September 20, 2015

“Struggle and Change”

The Rev. Maren Sonstegard-Spray

Genesis 32:22-30

²² The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. ²³ He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. ²⁴ Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. ²⁵ When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. ²⁶ Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” ²⁷ So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” ²⁸ Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” ²⁹ Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. ³⁰ So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”

I am not a great sleeper.  I have been this way my whole life.  It sometimes takes hours for me to fall asleep.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and it takes hours to fall back asleep.

The slightest sound or movement will rouse me.

And sleeping in a new or unfamiliar place, forget about it.

When I was a child, I liked to write poetry and I wrote a poem about how falling asleep was like an epic battle with the bedsheets.

Awake, in the dark, I can tell you that I am not alone.  In the dark I wrestle my small worries and big fears, in the dark I meet good memories and painful regrets, in the dark old wounds are opened up again, in the dark I make lists of should dos and should have dones.

Fortunately, awake, in the dark, there is also prayer and God.

And perhaps because of all of that I have always felt a kind of kinship with this story of Jacob wrestling God in the darkness.

[Read more…]

August 30, 2015

“What We Wish Jesus Hadn’t Said”

The Rev. Maren Sonstegard-Spray

Mark 14:3-9

³ While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head. ⁴ But some were there who said to one another in anger, “Why was the ointment wasted in this way? ⁵ For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor.” And they scolded her. ⁶ But Jesus said, “Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me. ⁷ For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me. ⁸ She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial.⁹ Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”

I’ve mentioned before that I am a member of The Young Clergy Women Project and we have a facebook forum where we share ideas and prayer requests, and one pastor was doing a sermon series entitled, “Things We Wish Jesus Hadn’t Said” and she asked for input from the group, and today’s passage was one of the suggestions.

Perhaps that title isn’t quite right and we should say instead that there are things we wish Jesus had spelled out more clearly, or said differently.  Because as it is, his words, “For you always have the poor with you” have been misused and misappropriated by preachers and politicians, among others, to say that we should do nothing to help those is need because that was what Jesus said.

So we come back to the text to see what Jesus really said and what that means for us today.

[Read more…]

August 9, 2015

“Flinging Our Cloaks Aside”

The Rev. Maren Sonstegard-Spray

Our Commissioning program here at the church, which involves our 7^th and 8^th grade students, focuses over the course of two years on what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ, and when we do our big retreat in 8^th grade we focus on the practices that shape us as followers of Jesus – prayer, forgiveness, enjoyment of God’s creation, and entering God’s story through the Bible – the more we get into God’s story, the more it gets into us.

[Read more…]

August 2, 2015

“Tis the Gift”

The Rev. Maren Sonstegard-Spray

1 Timothy 6:6-19

 ⁶ Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; ⁷ for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; ⁸ but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. ⁹ But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. ¹⁰ For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. ¹¹ But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. ¹² Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. ¹³ In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you ¹⁴ to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁵ which he will bring about at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. ¹⁶ It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. ¹⁷ As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. ¹⁸ They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, ¹⁹ thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

Sometimes the Bible makes us uncomfortable.  Well, it makes me uncomfortable.  Sometimes I wish the words said something different.

Sometimes the Bible is hard to understand, and from where I’m standing, sometimes it is hard to explain.

Sometimes it is offensive.  But I think that is ok.  It is when we are offended or challenged that we know what our most closely held beliefs are, and perhaps those beliefs are holy, but sometimes they are not.

[Read more…]

July 26, 2015

“Lead Us Not Into Temptation”

The Rev. Maren Sonstegard-Spray

The gift of the summer season is that it allows your pastors to explore some thornier passages of scripture which may lie outside our longer sermon series.   If you remember a couple weeks ago we looked at a tough section of the Lord’s Prayer, the part about asking God to forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors.  This part of the Lord’s Prayer was a struggle for many of you.  It raises the question, if God only forgives us if we forgive others, does that mean that God’s love and forgiveness which we had thought we had to do nothing to earn, is actually conditional, that it depends on what we do or don’t do?

And we discovered that that particular part of the prayer reminds us that our experience of God’s forgiveness and our forgiveness of other people are intimately connected – perhaps even that one is inseparable from the other.

I will share that the part of the Lord’s Prayer that we are looking at today is a struggle for me, and perhaps it is for you as well.

[Read more…]