“In the power of the Spirit”

Luke 4:1-21

Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

January 19, 2025

“Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee…” 

Each of the gospel authors tell the story of Jesus’s ministry in different ways. They move things around, add and subtract from common stories, and otherwise mix things up to get their point across. Each is painting a vision of who they understand Jesus to be - not because they were eyewitness accounts, none of them were. But because they’ve had stories about this Jesus passed down to them and they’re trying to convey their understanding of who he is to their audience. 

And so, near the beginning of the Gospel of Luke, right after Jesus was baptized, the author of Luke tells us he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness where he was tempted for 40 days. We don’t have time to get into the ins and outs of that text today, but it sets the scene for the passage we just heard. We see that Jesus is no stranger to temptation. He isn’t some AI-generated savior who is simply following commands. He’s a human being with desires and questions. Like us, he knows what it’s like to be tempted to take the easier route, to do the wrong thing, to give in to exhaustion and give up. 

After he is tempted, “Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee…”  I love that phrase. He returned in the power of the Spirit. And he went home. 

Once he arrives in his hometown of Nazareth Jesus read scripture in the synagogue there. He read aloud from the Prophet Isaiah - adapting it slightly. 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

    because God has anointed me.

God has sent me to preach good news to the poor,

    to proclaim release to the prisoners

    and recovery of sight to the blind,

    to liberate the oppressed,

 and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Incidentally, I went to seminary twice for a total of 4.5 years. In all my years, this was the only passage of the Bible I was ever asked to memorize. My theology professor called it “Jesus’s mission statement” and told us that it is the key to everything else that follows in the Gospel of Luke. We were required to write it out on more than one occasion to prove we had it committed to memory. 

After being baptized - named and claimed as God’s own beloved child - and then tempted - Jesus centered himself in the Spirit’s power and spoke his mission on earth out loud. 

Sitting here at the beginning of 2025, we can be grateful for his example. 

Because the world often seems to be moving too fast. There are too many needs clamoring for our attention. Too many systems are broken and too much is changing too rapidly to keep up. Without a clear sense of mission - without feeling centered in the Spirit’s power - we’re likely to spin out of orbit. We’re likely to either say yes to everything and burn out OR say no to everything and disengage completely. The complexities of the world require us, like Jesus, to carefully discern where we can best use our skills and energy. 

Your mission is not the same as the person’s sitting next to you. Do you know your mission? Like Jesus, can you say it out loud? 

Jesus’s mission as an individual anchors him firmly to a community - he pulls upon the wisdom of his ancestors, freely remixing Isaiah’s wisdom. He speaks his mission aloud in his home synagogue - perhaps hoping for feedback so he can polish it up a bit. We can do the same - looking to our sacred texts and faith ancestors for wisdom - trying out our mission statement with trusted friends to see how it lands. 

The feedback Jesus receives is overwhelmingly positive. At least at first. After Jesus finishes speaking, everyone in the synagogue is amazed and impressed. And that would be a nice place to end the story, but things go a little off the rails after that. 

Jesus decides to stir things up a bit and provokes the people gathered there in his home synagogue. Essentially he says, “Well, I’m sure you all are excited for me to be here and do all these miraculous things here in Nazareth and Galilee. But Elijah and Elisha didn’t necessarily do signs and wonders in their own communities. They both healed people outside their own groups instead.”

And that’s the part that makes the hometown crowd mad. It’s not that they object to helping the poor or freeing those in prison. In fact, they love that idea. And they’re looking around their own corner of the world and saying, “Yeah. We need help here. A lot of help. We have a lot of problems that need to be fixed. We can’t take care of all the people here who have needs, so it’s wonderful that Jesus is here to help.”

But Jesus has other ideas. He never says he WON’T help people in Nazareth, but he invites the crowd to expand their understanding of who counts as “one of us.” 

This issue of who’s in and who’s on the margins seems to have been a problem forever. We seem to be biologically hard-wired to trust those who look, smell, sound like us. We trust those who are familiar and distrust strangers. If we’re lucky, we are encouraged to widen our circle of trust and expand our “in group.” But Jesus is telling us to go beyond even this. He is, instead, asking us to do something quite radical: to get rid of the idea of in groups and out groups completely. 

If you fast-forward in Luke’s gospel to Chapter 10, there’s a passage that seems to be in conversation with today’s passage. Jesus, in conversation with a legal expert, lifts up the importance of the law we’ve come to know as the Greatest Commandment: “Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.”

And then the lawyer asks a small question that really gets at the heart of it: “Who is my neighbor?”

Do you remember how Jesus answers this question?

That’s right. He tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. And he makes it clear that being a neighbor isn’t so much about where we live - it’s about recognizing that we are connected across all the boundaries that humans like to build up. Jesus pushed the people in his hometown synagogue to do away with the distinctions of us vs. them - and to understand that more freedom anywhere is a good thing everywhere; lifting people out of poverty anywhere creates abundance everywhere. 

As Robin Wall Kimmerer has said so succinctly and eloquently: “All flourishing is mutual.” 

Or as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. fleshed out a bit more in his letter from the Birmingham Jail: “I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

Again and again we are reminded of this profound truth: we are one. 

Three little words but, oh, how hard to live. 

My heart goes out to the people gathered in the synagogue in Nazareth that day. If someone showed up here in our sanctuary - someone who I believed had the skills and power to liberate and heal - I would be so excited. I would immediately begin thinking of all the needs we have here in our community - how amazing that there could be solutions to fix broken systems and help those who need it most! And then - if that same person told me that he was going to Houston or Peru or Taiwan to liberate and heal? Well, I’d have a hard time remembering that we are one. I would want the goodness for our community first. 

And there we are again - back to mine and ours. Back to the question of who are our neighbors. Needing the reminder, again and again, that we are one. 

Nobody ever said that following Jesus would be all unicorns and cupcake sprinkles. In fact, I’d be willing to say that if following Jesus seems easy, we’re probably not doing it right. If we get to the point where it seems simple, we probably need to pull up a seat at the synagogue in Nazareth and have our horizons widened a bit. 

Because until we get to the point where we can consistently love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us - until we get to the point where we can flip tables with skill - until we see every single person as our neighbor? We have work to do if we want to love like Jesus. 

Now - before you feel overwhelmed. I want to go back to the beginning. Jesus had a mission statement. It was short, clear, succinct. It was his. 

I believe we are called to be like Jesus, but we are not actually called to BE Jesus. He was both a model for us and a unique manifestation of the divine. The call is not to have your mission match his precisely. The call is to discern your own mission. And then live into it. 

Like Jesus, we do this as individuals and we do it in community. And as followers of Jesus, our mission should resemble his in some way. It should be able love and liberation and healing. But your mission might be more specific - perhaps you are living it out in a particular corner of the world or focusing on one way you can bring more joy and justice to those who need it most. 

I don’t know your mission but I’d love to. Because that’s what being followers of Jesus together is all about - listening and learning. Returning again and again in the power of the Spirit to this community of faith - to each other - where we can be reminded that, through Christ, we are one. 

May it be so. 

“Epiphany Gifts”

Matthew 2:1-20

Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

January 12, 2025

The first 12 days of 2025 have packed a real wallop, haven’t they? We woke up to the news of violence in New Orleans on New Year’s Day. And then we began watching the weather reports coming in about a historic blizzard coming our way. (Can we all agree we don’t need to live through any more unprecedented events?) And scarcely had the (indeed historic) blizzard passed here in Kansas when news of the fires in Los Angeles arrived. 

I prepared a sermon about Epiphany for last Sunday, but when I dusted it off for this Sunday, it didn’t quite seem like what we needed. Instead, I found myself drawn to just one theme of the Epiphany story: gift-giving. The Magi who travel from a far away land to see the young Jesus bring gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. (Or if you’re enjoying the delightful version of this story told by Barbara Robinson in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever - they bring a Christmas ham.)

These foreigners do not arrive empty-handed. They bring gifts. 

I couldn’t help but think of them this week when I saw firefighters from Mexico arriving in Los Angeles to help with the disaster there. In spite of all of the maligning meanness and puffed-up foolishness about building a wall…In spite of all of the arrests and detention camps and flat-out cruelty…our neighbors to the south are showing up to help. 

Of course they are. This is what humans do in a crisis. We show up. We bring our gifts. 

The Magi carried those gifts in their satchels, but they also brought something bigger. Like the firefighters from Mexico, they brought the gift of protection. They boldly and bravely stood between Empire and Jesus’s family, refusing to reveal Jesus’s location to Herod. 

Mister Rogers famously said, “look for the helpers,” and that is true in disasters of all kinds: human-made and natural, unexpected and totally predictable. There is something about a disaster that seems to help us remember who we really are - that shocks us out of complacency, that gets us off the hamster wheel of work-and-buy-and-consume. We remember our connections. We remember our humanity. We remember our vulnerability. We look out for those among us who are in need. 

Or we don’t. Or pull up the drawbridge and look out for “me and mine.” We forget to check in on others. We get so comfortable that we forget about our own vulnerability and fail to understand what others are going through. 

Like I said, disasters bring out the humanity in us. And we humans certainly have the capacity for helping and hurting, don’t we? 

Since it seems we will, indeed, be living through more disasters in the future, it’s a good time to pause and reflect on what type of humans we want to be. 

The story of Epiphany shows what it’s like to extend ourselves to help the vulnerable: the Magi traveled many miles and put their own lives at risk. Epiphany also reminds us that hospitality is a two-way street: young Jesus may have been an infant King but he was also incredibly vulnerable. Every person in this story had gifts to offer and also needed to learn how to receive gifts. Gifts of protection, a safe place to stay, a mystical moment of joy - plus, of course, the literal gifts carried in the Magi’s hands. 

This week, I was in a Zoom Bible study that I attend every month. We were talking about how hard it can be to receive gifts. Some of us have a much easier time giving than receiving, don’t we? I think it’s because we don’t want to impose. And it’s also because we don’t want to be reminded that we have needs. 

As we were discussing this, one of my colleagues, the Rev. Peter Ahn, explained that he grew up in South Korea and his mother taught him that we have to be able to receive gifts from others - not just give. She explained that without a recipient, there can be no giving. And so hospitality is a two-way street - we give and receive. If we were all givers all of the time, there would be no love flowing between us. And if we were all recipients all of the time, there would be no love flowing between us. Without givers and receivers, hospitality grows stagnant. We have to be willing to play both roles in order for this beautiful human dance to work. 

Mister Rogers told us to look for the helpers. I hope he doesn’t mind if we expand his wisdom to say we should look for the recipeints, too, right? Because we are - all of us - going to find ourselves playing both roles. Especially in times of trial. 

Let’s take a moment, here and now, to quiet our spirits, step away from the chaos, and contemplate the places we have been able to give or receive help so far in 2025. If you find that your immediate reaction is to thinking of something you GAVE, I ask that you pause, breathe, and try to dig a little deeper to also identify a time when you RECEIVED help from someone else. And if your immediate reaction is to think of something you RECEIVED, pause, breathe, and try to identify something you’ve GIVEN. 

Let’s just take a moment for silence. 

We’re going to move directly into the prayers of the people. If you felt something rising up during the silence just now and it feels like the Spirit would like for it to be shared with all of us, you are welcome to share that prayer aloud by unmuting or typing it into the chat. We will also use this time to share our regular prayers of celebration and concert in the same way. Once we’re finished, we’ll close with the prayer of Jesus, which I’ll put into the chat. 

“While Shepherds Watched”

Luke 2:1-20

Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

Christmas Eve | December 24, 2024

I wonder how long the shepherds wore their halos. 

The author of Luke tells us that “In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them.” How do you envision this in your mind? 

Up until this week, I always kind of saw the shepherds with a spotlight on them. As if they were on stage, perhaps in a Christmas pageant. “The glory of the Lord shone around them.” CLICK. Spotlight!

But then I looked up the Greek in the dictionary and it said the word means “to illuminate all around, i.e. invest with a halo.” 

Oh. 

“The glory of the Lord shone around them.” What does that look like, exactly? God’s glory….shining….around them? 

Regardless of how we envision it, the text says God’s light appeared and shone brightly around the shepherds. Enclosing them. Highlighting them. Marking them as important, special, holy. 

What do we know about shepherds? We know that they lived outdoors, in the elements. And so I imagine their skin was a bit weathered by the elements. I assume they were physically fit from days and weeks and months of walking long distances with their flocks. I am guessing they traveled light - carrying only what they absolutely needed. Perhaps a bedroll, a cup and plate, one change of clothes. In my mind they are rugged-looking…not surprising for a group of people whose literal job is to keep watch and protect.

If you’re thinking of them as big, burly, middle-aged men, though, you might want to reframe that a bit. Shepherds were probably much younger - what we would call teenagers or even tweens. And they may have been boys or girls. So maybe think more of a gaggle of middle school kids, right? 

And this particular group of shepherds were perhaps entry-level shepherds, not too high up in the hierarchy. Because whatever manager emailed out the weekly schedules and put them on the night shift. 

And so it was that the glory of God came to kids working the night shift in a field. Maybe they were playing a game of Marco Polo in the dark, trying to stay awake. Or just scrolling aimlessly through TikToks with one eye on the sheep. 

Scrolling, playing, pinching themselves to stay awake, yawning. Whatever they were doing, we are told, 

“an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ 

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom God favors!’”

In case the one angel and the glory of the Lord shining around them isn’t enough, there’s a follow-up act: “Suddenly! There was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host…” 

This multitude is not the kind of hosts we would think of. No one is wearing an apron here. This heavenly host is an army. A multitude of troops. And so, to this small group of young sheep guards comes a flock of soldiers. Are they in camo? Dress blues? Do they carry weapons? I have no idea. But I imagine them to be a powerful, intimidating group. 

Strong, confident soldiers, lined up in rows, standing at attention. The message they bring is simple, but I can hardly say it aloud without tearing up: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth PEACE….”

This army from heaven brings news of peace: a sense of safety, harmony, prosperity, calm, tranquility, connection between humanity; an end to strife, conflict, and war. 

Soldiers that bring peace. Shepherds who are given halos. A young, unmarried couple who accept the invitation to bear Christ to the world. And a baby who comes to disrupt Empire - claiming the title of Anointed One, Heir of the Most High - though he cannot yet speak or walk or talk. The most vulnerable of human creatures - a newborn infant - laid to rest not in a gilded palace but in a pile of hay in a feeding trough. 

Overnight, the world shifts on its axis. Imperceptible, perhaps, except to those who are working the night shift. Bleary-eyed, exhausted, underpaid and overworked, sleeping out, keeping watch. 

The good news of peace is not heard in the halls of power. The revolution is not televised. It seems as though Caesar may have slept through the whole thing. 

But when the heavenly visitors departed, the shepherds were guided by the light of their halos. They made haste and found the holy family and shared all that was told to them. In this way, they became not only recipients of good news, but messengers, too. 

Tidings of peace. News of extraordinary, revolutionary love. Found outside the confines of Empire. The light sneaking over the hills and shining into the crevices of our despair. 

The gift of Christmas. Not just for shepherds in the fields. 

For you. For us. For our loved ones and our enemies, too. 

Peace. An end to violence and strife. 

Emmanuel - God with us. Then. Now. Always. 

May it be so. 

“Beginnings and Endings”

Luke 1:26-38

Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

December 1, 2024

Our family went to see Wicked on Thanksgiving. Did anybody else see it yet? It’s so good, right? Now, it turns out that our kids have never actually seen the Wizard of Oz. So we were talking on the way to the theater about the main plot points of the movie, to see what they knew about the world of Oz. It turns out that they knew pretty much everything they needed to know, even without seeing the movie. Maybe if you live in Kansas, it’s just in your blood? 

I didn’t know until last week that the movie adaptation of the musical is actually two parts. So the movie that is out right now is just the first half of the musical. And although the end of part one certainly feels a bit like an ending, we left the theater wanting more. 

Except: part two of Wicked won’t be the end, either. Because in the Oz universe, canonical events and prequels and spin-offs abound. The singular story that Baum created in 1900 has inspired so many adaptations. And Wicked, itself, begins at the end. The show opens with the death of the Wicked Witch of the West and the rest of the show is a flashback and forward through the main characters’ lives. Endings and beginnings are all jumbled up, seamlessly flowing one into the other. 

And isn’t this the way of life? It can be difficult, at times, to tell if what we’re experiencing is an ending or a beginning. More often than not, it’s both. 

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Mary’s story is like this: an unmarried teenager receives an unexpected visit from an angel. Is this the culmination of her life up until this point? Or the beginning of a new story? 

Yes. 

Perhaps this is why the angel says “do not be afraid.” Endings and beginnings can both feel profoundly unsettling. We get the sense that the ground is shifting under our feet and we feel unsteady. And, so often, when we’re living through these cataclysmic shifts in our own lives or in the world at large, we’re just not sure where we are on the timeline. Is this the end? Or the beginning of something new? 

Yes. 

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Rabbi Marc Gellman has written a wonderful collection of modern midrash titled Does God Have Big Toe? Stories About Stories in the Bible. One of the stories in this collection is “The First New Year.” In this story, Adam is surprised by the setting of the sun in the Garden of Eden on that first day. The garden is suddenly dark, cold, and scary and the animals crowd around Adam for reassurance. Adam eventually falls asleep and is awakened by the warmth of the sun on his neck that next morning. He jumps up and rejoices with the animals. He assures them that the sun must be here to stay this time…..but eventually the sun begins to sink and they frantically try to build a barrier to keep the sun from setting. It doesn’t work, of course, and the animals and Adam are plunged once again into darkness and fear.

But this time God takes Adam aside and explains that everything is okay. This is just “time,” God says. The sun will do this over and over again and it will divide time into days and nights. There will also be weeks and months. Reassured, Adam starts keeping track of the passing of time – one day, two days, three days, a week, three weeks, a month, three months, and so on. All is well, until….

One day Adam notices he has marked off 11 months, 3 weeks, and 6 days. He becomes worried. “I’ve used up all the time!” he exclaims. “Tonight the sun will sink and it will never rise again because this is the end of time. I am going to have to wander around in the dark and it will be cold and I will trip over things. O, Lord, what will I do now?” Adam gathers together the animals and explains that he’s not sure if there will be a tomorrow. They huddle together for warmth and cry as they watch the sun set for the final time. 

But then….the sun begins to peek up over the edge of the garden. Just as it always has. Just as it always will. And Adam hears God counting, “Ten years is one decade….ten decades is one century….ten centuries is one millennium….ten millennia….” And Adam falls asleep to the sound of God’s voice and the birds chirping. 

Every time I read this story, I get a little misty-eyed. There is something so powerful about their innocence and confusion about endings and beginnings. It’s a theme that echoes down through the rest of the Bible, too:

It’s Noah and the animals shut up tight in the ark, wondering if the rain will ever end. It’s Queen Esther standing afraid and brave outside the King’s door, preparing to go in and plead her case. It’s the Psalmist singing that we are all like grass, here for only a short while before the world changes again. And it’s Jesus’s disciples huddled together on the night of Good Friday, weeping - for the world as they know it has ended. And it’s the women who went to the tomb on Easter morning, only to discover that the ground has shifted right under their feet. 

It’s death and it’s Resurection and it’s hopelessness and a sliver of hope. It’s broken and it’s being made whole. It’s the end and the beginning and it’s messy and it’s beautiful and it’s all wrapped up together. 

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Our Advent theme this year is “words for the beginning.” As we near the end of 2024, we remember that, in the church year, Advent marks the beginning of a new year. Every year, the liturgical calendar starts over with the first Sunday of Advent. As our world here in the Northern Hemisphere grows cold and dark, we remember that sunlight may grow scarce, but winter is just a stop on the cosmic timeline of creation. The days will lengthen again. God will keep counting off the decades and centuries and millennia. We exist in this one moment in time but there are countless spin offs, prequels, sequels, and alternative timelines yet to be written. 

As we step into a new year with intentionality, how can we find a way to welcome the beginnings and endings that are all around us? Next week we’ll be doing this in a very tangible way as we mark the transition to Common Table that’s coming up in January. It can feel difficult to say this out loud, but Second Helping is coming to an end. Yes, it will continue on in new ways through our connections to Common Table. There are many things to celebrate as Common Table begins its new life at the Lincoln Center. It will be easier and more welcoming for guests and volunteers. We will meet the needs of our community more effectively. And at the same time, Second Helping as we know it, will be ending. No more lunches piled up in the fridge during the week. No more store rooms in the basement. No more meals around our tables every Sunday night. It’s an ending. And there is grief there, even as we celebrate the new beginning taking place at the same time. 

And we are also celebrating another new beginning! Week before last, Deane and I cleared out half the closet in Blachly Hall to make space for the Center of Hope Ministry. They’ll be providing warm, overnight shelter in Pioneer-Blachly beginning tonight. And it turns out that some of our neighbors that we’ve welcomed on Sunday evenings at Second Helping will still find a warm welcome in this space through the Center of Hope Ministry.

Endings and beginnings.  If you listen you can almost hear God counting, “Ten years is one decade….ten decades is one century….ten centuries is one millennium….ten millennia….” 

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When you came in this morning, you should have received a piece of purple yarn. If you didn’t, please give a wave and we’ll make sure you get one. If you’re worshiping on Zoom, I hope you’ll be able to find your own piece of yarn or string. 

Take a look at the yarn. It has a beginning and an ending, yes? If you bring the beginning and ending together, you have a circle - one of the primary symbols of Advent. That’s why we have wreaths during this season. Beginnings and endings and sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which because they’re all tied up together. 

This yarn is for you to carry throughout Advent. You could tie it in a circle around your wrist or just stick the loop in your pocket or tie it onto a bag. But when you look at this piece of yarn, I hope you’ll remember this cycle of beginnings and endings. How can we honor the blessings and challenges found in all our endings and beginnings? May the Spirit guide us in this season and beyond as we remember wisdom found in the old stories, find gratitude in the present moment, and seek a future that honors God’s vision of justice and peace for all creation. 

May it be so.