First, I have a few questions: if someone says they love you and then takes your favorite shirt without asking, are they behaving in a loving way? If someone says they love you and then pinches your arm really hard, are they behaving in a loving way? If someone says they love you, and then puts peanuts in your food, even though you are allergic, are they behaving in a loving way? If someone says they love you, and then makes it illegal to talk about your family at your job, are they behaving in a loving way?

     We’re not sure who wrote the letter that became known as 1 John. Scholar Pheme Perkins, in his introduction to this book, that a tradition developed that credited John the Evangelist as the author of the letter, though most scholars believe that it was actually written by a follower of the Evangelist’s teaching, rather than John himself. This author is writing to both offer instruction to other Christians but also to remind them of the core of the faith they to know through the Gospel of John: That Jesus offers creation a particular connection to God’s love and that the people who follow Jesus should live lives shaped by that love.

     In preparing this sermon, I read part of a book called All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks. When hooks died in December, the world lost one of the most important theorists and practitioners of love in action in the last 40 years. In All About Love, hooks talks about how people both yearn for and struggle with love. In this book, written 20 years ago while also feeling like it could be written for this very moment, hooks wonders if we, as a society, might better be able to learn how to love if we actually all agreed about what love means. She suggests, first, that it is best to understand love not as a noun, a person, place, or thing that just is, but instead, to use love as a verb, that is, an action... something we do.

     With this idea of love as an action in mind, she suggests a definition of love written by a psychiatrist named M. Scott Peck. Peck says that love is “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” According to hooks, Peck goes on to explain: “Love is as love does. Love is an act of will- namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” hooks herself goes to describe the various elements that are a part of love: care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust. She also says that honest and open communication is part of the act of love.

     You know those questions that I asked at the beginning of the sermon? I wanted to ask them because hooks argues that you can’t say you love someone and then turn around and harm them. Just because the word love is on your lips that doesn’t mean that you are being loving with your actions. If love is something you choose to do, your actions must reflect care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust. That doesn’t mean that we don’t sometimes hurt people we love. Because we all will hurt someone we love. But, if we are choosing to love them, we can choose to apologize and make amends because our love makes us accountable to them. On the other hand, if we keep saying we love someone and keep hurting them, then we aren’t really loving them.

     The Gospel of John tells us that Jesus said this to his disciples: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” The first letter of John carries this commandment forward, beyond the first disciples, through to the Christian community that followed about 70 years later. As it turns out, followers of Christ have disagreed for about 2000 years on how to do that best. Competing teachers shared different ideas about who Jesus was then and now. Disagreements about what to believe about Jesus and how to follow him threatened to split the community to whom this letter was addressed. When considering any theology or practice of the faith, the author of the letter holds up The New Commandment as the standard: You should have love for one another. You should make the choice to behave in loving ways to one another.

     “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” If you heard that alone, you might be tempted to understand love as simply a thing, a noun, a gift given. But, I don’t think the author of 1 John, or Jesus for that matter, intended it that way. Love is an action extended through Christ to creation. And, it is a behavior in which we may choose to participate. “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” God sent Jesus as an act of Love. Jesus offered healing and forgiveness as acts of love. If God acts in love this way towards us, we ought to also act towards each other lovingly. Or, as Dr. hooks might say, with care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment honesty, and trust. And, Dr. Gafney argues, our acts of love are part of God’s acts of love. In the version we heard this morning, it says that God’s love is perfected in us. Dr. Gafney argues that this word “perfected” is intended to convey wholeness or completion, not simply to say the love is made very good. God’s acts of love are made complete in our acts of love.

     This week, I hope that you can spend some time with these ideas about love. Consider how you can act in love. Remember times that you have felt loved. Rev. Jayne Davis, whose work on spiritual practices we’ve been reading through this Lent, speaks of gratitude as a spiritual practice. Maybe each day this week, try to think of three ways you’ve been loved or offered love and say a prayer of thanksgiving for them. May you revel in these memories of love this week. And, may the inspire your loving actions in the days to come.
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Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
Wil Gafney, "Lent IV," A Women's Lectionary for the Whole Church, Year W (New York: Church Publishing Incorporated, 2022)
bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 2000)
Pheme Perkins' introduction to The First Letter of John in The New Oxford Annotated Bible: The New Revised Standard Version with Apocryphya, ed. Michael Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)
Jayne Davis: https://www.churchleadership.com/leading-ideas/7-spiritual-practices-for-the-new-year
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Has anyone here read the book The Runaway Bunny lately? Just in case you haven’t, I’m going to read it to everyone to refresh your memory (website readers... do you have this book? I bet the library does).

     Oh, this little bunny... I often wonder what frustrated him so that running away seemed like the thing to do. Have you ever been tempted to run away? Why do you think the bunny might have wanted to run away? You can type your answer in the chat or raise your hand and tell us if you are in person.

     And, did you notice the mom’s response: “If you run away, I will come find you. Because I love you.” If you are a rock, I will climb the mountain to be with you. If you are a bird, I will become the tree that is your home. I will walk across the air to meet you on the trapeze. So much transformation happening in order to care for the little one. Why do you think the little bunny told his mom he was going to run away? How do you think the little bunny felt hearing that his mom would always find a way to be with him?

     I don’t think the Apostle Paul knew anything about The Runaway Bunny when he wrote his letter to the church in Rome. Which is too bad, because I think he might have felt some resonance between his notion that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord and this bunny mom who will go to great lengths to find her son if he were to run away.  Of course, we have a little more background about the letter to the Romans than we do to the bunny’s motivations. Paul wrote this letter to both offer instruction to the church and also garner support for his mission to Spain.

     The scholar Neil Elliott in an introduction to Romans that there was a lot going on behind the scenes in that church: Jewish people, including people who considered themselves followers of Jesus and also Jewish, had just been allowed to return to the city after being kicked out by the previous Emperor. Elliott argued that they had likely lost property and connections to the broader community when they were exiled. It is hard to rebuild those ties and regain that financial footing. Elliott even suggests that there could have been tensions among Gentile Christians, who were never forced to leave, and Jewish Christians, who were trying to rebuild their lives in the city. So much of the government had grown to mistrust Jewish people and had targeted them for violence.

     We can’t forget that Rome was inclined to use violence to concentrate its power. Paul seemed worried that the prejudices of the imperial government would filter into the churches.  Paul wanted to help members of this church resist the imperial impulse to violence and encourage the more privileged among them to care for the ones who were more at risk. But, he also knew that caring for ones that the government hates can put you at risk, too. Today’s reading is about affirming that Christ is present with those who feel like their lives are precarious. Or, in the language of the bunny book, Christ is the wind that moves their sails, the gardener that tends their bulbs, and the tree that will be their home.

     I wonder if the little bunny in the book needs some reassurance, which is why he tells his mom that he wants to runaway. He needs to hear that she will always want him and love him. While the people in the church in Rome are not talking about running away, they do have a real question: In the midst of hard things, can we know that Christ is with us? In the midst of violence and exile, illness and poverty, war and struggle, is this Christ’s spirit really here? The scholar Israel Kamudzando calls these the “questions of the human soul” in “desperate moments.” Has your soul had similar questions in desperate moments?

     Paul’s response to these questions? “If God is for us, who is against us... it is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.” In all the ways that we and the world can be harmed, Paul assures the church, as Dr. Wil Gafney says in one of her commentaries on this text, “in all these things God is with us and for us.” This doesn’t mean, as Elliott argues in his commentary, that all of this suffering is good for us. Instead, he argues, that Paul is saying “amid all these things God’s purpose prevails.” This kind of hopeful potential, even in the midst of pain, is certainly good news, isn’t it?

     Rev. Jayne Davis, in her work on spiritual practices, invites us to ask good questions, approaching our faith with curiosity. When you are feeling discouraged, I invite you to pull out Paul’s questions from this text, questions that Dr. Kamudzando suggests can be used as a template for prayer, and pray them. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? And, pray through Paul’s response, too: Neither death, no life, nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creations will be able to separate us from the love of God is Christ Jesus our Lord. And, then maybe eat a carrot with your mom, firm in the knowledge that you do not have to be lost to be loved. And, if you feel lost, you will still be loved.
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Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
Wil Gafney, "Lent 3," in A Women's Lectionary for the Whole Church, Year W (New York: Church Publishing Incorporated, 2022)
Jayne Davis: https://www.churchleadership.com/leading-ideas/7-spiritual-practices-for-the-new-year/
The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown, pictures by Clement Hurd (Harper and Row Publishers Inc, 1942)
Neil Elliott, "Romans," The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994).
Israel Kamudzando: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-17/commentary-on-romans-826-39-4
Art image credits for two images: https://pixabay.com/photos/gaztelugatxe-bizkaia-vizcaya-4377342/ and Photo by Barbara Zandoval on Unsplash. ​

     This week I read something that bummed me out. And, so, what do I do, as a pastor with a keen sense of compassion and care... I tell you, my congregation, all about it. Because that is exactly what you need right now: bad news. Because we have had such good news lately that we definitely need to even it out a little. Alright, here it comes: The Episcopal Church commissioned a study they are calling “Jesus in America.” I read about it in an article by Emily McFarlane Miller and Jack Jenkins. When you want to study something in a population, like, say, an entire country, it’s impossible to ask everyone the same things. It would take forever and you would definitely miss people. So, instead of making the task impossible, people who are good at numbers and good at demographics and sociology, work out what amount of people need to be asked something for it to represent at larger whole.

     The marketing firm our cousins in the Episcopal Church worked with decided that they would poll 3,119 Americans and ask them questions about how they viewed Jesus and how they viewed Christians with the hopes of better understanding Americans’ general attitudes about Jesus and Christians. Within this group of just over 3,000 people, they spoke to Christians (of many varieties), people who were part of other religious traditions, and people who are not religious at all. This isn’t the part that bummed me out, by the way. I love polls like this: Yes! Ask lots of people the same questions and let’s see what they say! The former sociology major in me thinks this is all very fun. But, then, I kept reading.

     The very first question I read was this one: What characteristics do you associate with Christians in general? There were 19 characteristics and they had to say how well each characteristic described Christians. The people who were surveyed who were Christians gave answers that I was happy to hear: 57% of Christians said Christians were giving. 56% said Christians are compassionate. 55% said Christians are loving. Other top responses were respectful, friendly, honest, humble, sharing, and truthful. If you asked me, as a pastor, how I would hope Christians would understand ourselves to be expected to act in the world, I would likely have included most of this list: giving, compassionate, loving, honest, humble, and truthful. About 20% of Christians also said we’re judgmental. I am inclined to see that as a good bit of self-awareness on our parts. Because we are, too often, judgmental. None of what I just shared bummed me out. Here’s what did.

     Non-Christians had a very different list of common attributes. 50% of Non-Christians surveyed said that Christians are hypocritical. Almost as many, 49%, said Christians are judgmental. This same set of people also said that Christians are self-righteousness (46%), and arrogant (32%). This part... this is what bummed me out. For as much as Christians seem to know what God calls us to be (loving, giving, and compassionate), non-Christians, when interacting with and observing our behavior in public, do not see or experience us living out this calling. Instead, Christianity as they understand it, is hypocritical, judgmental, self-righteous, and arrogant. If a tree is known by its fruit, our non-Christian neighbors are seeing a lot of rotten fruit.

     It’s not like this is new information for me. I know plenty of non-Christians, some who have never been Christians and some who have left the Christian churches that they were once a part of. For those who left, sometimes it was because they just realized that Christianity wasn’t meaningful to them. Much of the time though, it was because Christianity as they experienced was deeply harmful, unkind at best... at best... deeply abusive at worst. The very worst things that have ever happened to them happened at the hands of someone with Jesus on their lips.

     Plenty of people who have never even been a part of Christian communities have been and are being harmed by us. Not even passively harmed. Actively harmed by the things we say and do right now. There is a war going and the guy who started it said he’s doing so, in part, because of his Christian faith. There is deadly anti-transgender legislation being proposed by and approved by state legislatures across the country right now and all of the people who have proposed it claim that it is a necessary part of their Christian faith. In one state, a legislator who is a Christian minister has proposed a bill that would charge a someone with a potentially lethal ectopic pregnancy with a felony if they were to seek the medical procedure necessary to save their life. He says it’s his duty as a Christian to sentence these people to death. Too many Christians are growing wicked, wicked fruit.

     Now, my hunch is that you might be having a similar reaction to me upon hearing these examples. You might be saying, “Well, these people aren’t really Christians.” Or, you might say, “not all Christians are like that.” I have said both these things a hundred times. And, I think I can make a pretty good argument as to why each of the examples I listed is not an action that actually adheres to the Gospel. And, while those statements can help me feel better, like I’ve made a robust defense of proper Christian faith, it doesn’t blot out the fact that countless people have been harmed by Christians. So many, that a randomized survey of the American public shows non-Christians being deeply suspect of us. And, frankly, a bunch of Christians are being harmed, too. See, this is why I was bummed out. Maybe you’re bummed out, too.

     When we hear confirmation of wicked fruit that is common in our community, it can be tempting to grow defensive or quit listening or, as some Christians are inclined, decide that any critique of how we live out our faith is an attack on God. Being told the truth about the harm people see you do is not persecution, particularly in a country where most people who are religious are Christians and when so much civic life is based on our religious foundations. I also don’t think not thinking about a problem addresses the problem. Bishop Michael Curry, the head of the Episcopal Church in the United States, describes the problem this way: “There is a disconnect between the reality of Jesus and the perceived reality of Christians.” There is an expectation of behavior in the world that is laid out by Jesus in the Gospel. Christians know what is expected of us. We have to find a better way to actually live it out.

     The “Jesus in America” survey says that Christians and non-Christians alike understand Jesus as an important historical figure. And, most of the people surveyed, 58%, Christian and non-Christian together, believe that Jesus taught to love God and love neighbor. Jesus taught a lot of good things, but these are good places to start! And, listening to how our neighbors experience our actions in this world is another place to start. If we want to repair harm in this world (that’s part of what loving our neighbor is... repairing harm), we should ask ourselves, what can we learn from those who don’t worship among us? Or, to go along with today’s text,  what kind of fruit do people see us growing? As Bishop Curry says in the article, “You can only begin the process of healing when you have a proper diagnosis.” May we listen to the truth our neighbors share. May we live more fully into the promises we have made. May the world notice God in that which we grow. And, may our fruit be dripping with God’s love and justice.
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Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
The survey summary: https://www.episcopalchurch.org/jesus-in-america/
The article about the survey: https://religionnews.com/2022/03/09/episcopal-bishop-curry-says-more-to-do-as-poll-shows-christians-seen-as-hypocrites/
Diana Butler Bass: https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/next-year-in-kyiv?s=w
Wil Gafney, "Lent 2" in A Women's Lectionary for the Whole Church, Year W (New York: Church Publishing Incorporated, 2022)
Jayne Davis: https://www.churchleadership.com/leading-ideas/7-spiritual-practices-for-the-new-year/
The James Baldwin quote I mentioned at the end of worship is in this essay by Yotam Marom: https://medium.com/@YotamMarom/what-to-do-when-the-world-is-ending-99eea2e1e2e7
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 Bless the Lord, O my soul.
 O Lord my God, you are very great.
 You are clothed with honor and majesty,
 wrapped in light as with a garment.

     I spent some time on Friday trying to explain to one of my deeply southern friends the beauty of a clear winter day in Maine. I said that there is something so lovely about a winter blue sky, even if it’s 20 degrees out. As long as it’s not windy, it might as well be June if you were just looking out a window and looking marveling at the sky overhead. I told her about how people buy the right clothes so they can be out in the cold safely and about the way that the snow crunches underfoot.  And, everything is so bright! While I haven’t been converted to a lover of outdoor sports, it didn’t take living here long for me to see the beauty in a clear, bright winter day. She told me she’d take my word for it, but anything less than 40 degrees still sounded miserable.

You cause the grass to grow for the cattle,
   and plants for people to use,
to bring forth food from the earth,
   and wine to gladden the human heart,
oil to make the face shine,
   and bread to strengthen the human heart.
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     Tasha and I have been lucky enough to be able to afford to travel. The first time we went to New Orleans together, we decided that we’d spend the bulk of the money we’d saved for the trip on food. New Orleans is a city where you can eat! We had freshly made pralines from a shop near our hotel. We got incredible fried chicken at a little restaurant we wondered into. We even ate some touristy beignets.  But, the best meal we ate there... maybe the best meal we’ve had in our lives... was at this place called Bayonna. It was one of the fanciest restaurants we’ve ever been to. I got delicious pasta with venison. Tasha got what was called The Mixed Grill. It was three small pieces of meat, perfectly grilled, with an equally delicious little side to complement each meat. There were collards and sweet potatoes. There was a small squab, and little beef, and what was perhaps the very best bite of pork I’ve ever had in my life. I was very lucky that Tasha shared. The food was locally sourced and the farmers well paid. It was lovingly prepared. Twelve years later, we still ask each other, with no small amount of awe in our voices, “Do you remember that food we had that first time we went to New Orleans?”

     Today is the first Sunday in the season of Lent, a period of 40 days preceding Easter. As I said during our Ash Wednesday service, this is a season when many Christians will begin an intentional period of contemplation and discernment. Some will begin a fast from something that they wonder might be pulling their spiritual attention from God. Some might add practices of increased prayer time or special Bible readings. I hope some of you might attend the special Lenten Bible study with Old South or make use of the devotional we emailed out last week. Still others will add practices of almsgiving and service. Each of these things can help ground you in faith and allow you to explore what it means to follow Jesus, in times of great challenge as well as great joy.

     Each week this Lent, I am going invite you to consider a different spiritual practice in light of our reading. I am drawing from the work of a pastor named Jayne Davis. This week, a week when we read a Psalm dedicated to describing God the creator and the glories of creation, I am going to invite you to consider how you might cultivate wonder as a spiritual practice. Rev. Davis talks about Wonder as a kind of surprise that reminds us of the vast mystery that is God. I imagine for many listening to this sermon, it would not surprise you that I would suggest nature as something that can inspire wonder.  If you’ve ever eaten in New Orleans, I’m sure you’ve experienced a different kind of wonder and delight. Wonder is not small. Like the creator God making the clouds her chariots and also causing water to gush forth from the hills, awe and hope and astonishment and bewilderment are not limited to one part of creation. We may experience them in so many ways.

     This coming week, even with a pandemic and war going on, I hope you can carve out some time to stoke your sense of wonder a bit. Maybe remember the last time you were very curious about something you saw or read or heard. When was the last time you were surprised, in a good way? What has seemed like a marvel to you? Read through this scripture for yourself this week. Think about times when you’ve been satisfied by the fruit of God’s handiwork. Tell someone you love about a time when you’ve been deeply satisfied, because that is its own kind of miracle. Survival in trying times does not only require our work but also our joy. Wonder is something that sustains us. Practice making yourself open enough to experience awe. May God offer you renewal through that awe.
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Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
Wil Gafney, "Lent 1," in A Women's Lectionary for the Whole Church, Year W (New York: Church Publishing Incorporated, 2021)
Jayne Davis: https://www.churchleadership.com/leading-ideas/7-spiritual-practices-for-the-new-year/
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     This reading about swords and ploughshares is usually an Advent reading. This reading about God judging the nations is often read alongside one of more apocalyptic readings in Matthew 24 about the necessity of watchfulness: “For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.” Usually, if I am following someone else’s list of “good things to preach on,” this one is there, but it’s used to tell us something about the preparation for the coming Christ Child. We are months passed Advent, at the end of the season of Epiphany... though it does feel a little too close to the end of the world sometimes.

     This is the Sunday when many pastors will be preaching about the transfiguration, that moment when Jesus’ friends finally saw and understood who he was on the inside for the first time. And, here I am, because I miscounted in my new commentary, looking at a text from the prophet Isaiah where the nations of the world, all of them, will be judged according to how justly they have been living. I picked this text weeks ago not realizing, then, that I’d be preaching God’s vision for a peaceful world right after one major country in the world decided to attack another and start an unprovoked war. Epiphany in general and Transfiguration in particular are about the Messiah manifesting... being made clear... being incarnate in this world. If Jesus understood the prophecies of Isaiah to be describing his own mission, which the Gospel of Luke does, how might this portion of Isaiah help us see the Messiah manifest in this world more clearly?

     Prophets talk about corruption a lot. This is, in part I think, because they are rarely just talking to one person about their misdeeds and salvation. They are usually talking to whole communities and nations. Sin and salvation are communal. The actions of powerful people affect people with less power than them. In her commentary on this text, Leonora Tubbs Tisdale described the corruption that the nations would be judged for: greed, self-interest, and corruption among religious and political leaders. Isaiah says that, while God’s message is for all nations, Judah and Jerusalem had particular responsibilities emphasized in their religious covenant. Dr. Tisdale puts it this way: “Instead of seeking the welfare of the orphan, the widow, and the oppressed, as the Torah had commanded, the people of God are seeking to cushion their own bank accounts and pension funds, and to insure their own health benefits.” While they may still gather for rituals that look like what they have been commanded to do, the rituals become meaningless if they aren’t the foundation for just action in the world.

     In Isaiah chapter 1, the prophet says that that God does not mince words:
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     Your new moons and your appointed festivals
     My soul hates;
     They have become a burden to me,
     I am weary of bearing them.
     When you stretch out your hands,
     I will hide my eyes from you;
     Even though you make many prayers
     I will not listen;
     Your hands are full of blood (vs 14-15)

     Don’t tell me that you are faithful when, outside of the temple, your actions destroy lives. That’s the opening of Isaiah. The news of late, both out of states that are targeting and tormenting transgender children and out of one country’s justification for an unprovoked war, include people who call themselves Christian, claim to be fighting for Christ, all the while driving their neighbors to death. Their hands are full of blood.
Prophets aren’t only interested in judgement though. They know that God can bring about restoration. Jesus believed he was a part of that restoration. Isaiah described the restoration in today’s reading. Notice that it isn’t only a vision of Jerusalem and Judah getting their act together. It is a vision of them joining with the whole earth for a communal restoration from God. According to Dr. Wil Gafney, God, and God’s will, will be revealed to all the people through the instruction they receive up on God’s mountain. Out of Zion will go God’s instruction and connected to that instruction is God’s discerning judgement. Whereas the political and religious leaders had fallen away from just action, God is justice. God can be trusted to treat people with the justice that was at the root of their religious commandments. With God’s justice, war will no longer be necessary.

     The people will still need tools, but they won’t be for battle. They’ll be for farming. Swords into ploughshares; spears into pruning hooks. Remember, orphans, widows, the oppressed... these are the kinds of people who suffer the most in war, both literal and cultural. The ones who benefit from war... they are rarely harmed by the wars they incite. The prophet Isaiah says that God’s power will blunt these corrupt rulers’ power, so that they can no longer do harm. A nation that has learned at God’s mountain and is walking in God’s wisdom is a nation where war is no longer necessary. For those of us who follow Christ, the incarnation of Justice and Love, we will see Christ most clearly not in acts that are called religious but result in death, but, instead, where people gather across differences to seek Wisdom and Love.

     In Casey Thornburgh Sigmon’s commentary on this text, I read about an artist named Pedro Reyes who lived in Calicún, Mexico. After seeing so many gun deaths in his city, he began a project where people could trade in their guns for a coupon that allowed them to by home appliances. He got 1527 guns. He melted them down and turned them into shovels. They planned to use them to plant 1527 trees. That seems much more like the reign of God than threatening to take kids away from parents in Texas or invading a country to try to rebuild a nation to its imperial glory. I pray that this week, you can find a way to walk to God’s mountain, and when you return, live out the justice God’s shares from it.

Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
Leonora Tubbs Tisdale, "First Sunday of Advent," Preaching God's Transforming Justice: A Lectionary Commentary, Year A Featuring 22 New Holy Days for Justice, eds Dawn Ottoni-Wilhelm, Ronald J. Allen, And Dale P. Andrews (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013)
Casey Thornburgh Sigmon: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-of-advent/commentary-on-isaiah-21-5-3
Wil Gafney, "Epiphany 8," in A Women's Lectionary for the Whole Church, Year W (New York: Church Publishing Incorporated, 2021)
About the artist who turned guns into shovels: https://www.pocho.com/chilango-artist-melts-1527-guns-makes-shovels-to-plant-trees/?fbclid=IwAR0HOASU423v6Aj39ao38XrLipvtRoV-FtKY8LsD5V33rCPMEz3ZkAhWN4E
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