While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” Matthew 17:5

In Matthew’s account of the Transfiguration, we reach a decisive turning point in Jesus’ ministry. Having revealed himself as the Messiah, Jesus begins to teach what that truly means: not triumph, but suffering; not domination, but self-giving love. When Peter boldly confesses, “You are the Messiah,” he receives praise. Yet moments later, when he rejects the idea of a suffering Savior, Jesus rebukes him: “Get behind me, Satan.” Discipleship, Jesus insists, means denying ourselves, taking up the cross, and following him. Like Peter, we don’t like this. We’re far too scared to embrace non-violence. We want a God who wins, not loses, and we want the church to be in control, not suffer.
Six days later, Jesus leads Peter, James, and John up a mountain. There he is transfigured—his face shining like the sun—as Moses and Elijah appear beside him. The Law and the Prophets converge in Christ. Both Moses and Elijah confronted unjust power; now Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem, where he too will confront violence with truth and nonviolence.

When Peter tries to preserve the mountaintop moment, a voice from the cloud interrupts: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” The command is simple and urgent: listen to him. How much time in your day do you spend resting in the words of Jesus and how much time do you listen to other voices, be they media, or cultural, political, or economic?  Lent is here, and it’s the perfect opportunity to tune out all the voices of fear, violence, and division, and instead tune into the voice of love. You always know you are listening to Jesus when you hear compassion, love, and forgiveness, because that’s who he is. 

This Lent, we will be grounding ourselves in the good news of Jesus’ life and teachings where we find liberation, love, mercy, and grace—all of which are meant to be very good news for us all. I hope you’ll join us tonight at 7pm in person or online for our Ash Wednesday service as we start our Lenten journey together.

- Rev. Joel Esala

“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. People do not light a lamp and put it under the bushel basket; rather, they put it on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” Matthew 5:14-16

There’s a form of Christianity that says the job of the preacher is to cut people down to size. The idea is that humans by nature are so sinful and proud that they need to be told how bad they are before God’s grace can reach them. This has been the dominant form of Christianity in our country and remains its most popular form. Strangely, many people like to be told how bad they are, but Jesus wants to free us from all lies, even the ones that we’ve come to believe and love.

Jesus tells us how God really feels about us, and there’s no ambiguity or conditions. It’s better than you could ever imagine: “You are the light of the world, so let your light shine!” This verse always stops me in my tracks. It feels like too much, as though Jesus is laying it on too thick. I’m much more comfortable with John 8:12, in which Jesus says, “I am the light of the world.” If Jesus is the light of the world, then it’s our job to reflect his light. That’s all fine and good, but that’s not what he says in Matthew. He didn’t say, “You reflect the light of the world.” He says, “You are the light of the world.” We don’t merely reflect the light that is outside of us. The divine light also shines within you. You are the light of the world, so let your light shine!

While there is no fire or brimstone in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus does warn us not to hide our light. Don’t hide what makes you unique, which is your identity as beloved children of God who see the divine image in ourselves and others. When we know that’s who we are, then we don’t fall for stories that say only some are worthy, while others are disposable. We don’t participate in scapegoating that says all our problems are because of someone else. We don’t fall for that stuff because we believe our teacher who says, “You are the light of the world! Be who God created you to be.”

Rev. Joel Esala

“As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishers. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.’” Matthew 4:18-19

When we were searching for a preschool for Asher, two visits stayed with me. In the first school, children’s artwork lined the hallway. The youngest students’ art was wild and messy—full of color and imagination. But as we walked toward the older classrooms, something changed. The pictures became more uniform, more recognizable, until by kindergarten they looked nearly identical, with only minor variations. Creativity slowly gave way to conformity.

Then we visited a Montessori classroom. Children of different ages moved freely between learning stations. One child walked up to an easel, put on a smock, painted on a blank page, cleaned up, and moved on. No template. No model to copy. Just freedom, care, and curiosity. In that moment it became clear to me: how we teach often matters more than what we teach. Are we forming people to conform to the world as it is—or to imagine what it could become?

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus appears as a rabbi opening a new school of living. Over the coming weeks, we hear from the Sermon on the Mount, one of the most important—and often neglected—collections of Jesus’ teachings. Jesus does not teach conformity. He teaches freedom that has the power to transform the world.

Matthew frames Jesus as a new Moses, leading people toward liberation. Jesus begins his ministry in Galilee, far from the centers of power, among the poor, the marginalized, and those exploited by the empire. His first students are fishermen—overworked, underpaid, and dismissed by society. When Jesus calls them to be “fishers of people,” he is not recruiting salespeople for religion. He is inviting them to resist systems of greed and violence and to practice a new way of being human shaped by love, compassion, peace, and dignity.

Jesus’ school has open registration. No prerequisites. No tuition. Pre-existing conditions welcome. Healing—of body, mind, and community—is the curriculum. Repentance, in this school, means changing your mind: being willing to learn, to be wrong, to discover that God is always larger than our ideas.

Jesus didn’t come to enforce conformity or start a new religion. He came to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth—a beloved community of freedom and grace. So come. Put on your smock. Pick up your brush. And let’s paint something beautiful together.

Rev. Joel Esala

The next day [John the Baptist] saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” John 1:29

What does it mean to be the Lamb of God? If Jesus is the proverbial sacrificial lamb, we must ask ourselves, who demands the sacrifice? One way to understand it is that God demands a sacrifice for human sin, and Jesus pays humanity’s bill to get us off the hook. But this framework has problems. Why must God demand a sacrifice for sin? Why can’t God just forgive without needing to kill someone or something? One of the great tasks of parenting is creating an atmosphere for your children in which they are safe to apologize. Imagine my son coming to me as a four-year-old and saying, “Daddy, I ate the cookie even though you told me not to. I’m sorry.” If I responded, “Thank you for telling the truth, but to be forgiven, first, we’re going to have to kill your dog,” that would be insane. Yet that’s exactly how many Christians understand God’s forgiveness to work.

What if God isn’t the one demanding a sacrifice? What if we are? After all, at Jesus’ trial, God isn’t the one shouting, “Crucify him!” The mob did that. Human beings did that. Humans still do that. What if Jesus is the lamb that God offers to the sacrificial monster that is the dark side of humanity? I love human beings. I think we are walking miracles worthy of love, dignity, and belonging, but there is a dark side to us that I don’t like to talk about but can’t deny is present. There’s something inside us that likes to see our enemies punished. There’s a tribalism in us that wants our group to be vindicated and those we don’t like exposed for the selfish frauds they are, but if we’re honest the selfish frauds aren’t just out there. They are in us too. Maybe humanity doesn’t just need a little help or advice. Maybe we need to be delivered from a tyranny that is so ubiquitous that we can’t even see it and have come to love it.

The Bible names this tyranny “sin,” which isn’t a very popular word these days. Sin is a word that has been used to shame and control, so if you don’t resonate with it, I understand, but we need some way to describe the human tendency toward self-destruction. Freud called it the death drive. Whatever we name it, Jesus comes to take it away. Strangely, we cling to our sin and don’t want it taken away.

At the time of his assassination, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s approval rating in America was 25%. 75% of this country disapproved of him because he exposed our country’s sin, and we hated him for it. He wanted to take away our love of racism, poverty, and militarism, and we killed him for it. The night before he was murdered, King said, “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.” Though we cling to that which is trying to kill us, God sent the lamb to take it away, to break our delusions and our chains. Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world—yours, mine, everyone’s. He’s not asking. He’s taking, and for that, we say, thanks be to God.

Rev. Joel Esala

“And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’” Matthew 3:16-17

Christianity at its heart is a story, and all of us must decide what kind of story we think it is. Is it a story primarily about our obedience or our freedom? This year we will be primarily in Matthew’s Gospel, and Matthew wants us to understand Jesus as the new Moses, come to lead his people to freedom. It all starts on the banks of the Jordan River, where Jesus’ cousin John has been baptizing people to prepare them for the coming of God. For John, God is coming soon, and when God comes, he believes there will be hell to pay. He sounds an awful lot like those mothers who used to threaten their children, “Wait till your father gets home.” Many people think that’s who God is, the ultimate authority to be feared and obeyed.

When Jesus is baptized by John, we would expect that if God were to show up, it would be a revelation of judgment. That’s certainly what John preached would happen. Yet when Jesus comes out of the water he hears the best words that can be spoken or heard: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” The baptism of Jesus reveals a God who is more gracious than we have ever dared imagine, one who comes not to burn us up, but to surround us with loving embrace. I’ve said it before and will say it again: the entire Christian life is coming to trust that what God says about Jesus in his baptism, God says over each one of us. It’s all that simple, and it’s all that hard. 

It’s difficult to imagine that God delights in us not because of how good we are but because of how good God is. In our world, commendations come because of our hard work and accomplishments. For God, divine commendation comes built in. It’s the software we are born with. It’s our pre-existing condition to be marked by the divine as cherished and beloved. Such indiscriminate grace is not only foreign to us, it offends us. The cultural story we are immersed in tells us that we get what we deserve, for both good and bad. But God gives us grace whether we are good or bad. The waters of baptism free us from the rat race of this world. They allow us to rest in our belovedness, and from that place of total security to live for the freedom of all people. That’s exactly what Jesus did, and at its best, that’s what the church does as well. All of us are invited to the waters of baptism to receive God’s blessing and then spend the rest of our lives spreading that message of love, freedom, and inclusion to everyone we meet, especially those our culture deems undeserving. 


Rev. Joel Esala

“Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.” Matthew 2:11-12

On Sunday, we celebrated Epiphany in which God’s salvation revealed to all the nations of the world. Just as the Magi came from a distant land to worship the Christ child, God’s grace is revealed and given to all. Like with the Christmas story, Epiphany is far less sanitized and safe than our pageants and nativities indicate. With a violent and egomaniacal king on the throne, Jesus is born. Matthew tells us Magi from the east show up in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?” Herod is terrified by this because he’s not interested in losing his throne. In Herod’s last days, he became more violent, unpredictable, and immoral. As that happens, the only moral path is nonviolent resistance, which is what the Magi take.

After they honor the Christ child, God warns the Magi about Herod’s cruel intentions, so “they returned to their country by another route.” In other words, they leave their encounter with Christ as changed people, willing to disobey Herod. One indication you’ve had a divine encounter and not simply a worshipping a projection of your own ego is that it changes you. Your view of the world, your values, your hopes and your loves are forever changed. You end up caring about people you wouldn’t otherwise care for and resist the powers of violence to protect the weak. Obedience to wicked rulers isn’t righteous. Nonviolent resistance is. 

On Sunday our choir sang Howard Thurman’s poem, “The Work of Christmas,” which says:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.

Though Christmas is over, the work of Christmas begins anew. The good news is that God has not left us alone in this fearful and violent world. God came and still comes to find what’s lost and heal what’s broken. God invites us to be changed people who go home by another road, the road of non-violent resistance, which is the way of the Christ. Though the Herods of this world remain, God has revealed the path to peace for all. Fear doesn’t stop us from taking that road. May we find the courage to take it.

“Mary's Yes”
by Lisle Gwynn Garrity
Inspired by Luke 1:26-39

“‘For nothing will be impossible with God.’ Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’” Luke 2:37-38

People often ask pastors, “When did you receive your call to ministry?” I’ve always been uneasy with that question. God never appeared to me as God did to Mary with a booming directive. More importantly, calling isn’t something reserved for pastors. No one asks accountants or plumbers when they were “called,” yet their work can be just as holy. All work—paid or unpaid—can be a calling when it uses our gifts for the good of others. All of life is spiritual. While I have my reservations about it, I do believe in calling—mine and yours. Scripture tells us, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” To be created by God is to be called by God. That calling is not always comforting. Often it is frightening. But even in fear, we are called forward.
Christmas tells this story beautifully. God enters history not through power or privilege, but through vulnerability. God’s vision—what Jewish tradition calls tikkun olam, the healing of the world—is freedom, peace, and love for all. As the hymn “O Holy Night” proclaims, chains are broken and oppression ceases. To bring this about, God does not choose the powerful or well-connected. God chooses Mary—a poor, young, unwed woman from Galilee, a place dismissed by elites. She is “favored,” not because of status, but because God delights in those the world overlooks.
When the angel speaks to her, Mary is not merely startled; she is shaken to the core. Yet she is told, “Do not be afraid.” Not because the road ahead is safe—it isn’t—but because God will be faithful. Mary asks questions. She claims agency. Only after hearing God’s promise does she consent: “Let it be with me according to your word.” Courage does not mean fearlessness. It means moving forward despite fear.
I see that courage in everyday lives—in my own family’s story of grief, risk, and love. Calling is not reserved for saints and prophets. God calls each of us to birth hope into a wounded world, to trust the power of love is stronger than the love of power. Love may look fragile, but it endures. As the Apostle Paul reminds us, “Love never fails.” When you are afraid, remember this: God’s Spirit still comes upon us. We are not alone. And even in fear, we are called forward.

Rev. Joel Esala

“Zechariah and the Angel”
by Hannah Garrity
Inspired by Luke 1:5-13

“In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah.” Luke 1:5

Our theme for Advent this year is, “What do you fear?” For some of us, fear lives right on the surface, while for others it is hidden. Psychologists tell us that fear is a universal primal emotion tasked with keeping us alive. All of us have fear whether we are aware of it or not. If you are unaware of your fear, chances are it has more control over you than you know. Advent is a season of hope, and durable hope emerges only when we name and face our fears.

Luke’s birth narrative begins with a detail we easily overlook, “In the days of King Herod.” Herod was both incredibly accomplished and brutally dangerous. He was called “Herod the Great” because he built enormous structures throughout Israel, several of which remain to this day. Herod built and built and built, yet he was also notorious for destroying the people closest to him and ruling his people with an iron fist. Like many politicians before and after him, Herod pursued power above all else, and his greatest fear was losing that power. This made him incapable of love. Jesus is born into a world in which the people of God were ruled by a megalomaniacal tyrant who exacted wealth from his people, while brutalizing them. If you were a regular person, you had every reason to be afraid and very little hope that things would get better. The only reason to hope was that God might break in, and that’s exactly what God did, but not in the way we expect. God didn’t call a soldier or a politician. God breaks in by telling an elderly priest that his prayers had been heard.

If you were in Zechariah’s shoes and someone told you that two thousand years from now, people all over the world would remember and celebrate someone from that time, you’d bet on Herod, or maybe Caesar. You certainly wouldn’t think a child born to a withered couple and unwed mother would be sung about and celebrated while Herod would be a mere footnote in their story. Yet that’s exactly what’s happened. For all his purported greatness, Herod is remembered for his brutality and for his role in the birth of a new king, one who reigns not with fear and violence but love and compassion. Who could have ever seen that coming? Today, God still hears the prayers of the oppressed and Jesus’ kingdom lives on in every act of vulnerability, compassion, forgiveness, and love. God is the eternal presence of love that assures us that in all our fears both big and small, we are loved and God is near.

I recently finished Robin Wall Kimmerer’s incredible book, Braiding Sweetgrass, which combines indigenous wisdom with modern science in a series of essays about plant wisdom. In one essay, she introduces the Thanksgiving Address, an ancient indigenous practice across many North American tribes that in the Onodaga language is called, The Words That Come Before All Else. Kimmerer writes, “It is said that people were instructed to stand and offer these words whenever they gathered, no matter how many or how few, before anything else was done.” This year also marks the 800th anniversary of St. Francis’ Canticle of the Creatures, which has been put to music in the hymn “All Creatures of Our God and King.” These two works share much in common. Both give thanks to God for the diversity of creation, personifying the Sun as Brother and the Earth as Mother. Notice the overlaps the Thanksgiving Address has with the Canticle of the Creatures in these excerpts:

  Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. 
  We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony 
  with each other and all living things.
  So now, we bring our minds together as one 
  as we give greetings and thanks to each other as people.
  Now our minds are one.

  Be conscious, O human, of the wondrous state 
  in which the Lord God has placed you
  for you were created in God's image and likeness 
  according to the Spirit.
  And yet all the creatures under heaven, 
  each according to its nature, 
  serve, know, and obey their Creator better than you.

  We now send greetings and thanks 
  to our eldest Brother, the Sun.
  Each day without fail he travels the sky from east to west, 
  bringing the light of a new day.
  He is the sources of all the fires of life. 
  With one mind, we send greetings 
  and thanks to our Brother, the Sun.
  Now our minds are one.

  Praised be You, my Lord, with all your creatures;
  especially Brother Sun, who is the day, 
  and through whom You give us light.
  And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor,
  and bears a likeness to You, Most High One.

  We are all thankful to our Mother, the Earth, 
  for she gives us all that we need for life.
  She supports our feet as we walk upon her. 
  It gives us joy that she continues to care for us
  as she has from the beginning of time.
  To our Mother, we send thanksgiving, love, and respect.
  Now our minds are one.

  Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Mother Earth,
  who sustains us and governs us and who produces
  varied fruits with colored flowers and herbs.

How ever you celebrate the Thanksgiving Holiday, in addition to giving thanks for family, food, and friendship, consider your place in the vast web of creation. We are part of a diverse creation in which each part needs the other. Dr. King said, “In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” This is true of all life, not just human. May God open our eyes to the interrelatedness of all things, including Brother Sun and Mother Earth. Happy Thanksgiving!