I was asked to give a sermon for the Advent week of Joy. This was my first sermon, and giving it on the theme of “joy” seemed both ironic and appropriate, since I fixate at Enneagram type 7 — the overly positive & enthusiastic type😆. I was very warry of giving a sermon that trended towards rhetoric that boils down to a trite “be happy,” and felt that it would be more helpful for me, personally (and probably collectively, given our toxically positive culture), to talk about suffering. So I ended up pulling a classic Christian “both-and” move, and talked about BOTH joy and suffering. I talked about my favorite saint, Therese, and how she considered it “pure joy” to suffer in small ways for her friends and to offer up “little sacrifices” of kindness and generosity to others. Joy points us to Love (as it comes from Love), and Love is willing to suffer for its beloved. Joy and suffering are perfectly united under Love within the person of Christ, epitomized at the cross — in Christ crucified.

The second time I was asked to speak was during my favorite time in the liturgical calendar — Lent💜. This was God’s way of giving me a sermon actually about suffering — where I could flesh out the value of lament — the need we have to express all that is bad in our lives and in the world. We were going through the 5 chapters of Lamentations for the 5 Sundays of Lent, so I got to read from Lamentations chapter 2. But this time, I didn’t want to talk for the full time — I wanted to be able to live out — practice and embody lament (something we so rarely do in the United States). So after a short discussion of lament, everyone in the congregation wrote down their own laments on cards, taped them up front so that the whole congregation could bear collective witness, and then lit a candle to release their lament(s) to God in hope.🕯️

My 3rd sermon came in a 3rd liturgical season with a 3rd color: First it was Advent on Gaudete Sunday🩷, then Lent💜, then Pentecost❤️! At first I was a little uncertain what I would discuss, but then, as I poured over the passage, finding the themes of ruach-wind, and fire, and languages, I realized I could walk through the Acts 2 passage and bring out connections with the Hebrew Bible and with out lives today. It was an opportunity to read the Bible in a fun, symbolic, and exploratory way, and introduce fresh readings of the Tower of Babel text that I’d discovered. The overall theme was the Spirit — the spirit of wind and of fire — of mystery, power, and glory — but most of all, as the Spirit of unity, which unites across language and nation — across Jew and Gentile — that infuses the Body of Christ and binds-together all those who love God, despite our differences and flaws. Christians are each living stones, bound together by the mortar of the Spirit, being built up into a holy house unto the Lord!

Upon reflection of these first three sermons of mine, I am struck by how symbolically they line-up with the Persons of the Trinity. The 3rd sermon was all about the third person of the Trinity (at Pentecost and in the church), the 2nd sermon reflected the human suffering was the sermon which included an embodied activity (incarnation), and the 1st sermon, while touching upon all three Persons, could be seen as having a theme (Joy) which, of the three, is most fitting the heavenly Good to which we all aspire.