First Presbyterian Church Of San Anselmo

In the power of the Risen Christ, Resurrection liberates bodies and lives. Resurrection breaks everything free, and then invites us to take the next step into this new life of liberation.

Like, Paul and Lydia and Ananias and Tabitha and the women at the river outside the city gates, and the widows in Joppa, we welcome each other in to the life of Resurrection.  In Christ, we experience Resurrection in depth of belonging – in hospitality and tender mercy – embodied in community – embodied in us.

In our baptism, we are baptized into community – into a family of all God’s children. In Christ, we are baptized into life with each other.  

In this Sunday's sermon, we venture into the world of Revelation. Enlivened and empowered by Resurrection, we experience the Risen Christ in fierce resistance and in tender mercy.

In breakfast on the shore with the Risen Christ, the disciples experience Resurrection in their bodies. They experience not only Jesus’ Resurrection, but their own.  (This homily followed an enactment of the Scripture, from the play "Fish Eyes.")

In worship, we heard the case for Thomas, who history has wrongly judged for doubting. To Thomas’s questions, the Risen Christ responds with the gracious offer of himself and of life. The case for Thomas is the case for us. 

In Resurrection, Jesus draws us into expansive life, and gives us a future we can live from.

If the stones shout out, what will they shout?  Will they shout praise, and protest, and lament? In the fullness of Holy Week, what we experience is Christ filled to the fullness of our humanity, as we are filled to the fullness of Christ’s.

As Mary anoints his feet, Jesus helps us become aware of what really matters in the present moment.

With prodigal grace, Jesus welcomes us all and reconciles us to God and to each other.

In the parable of the fig tree, Jesus walks us into a world where folks together till the soil of new creation, so that everyone can live and thrive.

With our thoughts on Ukraine, this morning’s psalm takes seriously the suffering of the world and gives it voice.  And, at the same time, the psalm holds that lament with hope – hope in a God who is our shelter and our strength.

Even in the wilderness, we are Full to the Brim with God’s overflowing grace.

The invitation of Ash Wednesday:  Even now, even now, return to me with all your heart – with all your broken pieces – with all you are.  And I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.  Your youth will see visions; your elders dream dreams.

How many layers must a camel shed to get through the eye of a needle? And what about us? Everything is possible with God.

At every threshold, God is present moving the whole world toward good – toward healing, toward forgiveness, toward belonging, toward love.

With blessing and woe, Jesus brings us into a world of mutuality, a level place, where we see each other face to face, and see and meet each other’s need.

At the Threshold of Forgiveness – by God’s grace, we stand in the life we have lived until now –  then we step through... into the life we find in Jesus Christ – we step into the new creation – into a world filled with love, possibility, and hope.  

In the threshold of calling, God calls us to bring all of who we are created to be into the fullness of the life we live – and to join together in a shared life of rebuilding and reshaping a world where all live free.

Our body is the threshold where we encounter God.  The body of Christ – our bodies together in One Body – is where the world encounters God.  This Body, this is where Christ is coming to life in the world right now, and we are a part of that.