by Melissa Kelly | Oct 16, 2022 | Dustin Wilsor, Fall 2022, Sermons
Horns of Every Shape and Size! The Bible has taught us well to allegorize stories by substituting God for the male figure in a story, and Jerusalem or Humanity for the female figure. However, Hebrew poetry lends itself to double entendres and multiple meanings. With...
by Melissa Kelly | Oct 9, 2022 | Fall 2022, Megan Ramer, Sermons
Desire, Bodies, and Sex, OH MY! No bones about it: Song of Songs is steamy. Before this sermon is through, we will acknowledge that people do, in fact, have sex. We will hear about desire and the clandestine rendezvous of lovers. We will learn that Pastor Megan has...
by Melissa Kelly | Oct 2, 2022 | Fall 2022, Megan Ramer, Sermons
A Singular Voice Contains Multitudes When at last the communal voice enters the lamentation, closing out the book of Lamentations, the community finds a way to speak in a singular voice with enough spaciousness to embrace its diversities. It’s almost magical how they...
by Melissa Kelly | Sep 25, 2022 | Amy Epp, Fall 2022, Sermons
Don’t Look Away: The Pain and Protest of Lamentations It feels bad to feel bad! So often feelings and embodiments of anger and despair are punished or policed – especially in women and people of color. Maybe that’s why we so often turn past the book...
by Melissa Kelly | Sep 18, 2022 | Fall 2022, Megan Ramer, Sermons
A Time to Hear from One Another We encounter the timeless poetry of Ecclesiastes about the seasons of our lives. Pete Seeger iconically set this poetry to music so poignant and beautiful that it is known to nearly all of us. Like all good poetry, there is spaciousness...
by Melissa Kelly | Sep 11, 2022 | Fall 2022, Megan Ramer, Sermons
Ode to a Vaporous Life If all of life is “vanity” or breath or vapor, as the Teacher of Ecclesiastes repeats, is it then “perfectly pointless”? If life is unfair, inscrutable, beyond our control, and destined for the grave, as the Teacher describes, is it then...
