Month: June 2025

Queer Leaven

On By Oby BallingerIn SermonsLeave a comment

Preached at Creekside United Church of Christ (Minneapolis, Minnesota). Text: Matthew 13:33.

Imagine with me that you’re in an aisle of a grocery store, holding one of those rectangular baskets with handles that flip up. Put your hand out like you’re carrying it. (I’ll look less dumb if you join me.) Standing in the baking goods aisle, you reach for a five-pound bag of flour, and place it into the empty basket. Feel the weight as the powdery paper sack drops into it. Now, imagine that’s one terrible news headline, one calamitous thing, landing heavy as a bag of flour in your basket. How many other headlines and stories are you carrying after these last few weeks? Bombs dropping in Iran and missiles in Israel. Disinvestment in medical research, veteran services, disaster relief, suicide prevention. Five pounds, five pounds, five pounds. The supermarket basket is too full for more, but there’s additional pounds to come. Open your arms wide to a great bushel basket now—it can carry more. Add to it the pounds from Supreme Court decisions, ICE abductions, wildfire smoke, and political assassination. Palestinians murdered waiting for their sacks of flour. Do you feel the weight? You’re holding this awkward bushel basket, needing both hands, moving gingerly, so heavy in your arms, and unable to do anything else. How much are you carrying, the piled-up woes of the world this week? Fifty, sixty, seventy pounds—what to do with all that weight? There’s so much potential in the flour—enough to make more than a hundred loaves! But by itself the flour is just inert, dead weight.

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Open and Affirming: Past and Future

On By Oby BallingerIn SermonsLeave a comment

Preached at First Congregational United Church of Christ (Moorhead, Minnesota). Texts: Genesis 9:8-16 and Mark 12:28-31

In September 2001, I completed a move from Great Falls, Montana to Moorhead here, and started schooling down the street at Concordia College. The first couple days of classes were the usual overwhelm you can imagine—a new school, new place, new friends, and new studies. But then on September 11th, the rest of the world and I sat in bewilderment as we tried to make sense of terrorist attacks that would change world history. The next Sunday, I went looking for a church that would help me make sense of what was going on. That cool September morning, walking north from Concordia, I was heading to St. John the Divine Episcopal Church north of here. But as usual I was running behind, and would be late for that service. Walking past on the sidewalk, I noticed that worship here was also at 10am. I’d be on time here, and I could always go to that other church the following Sunday. So I looked up the stone steps, heard chatting and a friendly invitation, then entered through the open front door. In all the years since, I have never made it to St. John the Divine.

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