Sermons from the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer

Row Row Row Your Boat - The Rev. Melanie W. J. Slane

In his arms, he holds an infant, and he says, "Be like
this."
Innocent, and dependent upon one another, unstained by the
world; and open to being formed.
Be like this.
Curious seekers with BIG emotions.
Be creative and adaptable; imitating me. Someone you can
trust.
Welcome the vulnerable into your midst, and be like them.
For the leader among you is like the one who serves.
There is a reason why, in the Gospels, Jesus implores his
believers, his followers to be like little children.
Born anew to a living hope.

Following Jesus on My Terms - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

Jesus says, follow me, but be prepared to be transformed.
Talk about me, but if you're going to open your mouth and talk about exclusion,
if you're going to cancel people, if you're going to kick them out of your
life, out of this place, if you're going to deny your responsibility for the
people around you, don't speak in Jesus name.

If you're going to work in this world, To create a space
that's good for you at the expense of others don't speak in Jesus name If you are going to stand up in this world
and do work that is about your betterment
and the betterment of a few other people around you that look sound and
seem like you, please for the love of God don't speak in Jesus name.

But when you get up
in this world and you work for justice and peace in a way that humanizes and acknowledges the
beauty of every single person. Whether
you say the name of Jesus or not, you are speaking with the authority of the
God who made you. When you dedicate your
life to the care and concern of others and make sacrificial love your story,
whether you say it's in Jesus name or not, it is Jesus who speaks within you.

Backtalk - The Rev. Dr. Herschel Wade

Are you beset with gloom?
Gloomy because someone like me refuses to accept your dehumanizing
dream, crushing his nose for an answer?
Oh well, still I rise. Maya audacious,
defiant backtalk is a sassy refusal to accept the life restricting consequences
of the denials, discrimination, and oppression by a dominant center and
patriarchal system.

Today we hear of a similar sassy refusal to accept a denial
of life in our Gospel reading. Here too,
we hear backtalk to someone in a position of power, supernatural power, that is,
whose denial of life and wholeness is also one of discrimination and
exclusivity. The episode is tense, upsetting
and complicated.

I cannot speak for you, but such is certainly true for myself
and in fact, the same appears to be true for the author of the Gospel of Mark
who locates a tired and possibly quite aggravated Jesus in the region of Thyre,
a Gentile dominated territory. It is
hard to imagine Jesus being at ease. He
is alone, attempting to go unnoticed in a house in a region in which there is
some history of animosity between the Jews and the Gentiles.

The Hate We Carry - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

I need to say this, by the way, in this conversation, if
I don't say this, I will be very remiss.
Anger and hatred are not the same thing.
And many of you were raised, especially women, were raised to believe
that anger was bad and you should not have it or keep it to yourself. We were taught that you
shouldn't be angry about anything.
And you might be worried that what I'm saying right now
is that you should never be angry because that's bad friends. Anger is not inherently bad. In
fact, anger is a very natural part of our lives. Anger is a base emotion that we all must have sometimes. In fact , there
is a problem if you see injustice, hatred, violence, murder,
oppression, cruelty, and hatred, and anger does not arise in you.
We're supposed to feel angry
in the face of that which is deeply wrong.
I'm not saying don't be angry, but as the epistle writer James
says, your anger is not the thing that makes God righteous. We do not want to allow our anger to become self-righteous.

Living Transformed - Guest Speaker

We pray that God will take ordinary things. Things like bread and wine and water and oil and use those ordinary elements to convey God's extraordinary grace and love. It matters. It matters that we recognize these gifts from God and it matters too that we acknowledge the reality of evil. I don't envision a return to three years preparation for baptism, or it's once a year occasion, or even necessarily that whole facing west and facing east business that our forebears practiced. But I do give thanks for the fact that we hold those ancient promises That we reaffirm those renunciations and those affirmations every time we renew the promises of our baptism

The Apostle Paul probably wrote the letter to the church at Ephesus, which has been the focus of your preaching series over these last weeks, while he was in prison in Rome after his third missionary journey. Paul would have visited that region three times over the course of his ministry. First, just for a few months to establish the church, establishing also leaders in that place who would continue the ministry that he had begun. And later in his second voyage, for three years, he stayed with the Ephesians. And finally, he went back as part of his last journey to Jerusalem. Over that time, Paul saw the church grow into a body of multiple cultures.

In his letter, Paul teaches that through Christ all creation has been reconciled to God. In doing that, God has reconciled all of us to each other, and so because we are reconciled to God, because we're reconciled to one another, God calls us to live differently.

To live as a people who have been transformed.

Be Careful - The Rev. Melanie W. J. Slane

For me, the third grade was probably one of the best times of my life. I could pick out my own Umbro shorts, scrunchie my own ponytail, And ride my bike freely around the neighborhood from sun up to dinner time, getting into some good and maybe not-so-good trouble with the other kids who lived nearby.
I learned to cook, spent unnumbered hours creating trampoline routines, and made prank phone calls to my friends from school. Is your refrigerator running? Better go and catch it.
I vividly remember a Saturday morning in July of 1994, climbing the gutter at the elementary school down the street and slipping in through an unlocked window, and scaling down the bleachers into the gymnasium. So that we could swing on the big rope in the open gym. Being eight was great. Life was good, not a care in the world.
Nostalgia set in earlier this summer when I realized with sentimental longing and wistful affection that the mothering of my own eight-year-old children has been marred by the same two words that begin our reading from Ephesians today; be careful.

Nothing to Prove - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

And then what happened is as many of you know, I had a sort
of a conversion experience when I was 20 and I realized, oh gosh,
dang, I do believe in God. This is real that I believe in God. And in fact, I
think I'm Christian. I do believe in Jesus. And from the moment that that
happened, I felt this sort of need to prove some things.

From the moment that I was called back into my faith, I felt the need to prove myself. In my case, I didn't feel the need to prove
to other Christians that I was Christian.
In my case, I needed, I felt the need to prove to my friends and those
who knew me for the last few years that just because I was Christian didn't
mean I was all of a sudden going to become a jerk. It was really important to me.

I wanted people to know that
even though I believed in this Jesus guy and I was in on
this, I was very concerned and wanted to prove to my friends that this
wouldn't change the way that I loved them and hopefully it wouldn't change the
way that they loved me.

Unity - The Rev. Dr. Herschel Wade

This certainly is not unity. Is unity a difficult ask for today? Today America has become more divided than ever. For many, unity is viewed as a threat to peace. to one's personhood or individual identity altogether. Unity requires someone must win and someone must lose. Unity means a loss of freedom.

Unity means a loss of merit or a loss of dignity. Unity also means a loss of stability, a loss of security, and a loss of safety. Today, to some, unity is indeed frightening. Unity And yes, unity is indeed frightening because unity requires vulnerability. Unity often takes its victims to unchartered and unknown territories.

Unity might lead to becoming friends or falling in love with someone you never dreamed possible. Unity might lead to agreeing with or even having compassion for another person that they have been conditioned to hate. Unity might lead to someone challenging their own worldviews, then to confusion, and then maybe some resolve.

I've never heard or read anywhere that unity is easy.

End of August - The Rev. Joanna Leiserson

Now that this is my last Sunday with you, it's time for me to tell you my real name, because in so many ways, our name defines us, roots us in this world, gives us our identity. My real name isn't the name that my parents put on my birth certificate and that I was called at my baptism. It's the name my grandmother gave me when I was born. My father's mother, Ah Yun, was the name-giver for the Chin family.
An ancient Chinese saying goes, "The family is essential under Heaven." The family is the foundation, the center of Chinese culture, with the male child responsible for continuing the family lineage and, importantly, passing on the family name. So girls are traditionally not valued.
But the birth of the first child, male or female, is always an occasion for celebration and joy. So when my parents' first child was born, a girl, Ah Yun named her Mei Li, meaning "Beautiful Daughter." Girls are often named lovely names like that--Coral Flower, Beautiful Girl, Lustrous Pearl, and so on. I think it makes the girl more appealing when the time for marriage comes along.

Carriers of Love - The Rev. Joyce Keeshin

We live in a time when the proclaiming of Christ's word may
sometimes be used to divide us, not unite us.
To judge us, separate us from one another. The distortion of Christ's message of love
may be used to sound exclusive instead of the inclusive example Jesus actually
taught and lived. Sometimes it feels
heartbreaking that truth and faith and love can become so distorted and
weaponized for very human agendas.

In our very human lives, we may witness many divisions from
politics to economics, to ecology, to healthcare, to diet, to education, to
government, to justice. The list could
go on and on. We see these divisions in
headlines, in conflicts involving power, violence, manipulation, and
distortion. We see these in our
communities, in country, and around the world.

And we often experience divisions in close relationships,
within families, friendships, with colleagues, neighbors, others in our
communities. We can be very clear about
our experiences, our judgments, to respond to others. And we respond to others with judgment,
accordingly, without effort, to find a place of listening, of reconciliation,
of unity.