Esther and Octavia Butler and My Sermon

On our way home from church yesterday, my spouse observed that it's not every day that you hear a sermon that mentions both Octavia Butler and Esther.  He thinks that it's one of my strengths, that my sermons use elements of popular culture that not everyone would use.

My sermon used both the Gospel text, where Jesus tells the disciples that they'll be known as followers of Jesus by how well they love each other, and the text from Acts, where Peter has the dream about all the forbidden foods he should eat and has a conversation about eating with uncircumcised Christians.  I talked about the idea from Octavia Butler where a space alien notes that humans have a lot going for them, but what will doom them is their need for hierarchy.

I talked about the need to expand our love outside of our immediate social groups, that we're called not to love just our fellow Christians, not just the outcast of society, but even those in power.  I talked about how the Roman empire was much more brutal than our own time, and that's when I brought in Esther--maybe we are all here for such a time as this, this time when it seems like the forces of disruption are proceeding faster than we can stitch it all back together again.

My spouse also talked about my skills in teaching and extemporaneous speaking, after I confessed that once again, I had an outline of a sermon, but I wanted to leave the ending open, in case the Holy Spirit had something to say and wanted to lead me there.  I'm also fortunate in that I've spent a lot of time doing reading and writing on these subjects, so I can come to a sermon without it written out, and still trust that I'll have something to say.

It was a good Sunday at church, which was a bit of a surprise to me.  Our pastor has been gone away at the Festival of Homiletics, and I expected a low turnout yesterday.  But we had similar attendance, which is gratifying, since they knew in advance he wouldn't be here.  Our choir was missing some key members, but that allowed a different duet than usual.  Our organist was gone, and our other key musician had issues with his keyboards, but we had a lovely, guitar-led service.

Since Friday, I had been fighting something (cold?  sinus infection?) that left me tired and achy and irritable, but I was able to lead the service with a lower energy kind of day than is usual for me.  I'm glad we all made the effort, because I'm aware that many of us are facing days of ebbing energy, even as the daylight lingers longer.