Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Mark 11:1-11

Sermon audio:

The author E.L. Doctorow has described his craft in this way. “Writing,” he says, “is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” The same can be said of life itself. We don’t always know where the road will take us. It’s like Highway 1 along the Pacific Coast in California—weaving and turning around sharp corners, slipping through unexpected tunnels, and then opening suddenly into a breathtaking vista of the wide-open sky. It comes in bits and pieces, one stretch at a time. We can’t take in the whole journey, with the best of headlights, or even in the daytime. If we could see everything instantly, we might know what parts of the trip hold the greatest consequence. What chance meeting will change life forever, and which will be just a blip in passing? Where should we be careful, lest a careless detour lead to many lost hours before a U-turn? But we can’t know these things because we can’t see the whole trip at once. Only looking back can we recognize what’s of the most importance.

Continue reading “Committing” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Mark 5:21-43

Sermon audio:

One of the things I did for fun in seminary was sing with the gospel choir. It was a community of deep care, and rehearsals were just as worshipful as the chapel services in which we sang. One favorite gospel song starts out this way: “I need you. You need me. We’re all a part of God’s body. It is God’s will that every need be supplied. You are important to me—I need you to survive.” The song is honest about vulnerability. “I need you. You need me.” We are necessary to one another—we cannot make it on our own.

That said, being vulnerable does not come easily.

Continue reading “Healing Power” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Mark 5:1-20

Sermon audio:

Some years ago, Javen and I used to visit a friend who lived in Lake Elmo. When we were almost there, we’d turn the car onto a road marked, “Legion Lane”. Without fail, we’d turn to each other and say one of the creepiest lines in Scripture: “My name is Legion; for we are many”!

Continue reading “Liberating Power” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Mark 4:1-34

Sermon audio:

Denise Levertov’s poem “The Avowal” memorably captures the trust in unseen grace at the heart of Christian faith. She writes,

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.

Jesus points to such trust in divine care in his parables of seed and soil.

Continue reading “Teaching Trust” →

Edina Morningside Community Church

Today’s scripture reading: Mark 2:1-22

Sermon audio:

Ten years ago, I was just starting ministry with my first congregation, in a small blue-collar suburb southeast of St. Paul. The church had mostly older, white, straight members and struggled to make its budget. Yet they had made the bold decision to become Open and Affirming to LGBTQ people during the interim process, and had invited me there fresh out of seminary. In meeting with a pastor colleague to prepare for my ordination, she suggested that my ministry would be planting a new church within the old one, rather like a fallen nurse tree gives its energy and nutrients to new trees that grow up from its trunk.

Continue reading “Breaking Convention” →

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” →