Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Acts 6:1-7

What a hard week, dear Church. Javen and I were away for vacation starting last Sunday, but it seemed like each day there was more inescapable and tragic news: from the police killing of Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, to days and nights of violence against those protesting for justice there, to the video released of another police murder of a child in Chicago, to the mass shooting news from Indianapolis. In the background is the ongoing trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, with each day bringing more graphic video and legal arguments that re-traumatize the entire community, especially our Black neighbors. A pastor friend who is Black and lives here in the Cities told me recently that he wonders if he can remain in Minnesota—every time he sees images of George Floyd, he knows that could well be him. Even though there are many officers serving in communities with honor, excessive police violence continues to grow worse. One recent analysis found that an average of three people per day have died at the hands of police since the Chauvin trial began, and more than half of them have been Black or Latino.

Continue reading “Transforming Community to Better Serve God” →

Rev. Dr. Emily C. Heath, a friend and colleague serving a UCC church in New England, posted on Twitter as the pandemic first began last year. Emily wrote: The first Easter didn’t happen at a church. It happened outside of an empty tomb, while all the disciples were sequestered in a home, grief-stricken and wondering what was going on. So, we’re all going to be keeping things pretty Biblical this #Easter. One year on, the pandemic is waning but it’s not over yet, and many of us carry similar feelings of anxiety, grief and loss. A biblical Easter, indeed.

Continue reading “Re-member” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Genesis 15:1-6

Sermon audio:

Corrie ten Boom lived in Europe a hundred years ago, learning the trade of watchmaking from her father, and becoming the first woman watchmaker in the Netherlands. Growing up in the Dutch Reformed Christian faith, she also started a successful youth club for teenage girls until it was shut down by the Nazis when they invaded the Netherlands in 1942. Corrie ten Boom’s autobiography The Hiding Place describes how she and her family then worked in the Dutch underground resistance, protecting Jews and other targeted people fleeing Nazi fascism. The family safe house was betrayed by an informant in 1944, and ten Boom survived a series of concentration and work camps, even though she was in her fifties at the time. She saw how civil society can give way to autocracy, but Christian faith helped Corrie ten Boom resist and protect others. She described the trust that’s needed to keep faith in challenging times. “When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark,” she said, “you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.”

Continue reading “Count the Stars” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Genesis 18:1-15 and 21:1-7

Sermon audio:

I will never forget the night of November 6th, 2012. Javen and I, with countless others, had worked for more than a year to defeat the marriage amendment that was on the ballot in Minnesota. We had done so much as staff members in the faith department of the campaign: leading forums in church basements all over the state, helping with events that raised millions of dollars, getting up early for staff meetings and staying up late to lead phonebanks into the cold night hours. In the last week, we had basically occupied the University of Minnesota campus, teaching in classrooms, walking around with Vikings punter Chris Kluwe, storming the student dorms and disrupting cafeteria dinner on Election Day, to load young voters onto waiting busses. But with such exhaustive efforts, there was no guarantee how it would turn out. More than thirty states at that point had taken such measures, and every. single. state. had lost such fights to that point. Going into Election Day, the polling was too close to call on the amendment—we were in a virtual tie. We spent the whole election night party hoping for the best but prepared for the worst, even after all that work. It wasn’t until the wee hours the next morning, when we were about to go home, that the cry went up and victory was declared. What we had dreamed and labored long for, yet feared to hope in too much lest we be disappointed, had actually come to pass. Goodness and reform did prevail, despite centuries of anti-queer laws and practices. “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”, we wondered.

Continue reading “Despair Unraveled Into Joy” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: 1 Corinthians 12:1-13

Sermon audio:

“Now concerning spiritual gifts… I do not want you to be uninformed,” Paul writes to the Corinthian church. Once in Bible study on this passage at my previous congregation, one of our readers mispronounced that last word. She said, “concerning spiritual gifts… I do not want you to be uniformed”! This brilliantly expresses Paul’s point here: bring together diverse talents and spiritual gifts together, but don’t try to flatten them out or make everyone the same. “I do not want you to be uniformed.” What Paul does want—and what the church in every place seeks—is to affirm our different gifts, our unity in the Holy Spirit, and our determined commitment to the common good.

Continue reading “God of our Descendants” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: 1 Corinthians 15:19-26, 51-57

Sermon audio:

One of the gifts of springtime is watching our ferns grow. They’re in a side garden of our house, beneath an overhanging crabapple tree. For days we watch tightly curled fiddlehead ferns, stubbornly pushing their way up from stubby, apparently dead husks that were last year’s stumps. But every year there’s one morning when they all open up into these gorgeous fronds, broad fans lifted skyward in praise. The bare ground has been transformed to the springtime green of new ferns.

Continue reading “Perpetual Change” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Sermon audio:

Annie Dillard writes nonfiction and contemporary American novels. She got her start with a memoir called A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which begins by describing her home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She writes, “I think of this house clamped to the side of Tinker Creek as an anchor-hold. It holds me at anchor to the rock bottom of the creek itself and keeps me steadied in the current, as a sea anchor does, facing the stream of light pouring down. It’s a good place to live; there’s a lot to think about.”

Continue reading “Enduring Love” →