Midwives of Hope [OR Ideological Purity is Death-Dealing from Every Angle]

July 19, 2026 caitlin121608

Pastor Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on July 19, 2026

[sermon begins after two Bible readings]

Matthew 13:24-30 [Jesus] put before [the crowds] another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field,²⁵ but while everybody was asleep an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and then went away. ²⁶ So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. ²⁷ And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ ²⁸ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ ²⁹ But he replied, ‘No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. ³⁰ Let both of them grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’ ”

Romans 8:12-25 So then, brothers and sisters, we are obligated, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—¹³ for if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. ¹⁴ For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. ¹⁵ For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” ¹⁶ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷ and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
¹⁸ I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. ¹⁹ For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, ²⁰ for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor, ²³ and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴ For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what one already sees? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

[sermon begins]

Gardening and farming with hands in the dirt can feel like heaven for some folks. They can till, plant, prune, deadhead, weed, and harvest for hours, satisfied as much by their work in the dirt as their harvest. For others, myself included, it’s more transactional. We like flowers or vegetables, therefore we do the work that they need to grow and be beautiful or tasty. It’s taken some years for me to tell the difference between the flowers and the weeds in early spring, but I think I’m getting the hang of it. Lo and behold, according to the Bible anyway, I could have simply left the weeds to grow alongside the more desired flora and let God handle it in the end.

But, of course, Jesus isn’t telling a literal tale in today’s Bible reading. It’s a parable. A parable is a story told to direct the listener’s attention. In the Greek, “para” means “alongside” and “bole” means “to throw,” so a parable means to throw things alongside each other and see what emerges.[1] In this twisty parable, Jesus reveals the kingdom of heaven to the crowds and his disciples with wheat intentionally and quite nefariously sowed with weeds. It’s so like Jesus to describe the kingdom of God using images of creation: wheat, weeds, birds, trees, seeds, yeast. Jesus could have used other images like warriors, empire, navigation, music or others.[2] But he didn’t. Jesus used God’s creation as illustrations of the kingdom of heaven. New and tender baby wheat. Threatened by something so similar that removing it could harm the harvest.

The Gospel of Matthew spends some of its time trying to figure out who’s in and who’s out while intensely cautioning elsewhere to care for the least, the most fragile, the little ones.[3] In our parable today, the householder tells the enslaved farmers that it’s not their job to figure out the weeds from the wheat, the insiders from the outsiders. For the listeners of this parable, their task is to nurture the fullness of the kingdom of heaven to grow to maturity. Elsewhere in Matthew, Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful…[and] blessed are the peacemakers.”[4] The same Jesus who said, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”[5] No single passage can hold the entirety of Jesus’ message but parables are meant to unsettle Jesus’ listeners, to make us wonder where the allegory calls us out of comfort and into following Jesus.[6]

Jesus didn’t ignore the weeds. He names them throughout Matthew’s gospel. He regularly and actively challenged his followers and the powers that be on behalf of the poor in spirit and the persecuted.[7] In the parable of the weeds and the wheat, he reminds the listener that it’s impossible to identify oneself as either weed or wheat. Although we tend to think of ourselves as wheat and that other people are nasty weeds, there may be weedier parts of us that, as the parable suggests, will be bundled for burning so that the wheatier parts of us can thrive while the ash can be used as farmers use it to enrich the existing soil.[8] I find the thought of being unburdened from a few of my own weeds both a challenge and a comfort.

Identifying weeds and wheat takes on the either/or proposition that we humans seem to fall into as much as the faith community in the Gospel of Matthew. One case in point is what’s known as “cancel culture.”[9] Canceling initially meant to boycott someone in power who has committed atrocious acts against other people. Canceling was a way for the community to reduce the power of people who abused their position of authority to hurt other people. It has evolved into cutting someone out of the conversation or canceling someone who even tries to negotiate a conversation with a perceived enemy so that constructive dialogue with opponents is not possible.[10]

Canceling reduces people to unworthy based on a moving target of ideological purity. It makes me wonder how long it will take before no one is ideologically pure enough to survive cancel culture. Before anyone gets on a high horse, this happens across political and cultural ideologies. No one is immune to the temptation to cancel or to the dismay of being canceled. One tweet or blog post or comment that doesn’t measure up to the purity code, and you’re out.

Canceling seems to move against every lesson that Jesus tells us about how grace works. No grace or transformation exists in cancel culture. It’s about social shaming. Nuance is lost as the humanity of the opponent is canceled. Violence becomes easier once opponents are dehumanized. Just like that, we’ve circled back to the parable of the wheat and the weeds; back to the either/or proposition of ideological purity. Ultimately, we’re back to the cross, where shame and ideological purity lead to inevitable violent death. And the earth groans in its shadow.

No wonder the whole earth is groaning as described in the Romans reading. The Apostle Paul who wrote the letter to the Romans, seldom used creation language. This is one of those rare times he writes about creation, much less so poetically. But first he dabbles in the first century inclination to pit our flesh against our spirit. Once again, the either/or proposition becomes oversimplified in such distinctions. Human beings are bodies AND spirits. However, the Apostle Paul makes a key theological move by indirectly placing the wheat-and-weeds-like distinction within each person. He makes an important claim that our whole selves wrestle with being saint and sinner at the same time. If you want to be Christian-fancy, you can quote Martin Luther’s “simul iustus et peccator” – simultaneously righteous and a sinner. The letter to the Romans describes it as adoption out of bondage to decay. That’s heavy-handed language but it gets at an important truth about our tendencies as earth’s creatures. Our hope rests in the comfort of adoption and the challenge of labor.

The metaphor of groaning in labor aptly describes our current moment. The groans of labor come from a deep, primal place, when the process is simply experienced. Oh sure, there’s coaching and catching the baby. But the process of labor itself will have its way. Pregnancy and labor are painful and hard but also expectant and hopeful. Translating that hope into our collective lives, maybe what we’re laboring through in this world will birth a society better equipped for 21^st century life together. We’re at a time when groans of despair are intermittently muted by shouts of rage. Not a lot of fun to be had, but there is hope. The kind of hope experienced by a laboring woman.

In the birth process, groaning in labor is active waiting. (Lest we think that we’re being encouraged by the Apostle Paul to hang out in a Barcalounger recliner while we wait.) Labor is active, sweaty, messy, painful waiting. Our adoption as children of God calls us into midwifery for a planet groaning in labor.

We’re called to be midwives of hope who can see the good and the beautiful alongside the hard and the painful, who are able to tend the sweet young wheat whilst knowing the weeds will simultaneously exist in each one of us and that others may need to be called on their weediness when they dehumanize and destroy. Being midwives of hope may mean being guided by the angels of our better nature to see the humanity in each person, in even our enemies, when we’re asked to align with false ideological purity over and against our fellow humans. Or to paraphrase Rev. Dr. King, “Let no one bring you so low as to hate them.” Or maybe a more apropos way to say it given this morning’s Bible reading from Romans would be to rely on our baptisms of adoption as children of God.

During the rite of baptism, we pray to God to:

“Sustain [the baptized] with the gift of your Holy Spirit: the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, the spirit of joy in your presence, both now and forever. Amen.”

This baptismal prayer names the Holy Spirit as the One who empowers us as the adopted children of God to midwife the birth of hope through the labor of creation’s groanings. We’ve got this! Amen.

_________________________________________________________

[1] Karoline Lewis, Professor of Homiletics, Lutheran Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Discussion on the lectionary worship texts for Sunday, July 19, 2026. #1093: Eighth Sunday after Pentecost – July 19, 2026 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[2] Cody J. Sanders, Professor of Congregation and Community Care, Lutheran Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Discussion on the lectionary worship texts for Sunday, July 19, 2026. #1093: Eighth Sunday after Pentecost – July 19, 2026 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[3] Matthew 18:6

[4] Matthew 5:7 and 9

[5] Matthew 22:39

[6] Ibid, Sanders.

[7] Matthew 5:3 and 10

[8] What Does Ash Do For Soil? – Complete Soil Enrichment Guide – GardenerBible

[9] Merriam-Webster. “What It Means to Get ‘Canceled.’” https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/cancel-culture-words-were-watching#:~:text=The%20term%20has%20been%20credited,calls%20to%20cancel%20such%20figures.

[10] Petra Bueskens. An Apology to JK Rowling. June 23, 2020. Areo: Politics, Culture & Media. https://areomagazine.com/2020/06/23/an-apology-to-jk-rowling/

Preaching, Sermons

Civic Freedom and Christian Freedom [OR Happy Bisesquicentennial!!]

July 5, 2026 caitlin121608

**sermon art: Freedom Sculpture — America 250 — Zenos Frudakis

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on July 5, 2026

[sermon begins after two Bible readings; Zechariah reading is after the sermon]

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 [Jesus spoke to the crowd saying:] ¹⁶ “To what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another,
¹⁷ ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.’
¹⁸ “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; ¹⁹ the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”
²⁵ At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; ²⁶ yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. ²⁷ All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
²⁸ “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Romans 7:15-25a I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶ Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ But in fact it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸ For I know that the good does not dwell within me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do the good lies close at hand, but not the ability. ¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me.
²¹ So I find it to be a law that, when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. ²² For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, ²³ but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴ Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ^25a Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

[sermon begins]

Happy bisesquicentennial! Or is it a happy sestercentennial? Or maybe it’s quartermillenial. Or perhaps you agree with the United States’ official term semiquincentennial. As a word-nerd, I prefer the former-most term. Bisesquicentennial packs poetic punch along with an insanely impressive number of syllables. Regardless, they all mean the same thing. These words denote the 250-year mark of a date or event like the 250^th celebration of our country’s Independence Day from England. Americans in the United States commemorate our democracy that began as a fledgling republic. On King Charles’ recent trip to the states in April, he noted, “The [Founders] were bold and imaginative rebels with a cause. Two hundred and fifty years ago, or, as we say in the United Kingdom ‘just the other day,’ they declared Independence.”[1]

“Just the other day” to many countries around the world, we are a country with youthful idealism about democracy and especially about freedom. These foundational ideals inspired passionate freedom movements that changed our civic life together over the past 250 years. Some of these movements were led by non-religious humanists and others were led by citizens across the religious spectrum. The shared ideal and essence of the conflicts often boiled down to who our countries’ freedoms are for. We can call this civic freedom or state freedom.

One challenge for Christians in the United States is that we talk about Christian freedom in the church. We are made free by what Jesus did and who Jesus is. But it’s difficult to tease apart these two freedoms because we interpret the separation of church and state to mean that we can’t talk about them in the same breath. Alas, this means that we don’t get to practice talking about these two major identities in our lives. Being an American AND being a Christian.

I am both. No shock there. I love my country, the place of my birth. I love our shared story, and I love our millions upon millions of different stories even as I lament historical and present day suffering caused by my country. I’m a patriot who appreciates the Framers’ founding documents that promise freedom then and now. I cry when I sing our national anthem and our black national anthem. I’m inspired to do better when I hear the stories of people and communities from whom freedom is withheld by habit or trampled by malice. I love that we can gather on Sunday mornings to worship, as do my Jewish family members who light Shabbat candles on Friday evenings, as do my Muslim friends who pray multiple times a day. I’m grateful for family and strangers who have served in the United States military who have protected all our freedoms.

Civic freedom is complex. Christian freedom is also. A couple of Sundays ago, Pastor Michael preached about Christian freedom. He said, “The strange promise of the gospel is that when God occupies the center, other loves are…freed. [Jesus] wants to free our congregation, our nation, and every other good gift from having to carry a weight they were never meant to bear. When God is first, everything else is finally free to be what it actually is. Not less loved, but more rightly loved. Not diminished, but liberated.”[2] Pastor Michael’s sermon caught my ear in a particular way because I was already working with our scripture for today and the confusion from conflating our civic freedom and our Christian freedoms.

Jesus’ preaching in our Bible reading this morning challenges his listeners, the crowds. The missing verses from today’s reading include Jesus’ woes to unrepentant cities. Cities who rejected Jesus’ deeds of power that gave sight to the blind, healed the lame, and raised the dead. Into the cultural chaos of unrepentant cities, Jesus commanded his listeners. He said, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” The language of the scripture is an imperative. Jesus is not suggesting or inviting or sweet-talking the crowds. In the Greek, he speaks in the imperative tense of command. “Come to me…” He commands the weary. In Jesus’ command to “come to him’ he also says, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.”

The language of “yoke” was often used by Jewish rabbis as a symbol for Torah and teaching. Yokes were used by farmers to connect animals to harness their power for heavy lifting beyond human capacity. It makes some sense that Jesus would use it with his listeners here. He leads his followers into the heavy lifting of loving God, loving self and neighbor, feeding the hungry, caring for widows and orphans, and setting the prisoners free. Jesus aligns himself with centuries of Jewish tradition as he commands the crowds to learn from him because, in his words, “I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

A gentle and humble Jesus’ described his yoke as easy, and his burden light. He didn’t, and doesn’t, use violence to take his listeners by force or fear. He commands in freedom. Christian freedom. Freedom to be on the way of Jesus, to live by faith, not to live by the sin to which we are bound.

Which gets us to Paul’s letter to the Roman church in the Bible’s book of Romans. He wrote, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…Now if I do what I DO NOT want, it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me.” Paul wasn’t having a crisis of confidence. Elsewhere he wrote about being an upstanding Roman citizen and a righteous Jew.[3] Paul’s writing here captures a truth about sin that many of us experience. We don’t seem to be able to solve sin ourselves—our own sin much less the sin of others. Sin describes our separation from God that leads to sins, plural. Sins that include violence against our very own selves and inflicts ourselves on the people around us. Violence is anything that is the opposite of the love we’re yoked to in Jesus. The paradoxical yoke of Jesus that binds us to obedience in love and for love as we are freed by faith into his love.[4]

Freed by the yoke of Jesus into naming my sin that separates me from God and other people also allows the wide-angle view of how my sin becomes cooperative and systemic, even intentional through willful ignorance. We are social creatures. It makes sense that our individual moral failings combine to form social systems that bind us further into what we do not want.[5] Big examples include the intentionality of the opioid epidemic or tech algorithms that change our neurobiology.[6] Insidious, quieter examples are local and national laws and legislation that make it hard to feed our families or take care of our bodies or recover our lives after being in prison or to find places of rest.

Our 21^st century moment is moving fast and can feel exhausting. Jesus’ promises rest for our souls. Souls are the deepest part of ourselves. The soul is often how we describe where God connects with us. There’s so much coming at us that demands our identities right through our souls. And before we’re aware of it, we’ve squandered our Christian freedom and foundational identity in Jesus Christ. No longer are guided in faith by the One who teaches us to follow his gentle humility. We unyoke ourselves from the One who commands us to love and pray for our enemies only to become the very worst of our enemies. We unyoke ourselves from the One who frees us from sin, as the Apostle Paul writes in Romans, only to be “at war with the law of [our minds], making [us] captive to the law of sin.”[7] We unyoke ourselves from the One who revealed on a cross that vicious insults and violence have only one end–death.

Jesus commands us to learn from him, he who is gentle and humble in heart. Jesus was the embodiment of our reading from Zechariah—a humble, triumphant king riding on a donkey leading “prisoners of hope.”[8] You may remember hearing that verse quoted on March 29^th in the Palm Sunday Gospel reading from the 21^st chapter of Matthew.[9] Jesus entered Jerusalem for the last time before he was executed in a plot concocted by religious and Roman leaders. The crowds, prisoners of hope, celebrated his arrival as he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.

We, too, are prisoners of hope given a foundational identity in Jesus Christ – our humble, triumphant, non-violent king. We who are weary are commanded to come to Jesus with our heavy burdens to learn from him and rest our exhausted souls. Yoked with Jesus we are freed to share repentance, forgiveness, wisdom, gentleness, and humility. These are gifts given as promise for God’s sake, for our sake, and for the sake of the world. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”[10]

___________________________________________

[1] King Charles III, The King’s Full Address to Congress on April 26, 2026. King Charles’ speech to Congress: Read full transcript – NBC New York

[2] Michael Tassler. Matthew 10:24-39 – Hanging Our Hearts. Augustana Lutheran Church. June 21, 2026. https://www.youtube.com/live/twgH_7qfBxc?si=lqmR3htIAcV_tbhz minute 24:34.

[3] Matt Skinner, Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Podcast discussion on the worship readings for July 5, 2026. #1091: Sixth Sunday after Pentecost – July 5, 2026 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[4] Karoline Lewis, Professor of Biblical Preaching, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Podcast discussion on the worship readings for July 5, 2026. #1091: Sixth Sunday after Pentecost – July 5, 2026 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[5] Cody J. Sanders, Associate Professor of Congregational and Community Care Leadership, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Podcast discussion on the worship readings for July 5, 2026. #1091: Sixth Sunday after Pentecost – July 5, 2026 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[6] Ibid.

[7] Romans 7:23

[8] Zechariah 9:12

[9] Matthew 21:1-11

[10] Romans 7:25a

_____________________________________________

Zechariah 9:9-12 Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
¹⁰ He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
¹¹ As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you,
I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.
¹² Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;
today I declare that I will restore to you double.

Preaching, Sermons

Love Poured Into Our Hearts [OR A Human Glimmer in the Social Medias]

June 14, 2026 caitlin121608

**sermon art: Truelove (Heart Series) by Elizabeth Chapman, acrylic on canvas

Pastor Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on June 14, 2026

[sermon begins after two Bible readings]

Romans 5:1-8 Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ² through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. ³ And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, ⁴ and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵ and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
⁶ For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. ⁸ But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

Matthew 9:35-10:14 Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness. ³⁶ When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. ³⁷ Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; ³⁸ therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
^10:1 Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. ² These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee and his brother John; ³ Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus; ⁴ Simon the Cananaean and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.
⁵ These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not take a road leading to gentiles, and do not enter a Samaritan town, ⁶ but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ⁷ As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ ⁸ Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. [⁹ Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, ¹⁰ no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff, for laborers deserve their food. ¹¹ Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. ¹² As you enter the house, greet it. ¹³ If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it, but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. ¹⁴ If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.

[sermon begins]

The positives about social media are rarely touted. That there’s anything to feel positive about is tough to imagine if you haven’t experienced it or you’ve experienced the opposite of it or you’re in recovery from addiction to it. Acknowledge that that’s a lot of “ifs,” humor me for a moment, if you would. Besides the fact that the socials connect me with childhood friends, extended family, and neighbors who don’t live on my street, the social medias give me ready access to my favorite cooks, artists, writers, comedians, professors, historians, and leadership experts. My Grandma Ruth, who was a librarian, would be stunned by the information at our fingertips. But what I find most amazing about the social medias is the human connections there, especially around health issues or grief and loss. I’m not talking about large scale events around the world. Our very human bodies aren’t designed to hold all the things all the time all at once.

I’m talking about when someone I know posts about the death of someone close to them, the compassion pouring towards them from the rest of us is immediate. Similarly, encouragement flies fast towards someone who is in the hospital or on the slow road of healing. Obviously, the encouragement isn’t sufficient to alleviate the suffering. But it is a human glimmer of hope as it can help people feel less alone. The social media example breaks down pretty quickly when it comes to biblical interpretation, just to say it out loud, but there is something to be said when we see support and encouragement play out in the world analogous to how we’re encouraged to be the church in the world.

As I preached last week, Jesus invited unlikely people to follow him. It’s no secret that God collects the unlikeliest people into God’s plan and sends them out to show love the world. It just surprises us when it happens. Today’s Bible story shows Jesus moved to compassion when he sees harassed and helpless crowds of people. He commissions his followers to heal the suffering that they see around them. The kingdom of heaven coming near brings practical help to hurting people. Jesus instructs his apostles to start with those closest to home, their fellow Jews. They already have a shared language and a shared God. They are a good place to start. As the apostles heal people, Jesus tells them to travel light and hold their message lightly when there’s resistance. Dust off your feet and keep moving, he tells them. Jesus prompts urgency because people are suffering.

Suffering cannot be compared. It’s a lot like beauty that way. What’s more beautiful—the fiery orange of a Colorado sunset or the riotous tumble of pink peonies? It’s a ridiculous question. Suffering is similar. Being with someone who is suffering for any reason is NOT a time to get into qualifying their experience, giving a different take on it, or redirecting them to someone else’s experience of suffering worse than they are. That stuff is the opposite of helpful. Being with someone who is suffering IS a time to listen and to wonder. It’s a time to share their burden by holding space for it without rushing to comfort. Sharing the burden lightens the suffering without imagining that it can be taken away.

Suffering is something the Apostle Paul seemed to deeply understand in his letter to the fledgling Roman church. How often do you suppose he cried out to God withOUT a pen in hand? It must have been a lot given his transformation from the one punishing the earliest Christians to the one being beaten, stoned, and imprisoned for his faith.[1] He knew suffering intimately to be able to write about suffering as he only he could. He knew suffering like a friend, just like he knew God as a friend.

If you would, open your worship bulletin to the Romans reading again. In verse 8, Paul connects God’s love to the cross. Love is the heart of the matter for Paul as he pivots into the next four chapters of his letter.[2] Now look at the end of verse 3 and follow along with me:

…affliction produces endurance, ⁴and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

The Apostle Paul is talking to all of us. One reason his words about affliction and suffering resonate so strongly is because he describes what he knows and what we know. He knows enough to be comforting. Comfort is no small thing. It’s not appeasement – meaning I’m not making you feel better so that I feel better. Comfort is deep knowing shared across our human experience. Most of us have experienced suffering and still we live on. Some of us live in the struggle but still we live. Paul’s account of moving from affliction to endurance to character to hope is a description not a strategy. He describes what we know by faith and experience about how suffering works. There are days in the midst of it that we wonder how it’s possible to make it through. Days in which we’re not sure who we are anymore. And then, in the body of Christ, the church, we’re reminded once again of the main things – God’s promises to us no matter what is happening.

Paul talks about affliction, endurance, character, and hope NOT as a way to redemption. We’re not better people because we suffer. We’re not made more pure because we suffer. Rather, sometimes we see more easily what’s most important when we are suffering. Paul alludes to it in Romans and later writes in Corinthians that the most important thing, the greatest thing, is love.[3] As much as Paul likes theology, he’s not solving a theological problem here, he’s encouraging the first century churches that God’s story is a love story. God’s love story about how God demonstrates God’s love for people through action, through Jesus’ self-sacrificing death on the cross. The cross defies explanation but insists that it reveals love.[4] Divine love. God’s love.

We’re at a time on the planet when the church is especially positioned to talk about being human and to simply be human together. Pope Leo just wrote a formal encyclical about the grandeur of being human and being human together in the age of Artificial Intelligence. Organizational thinkers are reflecting on our shared humanity and what it means to think and work together with A.I. and without it. Artists and musicians are creating purely human expressions of our experience—both the beauty and the pain of being human. Church is an inherently human experience encountering the divine.

Jesus connected his followers with each other, coached them, and sent them out to heal. As he prepared them to deal with conflict, he also gave them hope. Hope that healing was possible through their hands because they were sent by God who loves the world.

God’s love is known through action. For the church, we’re promised God’s action in Jesus. Jesus’ ministry of love and justice while he walked the earth. Jesus’ death on a cross revealing the depth of divine love. Jesus present in water, bread, and wine so that we become the mercy and love that we receive. God’s love certainly isn’t limited to God’s church, but we are commissioned into God’s work of love, of healing, of hope for the sake of the world. “Because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Thanks be to God. And amen.

_______________________________________________________

[1] Acts 7 (when Paul was still Saul); Acts chapters 9, 13, 14, 16, 18, 21, 22, and 23.

[2] Matt Skinner, Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Sermon Brainwave Podcast #908: Third Sunday after Pentecost – June 18, 2023.

[3] 1 Corinthians 13:13

[4] Ibid., Skinner.

Preaching, Sermons

Taking a Blessing You Can’t Ask For [OR Pride Month is a Good Time to Talk about Grace and Restoration]

June 7, 2026 caitlin121608

**sermon art: Rainbow Jesus by Tony Rubino (2020) acrylic on canvas

Pastor Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on June 7, 2026

[sermon begins after the Bible story; see two more readings at the end of the sermon]

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26 As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.
¹⁰ And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. ¹¹ When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” ¹² But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. ¹³ Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”
¹⁸ While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” ¹⁹ And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. ²⁰ Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, ²¹ for she was saying to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” ²² Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And the woman was made well from that moment. ²³ When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, ²⁴ he said, “Go away, for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. ²⁵ But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. ²⁶ And the report of this spread through all of that district.

[sermon begins]

A note on the apartment door said to come on in. Once inside, I noticed that there were shoes lined up inside the door on a towel. My heart sank. I knew the state of my socks because I’d put them on that morning. They were bright pink with a hole starting at the big toe. No one would ever have known because they were confined inside my black boots which were draped by my slacks. [Sigh.] I took off my boots inside the door and added them to the towel. One of my very first hospice patients was also one of my first adult patients. Up to that point I’d worked on pediatric units in hospitals with the proper socks and shoes for such occasions. But my clinical mentor in graduate school said that if I didn’t find my dream job right away in pediatric pain management that I should check out hospice because I’d learn more about symptom management than I’d ever dreamed. Thus, Denver Hospice. Thus, my first ever adult patients. Thus, standing in the living room of a stranger attempting to be professional with holey bright pink socks.

I walked into the next room where the young man in the hospital bed was being tended by a nurse aide. He took one look at me, saw my socks, and burst out laughing. Today, I can feel grateful that my fashion faux pas brought some laughter to his last days. Back then, I was mortified by the absurdity and that I wouldn’t be taken seriously as an R.N.. And I was worried that this young man with advanced Kaposi sarcoma lesions on his face and in the last stages of AIDS would feel disrespected by my ill-conceived sock wear. But that wasn’t the case. Rather, the young man’s laughter at the silly socks became one more step into grace as my world expanded through relationship with someone I never would have met otherwise.

I wonder if Matthew felt a little like that when he looked back on meeting Jesus. Although he had more going on than an awkwardly exposed big toe. He was sitting at his tax collector table, a traitor to his Jewish friends.[1] Tax collectors took profits for themselves as well as Rome. Jesus walks by and restores Matthew with two words. “Follow me.” It’s quite remarkable that Matthew actually follows him. The second remarkable thing Matthew does is throw a party for Jesus with other tax collectors and sinners. We don’t really know if these sinners are people who have been othered for religious or cultural reasons or if they really are bad actors hurting people with intention.[2] Regardless, the party attracts the interest of religious leaders called Pharisees who question Jesus’ disciples about his eating with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus answered their accusatory question himself, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

Jesus’ mercy is BIG. So big that the Gospel of Matthew reveals restorative mercy time and again throughout the story it tells about Jesus. Mercy way bigger than we can conceive overriding any judgment indicting us. Lutheran Christians often use the language of grace and mercy interchangeably—celebrating God’s grace as God’s last word.

After Jesus told Matthew to follow him and defended himself to the Pharisees, another synagogue leader asked Jesus to come help his daughter live. While on the way, a woman who talked to herself and whose blood flowed from her body nonstop for 12 years, reached out from behind Jesus to touch the fringe of his cloak. It’s difficult to convey how edgy, how radically audacious, how desperate this woman was to touch any part of Jesus’ attire or person. We live in a time of hugging and handshaking between all kinds of people across color, gender, religions, and more. In the first century, women on their periods weren’t allowed out publicly and they certainly weren’t allowed to touch men. Tough to imagine those norms but they were very real with serious consequences to life and limb if those norms were breached.

I love the image of this woman crossing all the boundaries to touch Jesus, to take a blessing that she couldn’t ask for.[3] Even better? It worked. Her story is an interesting lens for considering other communities for whom this has been true over time. Communities who took Jesus’ blessings they couldn’t ask for.

As Pride month launches, it’s a good time to remember our queer ancestors in the faith. These folks weren’t allowed to worship in their home churches even to return for family funerals. They couldn’t follow Jesus’ call to ministry as preachers and teachers. In the LGBTQIA+ community, reaching out to secretly touch the fringe of Jesus’ cloak looked like the Eucharistic Catholic Church who began meeting in 1946 led by a Catholic ex-seminarian.[4] Touching Jesus’ fringe in secret also looked like Pentecostal Pastor Troy Perry in 1968, who gathered 12 other faithful Christians into his living room for worship when they weren’t welcome elsewhere and so began the largest grass roots LGBTQ+ movement now called the Metropolitan Community Church.[5] Like the woman in our Bible story today who was blessed and affirmed for her faithful action, these folks secretly came to Jesus to take what was needed by faith.

Why the church history lesson? Because over the centuries, claiming scriptural authority and the authority of Jesus, Christians have taken positions against groups of people based on their identities and used the Bible to do it. In light of Pride Month, it’s good to note that there are only seven instances in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible combined that comment on anything remotely related to homosexuality, and certainly not reflecting our 21^st century experience and knowledge of it.[6] Compare this to the 2,000 Bible verses about money and greed; or the over 500 verses about love. Neither the Ten Commandments, nor any of the prophets mention homosexuality. Jesus doesn’t say a word about it in the gospels. Not. One. Word.

Most recently in our congregation, our Welcome Connection Ministry has formed a Guiding Group of queer and straight Augustana folks “to help us listen well, speak honestly, and grow more deeply into the welcome we already experience and proclaim, especially alongside and with the children and adults in the Augustana community who are LGBTQIA+ and/or Black, Indigenous, or people of color (BIPOC).”[7]

This work is about becoming who we already are alongside our queer members and staff in a 2,000-year-old tradition that has caused harm in ways that we’ve no wish to perpetuate by accident of habit or unexamined practices. There may be awkward moments akin to taking off my black boots to reveal a holey pink sock that fit the moment only because my hospice patient’s laughter was full of grace and good humor. There may be other moments more painful than awkward in which the depth of our grace will be tested.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus commits acts of restorative mercy as he did flagrantly with the call of Matthew the tax collector, as he did quietly with the shamed and bleeding woman, and as he did publicly with the synagogue leader’s daughter. Many of us fit in at least one of those examples of our ancestors in the faith, restored daily in Christian community by the audacity of Jesus who calls us together to be his body in the world, excluding no one.

Like the prophet Hosea, we are drawn by God’s steadfast love through liturgical repentance into the restorative mercy of justice and righteousness.[8] Like Abraham, we are “hoping against hope” that God’s promises and reliability hold true against our doubts, fears, and fatigue.[9] Our faith rests on the grace of God revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord who radically restores us to God and to each other for the sake of the world God so loves. Thanks be to God and amen.

___________________________________________________

[1] Danny Zacharias, Associate Dean and Professor of New Testament Studies, Acadia Divinity Studies, Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Commentary on Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26. Commentary on Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[2] Matt Skinner, Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Commentary Podcast on Bible readings for 6/7/26. #1087: Second Sunday of Pentecost – June 7, 2026 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[3] Cody Sanders, Professor of Congregational and Community Care Leadership, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Commentary Podcast on Bible readings for 6/7/26. #1087: Second Sunday of Pentecost – June 7, 2026 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[4] Livia Gerson, The Origins of LGBTQ-Affirming Churches – JSTOR Daily, March 23, 2021.

[5] Sanders, ibid.

[6] Peter J. Gomes. The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart (New York: HarperCollins Publisher Inc., 1996).

[7] The Tower (Augustana’s Monthly Newsletter), “Becoming Who We Are: Alongside and with LGBTQIA+ persons and people of color in our community.” May 2026, Volume 50, No. 5, page 7.

[8] Bo Lim, Associate Professor of Old Testament, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA, USA. Commentary on Hosea 5:15-6:6. Commentary on Hosea 5:15-6:6 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[9] Sanders, ibid.

________________________________________________

Hosea 5:15—6:6

¹⁵ I will return again to my place
until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face.
In their distress they will beg my favor:^6:1 “Come, let us return to the Lord,
for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us;
he has struck down, and he will bind us up.
² After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will raise us up,
that we may live before him.
³ Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord;
his appearing is as sure as the dawn;
he will come to us like the showers,
like the spring rains that water the earth.”

⁴ What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
What shall I do with you, O Judah?
Your love is like a morning cloud,
like the dew that goes away early.
⁵ Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets;
I have killed them by the words of my mouth,
and my judgment goes forth as the light.
⁶ For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

Romans 4:13-25

¹³ The promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. ¹⁴ For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. ¹⁵ For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, neither is there transgression.
¹⁶ For this reason the promise depends on faith, in order that it may rest on grace, so that it may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (who is the father of all of us, ¹⁷ as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”), in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. ¹⁸ Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations,” according to what was said, “So shall your descendants be.” ¹⁹ He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), and the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. ²⁰ No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, ²¹ being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. ²² Therefore “it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” ²³ Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone ²⁴ but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, ²⁵ who was handed over for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.

Preaching, Sermons

Peace to Share, Peace to Send [OR A Prevailing Pentecostal Peace]

May 24, 2026 caitlin121608

**sermon art: Pentecost by Mark Wiggin

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on May 24, 2026

[sermon begins after two Bible readings; see the other two at the end of the sermon]

John 20:19-23 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁰ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. ²¹ Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” ²² When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³ If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Acts 2:1-12 When the day of Pentecost had come, [the apostles] were all together in one place. ² And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³ Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴ All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
⁵ Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶ And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷ Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸ And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? ⁹ Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰ Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹ Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” ¹² All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” ¹³ But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
¹⁴ But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Fellow Jews and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. ¹⁵ Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. ¹⁶ No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
¹⁷ ‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
¹⁸ Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit,
and they shall prophesy.
¹⁹ And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
²⁰ The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
²¹ Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ ”

[sermon begins]

Three weeks ago, it was standing room only in The Basilica-Cathedral of Our Lady of Altagracia, known by the locals as Basílica Catedral Nuestra Señora de la Altagracia. Omar, our cabbie, had dropped me off at mass and took Rob and the Trussell sprouts to the local market. The first Sunday of the month is a pilgrimage day, so Dominicans came from all over the country. Cars, vans, and coach buses filled the parking lot. Amid the heat and humidity, I stood packed in the sanctuary entrance, sharing air with the folks who’d also missed out on getting a seat among the over 3,000 of us there. My Spanish is as rudimentary as it is earnest, but the liturgy was comforting and familiar. Some of the responses I was able to say in broken Spanish and the rest of it I quietly spoke in English when I could tell where we were.

Very few times in my life has my skin color not been the main one in the group around me. I can count those situations on two hands, including my high school that was 89% Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). During the Basilica mass, I saw two other people that looked like me. Mostly, I was left to my own thoughts and experience except for during the sharing of the peace—el compartir la paz. The elderly gentleman in front of me turned, took my upper arms as I held his elbows and we said, “Paz.” His friends then shared it with me, clasping my arms and I theirs. Turning to my right, the young people and I did the same. I was moved to tears during this timeless, intimate ritual of reconciliation and Christian friendship as we shared Christ’s peace.

In John’s gospel, Jesus announced peace to his friends and showed them his wounds on his hands and his side. They rejoiced as had the women at the tomb who were the first witnesses of the resurrection. There was a lot to be relieved and happy about. Jesus was alive! Then he gave them the Spirit in a deeply intimate exchange of breath.

The disciples were locked in a room in Jerusalem in the three days after their friend and teacher was executed on a cross. Of course, they were afraid and hiding, not knowing who to trust. Jesus showed up in the midst of their fear. We all know what it’s like to feel afraid as the disciples did. Some of us more than others feel the fear of letting go of this life. Some of us feel the fear of political events beyond our control and wonder who to trust. Some of us feel fear closer to home as we simply survive. It’s into this fear and the way that it holds us captive that Jesus announces his peace and breathes the Spirit into us to send us out in peace. He said, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Jesus simultaneously comforts with a word of peace and challenges as he sends them on their way to serve others as he served in his earthly ministry.

The John reading is as intimate and personal as the Acts reading is wondrous and communal while both stories are extraordinary experiences of the Spirit. In Acts, the first century church received the Spirit in a blaze of glory. The long list of peoples pronounced for us during the reading spoke languages from lands across the Mediterranean Sea, east of the Caspian Sea, and south of the Persian Gulf. Places we know today as Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The Spirit of Jesus poured out in a new way over this multiethnic group of folks without regard for position and rank.[1] The Spirit moved through the young, the old, the men, the women, and the slaves. The Spirit lit them up with prophesies, visions, and dreams.

No wonder other people thought they were drunk. Pentecost fire had a moment with the people and left them changed to become the church they were sent to be. They are part of who we are because we exist as a congregation, a small corner of God’s whole church, the meaning of the church catholic with a little “c.” But their ecstatic moment was not forever. Their euphoria and wonder quieted.

Life in the faith became challenging almost immediately as the twists and turns of history subdued their Pentecostal fervor through the twists and turns of history. But, for a moment, there was an experience of unity that amazed and perplexed the people. They heard their own language and couldn’t fathom how it could be, so they wrote it off as drunken babble. And then Peter began to preach.

Preaching is an act that has little to do with the preacher and everything to do with the Holy Spirit – a stark and humbling truth for a preacher. Many a preacher has had the experience of people hearing something in the sermon that the preacher didn’t say but was something that that person dearly needed to hear. Lutheran Christians believe that through preaching the Holy Spirit calls us by the gospel, the good news of Jesus, and fills us with faith. I had that experience through the words of a preacher and the power of the Holy Spirit. I was amazed and perplexed week after week hearing about grace, forgiveness, mercy, beauty, and hope while receiving faith through that same preaching. The message of being unconditionally beloved and created good as the first act of God was new to my adult ears. That God’s breath of the Spirit created wonder and life and, as we heard in the Psalm today, even joy as the Leviathan of the sea sported in chaos of the deep.[2]

God does not leave us swirling in the chaos but brings us to new life – to the life of the Spirit’s imagination and, thankfully, not our own. Often, what we can imagine fits into specific limits of good and bad, order and chaos, black and white, and so on. What we can imagine is limited by the languages we speak and the kinds of people we know. From those limits we make decisions both conscious and unconscious about how we think the world works.

Someone who is fluent in eight different languages recently said that when you speak another language you are a slightly different version of yourself in that language because language strongly impacts our thinking and interactions. It’s astonishing to watch as we did our daughter’s bilingual fluency in Spanish. She was our translator in the Dominican Republic. Watching someone respond to her with either relief or respect as she crossed the barrier of language, culture, and thinking, added to my own experience of how language works across difference. And led me to wonder what it means to understand and be understood as a feature of the gospel by the power of the Spirit.

Thankfully, the Spirit blows through our assumptions and sends us into the world with something different. We’re sent as specific individuals with what makes us ourselves and we’re sent with something quite global that is deeper than color, culture, or protocol and builds multiethnic community unified by the Spirit over and against the uniformity of our limited experience. Unity is not uniform. As on the first Pentecost, unity functions through difference to amaze and perplex us as well as to challenge our assumptions about meaning by pausing long enough to ask the question, “What does this mean?” More than an academic question, this is a faithful question to ask ourselves.

The earliest Christians were led by the Holy Spirit to cross culturally defined boundaries including ethnicities. Their experience makes we wonder how we attain fluencies to be aware of ourselves and others so that channels are opened between us. This isn’t about learning Spanish. Although by all means go for it. This is about the Spirit opening us to an understanding greater than ourselves for the good of each other and for the sake of the world. Ecstatic experience of the Spirit inspires and deepens our peace to encounter the other as connected to us by the gospel and love of God. May the Spirit fill us with the fire of faith as we share Christ’s peace among us and as we’re sent out to do the same. Alleluia and amen.

_________________________________________________

[1] Matthew Skinner, Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary. Sermon Brainwave for Pentecost, May 31, 2020. https://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=1267

[2] Rolf Jacobson, Professor of Old Testament, Luther Seminary. Sermon Brainwave for Pentecost, May 31, 2020. https://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=1267

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Psalm 104:24-34, 35b

²⁴ O Lord, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom you have made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
²⁵ There is the sea, great and wide;
creeping things innumerable are there,
living things both small and great.
²⁶ There go the ships
and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.
²⁷ These all look to you
to give them their food in due season;
²⁸ when you give to them, they gather it up;
when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
²⁹ When you hide your face, they are dismayed;
when you take away their breath, they die
and return to their dust.
³⁰ When you send forth your spirit, they are created,
and you renew the face of the ground.
³¹ May the glory of the Lord endure forever;
may the Lord rejoice in his works—
³² who looks on the earth and it trembles,
who touches the mountains and they smoke.
³³ I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praise to my God while I have being.
³⁴ May my meditation be pleasing to him,
for I rejoice in the Lord.
³⁵ Let sinners be consumed from the earth,
and let the wicked be no more.
Bless the Lord, O my soul.
Praise the Lord!

1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

Sermons

Grace at the Gate [OR Holy Fire & Hot Wings]

April 26, 2026 caitlin121608

**sermon art: Generosity by Stig Lofnes, oil on canvas

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on April 26, 2026

[sermon begins after the Bible reading]

John 10:1-10 [Jesus said:] ¹ “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. ² The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. ³ The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. ⁴ When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. ⁵ They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” ⁶ Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
⁷ So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. ⁸ All who came before me are thieves and bandits, but the sheep did not listen to them. ⁹ I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture. ¹⁰ The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

[sermon begins]

You may have felt a Holy Spirit surge over the past few days as Lutherans across our four state Rocky Mountain Synod gathered in Denver for our Synod Assembly led by elected Bishop Meghan Johnston Aelabouni.[1] We hosted a special guest this year. Imran Mohammed Siddiqui is Vice President of the ELCA, Augustana’s denomination. and chairs the Churchwide Council.[2] “An atheist in college, he converted to Christianity in 2009 through the work of the Spirit in the Pentecostal church. After being invited by two of his friends to worship at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Atlanta in 2011, he fell in love with the liturgy and the Lutheran focus on God’s grace.”[3] He brought our Presiding Bishop Yehiel Curry’s welcome to the Assembly.

Imran partook in a hot wing interview with Bishop Meghan and Synod V.P. Ray Ferry. In a hot wing interview, the participants eat progressively hotter wings while talking with each other. During the hottest of the wings, Imran got fired up about God’s grace that we celebrate and need to share. People need to hear about God’s unconditional grace and love from us. He said that we have literal words of life to share with the people around us and asked why aren’t we doing it!

A few weeks ago, Pastor Michael preached to us about the sign that comes right before ours today—the man born blind to whom Jesus gives sight. The man born blind, who could now see because of Jesus, was launched into fame of his own. And he was also launched into community. Rather than narrow the playing field. Jesus opened it to include one more so that the man could have life and have it abundantly. Jesus who said, “I AM the gate,” opened it wider.

Jesus is all about abundance in the gospel of John.[4] Fine wine that overflows at a wedding. Bread and fish that feed 5,000. Love that pours through death. Life that lives beyond it. Sign after sign accomplished by Jesus to reveal the risen one who laid his life down. That’s in verse 11 just after our gospel reading today, Jesus said, “I AM the good shepherd—the good shepherd lays his life down for his sheep.” On Good Shepherd Sunday, it’s easy to get confused as to whether Jesus is the gate or the shepherd. The answer to both is yes. Yes, Jesus is the gate. Yes, Jesus is the shepherd.

In our Bible reading, Jesus explains the sign of the sight restored to the man born blind in his discourse as the gate and the shepherd. Shepherds in the Bible are leaders and kings—Moses and King David are two of many shepherd examples, and then Jesus had the title. To give us a place to focus, hear Jesus’ gift to us as he says, “I am the gate.” He says it twice. “I am the gate.” A gate denying thieves and bandits their goals. A gate opened by nail-wounded hands. A gate opened for easy passage to food and life.

Jesus said that he came to give abundant life. The theme of our Synod Assembly was Life in Christ. Assembly is an interesting mash-up of lay folks, ministry leaders, and rostered deacons and pastors. Pat, Don, A.J., Pastor Michael, and I attended as Augustana’s voting members. We heard stories from folks in Lutheran Churches across Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado, and El Paso, Texas.

One story from Assembly that sticks with me was the interview of a college senior named Matt. He brings several of his friends to church every Sunday, driving around campus to pick them up. Matt’s faith is as much an open topic for him as everything else in his life. When friends are struggling, he says to them that he has something that works for him and asks if they’d like to hear about it. Depending on the situation, he may even offer to pray with them. What caught my attention was when he said to his friends that he has “something that works me.” When I was in my early 20s, I didn’t know which end was up religiously or theologically. The Jesus taught to me growing up was scary and unpredictable. I had two close friends that I was able to ask about their faith because the way they lived was compelling. Both of them said almost exactly what Matt said, “It works for me.” Matt is more assertive. He says, “I have something that works for me, would you like to hear about it?”

Some of us have reasons for why church or why Jesus works for us. Some of us may still be trying to figure it out. Jesus the Good Shepherd as a gate that stands open is one of mine. While I celebrate the heights of human achievement with those that scale them. I’m much more interested in the way Jesus levels the playing field by laying his life down and opening the gate for us all.

For Jesus followers, figuring out what works for us by faith and how to talk about it is a way of faith. It can also be a natural instinct to set up the gate so that we might feel some small glimmer of hope that our right faith keeps us safe from that which would harm us or destroy us. But we can so quickly turn our instinct into driving people out as if we ourselves are the gate, or at least the ticket-taker.

Jesus says to his disciples, “I am the gate.” Jesus as the open gate in this passage is very, very different than Jesus as a faith-ticket-taker. You know, like I have my ticket of faith which gives me entrance to the right church and then, at the just the right time, I hand my ticket of faith over to Jesus so that all will be well, so that I will be well.

I’m pretty sure there are no tickets of faith-in-Jesus that purchase protection for deflecting the worst kind of pain. Perhaps to confirm this we could check in with a few of our most faithful siblings in the nearest ICU or hospice.

And I’m pretty sure that there is no ticket-of-faith in Jesus that unleashes a cash windfall – perhaps we could check in with some of our poorest and most faithful siblings in Christ next door and around the planet who wonder where their next meal is coming from.

We experience faith living in the shadow of the cross while clinging to the promise of the Easter resurrection. In the season of Easter, we live on this side of the resurrection although we see it through a glass darkly.[5] The realities of the cross are real even today. Jesus does not describe a world free of bandits and thieves. Jesus names the bandits as real, as the powers that rob us of life and health.[6]

So then, Jesus is the gate to the abundance of what? He says, “I came so that you may have LIFE and have it abundantly.” That he says this through the specter of the cross is key. Jesus lives a truth about the mess of human reality on the cross. Jesus overcomes that reality not by ignoring it but by dying on it. Lighting up our vulnerability through his own—vulnerability that cannot be ignored. So then we can stop pretending that we know enough and are strong enough to be our own gates, our own gods. Jesus promises an abundant life that is the power of God’s love in the midst of real threats, in the middle of thieves and bandits who kill and destroy, who show up in the valley of the shadow of death.

Jesus is the gate through whose death and resurrection we enter and emerge into life abundant today, no waiting.

Jesus is the gate who sees the truth of the whole you – the image of God in you and the worst of the brokenness in you.

Jesus is the gate who promises that death, when it comes, may win the moment but does not win the day when you breathe your last in this body and awake in the next.

Jesus is the gate who lays his life down in unconditional love and grace for you. Alleluia and amen.

___________________________________

[1] Rmselca.org/assembly26

[2] ELCA.org

[3] Imran M. Siddiqui | People | ELCA

[4] Laura Holmes, Professor of New Testament, Wesleyan Theological Seminary, Washington D.C.. Commentary on John 10:1-10 for April 26, 2026. Commentary on John 10:1-10 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[5] 1 Corinthians 13:12 For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then shall I know, even as also I am known.

[6] Craig Koester, Gospel of John, Course Lecture at Luther Seminary, October, 13, 2010.

Preaching

Looking in the Rearview at The Road Taken [OR God Wastes Nothing—Cosmos, Creation, and Creature]

April 19, 2026 caitlin121608

**sermon photo: Nasa

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on April 19, 2026

[sermon begins after Bible reading]

Luke 24:13-35 Now on that same day two [disciples] were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, ¹⁴ and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. ¹⁵ While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, ¹⁶ but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. ¹⁷ And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. ¹⁸ Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” ¹⁹ He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, ²⁰ and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. ²¹ But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. ²² Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, ²³ and when they did not find his body there they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. ²⁴ Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see him.” ²⁵ Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! ²⁶ Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” ²⁷ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
²⁸ As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. ²⁹ But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. ³⁰ When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. ³¹ Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight. ³² They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” ³³ That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem, and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. ³⁴ They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” ³⁵ Then they told what had happened on the road and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

[sermon begins]

The first assignment in my 9^th grade drama class was choosing and memorizing a monologue to read in an accent different than my own. Thus was Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken,” earnestly butchered in a British accent by yours truly.[1] Sparing you the torment of a reenactment, Frost’s poem observes the chosen road from the rearview of looking back on it. It’s a very human thing to do. We make sense of our life by looking back, interpreting events and then reinterpreting them, wringing meaning from our experiences as we wrestle with them.

Our faith stories are similar. Those of us who’ve lived long enough can look back and see how God wastes nothing from our lives. Each wild misadventure. Each painful doubt. Each transcendent hymn. Each miserable failure. Each shining celebration. Each shattering grief. Each quiet joy. Each deep regret. Each sin forgiven. Each normal everyday moment. All those seems-like-yesterday moments spun by God through baptismal water into the cross-and-resurrection Easter faith we live today.

For Cleopas and his friend on the road to Emmaus, yesterday couldn’t come soon enough to start making sense of all they’d seen and heard and felt in Jerusalem. They had a seven-mile walk ahead of them. Just that morning the women disciples had come racing from the tomb to tell them that Jesus was alive. While the two friends walked and talked, the freshly resurrected Jesus joined them. They didn’t know it was Jesus and regaled him with their story. “Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, [Jesus] interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” He preached way, way back about himself through Moses and the prophets before his earthly yesterdays, stories winding through time that made Jesus himself.

It’s not lost on THIS preacher (pointing at myself) that his lengthy sermon did NOT open the two friends’ eyes to Jesus. The big reveal happened through the meal. “When [Jesus] was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.” Ahhh, they ate and then the scriptures and preaching made sense. Hindsight. Looking back through a current experience to see something new on the road we traveled.

Making sense of things in the moment and seeing God’s activity in real time can be tough. Communing and talking with another Jesus follower, sharing our experiences through faith, can make all the difference in our faith. Very few people are good at figuring things out all by themselves in real time. Most of us need other people as we understand our experiences, allowing the roots of faith to deepen as our stories wind across time.

If you had told me back in the days when I was building my nursing career, acquiring degrees, and having babies that I’d become a pastor, I would have laughed out loud, shaking my head at the lunacy. Looking back though, I see the threads of being baptized as an infant and having First Communion in the Catholic Church; being baptized again by immersion at the age of 12 in my stepfather’s fundamentalist reformed tradition; leaving church altogether as a religiously exhausted college student; and then marrying a Lutheran and baptizing our babies by the grace of God. Those roads made little sense at the time.

But God wastes nothing. Those stories now weave together by the power of the Holy Spirit. Telling those stories reveal imperfect and unlikely roots of faith in Jesus. Each one of you has your own story through which faith has played its part, perhaps along with some doubt shaking things up and keeping faith real. Faith and doubt are partners in the mystery of faith.

We have plenty of mysteries of faith starting with the mystery of creation itself. Earth Day, celebrated civically on Wednesday this week across 190 countries, is but a piece of this cosmic Christian mystery. The Nicene Creed that we’ll say together a little later in worship attributes creation first to “one God…maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.”

We’ve seen some wondrous glimpses of the unseen most recently through the eyes of the Artemis II astronauts looking out the windows of their spacecraft Integrity. We saw a bright feature where the near side of the moon meets the far side. They officially named this bright feature for Commander Weisman’s wife Carroll who recently died of cancer.[2] The crew cried together as they grieved and celebrated with their Commander. And some of us also celebrated God, maker of heaven and earth, for the sheer magnitude of the cosmos through which our earthly home spins.

The Nicene Creed goes on to acknowledges “one Lord, Jesus Christ…through him all things were made.” A second attribution of creation through the words of John’s Gospel: ¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴ in him was life…[3]

Lastly, the Nicene Creed acknowledges “the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life…and the life of the world to come.” Each of the three articles of the creed revels in the mystery of life and creation through the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Creation is announced; life is formed and given. Looking back through the millennia reveals what we can see of the road taken by God whom we profess as three-in-one and one-in-three, the holy, blessed Trinity.

As creatures set within creation, we can also look back and around now to see the impact of our interactions with creation. Producing life giving energy means negotiating the unintended consequences of mining, oil extraction, and use of their gifts. Consequences that negatively impact air, water, quality of life, worker safety, and peaceful coexistence without wars over energy sources. It’s well-documented that our creaturely lives are changed for the better when energy becomes available and affordable. Communities thrive when energy production is introduced and when we address energy as a systems issue not an individual failure.[4]

We are creatures who are simultaneously saint and sinner through the cross of Christ. The cross is our foundation for truths that are good, bad, and ugly. Not one of us can claim perfection or omniscience when it comes to our motivations, actions, or their consequences. This is just as true of our collective energy production and use for both positive reasons and negative outcomes as it is of our individual and community relationships. Saint-and-sinner is more than a catch phrase. It’s a theological truth.

Regarding the church, we see and celebrate God’s history of salvation and our individual roads that converge here. However it is that we understand the mystery of ending up here together, we can look back and interpret events and experiences through which God has called us here. Like the two friends on the road to Emmaus, this congregation walks deeply in faith while each of our own individual faiths take turns wavering, deepening, doubting. Faith converges our roads into a shared path. It’s a cooperative and Christ-centered pilgrimage for we who “walk as yet by faith.”[5] Walking alongside each other as church. Challenging each other through our different perspectives. Praying for each other when we won’t or simply can’t pray for ourselves. Holding faith steady when we cannot dredge it up in ourselves.

As church together, we remind each other that the Holy Spirit daily and vigorously seals us by our baptism to the faith OF Jesus. Through no effort of our own, the Spirit draws us through the cross of Christ revealing our messy lives on various roads and the fragile faith from which not one thing is wasted by God. Alleluia and amen.

______________________________________________

[1] Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken in Complete Poems of Robert Frost 1949. (U.S.A. Robert Frost, 1949), 131. Also see his poem here: The Road Not Taken – poem by Robert Frost | PoetryVerse

[2] Artemis II proposes moon feature name “Carroll.” https://youtu.be/GAMkRJdu9j4?si=jdfZa4Y_wfG0PiHQ

[3] John 1:3

[4] Melanie Allen, Xavier de Souza Briggs, Robert J. “R.J.” McGrail, and Robert Puentes. “How local leaders and communities are leading the transition to clean energy.” Brookings Institute podcast on July 30, 2025. How local leaders and communities are leading the transition to clean energy | Brookings.

[5] “Burial of the Dead” in Occasional Services: A Companion to Lutheran Book of Worship – LBW Hymnal. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House and Philadelphia: Board of Publication, Lutheran Church in America, 1982), 121.

Sermons

Joy and Fear Mingle in Easter Hope [OR An Easter Riff on Seismic Shifts]

April 5, 2026 caitlin121608

**sermon art: The Empty Tomb by Anne Cameron Cutri

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on April 5, 2026

[sermon begins after Bible reading]

Matthew 28:1-10 After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. ² And suddenly there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. ³ His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. ⁴ For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. ⁵ But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. ⁶ He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. ⁷ Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.” ⁸ So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples. ⁹ Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. ¹⁰ Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers and sisters to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

[sermon begins]

I grew up in earthquake country. We’d guess the seismic strength of the current quake with each other–a 3.0 on the Richter Scale could be felt a little, a 4.5 would get your attention, and a 6.0 could knock down walls. I remember the first big quake in my teens. I was home alone, on the second floor of our house. It was loud, like a freight train barreling by within feet of the house. It was long, the shaking lasted almost 30 seconds. And it was scary—5.9 scary, the epicenter of the Whittier Narrows quake wasn’t far from Altadena.[1] The house stood through it, but I shook for a while. A few minutes after the quake, my stepbrother Bill strolled nonchalantly into the house and asked me if we had any bar soap. He’d been on his way to get bar soap when the quake hit but the grocery store was a mess. I’d never been so happy to see him! Quakes happen on their own time. They surprise and disrupt what you thought would happen next. And they connect us differently to each other.

This Easter morning, our Bible story begins with an earthquake. But it isn’t the first one felt by Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. Their world had been metaphorically and literally rocked by the events of the past few days. Judas had betrayed Jesus to the ones who arrested him.[2] Peter had denied knowing Jesus to servants and bystanders at his trial.[3] The women looked on from a distance as Jesus cried out on the cross and breathed his last while the EARTH QUAKED THEN, too.[4] Mary Magdelene and the other Mary watched Joseph of Arimathea wrap Jesus’ body in a linen cloth, lay him in the tomb, roll a great stone to cover the door, and walk away.[5] The women’s constant presence was unwavering as their world was rocked by the execution of their teacher and friend at the hands of the powers that be. Some of us know that feeling of not being able to look away when our foundations tremble through a seismic shift.

We’re told that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary return to see the tomb. Their longing to reconnect could have stirred their natural instinct to visit after Jesus’ burial. Their world was immediately shaken by another earthquake, an aftershock of the one at the cross. Perhaps the angel gained leverage from the quake to roll back the two-ton stone before using it as a chair. Afraid of the angel’s power, the guards quaked and fell over as if dead. Just like that [snap fingers], the ones in power were laid flat by their own fear while the Marys’ fear and joy launched them from the tomb to go tell the other disciples, “He has been raised from the dead.”

Reverberating with the good news from the angel, the women met Jesus on their way. They ran to him, knelt and touched his feet. Like the angel, Jesus sends them to tell the good news to his disciples. In this telling of the story, we don’t know how surprised the other disciples were to hear their news. But we do know that the women’s story led to action, because a few verses later the disciples actually do meet Jesus in Galilee.

Regardless, the fear and joy of the women are part of this seismic story. Many of us are shaken to the foundation by things that happen to us and by things happening around us. And many of us experience a God who brings life out of death. Maybe not as dramatically as Jesus resurrecting out of tomb. But individual experiences that, like Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, can mingle our emotions of joy and fear. God begets us through cross and tomb into new life because we are children of God, broken and beloved, resurrected into the body of Christ that we call the church. The church that is resurrected through Jesus’ death and new life.

Part of the good news that we get to share as the church is that there is enough for everybody—enough resources, enough love, enough life—as we extend Christ’s arms of love and grace, so that Jesus’ joyous welcome through us nourishes a disrupted world with community and belonging, nourishes us with hope and new life. Jesus calls us to be the love that we receive however imperfectly we get that done. We share joy with our new neighbors who are new homeowners just down the hill in Augustana Homes. We welcome the stranger with our Refugee Support Teams. We pray for our public leaders while holding them accountable for the dignity of each person made in God’s image. And we love our neighbors as ourselves by accompanying them in advocacy and amplifying their voices with our own.

New life literally abounds as Easter and Spring happen simultaneously this year. Tree roots are soaking up the latest snow even as they clamor for more. Birds fly back to our latitude for nesting and nectar. Perhaps your suffering, confusion, and grief make it difficult to see life at all, to feel any joy alongside your fear. Real life doesn’t conveniently align with the season of the earth or the season of the church. Fear is a reasonable reaction to the unpredictable nature of life on this planet. One gift of the body of Christ is that the prayers, practices, and people of the church’s resurrection faith surround us while we grieve or heal, holding space for joy until we can feel it once more. When we’re too broken to pray, our church community prays for us as the risen body of Christ for each other and for the world. Individually, we are not designed to hold all the things, everywhere, all at once, but the church IS intended to hold the surprises, disruptions, fear, and joy, as a people who look to the future with hope. As a people formed and sustained by the life and love of Jesus.

The good news of Easter surprises us with God’s love for the world, reminding us that we belong to God through the life-death-life of Jesus. The seismic shift of Easter surprises us with the reclining angel on the tomb’s stone who announced to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary that Jesus had been raised as he said; and today, Easter Sunday, and for the next 50 days of the Easter season, we remind each other that there is good news of defiant joy alongside our fear.

God brings us through cross and tomb into the joy of new life because God is love.[6] Made in the image of God, each one of us is beautiful and unconditionally beloved—there is nothing we can do or not do to make God love us any more or any less. YOU are beautiful and unconditionally beloved by God. Such is the radical, excessive, audacious love of God. The love of God is a seismic shift that surprises and disrupts with the power to change the world that God so loves. Jesus first revealed God’s love in his life and ministry on earth including taking our violence into himself on the cross and transforming death into life through the self-sacrifice of love. Through that very love of Jesus, the body of Christ gets to be the love we receive for the sake of the world. Thanks be to God and Happy Easter!

________________________________________________________

[1] M 5.9 – The 1987 Whittier Narrows, California Earthquake

[2] Matthew 26:47-50

[3] Matthew 26:69-75

[4] Matthew 27:45-56

[5] Matthew 27:57-61

[6] 1 John 4:16a

Preaching, Sermons

Good Friday for Goodness Sake [OR Jesus Loves You More Than You Can Hate Anyone]

April 3, 2026 caitlin121608

**sermon art: Jesus’ Mother, Beloved Disciple by Laura James

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on April 3, 2026

The Gospel of John, chapters 18 and 19 [grab a Bible or web search the readings]

[sermon begins]

How are we to understand the goodness of Good Friday? Is it like how kale is good for us but really not that tasty? A violent execution seems an odd thing to commemorate much less celebrate, especially in a time when the world is wrestling with disturbing violence and deep pain. Today of all days, it’s especially important to understand that it’s not the violence of the cross that is redemptive. It’s not the pain of Jesus that saves us. It’s easy to get lost in the message of the cross because the earliest Jesus followers who wrote down their experiences couldn’t quite figure it out either.

The goodness of Good Friday has to do with God’s goodness. More specifically, the goodness of Good Friday has to do with Jesus who embodies God. In the Gospel of John, God is Jesus and Jesus is God. The love of God in Jesus, the audacity of grace personified in Jesus, the ultimate power of that love, so enraged his enemies and fueled the mob mentality that ultimately killed him. Jesus ate meals with unlovable people, he had public conversations with women no one spoke to, and he had secret conversations with religious leaders who opposed him by day. The list of his ever-expanding circle of grace and love is endless.

Finally, when the threat of his grace, the threat about who is included in the love of God, became too great, he was killed for it. Grace and unconditional love are that powerful. Jesus predicted his death because dying for goodness’ sake was anticipated as the inevitable attempt to do away with love. Hate’s last gasp against love’ great, disruptive power. Hate will always try to do away with love. But Jesus will always love us more than any of us can hate him.

The goodness of Good Friday reminds us that we are not abandoned in suffering. God suffers with us. God absorbs our suffering into God’s heart. Good Friday also tells the truth about suffering caused by violence. Large acts of violence are obvious. War, terror, and murder are clearly seen. There are also the smaller acts of violence that destroy relationships and murder people’s spirits and our own spirits – lies, gossip, passive aggression, dissing someone’s body rather than debating their ideas or confronting their hurtful behavior. The list of our violent ways is as endless as we are creative in inflicting ourselves against the ones we love and the ones we hate. The level we inflict suffering on each other, and on the earth and all its creatures, knows no bounds.

The goodness of Good Friday reminds us that the cross is the place where we struggle in the darkness and the very place where God meets us. We live in this darkness in different ways – failure, addiction, confusion, doubt. God loves you through the cross, in the darkest places that you don’t tell anyone about. The truth is that most of us are capable of just about anything given the right set of circumstances. The goodness of Good Friday isn’t about pointing away from ourselves to other people who cause suffering. It’s also a sacred space to wonder and be honest about the pain that we cause as well.

Confessions of sin extend to systems that we’re a part of—institutions, countries, governments, families, friendships, communities, and even churches. Systems that hold us captive to sin from which we cannot free ourselves. What does free us? Jesus on the cross. Jesus on the cross holds up a mirror in which we can see our own reflections. Our reflections that simultaneously reveal God’s beauty in us as well as the sin we inflict on each other and cannot justify. No matter how many times we enshroud our sin in self-righteousness, the cross tells us otherwise.

We often act without awareness of how our actions may hurt someone else. That’s why our worship confessions talk about things we’ve done and things we’ve failed to do. That’s why we talk about our sin. Sin gives us language for the way we hurt other people and ourselves with our actions – actions that separate us from each other and God. But nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.[1] Good Friday’s goodness creates space to experience life-giving compassion from the heart of God in the face of our sin. God’s SELF-sacrifice in Jesus also reminds us that Jesus’ death is NOT payment to an angry God or a hungry devil. That’s just divine child abuse. Jesus is a revelation of the goodness of God, taking our violence into himself on the cross and transforming death into life through SELF-sacrifice. The cross surprises us with grace in the face of sin.

God reveals the truth of our death dealing ways while reminding us that God’s intention for humankind is good.[2] Jesus was fully human and fully divine. His life’s ministry and his death on the cross reveal his humanity and our own, reminding us about the goodness for which we were created. The cross awakens that goodness. Jesus’ full and fragile humanity was displayed on the cross. He sacrificed himself to the people who killed him for his radical, excessive love. He did not raise a hand in violence against the people and the world that God so loves. Jesus’ self-sacrificing goodness clears our eyes to see God’s intention for our human life together. Jesus loves us more than we could ever hate him or anyone else.

Our connection with each other is also revealed in the goodness of Good Friday. From the cross, Jesus redefined connection, kinship, and belonging. Hear these words again from the gospel reading:

“Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. ²⁶When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” ²⁷Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” [3]

From the cross, with some of his last breaths, Jesus did this incredible thing. Jesus knows we need belonging. He connects people through and beyond suffering. This is NOT a reason for suffering. Simply one truth about it. When we suffer and feel most alone, Jesus reaches out from his own suffering to give us to each other. To belong to each other. God’s heart revealed through the cross destroys the illusion of our isolation and connects us to each other once more. In each other, we’re given kinship and appreciation for the gift and mystery of being alive. In God we live and move and have our being through God’s goodness in Jesus on the cross.

In the end, the cross isn’t about us at all. It’s about the self-sacrificing love of Jesus who reveals God’s ways to show us the logical end of ours—our death-dealing ways in the face of excessive grace and radical love. We struggle to believe that God applies this grace and love to everyone. It’s hard enough to believe that there’s a God who loves us. It’s downright offensive that God loves our greatest enemy as much as God loves us. But that is God’s promise in the goodness of Good Friday.

There is nothing you can do or not do to make God love you any more or any less. The same holds true for the person you like the least. Jesus loves you more than you can hate anyone AND Jesus loves that person, too. Offensive? For sure. And also reassuring. Because if God’s love includes everyone then it also includes you. God’s arms are opened to all in the outstretched arms of Jesus on the cross, receiving us by God’s reckless grace because Good Friday is reveals that God’s goodness is love.[4] Thanks be to God and amen.

_______________________________________________

[1] Romans 8:38-39

[2] Genesis 1:26-31 God creates “humankind.”

[3] John 19:25b-27

[4] 1 John 4:7-21

Sermons

Faith Makes Space for Grief [OR Raising Lazarus and a Valley of Dry Bones]

March 22, 2026 caitlin121608

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on March 22, 2026

[sermon begins after two long Bible readings–hang in there, they’re worth it]

Ezekiel 37:1-13

The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. ² He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. ³ He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” ⁴ Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. ⁵ Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. ⁶ I will lay sinews on you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”
⁷ So I prophesied as I had been commanded, and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. ⁸ I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them, but there was no breath in them. ⁹ Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” ¹⁰ I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
¹¹ Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ ¹² Therefore prophesy and say to them: Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. ¹³ And you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people. ¹⁴ I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.”

John 11:1-45

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. ² Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. ³ So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” ⁴ But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather, it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” ⁵ Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, ⁶ after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
⁷ Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” ⁸ The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” ⁹ Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble because they see the light of this world. ¹⁰ But those who walk at night stumble because the light is not in them.” ¹¹ After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” ¹² The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” ¹³ Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. ¹⁴ Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. ¹⁵ For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” ¹⁶ Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

¹⁷ When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. ¹⁸ Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, ¹⁹ and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. ²⁰ When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. ²¹ Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. ²² But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” ²³ Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” ²⁴ Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” ²⁵ Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, ²⁶ and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” ²⁷ She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

²⁸ When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” ²⁹ And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. ³⁰ Now Jesus had not yet come to the village but was still at the place where Martha had met him. ³¹ The Jews who were with her in the house consoling her saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. ³² When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” ³³ When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. ³⁴ He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” ³⁵ Jesus began to weep. ³⁶ So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” ³⁷ But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

³⁸ Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. ³⁹ Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” ⁴⁰ Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” ⁴¹ So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. ⁴² I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” ⁴³ When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

⁴⁵ Many of the Jews, therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did believed in him.

[sermon begins]

I recently rewatched the Harry Potter movies, having also read the book series a few times over the years.[1] The magical world-building seen through Harry’s eyes is a wonder to behold, including the Hogwarts school’s carriages that seemingly propel themselves without horse or engine.[2] In the fifth movie we learn that the carriages are pulled by Thestrals, a horse-like winged reptilian creature that can only be seen by someone who has seen death. If you hadn’t seen someone die, then you couldn’t see the Thestrals pulling the carriage. The carriages seem to be pulling themselves. Harry had seen his friend Cedric die at the end of the last movie so Harry could now see these creatures. Seeing his friend die opened his eyes to see something new amid his grief and anger.

Some of us here today know what it’s like to see death, to watch someone’s life leave their body. Mary and Martha certainly did. There was enough time after Lazarus became ill to send word to Jesus. There was more time after the sisters sent word and even more before Jesus finally arrived after Lazarus died. Martha was angry. Mary was miserable. Both were heartbroken and grieving. Both proclaimed their faith in their Lord—if he had been there then Lazarus would not have died. Martha’s confession of faith is one of the big three in John’s gospel along with Peter and Thomas. Martha said to Jesus, “You are the Messiah, the Son of God.” Mary’s faith acts—she kneels at Jesus’ feet and cries. Simultaneous faith and grief. Many verses in the story are given over to grief. Only a couple verses describe the raising of Lazarus.[3] Faith makes space for grief. Some of us know how long those days, hours, and minutes can be while we watch a loved one die. We know the powerlessness, anger, and broken hearts as we wait and watch and pray…as we lose, as grief enshrouds our hearts.

This Bible story about siblings and friends grieving together describes an important truth about people of faith. We make space for grief and we grieve with each other. Just ask our friends who have been through Augustana’s Grief Support Group. Faith in Jesus doesn’t take grief away. Indeed, Jesus’ is greatly disturbed and deeply moved by grief, soul wrenching grief for his friends. And grief maybe even for himself as he knows what’s coming for him and the grief that will bind his friends again when he dies on a cross. The story of Lazarus is as much about Jesus’ humanity as it is about his divinity.

The prophet Ezekiel and his people knew grief, too. 500 years before Jesus, the Babylonians took Ezekiel’s people from southern Israel into far away Babylon. The temple in Jerusalem was God’s dwelling place, but Ezekiel and his people ended up far, far away in a land where their God was not known. They lamented, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” Ezekiel’s valley of the dry bones goes against Jewish burial custom.[4] It was a mass casualty decimation and there was no one to bury them. Another story of grief but this time it’s one of collective grief. A grief that exemplifies our own when faceless groups people are annihilated by war, bombs, and hunger inflicted by politically powerful people who feel neither the suffering of the dying nor the sting of death themselves.

For Mary, Martha, and Ezekiel, faith and grief walked together. Faith made space for their grief for their brother and their community. Faith didn’t erase grief or explain it away as just the way life works. Sometimes we’re inclined to minimize or feel shame about our own grief. It’s too big. It’s too messy. Or we think that if only we had more faith then we would feel less pain. Or if only someone else had more faith, then their grieving wouldn’t hurt our hearts. These Bible stories are an antidote to such thinking. The faithful people in these stories are the ones who are sad, angry, and ugly-crying. Even Jesus. Even Jesus! The English translation of “Jesus began to weep” doesn’t do justice to the Greek word which means soul-wrenching sobs.[5]

Minimizing grief, whether our own or someone else’s is antithetical to the crescendo of the cross and the silence of the tomb that we are edging toward as Palm Sunday and Holy Week loom on the calendar a week from today. We are treated to whispers of Holy Week in our John reading. Mary’s anointing of Jesus’ feet is remembered to us even though we don’t get to that part of the story until the beginning of the next chapter. Anointing is done for divine kings and for the dead. Jesus’ anointing conflates the two. In verse 25, using yet one more divine “I am” saying, Jesus said, “I AM the resurrection and the life.” In verses 4 and 40 Jesus talks about God’s glory in conjunction with the Son of God being glorified. When the word “glory” is used in the Gospel of John, it is code for Jesus hanging on the cross. We tend to think all kinds of things when we hear the word “glory” but hanging on a cross is not typically one of them.

It’s common to avoid Lent and Holy Week, to go from the Transfiguration straight to Easter buffered by the mini-Easters of Sundays in Lent. Lent is quiet and grey, culminating in Holy Week that is dark and ends in a tomb. Holy Week runs smack up against our addiction to optimism, smack up against our discomfort with grief, and smack up against our desperation not to look at the ever-so-obvious tomb. But sinking into the depths of Holy Week, focusing on cross and tomb feels like freedom. It feels like freedom because it feels true. There IS pain in the world. Sometimes we cause that pain. Sometimes the pain is inflicted on us. Sometimes we watch helplessly as the pain is inflicted on other people. The relief and truth of Holy Week is enormous. Facing this truth head-on, neither looking away from grief nor blocking out God in the midst of it, reveals what God does when confronted with a tomb. Our journey into the abyss of death and grief places in stark relief an ever more vibrant Easter dawn when the trumpets declare victory over death.

In Ezekiel, God breathes into the decimation, restoring the forgotten dead into community. In John, Jesus raises Lazarus reconnecting him with his community. In the tomb of Lazarus, lays a man who’s about to walk again. Jesus tells him to come out. Lazarus comes out. His disorientation must be staggering. Jesus looks at the people and says, “Unbind him.” These people had a role in his unbinding. Jesus gave them work to do to welcome him.[6] Among the people who unbind Lazarus are surely many who loved him or at least knew him. The moment reveals that “resurrected life needs a community.”[7]

Raising Lazarus is Jesus’ final sign before the execution plot unfolds. A sign of life that declares his divinity and incites his execution. The people are ready to crucify because they fear that the one who brings life might get noticed by the powers that be in Rome and bring death to them all. As Holy Week whispers to us from the faraway place of next week, we pause with the crowd of people who unbind Lazarus. We, like them, wonder about the power that can resurrect. The power that can draw unwanted attention. Lazarus isn’t the only one standing there dazed and disoriented.

As we the people acknowledge the mercy of God, we see the fullness of life that God pours through us as we grieve and celebrate life. We see the Christ, the Word made flesh. We see each other receiving the Spirit who breathes life into our bodies – here, now, today, with these people whom Jesus calls to help unbind us as we are called into resurrected life. Thanks be to God and amen!

__________________________________________________________

[1] Link to IMDB: Harry Potter Movies

[2] Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) – IMDb

[3] Karoline Lewis, Professor of Homiletics, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Lectionary Discussion for 3/22/26. #1074: Fifth Sunday in Lent – March 22, 2026 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[4] Cody J. Sanders, Associate Professor, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Lectionary Discussion for 3/22/26. #1074: Fifth Sunday in Lent – March 22, 2026 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[5] Matt Skinner, Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Lectionary Discussion for 3/22/26. #1074: Fifth Sunday in Lent – March 22, 2026 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[6] Laura Holmes, Professor of New Testament, Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington D.C. Commentary on John 11:1-45 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[7] Ibid.

Hosea 5:15—6:6

Romans 4:13-25

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