Season of Creation: Water is Web

Season of Creation: Water is Web

Leanne Rose
Sermons

We have to live in the hope, we have to live in the confidence that the God who brings water to dry places, renewing the face of the earth will bring renew us, will renew our communities, will renew creation. We live in the confidence that the God of creation can connect the that which binds us, the web that connects us, the water that flows through the earth, can be brought forth to saturate dry places. To bring justice where there is none, to bring water from rocks, springs to deserts. It is the Wadi in Israel, rains in Cape Town, it’s moments and sparks and drizzles.

Season of Creation: Enough

Season of Creation: Enough

Leanne Rose
Sermons

It is greed that continues to rape the earth of natural resources for energy instead of developing and advancing the means that could be sustainable. It is greed that clear-cuts, over plants and overgrazes, over-fertilized when the land can’t keep up, and has allowed for runoff into waterways, warming the oceans, killing the plants and creatures. We could bring healing to the oceans and the air we breathe if someone could farm seaweed into the oceans, it would support the creatures but importantly the coral that holds CO2. But there’s no economic incentive to do so… so no one has. Are we willing to give a little more to the earth of what she needs, when we have enough?

Season of Creation: Protecting the Commons

Season of Creation: Protecting the Commons

Leanne Rose
Sermons

We do not stand here as islands but as part of an ecosystem of other humans and all of creation. The ground under our feet is not the only important place, and what we do here has an impact on the rest of the world. The commons are spaces between us and above us and all around us, the spaces that need nurturing, that need healing, reconciling, restoring, renewing.

Season of Creation: Greatest Commandment, Love Your Neighbor

Season of Creation: Greatest Commandment, Love Your Neighbor

Leanne Rose
Sermons

The earth is crying out that the wheels are turning, the machine of the worst of capitalism is set on a path of destruction of the earth, of its inhabitants, animal and human and plant. And there are no winners this time, we all lose when we lose the goodness of creation. How will we respond to the crying out of the earth? How will we live God’s laws in face of this crying out? How will we love?

The Church is Ice Cream

The Church is Ice Cream

Leanne Rose
Sermons

We navigate our own relationship to the Empire, the powers, the government. And as Christians we have options. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, it seems he recommends obedience to civil authorities. And John of Patmos in his Revelation writes to incite resistance and martyrdom. How do we hold together these different ideas of best practices? So we look to Paul, and we look to our mentor and saints over time.

The Church is Covenant

The Church is Covenant

Leanne Rose
Sermons

Because here’s the thing: each of us is called. We each have a calling, we are each created and trained and taught formally or by experience for something, it could be a talent, a gift, a lesson hard earned that might be a calling. And the amazing thing about being congregational, is that we’re in this together. This isn’t my church, but yours. But it means that the responsibility of living this church’s ministry in the world doesn’t fall just on your pastor, but is shared. We are the leaders of this community. We are empowered to live fully into the ministry to which we are called. So that means, maybe you’re not called to leadership of climbing on the roof, maybe it’s teaching, feeding, connecting community, reaching out to friends or strangers, being a welcome, protesting, advocating, maybe it’s caring for the garden or praying for our children. It doesn’t matter, that’s where you lead.

The Church is All Saints and Sinners

The Church is All Saints and Sinners

Leanne Rose
Sermons

The idol of independence, means not believing that we are interconnected, that what you and I do, say, buy effects others in the world. That there isn’t something that binds us together. That I am in this life on my own. It’s saying, I don’t like a mask, I don’t need a mask, I won’t wear a mask. Because the idol of independence has made living and mask wearing all about me.

The Church Pactices

The Church Pactices

Leanne Rose
Sermons

Worship and prayer is remembering that we are not the center of the universe, there is a God that cares about what is happening to us. Worship is gratitude for the world around us. It is practice taking time, showing up, feeling ridiculous the first time you pray or sing or simply open your arms to the creator of the universe and believe that you will be heard.

The Church is Discerning

The Church is Discerning

Leanne Rose
Sermons

The problem comes when our experiences are so different from another. Who’s wins? Who’s is more important? Who’s takes precedence? What if “some people’ had said, “Nah, I’ve seen Gentiles, the spirits they are filled with are not Holy.”

The Church is Godbearing

The Church is Godbearing

Leanne Rose
Sermons

But it seems to me, Paul and Barnabas were upset because they were seen as gods and not as godbearers, they were mistaken for gods but those around them missed the God they were pointing to, the God they were revealing. The God they were incarnating in the world.

The Church is Called Christian (AKA: The Church is Choosing Hope)

The Church is Called Christian (AKA: The Church is Choosing Hope)

Leanne Rose
Sermons

Let me tell you, we need each other. We need each other’s support and care. Some might need a friendly face, support of food or gifts, prayer, comfort. We are here together because many folks have been able to think creatively and bring their gifts to worship and technology. And we still need each other, still need support, still need help to continue our work of worship together.

The Church is a Safe Place

The Church is a Safe Place

Leanne Rose
Sermons

Transformation like that, it takes time, and it’s hard, and it means setting your own defenses aside to make room for someone new, someone different, for the unexpected and the unlikely. It took Megan Phelps-Roper 5 years to prepare herself to stand on that stage, acknowledging her past and setting a vision for her future. And she carries with her the name of her grandfather--never fully able to escape it, perhaps letting it motivate her to more in the world with intention.

The Church is Spirit Led

The Church is Spirit Led

Leanne Rose
Sermons

Sometimes this leading takes us out into the world, to talk with folks we normally don’t talk to. Maybe it’s the homeless man who sits at the corner. The person who supports the candidate you admittedly oppose. Maybe it’s the person who seems to be your exact opposite.

The Church is Not the Powers

The Church is Not the Powers

Leanne Rose
Sermons

It is those who reflect today of the ongoing connection between the Christian church and the empire as it grew and spread across the world and as it remains a colonized Force. It stands up to the powerful and says the God we believe spoke through the prophet Isaiah: learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. God will always always always be present wherever God pleases and God has already been there already been in the life those have been left behind by the powerful

The Church is Rooted and Growing

The Church is Rooted and Growing

Leanne Rose
Sermons

How will it change us? Who will we become? Are we willing to change? The church in Jerusalem would never be the same. They started the work of delegating the day to day work of the church, those leaders might have stayed in that position but Stephen wouldn’t--Stephen is also a preacher. The church would change because the Apostles were now able to leave, they could travel and preach because they knew the church in Jerusalem would be cared for. They church would continue to grow beyond Jerusalem to the ends of the earth because they were willing to be changed and open to what the Spirit was calling them to, making room for the next thing, and the next.

The Church is a We

The Church is a We

Leanne Rose
Sermons

Waiting wasn’t going to change anything. Hope, with action, just might. So these few verses, they tell us what those first followers of Jesus did, after the resurrection.

The Call of Pentecost

The Call of Pentecost

Leanne Rose
Sermons

Pentecost reminds us that we are enough. You are enough. the church is enough. We have been prepared even as we continue to grow. Pentecost calls us to take all that we are, all that we have learned, all that God has made us and to have courage, and hope, and creativity, and to give it wings.

Church: Sky Gazing or Grounded?

Church: Sky Gazing or Grounded?

Leanne Rose
Sermons

But the world has changed around us. And it’s not that God doesn’t show up anymore, it’s that maybe we can’t show up like we want. And other people aren’t showing up like we want. And even if we could get back to what we know, something will be missing. When we can go back and meet together again, can we sing together? Can we have communion? Can we have coffee hour? How do we share peace if we are 6 ft apart? And that all only matters when it’s safe to gather. Which isn’t today. Maybe, like the disciples, we’re staring at the sky, hoping for things to be as they had once been.

Making it Through

Making it Through

Leanne Rose
Sermons

But we did. The church survived the persecution, its own splintering, its failure to live into the mission. Again and again the Spirit comes as advocate, as counselor, as vision giver, as encouragement and one who walks along, to bring us life, to renew life, to offer courage, to remind us again and again that this moment is not the end.

Church, this moment is not the end.

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