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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Created to be together, we join in the collective work of God’s healing and love. 

Vicar Andrea Bonneville
Reformation Sunday 
Texts: Jeremiah 31: 31-34 

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 recently ate an artichoke, pulling petal by petal away, trying to get to its heart. If you’ve had an artichoke, you know that it can be quite the process pulling away each petal. And then there gets to a point when you are so close to the heart, or what looks the heart, only to realize that there is still one more hairy layer, what’s called the choke, to pull back, revealing the long-awaited heart.  

A vegetable metaphor is odd, I know, normally we hear about peeling back the layers of an onion…but we all know that just makes us cry…and really once you pull back the layers you are just left with tears and more onion than you know what to do with.  

Getting to the heart of an artichoke is a process, one the takes patience and honestly a lot of perseverance. But the thing is, is that once you start tasting the nourishment on the petals and get a glimpse of what is at the center, you won’t stop until you get the heart.

Now if you’ve never had an artichoke before, or even if you have, you may be wondering what an artichoke has to do with reformation. But reformation is all about getting to the heart and the task at hand for us today is to peel back the layers of shame, guilt, fear, and sin in the world and in our lives to get to the heart of who God has created us to be.

Sometimes we think about reformation as change and that we have to work to create something new and innovative in order to make an impact.  But what if reformation is about revealing what has already been inscribed on our hearts.

Unconditional love is on your heart.
Forgiveness is on your heart.
Passion, and energy, and community are inscribed on your heart.

This is what God, through the prophet Jeremiah, reminds us today. God says “I will put my law within [my people], and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”

Most of what we know about who we are as God’s beloved has already been inscribed on our heart:  God’s grace and love is at the center of who you are. Knowing that love and grace, experiencing that love and grace, tasting that love and grace, is going to lead us into the world where our hearts break open and forgiveness and healing are poured out.

God made a covenant that changed our hearts. That dealt with the core of who we are. So that when we are wondering in the world wondering what we can do to deeply love God and love our neighbor, all we have to do is listen to our heart.

God’s justice, and healing, and mercy, and love are the pulse of our lives and they are what flows through our entire body. Transforming us with heartbeat of our heart.

We are capable to bring forth reformation, real change in our society, that goes beyond what we can imagine for ourselves and our neighbors if we can just get to the heart and confront the sin in our world and in our lives, knowing that God’s grace, shown through the life, and death, and resurrection of Christ, frees us to live boldly in service to our neighbors.

It can feel daunting to think of reform when so many intertwined systems are involved. It feels daunting that it is our collective sin of not loving our neighbors, of putting our own needs and comforts before the needs and comforts of others is what makes up these systems.

But what is collective sin is also a collective task at hand. It is not just me and you that has “beloved” written on our heart, but every person. We—all of us—were created to love our neighbor and love ourselves.

God’s promise for our lives in Christ is at the center of who we are and at the center of community.

Through you, God is changing things. God is moving things. God is breaking down systems and peeling back layers to expose what is at the heart of it all…  

And as we join in the work of Christ, we experience the truth of who God is, the Holy one who created us, reformed us, changed us, transform us, and leads us to the heart of the needs of the world where are heart join together and love and grace pour out.

Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Created to be together, we join in the collective work of God’s healing and love. 

Vicar Andrea Bonneville
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 27 B
Texts: Genesis 2:18-24; Mark 10:2-16

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

 What God has joined together, let no one separate (Mark 10:9).

Yet there is so much division and destruction. Walls being built, both metaphorically and physically, to keep people apart. Laws created to separated families and communities of people. Systems of privilege creating a hierarchy and forcing segregation based on race, economics, employment, housing, geography. Judgement and perceptions from within that create and us vs. them mentality, pitting individuals and groups of people against each other as if competition and achievement mean more than kindness and love.

 It is not good that the human should be alone (Genesis 2:18).

Yet there are so many individualist and egocentric ways of thinking.  Keeping humanity at the center of the created world while the rest of creation suffers.  Individuals competing for their own success rather than joining in our collective work of shared progress.

Not to forget what we often forget about which is the significant loneliness people experience because of strained relationships, changes in both physical and mental health, underemployment, or just not being welcomed into a place where they can be their full selves. 

We are continuing to learn what the Triune God learned as the Spirit, the very breath of God, brought forth life from dust creating a human. Learning that a human was never intended to be alone, but that this human needed another human to join together in what would become their shared humanity, their life together with God and with all of creation tending to the needs of the earth, the concerns of their community, and the commitment to future generations.

Hearing the Holy Scriptures for today stirs in us all sorts of different perceptions about what it means to be in relationship. Listening to it makes us think of the strained relationships in our lives and in our families, the broken relationship between humans and creation and the restorative work ahead, the ways that we have experience the beauty of the relationships that go beyond a male and female binary, the loneliness that we experience remembering a partner or hoping one day for a union.

Even in all the challenges, we hear the overarching promise from God that starts at the very beginning our story, the promise that we will never be alone.  A story that starts at the beginning of creation, traveled through the wilderness, proclaimed by the prophets, and embodied in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

A promise that invited even the most vulnerable in our communities, like children, into the loving and healing embrace of Christ reminding us that the promise of God’s reign, was never intended for just one group of people, but for each and every person created in the image of God.

A promise that will shake the core of what we know in this world as healing takes place in unexpected places and unexpected people, as rulers are suffocated of their power, where the rich are made poor and the poor are made rich, where the table extends even beyond our reach to where the people of God in all walks of life can come to feast on this life-giving meal at Christ table.

Our work then continues to be the work of reconciliation and caring for all who are vulnerable in our midst. It becomes to listen to the stirring of the Spirit in our lives as she leads us toward the division and loneliness of our community bringing unity and hope.

Today’s teachings are challenging, particularly because of the interpretations from both well intended and no so well intended people that have only created further division. But at the heart is the reminder that human relationships are complicated and that being in community will always take tending and nurturing just like we are created to tend to and nurture the earth.  And that our lives together don’t fall on conditional promises but are united through the unconditional love and promise of God.

Reminding us, that for the most part, we are better when we are together.

Better when we are in partnerships that are respectful, honest, and loving. Better when we are in communities and can show up as our full vulnerable selves loving who we love, sharing our passions and energy. Better when we are in creation listening to the birds, hearing the crashing of the waves, watching the changing leaves remind us of the change to come.

Better when we are learning and being challenged to grow in community. Better when we are caring with and for our neighbors. Better when we are actively serving God bringing forth God’s reign in which forgiveness, healing, and love are at the center of who we are and what we do.

Going out into our communities with grace over law, love over rule, and compassion beyond anything that we can comprehend.  Breaking bread that unites us together. Joining in the work our Creator has created us to do.

Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We look to the cross and our neighbors as signs of God’s love and healing in the world. 

Vicar Andrea Bonneville
The Feast of Holy Cross 
Texts: Numbers 21: 4b-9, John 3:13-17 

They needed a sign. 

Journeying through the wilderness away from everything they knew, experiencing pain and exhaustion and grief and loss, trying to figure out how to be in community with each other, learning what it means to be God’s beloved.  

The Israelites needed a sign to show them that God was really with them and that God was going to lead them into the Promised land. They needed to know that there was a future beyond the dry dangerous desert they were living in.   

First, they needed food and then manna and quail fell from the sky. They ate their fill and continued on with their journey. A sign that God was listening to their plea. But it wasn’t enough.

Eventually they needed water so they complained to God until water poured out of a rock. It sustained them for a part of their journey but it also wasn’t enough.

And then they needed safety and healing, so they got a serpent on stick.  A visual reminder of God’s presence and protection that was with them and leading them on their journey.  But it still was wasn’t enough.

No matter what happened in the wilderness, the people of the Triune God, struggled to trust that God was really going to lead them into an abundant life. And to this day, the people of the Triune God continue to search for signs of God’s presence in our wilderness journeys.

Especially as we see and experience death and destruction and sin and suffering all around us. Looking for signs that show us what is good verses what is evil, signs that point us to rest and nourishment, signs that lead us into lives of service and love.

Just like the people who were wandering in the wilderness, we too need signs of God’s love and presence in our lives and in our world. 

So on this day, we celebrate the feast of the Holy Cross to remember and discern how Christ’s sacrificial love and transformative power on the cross is the ultimate sign of God’s enduring love, care, and presence in our world.

Christ incarnate born into our world in an unexpected place, teaching us a new way of life that puts love and grace at the center of who we are and what we do. Christ on the cross, taking on all of the sin and suffering of the world, so that we may hope and trust in abundant life, both here on earth and in heaven. 

Christ’s death on the cross is a sign of God’s self-sacrificing love showing us that oppression and injustice, suffering and illness, destruction and death went to the grave and out of the grave came abundant life and love and forgiveness and healing.

The cross is our sign that God comes to us in our pain and brokenness and transforms us into people who embody God’s love. Not because we are perfect or we’ve done all the right things, but because of who God is and the promise that God has made with all of creation.

John writes, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who trusts in him may not perish but have abundant life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:16-17).

The promise God continuously makes throughout scripture to never leave us or forsake us is shown to us through God’s love on the cross. The cross is the ultimate sign of God’s enduring and steadfast love for each and every one of us.

And God’s love doesn’t just stay on the cross. God’s love resurrects and enters into our lives and becomes woven into the DNA of who we are as God’s beloved.  Living our lives holding onto the promise God makes with us in our baptism. Taking seriously that through our baptismal waters, we embody the cross of Christ on foreheads for everyone to see.

That through us God is actively working in the world feeding and nourishing, serving and loving, caring and healing.  Each of us as the body of Christ resurrected in our communities to do what we have been created to do. To Love. To Heal. To Forgive.

So when we feel like we are perishing, struggling to discern where God is active in our lives and communities.  We look for the signs… in creation, in art, in music, in each other, in the unexpected, in the pain and suffering.  We look to see where God is entering our humanity in order to bring wholeness.

And when our seeking eyes and discerning minds our weary, we come together with open hands and open hearts to Christ’s table clinging closely to the promise of Christ. Feasting in the meal in remembrance of Christ. A sign that will nourish us and transform us and a sign that will continue lead us into abundant life here and now and with all the saints forever and forever.

Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Living in a world that is in deep need of God’s healing, we continue to discern how we can be opened to be a healing presence to all of creation through who we are and what we do. 

Vicar Andrea Bonneville
The Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Lectionary 23 B
Texts: James 2:1-17, Mark 7:24-37  

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

Do your actions really reflect the love of Jesus Christ?

This is what James asks us today. It’s a fair question. James wants to know if you are willing to roll up your selves and get to work so that the love of Christ may be reflected through how you are loving your neighbor.

Suggesting a life of service that puts our actions of caring for our neighbors at the center of who we are and the center of what we do. Loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.

It should be simple. It is simple. We are empathic people who know how to show love. But as Pastor Crippen shared last week, doing good in a world filled with evil systems and structures of power is really really complicated.

So complicated at times it can leave us dormant. Moving through our days doing what we need to do just to care for ourselves and our families. Turning away from the pain and suffering and disasters that uproot peoples and communities. Going from point A to point B trying to find rest and nourishment in our exhaustion. 

Doing so we turn inward. Into our own wants and needs. Into our own biased perceptions of people based on race, gender, sexual orientation, income, and wellness. Into our own patterns and expectations of success, wealth, and knowledge.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus acts in a way that suggests he is turned inward. Traveling to a new region, he stops at a house to rest and doesn’t want anyone to know that he is there. A woman who doesn’t fit the norm for various reasons comes to Jesus asking for healing for her daughter and she is met with undeniable rudeness. 

The woman experiences Jesus’ rudeness and challenges him to turn outward. Seeing her and her daughter as people in need of healing rather than the labels that society had placed on them, Jesus heals the little girl.

As he continues traveling, Jesus encounters a man who is also in need of healing. In this event, Jesus realizes that he can’t bring healing to this man alone. He turns toward the heavens, sighs, and says to the man “be opened.”   The man is healed.

And Jesus is transformed through his encounter with and the healing of the woman and the man. Moving away from the regions he had been doing ministry and into new regions with different people showed Jesus that his ministry is more expansive and more life changing than he could have ever imagined. 

And it shows us that God’s healing and love and grace is not limited by location or laws. It isn’t found only in certain places or through certain people. If anything, God’s love and healing is happening where we least expect it.

So if you are feeling dormant in this season of your life, it is time to take Jesus’ lead and be open to a new way of imagining what the Triune God can do in your life and community.

Move out of your routine and your comfort zone. Take a new way to work, shop at a different grocery store, volunteer with or donate to a new organization that sparks a passion. Listen to and share stories of love and healing and hope. Go to new areas of our cities. Speak to people you’ve never met. Be open to new ways of seeing Christ at work in your life.

Doing so will challenge the ways that we have ignored the pain around us thinking that someone else would do something about it, challenge when we have been negligent in caring for creation suggesting that the problems are out of our control, when we have put our comfort before the needs of others.

All of it is going to transform us while God works through us to transform the world.

God is healing the world through all of us. Through the way we turn our ears to hear the cries for justice. Through the way we open our hearts and show love to a neighbor we have never met. Through the way we look at the brokenness of the world and trust that even the most broken thing can be made whole through God’s love.

Seeing the Gospel embodied and proclaimed through each of you and this community, reminds me of the love and grace and healing that God is doing. So try not to let the evil and injustice of the world make you dormant, the world needs your love, your passion, your hope.

But if you are feeling dormant, water and nourishment and sunlight are all around you. And God will continue to use it to heal you.

So be opened from the healing that comes from Christ. Be opened from God’s love for you. Be opened from the transformation that is taking place in your life.

And let it guide you in love and service. 

The world needs you, your neighbor needs you, God needs you, to zealously proclaim God’s healing, God’s justice, and God’s love.

Not just through your words, but in every action.

Amen.