Phillippa’s Place, where our religious education program lives, is about as far from this sanctuary as you can get and still be in the church. Two buildings over and a level and a half up. Many of you have never been up there–or haven’t for quite some time.

Last week I spoke about how in more or less normal times, when our months and weeks are filled with days that sometimes move from joy to joy to joy and that sometimes move from no good events to terrible, horrible events, to very bad events, in more or less normal times we can train ourselves to fine tune our attention to the joys.

If I have a day of petty and not so petty problems, set-backs, and annoyances, and a chance to tell them all to my friend Emily (who preached here at our installation service in October), Emily listens with great empathy. And then she says, “I’m sorry some days are like that. Even in Australia.”

Leap, and the net will appear. Or will it?

In just a moment I’m going to ask you to raise your hands indicating your agreement with one of three statements.

I grew up in a generation–one of several generations–that was taught to seek out a policeman (and they were almost exclusively men) if we were ever lost or separated from my parents. Oddly, I don’t remember my parents ever giving me that advice.

“You know more than you think you do.”

If I had a re-do that would be this morning’s sermon title. We will get to the sea will hold you a bit later.

In nearly 31 years of ministry I’ve participated in lots of stewardship campaigns, each with a different theme.

I remember the year the theme was peloton, and folks were encouraged to give generously enough so that those church members with fewer financial resources were able to draft along with them, while the whole church still moved forward.

“If I can’t dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.”

The Emma Goldman’s piece I read earlier this morning, is often paraphrased this way on t-shirts and social media memes. “If I can’t dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.”

A few years ago, in the height of the COVID pandemic, in the midst of the Black Lives Matter Uprising, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, I asked my mentor in ministry if we were living in the end times.

A friend recently posted a short video on social media, showing herself interacting with a cat that had recently joined her household. In it Bridget can be heard to exclaim, “that’s unauthorized behavior!”

Tomorrow, it hardly needs to be said, our nation celebrates the birthday of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man who would be 96 today, if he hadn’t been assassinated at the age of 39–in the prime of his life and at the height of his public ministry.

[this sermon was prefaced by stories submitted by members of the congregation]

When someone learns that I’m pastor of a church their follow up questions fall into a couple predictable patterns. The inquirer either asks demographic and geographic questions–where is that, how many members do you have, how long has the church been there/how long have you been there?

As I begin preaching I invite you to imagine meme after meme scrolling across 21st-century, high-tech, integrated video screens here in the sanctuary:

*Black text from Lutheran pastor, memoirist and public theologian Nadia Bolz-Weber on rainbow colored background: Yearly reminder: there is no resolution that, if kept, will make you more worthy of love. You, as your actual self not as some made up ideal, is already worthy.

In a poem, we sometimes read on Christmas Eve, Carl Sandburg asks

Shall we look up now at stars in Winter

And call them always sweeter friends

Because this story of a Mother and a Child

Never is told with the stars left out?

Today is the first of December. I haven’t even opened the first door on my Advent calendar of tea–one of many secular ways of counting down toward Christmas. And we’ve only just lit the first Advent candle on this the first Sunday of Advent–a more religious means of tracking the days until to Christmas. And I’m already grumpy.

Some of you are too young to remember an old sitcom called M*A*S*H. Aired from 1972 to 21983, it chronicled day to day life in a mobile army surgical hospital during the Korean War.

My friend Lisa’s dad died this week just past. “It was peaceful,” she said. “We’re relieved for him. And sad...”

I remember well that mingled relief and sadness when my own dad died many years ago. Dad had already been on my mind before I got Lisa’s text.

My colleague, friend, role model, Mike Mather signs his correspondence “keep tellin’ the story.” Since he always writes “the story” not “a story” I think he must have a particular story in mind, though I’ve never known him to specify one.