Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Mark 1:21-45

Sermon audio:

I’ll never forget the summer I spent in seminary as a chaplain at Bridgeport Hospital in Connecticut. It was part of my training to be a pastor—my first extended experience with the medical system, and being present at times of death or great suffering. I felt disorientated walking into the hospital, disbelieving that I could have any part in the healing that took place there. The unit where I was to be responsible for spiritual care felt like a jungle of hallways, crowded with personnel, patients and what they called COWs (Computers on Wheels). A tour of the Emergency Department left me feeling even more inadequate, knowing that at times I would be responsible for ministering to whatever went on in the gleaming and sanitized rooms of this Level One trauma hospital. I walked through bustling units filled with confident hospital staff, and wondered what my place was amid all these professional healers. I didn’t have power to order medicine or set broken limbs, and I didn’t know anything about physiology or brain chemistry, so what was I doing there? Did my conversations with patients actually make a difference in their healing? Could fervent prayer that God be present actually make a difference to God, or change the outlook of the person I was praying with? I assumed that a “real” spiritual healer would look and act more like the Son of God.

Continue reading “Healing Authority” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Mark 1:1-20

Sermon audio:

These days after Christmas are a little treasure that I rediscover every year. They exist here in an overlooked space on the calendar, a quiet little valley between the mountain peaks of Christmas and New Years. People are so hurried and busy before Christmas, but now we might experience some real Sabbath. These days of leisure following Christmas are something like the “vacation after vacation” which we long for at other times of the year.

Continue reading “Daring Invitation” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Luke 2:1-20

Sermon audio:

Howard Thurman, the African American mystic, poet and spiritual leader, describes in verse a mother observing her small child doing his bedtime prayer. She says,

Each night my bonny, sturdy lad
Persists in adding to his, Now I lay me
Down to sleep, the earnest, wistful plea:
‘God make me big.’
And I, his mother, with a greater need,
Do echo in a humbled, contrite heart,
‘God make me big.’

We might all pray for such bigness this year on behalf of children everywhere: bigness of vision, of stamina, of grace, and of courage.

Continue reading “Big Enough for God’s New Life” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Luke 1:5-25, 57-80

Sermon audio:

I’ve been reading lately about a new form of spiritual community that gathers for worship in open fields or a stand of forest trees. People assemble outdoors at a given time and share in opening liturgy. In place of a sermon, people are given time to wander in their surroundings, to explore, meditate, and learn from their observations. Brought back together by a cowbell, they share reflections on what they see. Some communities gather monthly, and others weekly, no matter the weather. This movement trusts that there is wisdom and worth in wildness. Its historical precedents go at least as far back as biblical times.

Continue reading “God’s Promise: Wilderness Spirit” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Isaiah 40:1-11

Sermon audio:

Anne Turner was diagnosed with “an aggressive but early stage breast cancer”, and writes about how the diagnosis sent her into exile from her former life. “Cancer brings all kinds of struggle,” she says in an essay for the Christian Century magazine, describing chemo side effects, her weakened immune system, and “fatigue that put me to bed before it was dark out. But perhaps the hardest loss was my hair. It was public and strangely shaming.” Having spent time in recent months with close family living through cancer, I can attest to ways that the disease and its treatment are a disorientating, bizarre, life-altering, all-consuming estrangement from what used to be considered “normal life”.

Continue reading “God’s Promise: A Way in the Wilderness” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Jeremiah 33:14-18

Sermon audio:

When you imagine the future, what do you feel? When you picture five years from now, or ten, or twenty, what do you see? What will your loved ones be doing? What will this community be like? Do you hope that things will be better than they are right now? Or are you convinced that they will be worse?

Continue reading “God’s Promise: Justice and Righteousness” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: 2 Kings 22:1-23:3

Sermon audio:

A few months ago, Javen and I were up north with his parents, enjoying his sister Briana’s visit from the Netherlands and meeting her Portuguese boyfriend Pedro. Javen’s mom took the occasion to return to Javen a few artifacts from his childhood, including some stuffed animals and two hard-shell cases of Legos. I’ll never forget Javen’s immediate enchanted response to the Legos. I watched his eyes light up, heard an exclamation of delight, and saw 35-year-old hands become those of a six-year-old again, reaching into the cases to play with wheels, platforms, and hard plastic assemblies left over from when he had played with them last. To me as an outsider, these Legos looked like old artifacts from an earlier time, but to Javen they were a portal back to childhood. We had found again a treasure whose value had been forgotten.

Continue reading “Our Forgetfulness, God’s Faithfulness” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Isaiah 5:1-7; 11:1-5

Sermon audio:

Deborah and James Fallows travelled the U.S. together several years ago, visiting dozens of small to medium cities across the country to answer the question of what’s working in American civic life today. They wrote articles for The Atlantic along the way, and published a book about the trip called Our Towns. “They were particularly interested,” according to reviewer Anthony Robinson, “in towns that had come back from decline, even devastation, when a whole economy had collapsed or a longtime major employer had left or closed. One of the key drivers of an economic comeback are the people they call ‘local patriots.’ …In every lively community there were local patriots, people who came from all walks of life to provide leadership, energy, vision, and just plain hard work. Local patriots believe in their towns. They love their towns.”

Continue reading “Our Scarcity, God’s Faithfulness” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Hosea 11:1-9

Sermon audio:

A century ago, tens of millions of Europeans died trying to destroy each other with barbed wire, mustard gas and trench warfare. They called it “The Great War”, a “war to end all wars”, and when peace accords were finally signed it became an annual holiday called “Armistice Day”. The term comes from two Latin words: “arma” and “sistere”, meaning “stand still”. Armistice Day, the day when arms will finally stand still. Such hope for what seemed possible on the other side of human carnage.

Continue reading “Our Violence, God’s Faithfulness” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Genesis 32:9-13, 22-30

Sermon audio:

My full given name is “Obadiah Zarephath Ballinger”. It barely fits on a driver’s license. When we had to put our names at the top of our papers in elementary school, I was always the last person done. I didn’t know how to spell my middle name for the longest time, so I used to spell it “Zero-path”.

Continue reading “Humility and Blessing” →