26.09.2025
Saint Francis
Sermon for September 21, 2025 - Creation 3
Pastor Elizabeth Ekdale - Vacancy Pastor
Dear Partners in Ministry:
Grace, Compassion and Peace to each of you from Jesus our Christ. Amen.
I meet with my Spiritual Director once a month. I often arrive distracted, my head and heart filled with events from the day and worried about what is ahead. Thankfully, she begins our time of discernment with this invitation for awareness and openness to God's presence in this moment - right here and right now. I extend this invitation to you:
Let us let go of the day that is already passed and come into God's presence. Let us open our hearts, our minds, our bodies, and our spirits to the presence of the Holy Spirit who is our true director. Amen.
I am delighted to be with you this morning. Preaching and presiding, singing and praying with the wonderful congregation of St. Francis - here and present on YouTube. Welcome to each of you and thank you for your kind and warm welcome. I will serve as your vacancy pastor for a few weeks until your Interim Pastor arrives - exactly who and when they arrive depends on the Sierra Pacific Synod and the excellent leadership of your church council. Until then, let's keep doing what the people of St. Francis do best - worship faithfully, pray frequently, serve compassionately, embody kindness, and dream boldly of God's vision for this community of faith.
Speaking of dreams . . . our story from Genesis is often called, "Jacob's Dream at Bethel". It represents a new beginning and a new future for Jacob and the people of Israel. Jacob has tricked his father into giving a blessing intended for his brother to him and now has to flee his brother's wrath. Jacob finds himself on a journey, alone, in liminal space between the home that he has left behind and the refuge he seeks with relatives. He uses a rock as a pillow and falls asleep, unprotected, under the nighttime sky.
In this in-between time, in what we could imagine as a deeply vulnerable and anxious moment, God appears to Jacob. Yes, God's appearance is rather unusual in a dream complete with a ladder or stairway - but note: God speaks to Jacob directly. There is no chastising from God about how Jacob secured his father's blessing - God focuses on sharing sacred promises given to Jacob and the people of Israel. These promises and God's presence
to Jacob are so powerful and real to him - which may explain why when Jacob refers to this event, he never refers to it as a dream. Jacob speaks about God's presence in this place: "Surely, the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it."
I wonder about our own journeys right now: of leave-takings, of anxious fleeing, of transitions in our own lives. Is God present in those places and spaces too? Might our fears or anxieties or grief impair our awareness of God' promises, God's life, God's presence right here and now?
Jacob and Jesus can be our guides today. Upon awakening from his dream, he remains in this place and sits with God's promises. He takes time to reflect on what they mean even if he does not fully understand them. Jacob has a new sense of what the presence of God entails and expresses awe(fear) that God would appear to him in such an ordinary place and share sacred promises to him. Jacob realizes the significance of this time and place.
As one commentator wisely shares, "The link made between God and ordinary places is especially striking. It is often thought that the presence of God is only associated with times and places that are extraordinary, filled with miracles, that blow your mind. But here the presence of God, per usual, is assocated with the mundane routines and the everyday.
Ordinary transitions in our lives and now, in the life of St. Francis, can be places where God's promises and presence are experienced even more intensely. Like Jacob, we might sit still for a while reflecting on what we've seen and heard. We might use this liminal space to lean into the promises, savoring the baptismal water, the living bread, and flowing wine. Instance of getting to the other side of our transitions and pushing through this liminal space - all of which can cause us to miss out on God's presence altogether - we can "come into the present" and receive the gifts God gives us in this in-between time.
Jacob marked this experience of God's presence and promises by anointing the stone pillow with oil and placing it securely so others might become aware that something sacred and hope-filled had occurred in this very place.
How will you mark such times in your lives and in the life of this congregation? This is what our partnership of pastor and people is about - to hold fast to God's promises - to remember despite all that is happening in our world and lives that God is faithful and God keeps God's promises - to welcome the presence of Jesus in our midst and to emobody Jesus' kindness and caring to our neighbors near and far. I look forward to holding this time of transition with you and, like Jacob, experiencing and being transformed by God's faith-filled presence and promises.
Thanks to be God. Amen.
Resources:
Workng Preacher on the Narrative Lectionary, especially Dr. Terence Fretheim: Commentary on Genesis 27:1-4, 15-23; 28:10-17.
