Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons

The Great Restoration - October 24th, 2021

Rev. Dr. Kelly L. Grimes

Psalm 23:1-3a; Mark 10:46-52

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More Green, Less Noise - October 17th, 2021

“More Green, Less Noise”

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, October 17, 2021, the twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost. “Prepare the Table with Justice and Joy” series. 

  Texts: Psalm 23:1-2, Mark 10:35-45

“…one morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green…” This line from J.R.R. Tolkien’s book The Hobbit has inspired a refrain in the Gaines-Cirelli household over many years, a phrase that is invoked like a prayer or a prophetic rebuke in moments when surroundings are harsh or grating on the nerves. “More green. Less noise.” I suppose one could say it’s nostalgic or naïve. But regardless of that, it is what I so often desire. More green. Less noise. 

And so I love the line from Psalm 23 that is our focus today as we journey line by line through that Psalm in this series. 

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
    The Lord makes me lie down in green pastures;
and leads me beside still waters; 

The landscape traversed by the Hebrew people from which the Psalm emerged is diverse—from rocky desert to mountain to seacoast. And there are lovely broad valleys and places where green spreads out like a blanket. The good shepherd knows the terrain, knows when and where we need to be guided from one place to another—and chooses to bring us to green pastures and still waters.

Rabbi Harold Kushner begins his reflection on verse two by telling an amusing story of a boy who asks his father why the sky is blue and the grass is green.

Of course there are those in this congregation who could answer the boy’s questions quite precisely from a scientific perspective. But even if we don’t know those answers, Kushner goes on to suggest a fairly simple answer from a theological point of view, namely, the reason the sky is blue and the grass is green is because God made a world God knew we needed… Not just a world that produces sustenance for our bodies, but a world that provides suitable habitats for different creatures, a world that gives comfort and delight. 

But what do blue and green have to do with any of that? He spends a bit of time talking about how different colors evoke different emotional responses. “Remember that light is a form of energy. Light reaches our eyes in waves of different frequencies per second, creating different levels of intensity. For bright colors, red and yellow, the waves are longer and hit the eye with more strength, even as taller, longer ocean waves hit us more forcefully…Darker colors, the blues and greens, emit shorter waves and strike the eye more gently.” And then makes this observation, “God has colored [the] world in predominantly calming colors, blue sky, green leaves, blue-green water, brown trees, colors that calm rather than excite.” And for our siblings who don’t see colors, there are other aspects of creation that are similarly delightful and calming…the feeling of a breeze or a warm body snuggled up to us, the sounds of birds, a purring cat, water flowing, the rustle of leaves, the smells of fresh cut grass, wet earth, flowers, wood smoke. 

We know that the elements of our planet can be harsh and dangerous as well. But there’s a reason people yearn to be outside in nature—any nature! I remember when I lived in New York City, after a long, cold winter, I took a walk on the first warmish, sunny day of spring and was astonished to see that Central Park’s Sheep Meadow was literally covered with people. The Lord (or something!) had made them lie down in that green pasture—and you could barely see the green of the pasture for all the people! God made a world God knew we needed…

And have you ever noticed that line in the Psalm, “[The Lord] makes me lie down…”? I think I’ve always thought of verse 2 as mostly about food and water, as a shepherd leading the sheep to pastures and streams for nourishment. But what I’ve come to appreciate is that it’s not only that God has created a beautiful planet to nourish us with food, but also to help us rest, to find calm in what can be stormy waters of life. One translation of verse two reads, “You let me rest in fields of green grass. You lead me to streams of peaceful water.” (CEV)

Many poets and other writers have the created world as their primary inspiration and study. One of those is Wendell Berry, farmer, poet, philosopher, prophet. Berry writes these words in his poem “The Peace of Wild Things”:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

God has given us this beautiful creation, not only as a source of food, as raw materials to consume and manipulate, but as a doorway into rest, delight, grace, and peace. //

Several things converge around this Sunday when it just so happened that these lines fell open for our reflection… October 4th is the traditional Feast Day of St. Francis, who is known for love of all creation and creatures, climate and environmental justice legislation is a centerpiece of current debates in congress, and preparations are underway for a UN Climate Change Conference happening in Glasgow the first couple of weeks of November. Some fail to see any connection between Christian faith and the climate crisis. I remember back in 2015 Pope Francis was catching all kinds of grief for his “green agenda.” Some of those opposed to the Pope’s environmental justice advocacy believe “that climate change is being overhyped or that human activity is not a factor and that remedies may do more harm than good…Others simply believe that Francis…should not [weigh] in on issues that touch on technical and scientific matters that some contend are still debatable.”

Of course the fiercest debates around environmental issues often come to a head when there is a lot of money to be made and/or the promise of jobs. I have had conversations with close family members (remember I come from Oklahoma and Texas, after all) who argue that careful engineering and maintenance of things like off-shore drilling and fracking are not necessarily bad for the planet, but rather it is only when companies try to do things on the cheap or without care that harm is done. My goal is to keep an open mind and to try to see things from a variety of perspectives. I know that my family members (and others like them) want to care for creation even as they advocate for practices such as those mentioned. But when we add up those things together with mountaintop removal coal mining, deforestation, polluted groundwater, loss of wetlands, greenhouse gas production, paving everything in sight, and Lord knows what else, I can’t help but think that we are, collectively, being driven first and foremost not by a balanced sense of forward looking stewardship of both human and environmental needs, but by the short-term money to be made from coal, development, oil, agribusiness, and more.  

There are folks here today who have a much more nuanced and complete understanding of the environmental, economic, social, and political issues involved in all of this than I do. But I simply want to remind us of a very simple truth. Regardless of your views about particular practices, our Judeo-Christian faith specifically calls us to a deep and intentional connection with all of creation. In his focus on environmental stewardship, Pope Francis is not, as one particularly mean-spirited writer suggests, being “an ideologue and a meddlesome egoist”; he is being a Christian. Christians are not only called to be caretakers of the world, its earth, air, water, and creatures, but we are also reminded that we are, ourselves, part of the creation. God has created a beautiful world to provide for all we need, body and soul and has given us as the human creature a place and role within the interconnected beauty and order of things. The Christian understanding is not different from the Native American wisdom reflected in the words of Chief Seattle: “Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” The truth is that the human creature has harmed the web. God has given us green pastures and still waters, but as we have seen, droughts dry up the pastures; waters rise and overwhelm as a result of our lack of care. We cannot assume that green pastures and still waters will always be there.

Last week, Foundry Board President Todd Mullins mentioned that environmental justice is part of our vision and agenda for 2022. It’s not new—we have solar panels, a rainwater garden, we recycle, and have drastically reduced single use plastic and paper consumption, but we are committed to taking things to another level of sustainability through projects in our physical plant, consciousness raising for practices in our personal lives, and advocacy in the public square. 

More green. Less noise. With God’s help and our shared commitment and generosity, we’ll do our part in mending, sustaining, sharing and enjoying the gifts of green pastures and still waters so that all might be nourished by the good gifts of creation, so that all may “rest in the grace of the world and [be] free.”

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“Tell Me What You Really, Really Want” - October 10th, 2021

“Tell Me What You Really, Really Want”

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, October 10, 2021, the twentieth Sunday after Pentecost. “Prepare the Table with Justice and Joy” series. 

  Texts: Psalm 23:1, Mark 10:17-31

A story is told of a minister who sat at the hospice bedside of a woman near death and, failing to find his own words, began to recite the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…” The woman stirred and summoned the energy to whisper, “But pastor, I do want!”

I imagine there are many for whom this will resonate. The woman in the story wanted to be made well, to get to experience more of the life and love and relationship that she would be leaving behind. Does Psalm 23 teach that we aren’t supposed to want like that? What does “I shall not want” actually mean?

Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book on the 23rd Psalm entitled The Lord Is My Shepherd: Healing Wisdom of the Twenty-Third Psalm is one of my companions for our journey over the coming weeks. Rabbi Kushner points out that the familiar Elizabethan English used in the King James Version doesn’t mean “I shall not desire anything.” Kushner says “the intent of the Hebrew is more accurately captured by more recent translations, with words like ‘I shall lack for nothing’…[or] ‘The Lord is my shepherd, what more do I need?’ The issue of whether I desire things beyond that is beside the point.”

Last week, I noted that the image of God as a good shepherd lives deep within the spiritual imagination of our religious ancestors. And the memory of God leading the Hebrew people out of slavery and providing manna in the wilderness folds into that image of a faithful, ever-present God who guides us through and provides for our needs. When you read the story of that wilderness time, you see that the people struggled to appreciate manna. They remembered all the food back in Egypt, the land of their captivity and, well, they wanted that. But the thing is, God led the people out of slavery and into freedom and made sure they had what they needed to survive. It is understandable to want spiced meat and vegetables and not a mystery substance likely scraped off a tree. They didn’t get what they wanted but they did not want for sustenance. 

Let’s be clear: God is not a genie in a bottle; God is not an ATM; God does not exist to give us our way right away, but rather to guide us in God’s way that is discovered in an unfolding kind of way over time. God doesn’t just give us what we want, but works all day long to help us receive and share the good we need.

Also, it is common and perfectly OK to get angry at God about the way things are—in our lives or in the world around us. We can have feelings about how creation is created, how humans have free will and choices, how everything experiences cycles of birth, growth, diminishment, and death. We can shake our fists at the heavens because of suffering and strife. We can cry out saying, “If the Lord is our good shepherd, why do we want for peace, for justice? Why do we want for an end to poverty, pandemics, and environmental degradation?

Perhaps you’ve heard the one about a human who asks God, “Why do you allow poverty, suffering, and injustice when you could do something about it?” And God replies, “I was about to ask you the same question.”

We can have feelings about what we have or how things are, but God has in fact given us all we need. We have been given this beautiful planet, created in ways that are intricately interconnected and interdependent. The planet, well-tended and respected, provides all we need to thrive. We have also been given one another—a wonderfully diverse human family—each one with unique talents, skills, gifts, and insight. We are made to live in community, to care for one another and to share with one another and, in so doing, assure that all have what they need.

Perhaps it helps to think about it this way, when the Lord is our shepherd, we shall not want…  Because if we are being guided in God’s way of life, we will be good stewards of the earth and grow healthy food that can feed hungry bodies instead of some other bottom line. When the Lord is our shepherd, we shall not want because we will understand that we are one human family, created to care, share, and provide for one another. We will both desire and choose in ways that assure ALL have what they need, that ALL have enough. Together, we can be the answer to prayer. 

As I prepared these reflections for today, I received an email from the Poor People’s Campaign that said: “As those with power and wealth continue to debate whether our nation has the resources to meet the needs of all of its people – with talk about debt ceilings and budget and infrastructure bills – we will continue to denounce the lie of scarcity amidst great abundance, and keep building our movement to end poverty once and for all.” 

You will likely have encountered at some point along the way, the idea of a “scarcity mindset.” A scarcity mindset perceives there isn’t enough time, money, or other resources for what is needed. It can be in response to a true lack of sufficient resources. Certainly there are those who do not have enough money or support to thrive. Others may have enough or more than enough but still maintain a scarcity mindset out of fear. “What ifs” can really do a number on us. What if I lose my job? What if someone in my family gets sick? What if, what if, what if can lead to fearful obsession with not having enough.

In either case, the focus on the need to have more money or to protect our money affects our overall perspective and our literal brain function and, as a result, our choices and actions.

In our Gospel text today, we encounter a rich man who was clear about what he wanted. He wanted to figure out how to inherit eternal life. The man is functioning within a market economy mindset: “What will it take to get this other thing that I want?” Jesus’ response is to recite the last six commandments of the Big Ten. He doesn’t name the first four—which have to do with our relationship with God—but rather, focuses on the last six, which are all about our relationship to our neighbor.  And Jesus edits one of the commandments—evidently just for the benefit of this man before him.  In verse 19 of our passage, instead of “you shall not covet” Jesus says, “you shall not defraud.” 

The thing that made folks wealthy in Jesus’ day was to own property, so we can assume that this rich man had lots of property. Folks gained more wealth by acquiring the land of debt-defaulting neighbors (foreclosures?); therefore, it is also reasonable to assume that those who had lots of property had gained that wealth at the expense of the poor. In fact, the Greek word for “defraud” literally means “to keep away from someone, to deprive, to take away what rightfully belongs to someone else.” To follow the commandment as Jesus presented it would mean that the man has to give back what doesn’t really belong to him (Brueggemann’s definition of justice)—that he would have to acknowledge that the goods of the earth are unequally distributed and then do something about it. Jesus calls the man to do just that, to let go of what he doesn’t need, and to follow Jesus. The man refuses, the only time in Mark where someone refuses to respond to Jesus’ call.

This story not only impacts the life of the man who walked away from Jesus, it impacts the larger community as well. As one scholar writing about scarcity mindset says, “When we feel that money and goods are scarce, we start to think of our neighbors and fellow citizens as competitors rather than teammates united by our shared humanity. When we believe that the economy is zero-sum, we also come to believe that helping another person comes at our own expense. Helping our fellow humans escape poverty, debt, and misery becomes a disservice to the wealthy, rather than an expression of compassion and justice at the foundation of a society of equally free and valued people.”

Scarcity mindset makes us believe there is not enough to go around. But that’s simply not true. There is enough if we don’t destroy or squander earth’s resources. There is enough if we share what we have. There is NO REASON that children in this country or any of our siblings should be going hungry or not receiving healthcare or having access to clean water and secure housing. If we wanted to invest in solutions to care for the poor, the planet, and the common good as much as we want to focus on spaceships and weaponry (just two examples), the creative, innovative brilliance present all around us would figure out how to get things done and there would be enough money to make it happen. 

If the Lord is our shepherd, we will want to do everything we can to assure that ALL have what they need, that ALL have enough, that ALL have a place at the table. 

We can blame God for whatever…or allow ourselves to get caught in a scarcity mindset… or we can give thanks that God has given us one another, this beautiful world, and all sorts of ways to tend and mend, to care and to share. As we think about preparing a table here at Foundry that draws the circle wider and makes sure that all have enough, just think about the abundance that is among us and all around us. Some of the best tables I’ve ever experienced have been potlucks, when people all bring their best dishes to share. If each one of us simply contributes what we can, if each one of us brings out very best to the table, there’s absolutely no reason we should struggle to exceed our goal and have the resources we need. As we continue to build relationships and partner with others in our city, we will find ways to assure that there are not two cities—one that has enough and another that doesn’t—we will find ways to house our neighbors instead of evicting them from their tents—we will find ways to assure that all our neighbors’ needs are met. The Lord is our shepherd, so let’s not only really, really want to prepare a table that leaves no one wanting, let’s do what it takes to get the job done. 

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Humble, Strong, Sure - October 3rd, 2021

“Humble, Strong, Sure”

A reflection preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, October 3, 2021, the nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost. “Prepare the Table with Justice and Joy” series. World Communion Sunday.

  Texts: Psalm 23:1a, Mark 10:13-16

“The Lord is my shepherd.” These five words hold so much. Because the Lord, our shepherd, holds you and me and the whole world. 

An image comes to mind from my travels to the Holy Land at the beginning of 2020. It is of a young Bedouin boy, his arms filled with just one sheep. As our group traveled around Israel and Palestine, it was powerful to see the Bedouin shepherds with their flocks on what looked like mostly dry, rocky hills. The images of the 23rd Psalm took on new meaning the more I observed the landscapes from which that Psalm emerged. Much of the terrain is dangerous, weather unpredictable, water and food sources hidden or scarce, predators always around. Shepherding can be dirty work, dangerous work, exhausting work, lonely work. 

The ancestors of the Hebrew people were all nomadic, moving with their flocks to find sustenance, sometimes in the broad, green valley of places like the Galilee, and in times of drought, further afield. And that memory persists in the spiritual imagination of the tribes of Israel, the memory of the shepherd doing whatever was needed to tenderly care for and protect each little lamb. Our spiritual ancestors imagined God not as a king, but as a humble shepherd. Rabbi Harold Kushner writes, “To say ‘the Lord is my shepherd’ is to say that we live in an unpredictable, often terrifying world…But despite it all, we can get up every morning to face that world because we know that there is Someone in that world who cares about us and tries to keep us safe.” 

It is a primal thing, the yearning for someone to make us feel safe in a dangerous world and cared for in what can be an everyone’s-too-busy-to-care, impersonal world. We humans try to get those needs met in all kinds of ways, some of them healthy and others, not so much. Even the best humans at some point along the way will hurt, disappoint, or not be present with us when we need them. But what we are offered in our faith tradition is assurance that the Lord, our shepherd, is present with us every single moment of every single day of our lives—and present with patience, compassion, mercy, and love, no matter what mess we may have made of things. The good shepherd is always with us trying to protect us and lead us to the things that nourish, sustain, and bless our lives.

A good shepherd also seeks out those who are in dangerous places, the wounded ones, the ones who’ve been led astray. It doesn’t matter how or why they are where they are, the shepherd still cares, will find them, and attend to their needs. Each and every sheep is cared for; all are loved and worthy to be scooped up and held. Jesus modeled this with the little children whom others would have ignored or excluded. 

When we are safe and secure, we may forget. But when we find ourselves wounded or lost or being pushed aside or excluded, the promise is that God will remember us and draw near to help. We will be among those enfolded and held in the shepherd’s humble, strong, sure arms.

A day ago, I noticed that a colleague with whom I went to seminary, Rev. Otis Moss, III of Trinity UCC in Chicago, is starting a new sermon series entitled “I am Not Okay.” It struck me in a deep place as resonant with my own thoughts of late. A couple of weeks ago, in my midweek “Ponderings” on Facebook, I shared reminders about how our current experience of prolonged struggle of various kinds through the pandemics of 2020 and 2021 are taking a toll on every one of us. The stress and confusion and isolation is landing on our bodies and souls in some kind of way. And we may forget that how we feel or react in any given moment right now is likely affected by this larger reality. We may forget—because it’s been going on so long—that human systems are not MADE to sustain these levels of uncertainty, danger, and trauma for such long periods of time. My message was a simple reminder that it’s OK to not be OK and an encouragement to be gentle with ourselves. We need to remain aware of the context we’re in and be mindful of how we’re reacting to things. Because I don’t think anyone is really OK right now; I don’t think we’re “fine.”

The new series we begin today, is a journey through the 23rd Psalm. Every week through November 21st, the sermon will take a line from the Psalm as the focus for study and reflection. We will have opportunities to reflect on the ways God has brought us this far through these challenging years and to commit our support for what God will do in and through Foundry in 2022 to help us care for others as God has cared for us, to prepare the table for others as God has prepared the table for us.

We begin with the simple, profound assurance that the Lord is our shepherd. We will discover as we journey together through our study of Psalm 23, that its primary message is not that we’ll be free from the experience of pain or loss or difficulties in our lives. But rather that we will not have to experience anything in our lives alone. Because, as John Wesley affirmed in his dying breath, “Best of all, God is with us.” 

The Psalmist wrote from a deeply personal place of relationship with God. But let’s be very clear. This Lord is not just “my” shepherd or your shepherd or Christians’ shepherd or Jews’ shepherd. The Lord is our shepherd and the shepherd of all. God has the whole beautiful, broken world in God’s hands. As we prepare to gather at the table God has prepared for us on this World Communion Sunday, I think about that Bedouin boy shepherd, arms full. I think about the Bedouin shepherds I observed, guiding their flocks through dangerous terrain to find sustenance, sometimes in unseen places. I imagine God as our shepherd, arms full with all the people in all the places all around the world gathered at the Communion table prepared by God. I think of all those who gather around different kinds of spiritual “tables.” I think about all who are suffering or lost, those whose suffering is hidden to others, those whom others ignore or devalue…I think of all these who are watched over and sought out by the Lord, our shepherd, who is determined that not one should be lost, that none will be excluded from the compassion, love, care, and grace of God. 

As we draw near to the table God prepares for us, a table where we are nourished in forgiveness and in love, remember that at this table we are created and called to be the Body of Christ for the world, to follow in the way of the good shepherd who labors in love to tend for each and all. Today, I encourage you to really listen to the words of the Great Thanksgiving prayer. Let’s gather at the table today, with all God’s people everywhere, and truly give thanks for the bounty of love, mercy, and grace God has showered upon us all; let’s give thanks for the encouragement and nourishment to keep going; let’s give thanks for the grace to participate in God’s work of love and justice and compassion; let’s give thanks for the humble, strong, and sure presence of the Lord our shepherd. 

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Baptismal Thirst - September 26th, 2021

Psalm 84:1-4 (5-12); Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29 

Rev. K.C. Van Atta-Casebier 

A Sermon for Foundry UMC 

9.26.21 

Let’s Pray. God, for Your wisdom and revelation and hope, we pray now. Amen. 

Splash! A little jarring at first, for both me and the water, but when the water  settles, it begins to envelop me in what feels like a hug with no added pressure. Then  an immediate, unencumbered deep breath with no resistance, no pain. It's the moment I  long for - breath accompanied by relief. After the breath comes the desire to test the  water, to see if it encourages movement or would prefer for me to stay in my place.  Predictably, it always encourages movement. It always invites me forward. And after the  movement comes the rest. And oh, does the water encourage rest. It holds steady as if  to say, “Take all the time you need, I’ve got you, and I’ll be here when you’re ready to  move again.” Eventually though, the time does run out. I have to find the nearest ladder,  and pull myself out of the pool. It’s hard, not just because of a lack of desire, but  because (and I’m sure you’ve noticed this as well), pulling yourself out of the water  requires extra strength. The water grabs onto you, almost trying to pull you back into  communion with itself. “No! Don’t go,” the water says. Inevitably, the first feeling and  connection I have with my body after swimming, is a deep and primal need. THIRST.  Now, I do need to confess that I am typically a thirsty person. I have “beverage needs”  as the Foundry Youth and I call them, and you will likely never see me without a  ridiculously large sized container of water. Swimming, though, exacerbates my thirst,  because as it turns out, spending time in the pool can actually dehydrate you. As time  goes on, I not only experience that kind of primal thirst, but also an itching desire and  thirst to be back in the water. To feel held, relieved, and encouraged to move and to  rest. Over the last few months of obligation, difficulty, and to be transparent, a dip in my  mental health, swimming has sustained me.  

To set the scene for our text, we actually have to set two scenes. In our first  scene, the Israelites are emboldened to express their hunger and thirst by this rag tag  rabble, said to be a group of Egyptians who tagged along with the Israelites out of  Egypt. They begin to express a hunger for sustenance beyond the miraculous manna  that God has provided for them. Specifically they wanted the fish, melons, cucumbers,  leeks, onion, and garlic that they were fed back in Egypt - a meal that was remembered  as free, except that it wasn’t free at all. It actually came at a great cost, the cost of their  freedom. Moses hears the people weeping at their tents. I imagine it as this guttural  expression of another very basic human need - food. Moses, overwhelmed by the  communal despair, addresses God by saying (and I’m paraphrasing), “Why am I the  one carrying this burden? Did I conceive these people? No, YOU did. I can’t carry the  weight of this need. It is too heavy. DO SOMETHING.” And as we enter the second  scene, God basically rebuts saying, “No, you do something. Go grab the seventy elders  and bring them to the tabernacle tent.” And in our second scene, Moses does just that. 

And in the tabernacle tent, God takes some of the Spirit saturated in Moses and places  it on the seventy elders, and they begin prophesying. Then word gets back to Moses  that 2 of the elders weren’t in the tabernacle, but they were prophesying anyway.  Joshua is very concerned. And Moses says, “Would that all the Lord's people were  prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!" (v. 29) This is firstly a tale of  revised memory. Perhaps we revise our history because it is too painful to confront.  Maybe we do it subconsciously. I’m going to talk briefly about pregnancy and want to  offer this word. If you feel that this might be something that could cause you pain,  please keep watch over your heart. With my first pregnancy I had this nifty little thing  called hyperemesis gravidarum, which they should really just call “misery with a side of  misery.” It caused me to have all day, all month, all pregnancy illness. There wasn’t a  day in my first pregnancy where I didn’t vomit, including the day I gave birth. I lost a total  of 50 pounds over the course of my pregnancy with Kash. And I insisted I wouldn’t have  another child because of how miserable the first experience had been. I even wrote a  journal every day so that if I ever even thought about trying again, I would have a first hand account to convince me otherwise. And lo and behold about 2 years later, and  after reading my pregnancy journal, I began to remember that it “wasn’t that bad.” And I won’t go into detail, but I will tell you that my pregnancy with Riggins was even more  difficult. And as an aside, both were of course totally and absolutely worth it. The  Israelites have not only misremembered their time in Egypt, but it seems they've also  forgotten about God’s work and provision that got them where they are and the blessing  of manna they have now. For example, in their exodus, when met with an obstacle of a  huge body of water, with an opposing army at their back, God provided a way. And it's  worth noting that this way isn’t around the water, or by another path, the way that God  provided is THROUGH the water. And yet, even as water is poured from their faces,  and as they thirst, they can’t recall this great water miracle. Not only do they not  remember it, they don’t crave it - God’s provision and blessing. Their craving instead is  for something less sustainable and empty - that later in the text becomes their demise. 

How often do we forget about our own great water miracles? When the suffering  is too great, when we’re holding more than we can bear, when work is overwhelming,  and the lines between work and home are blurred, and we’re angry because we’re  grieving unfair deaths, and our anxiety and stress levels are through the roof. How is it even possible to remember anything other than the weight of the wilderness or to yearn  for the predictable, even if it is torturous? And so we cry out, “God, where are you? DO  SOMETHING. I can’t carry this load, at least not by myself.” Or...we’re simply too  exhausted to be angry so we weep at our tents. Or we become wrapped up in the  predictability of hierarchical structures and binary ideals. And if we check in with our  second scene, how is Joshua handling all of this? By realizing for himself if he doesnt at  least have an idea of who is allowed to be prophesying and who isn’t that it will all come  crashing down on him. As if to say, “Nothing around me makes sense right now, but  you know what feels really good in the midst of this suffering and grief? To know that I’m  right about something...to know that I’m on the good side of something. To know that  these people have authority and these people don’t. Or these people deserve medical  care and these people don’t. And sometimes thirsting for reassurance of our goodness  and rightness, can spiral into a sense of entitlement, a lack of empathy, a conscious or subconscious bend toward manipulation and gaslighting, disempowerment and abuse - that ultimately becomes our demise. 

And yet, God had not abandoned the Israelites. God provided manna for them in  the dewy water that grasped onto the land. God showed up and commissioned 72  people in the community to help share the load of Moses. And while baptism isn’t an  expressly mentioned ritual in the Hebrew scriptures, the idea of water as an agent of  renewal would have been intimately known by the Israelites who practiced mikvah - a  purification bathing ritual. I wonder if the Israelites recognized this in the crossing of the  Red Sea, or if it wasn’t until they later crossed the River Jordan into the promised land  that they felt the significance of the breakthrough, release, and rescue of movement  THROUGH the water. The same River Jordan where later the Messiah would come to  be baptized. 

Crossing through the water is part of the story of our people of faith. Wandering  away from the water is part of our nature. Misinterpreting our thirst becomes a coping  mechanism for the desert. I find that in driest deserts, I try (and often fail) to be grateful  for the oasis of grace, which we see highlighted in baptism - those three Wesleyan  types of grace: prevenient - the grace that goes before our understanding or  recollection, justifying - the grace that stops us in our tracks, the moment of realization  and memory; and sanctifying - the grace that continually pulls us back into community to  be encouraged, loved, and fed on our spiritual journey. Our baptisms aren’t just  certificates we keep in storage boxes. They’re a tabernacle event, whether we  remember it or not, where we become saturated by the Spirit. They are our great water  miracles. In a gathering of the community intended to embrace those claimed by God  whom we invite into life and love and grace, and eventually vocation through the  sacrament of Baptism. It is a passageway from death to life, from darkness to light, from  wandering to the promised land, from bondage to liberation. It is THROUGH, through  the water we are saved and healed and made whole, imbued with the spirit,  consecrated as prophets with something to say about the way of justice and mercy. It is  on our baptismal journey that we remember that we are surrounded by more than  seventy capable and called people, ready and willing to help carry the load, who share  the same vocation of the work of transformation and showing up for and with our  siblings as living witnesses that we can be different and still belong together. It is there  where we are ushered into unrevised memory of the power of the promise of God’s  unfailing presence and love for us and all people, where we feel empowered into  leadership and sharing the work of communal life together. And Foundry as we continue  turning this corner, I can think of nothing better to remember as we’ve come through the  driest of deserts, than our great water miracles. And just like my thirst to get back in the  pool, I pray that we thirst for the things that will sustain us and carry us through. Our  thirst, may it be for the baptismal waters. Waters that envelop us like a hug with no  added pressure. Waters that provide relief, encourage us to both move and rest. The  waters that say, “I’ve got you. You’re safe here.” And the waters that grab onto us and  beg us not to go. 

Let’s Pray. God of the great water miracles, remind us that in our driest deserts,  when we hunger and thirst and get caught up in coping strategies that bring harm to  ourselves and others that the oasis of grace is not a mirage. Remind us that we are  water people, baptized into this storied faith and that we are part of beloved community together. Help us to stand so that we may step up. And continue to rain manna down on  us until we no longer insatiably thirst for inadequate substitutes. Drench us in the  memory of our baptism that we may intimately know who we are and who we are called  to be. For these and all things we pray together in the name of the Triune God. Amen. 

May we go from this place remembering our great water miracles, staying in  touch with how we cope with our deep human needs, and commit the coordinates of the  oasis of grace to our memory. In the name of the Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer, go  in peace and go in power. Amen.

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