What ways has God gotten your attention? A good book? A scripture? A dream? An illness? A natural wonder?  a heartfelt and truthful conversation? In the readings for today we encounter several more evident ways that God gets the attention of human beings. When their minds are made up, and pieties tidy, God appears to shepherd them, with gentle firmness, toward actions truer and more loving than they had previously imagined possible. The passage from Isaiah shows us how God speaks to a King, an important and powerful person, with a self-image to fit. God has his work cut out in trying to get around this “type-A” ego. He is someone who knows he is in charge and doesn’t wait around to find out what is going to happen. He’ll make it happen! Isaiah prophesies, bears a message of God’s word to Ahaz amidst a tense and threatening political and…

An important spiritual effort for me the past few winters has been to maintain my lawnmower or learn better to do so. Patience. I have a gas-powered lawnmower; I don’t water the lawn, I mow every 1-2 weeks, and not at all when the grass has stopped growing. I don’t bag the clippings, I don’t water the lawn. Here west of the cascades the grass seems very happy to grow lush with the rain, grow crackly dry and go dormant for three months, and then green up again after the first good fall rain. That’s my larger pattern of lawn care, which other people taught me, and I probably inherited from my father and his father too, It’s at least carbon neutral, if not better, even with the petrol burner. So, I keep the old gas mower around. But I really didn’t know how engines worked. So, I’ve set about…

Sermon for 11-27-2022, 1st Advent, The Rev. Evan Graham Clendenin   For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. What sort of time do we live in now? Well, the disciples with Jesus were living in a time of expectation, the arrival of some person, some power, some reign we might call messianic, the son of Man as Jesus says. It may be that they expect, that they actively hope for what will settle intractable disputes, pacify struggles, purify and enrich and hallow the ground, feed the hungry, wipe every tear from…

“He is the image of the invisible God,…in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”   Colossians 1:15-20 NRSV   Who is Jesus Christ, what does he do, and what does that matter to us, our neighbors and the world? Who is he? What does he do? What does it matter? These are some questions that people might ask, somewhere in their mind and body and heart. And we might be open to how this scripture lifts up these questions and offers answers.  It’s less an intellectual exercise, and much more a matter of living guidance, and listening and looking for leadings from God. These living questions open the eyes of our hearts more and more to certain things. The image…

Sermon for Sunday, Nov 13, 2022 The Rev. Evan G Clendenin   “But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating.” Is 65:18 What is God creating?  What is God creating? Here and now, in you and among you? Here on Vashon Island, here at Church of the Holy Spirit? As the winds blow through the passages and straits, as the tides ebb and flow…what is God creating? While you enjoy a hot beverage on a cold rainy day, what is God creating? In the lives of the people who live and work, here on this island, or ferrying onto or off of the island to undertake the services, professions, trades, all the building and planting and toil on which our common life depends, in your various holy efforts of simple daily living…what is God creating? The prophet Isaiah invites the people of Israel to notice that God…

Sermon for Pentecost 18 (23C) Holy Spirit, Vashon October 9, 2022 Luke 17:11-19 – The Ten Lepers, Gratitude The story of the ten lepers that we have just heard could be used in a number of ways: it could be a parable about the relations of Jews and Samaritans; or the marginalization of people suffering from a dreaded disease and the punitive nature of the laws regarding untouchable peoples; it could be used to talk about Jesus’ willingness to bend the purity laws in favor of compassion for the outcast; or it could be about this progression of his journey from Galilee to Jerusalem and the mounting evidence of his identity as the Christ. But this little story is primarily about one thing – Gratitude. That’s right – Gratitude. I could easily fill a sermon with stories or famous quotes about gratitude, and how important it is, and maybe that…