteous anger, or prophetically speaking truth to power, and yet feel as though there is no breath left in your lungs, this one, dear ones, with a few new edits, is for you.

A Prayer of Lament

Oh God, have you turned your face away? 
Lord, do you no longer hear us when we pray? 
Your children have been forgotten + abused, 
Your daughters have been silenced and bruised. 
Based on skin color your loved ones have been slaughtered; 
Lord, where have you been? 
Can you not see? God, what did we do to make you flee? 

Oh God, have you turned your face away? 
Lord, do you no longer hear us when we pray? 
Your children have been forgotten + abused, 
Your daughters have been silenced and bruised. 
Based on skin color your loved ones have been slaughtered; 
Lord, where have you been? 
Can you not see? God, what did we do to make you flee? 

In your name, lives have been laid waste. 
In your name we have been divided based on race. 
In your name lies have become truth. 
In your name older generations led astray our youth. 
O Lord, have you turned your face away? 
What did we do to make things be this way? 

Oh God, do you no longer hear their cries? 
Lord, did you truly divert your loving eyes? 
The child left alone with their teacher, 
And the mother who believed him to be a healer. 
The young girl who trusted her pastor, 
And the father forced to cover up a disaster. 
Lord, do you no longer see their tears? 
God, where have you been all these years? 

In your name scripture has been weaponized. 
In your name victims are ostracized. 
In your name abusers walk free today. 
In your name offenders are allowed to stay. 
O Lord, have you turned your face away? 
Will things always be this way? 

O God, when will you step in and liberate? 
Lord, how much longer must we wait? 
There are women being told they are incapable of leading, 
With any defense shut down and labeled a misreading. 
There are daughters with gifts given by you to share, 
But the only spaces they may occupy are childcare. 
Lord, can you not see her pain? 
God, where is your distain? 

In your name hatred of differences is allowed. 
In your name bigots and racists feel proud. 
In your name hostile words are painted on signs. 
In your name animosity fills our headlines. 
O Lord, have you turned your face away? 
Please remember your children today! 

O God, where have you been? 
Lord do you not see the injustice of the church’s division? 
An unarmed man woman is robbed of his her life 
While the church down the street takes a stand for the officer’s rights. 
An immigrant child yanked from her mother’s his father’s arms, 
While a pastor down the street bends a knee to his forearms. 
Lord where is your compassion? 
God, how long must we wait for you to spring into action? 

In your name wars are waged. 
In your name generations have been enslaved. 
In your name protests against love have been staged. 
In your name children are caged. 
O Lord, have you turned your face away? 
Hear our cries, please do not delay! 

O God, what have we done to have you turn away from us? 
Was our complacency so treasonous? 
A silent church in a time of great distress, 
We follow your example less and less. 
A church ignoring the issues of our day, 
I cringe at the thought of what you might say. 
God, would you give us one more chance? 
May we finally have the courage to take a stand. 

A full manuscript of the sermon can be found below.

We hear a lot about Mary, and even from Mary, Jesus’ mom, in the Advent and Christmas scriptures. Mary has such incredible agency as her side of the story is described. We witness her bone-deep fear. We hear her questions. We bear witness to her “yes.” We are serenaded by her magnificat where she prophesies about who her Son will be and all he will do to break the chains of suffering and injustice that have shackled far too many people for generations, while kicking the mighty off their thrones.

Someone we spend significantly less time with this season is Joseph, Mary’s husband and Jesus’ earthly father. Maybe it is because we see Joseph significantly less in the entirety of the gospels’ narratives. Maybe it is because he doesn’t speak at all. And yet, Joseph plays such a significant role in the Advent and Christmas story. In his steadfast faithfulness to showcase his faith not with words, but with actions, Joseph invites all those who meditate upon his side of the story of Jesus’ annunciation, of how God invited Joseph to be a part of this story and equipped him to do so, to go and do likewise.

The scriptures tell us that Joseph was a righteous man. This description invites us to imagine the righteous in our lives. The folks with upstanding reputations, the people we trust to do the right things at the right times. The people who follow the rules and are steadfast in their faithfulness. We can easily imagine that Joseph has done the “right” things in his life up to this point, and then he is thrown this incredible, unbelievable curveball. His fiancée is pregnant, and she claims it is an act of God. No one can fault Joseph for likely not believing her at first. The fear that must have come over him as all these carefully laid plans he had for his life were suddenly, completely upended. And yet, Joseph is a righteous man. Even as he makes plans to break their engagement, by all intents and purposes, divorcing Mary before their lives together even began, Joseph wants to do so quietly. He does not want to put Mary at more risk, because he knew the future that awaited her: the scorn, the scoffing, the isolation, the casting aside, the poverty, the shame, even the possible risk of death. A woman, unmarried and having a child alone, would have been a terrifying life sentence, and yet, Joseph knew the “right” thing would be to separate himself since he wasn’t directly involved. Or at least, that appears to be what he thought at first.

Just as happened with Mary, an angel appears not necessarily to quell anyone’s fears, but to extend a message from God, to say, “I see you are afraid, give me your hand.” The angel confirms all that Mary has told Joseph. She will bear the Savior of the world, the Son of God. The child within her is the God-With-Us, Emmanuel. And Joseph is invited to join in this topsy-turvy, unbelievable plan to bring God into this world. Innocent and mild. Completely and utterly dependent upon those entrusted to care for the soon-to-be newborn. “Do not be afraid,” the angel tells Joseph, “for the God With Us will be with you.”

We don’t hear Joseph’s response. Joseph’s story and his faith are not ones with words but with actions. When Joseph woke from his dream, when his vision of the angel from God ended, Joseph didn’t do the right thing by his community’s standards, by societal expectations, but he did the right thing by Mary and by God. Sometimes, it seems, what the community or culture around us believes is right and what God says is right do not always align. Mary said yes to God, and yet we know she did so with more than a little fear and trembling because she knew what was at risk by doing so. She still needed a companion, someone to be with her and stand at her side.1 Joseph, moved by that Divine inbreaking in his own life, moves through his fears of losing his own reputation, his own righteousness in the eyes of others, and reaches out, offering Mary his hand just as God offered a hand to Joseph. Just as God promised God’s presence, Joseph does the same for Mary and the child within her. In her commentary, Rev. Dr. Boyung Lee proposes that it is in this story we bear witness to how “God’s work in the world unfolds not through lone heroes, but through the joined hands of those who choose: relationship over self-protection, accompaniment over certainty, and presence over perfection.”2

The Bible is an interesting text because it isn’t just stories for us to read as we do any other book. When we engage with scripture, we are invited to bring it into our everyday lives. To ask, “What does this have to say to me, in my present moment, about me, about the world, about God?” When we do so with Matthew 1:18-25, we realize that this story is not only about Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus. It is about us, too.3 Still in our present day, two thousand years and so many empires removed, there are still people in our communities who, like Mary, are at risk because of what they carry. And still in our present day, there are people like Joseph, whose very bodies they embody offer them more safety, more security, more power and protection.4 This Advent season, as we reflect on the themes of hope, peace, joy and love, invites us not simply to “be not afraid,” but to act with love in the midst of fear.5 We are certainly not called to fix everything; that is an insurmountable task, but we are being invited to take notice and to show up with faith and with courage. We are invited to extend our hands as an act of solidarity first modeled to us by the God With Us, who, upon rereading this story this past week, I couldn’t help but wonder, may have learned a thing or two about standing with the vulnerable from his earthly father. When we do so, whether that be with the refugees or immigrants in our communities, the people enduring housing and food insecurities, the single parents, the people whose skin color or who they choose to love puts them on the outskirts, when we extend our hand, we are an extension of the love of the God With Us. We do not have to fear love, for when we say yes, either through word or deed, we can trust that God is with us.

When fear grips us, may we not follow our first inclinations to pull away, to step back, to distance ourselves, even if we think it might be the “right” thing to do. May we not mistakenly think that another person’s suffering and struggles do not impact us, even if, at first glance, it might seem as though we are not directly involved. But instead, might we each hear God’s call to extend our hands. Might we show up, in word and action, and model what Jesus most certainly learned from his earthly father as much as his heavenly one: the power and presence of incarnate living. Of standing with the vulnerable and leveraging the privileges we carry to provide shelter and protection to those who need it most. I cannot think of a better act of love to highlight on this last Sunday in the Advent season. This kind of incarnate love is indeed good news for us this morning. Thanks be to God, amen.

Did you happen to catch what was missing in our Gospel text today? And actually, there are actually two things missing in Luke’s account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem that all three other gospels make sure to include. Both missing elements are rather important to how we celebrate and mark this first day of Holy Week. Any guesses? In Luke’s account of this story, we see no palms and we do not hear “Hosanna!” Instead, we are given a picture of people only laying their cloaks along the road. Also, it is not a fickle crowd shouting praises on Sunday and then death on Friday, but this is the great multitude of Jesus’ disciples who ring out in loud proclamations of blessings as they explicitly welcome the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Some of the Pharisees are concerned, maybe because they disagree theologically and ideologically, but quite possibly because they, like the crowd, like Jesus understood that what they were saying was going to draw the attention of Rome and was therefore dangerous. Because Rome was never really known to deal kindly with dissent, with pushback, with protests, and to proclaim there was another was king, and that peace was arriving on their shoulders, would have been quite the challenge to a government that claimed Pax Romana, Roman peace, was the way peace in these lands, and would be, eventually, in the whole world.

As Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a colt, a small, young animal yet to be employed for service before this moment, he is the embodiment of contradiction. Conquering kings rode into Jerusalem on war horses, led in by their victorious armies while donning their riches and spoils of war. There would be proclamations of power, of success, making sure that everyone witnessing this grand event knew who was in charge. They were strong, forceful, unrelenting and certainly unapproachable. Jesus, instead, rides in on a colt, with the torn and tattered cloaks of his disciples being his seat and royal carpet. He has made the decision to enter what will become a deadly situation for himself, and possibly even his followers without any force or protection. Unlike other kings, Jesus gives himself freely, he holds nothing back. This moment is most certainly a tangible sign of God’s vulnerable love for this world. The risk is great, and yet, the promise of God’s reconciling love remains the thread of hope through it all. This is how God will bring peace, and it looks nothing like any efforts of Rome or any other empire that has come before or will come after.1

We hear too, the fragile yet hopeful cries of his disciples as they proclaim Jesus is indeed the king who comes in the name of the Lord and the time is drawing near when he will fulfil the prophetic words of his mother all the way back in the beginning of Luke’s Gospel. The song that she uttered, when his birth was first foretold. These disciples have hope because of what they have already seen, what they have witnessed, what they have experienced. They know, deep in their souls, that Jesus offers something different. As one commentary puts it, Jesus is a leader “of sinners and outcasts, the poor and the oppressed, [all of whom] call us to join the worship of the one who [has, as his mother said he would] “brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly … filled the hungry with good things,/ and sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:52-53), [this is] the God who “has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them” (Luke 1:68), [this is] the God who gives “light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,” [this is] the God who will “guide our feet into the way of peace (Luke 1:79)”.2

Hope in the midst of great turmoil can sometimes feel foolish, sometimes it can even feel dangerous. There were some Pharisees in this crowd, Luke tells us, and they expressed their concern over this small protest Jesus and his followers were putting on. They urge the disciples to be quiet, to not challenge the status quo, possibly because they disagreed with the sentiment but even more likely out of fear for how Rome might retaliate against Jesus, against his followers, against all the children of God who were making their way into Jerusalem for the celebration of Passover. Which is a festival of liberation. And in response Jesus turns to them in what I do believe was a moment of great compassion, telling them if these human disciples stop, the rocks among them would cry out. In other words, there are just some things that must be said and some messages will make themselves heard. When Jesus uses the imagery of rocks crying out, he employs the language of the prophets who have come before him and reminds those with him and us today that this whole world is tied up together. Together we experience distress and we experience blessing. Together we experience life and we experience death. The peace of God that Jesus is ushering in is about the restoration of all creation. So yes, even if those who call themselves disciples, both yesterday, today, or even tomorrow are silent, the stones, the very foundations of our created world will cry out that peace, true peace is on its way.3

The question that I believe is prompted by the Triumphal Entry of Jesus, by Palm Sunday, is this: “Do we yearn, deep in our souls, for a king--for a different kind of king?”4 Do we yearn, deep in our souls for a kingdom--for a different kind of kingdom, one built on love for all, built on the promise that God’s peace is about the work of reconciliation, of restoration of all things to one another? Like many who study the Bible I have wrestled with King and Kingdom language because I don’t think any form of leadership of God’s or any community created by God can be encapsulated by human systems that we know to be so broken and often abusive. But as we continue to see, all around the world, strongmen attempt to prop themselves up as kings, I think there might be something to us today, proclaiming with the same hope of fragile possibility that the disciples had two thousands years ago, that indeed, Jesus is our King. And he is the king of the oppressed and suffering. He knows the hardships, he has relieved suffering, restored many to communities and accepted those others deemed unacceptable. He brought hope, and was the embodiment of God’s love. Jesus wasn’t what the people, the crowds, or even his own disciples expected, and like them we don’t always understand what God is up to. But this we can know and this we can trust: Ours is a different kind of king. One who leads us with humility, who chooses life with us, even until death on a cross, all out of a love for this whole created world, which will ultimately take away even the sting of death. And so we still wave our palms today, even if Luke leaves them out. And we still cry Hosanna, even if Luke does not. Because this King Jesus, I firmly believe, is the good news. Thanks be to God, amen.

The Stained Glass Reflections Podcast is a part of Some Holy Hodgepodge, an inclusive and affirming pastor's blog compiled with the writings, projects, and random musings of Rev. Mikayla Sauerbrey (she/her). Rev. Mikayla is a self-proclaimed sweater weather enthusiast, procrasti-baker, novice fiber-artist, and, in the words of the late Rachel Held Evans, is still willing to risk being wrong about Jesus.

For more, feel free to find your way over to her blog at www.mikaylasauerbrey.substack.com⁠. And, If you are looking for an inclusive church community to check out, visit her congregation's website at ⁠www.calvarymoravian.net⁠

Have you ever read a book that made you want to hurl it across the room? I’ll admit, this hasn’t happened to me too often. But there have been a few times when a book was in my hands one moment and suddenly on the other side of the room the next. The handful of times this has happened it has been because of one of two reasons. First, the author of the book was a little too on the nose about something I desperately needed to hear but wasn’t quite ready for. And second, the author said something that I so vehemently disagreed with it made me angry beyond belief. It’s hard to have a good fight with a book; they rarely fight back so across the room they go.

Sometimes I have wanted to throw my Bible across the room because there are things in here that I know I need to hear and yet I absolutely do not want to hear them, and because there are stories in here that make me so angry. Now I have never actually done this to my Bible because it feels like one thing to throw a book about personality types across the room and a whole other thing to throw my sacred text. But while I have never done so, I have at times thought about it, because despite how much I love this book I also really, really dislike some of the things in here.

There are stories in this text that describe horrific violence. Just look at Joseph’s story: our first reading today was the happy ending of that tale but those of us familiar with it know this is no Precious Moments Bible story. Joseph’s brothers abuse him, sell him into slavery, lie to their father about his death. Joseph ends up as the victim in a sexual abuse scandal, thrown in prison, and it is decades before he finds himself in the position he is in Genesis chapter forty-five, finally on the other side of his trials and trauma, helping save the people of Egypt and even his own family from the perils of a seven year famine. It takes Joseph years to be able to see how God can take any situation and find good and who could blame him based on his life story?

Also in this book there are letters that have been misinterpreted over the centuries, leading to the oppression of people simply because of their age, gender, skin color, socioeconomic status, sexuality, ethnicity, you name it. This book frustrates me often because you can read it and come away with diametrically opposed beliefs and positions which is really inconvenient these days when it seems everyone wants to claim that they know what it means to be a Christian. As one of my favorite authors, Rachel Held Evans once said about the Bible, “If you are looking for verses with which to support slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to abolish slavery, you will find them…If you are looking for reasons to wage war, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to promote peace, you will find them.”1

But sometimes I read the Bible and I come across something that I may not vehemently oppose, and yet I still find myself getting defensive. And that's where I find myself when I read this second half of Luke’s Sermon on the Plain. Last week we listened as Jesus gathered his growing crowd of disciples while another crowd of curious folks from all the surrounding towns gathered to catch a glimpse, hear a message, receiving a healing touch. It was at this moment that Jesus turned to those who had made the decision to follow him and let them know exactly what that would entail. There were blessings that turned societal expectations on their heads, there were woes that called the most comfortable of us to wonder if our comforts were actually a hindrance. And now, Jesus has some of his most difficult words yet.

To his disciples, both on that plain with him and all those who would claim that title for centuries to come, Jesus says we are to love our enemies; to do good to those who come at us with hate; to bless those who try to curse us and to pray for those who mistreat us. He says it's not enough to merely love those who love you back, or to give to those who will give amply in return, or to do good for those who have already done good for you. No, apparently, if we are going to choose to follow Jesus we need to love our enemies, do good, lend and expect nothing in return. We are to be merciful, just as God has been merciful. We are not to judge or condemn, but rather we need to forgive. Honestly after a sermon like this it's a wonder that we have more scripture left to read because what kind of marketing strategy is this for the kin-dom of God? This is not a message that will sell out stadiums or get you on the New York Times bestsellers list. And yet, it is apparently part of the Good News Jesus had to bring.

The entirety of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain seems to be saying to all those who dare call themselves disciples or followers of Jesus, that what God’s love requires is that we remain soft-hearted toward one another. And if we stop there, then at best this list of commands becomes an impossible ask and at its worst it becomes the very tool of oppression Jesus is trying to thwart. And so, thanks be to God that it is God’s transformative love for us and in us that makes any of this sermon even remotely possible. When we hear these commands rooted in the depths of God’s character, in the depths of God’s love, then we can hold on to the promise that Jesus is not simply trying to require good behavior from us, but is instead inviting us to be intrinsically connected to God. Because who has already done all of this? God has loved God’s enemies. God has done good to those who have hated God. God has blessed those who curse God and God has certainly turned the other cheek. God has given without expecting anything in return and God has forgiven time and time again. Indeed, our God is full of grace and full of mercy. These commands, these teachings Jesus has for his disciples are daunting if we think they are the entry requirements for belonging, but I do not believe that is what Jesus is saying. I believe Jesus’ message that day on the plain was the welcome into the kin-dom. And they would all pursue this topsy turvy way of living together.

We are living in a moment where it seems hearts are hardened more and more each passing day. We make enemies out of one another because of how we vote, how we worship, where we live or where we once lived, or even what sports teams we root for. When someone who believes differently than us stumbles and struggles, there is a natural inclination to have some sort of prideful thought like, “they are getting what they deserve for not agreeing with me.” We as a culture have made the decision, consciously or unconsciously thanks to our internet algorithms, to surround ourselves only with like-minded people and in doing so, have completely other-ized everyone else who may not believe everything we believe. This is not to say we shouldn’t have boundaries, that when our fellow human beings desire harm to come to our most vulnerable neighbors that we shouldn’t draw a line; of course we should and there are teachings of Jesus that make it clear we are to love, protect, and serve those on the margins. But we are on the verge as a culture of forgetting what it means to be merciful and I can only imagine how much this breaks God’s heart.

There is something truly transformative about meeting hate with love, and so I wonder if what we, the disciples of Jesus living today, are being called into is to do just this: meet hate with love. When we witness folks being hated because of who they love, the color of their skin, the language they speak, may we lean in to God’s transformative love and proclaim that we are all image bearers of God. When we experience hate because we claim that the only King we will worship is the God With Us who gave up power and might and embraced love and humility, may we not forget to lean in to God’s transformative love and choose to extend forgiveness even when it hurts. When we want to give in to hate because of what we watch on the news or read about on Facebook or overhear folks in the grocery store talking about, may we keep our hearts soft and find a way to lean into God’s transformative love extending the grace and mercy first shown to us. We cannot do this work on our own, but Jesus was never asking us to do this alone. As one scholar said in a reflection on this passage, “None of these [teachings] imagine life in isolation.”2 These commands are plural. Jesus starts this portion of his sermon by saying, “but I say to you who are still listening” All who have stuck around, these words are for us. Collectively. And together, by the grace and love of God, we may just be able to live into this kind of transformative community.

Our world is desperate for soft hearts capable of sharing God’s transformative love, and it is through these teachings of Jesus that we do just that. It won’t be easy, it won’t come naturally, and we will not always get it right. Our faith would be so much easier if all it was were a set of dogmas and doctrines that we would simply reflect on or debate and then just live our lives however we please. But our faith, the faith Jesus is calling all of us into is a way of life.3 It is a way of life made possible through the transformative love of Jesus that already made a way for these teachings on the plain possible. Indeed this gospel text is good news for all, even if it isn’t easy news.4 May we have hearts soft enough to hear these words and let them transform us. Amen.

The Stained Glass Reflections Podcast is a part of Some Holy Hodgepodge, an inclusive and affirming pastor's blog compiled with the writings, projects, and random musings of Rev. Mikayla Sauerbrey (she/her). Rev. Mikayla is a self-proclaimed sweater weather enthusiast, procrasti-baker, novice fiber-artist, and, in the words of the late Rachel Held Evans, is still willing to risk being wrong about Jesus.

For more, feel free to find your way over to her blog at www.mikaylasauerbrey.substack.com⁠. And, If you are looking for an inclusive church community to check out, visit her congregation's website at ⁠www.calvarymoravian.net⁠

When we teach faith to children, we often do so in a very plain way. Not to give them a simplified or watered-down faith, because honestly, I often found the faith of children to be deep and rooted on an unwavering sense of trust in God. But we often use plain lessons and plain language because plain is the language of children. I mean, who here hasn’t had their fragile adult-sensibilities wounded by the plain and direct speech of a child? And plain certainly doesn’t mean shallow, boring, inauthentic or lacking in conviction, grit and seriousness. Sometimes I think adult faith formation could learn a thing or two from the ways children breathe life and excitement into the tangibleness, plain, and direct good news of the gospel we so often over complicate as we age. We also teach children about faith in a plain way because it is the plain and simple, timeless truths about God that make for such a strong foundation. Indeed often it is these plain foundations that are the most profound. We teach our children to know that they are loved by God: “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so…”. We teach our children to know that all creation, every person and being here in this world is beloved and held in the hands of God: “He’s got you and me sister in his hands… he’s got the whole world in his hands.” And of course, we teach them that they have the power to make a difference in this world; that because they have the love of God within them they are a light in this world and they shouldn’t hide that light away: “this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.” These lessons are plain in that they are easily understood, easily applied to our everyday lives, and easily remembered. God loves me; God loves everyone; and because of God’s love, we can make a difference.

Luke’s gospel text tells us that Jesus “came down and stood on a level place”, guiding us into what many scholars call the “sermon on the plain”, a sister sermon with many similarities to Matthew’s “sermon on the mount.” But the language Luke uses here is dynamic and full of meaning: yes, Jesus was speaking on a plain and so therefore there was a level of equality to be found. He was not above anyone and no one was below anyone else either. But also, the Good News that he has been called to bring forth into this world is a plain, direct message. At least according to Jesus in this sermon, the gospel is plain and simple, not necessarily easy, and yet it is nevertheless one we as humans have tried to overcomplicated in our attempt to understand it or to shy away from the pointedness of the message that, much like the plain-speak of children, threatens to wound our fragile adult sensibilities.

Jesus’ ministry is just beginning and right before the portion of chapter six read aloud moments ago, we see Jesus has gathered his twelve disciples. However, by the time he comes down the mountain he has clearly collected a few more followers, a few more disciples, as they get described as a “great company” or a “great crowd.” And as these followers mix in with another great crowd of folks who have traveled from surrounding cities to encounter Jesus, to be healed from their pains and to hear the message of hope that they had heard so much about, we see Jesus turn specifically to his disciples. The words he is about to say are for those who have made the conscious choice to follow after him, to learn from him, to mold their lives after him, to be identified with him. It is to them that he has this to say:

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.1

These pronouncements of blessings are a reminder to all the disciples of Jesus, and to the crowd no doubt eavesdropping on this lesson, that the hope that comes from Jesus, that is the Good News Jesus brings us is real, is tangible, and is bound up in our real day-to-day lives. Unlike Matthew’s Jesus, who takes a spiritualized approach at the idea of poverty and hunger by saying “blessed are the poor in spirit” and “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”, Luke’s Jesus on the plain keeps it simple: blessed are those who are impoverished, for they belong to this kin-dom we are building, whose values uplift them instead of shoving them to the margins.2 Blessed are those whose stomachs cramp and ache because they have nothing in them, for we will set a place at our table and make sure they are fed.” With our sanctified imaginations we can imagine Jesus in this moment, surrounded by men and women, children even, some of whom are gathered in close because they’ve been traveling with him. They heard what he had to say and they were all in. They wanted to be a part of this kin-dom of God and so Jesus is telling them straight now, as the world crowds around them, what exactly to expect from the values, ethics, and practices that come with the kin-dom of God.

Except, the blessings are not all of what Jesus has to say. How this sermon unfolds almost makes me wonder if this crowd had self-segregated based on how this opening of his sermon goes. Does Jesus see out on the edges of the crowd those who deserve to know they are blessed? And then does he see toward the front, in the center, those who already know and believe they are blessed and yet their reasons for why are all but a lie? Because then we get the dreaded woes:

But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. "Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.3

There is some debate among scholars as to what Jesus means by “woe”, as the word is more of a sound and so much gets lost in translation. But given what we know from the rest of Luke’s gospel and the book of Acts which likely shares a common author, Jesus’ words are not an angry condemnation or some belief that those who never have to worry about living paycheck to paycheck, or those who have never stood in a grocery isle wondering if they can afford eggs this week, or those whose lives are without trials a are doomed. Instead, one scholar suggests that it is likely Jesus meant this as a lament; Jesus feels awful that those who prioritize their earthly comfort and security have done so because they were sold a lie.4 The promises of this world will break; the security they think they have will falter. And so Jesus instructs those following him to remember that in God’s kin-dom, the values are different.

In his sermon on the plain, Jesus stands on the teachings of all the prophets that came before him. Like the prophet Jeremiah who once encouraged God’s people to abandon their trust in strong men and leaders who will only lead them astray and to put their trust in the plans and promises of the God who has never abandoned them. When we trust only in charismatic leaders who put on a front of strength, at best we will only end up disappointed and at worst we will end up in exile. When we put all our eggs in the basket woven together with the promises of this world, that wealth, power, and status are all we need, we are not living by the values of God’s kin-dom.

Let us put ourselves in this story, and if we are gathered here at church together today then I think it is appropriate to identify ourselves with the disciples, the ones for whom Jesus’ sermon appears to be meant for. May we hear Jesus when he reminds us of the topsy-turvy nature of the kin-dom of God. Those this world curses are blessed and those this world blesses are not without their troubles. If we are serious about being followers of Jesus, then these values become ours too. Indeed blessed are the poor, because this kin-dom is theirs, and ours too. Blessed are those who are hungry, for we the kin-dom have been tasked to make sure all are fed. Blessed are those who weep and grieve, for in this kin-dom we come alongside each other and don’t let the hardships of life keep us at arm's length. Blessed are those who live by these controversial teachings of Jesus that may or may not make you very popular, for you are the apple of God’s eye. And a heartbreaking woe to all those with riches, gluttony, unburdened lives, and seemingly great reputations; if this is us, may we too see the truth and change course. The cost of discipleship, of following Jesus, of being kin-dom people is quite high in some respects; but it is no entrance fee. We choose this life because of the love shown to us. The love we sing about in children’s songs that still hold on to those timeless, plain truths and bits of the Good News. There is good news to be found in today’s gospel; may it indeed be a comfort to those who need it, and may it be the affliction or wake up call to those who need it as well. Thanks be to God, amen.

The Stained Glass Reflections Podcast is a part of Some Holy Hodgepodge, an inclusive and affirming pastor's blog compiled with the writings, projects, and random musings of Rev. Mikayla Sauerbrey (she/her). Rev. Mikayla is a self-proclaimed sweater weather enthusiast, procrasti-baker, novice fiber-artist, and, in the words of the late Rachel Held Evans, is still willing to risk being wrong about Jesus.

For more, feel free to find your way over to her blog at www.mikaylasauerbrey.substack.com⁠. And, If you are looking for an inclusive church community to check out, visit her congregation's website at ⁠www.calvarymoravian.net⁠

Can you think of a moment where life as you knew it changed forever? I am sure many of us have probably had several of these moments, but maybe just think of one for now. Maybe one of the moments that came to your mind were cultural and communal in nature, with almost catastrophic consequences: The events of September 11th, 2001, Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, or the day of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school. Maybe I’m showing my age by giving these examples, but you get what I mean. Or maybe, the moments you thought of were more personal in nature and were hopefully, moments where life as you knew it changed for the better: the birth of a child, a graduation day, the first day in a job that you absolutely adored, or even the day you pledged to love that one special person for the rest of your days, no matter what life threw your way. Whatever that moment, or moments were for you, often we can almost categorize our life in a before and after. There was life before that moment, and then there was life after. We were existing in this world in one way, and then we found ourselves existing in an entirely new way from that moment on.

The prophet Isaiah likely had a couple of those moments stacked on top of each other, with the selection of our reading today. We are told this all takes place in the year that King Uzziah died, which would have been like saying “In the year that Jimmy Carter or fill-in-the-blank politician died.” King Uzziah, by most accounts, started out a good and stable king for the people in Judah. He had a long reign that wasn’t without its controversies and consequences: his pride was indeed an eventual downfall for him and with his death, left the kingdom of Judah in disarray, politically-speaking. Warring empires from the north were threatening exile, people from within the country were taking advantage of the fragility of the moment for their own gain at the suffering of the most vulnerable. For Isaiah, this was probably one of those catastrophic cultural, communal, “there was life before, and then there was life after” moments.

It seems likely that it was Isaiah’s world falling apart around him that maybe led him to the temple. Maybe he was seeking a place of shelter, a moment of peace. Maybe he wanted to beg God to do something, to step in, to hear the cries of those in pain and to notice the wrongdoing being done. And in a wild twist of events, Isaiah has another one of those “there was life before, and then there was life after” moments. “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne,” the now prophet writes. “high and lofty, and the hem of his robe filled the temple.” There were angelic beings who declared God’s glory and the foundations of the space shook. Isaiah had come to the temple that day, likely wanting to beg and plead God to break into this world and low and behold, before he even knew what was happening, there God was. Scholars call these moments where people have some kind of visible encounter with the manifested God “theophanies” because it is in these moments we are shown God.

Isaiah’s world is turned upside down. He acknowledges his shortcomings, he cannot help but think of the people that are his fellow citizens, his family, friends, neighbors, recognizing all the ways they have collectively fallen short and failed to live up to the holiness that God brings forth. But none of that seems to deter the God who meets with Isaiah in that temple; instead he extends forgiveness and healing, and then asks Isaiah to join in the work that is about to unfold. It is messy, it is hard to hear and I’ll be honest and say Isaiah 6:9-13 is absolutely not one of my favorite passages of the Bible and I almost left these verses out today because they make me incredibly uncomfortable. But, I left them in because one: they are not the whole of Isaiah’s testimony to the people of God in the wake of great destruction. If we keep reading we see how Isaiah rings good news of hope of a Messiah, a Savior in chapter seven or a great light in the darkness in chapter nine, or of the great comfort God will bring to God’s people in chapter forty. And two: I do think there is comfort in hearing that sometimes things get worse before they get better; sometimes there is a balm to a broken and contrite heart in words that remind us ours is a just God who does not let evil-doing get the final say. And there is always hope to be found when we hear about a hidden seed, or a hidden stump of hope that remains in the midst of the ashes. A promise that God’s faithfulness does not perish, but indeed has everlasting life. Isaiah’s call story, even with its troubling parts, is a reminder that when God shows up, our lives are forever changed and there is hope to be found.

Scripture is full of stories of God showing up, of God breaking forth into this world in the midst of mess and brokenness to call those willing to hear to partner in work that will change the world and go about the mission of taking those broken pieces and establishing wholeness once more. Luke’s gospel text for today is another one of many. These unsuspecting fishermen, specifically Simon Peter, join the likes of the prophet as they also have a “there was life before, and then life after” moment when encountering the manifest God, this time, in the flesh. And unlike with Isaiah’s call, where the message that follows is quite terrifying on a first read, these disciples’ call is a reminder of the joyful, unthinkable abundance that comes with saying yes to God. We the readers, all these thousands of years later are still being reminded to keep our eyes open, keep our hearts soft, and stay curious to how exactly God may show up in our moment, and what we also may be called to do.

These encounters with God, both Isaiah’s in the temple and the disciples’ on the water, were certainly life altering moments. Isaiah sees God and his life is never the same from that moment on. The disciples encounter Jesus and the entire trajectory of their life is altered beyond belief. These encounters are rather unique; not all of us will have dramatic theophanies where God is on a throne with a cloak filling the entire room or be on a boat and catch so much fish we have to call over our friends so we do not sink. But if we profess to be followers of Jesus then at some level, we have all answered the call of God when asked “whom shall I send?”

Yes it is us, who live as people of unclean lips among other people of unclean lips that speak forth cyberbullying and sharing of dangerous conspiracy theories, or even a rise in hate speech, name-calling, profanity, and all sorts of vileness. It is in the midst of all this uncleanness that we, followers of Jesus have been called into this world, called to repent ourselves and then asked to trust in the One who dares to suggest we toss our nets back into the waters, trusting that abundance beyond our wildest dreams is just below the surface. We might not receive dramatic theophanies, although maybe we will; I suppose that is God’s to know and ours to find out. If the Bible tells us anything it is that in seasons of great communal distress and political upheaval, that is when God tends to show up to those we might least expect. But regardless, if we sit in these pews or on this livestream and believe even an ounce of what this book has to offer us, then we too have encountered God and have been called into this world for the sake of bringing about the wholeness, the peace that we all long for, that we were created to crave, and that is possible through the transformative love of God. There is work for us to do, there is hope that needs to be spoken into this world. There is transformative, abundant love to be shared. May we indeed embody this message as we go about the days ahead. May we answer the call on our lives to be good news and to be love incarnate. Indeed, I believe these scriptures and this charge to be good news for us this Sunday, thanks be to God. Amen.

The Stained Glass Reflections Podcast is a part of Some Holy Hodgepodge, an inclusive and affirming pastor's blog compiled with the writings, projects, and random musings of Rev. Mikayla Sauerbrey (she/her). Rev. Mikayla is a self-proclaimed sweater weather enthusiast, procrasti-baker, and, in the words of the late Rachel Held Evans, is still willing to risk being wrong about Jesus.

For more, feel free to find your way over to her blog at www.mikaylasauerbrey.substack.com⁠. And, If you are looking for an inclusive church community to check out, visit her congregation's website at ⁠www.calvarymoravian.net⁠

Why did I pick up this book?

While I am not one for new year’s resolutions, I did make it a goal of mine to better utilize my library’s resources over this next year and beyond. Also, given the current political climate, I am always trying to find books that elevate the importance of community while giving practical ideas to apply in one’s own context. That led me to finding Birdsong’s debut book, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community. After reading this part of the book jacket, I was hooked and knew this was my next read: “It seems counterintuitive that living the ‘good life’—the well-paying job, the nuclear family, the upwardmobility—can make us feel isolated and unhappy. But in a divided America, where only a quarter of us know our neighbors and everyone is either a winner or a loser, we’ve forgotten the key element that helped us make progress in the first place: community.”1

Who is the author?

Mia Birdsong (she/her) describes herself as a “pathfinder and futurist who reconnects us with our forgotten wisdom and practices of our collective liberation.”2 She is also a writer, speaker, and founding Executive Director of the Next River project, “a think tank and culture change lab… that incubates future-facing ideas, practices, and initiatives that advance our present and future collective liberation.”3

What I loved:

I loved Mia’s ability to share practical ideas for how community can be fostered through the stories of those in her life. Her elevation of those mainstream American culture often denegrates—the lgbtqia+ community, black women, single parents, etc.—as guides for us all as we all consider how we might build better communities was backed up through real life stories of those she knows who are doing the good, challenging work of building lives grounded in unwavering love outside of the traditional “American Dream.”

Not only does Mia Birdsong share personal stories to back up her theory that real, loving community is found through intentionality, honest communication, and commitment on the part of all parties involved, she also loops in research to highlight how the American Dream ideal really isn’t serving the purpose it claims to. Even though this book was written before the COVID-19 pandemic, she highlights how an epidemic of isolation and loneliness was already making its waves through a variety of demographics.4 As a pastor, I appreciated Birdsong’s ability to elevate the concerns we have as a society about what ills are often a hindrance to developing caring communities. However, she doesn’t leave these concerns to stand alone. Through each chapter you get to read stories of success that ultimately all have a common thread of people realizing the gift of choosing vulnerability, refusing to give into a scarcity mindset, and fostering a sense of belonging “in and to the world” that necessitates a reicprocal sense of care for all creation, all people.

What left me wanting:

How We Show Up was orignially published in 2020, so I am curious how the global COVID-19 pandemic may have changed or informed some of Birdsong’s ideas around how folks can better show up for one another and foster a meaningful community around them. I would have also loved some additional resources with this book to make it either personally reflective or adapted for group study.

A favorite quote:

Narrowing down a favorite quote for this was tricky; I wish I could show you the sheer amount of tabs I have added to my physical copy of this book. So, I’m going to give you two! The first is actually a quote Birdong uses in chapter two, from a conversation she had with her friend Matt:

“‘White supremacy makes it harder for white folks to connect authentically, understand others, and accurately empathize. Since oppression is definitionally a form of dehumanization, since it denies the full subjecthood of those being oppressed, I think there’s a deep level in which it limits human connection.’ It keeps white people from being deeply known—to others and themselves. It casts what is human about white please as weakness.”5

The second is a quote from Birdsong, in chapter six, “Make This Space for People, Make This Space for Me”, a great reminder that building community can take on many different forms, but when we take the time to try, and if we lean into our strengths and longings, we will often find our attempt at building community will not only meet our own needs, but the needs of others too:

“So often, the thing we’re missing in our lives is something others are missing as well. Some people launch organizations to make the thing they need; others gather a few friends. This is what it looks like to ask for and offer help, to build relationships that can hold us accountable to ourselves, to open up to knowing others and letting ourselves be known.”6

Should you read this book?

If you are looking around the world right now and are curious how we might undo so much of the terrible, awful, no good of it all, then I definitely think you should add Birdsong’s book to your to-be-read list!

Find a copy of Mia Birdsong’s How We Show Up here!

The year was 1967, it was mid-August, in Atlanta, Georgia. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr stood before a crowd as he addressed the tenth annual Southern Christian Leadership Congress. Before him were about 100 fellow young, Black leaders who I have no doubt listened intently as he pondered the question, “Where do we go from here?” Over the last decade, they all had fought tooth and nail, through legislation, conversation, marches, and other acts of nonviolent protest to break down the walls of segregation and had finally begun to see some progress take shape. However, there was still so much work to be done. There was still immense suffering and oppression that fell along racial divisions that remained far too set in stone to the point that humanity’s connection of all being image-bearers of God, wholly and completely, was distorted beyond measure. There would need to be many more decades of work to undo the sins of enslavement, of segregation, of racism, which was what led Dr. King to speak on this very question, one that I think may sound familiar for similar and new reasons to many of us sitting here today: “so where do we go from here?”

The Rev. Dr. King suggested then, to a crowd of many God-fearing folks, a majority likely being pastors or faith leaders like himself, that now was the time that they get love right. Now was the time, as the struggles for who had power, who did not, and who got to decide this was all anyone could think or talk about. Now was the time because if they did not get love right, then Dr. King believed we as a human race would continue to struggle relentlessly. He offered words of challenge around the ideas that power and love were believed to be diametrically opposed, saying that “What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”1

I think the Apostle Paul would be rather surprised and honestly, maybe even a little bit appalled to see what we have made of one of his more challenging passages. Paul had written this now famous soliloquy on the purpose and power of love immediately following a passage where he tells the believers, the body of Christ, that they are each a necessary, a needed, and an important part of the Body. Their giftings will vary, but that doesn’t mean any of them is more or less important than any other and in fact, their giftings are only elevated when they come together and unite. As Eugene Petersen, the author of the Message Translation puts it: “But it’s obvious by now, isn’t it, that Christ’s church is a complete Body and not a gigantic, unidimensional Part? It’s not all Apostle, not all Prophet, not all Miracle Worker, not all Healer, not all Prayer in Tongues, not all Interpreter of Tongues. And yet some of you keep competing for so-called “important” parts. But now I want to lay out a far better way for you.” The far better way, the gift that far exceeds even the calling of Apostle or the ability to perform miracles and heal and speak in tongues, is love.

I worry that we are a culture that has cheapened the idea of love. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good Hallmark movie. Honestly, if I am not watching reruns of The Repair Shop or The Great British Baking Show, I am probably watching a Hallmark movie because I am basic and boring and life is stressful and hard enough that sometimes it is nice to just escape for 90 minutes and pretend that the biggest problem in the world is whether or not a woman who left her small town years ago will be able to return and save their Christmas festival or if a man who never left his small town will be able to save his family’s bakery from closing.

But I do not think that what the Apostle Paul was thinking of, when he penned these words in a letter to a church that was threatening to fall apart at the seams over issues of wealth and inequality, were predictable Hallmark movies or even romantic love at all. This isn’t to say that anyone who chooses to use this text in wedding ceremonies is doing something antithetical to the text, but if we leave this text for only these kind of romantic moments and ceremonies, we are missing the mark as to what Paul was trying to communicate to a community divided in his day, and unknowingly, what he would try to communicate to us who also know all too well what it means to be a country divided. It doesn’t matter what we have in our lives, what gifts or talents or treasures or achievements; if we do not have love, we have nothing. Because real love is transformative. Its a love that is recognized because it is patient, kind, lacking envy and never boastful or arrogant or rude. The kind of love Paul says will change the world doesn’t insist on its own way, meaning it doesn’t prioritize the self or individual and isn’t easily irritated or known for keeping a record of wrongs. Rather this love, this love that is the “better way”, this love that makes everything worth it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. This kind of love is strong and transformative, but to do its transformative work, this love will demand much of us.

As Dr. King began to conclude his speech that day in Georgia in 1967, he said “I have decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems.”2 We have no shortage of problems still in our world today. In fact, they kind of seem to be stacking up taller and taller with each passing day. And maybe it can seem a bit frivolous and careless to dare speak of love at a time like this, but I think that is only true if we continue to see love as something frivolous. We see hate all around us; hate for those who are different, hate for the things some do not understand, hate for things and people alike and when faced with witnessing and experiencing so much hate day in and day out, I believe both Paul and Dr. King are correct: our only salvation will be found through the love of the God made flesh, through the love of the God with us.

Dr. King would also say in this speech that “hate is too great a burden to bear”3, and I believe this to be true as well. Hate takes so much from us. No matter one’s political affiliations these days, all any news or social media postings seem to want to encourage us to do is give into the hate and my fellow beloveds of God I beg of you to not give in. We cannot give in to the corrosiveness of hate, we cannot lose sight of the imago dei, the image of God which exists in all of us, even those whom we might vehemently disagree with. Even those who have, seemingly, lost themselves in hate. Hate will never save us, it will never bring about the kin-dom of God, and hate has never been nor will it ever be the way of God or God’s people. But if we look to scripture we can see what will and that is love. Real love, transformative love. A love that digs in deep and refuses to let go. A love that might feel impossible for us to comprehend or take on, but a love that is possible and is something we must not give up on.

Indeed, the good news for us this Sunday is that this love is already ours to accept and ours to share. We do not have to worry whether or not we have this love or if we are capable of it because it is written on our bones and runs through our veins because we are made in the image of the God who is love. It isn’t easy; it might not even feel natural. It would certainly be simpler to just be noisy, clanging gongs or lose ourselves rather in knowledge and rational thought. It would be easier to just bend to the pressures of hate because the kind of love Paul wrote about and Dr. King fought for demands much of us. It demands we remain patient with those we can hardly stand to be in the room with. It demands we be kind even in the face of so much unkindness. It demands we not be envious or boastful, even when we feel we may have a right to do so. This love demands we never become lost in our own arrogance or cave to rudeness. This love demands we not develop short fuses and become easily irritable while also demanding we keep no record of wrongs and forgive easily when forgiveness is sought. This love we as the body of Christ are called to live into demands we rejoice in the truth and never in wrongdoing. This kind of love demands we don’t give up on hope, or on one another. It is a tall order, an impossible one if we try to go it alone. But we do not have to nor are we called to even try. Through the power of the Holy Spirit and the presence of one another, this seemingly impossible task to love the 1 Corinthians 13 way is made possible.

Yes, this kind of love may demand much of us but it gives us so much more in return. This kind of love heals all sorts of brokenness, divisions, and sorrows. It builds a kin-dom where all belong to God and to one another. So may we indeed embody the love first given to us, and may we use it to do a little kin-dom building on this side of heaven. Yes, it is true that if we don’t have love we have nothing, so thanks be to God that we already have all the love we could ever need, given to us through Jesus. May we share this love with our world that is so riddled with hate but desperately longing for real, transformative love. This is our call and this is the good news, thanks be to God, amen.

The Stained Glass Reflections Podcast is a part of Some Holy Hodgepodge, an inclusive and affirming pastor's blog compiled with the writings, projects, and random musings of Rev. Mikayla Sauerbrey (she/her). Rev. Mikayla is a self-proclaimed sweater weather enthusiast, procrasti-baker, and, in the words of the late Rachel Held Evans, is still willing to risk being wrong about Jesus.

For more, feel free to find your way over to her blog at ⁠www.someholyhodgepodge.substack.com⁠. And, If you are looking for an inclusive church community to check out, visit her congregation's website at ⁠www.calvarymoravian.net⁠

The Apostle Paul wrote this first letter to the Corinthian Church at a time of significant division within the community. From the many topics that Paul addresses in this letter we can see there were issues of classism, where social status and wealth were getting in the way of the unity God’s love should inspire. Issues of untrustworthy leaders, or strong personalities who were leading folks astray or encouraging them to follow cults of personality instead of the God made flesh. There were people in this community that were bragging left and right about how they were the ones who had been given the “best” gifts of the Spirit and were, therefore, the really important followers of Jesus. The Corinthian Church was a community of people from a variety of backgrounds in regard to faith, ethnicity, vocation, etc. And they all lived in this place, Corinth, which was a melting pot of cultures in its day. Sound familiar? Well, it was in this very context that Paul wrote this letter.

He wrote this letter to a community struggling with such great divisions around giftings and roles, around interpretation of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, of who can be in and who should be out. It was to this community, that the apostle Paul has this to say: “We were all baptized by one Spirit into one body, whether Jew or Greek, or slave or free… Certainly the body isn’t one part but many.” No foot gets to say they do not belong because they are not a hand, nor does an ear get to say it is not a part of the body simply because it is not an eye. In the same way, no nose gets to tell a leg it doesn’t belong simply because it cannot smell and no mouth gets to tell a neck it doesn’t belong because it cannot speak. Just as God made our human bodies in all their wonderful, diverse complexities, a sum of many parts, this is how God has formed the body of Christ, the community, the Church. None of us are exactly the same; we all have different gifts, different callings, different inclinations, different strengths, different weaknesses, but that is exactly why we have been brought together. We do not get to turn to one another and claim we have no need for each other; we are better when we are together. We are more capable of the calling placed on us as followers of Jesus to love this world as Jesus first loved this world when we remember that our differences do not need to divide us, nor do our differences mean any of us are any more or less important than the other, but rather, should unite us as we all seek to further understand and live out the Gospel in our present moment.

We are the body of Christ; when one of us celebrates we all celebrate. When one of us mourns, we all mourn. When one of us is suffering or struggling we all feel it too. It does not matter what our gifts or our callings are, whether we are teachers, preachers, nurses, stay at home parents, construction crew, grocery clerks, lawyers, linemen, musicians or any other vocation we can think of or no traditional vocation at all; we all matter to the body and we all have a role to play that only we can fulfill. We have all been created out of unconditional love and we have now been called to share that love widely, to the best of our ability, united with those around us.

I love this first letter to the Corinthians because for better or worse we are still dealing with so many of the same struggles that seemed to have been present in this early church community. There is both comfort and heartache in this; we can empathize but also, how horrid is it that two thousand years later we still can’t seem to move past some of these timeless struggles? If we are to own that we are the body of Christ in our present moment, that we are the hands, the feet, the eyes, the ears, the nose, then we must also own the mission of Jesus which he lays out pretty perfectly for us as he reads from the scroll of Isaiah in Luke’s gospel today: Jesus came to bring good news to the poor, to release those imprisoned, to bring back vision to those who had lost it and to usher in liberation for the oppressed. It was a mission that we would see, if we kept reading in Luke chapter four, had his own gathered community in their worship space up in arms when they realized the full ramifications of what this Jesus of Nazareth was saying. To restore peace, to heal a broken world, to make right what has been wronged, their sense of their divine privilege would need to be set aside. Jesus came to shake things up with a love this world desperately needed, even if they did not know it; it was a love that proclaimed belonging to those who had been ostracized. It was a love that proclaimed hope to those without any hope at all. It was a love that proclaimed those who were on the margins of society would be brought in and celebrated as kin. It was a love that proclaimed no one is greater than or lesser than; all are children of God and all are worthy of care, respect, and dignity. It was a love that was the embodiment of the Good News: it brought comfort to those afflicted, and it afflicted those who had gotten too comfortable.

It is so easy for many of us at this moment in history to be angry at the world around us. I know many of us are furious, maybe at laws made or unmade. We are upset about leaders being elected and others not. We are concerned about the rising prices of everyday essentials. We don’t know what to do about the divisions that seem neverending in our families or social circles that weren’t there a few years ago. We are scared too, about the state of our world and what will come of our communities if some of the most recent headlines come to fruition. We worry incessantly as we doom scroll on social media or refuse to step away from our television screens or newspapers. We want to try to find a balance between staying informed and educating ourselves and not becoming so overwhelmed we cannot even properly function, but it seems the division of this is shrinking more and more each day. And in the mess of it all, it can be hard to find the presence of God, of the Good News in the chaos. We pray, we ask God to intervene, to step in, to just do… something. Anything. But what if God is asking the same from us?

If we are the body of Christ, then Jesus’ work is our work too. And the wonderful, amazing part about us being the body of Christ is that we are not just one, singular human body. We are a beautiful mosaic, a multitude, a collective with gifts and talents to share. Every single one of us is called to continue the work of Jesus in our communities. We are not all called to do this work in exactly the same way; not all of us, not most of us, are episcopal bishops like the Rt Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde with such an incredible gift of preaching the Good News, but nevertheless if we profess to be a part of Christ’s body, then we are called to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. So how might we do so? How might we, as the hands and feet and all the other parts of the body, continue to bring good news, to proclaim release to captives, to grant vision to those who lost it, and set free those experiencing oppression? Where might we start?

Maybe a start for you is simply dropping some change in a bucket to be sent off to our siblings in Ramallah, Palestine at the Star Mountain Rehabilitation Center, or continuing our work at the Lehigh Conference of Church’s soup kitchen. Maybe it's finding new ways to care for our friends and neighbors, possibly by handing out thse red cards our provincial leadership sent out earlier this week so folks in our communities might know their rights if and when someone comes knocking, threatening to tear their family apart because of immigration status.1 Maybe it's helping out with some physical labor at the homes and offices of the Valley Youth House while their team of trained professionals help get kids and young people off the streets and into well established, whole lives. Maybe it is something else entirely that is right within your gifts and talents, your passions and interests that isn’t even on my radar as your pastor, but is something you have been thinking about for awhile and this is the nudge you need to take that next brave first step. It is daunting to look at our world and see all that is wrong with it, but the good news is we are the body of Christ, and therefore we can make a difference. Yes, my fellow Beloveds of God, my fellow members of the Body of Christ, what I believe scripture is saying to us and to our world around us this morning is that we are the embodiment of good news. We are love incarnate. Or at least, we have the chance to be. So may we go forth and live into this call. May we follow Jesus’ lead. Thanks be to God, amen.

The Stained Glass Reflections Podcast is a part of Some Holy Hodgepodge, an inclusive and affirming pastor's blog compiled with the writings, projects, and random musings of Rev. Mikayla Sauerbrey (she/her). Rev. Mikayla is a self-proclaimed sweater weather enthusiast, procrasti-baker, and, in the words of the late Rachel Held Evans, is still willing to risk being wrong about Jesus.

For more, feel free to find your way over to her blog at ⁠www.someholyhodgepodge.substack.com⁠. And, If you are looking for an inclusive church community to check out, visit her congregation's website at ⁠www.calvarymoravian.net⁠

If the Gospel of John were not a book, but a group of folks gathered around, sharing their favorite stories about their friend named Jesus, they likely would all be answering the question, “Well when did you know Jesus was the Son of God, the Word made flesh?” Throughout this gospel we see stories of sign after sign, all of which are there to tell us, remind us, of exactly who Jesus is. And it is telling that in the first story, the first big sign that the gospel writer chooses to share at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, is this story of Jesus at a wedding in Cana. We do not know whose wedding this is, we do not have any direct indication as to why the author says, “on the third day” to start this tale, and we do not know why Jesus, his mother, and a bunch of his disciples are in attendance. But the answers to all these questions we may have as we read the story were not important enough for the author to include them, therefore they must not have been the point of the story. What is included, however, is the story of a miraculous sign showcasing God’s radical abundance.

Jesus, his followers, and his mom are at this wedding. We know no other details, but the setting is important because a wedding means there is a reason to celebrate, a reason to gather. And the party must have been going on for some time because Mary has noticed that the wine is gone. So, like many mothers I am sure we all know, she turns to her firstborn child, communicates the problem at hand, and all but tells him to fix it without outright telling him to fix it. I like to imagine how exactly this may or may not have taken place. Maybe Jesus was sitting with friends and Mary comes up, steals him away, leading him quickly to the kitchen as she shares the issue at hand. Jesus, sighing as his mom tells him to do something, maybe hinting that he might do the miraculous, or maybe believing he’ll just send those serving that evening out to the markets to get more wine. The small group of people gathered in the kitchen, tired from being on their feet all day as they have worked this celebratory occasion, staring back and forth between Mary and Jesus as they converse before Mary finally just turns to them and tells them to do whatever her son tells them to do. And then, the water jars are filled, the contents brought out to those still celebrating. And to the shock of all the wine that is just now being served, late into the festivities, likely the time when everyone expected to call it a night, to pack it up and go home, when not only the good wine is gone but the bad, cheap stuff is too, this is when the best wine they’ve ever tasted is brought out. And there is so much of it, some modern scholars estimate that given the kind of water jars mentioned the amount of wine made would have been enough for roughly a thousand bottles, far more than any one wedding would need even if the entire neighborhood came out to celebrate. And this is the story of the sign John uses to introduce us to the God made flesh: Radical, overwhelming, celebratory abundance.

This week I was listening to a podcast with a group of episcopal priests talking about how many of us might feel as though we are living through the end of some kind of grand party. The lives we lead might feel as though all the wine has run out, not just the good stuff you bring out at the beginning when everyone still has their whits and refined pallets about them, but even the cheap, boxed stuff you save until the end when no one cares what they are drinking, just that something is in their hand. The rising prices of all necessities, the mounting issues of inequality, the fears of what might happen at the hands of a few very rich men who seem to think that money means you get to do whatever you want, the concerns over a government change taking place yet this week and what that will mean for so many in our cities, states, and communities. We feel ruled by the fears of scarcity; will there be enough? Will we be okay? Will our children, grandchildren, friends, neighbors, grocery clerks, healthcare workers, will we be okay? Or is this it? Has the good wine come and gone?

The promise, the good news as I see it, that can be found in John’s story of this mysterious wedding at Cana, is that ours is a God of radical abundance and when we ask whether or not there will be enough, we can trust there already is. It can feel complicated to speak of God’s radical abundance when we know not everyone experiences it's gifts in our broken world; far too many of our fellow human beings choose to lean in to the scarcity fears and hoard their exorbitant wealth, or take the abundance of resources that we know exist and are enough for all to never go hungry and always have a place to call home, and keep it all for themselves. But in the face of these injustices and inequalities may we know this is not God’s way. Jesus could have introduced himself in so many ways at the start of his ministry, through a number of signs that exhibited power and might, and yet he chose to do so through the gift of abundance and celebration. In a time when our fears of scarcity are often our guides, John’s gospel reading today is here to remind us that with God, we do not have to cower to the fear of scarcity. In a world that screams there isn’t enough, so be selfish and keep what you can for yourself, may you and I be the living embodiment of this miraculous wine that is a symbol of God’s abundant love, abundant grace, abundant acceptance, and abundant hope. May the love of God flow through us so that all might know that while life may feel as though all the good wine is gone, God has something more in store that just might be beyond our wildest imaginations. In the days, weeks, months, and years ahead, may we show up for each other when we least and most expect it, and may we be the fruit of God’s abundance in our present moment. This is the good news, thanks be to God. Amen.

The Stained Glass Reflections Podcast is a part of Some Holy Hodgepodge, an inclusive and affirming pastor's blog compiled with the writings, projects, and random musings of Rev. Mikayla Sauerbrey (she/her). Rev. Mikayla is a self-proclaimed sweater weather enthusiast, procrasti-baker, and, in the words of the late Rachel Held Evans, is still willing to risk being wrong about Jesus.

For more, feel free to find your way over to her blog at ⁠www.someholyhodgepodge.substack.com⁠. And, If you are looking for an inclusive church community to check out, visit her congregation's website at ⁠www.calvarymoravian.net⁠

A religious insider. A walking hazard to ritual purity. Two people whose lives should never intersect, and yet, after one encounter with Jesus, their stories are now forever linked together. We begin our story with a Synagogue leader and desperate father who comes to us on the tail end of a few other miracles and healing stories; Jesus had just freed a man from a legion of demons, calmed an entire storm, healed a paralyzed man, and gotten into a lively debate with some other religious leaders. Word is getting out about this man who has amassed a following of outcasts and misfits, and not all of it was good press. Who is this teacher who thinks he can just go around touching and healing ritually unclean people, eating with sinners, healing on the sabbath, and throwing out demons? 

And it is right here where we meet our desperate father. A man with significant social standing as a synagogue leader. He has heard the stories of Jesus touching those deemed untouchable and bringing healing, and despite what some of his colleagues may say, Jairus is willing to take the chance if it means his daughter could live. We do not know how long they were walking before being interrupted. The second part of our story starts as we are introduced to a new character. Although she is not some esteemed leader, important enough to have her name recorded for all of time and history to remember. No, this is an unnamed woman with a chronic health condition that has left her penniless and, according to the ritual purity laws, community-less. You see, to better understand this woman’s situation one needs to go back and read Leviticus 15 to understand the ritual purity laws that were common practice. And while under healthy and normal circumstances these ritual practices were not viewed as oppressive but just a part of life, this kind of intense separation from community for twelve years would have no doubt been incredibly isolating.  

But just like Jairus, this woman had also heard rumors about Jesus. A teacher, going around and touching those deemed untouchable, bringing healing. Unlike Jairus, her status in life did not grant her permission to walk up to Jesus and just ask for help. No, she would have to try a different way: from behind, hopefully completely unnoticed. 

You all know me by now and you know I love to employ my sanctified imagination and ask questions of the text to try and draw out the humanity in the sacred. So as I read this story this week I wondered, was this woman known in her community? Did people recognize her face and dodge her in the crowded streets so they wouldn’t also become ritually unclean? How did her family respond or engage with her year after year? After a while, did she just try dodging people, avoiding contaminating them, avoiding their pitiful or judgmental gazes? 

But then, she spots him. As the text describes the scene, you can almost hear the gravel crunch underneath her feet as she picks up her pace, bobbing and weaving, going over the plan in her head again and again as she closes the gap: “I just have to touch his clothes, then I’ll be healed. I just have to touch his clothes, then I’ll be healed…I know it.” And suddenly she is there. Before she can lose her courage she reaches out and touches him. 

The scriptures tell us that she knew immediately in her body that she had been healed. What was that moment like for her? Did she begin to cry? Did she have anyone left in her life to run back to and share in her miracle? It seems from the story that she had no intention of speaking a word to Jesus, but in the same immediate moment, Jesus stops in his tracks. “Who touched my clothes?” You can almost hear the crazed confusion in the disciples’ tone when they respond, right? “Um, don’t you see the crowd, Jesus? We are ALL touching each other. You expect us to be able to tell you exactly who touched your clothes?” But Jesus is insistent. This touch was different. He begins to search the crowd, looking for the person who touched his clothes. He needs to know and he is not going anywhere until the mystery is solved. 

The woman makes herself known “full of fear and trembling”. And in a way that mirrors Jairus, she falls at Jesus’ feet and tells him the whole truth. Did she tell her whole story to Jesus? Was she sobbing, snot mixing with the dusty ground as she explained how she had spent twelve years and every cent to her name on trying to find a cure, but nothing had worked so she figured maybe if she just touched his clothes, not even his skin because she would not want to risk his ritual uncleanness, but maybe he was the miracle she had long been praying for?

We do not know Jesus’ posture, but I think it is okay to imagine that Jesus crouched down to get on the same level as the woman. Ours is a Jesus who is known for meeting people where they are, in the midst of their messy lives, so to me it makes sense that he would kneel down, maybe place a hand over hers or on her shoulder, perhaps on the bottom of her chin so she stops sobbing into the dirt and meets his gaze. He did not want to scold her, no, Jesus wanted to meet her face to face because he is a relational Savior. This story is not just about her physical healing, but also her relational and communal healing.

“Daughter,” he uses a familial term to address this woman who had been left outside of her community for over a decade, “Daughter your faith has healed you. Go in peace, healed from your disease.” We hear nothing else from this woman, so there is no way to know what kind of life she returned to, but she touched the Messiah and her life was forever changed. But there is still another person waiting on a life-changing miracle. Can you too feel the discomfort, the impatience that must have been radiating off Jairus? His daughter is back at home dying and Jesus had the audacity to stop in a large crowd and ask, “who touched me?” And not only that, then Jesus enters into conversion with the woman at fault! If watches had existed I think we can all picture Jairus constantly checking his, tapping his feet, pacing back and forth. His daughter was in need of a miracle, why did Jesus not see the urgency?

As Jesus and the woman were still speaking, some messengers approached Jairus. As I read the text I can imagine this desperate father’s heart rate drop and his stomach sink to the ground. He knows what they are coming to say: his daughter has died. But Jesus is not easily deterred. He overhears the conversation and turns to Jairus to say, “don’t be afraid, just keep trusting.” While Jesus had just made the last first, we soon see that there is still hope for those deemed first by societal order. Jesus enters the house and it is just as loud and crazy as the street they had been traveling on. Making his way through the commotion Jesus finds the child and once again speaks in a way that likey seemed crazy to those around him: “The child isn’t dead, she is only sleeping.” The people in the room laugh because what other response is possible? She is clearly dead. But Jesus pushes forward. He allows a small group to remain, reaching out and touching the girl’s hand, telling her to get up. And she does just that. She is reunited with her family and as he heads out the door, Jesus instructs them to tell no one and to give the girl something to eat. 

It is so easy to focus on the physical healings in narratives like these. But I love how commentarian Lance Pape put these stories into a different perspective. He wrote, quote, “For Mark’s Jesus, the healing itself is not the only point, not the only urgent point, not even the main point.” No, Jesus is in the business of restoring social outcasts to community. Jesus is ready to bring those on the edges of society into the family of God, and he does so through touch. Through the physical act of drawing near.

We have all lived through a global pandemic that, for a season, left many of us deemed untouchable over concerns for our own health as well as the health of our loved ones and neighbors. But there are many other ways we deem one another untouchable, where we place one another in separate boxes, in separate statuses of life, aren’t there? We divide on issues of class, on race, on sexual orientation, political allegiances or ideologies, and so forth. At times, when we feel as though we have been deemed untouchable by others, we feel as though it is only fair to return the favor, so we turn around to deem them equally untouchable, forging for ourselves a life marked by a significantly isolating existence.

But that is not supposed to be true for those who claim to follow Jesus. No one is untouchable in God’s family. Not the wealthy religious leader or his dead child, nor the unnamed woman with a chronic illness that cut her off from community, religion, and family. God’s family is one where all are treated equally, with the same dignity, and given the same attention by the Messiah. Many of us here enjoy a life that is probably very comparable to Jairus’. We are often considered religious insiders, and due to a multitude of reasons experience the privileges that are comfort, leisure, healthcare. But the family of God is also for those whom society has shunned. For those whose conditions or status has left them broke, homeless, in chronic pain, cast out from their family and friends due to their identity. And in this short story we see Jesus is living a message that shows truly, all are welcome. There is more than enough room for all of us in the family of God. This is indeed the good news, thanks be to God.

The Stained Glass Reflections Podcast is a part of Some Holy Hodgepodge, an inclusive and affirming pastor's blog compiled with the writings, projects, and random musings of Rev. Mikayla Sauerbrey (she/her). Rev. Mikayla is a self-proclaimed sweater weather enthusiast, procrasti-baker, and, in the words of the late Rachel Held Evans, is still willing to risk being wrong about Jesus.

For more, feel free to find your way over to her blog at ⁠www.someholyhodgepodge.substack.com⁠. And, If you are looking for an inclusive church community to check out, visit her congregation's website at ⁠www.calvarymoravian.net⁠

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Please enjoy this sermon originally preached at Calvary Moravian Church in Allentown, PA on the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost on June 16th, 2024. The biblical texts for this sermon came from Mark 4:26-34. A full manuscript of the sermon can be found below.

Jesus loved to use a good story, a visual aid to help get his point across. Throughout the gospels we see this: water is often a very important medium for Jesus, as are trees, plants of all kinds, mountains even, fields, wineskins, ceremonial gatherings, shepherds, gardeners, and so much more. And like those who would have heard Jesus speak these parables for the first time, we might be wondering why on earth he felt the need to talk about the kingdom or kin-dom of God as he did, because sometimes he didn’t necessarily make things clearer with his different metaphors and narratives. However, as we often do on Sundays like this, when we take some time to slowly read and listen to these parables of Jesus, we are invited to see how his use of imagery makes for some rather grand statements about just what God has in store for God’s people and all creation.

Mark sets the scene for us earlier in this chapter, so we know Jesus is teaching both his close followers and many others about the kingdom of God, the family of God and what exactly being part of God’s family entails. On the shores of the sea, in a boat, Jesus tells those gathered that God’s kin-dom, is resilient, but that the environment around the kin-dom matters greatly. The kin-dom of God, he continues, is a light unto the world that cannot and should not be hidden away. And that even though it may be small, God’s family can and will grow into a mighty, amazing, community for generations to come. That is the image Jesus chooses for our parable today: this image of a tiny little mustard seed.

God has always been in the business of flipping our preconceived notions on their heads. Scripture tells us on more than one occasion that it is the oldest sons are supposed to be the leaders and the special ones, and yet how often do we read stories about younger sons and even daughters, through whom God moves and speaks in mighty ways? When we think of people who will bring about victory, who should represent God’s might and favor, why shouldn’t it be strong-willed kings with all sorts of riches and military successes? When we imagine how God might come in the flesh to dwell with us, of course God would not choose to do so in the form of a small baby, born among the animals to a family with no real means, right? But of course, that is exactly what God did. And of course God reminds God’s people time and time again that the world’s definitions of success are not the same standards of measurements God goes by. And it is God who gets to choose who God works with and through, for God is not bound to social conventions of practice. 

At other times in other narratives, Jesus calls on his followers to have faith the size of a mustard seed and promises that if they do so, they will get to move mountains. But that is not how he uses the mustard seed in our Mark text today. Today, the seed does not represent something we ought to obtain and work for, but rather represents the gift we are given through the family of God that Jesus has come to bring to fruition. In this small corner of the world two thousand years ago, Jesus walked among friends and families and strangers, healing, teaching, leading, and loving, setting an example for the kind of community God wanted for all of God’s children, for all of God’s creation. What Jesus wanted his friends and followers to know, was that while they may have been small, they would grow into something beyond their wildest dreams. They would become a shelter, a place for others to find peace and refuge. They would grow and change. They would become what they were meant to be. 

This week I had the privilege of attending a prayer lunch down in Philadelphia for those in Gaza, and at this lunch those of us gathered got to hear from Palestinian pastor, author, and professor the Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac. You may or may not know his name, but he preached a now famous sermon this past Christmas season at his church, Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, not our Bethlehem but the original one, and it was titled, “Christ in the rubble.” It is a stirring sermon, one I would encourage you to listen to, and his words for us this past week were very similar to the ones he had for all those listening this past Christmas: the church cannot turn her face away from this moment, from the horrors and atrocities being done day after day. Silence in the face of great atrocities is complicity, and the beauty of the incarnate God is no more made manifest than in solidarity with those on the margins. 

But during this lunch, someone, a young college student, stood up and spoke about how disillusioned he had become with the church over the past several years, only having his discontentment grow since last fall. This student asked Dr. Issac if the Church at large was going to survive much longer and if there was any reason to really have hope anymore. Dr. Isaac’s words will stay with me forever because his answer was gentle yet resolute: Yes, the Church will survive. And yes, there is still reason to hope. That hope, Dr. Isaac offered, can often be found in small churches all over the world that are still listening to the leading of the Holy Spirit, that are still walking in the ways of Jesus to the best of their abilities, and who are wholly imperfect but still show up because they believe in the God who first showed up for them. 

Sometimes, those of us in small churches, look around and get incredibly discouraged. We see pews that we wish were not so empty, we see budgets that are shrinking, we make changes to the way we have always done things not because we want to, but simply because we have to, and we worry about what this means for us and whether or not God is still with us. We compare ourselves to other churches we see or know about that, from where we stand, appear to be thriving given their size and apparent successes and we worry, that because we don’t look like them, that something has gone wrong. However, I think Jesus’ imagery of the mustard seed reminds us all that this is not true. We may be small, but when we are planted where God has us, we will grow into what we are meant to be. The kin-dom and family of God does not need to come rolling in in some large and in charge way. No, when Jesus speaks about the kin-dom of God to his disciples, he presents them with a mustard seed as the image to hold on to. “Consider a mustard seed,” he says, “it’s the smallest of all the seeds on the earth; but when it’s planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all vegetable plants and is even able to eventually provide shelter for the birds.” When trying to think of the best image to describe God’s kin-dom, God’s family, this is what Jesus had in mind. Small, unassuming, but with great promise.

So what is that kingdom of God like? In a world that is no less filled with brokenness, pain, and sorrow as it was when Jesus sat in that boat and taught those gathered, what hope can we glean from these words of the God in flesh? It seems that the hope lies, as it often does, in remembering that God’s love can take what is unassuming, what appears inconsequential, a mere drop in an ocean and turn it into something beautiful and life altering. From the outside or from a cursory glance, someone might imagine that a small church on a corner in the West End of Allentown might not lead to something grand, and Jesus’ words remind us to recognize what can be possible. With just a few hands every other week, thousands in our greater community have been fed by those dedicated to the work at the soup kitchen. In a world where so many have been told that God’s love is not for all, we rewrite that narrative every year we show up at Lehigh Valley Pride. When we open our doors for gatherings like we did this past week, we make room for people like some of my friends who showed up and had their first positive experience with a church and with Christians in years. This is what I think Jesus had in mind when he told those gathered that God’s kin-dom. God’s family does not always make sense at a first glance, but through the transformative power of God’s love, it has the chance to grow into something breathtaking and wild. So, may we live into our mustard seed nature, knowing that we are more than enough for God to work with. This is the very good news, thanks be to the God of mustard seeds and transformative love. Amen. 

The Stained Glass Reflections Podcast is a part of Some Holy Hodgepodge, an inclusive and affirming pastor's blog compiled with the writings, projects, and random musings of Rev. Mikayla Sauerbrey (she/her). Rev. Mikayla is a self-proclaimed sweater weather enthusiast, procrasti-baker, and, in the words of the late Rachel Held Evans, is still willing to risk being wrong about Jesus.

For more, feel free to find your way over to her blog at ⁠www.someholyhodgepodge.substack.com⁠. And, If you are looking for an inclusive church community to check out, visit her congregation's website at ⁠www.calvarymoravian.net⁠.

Please enjoy this sermon originally preached at Calvary Moravian Church in Allentown, PA on Trinity Sunday, May 26th 2024. The biblical texts for this sermon came from Isaiah 6:1-8 and Romans 8:12-17 A full manuscript of the sermon can be found below.

Manuscript:

It was sometime in the middle of May, about six or seven years ago. I had, for some reason, thought it would be a brilliant idea in an already busy summer, to lead a trip of college students, some of whom had never even been on an airplane before, across the world. I would be moving in June to a city and state I had never even been to for a job with coworkers I’d only ever met over Skype because this was back when Skype was the leading video chat service. I had a plan for the years ahead, I thought God and I had worked things out and we both knew exactly where we were going. Life was full and chaotic and while I didn’t really have the time, but I loved to travel and so after many, many hours in the air, a connection in Turkey, and a few days of getting settled and into a rhythm, I found myself on the patio of an apartment in Tbilisi, Georgia, early in the morning. I also quickly realized my Midwest penchant for being an early riser was not necessarily something shared by the still sleepy city I now found myself in. However, I kind of liked that it felt as though I was one of the few people up and moving about the world at seven in the morning on a weekday; even in this city, there was stillness. There was quiet. And as I waited for my pour over coffee to finish brewing I closed my eyes, taking a moment of meditation and prayer, when I saw something that, if I’m being honest, still has me a bit shaken to this day.

My eyes were closed but a set of hands appeared stretched outward, the rest of the body they were attached to was there but not necessarily a focal part of the image and in these hands there was a cup. It was clearly made of glass, a common drinking vessel that I am sure many of us can immediately call to mind. And I watched as the grip on this glass tightened until, suddenly, it shattered. Logic would have had the hands spring open and toss aside the now broken drinking glass but instead they seemed to only hold on tighter, causing serious damage that I felt as though I could physically feel. Until there was another set of hands that pried open the first, taking care to remove every shard and sliver, holding the palms up and open despite protest as they were allowed to heal. Time went by, the seasons changed, and the scars remained even after all the wounds had closed. But eventually another glass cup was placed into the first set of hands and finally, a voice spoke for the first time, saying: “don’t hold on so tightly this time.” 

As my eyes fluttered open it was as if the rest of the world around my decided it was time for life to begin and suddenly there was noise and movement both from the students inside the apartment and the strangers on the street and other balconies below, and I quickly scribbled down what I just described to you out of fear that I would forget it or feel as though it was something I merely imagined happening. I could not explain it, I wouldn’t tell anyone about this for months. But this mysterious, Divine encounter on the balcony in Tbilisi felt like a turning point I could not ignore. And, those words of encouragement to not hold on so tightly, have meant something different nearly every year of my life from that point on, and I still get goosebumps every time the memory comes back to my mind.

An encounter with God is an encounter with Divine mystery, and when we are on the other side, we walk away forever changed. This is certainly the case for the prophet Isaiah who experiences a vision of God that knocks him off his feet. We are painted quite the vivid picture of this Divine encounter: King Uzziah has died, but God lives and is seated on a throne in the temple. And the royal robe God wears is so grand, it fills the entire space. There are these winged creatures flying about with descriptions that boggle our minds: six wings each, faces and feet hidden by them as they fly around and shout “holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of heavenly forces! All the earth is filled with God’s glory!” Isaiah encounters God, meets his Creator nearly face to face and it is an experience that rattles him, shakes him to his very core.

In response to this sight, Isaiah feels the suddenly very present inadequacies within himself that have come bursting to the surface in the aftermath of meeting with the glory of God. “Woe is me!” He cries out. “I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; and yet, my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.” And in his distress, Isaiah experiences one of the angelic creatures approach him, bringing coal from the altar to his lips and proclaiming him cleansed. It is then, that the voice of God bellows throughout the temple, asking a question about whom shall be sent out, who will take on the task at hand that God is about to give out? Our renewed, forgiven, cleansed prophet steps forward and says those somewhat famous words: “Here am I, send me!”

Isaiah’s encounter with God propels him into this next chapter of his life. This moment is so defining that it is shared, spoken aloud, and eventually written down so generations later might also hear of what happens when we find ourselves in the presence of God, when we receive a call to live into a new purpose, a new chapter, a new way of being that will have impact not just on us personally, but communally as well. Isaiah meets with God, and in this brief encounter where he feels wholly unworthy, we see the character of a God who has a desire to work with us, who calls us even in our unfinished, imperfect state, and who welcomes us into the Divine presence as we are.

When the apostle Paul writes his letter to the Believers in Rome, he encourages his friends to live into their own encounters with the Holy Spirit. “Siblings of the faith”, he proclaims. “This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid life, nor a life bound to fear. It’s a life where you have been brought into the family, you are heirs with Christ, and God is not done with you yet. The Holy Spirit has met with you and has confirmed that indeed, you are now a part of this big, glorious, inclusive, community and so go about your life and live as though this is the truth, because it is.” In the early days of the Church movement, as many were trying to figure out what exactly it meant to be a follower of Jesus, to be someone who had encountered the Holy Spirit and believed in the Creator God, Paul charges them to simply remember who they had become because of their encounter with the Divine.

We are entering the season of Pentecost, the longest season in the Church calendar where we remember and celebrate that ours is a God who remains ever present, ever near through the guiding, comforting, and advocating presence of the Holy Spirit in our everyday lives. We gather together as a church family week after week to communally engage with God through worship: we sing songs and pray prayers that have been sung and prayed by our siblings in the faith for generations. We listen to the timeless, living Word of God and dare to ask big questions of it, wondering together what this ancient text might have to say to us in our modern lives. We greet one another with smiles and hugs and compassionate conversation, inspired by what we hear and say to remember that each and every one of us is an image bearer of the God who came to be with us and is always working to change us, mold us, call us into the lives we are meant to live. How might we, inspired by Isaiah’s encounter with God and Paul’s words to his fellow Jesus followers, listen to the call placed upon us from our own Divine encounters? How are we changed in our direct engagement with God? What is God calling us to step into, and how might we live inspired by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our lives?

This Book we read from each and every week is filled with stories of different people and their vastly different encounters with God. From garden walks with the Divine to evening, mystical wrestling matches, to seaside meals and mountainside sermons, to heavenly throne room visions, and so many more, we can take heart in the knowledge that ours is a God who meets with us in ways that match where we are. Jesus put on flesh and bone and met with his neighbors, talked with them, touched them, healed them, loved them. And the Holy Spirit finds us and stays with us through life’s highs and lows. Sometimes encounters with God are so easily seen and remembered because of visions or audible words or very dramatic moments, but sometimes God is silent or at the very least quiet. But, as we read in our Isaiah text, just because God is silent for most of that vision does not mean that Isaiah was not in the active presence of God. How we find ourselves encountering God can and often is different from person to person, from church to church, from year to year, but the promise to hold on to, the thing to remember is that ours is a God who desires to be with us and makes space and opportunity to meet us where we are, as we are. We, those who call ourselves the Church, have the gift of living in an ongoing encounter with the Divine, and so it is our challenge to figure out how we might fully live into who we have been called to be. As we leave this space, might have eyes and ears to see how God is reaching out to us, inviting us into the glorious Divine presence that is incredibly life-changing. Might we remember that ours is a God who still speaks, who still moves, who is still active all around us. And, may we find ourselves echoing the words of the prophet, accepting our own call, while also living into the abundant life offered to us through the Spirit who has brought us all together into one big, beautiful, messy, imperfect, but oh so wonderful family of God. The good news on this Trinity Sunday can be found in the reminder that ours is a God who invites us in, and who goes with us wherever we may go. I think it’s very, very good news so thanks be to God.

The Stained Glass Reflections Podcast is a part of Some Holy Hodgepodge, an inclusive and affirming pastor's blog compiled with the writings, projects, and random musings of Rev. Mikayla Sauerbrey (she/her). Rev. Mikayla is a self-proclaimed sweater weather enthusiast, procrasti-baker, and, in the words of the late Rachel Held Evans, is still willing to risk being wrong about Jesus.

For more, feel free to find your way over to her blog at ⁠www.someholyhodgepodge.substack.com⁠. And, If you are looking for an inclusive church community to check out, visit her congregation's website at ⁠www.calvarymoravian.net⁠.

Please enjoy this sermon originally preached at Calvary Moravian Church in Allentown, PA on Pentecost Sunday, May 19th 2024. The biblical texts for this sermon came from Ezekiel 37:1-14 and Acts 2:1-21. A full manuscript of the sermon can be found below.

Our friend Ezekiel, a priest living in exile, no doubt felt the weight of the world heavy on his soul. His community, his people were in a collective state of hopelessness. Their world had dramatically changed in just a few years and life as they knew it had fallen away, replaced by the horrific realities of life on the other side of absolute disaster. Their homeland was war torn and a pawn in the struggles of other more powerful governments. The collective trauma that abounded from forced assimilation, from being separated from loved ones and places they had called home would have been available in abundance. 

By the time we catch up with Ezekiel in our passage today, he has been living as priest and prophet to his own people for some time. There are some who remain in the homeland, but Ezekiel and many others have become refugees, captives in a place and country that is a far cry from what they know. God has been speaking to and through Ezekiel leading up to our encounter with him today when, as the Message translation says, “God grabbed” Ezekiel. Suddenly Ezekiel finds himself in a valley, riddled with dusty, dry bones. It is no doubt a vision that brings about familiar feelings to Ezekiel: the death, the sorrow, the overwhelming grief and sense of loss are palpable. And then God’s Spirit asks a seemingly absurd question, “can these bones live?” Ezekiel answers in a way those of us who have walked with God for some time can recognize. “Only you can know or say, God. Only you can know or say.” 

What follows is a mystery, a profound miracle, a divine intervention meant to breathe hope back into the dry and weary bones of Ezekiel and the children of God who had lost sight of exactly who God is and what God is capable of. In partnership with this prophet, the Spirit of God invites Ezekiel to prophesy, to speak life over these dry bones and right before Ezekiel’s eyes, they begin to rattle and quake. And then the bones came together. And then their sinews appeared. And then muscles grafted themselves onto those bones that had, mere moments before, been the symbols of a desert wasteland.

God once again turns to the prophet and invites Ezekiel to prophesy to the breath, inviting the winds to breathe life into the dead bodies around them so they might live. And so Ezekiel does as was commanded, and in a valley that was once desolate, now stands evidence of life in abundance. If I were with Ezekiel at this moment, I imagine both of our jaws to be on the ground, in awe at what lies before us with no real ability to make sense of the mystery. What was dead, really, really dead moments ago, now breathes and appears very, very alive.

In Ezekiel’s likely overwhelm, I picture God’s Spirit turning to the prophet and gently explaining all that has unfolded. “Human one, these bones are the entire house of our people. They have cried out to you and to me that their bones are dry, and that their hope has died. As you prophesied over these bones, turn to our people and say the same to them. Do this so you and they alike will all know that I am God. I will put my breath in you, my Spirit in you, and you will live.” In other words, “Tell our people, Ezekiel, that they are not dead and gone. I am not finished with you yet.”

This breath of life, the Spirit breathed into the valley of Bones and into the people of Israel in the years that followed their exile, pops up once again in the book of Acts, on the story that is the origin of our celebration today. Here too, The Spirit makes quite a scene. Our friends, the disciples, have all gathered in one place fifty days after the resurrection and suddenly, just as they are all sitting about in a house somewhere, there is a howling sound of fierce winds that has filled the entire house. And in with the wind came a sight nearly unexplainable: individual flames of fire were on each one of them. But the mystery and wonder does not stop there. This group of Galileans are suddenly able to speak in languages not known to them, but are known to the many different people who have traveled from all over the world and now call Jerusalem their home. In a narrative that has so many parallels to the early story of the tower of Babel, we are invited to see and remember our God as the one who uses diversity as a way to bring people together under the a message that the life and love of Jesus is available to everyone. 

Just as The Spirit breathed life into a valley of dry bones, here, now the Spirit breathes life into a gathering of people so that again, the hope that can be found in God can be shared far and wide. Some don’t have the eyes or ears to recognize it; choosing rather to believe that new substances are the reason for this mayhem, maddess, and mystery. But when Peter stands up to preach to the masses, he gives credit to the Holy Spirit as the force of life behind the miracle of their day.

While those in the room on Pentecost likely were not quite in the same dire hopeless straits as their ancestors in Babylonian exile all those years ago, it is not far-fetched to imagine that they were also in a state of crisis. Ten days earlier Jesus was with them and now he is gone and unlike after his death, it does not appear that he is making a return quite yet. Sure, Jesus promised that they would not be left alone for long, but anyone who has ever had to wait for something, especially an unknown something, knows that every passing hour seems longer than the one before it and left to our own devices we begin to question everything we think we know. Doubt arises, fear finds a foothold, and hope begins to feel ridiculous. But it is right here, whether one finds themselves in a valley of the driest bones or sequestered in a room, unsure of what might happen next, that the Holy Spirit breaks forth and shakes up absolutely everything.

The Pentecost story is recognized as a turning point, a birth moment of the movement that would one day be known as the Church. The centuries that followed would see the Church take on so many different forms and iterations. There would be seasons of bounty and growth, and seasons of famine and death. And yet time and time again, it appears we are still here and the Spirit keeps on whispering “I am not done with you yet.” Friends, ours is a God who is in the business of doing new things, exciting things, things that go beyond our understanding and remain an utter mystery. And yet, often the foundational pieces of the new, if we look closely enough, resemble some dry bones we might have never expected to be able to live again. As people of the resurrection, I believe this is where we can find embers of hope that our story is not yet finished and may only be just beginning.

And indeed, the hope that comes on the breath of the Holy Spirit is one where everyone belongs and everyone has a place, and in a world where folks of all ages are recounting their rising experiences with loneliness and isolation, in a world that feels as if it gets more and more divided every day, the Good News of Pentecost remains Good News for all. We the Church still have a place and a calling in this world. No matter your gender, your station or lot in life, your background or education, the language you speak or the place you call home, when Peter calls forth the prophecy from Joel, we hear the reminder that God’s family is an eclectic, mismatched group where all are wanted and welcomed and no one is better or worse than anyone else. This is who we get to be in the family of God. And the love of God is bountiful enough to embrace everyone who wishes to find a seat at the table. And I do believe this to be such good news. Thanks be to God, the Spirit of life and life abundant.

The Stained Glass Reflections Podcast is a part of Some Holy Hodgepodge, an inclusive and affirming pastor's blog compiled with the writings, projects, and random musings of Rev. Mikayla Sauerbrey (she/her). Rev. Mikayla is a self-proclaimed sweater weather enthusiast, procrasti-baker, and, in the words of the late Rachel Held Evans, is still willing to risk being wrong about Jesus.

For more, feel free to find your way over to her blog at ⁠www.someholyhodgepodge.substack.com⁠. And, If you are looking for an inclusive church community to check out, visit her congregation's website at ⁠www.calvarymoravian.net⁠.

Please enjoy this sermon originally preached at Calvary Moravian Church in Allentown, PA on the Seventh Sunday in the Easter Season. The biblical texts for this sermon came from the Gospel of John 17:6-19 and Acts 1:1-11. A full manuscript of the sermon can be found below.

Manuscript:

One of my favorite books in recent years is a small collection of prayers, compiled together by the author Sarah Bessey and her merry lot of friends. The book is titled “A Rhythm of Prayer: A Collection of Meditations For Renewal” and in its introduction, Sarah describes how she grew up in the age of prayer circles. Throughout her childhood years, she found herself in living rooms and church basements as the many women in her life, women of all ages and life stages, would gather together to pray. She recalls how their prayers were often incredibly different from one another; some would pray only using words from the Bible, others prayed as if they were standing behind a pulpit, and others still who had the gift of tears as they lifted up the joys and concerns on their hearts. Some, Sarah says, used prayer languages in her more charismatic circles and there were also times when silence seemed to speak the loudest. But no matter how the prayers were said, it did not change that these women gathered together so they could communally lift up their concerns for their world, for justice, for the poor and destitute among them, for their nation and greater community, and for one another. And while Sarah does not go into detail about how many prayers she witnessed be answered or left unanswered, she does say that it was in these prayer circles that she and many others got to learn how to simply sit together with Jesus.

It was this rich history of women’s prayer circles that inspired Sarah to reach out to her friends and see if they would be interested in submitting a prayer to a little project inspired by those groups of her youth. And time and time again I have been brought back to this little book and found such beauty, such profoundness, in the words of these women who gave prayers for seasons of orientation, of disorientation, and especially reorientation. When I have wanted to rage against the never-ending machine of our lives, I have read Micha Boyett’s “Prayer Against Efficiency.” When my country has broken my heart I have prayed Lisa Sharon Harper’s “Prayer For America.” When I have needed a reminder of God’s love which has overcome all life’s trials and tribulations, I have turned to Sarah Bessey’s words in her “Prayer To Learn To Love the World Again.” In a way, this little book has become a prayerful companion for me like our Book of Worship is a prayerful companion for us as a community. We return to it time and time again to lift up the familiar words written by faithful friends and strangers, knowing we do so with a great cloud of witnesses around us that span time and space. There is something unique and wonderful about prayer that can make us feel both safe and incredibly uncomfortable at the very same time. 

In our John passage today, we get to listen in on another prayer circle of sorts. Jesus is with his disciples and after having said so much to them, offered as many lessons and takeaways to them as he could in the hours before his arrest, Jesus then takes the time to move into prayer. In these fourteen verses, he intercedes for the disciples, those whom he just said mere moments ago were his chosen friends, his makeshift family. But also his prayer seems to go beyond them, to any and all who would call themselves disciples. Jesus lifts up prayers that they may not become divided, asking instead that they will be able to remain unified in the days and years ahead. He makes a request that those he calls friends might know joy completely. Jesus asks for protection for his friends, that they may be kept out of harm's way, and that all which is antithetical to God–division, strife, violence, oppression, and hate–may cease to exist in their presence. And, he ultimately asks for his friends to be sanctified, or to be made holy, by the truth that he has taught them. They are to take up the mantle set before them: one of love for the whole world. And if they do so, life will not be easy because choosing to walk in the ways of Jesus means rejecting and standing against the conventional practices of greed, hostility, injustice, and oppression. 

Our scriptures today appear a bit like bookends of the Resurrection, which feels very appropriate on this last Sunday in our Easter season. In John’s gospel, we hear Jesus’ priestly prayer for his disciples before his death. In Acts, we bear witness with those same disciples as Jesus ascends just forty days after he rose from the dead. So much life has been lived and I have no doubt the disciples do not feel like the same people they were when Jesus had first prayed for them in that upper room mere weeks before. But once again these disciples are on the precipice of being left alone, or at least it might have felt that way to them. Once again Jesus is preparing them, telling them that he has to go away. But just like in John’s gospel, in the chapters preceding our reading today, Jesus reminds his friends that they will never, ever be alone. The Holy Spirit is on her way, and they will all be empowered to bring the love they have come to know to their neighborhood, to the surrounding communities, and eventually, the whole world so that one day you and I might find ourselves gathered here on this little corner of the West End of Allentown, Pennsylvania, brought together to remember and worship the God who put on flesh and dwelt with us so that we might find an eternity of peace in fellowship with God.

Today is such a full Sunday; we have the end of the Easter Season, a season of full-out celebration for all God has done for us. It is also the Sunday we remember the Ascension of Christ and the beginnings of a movement we would all recognize as the Church Universal. And it is Mother’s Day, a day that is for some a beautiful and wonderful, joyous celebration and for others a messy, complicated, heartbreaking day for a laundry list of reasons. In a way I think today is a beautiful encapsulation of the fullness that our life has to offer: it is beautiful and wonderful and busy and complicated all at once and when I read Jesus’ prayer before his crucifixion and his parting words at the Ascension, I can hear his awareness of the full life that awaits his friends. There will be seasons of joy and celebration for them and seasons of immense pain and sorrow. At times, it will all intersect and they might feel overwhelmed and unsure what to do next. So thank goodness for the assuredness that anyone who calls themselves a disciple or friend of God gets to rest in the knowledge that no matter what life throws our way, we are never alone. 

We can take heart, dear ones, in the knowledge that we are God’s and that ours is a God who remains so very close. Like that of a loving mother, a loving parent, ours is a God who cares for each and every one of us beyond our wildest dreams. As a good mother is to hold her baby, so too does our God hold us. Just like those disciples who gathered in a somewhat unexpected prayer circle all those years ago, we too have been gathered and grafted into a family whose binding truth is that all are welcomed and loved fully and completely. There is nothing any of us have to do or say to earn this love, but rather it has been freely given by the God who has created us, who has redeemed us in our imperfections, and who will sustain us our whole lives through. 

This is indeed the very good news, thanks be to God.

The Stained Glass Reflections Podcast is a part of Some Holy Hodgepodge, an inclusive and affirming pastor's blog compiled with the writings, projects, and random musings of Rev. Mikayla Sauerbrey (she/her). Rev. Mikayla is a self-proclaimed sweater weather enthusiast, procrasti-baker, and, in the words of the late Rachel Held Evans, is still willing to risk being wrong about Jesus.

For more, feel free to find your way over to her blog at ⁠www.someholyhodgepodge.substack.com⁠. And, If you are looking for an inclusive church community to check out, visit her congregation's website at ⁠www.calvarymoravian.net⁠.

Take This Bread: The Spiritual Memoir of a Twenty-First-Century Christian — by Sara Miles

Why did I pick up this book?

Last year I received a text from a dear friend asking if I had ever read or heard of this book called Take This Bread by Sara Miles. She and another friend and clergy colleague of ours had been discussing it in a recent meeting and thought I might find it intriguing. While this book was originally published in 2007, it had not been on my radar but its description immediately hooked me: “Take This Bread is rich with real-life Dickensian characters—church ladies, millionaires, schizophrenics, bishops, and thieves—all blown into Miles’s life by the relentless force of her newfound calling. Here, in this achingly beautiful, passionate book, is the living communion of Christ.”1 I added Take This Bread to my TBR because the sacrament of Holy Communion is a mystery that often brings me to tears and any book that offers stories about the mystifying, miraculous meal is one I want to read. Not even halfway through this book, I was so grateful I had a physical copy because I knew I was going to want this radical little book on my shelf for years to come.

Who is the author?

Sara Miles (she/her) is a writer, editor, speaker, preacher, political reporter, and former director of ministry at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Fransisco, a role she held for a decade. She is also the founder and The Food Pantry which launched nearly twenty-five years ago and proudly proclaims to welcome everyone at their table. The Food Pantry presently feeds up to 500 families every week in the San Fransisco area. You can learn more about Miles and The Food Pantry’s work on her website here. Her other books include Jesus Freak: Feeding, Healing, Raising the Dead and City of God: Faith in the Streets.

What I loved:

Is it a cop-out to say everything? I wish I could go back in time and reread this book for the first time. I loved the raw honesty with which Miles writes and her ability to exude authenticity on every page. When Miles wrote about her first encounter with the Eucharist, I felt the holiness of the moment leap from the page. When describing the struggle to get her mostly affluent congregation to get on board with her plan to take their Food Pantry to the next level, her agony and angst were palpable. And when Miles showed her honest struggle to come to terms with this faith she had long been skeptical of, I felt a kinship in her very real questions.

I also love Miles's emphasis on the power of sharing a meal across a table. In her chapter on the years she spent as a war correspondent, Miles writes “The impulse to share food is basic and ancient, and it’s no wonder the old stories teach that what you give to a stranger, you give to God.”2 There was something mystical and wonderful about sharing food—something Miles highlights as the thing all of us have in common—especially with strangers, sometimes those deemed enemies, and also with those you knew well. As Miles ties together the holiness of the Eucharist and the holiness of a shared dinner with her food-insecure neighbors in San Fransisco, I found it impossible to not catch the vision she shares: God’s table is open for all as a place where those of us who have already pulled up a chair make room so all can be fed both physically and spiritually.

What left me wanting:

Honestly, there really wasn’t anything that left me wanting in Take This Bread. It is a profound book that feels accessible to read (i.e. you don’t need to have gone to seminary to understand what Miles is getting at) and remains applicable even though I am writing this review thirteen years after it was originally published.

A favorite quote:

If you could see the amount of underlining and tabs I have on my copy of this book, you would know why it was so difficult for me to narrow down just one single quote for this review. However, I think this quote from chapter eight, “Histories”, is one that wholly encapsulates the beauty, power, and importance of Holy Communion:

“[The Eucharist] reconciled, if only for a minute, all of God’s creation, revealing that, without exception, we were members of one body, God’s body, in endless diversity. The feast showed us how to re-member what had been dis-membered by human attempts to separate and divide, judge and cast out, select or punish. At that Table, sharing food, we were brought into the ongoing work of making creation whole.”

— Sara Miles, Take This Bread, 76-77.

Should you read this book?

Yes. 100%. Please read this book. I cannot even begin to count the number of times I have told friends and colleagues “Read this book, it will radicalize you in the best ways.” Especially if you are a leader in faith spaces, whether lay or ordained. I think Miles has a profound word for the church on bringing together the spiritual and physical parts of our faith and how we can do so at the table.

If you are not a person of faith, or you are but you don’t consider yourself a leader in a faith space, I still think this book is an enjoyable memoir. Miles does not shy away from the big questions of faith and the natural skepticism that exists, especially when faith communities say one thing and end up doing another. Overall, regardless of the context you are coming from, I think Take This Bread has something to offer, so next time you are looking to read a memoir or you find yourself curious about the mystic nature of Holy Communion, find a copy and give this a read!

Find a copy of Take This Bread here!

Scripture is not always clear, and anyone who claims that it is likely needs a new prescription. However, it does not get much clearer than the words we have in 1 John 4 today: If we claim to be people of God, that is the God who is the full embodiment of perfect love, then we cannot entertain fear and hate at any level. Love and hate do not mix. And if we do truly want to be people known by our love for God, then our readings today call for us to love our neighbors well. Because indeed, when we love God, we are loving our neighbor because to love God is to love one’s neighbor. In a day and age where Christians appear to be known more for the hate and fear we let run rampant in our communities, may we be different and may we be known by our love.

Please enjoy this sermon originally preached at Calvary Moravian Church in Allentown, PA on the Fifth Sunday in the Easter Season. The biblical texts for this sermon came from the Gospel of John 15:1-8 and 1 John 4:7-21. A full manuscript of the sermon can be found below.

Manuscript:

Sometimes we don’t realize the most significant chapters of our lives are beginning until we are several pages in and we have almost forgotten how they started. I don’t really remember too much of those first few times in college when I walked through the doors of Waconia Moravian church, back in Minnesota. I don’t really remember the hymns that we sang, although I am sure I fumbled significantly with the hymnal and probably tried to sing things out of order. I couldn’t begin to imagine what liturgies we said or even what scriptures were read. It pains me, as a pastor now myself, to admit that I don’t even remember what my pastor Amy preached. My apologies, Amy, if you ever watch or listen to this in the future. I do remember feeling hesitant; I was a shy, sheltered, former homeschool girl attending an evangelical Bible College down the street and I was walking into a mainline protestant church, an open and affirming one at that, with commitments around racial justice and healing work, and it was pastored by a woman. To say I was out of my element would be an understatement. But I loved Church and I missed having one to call my own. I was desperate to find a place of worship, a community I could call home. And so, in I walked right through a door with a sticker on it that read, “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things love.”

Like I said, I don’t remember too many specifics of those first few Sundays at Waconia, but that sticker on the door has for some reason remained with me all these years later. And I don’t think it would have, had I not experienced that message lived out once I did indeed cross the threshold of that congregation’s entryway. Over the years that I would spend as a pretty active member I would get to experience that “in all things love” the door was talking about, a saying not unique to Waconia but is a sentiment shared by many of us who call ourselves Moravians. Sweet little Mikayla had absolutely no idea just how much her life would change by simply walking through those doors. But love, unconditional love, unending love, love that knows no limits or bounds has a way of always bringing about the best of kind change.

Our text from 1 John today quite possibly sits at the top of my top five passages of scripture. I’ll leave you all hanging as to what the other four might be. But how can you not just love the words written to a community of believers encouraging them, exhorting them to love one another because they have been loved by the God who is love. How can one not find a sense of peace and calm in the reminder that perfect love, the kind of love God bestows upon us, that each and every one of us is called to step into and to share beyond ourselves casts out fear and displaces hate to the farthest corners of the world because it simply cannot exist when perfect love is present.

I suppose we should try to define exactly what this love the Elder writes about in 1 John if we are going to talk about so much. It truly is an unfortunate thing that the English language has decided we use the exact same word to describe the sacred and holy bond between people, between the Divine being who created us all and our albeit very strong affection for certain foods or sports teams. In this I do think our language does us a disservice by diluting our understanding of what love can be, at least the kind of love that is the unnamed undercurrent in our Gospel selection and is the loudly professed force of all things in our Epistle chapter this morning. 

This week I was reading a book called She Who Is by Dr. Elizabeth Johnson. It isn’t a new book, in fact I think the 25th anniversary edition came out back in 2017. I wasn’t even reading it in preparation for this sermon but in it I came across a definition for the love that comes from God that I think can help us wrap our heads around the kind of love John speaks of. Dr. Elizabeth Johnson says quote, “Divine love is similar to human love in the sense that it is a binding, unitive force, always tending toward the ones loved and willing the good for them. Unlike human love, however, which is a response to goodness already there, God’s love creates goodness, making the creature lovable.”1 end quote.

The Divine love with which we have been loved is recognizable to us as humans, but it also goes above and beyond what we are able to feel and express on our own. God’s love creates goodness where there is none to be found. God’s love makes all creatures lovable when we might find them to be hardly likable. Dr. Johnson would go on to also say that “Love is the moving power of life, that which drives everything that is[,] toward everything else that is.”2 In other words, love, particularly the unconditional love of God is in action, in perpetual motion. 

But it is a tricky, sticky thing to make peace with unconditional love is it not? I mean it sounds great, love that knows no end and turns no one away? Sign my name on the dotted line with permanent ink. But love like this, the love we are given when we remain with God, when we abide with God, it all but necessitates vulnerability because truly deep, loving relationships ask much of us. In relationships we get front row seats to one another’s lives, leaving nothing to the imagination and knowing there is nothing we can truly hide away, especially from the God who sees all things, who knows all things. Even love like this between humans can sometimes feel like too much but when we stop and consider we are loved unconditionally by God, when we read that we are the beloved of God, it can be a breathtaking realization that we do not fully know what to do with. 

I suppose it is a good thing then, if we become just a bit overwhelmed by the love God has for us, that Scripture tells us exactly what we are to do next. I do appreciate when this happens because sometimes the Bible can be down right confusing between all the different historical contexts, literary structures, and genres. But here, 1 John tells us that what we are called to do is to love one another out of the love we have first been given. This, the work of loving one another, loving our neighbors, is how we will know for ourselves that we are remaining with God. But if we thought letting God love us unconditionally made us feel a bit vulnerable at times, was asking a lot of ourselves, certainly extending that same love to the best of our ability to our very real, very seen, very embodied family members, friends, community members, and beyond is not always going to be a simple walk through Trexler Park. People are complicated, fickle creatures and sometimes we become professionals at being really difficult to love. 

And at other times, we get so wrapped up in ourselves that we forget the call to love all that has been placed on us as the branches attached to the True Vine. And yet, I believe it is a beautiful thing that God’s love is known in and through us, even if we make a mess of it more times than not. Renowned author and speaker Barbara Brown Taylor writes in her book, Holy Envy that quote: “the same God who came to the world in the body of Jesus comes to me now in the bodies of my neighbors, because God knows that a body needs a body to make things real.”3 We need one another, we need to encounter each other, to show up for one another to often make the profoundness of God’s love real in our everyday lives. We don’t always get it right, but we are called to love as we have been loved all the same.

There is a beautiful hymn I am sure many of us know that goes, “and they will know we are Christians by our love, by our love! Yes they will know we are Christians by our love.” It is a beautiful song, one I almost had us singing today but alas we get a good Zinzendorf hymn as our closing tune. But I do love this hymn and yet, I fear it is not a true experience for many in our world right now. There is a narrative that is not without some merit, that Christians are more known for our fear and hate than we are our love. It is why many of my peers are leaving the Church and never looking back. It is why families feel divided over their dining room tables. Too often news articles and research studies make headlines that clearly lay out the worsening levels of hate and fear that seem to be the horrific characteristics of those who call themselves Christians in our world today. It is completely antithetical to what we read in Scripture and I can only assume all this hate and fear breaks the heart of God, who is the full embodiment of perfect love. 

Friends, if there are two lessons, two truths we can glean from our scripture today, it is that first: we cannot say that we love God and still refuse to love our siblings, our neighbors, or even the strangers we encounter each and every day. Love and hate do not mix. We cannot on one breath claim to be people of love, people of compassion, people in relationship with Love Itself and then on the next breathe out words that stir up division and strife, pushing our fellow human beings, our fellow Divine Image Bearers into the margins of life. We are people loved so wholly and completely by God and therefore we are at our core people of love, not hate and fear and what a time like our present moment to embrace such an identity. 

The second lesson we have is just this: when we love God we love our neighbor because to love God is to love our neighbor. When we remain with God, when we abide with the True Vine as the Gospel says, then the life that flows through us is a life marked by perfect love, love that casts out fear and roots out hate. The fruit we bear is the work of love that compels our limbs to reach for one another, to share that which freely flows through us. We answer the call to obey the commands of God when we love our neighbors in tangible ways inspired by our theological understanding of how God’s love moves us: we feed the hungry and thirsty, clothe those in need, welcome the stranger, care for the sick, visit the imprisoned, and bring those who have been pushed out and pushed aside back into the fold and flock of God. And who knows just what might happen if we embrace the idea of “in all things love” we as Moravians love to proclaim.

Who knows how we might join God in the work of changing the trajectory of someone’s life. In a world that is so incredibly divided and torn apart because of people’s fears and hate may we be different. May we indeed change the narrative and be known by God’s love which we know is for all people, of all backgrounds, creeds, identities, and abilities. It is a transformative love, one that when we encounter it, and even more so when we share it, we move forward forever changed. I say this every Sunday but indeed I believe all this to be the very, very good news. Thanks be to God.

The Stained Glass Reflections Podcast is a part of Some Holy Hodgepodge, an inclusive and affirming pastor's blog compiled with the writings, projects, and random musings of Rev. Mikayla Sauerbrey (she/her). Rev. Mikayla is a self-proclaimed sweater weather enthusiast, procrasti-baker, and, in the words of the late Rachel Held Evans, is still willing to risk being wrong about Jesus.

For more, feel free to find your way over to her blog at ⁠www.someholyhodgepodge.substack.com⁠. And, If you are looking for an inclusive church community to check out, visit her congregation's website at ⁠www.calvarymoravian.net⁠.

Hello, Dear Ones!

It is so exciting to share with you my first Scrap Paper Scribble project! And truly, this is a project that first came together on some *literal* scrap paper. It’s called, Our Mother Who Art In Heaven, and it is a four-week introductory devotional on the Divine feminine language and imagery found in Scripture.

Ever since I began seminary back in 2019, I have been fascinated by the biblical imagery and language that leans feminine. By and large Western Christianity, especially Protestant Christianity, loves to fully embrace the wealth of masculine imagery of God while all but dismissing the many feminine images and metaphors that do exist within our sacred text.

As I mentioned up top, this devotional is a four-week (or four sessions, it is totally up to you how long you would like to take with this resource) devotional that will mostly just invite you to dip your toes into the waters where the sacred imagination and biblical tradition meet around Divine feminine language and imagery. And because you may wish to wade into these waters a bit more, I’ve included a bibliography and reference list at the conclusion to be your personal guide into these deep waters.

With Mother’s Day right around the corner, consider this devotional my gift to you, even if you don’t embrace the title of “mother.” Also, I know that Mother’s Day can be a sticky, complicated day for so many, so if that rings true for you don’t worry, this little resource will remain available here whenever you may wish to engage with it.

For those who may be a bit skeptical, or for who are only used to masculine language for the Divine within Christian tradition and worry I’ve fallen off the Orthodoxy boat with this study, I want to share with you this note from the “What To Expect” introductory section:

“This devotional is not proposing an only feminine understanding of God, because that does not actually solve the issue around our God-speak. We belittle our understanding and engagement of the Divine whenever we box God in or restrict God to one particular way of human understanding. And of course it should hopefully go without saying that I, along with so many others who embrace Divine feminine language and imagery in scripture believe there can be rich and profound beauty in the many masculine metaphors and frameworks for God, just as there is room and space to identify God without any specific gender.”

So there you have it! This not-so-little resource is freely yours and I do hope and pray you meet with God in a new or renewed way as you walk through this devotional.

In All Things Love,

Pastor Mikayla

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Our Mother Who Art In Heaven Devo

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Also, if you would like to use this devotional in a congregational setting, a small group gathering, or in any other spaces, either printed or projected, attribution must include as follows: © 2024 Mikayla Sauerbrey www.someholyhodgepodge.substack.com.

Thank you!

This past Sunday was what some of us in the pastoring biz affectionately call “sheep Sunday”, given the lectionary provides us with both Psalm 23 and John 10:11-18. More widely this Sunday is known as Good Shepherd Sunday as we read about just what makes Jesus a truly good Shepherd and ponder what it means to belong to the flock of Christ.

Please enjoy this sermon originally preached at Calvary Moravian Church in Allentown, PA on the Fourth Sunday in the Easter Season. The biblical texts for this sermon came from the Gospel of John 10:11-18 and 1 John 3:16-24. A full manuscript of the sermon can be found below.

Manuscript:

I grew up with a pastor who had a bachelor’s degree in agriculture, so Sundays when the scripture involved any kind of crop or animal metaphor always made room for some great depth and knowledge on the physicality of those particular passages. Unfortunately for all of you, my bachelor’s degree in child and family ministry did not require me to take any classes on animal husbandry—a true oversight in the curriculum I’m sure—and I didn’t have to do any internships shadowing farmers as they figured out best grazing practices for their flocks, but I am hopeful I can still do justice to our text on this annual Good Shepherd Sunday.

We meet up with Jesus, his disciples, several skeptical religious leaders, and likely a handful of other nosey onlookers in the aftermath of a miracle. Right before this, Jesus had encountered a man who was unable to see, who was blind. And then, in what can only be described as a modern day, post-pandemic nightmare situation, Jesus sees this man, spits in the dirt, makes a muddy paste and then proceeds to smear this mixture on this man’s eyes. He then instructs the man to go and wash up and we are told that after he does this, he can suddenly see.

This miracle causes chaos to erupt in the neighborhood as suddenly there is this man walking around uninhibited, something that was not true even a day before. There are those who question whether it is the same person at all. To which Jesus’ new friend assures all his neighbors that indeed, he is the same man, the same beggar they all knew but that he has encountered a man called Jesus and now his life is forever changed. 

What follows is a lengthy account of the interrogation of this man by some of the community leaders who are up in arms over how he was given the ability to see. This unnamed man and the leaders go back and forth over how exactly Jesus was able to perform such a miracle and it unfortunately ends in a tragic statement: because there could be no unity even in their disagreements, these leaders expel the man from their presence. 

Word gets around and Jesus quickly hears what has happened and he goes out searching for his new friend. When Jesus finds him, in contrast now the man is welcomed with open arms and he pronounces his belief in the God enfleshed, this Son of Man, this Human One. We never get to learn his name and yet his story rings familiar to many of us, does it not? Yes, Good Shepherd Sunday comes around every year like clockwork and I am sure many of you know this story, but it is familiar in that we can all hopefully recognize the experience of a fellow person who encounters Jesus and is never the same from that point on. It is familiar in that we know Jesus to be the one who gathers people from all corners of the fields together, who searches us out and finds us, bringing together a community that resembles some kind of holy hodgepodge. But our differences and uniquenesses don’t matter to this Good Shepherd, ‘for he knows how to meet our every need and he gives us to each other so that we can find wholeness and love in the family, in the flock, of God.

Our portion of this text today is a selection of Jesus’ encounter with those religious community leaders in the aftermath of this miracle account. In it, Jesus puts himself in line with so many of the good shepherds these leaders would have been familiar with since they were well versed in their Torah: Rachel and Zipporah, two matriarchs of their faith and community who were brought into the fold while they were caring for their own flocks of sheep. Certainly King David, who also cared for his family’s flock, a job that fell to him as the youngest of his brothers. Being a shepherd would never have been a glamorous job, but it was nevertheless an important one. And in my sanctified imagination, I see Jesus wrestling with a million different emotions as he proclaims himself to be the Good Shepherd. He is frustrated because how dare any one expel a person from their community over something like this. He is angry on behalf of his friend. He is also filled with sorrow because he is from this greater community, these religious leaders are his religious leaders, he sees his own friends and neighbors in the faces of this man’s friends and neighbors and despite the overwhelming evidence, they still do not see, they still cannot grasp the picture being painted for them. It must break Jesus’ heart because we know all he wants is for everyone to lay down their weapons of choice, whether that be items of violence, words, or power, and embrace one another as God embraces us.

When I read Jesus’ words that begin in verse eleven I read them with a level of exasperation, almost as a plea for understanding: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep… I know my sheep and they know me just as the Father knows me and I know the father.” Jesus is desperate for people to know that indeed it is him that he speaks of in these parables; he is the Good shepherd, he is the gate that keeps out all those who would threaten harm to his flock. And as he looks into the faces of those who have just expelled his new friend, it must break his heart that those who should also be good shepherds or at the very least simply be a part of the flock, have caused harm to those Jesus had just brought into the fold. 

Jesus is not the Good Shepherd because he gave a man sight; after all Jesus does not say “I know my sheep and they know me; they know exactly what I look like.” No, Jesus tells those who are angry with him that his sheep know his voice. And even in this, he is not necessarily referring to the physical sense of hearing, we know this. One's ability to sense the world around them never inhibits them from entrance into God’s flock. Jesus is the Good Shepherd because he brought this man who had been an outcast in his community, someone people looked down upon as he had to beg to survive, Jesus brought him into his fold, into his flock. He gave this man a gift that can have no monetary amount assigned to it because it is priceless: Jesus gave this man the gift of belonging.

When Jesus uses the parable of a shepherd and their sheep, it is a given that those considered his sheep belong to him as their shepherd. They are now under the care, under the protection, of someone who goes before them, who leads from out in front and who will stand between them and any dangers that might come their way. These sheep have someone who, when they wander off or get sick and fall behind, when the terrain is rough and they fall by the wayside, they have someone who will chase them down and find them, bringing them back into the safety that is the community. They belong to the shepherd and, in a way, they belong to one another. So too is it true for you and for me: because Jesus is our Good shepherd too. He brought each and every one of you from all your various corners of this world together into this flock and he remains with us. Leading us, guiding us along the way. We follow after him because we know his voice and we know we can trust the path he has set before us.

But not only do we belong to the Good Shepherd, one of the gifts of belonging to God is that we get to belong to one another as well. And when we belong to one another that is when we are invited to care for each other. Our text from 1 John this week speaks of the love of the Good shepherd and calls us to love in kind: we love our siblings in the faith and in our greater community beyond these walls not with empty words on our tongues, but with actions and deeds done in the truth. When we care for each other, when we show up for each other, when we put ourselves out there for our siblings, when we take a stand and put actions behind our words when say that God’s is a family that is inclusive and invites all to join us, indeed this is how we will know that we belong to our Good shepherd and to one another. In this we will find our hearts reassured that our God is present with us. 

Belonging to one another all but necessitates action. Because we belong to God and one another, we feel the tug to be responsible in how we care for, how we show up for, and how we express our love for each other. When someone in our community is in need, we rally around them and do what we can to help meet that need. When we see injustices around us, we practice the age-old adage: “when you see something, say something” and we call it out, not letting the divine image in any person be diminished or snuffed out because of another’s fear or hate. When we notice one another falling behind, getting separated from the group, or all out going missing we too stop and look around, doing whatever we can to help our fellow sheep be found. This is what it means to belong to one another. This is what it means to love with truth and action. This is the call placed on each of us as we step into being loved by our God who certainly is our Good Shepherd.

Fellow Beloveds, my hope and prayer for us this Sunday morning is that we may love one another and our greater community with the same ferocity with which we have first been loved. May the love of our Good Shepherd, who seeks and finds us, who fights to make a space in the fields of this world where all lost sheep can find a home, indeed may this love seep into our very bones and then compel us forward to continue sharing this love everywhere we go, to everyone we meet. I believe all of this with my whole heart, to be the Good News. Thanks be to the God who knows us and calls to us with a voice we recognize. Amen.

The Stained Glass Reflections Podcast is a part of Some Holy Hodgepodge, an inclusive and affirming pastor's blog compiled with the writings, projects, and random musings of Rev. Mikayla Sauerbrey (she/her). Rev. Mikayla is a self-proclaimed sweater weather enthusiast, procrasti-baker, and, in the words of the late Rachel Held Evans, is still willing to risk being wrong about Jesus.

For more, feel free to find your way over to her blog at ⁠www.someholyhodgepodge.substack.com⁠. And, If you are looking for an inclusive church community to check out, visit her congregation's website at ⁠www.calvarymoravian.net⁠.