Our class was split into two groups, one which preached in the chapel and one which preached in the lounge. I was in the chapel and I thought my sermon went well, not perfect. But, it's a learning experience. I was nervous before I got up to preach but once I was up there, as per usual, my theatre training kicked in the the nervousness was absorbed. What did I learn today? I learned I feel constrained by pulpits and distanced from my congregation while in them. I learned I should not keep my hands behind my back. I did that becuase I often times don't know what to do with my hands, which can have a life of their own, so I stifled them. My classmates and professor both agreed that I should not do that and that I should avoid pulpits. I learned that my voice has more power in it than I am aware and so need to learn how to use and channel that energy. Warmth came from me when I softened my voice, but it did not lose the power, so the trick is to learn how to harness that ability. Anyway, it was a good experience. The lessons assigned were those lessons from Proper 28, year A and they are:

Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18
1 Thessalonians 5:1-10
Matthew 25:14-15, 19-29

Here is the sermon, as best as I can remember it (cause I didn't have a manuscript).


"Is my son dead?"

It was with these words that I was greeted when I came on-call one weekend this summer during CPE. I had just walked into the Emergency Room, laid down my bags, said goodnight to the chaplain whom I was relieving and heard what he was passing off to me. A trauma had just come in. A 21 year old young man who had been seriously injured in a high speed automobile accident. The other chaplain had not had time to greet the family, who had just arrived, and so I walked out into the waiting room wo have this woman look at me and say, "Is my son dead?"

I told her that I didn't know, but when I got the information, I would be with her immediately. Family and friends sat down, uncomfortable, and waited expectantly. 4 hours later I knelt with that same woman in the hallway outside the OR after the neurosurgeon had just delivered to her the news of her son's emergency surgery. His chances for recovery were bleak. The injury to his brain has caused to swell beyond any chance of healing. It was a dark, dark night for that family, and it lasted throughout the week.

But in that darkness little lights began to shine, and as they shone together, they grew. Nurses who could no longer care for the patient began to care for the family. Friends dropped by every day and shared with them their own tears, embraced one another, and told stories, already ritualizing the inevitable. Families of other patients in that intensive care unit gathered this family up and held them, held each other in that darkness. God was at work! The light of Christ shone through those people as they embodied that which they were called ot be - the children of light. They made that which was unbearable a little less so.

Each of us has within ourselves that potential because God has created us as the children of light. Each of us will have moments of darkness that may last a minute or carry on throughout a week or beyond. When that happens to you, it is my hope and prayer that the light of Christ can shine through me and illumine you. When I am faced with my own bleak times it is my hope and prayer that the light of Christ can shine through you and illumine me. It is in community that we bear one another up and it is in community that our lights shine strongest in the darkness of our world. We only read through the tenth verse of that section of Thessalonians today, but the passage continues in the eleventh verse, saying, "Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing." It is in community that our lights shine brightest.

The thief came for that family that night to steal, and he stole dearly from them. The thief will come for each of us when we least expect it and rip from us that which we hold most dear. But, that is not the end of the story for us! We have each other to bear us up and to hold us when we have fallen the lowest. We are all the children of light.

-R