Sermons

Because we are a community with a strong focus on study, service and community, we deeply appreciate challenging weekly sermons on these topics. (We call them “Promptings.”)

Below is a sampling of sermons offered in recent weeks by our talented and devoted preachers, Kristabeth Atwood and Carl Hilton VanOsdall, and our own Commissioned Lay Pastor, Frank Sadowski, as well as others who join us as guest preachers.

June 4, 2023

Rev. Carl Hilton VanOsdall

“God In Relationships”

A few months ago, I was talking to a retiring clergy friend.
Diane said to me, “the longer I am in the church, the clearer it becomes that the meaning of it all…is the relationships. There are all the conversations about belief, about spirituality, about faith in practice,” she said, “but I keep coming, time and again, to relationships with people,
which, increasingly, is what it’s all about to me.”
My friend Diane didn’t talk, right then, about the God-In-Relationship-Trinity,
But the trinity, the basic building block of Christian theology,
…is all about relationship.
GOD in relationship…which is a model for
what my friend Diane has found to be so true…so essential…

May 28, 2023

Kristabeth Atwood, M.Div.

“Breath of Life”

May 21, 2023

Kristabeth Atwood, M.Div.

“We Are the Body”

It’s a little bit like science fiction, this thing we call ‘The Ascension.’ Don’t you think? Jesus lifted bodily into heaven, rising like a helium balloon into the sky, feet getting smaller and smaller the higher he goes. The Ascension brings up a lot of questions for us 21st century Christians. Separated by centuries and scientific facts, this story pushes the bounds of incredulity. We tend to get caught up in the logistics of it, the ‘how.’ How did it happen? We start to wonder at the technical aspects.

May 14, 2023

Rev. Carl Hilton VanOsdall

“The Presence of God”

I stepped out of the car on Friday night.
it was quiet, save for the chorus of frogs who were singing
from their studio of a nearby pond,
And I looked up, no moon in sight, into the sheer darkness,
interrupted only by tiny white piercings in the black sheet of a sky.
The Big Dipper, suspended there, its friend Cassiopeia,
and some white miracle too bright to be a star…a planet. I’m not sure which.
And all I could do was wonder…be drawn in.

May 7, 2023

Kristabeth Atwood, M.Div.

“Prayer”

Like Elinore, when I was a child, I learned the Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep prayer. Every night, at bed time, I would pray:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
Keep me safely through the night,
and wake me with the morning light.

(Thankfully, my parents didn’t teach me the more nightmare-inducing version that includes the line, If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.)