Vicar at Mount Olive

An encounter with Jesus changes our lives and sends us out to serve others and tell everyone about him.

Vicar Erik C. Nelson
March 15, 2026
Texts: Jeremiah 2:4-13; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 8:46-51

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

If I had the ability to add one person to our church’s calendar, that would be Eric Norelius. And his day would be today, March 15th, the anniversary of his death.

If you aren’t familiar with Eric Norelius, he was known for being one of the founders of the Augustana Synod, which is one of the predecessor bodies of the ELCA. He was a Swedish pastor who came over to the U.S. and worked hard to help connect Scandinavian immigrants together into a network of congregations.

His work still continues to this day, through the congregations he helped start. He helped start First Lutheran in Saint Paul and Augustana in Minneapolis, both of which themselves planted several other churches, including Messiah, San Pablo, and Calvary in our neighborhood.

He also helped start Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, a school still committed to training students for leadership and service.

But one of the biggest pieces of his legacy was the children’s home he started in Vasa, Minnesota, that then grew into what we now know as Lutheran Social Services, one of the largest social service networks in the United States.

Eric Norelius’s life was marked by first knowing Jesus as a friend, as a brother, knowing the love of Jesus deeply. And then he turned to go share that love with others in a way that makes a difference in people’s lives.

In our readings today, we hear this story that we’ve heard many, many times, about the man born blind who experiences healing. In this story, we hear a similar pattern.

The man encounters Jesus, who sends him to the pool of Siloam, and after his healing, he goes out to tell people about Jesus and about the real, tangible difference that Jesus made in his life.

One thing that sticks out to me in this story is that Jesus had just left the temple grounds at the end of the previous chapter, the highest point in the city. And then he encounters this blind man and sends him to the Pool of Siloam, the lowest place in the city and back. I imagine it wouldn’t be an easy journey for anyone, especially someone who can’t see the way.

So I imagine that on that journey through the city and down the steep valley, the man probably had people helping him, maybe looking at him weird for the mud on his eyes, but letting him know which way to go. This healing, like many of Jesus’s healings, wasn’t just by one person for one person. It was with the help of many people, in order to bring this one person into the community in a new way.

He went to the pool, washed, and then came back able to see. But instead of celebrating with him, the people he encountered on his return challenged him and said that his healing was the work of demons. But I love his response.

Instead of engaging too much with the theological and philosophical debates, he simply shares his experience. “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” His life was changed by an encounter with Jesus, and he just wants to share it with others.

And I love the line that, after managing their theologizing and debating, he sees they’re obsessed with Jesus, and he just asks if they want to follow him too.

I see this as an example of a person living with a soft heart and open hands. Someone who refuses to harden his heart, someone who does not engage in the cynicism of the world, and instead knows the love of God, and that love of God flows out through him.

He’s someone who would just be discarded, according to the ways of the world. But in the reign of Christ, the people on the outside become the insiders.

We see this again in our Old Testament reading, with this very well-known line, “For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

Of all these brothers who could have been chosen to be the king, God chose the youngest brother, David, who was out with the sheep. He probably was stinky. He was small and young. There was nothing about him that would say that he would be a great king for the nation.

But instead, he was, as we know, from his writing in the psalms and other places, he was sensitive. Psalm 51, which we’ll sing later, “Create in me a clean heart, O God,” is attributed to David. He had a soft heart. And this is the way that God works in the world, among God’s people. With soft hearts and open hands.

God calls us to be sensitive with one another and caring. And God wants us to serve together for the good of others.

This is something we see in the life of Eric Norelius and his legacy. He and his fellow immigrants were kept at a distance and not trusted. These Swedes with their strange language and unfamiliar liturgies were the outsiders in this land.

And yet they built these congregations and institutions for the good of their neighbors, for their city, for the state and the whole country. LSS isn’t only for Swedes. It’s for everyone. And think about how many millions of dollars of grocery and rental assistance have flowed through San Pablo, Augustana, Calvary, and Messiah in the last several months. Think about how many immigrants and marginalized Americans that LSS has helped in the last 150 years.

Today’s reading is a reminder that God does care about our lives. God cares about the ways we physically encounter the world and one another. And God’s hand of healing is always extended to us.

Thanks be to God.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Worthless Things

Vicar Erik C. Nelson
Texts: Jeremiah 2:4-13; John 8:46-51

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last week I encouraged this congregation to refuse to harden your hearts. I talked about the importance of living with a soft heart and open hands. I talked about all the forces in the world that conspire to harden our hearts, cutting us off from the love God pours out upon us and from being able to share that love with others.

I talked about how having a soft heart makes you vulnerable. Cynicism and apathy can be a powerful armor, and if you want to stay safe, maybe that’s the way to go. But refusing to harden your heart means that in spite of the risk of loss and pain, your earnestness matters.

An essential part of having a full life with a soft heart is a commitment to honesty and integrity.

So I have to be honest with you today, in this pulpit, about how I’ve wrestled with today’s readings. In our gospel reading, Jesus has one of his most intense clashes with the Pharisees, which ends with them picking up rocks to stone him. In our first reading, we have Jeremiah speaking for God, calling the nation to repentance in a truly brutal way. I can’t stop thinking about the line that says that the nation “went after worthless things and became worthless themselves.”

I can’t shake this line, as it shakes the foundations of my vision of God. I know God to be merciful and compassionate, looking at us with total delight, seeing us as having infinite value, such great worth that God himself took on human flesh and lived among us.

So I hear this, and the prophetic hyperbole stops me in my tracks. These incisive words from Jeremiah are meant to catch us off guard, to get us thinking about our own lives. What are we doing with our lives? What worthless things are we pursuing? What are we putting before God in our life?

How are we undermining our own worth in that pursuit?

I can’t stop thinking about the fact that for the last eleven days, our own country has been pulled into yet another illegal war for oil. This war shows us again, the gods of this nation. The idols that we lift up that threaten our relationships with God and with one another.

These idols are money and oil and weapons. And these idols are different from the idols Jeremiah is speaking against. But what our idols have in common is that they all demand blood. Especially the blood of children.

A challenge to our soft hearts is the fact that in the opening volley of this war, 175 students and staff at a girls’ school were killed by American weapons. Since then, seven American soldiers have been killed, leaving families without their mom, their brother, their dad, their uncle. 1200 Iranians so far have been killed.

And in the continued attacks, the destruction of refineries has resulted in hellish conditions in the cities of Iran, with the gutters full of burning fuel and the air full of smoke and ash. Children’s lungs are full of these toxic fumes and they will have to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives.

What’s happening there is catastrophic now and will be for decades. So when I hear today’s scripture lesson, these extreme words from God’s prophet, it strikes at my heart.

It hits me where I’m most burdened. Our country is pursuing worthless things. I hope we’re not becoming worthless in the process.

It would be easy to preach a lighter sermon, one that only briefly touches on these things, but these are heavy texts, and they call for a serious wrestling.

And we live in the context of our faith being contorted to justify this war.

From the beginning of the war, religious liberty watchdogs have received hundreds of reports from our soldiers of commanders and leaders telling them that this is a holy war. Leaders of our military and defense structure have been using their interpretation of scripture to say that by bombing a girls’ school, they are bringing about the return of Jesus.

But the Bible is very clear about idolatry. The Bible consistently rails against any attempt or effort to put something else in God’s place in our lives.

And this condemnation of idolatry comes up in our gospel reading today. This dispute between Jesus and the Jewish leaders ends with Jesus making a claim to be God, and so the leaders pick up rocks to stone him.

Even if these leaders were wrong, not recognizing Jesus as the Son of God, their intentions were right, resisting what they saw as idolatry and the wrongful use of God’s name.

Violence was the wrong response to that, but we must respond in some way. We don’t have the right to remain silent when we see or hear our scriptures and beliefs being twisted to justify violence and Christian nationalism. We must resist it.

These holy days, when Lent and Ramadan coincide, we have an opportunity to slow down and see our neighbors as truly our siblings. We have an opportunity to live in solidarity.

We saw in our city’s resistance to federal occupation that when God’s people come together to resist tyranny, even the darkest of days can be overcome.

In the gospel reading today, Jesus promises that whoever keeps his word will never see death. Whoever listens to him will see eternal life.

We have an opportunity to listen to him when he says, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.”

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

“If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

When we live with soft hearts and open hands, these things that Jesus says, they start to make sense. The violence and idolatry of the world is laid bare. We see the emptiness of the messages we receive that make us see one another as enemies to be conquered or a means to an end.

When we live with soft hearts and open hands, we become conduits for God’s love, the living water that Jesus pours out for us.

This living water that Jesus gives us is not a tame, quiet puddle. But it is active and rushing and moves us into action, for the sake of the world.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Soft Hearts, Open Hands

Vicar Erik C. Nelson
Texts: Hebrews 3:12-14; John 3:17-21

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

One of the phrases I live by, that I often repeat to myself, is “refuse to harden your heart.” I have it printed out on a card, hanging on my bulletin board at home. I have it in my Facebook bio. I don’t remember exactly when I picked it up but it has served me through the last decade.

My whole adult life, since I graduated high school in 2015, has been full of violence and cruelty and pandemic and insurrection and federal occupation and all sorts of things that could easily sweep us into despair and cynicism.

These things, among others, are some of the things our readings today might call the “deceitfulness of sin.”

If sin is whatever separates us from God, our neighbors, and ourselves, and the love of God, love of our neighbors, and love of ourselves, all these events of the last decade seem designed to harden our hearts and wrap us up in sin.

When we see violence and cruelty, we can be tempted to respond with our own violence and cruelty. Or we can turn inward, trying to protect ourselves but ultimately cutting ourselves off from one another.

When we stumbled into the pandemic, we saw a rise of a radical form of individualism, that didn’t care if people lived or died, but only cared that our individual rights and freedoms were protected, at any cost.

When the imperial boot has come down and military forces have been deployed into our streets, we can find it hard to see the humanity and dignity of the person on the other end of the rifle.

And yet, when we refuse to harden our hearts, we remain open to God’s way.

We forgive those who do violence against us. We pray for our persecutors. We open ourselves up to each other in self-giving love. We can see the humanity of even an ICE agent and invite them to open up their heart to love.

The deceitfulness of sin hardens us and turns us away from God and one another. It makes us cynical and jaded. It makes us ashamed and makes us want to hide.

Refusing to harden our hearts keeps us away from the cynicism of the world and keeps us in God’s light.

The Message Translation of our John reading conveys the urgency of this problem when it says, “This is the crisis we’re in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God. Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won’t come near it, fearing a painful exposure”

The thing about refusing to harden your heart is that it makes you vulnerable. When others see the God-light shining on you and through you, people will call you naive and or too earnest, or say you’re unrealistic. If you’re young, you’ll hear people say you just need some more real-world experiences, that’ll rough you up.

I hope that I stay soft, even as life experiences rough me up. I hope that I continue to love the God-light, seeking it out, staying away from denial and illusion.

I think the real acts of denial and illusion are whenever we accept what God says is unacceptable. Whenever we say that violence is justifiable. Whenever we say that a life is expendable, or a person is illegal, or an enemy can be discarded, we run from the God-light, and buy into that practice of doing evil, becoming addicted to denial and illusion.

When we get wrapped up in those lies about others, about ourselves, when we forget that every person is a precious child of God, made in God’s own image, we start to get lost in that darkness.

It’s been said that the most dangerous person is the one who thinks that they are beyond saving, that they are utterly hopeless and helpless. If someone thinks there’s no going back after what they’ve done, they can then justify to themselves doing even worse things.

But the message of the Gospel reminds us that it’s never too late. Jesus didn’t come to the world to condemn the world, but to save the world.

The way to live in the world without hardening your heart is to have confidence in this truth.

The good that we do and the bad that we do can’t undo Jesus’s saving work in the world.

When we know that before and beyond anything we do or don’t do, we are loved, we are forgiven, and we are claimed by Christ forever, then we can live with soft hearts and open hands.

This is the kind of new life that Jesus invited Nicodemus into when he told him he must be born again. Again and again, Jesus tells anyone who listens that they must become like children if they are to inherit the Kingdom of God.

And this isn’t about becoming an actual child, but it’s about keeping a soft heart and an active spirit, trusting God’s promises to us. Trusting in God’s presence among us. Trusting that God’s truth, God’s compassion, God’s mercy, will always triumph over judgment, cruelty, and violence.

Refusing to harden your heart is a radical act that resists empires, pushes back the devil and the forces of hell, and helps each of us to live more fully into the people who God has made us to be.

God help us.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Saint Elisabeth Fedde

Week 1: Sharing our Suffering, Easing Anxiety

Vicar Erik C. Nelson
Texts: Hebrews 5:5-10; Matthew 6:25-27

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today our church commemorates Sister Elisabeth Fedde, a Norwegian immigrant known for her life of caring for the poor and outcast, especially through her efforts to build hospitals.

When Elisabeth Fedde was 13, her mother died, leaving her an orphan, and she entered the workforce as a maid. She worked for a shoemaker in Stavanger, Norway. She was impressed by her employers’ deep faith and life of service, and prayed that she also could live a life of faith and service.

Some years later, a visiting seamstress encouraged her to become a deaconess, and Elisabeth recognized her call from God, and joined Oslo’s Deaconess Motherhouse when she was 23.

This was the beginning of a lifelong effort to work for the good of others. The wife of the Norwegian consul in New York City put out a call, hoping someone would come help the poor Norwegian immigrants in New York. Sister Elisabeth responded, and with the support of some local pastors in New York, she set up a Deaconess hospital in Brooklyn.

Later, she came to Minneapolis and set up a Deaconess hospital here as well.

Sister Elisabeth was someone who lived fully into her baptismal identity. She lived a life of care and service, motivated by her faith in Jesus and relationship with God.

In spite of many challenges, she knew who she was called to be. She knew that her call came from God. God called her beloved, and God called her to service, and no one could challenge that.

Some Christians take the words of today’s readings, “don’t worry about your clothing; God will provide. Don’t worry about your food; God will provide,” and they use it as an excuse or a proof-text to talk their way out of doing good works.

Sister Elisabeth would have heard these words, and I think she would have known her place in them. She would know that yes, God provides, so we don’t need to be anxious about tomorrow. But she would know that very often, God provides through us. We are the only hands and feet God has in the world.

I think about our neighbors who have been hidden in their homes for the last few months, too afraid to venture out for food and other necessities. I can only imagine how much anxiety and worry they’re living with.

And so I have so much gratitude and love for the people in this congregation who have become the hands and feet of God for these neighbors. Every time you load up a truck of groceries, bring it here, pack it into boxes, and send it out to be delivered, you are the fulfillment of Jesus’s words.

You are the ones who God in heaven is sending out to feed and care.

This is how the people of God are called to live in the world. Remembering how the waters of baptism still cover us. These waters quench our thirst and soothe our pain and send us out for service.

When Jesus was baptized, he didn’t just stay there in the river. He brought that water with him into the wilderness.

And so that’s what we do. Everywhere we go, we bring that water of life with us.

But as our calendar brings us into Lent, I can’t help but feel like we’ve already been wandering in the wilderness. Since December, our lives have been full of these disciplines of Lent.

Maybe we’ve already been fasting, whether we realize it or not, as we rearrange our schedules, stepping away from some things we love, to make time for mutual aid and neighborhood patrols and supporting our neighbors. My own prayer life has been more active in the last couple months than it has been in years. And the money this congregation has raised for neighbor support is breathtaking.

This church knows about fasting, prayer, and almsgiving.

You don’t need me to tell you how to do the Lenten disciplines. So I will invite you, this year, to live into the reality that God has called you Beloved. Live into the truth that you are not defined by what you do or don’t do. I want to invite you to this Lent to live into your baptism in ways that maybe don’t feel like Lent.

I have great admiration for Sister Elisabeth, obviously. The hospitals she started live on today in the Fairview Medical System here and the NYU Medical System in New York. She also helped set up hospitals in Chicago and Grand Forks. She distributed food and clothing and cash to destitute Norwegian immigrants. Her work saved and improved countless lives.

But when you read her diaries and her autobiography, her utter exhaustion comes through clearly. Her life came with a heavy burden. After 13 years in America, her health gave out and she had to return to Norway.

If you feel today, at the end of your rope, if you feel like you’ve been burning the candle at both ends. Maybe Lent is an opportunity for you to slow down. Take a breath. Take a weekend away just by yourself, for yourself. Trust that others will hold the line for you.

Trust that God in heaven loves you deeply and dearly, more than anything else in the universe. God loves and cares for you. God doesn’t expect you to crawl over broken glass or wear yourself out. God invites us to abundant, eternal life.

This Lent, as we rest in the knowledge that we are God’s beloved, maybe there are some things it would be okay for you to let go of, to trust to God’s care.

Maybe if Sister Elisabeth had a community like Mount Olive around her, a community that really knows how to love and care, she would have lasted longer.

Maybe this is the year we do what we can, in a way that’s sustainable, in a way that doesn’t wear us out, and trust that God can handle the rest.

Thanks be to God.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

The wonder and glory of the Transfiguration wasn’t meant to just stay on the mountain. Our own mountaintop encounters with God restore our spirits and carry us through the valleys.

Vicar Erik C. Nelson
February 15, 2026
Texts: Exodus 24:12-18; Psalm 2; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

The first time I ever preached in public was for Transfiguration Sunday in 2018. I was a youth worker at a church in Jamestown, North Dakota, and I think my pastor wanted Super Bowl Sunday off.

My sermon was 37 minutes and kind of wandered all over. There are things in that sermon that I probably wouldn’t preach today, but there’s one thing I stand by: this mountaintop story is not about the mountaintop.

It is about a moment of encounter with the divine, how we respond to it, and what God invites us to in the time after.

I can only imagine what the disciples were thinking in the moment of the Transfiguration, when earth melts away and the curtain between heaven and earth is ripped open.

In this unbelievable moment, Peter, James, and John fall to the ground in fear. I wonder if they were thinking about the God described in today’s Psalm, the one that demands you submit with fear and bow with trembling. I wonder if Peter was regretting his attempt to fill the silence.

I wonder if they were thinking about the impossible things Jesus had already told them… “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also;” “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” “Take up your cross and follow me.”

Even so, the voice from heaven tells them, and us, to listen to Jesus. And like the disciples, we can be scared when we hear that, when we consider how high the stakes really are. When we follow Jesus, we follow him to a cross.

But we’re not alone in it.

After this voice proclaims, “listen to him!” Jesus could have followed that up with his own commands. A normal ruler would have told them to do something or serve him in some way.

But instead, he doesn’t speak. He comes over to them, touches them with love and care, bringing them back into their bodies, into the moment. And then he says to them, “Get up and do not be afraid.”

This is Jesus’ word for us today as well. Get up and do not be afraid. When he tells us not to be afraid, this isn’t just spiritual bypassing. These aren’t empty words telling you to get over what you’re feeling and move on.

This is Jesus reminding them and us that he is with them, so they really do have nothing to fear. This God of glory and majesty from our Psalm is with them, but doesn’t demand trembling submission. He comes to them in compassion and tenderness.

He is with them on the mountain. He comes to humanity in these celestial moments where heaven and earth come in direct contact. He is with us in our sacramental life.

He is also with the disciples as they go down the mountain. He remains with humanity in the everyday, not just in those moments of spiritual peak. He is with us as we leave this place, going out to serve our neighbors.

We need moments on the peak. We need experiences where God comes close to us in power and majesty.

And we also need moments down in the valleys. If we spent all day every day here, in this room, always in prayer and worship, who would pack boxes of groceries to deliver to our neighbors? Who would patrol the streets? Who would take the kids to school? Who would shovel the sidewalk? God is with us in our holy everyday moments.

Because we have these mountaintop experiences, we are able to go out and do all the other works God has prepared for us. When we hear Jesus say to us, “get up and do not be afraid,” when we have this reminder that he is here with us always, the other words he says maybe don’t seem so hard.

Because we know Jesus is with us, we are able to love our enemies. We’re able to pray for those who hate us. We hear him say, “blessed are the poor,” and we rise up to bless the poor. We hear him say, “blessed are those who mourn,” and we rise up to mourn with them.

The things that Jesus says, the life that he calls us into, those things are hard and costly and contrary to the way of the world, but we have these promises that we don’t do it alone.

These promises feel especially close this week, in the life of this congregation. Today, as we welcome new members to join us in this mission. Later this week, as we lay our sisters Marilyn and Rhoda to rest.

The God whose glory covered the mountain is the one who now holds Marilyn and Rhoda in love. The God who accompanied Peter, James, and John down the mountain is the one who guides us in our mission now.

God is heard in this booming voice from heaven. And God is seen in the compassionate person of Christ. This title Jesus uses for himself, the Son of Humanity, the Son of Man, is a reminder that he is truly one of us.

He’s not just far away, demanding perfect answers and constant fear and trembling. He comes close and reaches out to us in love.

At the end of my sermon eight years ago, I said, “And there’s no better, no dearer friend we can have than Jesus. He knows all things, he sees every trial, and He’s there to support us through it all. He’s with us when we feel like we’re on top of the world, and he’s with us when we feel like we’re in the lowest valleys.”

I stand by that. There is no dearer friend we can have than Jesus. Rhoda and Marilyn knew that in their lives on earth, and they experience the fullness of it now. And when we come to the table in a few minutes, we too will have a glimpse of that eternal feast.

Just like on that mountain, the glory of God will come to us in bread and wine, the body and blood of our Lord. Together with Peter, we can say, “Lord, it is good for us to be here.”

And then, when we leave, God will go with us.

Thanks be to God.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

The Holy Spirit descends and remains upon Christ at his baptism. In our sacramental lives and the life of our city, this pattern continues to this day. God is continually coming down to stay.

Vicar Erik C. Nelson
January 18, 2026
Texts: Isaiah 49:1-7; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

I’ve probably talked about it too much, but in case you haven’t heard, I went to Sweden last summer. And it will surprise no one to hear that I demanded we go into every church we found. One of my favorites was a small village church on the west coast, a church built by my ancestors and their neighbors in the mid-1800s.

In that church, above the pulpit was something familiar but also unfamiliar. They had a bird hanging there, a symbol of the Holy Spirit descending on the preacher. But instead of being all white, like we might expect, it was painted gray and black, with green and purple around the neck.

I asked the steward why they had a pigeon hanging above the pulpit instead of a dove, and she explained that in Swedish, like many other languages, they only have one word for pigeons and doves, because they’re actually the same animal.

When my ancestors heard today’s gospel reading in their heart language, they heard the Holy Spirit descending in the form of a pigeon, the beautiful, clumsy, iridescent gray and black, green and purple birds that lived among them.

As I thought about that, I fell in love with the idea of the Holy Spirit as a pigeon, not a dove.

When we think of a dove, we think of something we see at weddings and graduations, flying away from us. A dove is a pure, white thing, that flies high up in the air, above us all.

When we think of pigeons, it’s very different. Pigeons have lived among us for thousands of years, so this is where they want to be — down here, on the ground, with us. They live with us in the muck and mess of the world.

In our Gospel reading, the main thing the Holy Spirit does is come down and stay. The Holy Spirit doesn’t float above us, staying far off. The Holy Spirit comes down and joins Jesus in the muddy, mucky water of the Jordan River.

That’s what the Holy Spirit always does. That’s what God does. The central message of Christianity is that God comes down to us and stays.

But on days like today, in weeks like the last few, it can be hard to know where God is among us. It’s difficult to see the Holy Spirit descending and remaining.

In some ways, I do see the Holy Spirit in our city. In the midst of our collective heartbreak, I see the Holy Spirit as the community comes together to march for justice and liberation. I hear the Holy Spirit in whistles and horns that warn neighbors to seek shelter. I see the Holy Spirit descending and remaining as volunteers bring groceries to people in hiding. 

But if I’m honest, I want more than that. I want to see God come down in bigger ways. I want to see giant hands coming down from heaven to save us. I wish we didn’t have to march for justice. I wish our neighbors didn’t have to hide. I want God to act quickly and boldly to save us.

I want to believe what Paul says in 1 Corinthians, that we are not lacking in any gift as we wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. I want to believe that God will strengthen us to the end.

Even as we wait for God, I do believe that God is faithful.

I see God’s faithfulness in the community coming together in acts of love and service. I see God’s faithfulness in the care this congregation has for each other and their neighbors. I see God’s faithfulness in God’s presence in this place.

A couple weeks ago, on the day our neighbor Renee was shot, I came here to pray in the church. I was moved to tears, thinking about our belief that Christ becomes truly present in this room, every time we gather for worship. Right there. (pointing at the spot where the presider stands to distribute the Body.)

Not in a metaphorical or symbolic way. But we believe that he is really present here. He’s here, in this neighborhood that has experienced far more than its fair share of pain.

Seven blocks from where George Floyd was killed by his government. Six blocks from where Renee Good was killed by her government. In this room, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, killed by his government, comes to us. Right here.

Into the most difficult of places, God is always coming to us to stay.

The baptism in the Jordan is the messy beginning of Jesus’s ministry. A ministry that we know can only lead one place: the cross. The ways of this world that demand purity and uniformity, submission and compliance, will always clash with God’s way.

Isaiah reminds us that God loves outsiders. God loves the one “deeply despised, abhorred by the nations.” The one regarded as a “slave of rulers” is the one God uses to cast down the monarchs and chieftains.

God shows us strength through vulnerability, salvation through sacrifice. Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, takes away the sin of the world, not through conquest with angel armies or heavenly occupation, but in his love poured out for us in his innocent suffering and death.

God in Christ has already reached his arm down from heaven to save us, stretching them out on the cross. Showing us an embrace wide enough to take in the whole world.

On the cross, Christ took all our pain, all our suffering, all our heavy burdens upon himself.

And in his dying, he overcame death. He passed through the pain and the grief and the weight of this world, and overturned it all. So now we have the promise that wherever we encounter death, God has new life waiting. Resurrection is coming.

As Jesus says to the disciples, “come and see.” I say come and see new life in the middle of a land under imperial occupation. In a city that knows too much tragedy, in the heartland of a rotting empire, eternal life springs forth.

New life springs forth in our sacramental life, as God comes down to us and stays with us. New life springs forth in the life of this city, as neighbors come together and sacrifice for each other, giving up their time, money, privilege, safety.

As followers of Jesus, there is no promise that our days will be easy. We have no guarantee of safety. But the promise we have is the promise that we are God’s beloved. The Holy Spirit has come down to us and remains with us now.

The Holy Spirit keeps coming down to us. Again and again and again.

And so, we live, filled with the Spirit. The Spirit whose iridescent beauty finds us in the muck and mud and mess and leads forever into new life.

Thanks be to God.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen