@EUCC Sermons

We’ve been mighty busy this Lenten season leading up to Holy Week—potlucks, Songs of Resistance last Sunday (shoutout to Pastor Ashley), and another No Kings rally yesterday (shoutout to District 20 Woman of the Year, Pat Payne). And to those of you who were there, you may hear a few echoes today.

Today is Palm Sunday—wave those palms! 

We know the story: smiling faces, palms laid down, a triumphant entry. But the version handed down to us has often been sanitized, often turned into a mere children’s pageant.

So let’s set the record straight. Palm Sunday was a protest. 

Biblical scholars John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg in their book The Last Week, posit that Jesus enters Jerusalem at the same time that empire enters too. On one side, the machinery of Rome: governors like Pontius Pilate riding in on war horses, backed by soldiers, enforcing control. A parade of empire. A parade meant to intimidate. A parade meant to remind people who is in charge. Meanwhile at another entrance of the walled city, the Mercy Gate, here comes Jesus on a donkey, with the people, cloaks on the ground, palm branches in their hands. Not a parade of domination, but a parade of protest.

There’s a question underneath everything we’re holding in Lent this year: Tell me something good. And if we’re honest, that’s not always an easy request. Because the world can feel heavy. Because the news is complicated. Because even the movements and leaders we trust can and do disappoint us. And yet, the Gospel insists: there is good news. Not shallow good news. Not denial. But deep, grounded, hard-won good news. And today, Jesus tells us exactly where to find it: rooted in justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

Dime algo bueno. No siempre resulta fácil: la vida es pesada; el mundo, complicado. Sin embargo, el Evangelio insiste en que existe una buena nueva, real y sólida: se halla en la justicia, la misericordia y la fidelidad.

In the Gospel according to John, Jesus is teaching in the Temple. And suddenly, the teaching is interrupted. A woman is dragged into the center. Not named. Not protected. Not dignified. She is “caught in adultery,” they say. And then the trap is set. The academics and religious leaders turn to Jesus: “The law of Moses commands us to stone such women. What do you say?” It’s a lose-lose situation. If Jesus upholds the letter of the law, he participates in violence. If he rejects it, he undermines the Torah.

But Jesus does something unexpected.

It had been a long day. Jesus and his disciples had crossed the sea to find a deserted place, longing for rest, for quiet, for a moment to breathe. But the crowd found them — thousands of people, hungry not just for bread, but for healing, for hope, for a word that could make sense of their suffering.

As the hours wore on and the sun began to dip low over the hills, the disciples grew anxious. They were practical people. They were counting heads. And what they counted told them one thing: this is impossible. “Send the crowds away,” they said, “so that they can go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.”

It was a reasonable suggestion. Logistically sound. Fiscally responsible. And completely without imagination.

But Jesus looked at his disciples and said five words that must have stopped their hearts cold: “You give them something to eat.”

Gulp. Not a miracle. Not a dismissal. A commission. A challenge. A call to do the impossible — together.

On a high mountain, something happens that does not make sense. Jesus’ face shines. His clothes blaze white. The air shimmers with glory.

And the disciples do what we often do when confronted with mystery: they become afraid. Transfiguration Sunday is not subtle. It is luminous. It is overwhelming. It is radiant with the insistence that what you see is not all there is. 

In Exodus 24, Moses climbs Mount Sinai. A cloud covers the mountain. The glory of the Holy burns like a devouring fire. Six days of waiting. Then a voice. The text tells us that the glory of God settled on the mountain like fire. Fire does not just illuminate. It transforms. It changes whatever it touches. The people at the foot of the mountain see smoke and flame. They see uncertainty. They see danger. But Moses sees possibility. He climbs anyway. And undergoes 40 days of transformation. Faith requires that kind of climb.

Good morning, Church, and happy Bad Bunny Day to all who celebrate. I’m guessing most of us know what anger feels like. There are the everyday sparks: a pestering sibling, someone cutting us off in traffic, our team losing on a bad call. Those are acute bursts—anger that flares up quickly and often fades just as fast.

But then there’s another kind of anger. The kind that doesn’t dissipate. The kind that settles in the body. The kind that builds.

I don’t have to guess too hard to know there’s some chronic anger out there right now. Things are stacking up. For some of us, it was a meme posted by the President last week. For others, it’s something far closer to home. Either way, the pressure is real.

And here’s the first thing we need to say clearly: anger is not bad.

Anger has gotten a bad reputation in the church. We’re often taught to suppress it, spiritualize it away, or pray it into silence. But Scripture tells a more honest story.

The world is both burning and blooming. That line may be one of the most honest theological statements I’ve read in a long time. That sentence names something we all know in our bones, and those who have eyes to see, see it.

Everywhere we turn, there is evidence of burning: systems fraying, violence recurring, truth distorted, hope exhausted. We carry grief in our bodies. We carry fear in our newsfeeds. We carry weariness in our souls.

And yet. . . children still laugh. Neighbors still show up. Love still refuses to disappear. The sun still rises. The world is burning—and the world is blooming.

Karen Salmansohn, a self-described “Middle-of-Life” Doula, and columnist for Psychology Today, is a pioneer in the Mortality Awareness Movement. She doesn’t want us to fixate on death; she wants us to fuel the now. A mortality-focused lens helps one focus on what matters.

She penned a poem, entitled “The world is both burning & blooming” that really resonated with me this past week, perhaps it will with you as well:

You get the bad news
and the sunrise in the same day.
You cry over the headlines, then you laugh at a baby
wearing a hat shaped like a bear.
This is the dual citizenship of being alive.
Rage and reverence,
Grief and grace.
You are allowed to feel both.
You are allowed to scream,
& still notice how good the soup is.
You don't have to choose.
Let it all in.

Fear doesn’t stop us. That is the confession we make as we arrive at Epiphany—not because fear has disappeared, but because we have learned how to walk through it.

El miedo no nos detiene. Eso es lo que proclamamos en la Epifanía, no porque el miedo haya desaparecido, sino porque hemos aprendido a seguir adelante a pesar de él. Jesús ha nacido, pero Herodes aún ostenta el poder; el imperio persiste, la violencia continúa y el dolor inunda la tierra. Herodes tiene miedo, y el miedo en manos del poder se vuelve letal. Miedo a perder el control, miedo a ser desafiado. Y así, hace lo que los imperios siempre hacen cuando tienen miedo: miente, manipula, exige lealtad, promete seguridad mientras siembra el terror y culpa a los más vulnerables.

As this series ends, Herod is still in power. Jesus has been born, but the world is still dangerous. The empire has not collapsed. Violence has not magically ceased. Mothers still weep. Power still clings to itself. And that is precisely why Matthew refuses to give us a sentimental Hallmark Christmas-card ending.

We want Epiphany to sparkle—to be about stars and gold, fruitcake, and a sweet baby held safely in his mother’s arms. But Matthew says: Look closer. Herod is watching. Lurking. Calculating. Not in some fictional “Upside Down,” like in Stranger Things, but right here in the real world. Herod is afraid. And fear, when it sits on a throne, becomes lethal.

Que la paz de Cristo sea con ustedes. May the peace of Christ be with you. On this night, we gather around a story we think we know by heart—a manger, a young family, a quiet stable, a smelly stable if you recall last year’s homily. But if we listen closely, Luke’s account of the Gospel is actually far less gentle. The story is not hushed. It is the sound of heaven interrupting earth. It is the sound of angels who refuse to whisper. It is the sound of joy that refuses to stay orderly and polite, interrupting the days of Herods and Caesars.

“Glory to God in the highest!” Exclaim it with me, like you mean it. “Glory to God in the highest!” That is not quite a lullaby, like La Nanita Nana. That is a shout that echoes across empires and millennia, paying homage not to a demagogue, or even a demi-god, but to the One who creates, liberates, and eventually upends every false claim to power. Amen?

En esta noche, el Evangelio no susurra. El cielo irrumpe en la tierra. Los ángeles rompen el silencio del imperio: «¡Gloria a Dios en las alturas!». No es una canción de cuna como la Nanita Nana; es una proclamación audaz que resuena a través del tiempo, desviando la alabanza de los gobernantes terrenales hacia el Dios que crea, libera y derriba toda falsa pretensión de poder.

Christmas, if we’re truthful to the story, is the birth of an asylum-seeking child into a world ruled by fear. It is a story set under the shadow of an imperial census, a tool of population and labor control designed to count and extract. This is good news arriving among people who know what it feels like to be counted, taxed, displaced, and unseen—noticed only when they are scapegoated and used for the prison industrial complex or for the deportation regime.