In and With: 2022 After Pentecost Sermon Seeds Series (I-VI)

What are human beings
that you think about them;
what are human beings
that you pay attention to them?
Psalm 8:4 CEB

The longest season of the liturgical calendar are filled with Sundays called “Ordinary Time.” It begins with Trinity Sunday and ends with the Reign of Christ. We move from concentrating on the event of Christ in the world to focusing toward the impact of being in Christ in the world. A life in the unity of the Trinity is one of being shaped and sent daily in the image and in the purpose of Holy Love.

“As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”
John 17:18 CEB

“The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are so with one another that it seems they are in one another. And, to the extend that they are in one another, we call God not three, but one. These three are so with that they are one, three persons in one substance, always affirming one another’s difference and distinctness in person and presence, but always bearing within one another the whole being of the other two persons. The Trinity is the perfect equilibrium of three persons so with that they are in, but in in such a way that they are still with.”
Samuel Wells, A Cross in the Heart of God

After Pentecost I Scripture and Themes “All Truth”

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

After Pentecost II Scripture and Themes “A Plumb Line”

“I want my inner truth to be the plumb line for the choices I make about my life – about the work that I do and how I do it, about the relationships I enter into and how I conduct them.”
— Parker J. Palmer

After Pentecost III Scripture and Themes “Treasure in Heaven”

“I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.”
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

After Pentecost IV Scripture and Themes “Like Clay”

“And a woman spoke, saying, “Tell us of Pain.”
And he said: Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the
Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.”
— Kahlil Gibran (The Prophet)

After Pentecost V Scripture and Themes “Increase Our Faith”

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
— C.S. Lewis

After Pentecost VI Scripture and Themes “Keep Watch”

“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”
— Robert Frost

The Rev. Dr. Cheryl A. Lindsay, Minister for Worship and Theology, United Church of Christ, (lindsayc@ucc.org), also serves as a local church pastor and worship scholar-practitioner with a particular interest in the proclamation of the word in gathered communities.