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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.