“Salvation”

Luke 7:36-50

Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

February 16, 2025

The other table guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this person that even forgives sins?”

Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”

Sometimes I think that we’ve all gotten so comfortable with Jesus - so used to his miracles and funny little stories and extravagant love - that we forget to ask some really important questions. Questions like “Who IS this person that even forgives sins?”

There’s a high-falutin’ seminary-learnin’ word for the answer to that question: what we believe about Jesus is our Christology. 

Not that we all have to have the same one. I’m pretty sure that if we took a detailed quiz about Jesus we’d discover a diversity of beliefs about among us. And that’s just fine. One of the things I love about our tradition is that we don’t all have to believe the same thing to belong here. We just have to want to be on the journey together. 

Over the years, I’ve come to believe that following Jesus is less about what we believe and more about how we are trying to live. Christianity is a religion of transformation – it’s an experience of the holy that changes us and invites and empowers us to live in new ways. 

That transformation piece - that renewal that happens in us when we follow in the Way of Jesus - is at the very heart of what it means to be Christian. You can see that played out in dramatic fashion in today’s passage from Luke’s gospel. This unnamed woman is so moved by an encounter with Jesus that she kneels at his feet during a dinner party - weeping openly. We aren’t told the details but we can see that something significant is happening in her life. A transformation is taking place. 

Who is this person that makes grown adults weep openly in public? Who is this person who forgives sins? 

The transformation we see in this story - the epic shift that is taking place for this woman - has a fancy theological word, too: salvation. 

But before you put this whole story in a neat little box, let’s unpack that concept a bit, shall we? Because salvation in the Christian tradition is much bigger than some kind of magical-nothing-but-the-blood thing. And it’s even bigger than the what-happens-after-we-die thing, too. 

By the time I learned about “salvation” as a Protestant child in the U.S. in the late 20th century in Sunday School, the version I got was definitely about going to heaven and it was definitely all about Jesus’s death on the cross. But it turns out that for the first several centuries of Christianity people understood it as much broader and deeper than that. 

Luckily for us, some theologians continue to hold onto this bigger understanding of salvation. Like Lutheran Bible scholar Marcus Borg, who, like the early Christians, understood salvation as a multifaceted gift. [1] Salvation has that same root as the word salve - it’s a healing balm. And Borg points out that it doesn’t look the same from person to person or moment to moment. If you are captive, he says, salvation looks like freedom. If you’re sick or hurt, salvation looks like healing. If you’re in exile, salvation may look like return. If…….well….maybe a story would be better: 

In Kent Haruf’s Plainsong trilogy there is a teenage girl named Victoria Robideaux. Seventeen and pregnant, she’s kicked out of her mother’s home and taken in by a school teacher. Eventually the teacher arranges for her to stay with the McPherons: two elderly bachelor brothers who live 17 miles south of town. The three slowly become an unlikely family and near the end of the first book, Victoria welcomes a daughter, expanding the family to four. 

At the beginning of the second novel, Victoria is 19 and headed to college with her now-two-year-old daughter. The McPherons drive her to Fort Collins to drop her off at school and she gets some strange looks from another college girl who wonders aloud if the men are her grandfathers. No. Uncles? Also, no. 

“What about her daddy then? Is he coming too?” [the girl asked.]

Victoria looked at her. Do you always ask so many questions? 

I’m just trying to make friends. I wouldn’t pry or be rude. 

We’re not related that way, Victoria said. They saved me two years ago when I needed help so badly. That’s why they’re here. 

They’re preachers, you mean. 

No. They’re not preachers. But they did save me. I don’t know what I would’ve done without them. And nobody better say a word against them. [1] 

If you’re a pregnant seventeen year old whose mother has kicked her out, salvation may just look like two old ranchers who put a roof over your head and become family. 

We don’t know what, exactly, salvation looked like for the woman at the dinner party with Jesus. We’ve given very few details about her life. We can surmise that she must have encountered Jesus sometime before this meal because he’s already had a profound effect on her life. We are told that she’s “a sinner” but that could mean almost anything. We deduce that her presence and effluence of emotion made the host uncomfortable. 

But we don’t know the details of what, exactly, is saving her life. 

And so we are invited to wonder along with the other dinner guests: “Who is this person that even forgives sins? That saves?” 

Sometimes I think that we’ve all gotten so comfortable with Jesus - so used to his miracles and funny little stories and extravagant love - that we forget Christ’s power to save. 

And we forget that this Christ-force - this gift of  liberation, healing, reconciliation and love - is still surging all around us - even now. 

You don’t have to go far to find it. 

If you come into the church building early in the morning, you’ll run into some of the volunteers from the Center of Hope. Many of them volunteer because they’re trying to live like Jesus. And some of them volunteer because they, too, have been unhoused and have stayed in shelters just like the one they’re now running. Their mission is simple: to ensure every person who crosses their threshold lives to see “one more day.” When you’re living from day to day, salvation looks like seeing one more sunrise and having a chance at one more day. 

And it’s not just the volunteers who channeling Jesus’s life-saving love: because I’ve seen the joy and love and laughter that flows so easily in the kitchen lobby every evening. The guests are showering that healing, easy, life-changing love right back on the volunteers, too. There is reciprocity in the love shared at Center of Hope. Salvation there is a two way street. 

I saw salvation in Topeka this past week when over 20 people showed up to offer testimony against a hateful bill that would force teachers to call kids by only the names and pronouns on their birth certificates. I was particularly moved by the educators who stood firmly on the side of love and said that teachers will call their students whatever those students ask to be called. Whether it’s Khadijah or Olivia or Ash or Noah or José or Pookiebear. Sometimes salvation looks like a trusted adult seeing you and affirming who you are. 

You may or may not have noticed a salvation story on display during the Super Bowl last week. If you’re not fluent in the language and culture of hip hop, it may have whizzed right past you. But if you haven’t had a chance to hear the voices of people who DO speak the language, I encourage you to go seek them out. Because many saw salvation represented in the art that Kendrick Lamar shared at halftime. Lamar lifted up the story of generations of Black Americans seeking liberation and dignity amidst the horrors of a culture steeped in white supremacy. A culture that has too often sought to devalue and demean rather than respect and affirm. And so, when an artist tells just a small part of that story of perseverance and strength on a big stage? Well, this too is a part of the deep, wide, unstoppable, free-flowing story of salvation. Because sometimes salvation looks like getting free, celebrating that freedom, and inviting others to do the same. 

The gift of one more day. 

Being seen and affirmed for who you are. 

Getting free, celebrating that freedom, and inviting others to join you. 

Salvation is a salve – a healing balm, a cure for what ails us. If we are poor, it is the provision of basic needs. If we are held captive, it is a release from captivity. If we are being oppressed, it is liberation. 

We may not know this unnamed woman’s full story, but there are still stories of salvation all around us. Are we paying attention? Are we celebrating the gifts being poured out even now? 

Because God isn’t finished saving the world just yet. The light that Jesus pointed to all those centuries ago still shines brightly. As long as there are people who are sick, or poor, or trapped, or abused, or oppressed, or silenced, or addicted, or hurt, the Christ force is still at work. 

Thanks be to God. 

NOTES

[1] Borg, Marcus. The Heart of Christianity (and elsewhere - it’s a recurring theme for him). 

[2] Haruf, Kent. Eventide, 14-15.

“Do not be daunted”

 Luke 7:1-17

Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

February 9, 2025

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justice, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” [1] 

I don’t know about you, but a lot of people are feeling daunted right about now. In the past few weeks I’ve heard a lot of righteous anger and a lot of fear. Both of those are certainly very reasonable responses to recent events. Less often, I’ve heard people name lament or grief  - but make no mistake, those are also present. These are big, complex emotions. Emotions that, in general, we have a hard time working through. Many of us were taught not to express our fears out loud, lest we accidentally speak them into existence. Or simply because we don’t want to admit our vulnerability. Many of us were taught that it is impolite or unproductive to be angry. And so we turn it inward or try to push it down. And few of us have had excellent models for lament and grief - they’re such messy emotions. They come at inconvenient times. They can make us feel out of control. They feel scary. 

Like many of you, I keep thinking of Bishop Marian Budde’s powerful sermon at the National Cathedral a few weeks ago. What a sad state of affairs it is when people are surprised to hear a Christian preacher speak of mercy. And what a horrifying affront to our faith to hear people chastize the Bishop for lifting up Jesus’s core message of mercy and compassion. 

It’s hard to study the life and ministry of Jesus and come away with the idea that mercy and compassion are bad. Honestly, I have no idea how anyone could get that idea from reading our sacred texts. Because compassion and mercy are Jesus’s meat and potatoes. It’s, like, his MAIN THING. In word and in deed, Jesus is filled with compassion. Extravagant, some might even say “wasteful” compassion. For everyone. From every background. No ifs ands or buts. We saw it in action last week when we read the story about Jesus healing the man with the withered hand. Even on the sabbath when he wasn’t supposed to be doing work, Jesus couldn’t help but be moved with compassion. 

And then, in between last week’s passage and this week’s, Jesus even tells his disciples to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. He says, “Be merciful, just as God is merciful.” [2] 

And then we get to today’s passage. Two stories of Jesus’s compassion just overflowing. It’s like he can’t even help it. He’s just a fountain of mercy and compassion everywhere he goes. 

If you go and listen to Biblical scholars talk about the two stories of healing that we just heard, you’ll hear all kinds of hot takes on what these stories mean. As always, when we’re talking about miraculous stories, I want to note that we can take the Bible SERIOUSLY without taking it LITERALLY. Even if we don’t believe these stories factually happened in this way, we can still maintain a posture of curiosity about what truths are conveyed through them. After all, the late great Marcus Borg pointed out that metaphor can often convey deeper truths than factual stories. 

Okay, so back to these healing stories. We have two of them today: Jesus heals an enslaved servant of a Roman soldier and then Jesus raises a widow’s adult son from the dead. In both instances, there are lots of complexities, lots of characters, lots of details to explore. And while I love exploring all those details, we’re not going to get into many of them today. Instead, I just want to lift up a few themes.

First, first-century hearers may have been surprised at Jesus’s kindness to a Roman military commander. Rome was an occupying force in Galilee and even though this particular centurion seems to be friendly with the locals, it’s still unexpected that Jesus chose to act with such kindness towards him. 

Second, first-century hearers probably would NOT have been as surprised that Jesus helped an unnamed widow. After all, the entirety of the Jewish scriptures are full of admonishments to support widows. They were uniquely vulnerable in ancient times and a widow who lost both her husband and her son was likely in a very tenuous financial position.

Thirdly, first-century hearers likely would have heard echoes of 1 Kings - the story of the Prophet Elijah going to Sidon and healing the son of the unnamed widow of Zarephath. That story is the one that Jesus mentioned in the Temple earlier in Luke when he shared his mission statement. And the locals seemed to be perplexed and upset that Jesus was lifting up the global reach of his ministry. Like Elijah, Jesus didn’t plan to ONLY show compassion to those in his “in group” but to foreigners, too. 

And so these two short stories of healing lift up some huge themes in Jesus’s ministry: 

• Ministry in the midst and oppressive Empire of and even ministry TO the oppressor

• Ministry to and among those who are most vulnerable in society, like this widow

• Ministry that is unconfined by national, ethnic, or religious borders

And the theme that undergirds it all is Jesus’s superpower: compassion. 

I don’t think it is a coincidence that this story takes place in Capernaum. One translation of the name is, “Place of Compassion.” It is the place that Matthew calls Jesus’ home base – the place he retreats to after withstanding temptation in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry. Capernaum is also the place where Jesus got in trouble for teaching and healing on the Sabbath – acts of compassion for a people who were hungry for knowledge and for Simon Peter whose mother-in-law was quite ill. And it is the place where he healed a paralyzed man lowered through the roof in a scene of movie-worthy drama. 

Capernaum. The place of compassion. Jesus’ home base.

Time after time in our scriptures, the people around Jesus wonder, “Where does this man get his authority? How does he do these mighty acts?”

Perhaps we never needed to look any further than the name of the town where he settled after beginning his ministry. The place of compassion. 

Those of us who earnestly seek to embody Christ’s love in a hurting world would do well to remember his superpower of compassion. Bishop Budde knows this. And I think we all know it on some level. Even people who don’t follow Jesus and have grown weary of listening to hypocritical churches paid attention when she spoke of mercy. There is something within us that understands the power of compassion. We inherently experience it as a healing force for good. 

Even non-religious experts will tell you compassion is important. Psychology educator Kendra Cherry wrote about compassion on the health website VeryWell. She defines compassion as empathy in action. We feel empathy for someone and then when we are moved to act - that’s compassion. Cherry says there are two primary types of compassion: compassion for others and compassion for self. And that if we want to “flex our compassion muscles” we can:

• ​​Speak with kindness

• Apologize when we’ve made a mistake

• Listen carefully and without judgment

• Offer to help someone with a task

• Express gratitude and appreciation

• Be patient [3] 

Lovely tips, yes? Not rocket science but important reminders. 

But if we really want to take compassion to the next level - compassion for ourselves and others - I think we need to recognize there are spiritual components. Using Jesus as our model, we can actively seek out spiritual practices that help us build up our compassion muscles. Louis Savary and Patricia Berne speak of a spiritual practice of compassion for another person as “kything” - a term borrowed from Madeleine L’Engle. Kything is more than just a physical or psychological connection with another human. It’s a “spirit-to-spirit or soul-to-soul” connection. 

They describe a practice of kything in three steps:

1. Centering ourselves: getting settled in our own spirit - the foundation for any spiritual practice

2. Centering on the other person: this is a “state of consciousness they call being lovingly single-minded” and they give several suggestion for how to do this

3. Establishing connection with the other: they call this communion and describe it as “being freely and lovingly joined in spirit” [4] 

I’ll share the link to their full description in the sermon notes later if you want to learn more about kything and practice on your own. 

There is an enormous amount of pain and suffering in the world. And with the injustices mounting, I’m sorry to say that I don’t think the pain and suffering is magically disappearing any time soon. If we are going to do what Rami Shapiro describes and find ourselves undaunted by the enormity of the world’s grief, we will need robust spiritual practices to ground us in our common humanity. 

As always, Jesus shows the way through his compassionate acts: Don’t overthink it. Do justice, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. We are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are we free to abandon it. 

May we be held in that great circle of everlasting compassion as we keep breathing in and out. 

NOTES:

[1] This aphorism is usually attributed to The Talmud, but that’s not quite right. It’s a paraphrase of wisdom Rabbi Rami Shapiro gleaned from several places. It’s a commentary on Micah 6:8 a text from the Pirke Avot. All of which is to say, it appears in its most complete form in Shapiro’s book Wisdom of the Jewish Sages but it’s a mashup of Jewish wisdom. 

[2] Luke 6:36

[3] https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-compassion-5207366 

[4] https://www.thewellspring.com/flex/professional-integration/2463/kything-being-present-to-another.cfm.html 

“Power Moves”

Luke 6:1-16 Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood February 2, 2025

In January and February of 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. retreated to Jamaica with Coretta and two family friends. You can find photos of the Kings enjoying the sun on the beach and eating dinner with breathtaking views in the background. It’s nice to know that this man who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders could sometimes step away from the fray and find a bit of sabbath rest. 

What the pictures don’t show is that this was very much a working vacation. While King caught a break from the day-to-day realities of the movement, he didn’t actually stop working. Instead, he took a step back to regroup and find some clarity to fuel his next steps. It’s said he was pretty much cut off from the world during this trip - not even a phone in his apartment. In isolation, he wrote. 

The book he wrote on this trip ended up being his last. It was called Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? and it contains a mountain of quotable quotes that articulate King’s Christian faith. 

********

The past few weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about power. I’m going to guess that many of you have, too. I reached out to my friend Emilee Bounds who is a community organizer in Oklahoma. I knew she’d have a good working definition of power, so I asked her. She said, “Power is the ability to act,” and reminded me that the word shares the same origin of the Spanish verb poder - to be able. Even if you don’t know any Spanish, you may be familiar with the phrase popularized by the United Farm Workers: “Si, se puede” - “Yes, you can.” That’s poder. Power. Agency. The ability to act. 

Political theorist Saul Alinsky spent his life studying power. Generations of community organizers like my friend Emilee have used his teachings to make positive change. Alinsky taught that power is inherently neutral. It can be used for good and it can be used for evil. 

If we want to follow Jesus and love loudly? If we want to embody the Beloved Community? We have to get comfortable with power. 

**********

Back to Dr. King. In that book that he wrote in Jamaica, he said this about power: 

“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” 

Let’s talk about power and love, shall we? Because Dr. King’s question: “where do we go from here?” seems particularly salient right now. Chaos has been the theme of these past few weeks. It is chaos deliberately sowed to create imbalance, confusion, and - ultimately - to take away our sense of agency. It’s meant to overwhelm, make us shut down, make us think we have no power. An important part of the antidote to the overwhelm, as King’s title reminds us is COMMUNITY. 

Community is not only about the connections we have here and now - like gathering for worship on Sunday. It’s also about connecting to our faith ancestors and sharing stories from the past. And it’s carrying an awareness that we are in relationship with our descendants - we are, every day, creating the world they will inhabit. 

The author of Luke invites us into community with these three little stories about Jesus. And, like Dr. King, Jesus was clearly thinking about power and love here. 

We’re going to zoom through today’s passage really quickly, so buckle-up. 

First story: Jesus and his followers are walking through the fields, grabbing handfuls of grain and eating them. Some of the Pharisees are horrified because it was commonly understood that you were not supposed to harvest grain on the Sabbath. Now, we could go into all kinds of ins and outs about who is right and who is wrong here. But we’re not going to. Instead, I want to point out how Jesus justifies his behavior. He calls upon the authority of King David who also broke rules. You can look up the story he’s referring to in 1 Samuel 21. It’s an odd little story and David’s rationale for breaking the rules (and lying, I might add) is basically, “Because I’m David. The rules are different for me.” 

Regardless of how we feel about David breaking the rules and claiming special privileges, that’s exactly what Jesus seems to be doing here. It’s a major power move. He’s saying that he has special authority and is choosing to exercise his power as he sees fit. 

Not surprisingly, the Pharisees are skeptical. I get it. I’d be pretty suspicious if some guy showed up here and claimed that kind of authority, too. Wouldn’t you? Part of claiming our own power is being very cautious about who we allow to claim authority in our lives. It’s not a wise move to just trust leaders willy-nilly. It’s prudent to ask a lot of questions, which is just what the Pharisees do. 

Second story: Jesus, fully cloaked in his authority David’s descendent, violating sabbath norms again. This time, he’s teaching in the synagogue. And there is a man there with a withered hand. Jesus knows he’s being watched and tested. And so he asks the Pharisees a question: “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?” And then the man’s hand is healed. 

Now, it was absolutely lawful to save a life on the sabbath. You would never allow someone to die if you had the power to help them just because it was the sabbath. That would be abhorrent. And so, by asking these questions, Jesus seems to be broadening the question here about what it means to save a life. 

Biblical scholars Amy Robinson and Robert Williamson point out that a single withered hand isn’t likely to be life-threatening. And so, how is it that Jesus argues that he’s in line with sabbath norms by healing this man? Perhaps, they say, it’s a reminder that there is no neutral. Unless we are actively creating good, we are allowing harm. And so any good, no matter how small, is life-saving. 

If that’s the case, this story makes me deeply uncomfortable. Because I’ve seen too many do-gooders exhaust themselves to the point of burnout by never taking breaks. I want to pull Jesus aside and argue with him about the importance of sabbath-keeping. 

And my guess is, Jesus would probably argue with me about love. It’s always the last stop for Jesus, isn’t it? “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” So easy to say and so hard to know how to do. We find ourselves tangled up in guidelines. We aren’t sure when or how to take a break. We exhaust ourselves trying to love beyond the limits of sanity. 

I wish there was an easy 1, 2, 3 that told us how to balance it all. Maybe an index card we could memorize about how to use power and love to work for justice. 

I haven’t found that index card yet. And if someone handed it to me, I’d be skeptical. Because, as these stories from Jesus show, power and love and justice are complex. And our decisions feel particularly loaded when we are overloaded by chaos. 

Remember what Dr. King said - chaos or community? There may not be an index card with answers but we do not traverse the chaos alone. We can turn to community for guidance as we continue to show up in a chaotic world. 

We can read the words of Dr. King or call our friends who are community organizers. 

We can pick up Alinsky or turn to our favorite Bible podcast. 

We can look to Jesus as the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. 

And we can turn to one another. And that’s what I want to do right now. Two questions for you to ponder in sixty seconds of silence. And then I’ll invite a few of you to share aloud. We’re going to make this embodied. When you’re thinking or listening about power, you can do hands on hips - superhero pose. When you’re thinking or listening about love, please do hands on heart. 

Power first: was there a time when you saw power used for good?

Love next: what does everyday love in action look like? 

(Silence. Then space for people to share aloud)