This is an interesting pair of readings! We have two speeches – or, sermons. In our text from the Old Testament book of Nehemiah, the Torah – the Law of Moses – is being read aloud to the residents of Jerusalem. It’s easy for the stuff in the Old Testament to all just seem like “a long time ago” to us, but whoever the historical Moses was, he probably lived about a thousand years before this scene. This is a people being called back to their origins, their heritage – after many centuries of change, and also after a generation or two in exile, after Judea and Jerusalem were conquered by the empire of Babylon in 587 BCE, and most of the population were taken away from their homeland to live among strangers.
When a kinder, gentler empire took over, many were eager to return and rebuild. Nehemiah was an official in the Persian court who asked permission to back to Judea and help rebuild Jerusalem. This scene happens after the city’s walls are rebuilt, as part of a moment of recommitment and rededication.
Ezra, the priest, reads the Law aloud to the people. There are some details here that I really love! Notice that the crowd includes both men and women – that’s not a modern addition to make it inclusive; it’s in the Hebrew. The crowd also includes “all who could hear with understanding” – which I’m pretty sure means there were kids there too, anyone old enough to listen and understand. And I love the sentence “They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.” Ezra and the other leaders don’t just read the Law; they pause and explain, to make sure everyone is following.
And I love that when the people are weeping, because hearing the Law makes them realize how far they have drifted from God’s intentions, the leaders tell them, This is a holy time; don’t weep! Prepare a special meal; share with the hungry; celebrate. Don’t waste time on shame or regret. Just recommit, with joy and purpose, to being the people God calls you to be.
And then there’s our Gospel. In Luke’s telling, this is how Jesus begins his public ministry. He reads aloud from the book of the prophet Isaiah, chapter 61: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor… to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Then he announces that this 500-year-old prophecy of hope and restoration is coming true, today. In him.
The reading ends there but… Jesus’ words are not as well received as Ezra and Nehemiah’s! At first everyone is amazed at his gracious words. They’re saying to each other, Isn’t this Joseph’s boy? Apparently Jesus already has a reputation for being able to heal people and work other wonders, and people want to see more of the same. But he tells them, “No prophet is accepted in that prophet’s hometown,” and suggests that his ministry lies elsewhere. That makes everybody mad – so angry that they drive him out of town and try to throw him off a cliff! But he escapes and continues his travels and his mission.
Now, a pastor has to be careful about comparing herself to Jesus – even on a bad day – or even to a random Old Testament leader like Nehemiah or Ezra. But here I am, standing before you, on Annual Meeting Sunday, to talk about how I think we’re called to live, and where I think God is at work among us and around us.
Will my words stir up our hearts together, or will you try to throw me off a cliff? Let’s find out!
This is a hard time to be church; but it’s not necessarily a bad time to be church. The fact that it’s no longer culturally normative to go to church, and hasn’t been for decades, forces us to re-examine what we’re about, and to re-engage our neighbors in fresh ways, from a posture of humility and curiosity. The political, social and ecological landscape is troubling to downright frightening in a lot of ways. But I am glad to see people here thinking and talking about how to be real community for each other, to get past Midwest Nice and friendly acquaintanceship.
I think that’s really important and holy, and it’s what we’ve always needed and been called to build. There’s an opportunity, too, in a time like this, to get serious and strategic about our values, what we understand as our way of living the way of Jesus here and now – things like creation care, the full dignity and belovedness of LGBTQ+ people, deepening our commitment to antiracism, nurture and care for our young ones and elders, generosity towards and advocacy for our neighbors.
In thinking and praying about 2025, I think I see two main tracks, two big directions that need my particular energy and attention, this year – and perhaps yours too.
The first track is tending this community – for real. I’ve been thinking a lot about something my godmother Myra Marx Ferree, an esteemed sociologist and a faithful Episcopalian, said a couple of months ago. She said: Where your community is thin, thicken it. There’s so much we could share with one another, friends. In our recent parish survey, I was reminded how many fascinating skills and knowledges y’all hold – many of which speak directly to the big questions of how to live in these times.
I want to make opportunities to just learn from each other.
The survey also reinforced how much we want a community that sees and knows us. One question asked: “It would help me feel safe and supported if I knew that my church community was well informed about…” The strongest responses included diversity in sexuality and gender expression; neurodiversity; mental illness and mental health; and addiction and recovery. People had other suggestions too – experiences and struggles they’re willing to share, to help us all build understanding, compassion, and connection… and just know that we’re not alone, with any of this.
Thickening our community in 2025 also means strengthening our commitment to supporting our LGBTQ+ members and households. We’ve started an informal network of people who identify as LGBTQ+, and immediate family, to share resources, needs, and experiences – and ask for support from the wider parish, when needed. If you’re in that category and want to be looped in, let me know. We also plan an ally gathering soon, though we know that may include most of the parish! With governmental attacks on LGBTQ+ folks at both the state and federal level, we know we need to get real about looking out for each other; it’s not just rainbow sticker season anymore.
While welcoming, celebrating, and sheltering LGBTQ+ folks is an important part of who we are, here, we are mindful that there are others among us who may face new difficulties in this season. White nationalism is on the rise, and our members and friends who are people of color and perhaps have ties to immigrant communities are feeling rightly uneasy. That’s one reason some of us are reading the Episcopal Church’s Racial Justice Audit – to refresh our commitment to being an antiracist church, including the Biblical call to hospitality for our immigrant neighbors.
I know there are folks who just want to come worship, and don’t feel like they need all this. That is fine! Truly! I also know there are folks who’ve been coming for a while and still don’t really feel connected, and I want to work on that. Let’s talk about it.
And: I know some folks may feel a little resistance to this community-thickening project because it feels inward focused, and their sense of church is oriented out, towards neighbors and the wider world.
But, friends: People literally show up here every couple of weeks looking for a community that’s doing what we’re trying to do. This work is not inward focused as long as we keep welcoming new folks into it. Working towards being a true community of mutual support, that actively cares for each other and stands with each other, is a witness to the wider world, and draws people in. And that’s important not because of the proverbial church focus on getting butts into pews, but because people need community, y’all. This work matters.
Okay – that’s track one. That would be plenty. But there’s another important direction for our continued work: taking steps towards the longer-term financial stability of this church. Developing additional sources of income, in addition to the holy gift of our members’ pledges, so that we can start to move beyond this season of deficit budgets.
This could feel like a big step away from the heart and purpose stuff I’ve just been talking about – but the Good Futures Accelerator process has helped me start to see this as heart and purpose work, too. For the visitors – because all the members read that report, right? – the Good Futures Accelerator is a curriculum to help a team from a church start to think in fresh ways about how under-used church buildings and/or land can be used to respond to community needs and generate some income to help sustain the church. We had a great team do that work in 2024, and now we’re starting to talk about next steps and follow through. Let me be clear, this is not a 2025 project; this is quite possibly a 2025 through 2030 project. But we’ve taken some important first steps and we owe it to our future to keep walking.
It’s really important that that work, that whole approach, is not just about rustling up more income. It’s about deepening our understanding of the challenges and needs of the neighborhoods that surround the church – and seeking, with holy curiosity, how we might be able to deploy our resources in response.
One of speakers in the Good Futures videos said something like this – I wrote it down: “Think of your [potential] project as sitting in the ache of the gap between the status quo, and what’s actually needed for human and ecological flourishing.” I’m excited about this work because it feels like a path towards sustainability that’s aligned with our values and hopes, here. God is in this work, I’m sure of it, and I’m really curious to see where it leads us next. We’ll say a little more about this in the Annual Meeting later this morning, but if you’d like to get involved with this as it continues to take shape, I’d love to talk about that.
(By the way: I hope you also read about the Neighborly Spaces project! That’s its own little thing but it’s also a way to start listening to our non-church neighbors, which may serve our larger Good Futures work.)
The last couple of Sundays, our Epistles have come from the apostle Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth. He’s been talking about how a church – how any community – needs a variety of gifts and skills for its health and effectiveness, and how we should celebrate the way the Holy Spirit activates all those different gifts and skills for the common good. Our reading last week – the body part one! – ended with these words: “But strive for the greater gifts.” That’s half a sentence, though! Here’s what it cuts off: “And I will show you a still more excellent way.” I love that! Doesn’t it make you curious?
What is Paul’s still more excellent way? Love. It’s love. The next passage is one of the most famous in the Bible: “Love is patient; love is kind…. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things… Now, faith, hope, and love abide; and the greatest of these is love.”
The greatest of these is love. A still more excellent way. Love is the heart of it all. Our call as individual followers of Christ; our work of being Christ’s body, together, the church.
These two big tracks – thickening our community here, and continued exploration of where our assets and our neighbors’ needs might intersect – could feel like they pull in different directions. But they are both fundamentally about love. Love for one another; love for this church; love for our neighbors and our world. A still more excellent way.
As I said earlier: These are the directions that I am discerning, for where to put my particular energy and attention, this year and beyond. My discernment could be wrong, or incomplete. I don’t run this place; God does, and we do together. Wonder with me, friends. And if these are the right directions – they are definitely not stuff that I can do on my own. I will need partners, collaborators, shared leadership. Some of that is in place, and more is emerging; I’m grateful. But there’s still plenty of room! …
These overarching projects or priorities won’t replace or take away all the other things we do: youth group, book studies, gathering for worship, creation care, and more. But how we do those things might sometimes be shaped by these priorities, in the months ahead. And there will be things I choose not to do, to make room for what is mine to do, here.
2025 may be a difficult year for our country and our world, for a whole host of reasons. But our faith-ancestors teach us that in seasons like this, it’s all the more important to be God’s people together, to join Isaiah and Jesus in proclaiming and striving for freedom, healing, and hope. So let us hear Nehemiah’s kind words as spoken to us, across the millennia: Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.
Amen.