St George's Sermon Blog

  1 Sam 1:4-28; 2:11, 18-21; 2:1-10 This is the final week of our Season of Women, the church year is coming to a close and together this year we have been on quite a journey and we have heard so many powerful tales. Tales of women who are fierce in so many ways, women who are wise, women who lead armies, women who topple empires, women who proclaim the good news, women who lead through service, women, several women who challenge God (directly or through Jesus) so thoroughly that they change the mind of God.   And now today we come full circle and we end where we began, with a mom.   We started this journey with a Mom, with Mary, the mother of God, agreeing to smuggle God into the world in her very body, with a story about a woman enduring great danger and great pain in order to say yes to God. We began with a mom singing a love song to her son about toppling the mighty and bringing justice to the poor.   And we have gone on a long and winding journey through t...

  Ruth 2:1-8; 3:1-11; 4:13-17 We are nearing the end of our season of Women and today we resume our story from last week about Ruth and Naomi and we follow along in this story about vulnerability and risk and the power of loyalty and community in the face of unsurmountable odds.   And so today is a day when we talk about biblical widowhood because widows were among the most vulnerable people in ancient society.   And as such they are mentioned often in the bible, both in narrative stories and in the biblical commands of the Torah, prophets, and Jesus’s teaching.   Because it has always been true that the measure of a communities’ faithfulness, strength and cohesion always lies in how they treat the most vulnerable among them. And so today we encounter one of the longest sustained narratives about biblical widowhood in the book of Ruth.   And I really wish we could read the whole 4 chapter book here because every word of it is great.   But alas, it is ju...

Ruth 1:1-22; John 11:32-44 Today we celebrate All Saints Day or more properly the portion of the Holiday that is more closely historically connected to All Souls Day.  It is a day where we remember the saints who have gone before us.  More specifically the Saints of our lives, the faithful departed who we have loved and lost as they entered the church triumphant.  Those who have taught us and nurtured us and helped us grow in our faith no matter how long of short their lives may have been.  And it is a day when we can think about and talk about and publicly acknowledge our grief and the pain we continue to feel over the loss of loved ones.  And honestly this is a such a gift because this opportunity seems rare in our culture and even in our church. And today we receive some help, yet again from the example of the faithful women of the bible.   Today we listen and bear witness to the grief of these holy women.  And I have added the story of Naomi f...