The Holy Spirit is active bringing transformation in our lives, our community, and in the world. 

Vicar Andrea Bonneville
Third Sunday after Epiphany, year C 
Texts: Luke 4:14-21 

Beloved in Christ, grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

The Holy Spirit is busy transforming.  Do you hear her?

Moving, stirring, breathing, growing, changing.
Challenging, testing, inviting, stretching.
Energizing, motivating, inspiring.

Systems of oppression and structures of power are being exposed, creation is crying out for healing, walls of division are crumbling. God’s Spirit is active in the world bringing good news to the poor, proclaiming release to the captives, recovering sight to the blind, freeing the oppressed, proclaiming the celebration of the jubilee.  

Today, Jesus says, today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Today God’s spirit is filling your life. Today the Triune God is transforming our world.  Today, here and now.

And yet many are still trapped in systems of injustice, caught in the sin of the world, living within destructive patterns that are hurtful to their neighbors and creation.  

Many can’t escape the noise of fear and shame that lies to us and convinces us that we are not good enough to receive the good news of God’s love and mercy.  Many live in poverty, captivity, isolation and experience loneliness, discrimination, and hate.

It’s hard to believe that transformation is happening and that God is active in our lives when we look around us and see pain and suffering and division.  It’s hard to trust that change is going to happen when the weight of sin and evil weighs us down.  Some days we don’t know if what scripture says God is doing and has done in the world is enough or if God’s promises of abundant love and life will be fulfilled.

But don’t give up on hope. Don’t lose sight of the ways God is active in our lives. Because God, through the Spirit, is transforming you, this community, our neighborhood, our world. With God, transformation is happening, but we know that it doesn’t happen overnight.

When Jesus enters back into his community after his baptism and wilderness journey, people who have known him his whole life don’t notice the transformation that has taken place through the Spirit. And next week we will hear that his community doesn’t respond well to his transformed identity.

But Jesus plants a seed of promise that throughout his ministry he will continue to water and nourish the world bringing healing and justice until God’s promise of love and mercy is fulfilled through his death and resurrection.

And now, as people living in the hope of the resurrection, we take on the task of watering and nourishing until God’s promise can be fulfilled for all of God’s beloved.  Day by day change is happening in unexpected ways in unexpected people, and in unexpected places.  

When we encounter the word of God, hear the promise of a world filled will love, grace, and justice. And when receive glimpses of God’s promises fulfilled in our lives, we cannot help but open our hearts to the transformation that is happening in our lives through the spirit.  

Transformation happens as we hear God’s word through our singing and speaking in our silence and in our prayer. God’s word is being fulfilled today because as we hear God’s word and experience God ‘s word in others, we are transformed by it and through it. This is why it is so important for us to gather in community to worship, read scripture, pray, and serve together, to feast together, to be a part of each other’s daily lives.  

Transformation happens when we confront our biases and behaviors that contribute to division and destruction.  When we take responsibility for our actions and apologize when we make mistakes. It happens when we check in on a friend or take time to laugh, play, and share joy.

Transformation happens when we serve our neighbor. When we give of our time, money, and resources to help others and journey with them.  Like what is happening in our community as we take action to accompany and advocate for an Afghan refugee family.  Or when we continue to provide gracious hospitality to all who come to our door looking for support and love.

Transformation happens as we walk out of these doors proclaiming God’s love and justice through our actions and words whether that be in our classrooms or office, around the dinner table, at the doctor office, or in an interaction with a stranger.  

When we take time to pause and listen to the Holy Spirit, we are guided in ways that will grow our hope and confidence in God’s word active in our lives. And for now, we are nourished by the promises of God’s love and grace that have already been revealed to us. These glimpses of growth, of healing, of reconciling, give us hope to continue to follow the Holy Spirit nudging us toward transformations we don’t even know are possible. 

Moving, stirring, breathing, growing, changing.
Challenging, testing, inviting, stretching.
Energizing, motivating, inspiring.

The Holy Spirit is busy transforming. Do you hear her?

Amen.

The Triune God, through community, is leading us into abundant life and love 

Vicar Andrea Bonneville
Second Sunday after Epiphany, year C 
Texts: 1 Corinthians 12: 1-11; John 2:1-11 

Beloved in Christ, grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

I must admit I am envious of the people in this week’s Gospel story. Together with both loved ones and strangers, celebrating a wedding without having to think about masks, social distancing, showing their vaccination cards, or locating a test.  The weather is warm and the wine is flowing abundantly.  It sounds pretty dreamy, if you ask me.

But even this celebration has a bit of a hiccup as the wine runs dry.  Mary tells Jesus, “They have no wine” which to me sounds like a code for saying “we are experiencing unprecedented times”.

Jokes aside, running out of wine is a serious issue. Unlike modern day weddings, this wedding was likely to last a whole week and there was an expectation that wine would flow abundantly throughout the celebration.

But before I go any further with this metaphor, I just want to create a clear understanding of what we are talking about with wine.  In this time period wine wasn’t necessarily a strong alcoholic drink. It was a slightly alcoholic drink filled with vitamins and minerals and it was safe and clean to drink unlike most of the water. 

If the wine runs dry, the celebration was likely to end. And if it does, it leads to shame and embarrassment for the newlyweds, and also reflects negatively on the community who is supposed to be supporting them. It was after all custom for guests to bring food and drink to keep the celebration going.  

Two years ago, I would have read this Gospel story and sort of dismissed it because it kind of seems insignificant in the larger narrative of Jesus’ healings, teachings, and signs throughout the Gospels.

But over the last two years, it has been reinforced time and time again of how important community is.  We know the heartbreak of having to cancel or postpone time spent with people we love doing things that bring us joy and nourishment and love and support.

It feels like the wine has run dry and we are living in a time of scarcity again as we navigate canceled plans, empty grocery store shelves, limited hospital beds, and physical and emotional exhaustion. We know scarcity, whether it be scarcity of our basic needs, scarcity of resources, scarcity of energy, or joy, or hope. Yet, today in our Gospel story God’s unconditional love, grace, and mercy is revealed to us through providing abundance in the midst scarcity.

And so, if you came to worship today with your glass half empty (or half full for the optimists in the room), I have good news. God is here transforming our scarcity into an abundance of nourishment and hope.

Mary knew it. The disciples were starting to learn it. The newlyweds and wedding guests had no idea what was going on as they received nourishment, joy, and hope that with the amount of fine wine available the celebration was never going to end.  

Jesus’ act of changing water into wine is a sign that with the triune God—abundant life, joy, and hope are here and now.  Jesus even proclaims later in the Gospel that he has come so that we can have life, and have it abundantly (John 10:10). 

Abundant life is more than portioning our energy and resources, more than checking off the boxes of our to-do lists, more than navigating division and fear. And is certainly more than hoarding resources and material things. Abundant life is about community.

Because abundance is not abundance unless we can share it with others. We may have abundant joy in our hearts, but our joy can’t be reflected if we do not have someone to share it with. Our meal may be the most delish looking feast, but the food is just going to spoil if we do not have a community to share it with. The abundance of gifts we have through the Holy Spirit are going to get rusty if we don’t use them by living lives of love and service.

Now there are varieties of gifts, Paul writes, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.

God who created you, who knows you by name, who walks with you in the joys and sorrows in the grief and hope also calls you into abundant life and into abundant community.  Where all are invited, where all are embraced, where all can taste the fine wine that is the nourishment of our abundant life together.  So come to God’s table and be nourished, reflect God’s abundant grace and love for all to see.

We are being transformed with and through community and with and through God to share the abundant gift of God, who is our source of life.

Amen. 

The Triune God is here bringing grace and love and hope into our lives and into our world.  

Vicar Andrea Bonneville
Nativity of Our Lord
Texts: Isaiah 52:7-10, Hebrews 1:1-4, John 1:1-14 

Beloved in Christ, grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Grace is here.
Forgiveness is happening now.

Love is here.
Good news is being proclaimed now.

Peace is here.
Division is ending now.

Hope is here.
New life is springing up now.

The Triune God is here.
God is dwelling among us now.

But you already know this. You’ve already experienced this. This is the Christmas promise. 

God being born into the heartbeat of our humanity and all of creation.
God dwelling among us and with us and in us.
God bringing grace, love, peace, and hope into our lives and our world.

We’ve been lighting candles, praying and singing, hoping and waiting, anticipating this moment. For Christ’s light and glory, the very presence of God, to dwell among us and to scatter the darkness of the world. 

I wish I could tell you the waiting, and hoping, and anticipation was over. That the pain of this pandemic, the heartbreaks, the illnesses, the grief, and injustices were gone.  

On this day as we sing joyous praise our hearts are likely a little heavy, our bodies fatigued, our minds filled with worry, our voices worn out.

But we are still singing. We are still seeking, looking, listening for God to break into and transform our world.  Bringing peace, good news, and salvation for all of creation.

God is coming to us in plain sight, in places that are both expected and unexpected, in ways that have been passed down from generation to generation and ways that surprise us every day, in messy and vulnerable places through messy and unexpected people.

John, in our Gospel reading for today, gives a glimpse of how this looks.  We hear the promise of God being born into the world, into the cosmos, into the wind and the trees and the birds, into my life and yours. God taking on flesh and everything that comes with having a body in this world.  Showing us grace and truth and light and love will scatter darkness.

And in one of his letters, John even deepens what this means for our lives. He writes. “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him” (1 John 4-9).

What does this mean for us today as beloved children of God. It means that we are created out of love.  That we embody love.  That we be love. 

Because to experience love, grace, hope, joy, and comfort is to experience God and to experience God in creation, in our neighbor, in ourselves is to experience comfort, joy, hope, grace, and love.

To know pain and suffering, to walk with people in their pain and journey with them at their death, to have our hearts break open because of the sin and suffering and death and destruction of our world, to weep is to be the reflection of God.

To stand in awe of and care for creation, to care for animals, plant gardens, grow food, put solar panels on our roofs, raise awareness about the climate crisis is to be co-creators with God.

To extend empathy when it is hard, to challenge ourselves and our neighbors to grow and learn, to recognize and acknowledge when we hurt others and creation, to strive for unity and community is to be the body of God.

To sing and praise, to curse and scream, to advocate for yourself and others and call out injustices in our world, to share words of comfort and hope is to be the voice of God.

To deliver diapers, welcome and support immigrants and refugees, build affordable housing, provide transportation, volunteer our time, go to our jobs, care for our families and our neighbors in whatever way we can is to be the hands and feet of God.

To forgive, to heal, to love is to be the heart of God.

God’s dwelling in you and creation is the Christmas promise.

And I can tell you, that because of who you are and how you love and because of who God is and God’s love, the world has been transformed forever and will continue to be transformed through God with us.

But when in doubt keep singing, seeking, looking, and listening.

Grace is here.
Forgiveness is happening now.

Love is here.
Good news is being proclaimed now.

The Triune God is here.
God is dwelling in you now.

Amen.

We join with Mary in singing her song and proclaiming with generations before us and future generations that Christ will be born in our world to bring justice, peace, and mercy.  

Vicar Andrea Bonneville
Fourth Sunday of Advent, year C
Texts: Luke 1:39-45

Beloved in Christ, grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Is there a song that takes you back to a moment in your life when you were filled with joy, or sorrow, or fear, or love?  

A song that you know every word or note to. A song that lives deep in your bones and in your heart. It might not be your favorite, or on the greatest hits list, or by a well-known composer, but it has a meaning from a time in your life. And now when you hear this song it takes you back to a moment, a time or place, and you remember and feel all the emotions that are wrapped in it?

Take a moment. What song starts playing in your heart?

Today we sing and hear the song that was playing in Mary’s heart as she believed there would be a fulfillment of God’s promises and God’s Word in her life.

But where did she learn her song?

I’ve heard that this song that Mary sings is divinely inspired by God and that through her faith she sings these words of praise and proclamation. And we also know that Mary’s words are similar to the words that Hannah sings when she is pregnant with Samuel.  For Mary, this song was about her life about her community about who she knows God to be.

The words pour out from her heart with joy, and confidence, and hope, and mercy that indeed God is going to transform the world through her with the son she will give birth to.  She sings of a world where the people with power are brought down and the lowly will be lifted high, of the hungry being filled with good things and the rich being sent away empty.

She sings with joy knowing that, now with this baby in her womb, the promises that she has heard passed down from generation to generation are about to be born.

I don’t know if this is necessarily historically accurate, but imagine with me if Mary had heard this song her entire life. What if Mary’s mom sang this song when she was pregnant with Mary? What if Mary’s family sang this together before bed at night?  Hoping, waiting, anticipating for their current reality to be transformed by God.  What if the song was passed down from generation to generation by the prophets?  So just as Mary proclaims “Here I am” to the calling of God like the prophets before her she also proclaims this song.  Believing and trusting that she was created for and worthy of bearing the Christ child into our world.  

If this song, this promise and proclamation of who God is, was already deep within her bones and her heart whether she had heard it before or if the Spirit moved through her in that moment, there is no hiding that Mary was created for the task ahead of her.

When Mary says yes to the calling of the Triune God, she could have wept or hid in fear, but instead she goes to her relative Elizabeth who is also pregnant. She goes into a community that will love her, believe her, rejoice with her, and walk this journey with her because they have also heard the promises of God’s love and mercy. She goes to her community and she sings a song of joy and praise proclaiming God’s transforming power, mercy, and justice are here and now.

Mary takes joy in the promise that God is with, cares for, and acts on behalf of the poor and oppressed. And trusts that the mighty and powerful will not control the world, but that through people like her and her friends, family, and community God is working and stirring and breathing life that will transform. She knows that what God is doing is not just for her, but it is for you and for me and for all of creation.

We join our voices with Mary who proclaims the greatness of God and who rejoices in God’s promises in her life and for the world.  Knowing, trusting, hoping, anticipating, waiting for these promises to be made known in our lives and our communities.

Discerning that for some of us our voices will grow louder and for others our voices need to be softer.  That for some of us, we need to actively empty ourselves letting go of privileges, and excess money and belongs, and for others we seek more fulfillment of both physical and spiritual things that help us to live healthy and whole lives.  Living in community where we can challenge, and love, and journey with each other as we bear the living Word of God in our lives, being people who reflect the image of God through our love, our actions, and our songs.

In our songs of joy,
In our songs of transformation,
In our songs of hope,

In our songs that we hold dear to the core of our being, we are reminded of our belonging in the ongoing work of Christ. That we are part of the story from generation to generation of God’s beloved creation working together to bring peace and justice to our world.

Mary shows us and reminds us that each of us have been chosen for the communal task of bearing God’s transforming love in our world. And as we witness and participate together in God’s call for our lives, we singing praises, again and again so that our children, and grandchildren, and generations after us continue these praises.

Take a moment. Can you hear Mary’s song in your heart?

Mary’s song and proclamation is at the center of our lives. It’s the structure of our bones, the melody of our hearts, the chorus of our lives.  The good news and joy of God’s love and justice lives, and breaths, and has life in us as we join our praises together. Praising and rejoicing in the Triune God who continuously comes into our world and into our lives bringing hope, and peace, and justice here and now.   

Amen.

Even as the world is shaking, we stay alert and pray. Turning our head and hearts to the Triune God, who is bringing healing and transformation to our lives, communities, and world. 

Vicar Andrea Bonneville
First Sunday of Advent, year C
Texts: Luke 21:25-36

Beloved in Christ, grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

There will be signs, Jesus says, signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the seas and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

Shaken. Now that’s a descriptor for how the world feels these days.  Shaking from distress among nations, displacement by terror, climate catastrophes, global pandemics, hate crimes, illnesses. Shaken by everything that traps us in fear and weighs down our hearts.  

If you turned on the news in the past week, or were attuned to your community, you likely encountered something that shook you. Something that rattled your bones leaving you questioning how to put the fragmented pieces of our broken humanity together to make something whole, something filled with hope.

My mom watches the news at 5PM, 6PM, 10PM. When the news is on, she is attentive to it.  A few weeks ago, while she was staying at our house, I learned she even puts a police scanner under her pillow as she falls asleep, white noise? I don’t know. My mom is the definition of “alert” when it comes to events taking place in her community. 

I, on the other hand, stay as far away from the news as I can.  Not so much news articles or public radio, but more so from the morning and nightly news in which in the first 5 minutes they introduce everything bad that is happening in the world only to suggest at the very end there will be an uplifting story. Like the duck, Quackers, and the dog, Max, who are best friends. 

This method works and it gets me every time, even as a little kid I had to believe that there was something good happening somewhere. A way to steady myself. I want to cheer for something, and I will 100% cheer for Max, the dog, and Quackers, the duck, as they teach me about friendship.

The promise at the end—the animals, or the family reunion, or a new baby, or the heroic bystander— kept me steady and attentive through the more difficult headlines. But when I think about it, there was always good mixed throughout the “bad” news and even many of the feel-good stories stemmed from sadness and brokenness. Like in this case, Max and Quackers bonded only after they lost their sister and their best friend.

Our Gospel for today is like this. Giving us a highlight of all the bad things that are happening in the world only to suggest that if we are able to endure what is going on long enough, we will be able to turn our heads to see redemption. And hope that the brokenness that we see is only a part of our story.  

What I’ve learned from my mom and her chronic news-watching is that if you stick with a story long enough, you are going to find hope some place in it. The antagonist does not and will not dominate the entire story.

Granted, sometimes you do need to change the channel or change your context if only briefly. Becaue if we turn off the news and ignore our community or get trapped in the worry or fear of the immensity of what’s going on in the world, we may become inactive or stuck. 

Instead, Jesus challenges us to lift our heads and stay attuned, living alert to both the despair and hope that is all around us.

We can’t prevent the earth from being shaken by all the tragedies of this life.  So, we stay alert in order to adapt. We walk through the shaking world pointing to signs of hope that are springing up all around us. Sometimes a broken foundation or even a crack makes room for something new to grow. 

Our capacity to lean into the shakes are different for every one of us. But the point of it all is that we need to be attuned to the needs of our neighbors and the ways God is stirring within us. Some of us can stay alert 24/7 and others need to find different ways to engage.

Changing our perspectives is exactly what Jesus is instructing us to do today. Turning our heads to see the way the incarnate God is being revealed in our humanity and all of creation.

Turning towards our community and seeing the ways that neighbors are caring for neighbors. Contributing to building communities that go against the pattern of individualism and put community in the center. Realizing that our actions can have a significant impact on current and future generations. Living into our full potential to be agents of change, and hope, and healing.  

Turning toward the font and the table.  Remembering our identity as God’s beloved and God’s promise to be with us. Going with open hands and hearts to receive God’s grace and mercy and be fed to go out in service and love to be Christ in the world. 

Turning… even if you don’t know where you are going.  For a step in a new direction can lead us to places we didn’t even know possible and show us something different than old patterns.

Turning to God in prayer.  However prayer looks like for you. Opening our hearts to God and putting trust in God who promises to remain with us. Being gentle with ourselves and finding ways to rest and nourish our spirits.

In this season of waiting, and hoping, and anticipating, we stay attuned to what is shaking and breaking. For we know that hope will come, trees will bud, light will lead us, for the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ is the ultimate transforming good news at the beginning, during, and at the end of our lives.  

Where our world, and our lives, and our communities are shaking, that is exactly where we can expect to find God. Bring healing to what is broken, love to what is hurting, and hope amid despair.

There will be signs, Jesus says. Signs in creation, in our neighbors, and in our communities of hope among the people alert to the cries of all creation. People will trust and hope for what is coming upon the world, new life, God with us, to heal and transform us all.

Amen.