I turned in my last final paper of the semester yesterday, which marks that I am officially halfway through my time in seminary. I am halfway to having divinity “mastered,” halfway to knowing how to respond when a congregant asks me how the canon was decided, halfway to figuring out the question of theodicy, halfway to knowing what I am going to do next…you get the picture. I am halfway and I feel most days like I know absolutely nothing. Serving as a pastor for the last 6 months hasn’t exactly helped that feeling of “I still have too much to learn.” Every day working in the church and working on theology in the classroom, there are things I forget, things I wish I did better, things I do not understand, things that are overwhelming, things I’m fairly certain will never make sense, and every so often a small thing or two to hold on to amidst all of my growing edges. If I do know anything, it’s that we have to hold on to those little things to keep going in the meaningful work that fits into the categories described in the first 85% of that last sentence.

So I decided as I am putting together Christmas Eve bulletins, wrapping the last of my Christmas gifts, ordering books for my January class that starts way too soon, and simultaneously reflecting on this semester and all it has brought for me, I have a choice. I can choose to focus on all of the things I do not know, all of the ways I fall short, and all of the copious mistakes I have made and will continue to make. OR I can choose to focus on the things I do know. In the spirit of self care and healthy mindsets, here is a list of what I do know:

• We need God. There is absolutely no reason I am where I am, with the love that I have, with the privilege I have, with the hope that I have if the Spirit of God is not active and present in this world. Studying God in the classroom mixed with serving God in the church can make it surprisingly hard to remember what a gift all of this work is. There is hope in our world, love in our hearts, and imagination in our souls that is waiting to be shared. All because a gracious, loving, creative God who came before us and declared us good first.
• We need community. We need each other. There are so many times my brain runs amuck and tries to convince me I cannot do it, I am not good enough, I shouldn’t be trusted to do this work. Good people have surrounded me every single time and pulled me through, encouraged me, walked beside me, worked with me, loved me through it. For that, I am eternally grateful. And eternally mindful I cannot and will not do it without good people by my side.
• We need to wrestle. My classes this semester challenged me to not be afraid of asking questions. In fact, that was the sole mission of almost all of them. We all know that’s a dangerous invitation for a huge question-asker like me. But we also have to recognize how important it is to push past what makes us comfortable and what we’ve simply always known so we can figure out what it is we truly believe. It is daunting and sometimes exhausting, but I do believe we come out stronger on the other side, more confident in ourselves and, more importantly, more confident in the God who claims us and loves us and calls us. And you can ask some pretty crazy questions in the process, which is always a joy!
• And I know that we need to pause. We need to rest. We need to worship. We need to slow down and truly see what we’re doing and who we get to do it with. If we are too busy or too distracted or too tired to do those things well, we are missing the point. (See the first 3 bullet points for reference)

As we continue to wait expectantly this Advent as we approach the Christmas season, I pray you also can slow down, reflect, and appreciate all the ways God is working in your life. I know I would not have made it through this semester without that. I pray you can challenge yourself in the choice and choose to celebrate what you do know as it carries you through all that you will work through in the time ahead.

Wishing you joy, hope, love, and inspiration,

Kelly

I am working on my final sermon for preaching class. While it is crazy to believe that it is already time to be taking finals (!!!), it is simultaneously daunting to work on this public issue sermon.  To put it briefly, I have decided to write my final sermon to be used in my actual church next February as the United Methodist denomination meets together with representatives from around the world to vote on the denomination’s stance on human sexuality (referring to the marriage and ordination rights of the LGBTQ+ community, which the UMC does not current affirm), also known as the Commission on a Way Forward. It’s quite a huge task for preaching class and an even bigger task for a church full of wonderful, real, intricate human beings. But I never do take the easy route, do I?

As part of my exegetical work (preparation and meditation with the scripture on which I will preach), I decided to include a psalm of lament to help capture the depth of the feeling in this upcoming vote. No matter which plan gets chosen, there is hurt and grief and division. No matter which plan gets chosen, people will be left out or will feel left out of the church. No matter which plan gets chosen, we have some serious work to do. And if I have learned anything in seminary, it’s that we need to use psalms of lament more often.

This process for me looked like reading through all 150 psalms. It was a powerful experience. And it was a difficult experience. As I read through the psalms, I realized the ones my heart was pulled toward. The ones where the psalmist was begging God to bring judgment on their enemies. The ones where the psalmist was crying out to God because God abandoned them. The ones where the psalmist was petitioning for the world to be put back in order out of the chaos they had been living in. The ones where the psalmist cries out and does not respond with trust and praise.

I chose a different psalm of lament for my sermon, one that will better match the feelings of everyone’s hearts and situations, one that ties nicely to the work I’m doing with the New Testament lesson. But I had to pause in the process to name that I need my own work in the psalms of lament in this particular season of waiting. I am waiting to see if the denomination that I feel called to will ordain me. I am waiting to see if the denomination I feel most connected to would marry me and my partner when the time comes. I am waiting to see if the denomination I searched for will send me searching for a new home again. I am waiting to see if the denomination that currently allows me to serve part of its body will let me serve again in the next appointment year. In all of this waiting, I am crying out to God for justice. I am praying to God for love to win. I am asking God to show up in this vote in February because right now it does not feel like God is in this conversation.

I am not very good at waiting. Especially when literally the rest of my life hangs in the balance. So I wanted to write about my experience over the last few days and ask for accountability and prayer. Keep me accountable in hope. In finding God in the midst. In loving no matter the circumstance. And please pray with me. For justice. For space. For presence. For love.

Lord in your mercy.

Hear my prayer.

In the last two weeks, I’ve been working on a sermon for my preaching class. If you know anything about my life right now, you probably know I never get two weeks to work on a sermon. But this one has really been on my heart. See, we were given the task to write a 12-14 minute sermon on any Old Testament narrative. That’s it. When I first started looking at this, my mind jumped to all of the powerful, super cool women I could preach on throughout the Old Testament. Then I thought this might be the opportunity to preach on something a little more challenging or maybe less accepted by a lay congregation. But through it all, Genesis 32:22-23 kept coming back. Every time I dismissed it because I didn’t think it was cool enough or meaningful enough. Boy, was I wrong.

Genesis 32:22-32 is where Jacob wrestles. Jacob is completely alone. He meets this mysterious man who wrestles with him until daybreak. Then the man is ready to go and out of nowhere Jacob says, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” Then the man asks his name. Jacob responds. The man renames him Israel. Jacob asks the man’s name. The man evades the question, blesses Jacob, and Jacob limps away as the sun comes up.

There’s a lot of baggage that comes to light right there in the middle of this passage. I won’t get into the long detail of it (that’s what my 12-14 minute sermon is for). But I think the baggage is exactly the point. That’s why God put this particular text on my heart when I could’ve preached on any other story from the 39 books of the Old Testament. Because I have a lot of baggage. We all have a lot of baggage. And it tends to come up in these weird ways that are mostly terribly inconvenient. You know, those times when we’ve sent everyone we love and everything we own ahead of us on a big journey and we’re left alone.

Then we wrestle. We ask a bunch of questions or toss and turn in our sleep or maybe you physically wrestle someone. And then you get to that last question. The really big one. The one that gives insight to all of the wrestling you’ve been doing all along. For Jacob, that references back to the blessing he stole from his brother, which spurred a life of self-serving schemes. For you…well you can probably name that one for yourself.

For me, that wrestling looks like trying to balance being a pastor and a full time student. That wrestling looks like trying to be a good participant in my family when I’m so far away. That wrestling looks like discerning my place in the United Methodist Church despite the current situation. That wrestling looks like learning to be a good partner. So all of that comes down to me wrestling with what it means to live into my identity as a beloved child of God. That’s my big kicker when I have God pinned down in the dirt.

I think wrestling and doubt and questioning get a bad rap in our faith. It’s frowned upon. It’s the representation of a lack of faith. It’s traitorous. Except Jacob here declares something different. He reclaims that we have to wrestle to get to the heart of it. We have to face all of the baggage inside us and in our past – ignoring it just allows it to build up and explode at horrible times. And we have to find God in the middle of all of that. Jacob teaches us that wrestling is actually a good, healthy thing that makes us a lot stronger in the end.

Jacob limps away as the sun peeks over the horizon. This monumental experience is now with Jacob forever. Sometimes that reminder is painful as we start to slip back into our old ways and old guilt. Other times we really need a tangible representation of this important, life-altering redemption we have so graciously been given. No matter what, we have wrestled and we have found God. So as I keep wrestling and I keep finding God, I pray you can experience a taste of that same redemption.

Sermon from 10/14 at Titusville United Methodist Church

Text: Psalm 90:12-17, Mark 10:17-31

“Kelly, I know you don’t feel ready, but I want you to serve on your church’s praise team.” God called me to serve on my church’s worship team in high school; so every Sunday for three years I was there at 7am ready to move boxes, set up equipment, and play music for the Lord. “Kelly, I know you don’t think you’d be good at youth ministry, but I want you to serve with the youth at this church.” God called me to work in youth ministry in college; so I took the job and gave everything I had to figure out how to best serve the young people in my church. “Kelly, I know you’re comfortable where you’ve always been with what you’ve always known, but I want you to go to Princeton Theological Seminary.” God called me to New Jersey to attend seminary where I didn’t know a single person and really didn’t know what I was getting myself into; so I have tried my best to be faithful and dedicate myself to my studies and my work here.

I feel like God’s call in my life has always been relatively direct and I have relatively done my best to answer those calls with faith and courage. These steps have not always been easy, but I could jump into the unknown or the scary because I knew it was where God was calling me. But then in the last year, God called me to something else. God asked to have the most vulnerable part of me, something it felt was going to cost me more than any other call. God was asking me to own my queer identity. For so long, I had avoided the questions in my life around my sexuality and around my gender-expression. I thought if I could just be faithful to God in all the specific calls I had heard to that point, maybe I wouldn’t have to do this incredibly hard, incredibly scary, incredibly vulnerable thing. I asked the dangerous yet worthwhile question that the rich man in our story this morning asked. It was like I was challenging God, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” I felt pretty confident that I was relatively obedient and relatively on track with the commandments and calls on my life. And then just like Jesus responded to our rich friend, he said to me, “oh wait, just one more thing. This thing you’ve been holding on to, this thing you’ve been afraid to give to me, this thing that could cost you greatly – I want that, too.” Maybe you’ve been there as well.

I believe this is why Jesus continues on to say how hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. He’s not talking just about money here. This request encompasses all of the things we hold back or tuck away or outright dodge. God wants all of us so that all of who we are can be used to glorify God. If we keep any of that for ourselves because it makes us feel better or neglect it because it’s hard or conceal it because we’re unsure of how others might react, that’s like saying you have a better chance of winning if you don’t play the game at all. So just like the rich man in the story, God was calling me to surrender everything. And by the grace of God, I began celebrate that process and truly listen and pursue all that God created me to be.

And even after all of my work in naming this identity and coming out to certain people in my life and opening up to what might come from this part of who I am, God said, “you’re not done. That’s not all.” God called me to share this significant piece of who I am with all of you this morning. God was very clear to me that I am not fulfilling my call to ministry, my call to this specific body of beautiful and diverse and gracious people, if I am not inviting you to be part of my story, too. This is a vital time in our church…in our denomination…in our country…and my honesty and my celebration of who I am as a queer woman is a crucial part of the conversations happening in our lives right now. This has been simultaneously rewarding and frightening. Rather than grieve a loss, like the rich man in the text today – a loss of comfort, a loss of familiarity, a loss of expectation – I have chosen to try and trust that God is at work. God has been shifting my call once again and God has been giving me strength even when I haven’t been sure that I am strong enough to honor it.

Let me be clear: This doesn’t mean you have to agree with me or that we all have to feel the same way about everything or that we all have to automatically get up to speed on every issue that has ever plagued the church. But I do think it invites us all to remember the humanity and the contribution of every single person here this morning. As we continue in conversation from here, I pray we all can remember that.

Thank goodness, our parable continues. “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.” My going into ministry, my serving the church, my coming out have never been about my own strength. Your barriers, your challenges, your risks aren’t about your strength either. This is why beautiful, incredible things happen when we give everything to God. Because we cannot do it on our own. We are not that powerful, that creative, or that loving. God takes what we have and does something more grand, more inspiring, more wonderful, more impactful than anything we could do if we held onto it ourselves. God can take something as scary as selling all that you own and turn it into a heavenly treasure. God can take something as scary as questioning your sexuality and turn it into a magnificent love that helps you better live into your purpose. God can take something as scary as what you have and turn it into something absolutely beautiful, too.

My advice from one person learning to surrender to another? Strive to respond like Peter did. Take ourselves out of the bondage of the rich man and instead claim our liberty of being a disciple of Christ. “We have left everything and followed you.” Embrace the freedom in our potential to say to God, “Take all of me and use it for your glory.” It is very scary and very shocking, just like the rich man illustrated. But this is exactly what faith looks like. Peter’s confidence is what faith looks like. We have to trust. We have to take a leap into the unknown and take Jesus at his word. “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” It feels like we are last on earth as we sacrifice all of who we are and really put ourselves out there. But there is a greater purpose at work. There is a greater design at play. Heavenly treasure and ultimate fulfillment are waiting for us.

Imagine if we prayed like the psalmist prayed. Lord, “satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and prosper for us the work of our hands.” I have been praying fervently over the last year for God to thrive in the work of my hands – in this church, in my studies, in my life, in my relationships, in all of the challenge and heartbreak and struggle that come in those places. As we pray, as we open ourselves up, as we truly submit every piece of ourselves to God, we are satisfied in the morning, friends. Like the hymn we sang right before this, faith anticipates the sun. Faith is eager for the daylight, for the work that must be done. That’s what I think it means to be satisfied in the morning. We can rejoice and be glad in all our days. We are liberated to press into the favor God has put upon us and to do the work we are called to do.

God might not be asking you to give up your sexuality. God might not be asking you to give up all of your money. I couldn’t possibly tell you what you might be holding back or holding on to or hiding from. I have a suspicion you probably already know what that is. I pray the Spirit is communicating with you on that. What I can tell you is that, whether we realize it or not, whether we name it or not, just about all of us have something we are trying to keep. So I propose this morning that we are all open to what it is God is asking us to surrender, for the betterment of ourselves and all those around us.

Like the beautiful Howard Thurman quote that has stuck with me during my ministry journey over the last 10 years, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” I don’t know why we tend to be so hesitant of what makes us come alive. Maybe it’s back to Jesus’ point that for humans there are things that are impossible. I don’t like to ask for help and I certainly don’t like to be challenged to give up the most vulnerable parts of who I am. So I tend to play it safe. I stick to what I know. I only take calculated and sheltered risks. I imagine I’m not the only one. However, as we return to the basis of faith, which is to trust in God with everything in us, we are charged to do some really hard, really scary, really vulnerable work. If you walk away with anything this morning, I pray you can know that with God all things are possible, and therefore we are empowered and we are challenged to give all of ourselves to the Lord so that God may prosper the work of our hands. Amen.

Come with me for the journey is long
Come with me for the journey is long
Come with me for the journey is long
Come with me for the journey is long

Roughly a year ago I sat in Miller Chapel along with about 125 other confused and overwhelmed Princeton Seminary first year students. At that time, I didn’t know it was tradition for the incoming class to sing this song in a beautiful round with four part harmony during opening orientation worship. So I simply joined along, having no clue what those words would mean to me in the following months. Somehow yesterday I found myself on the other side of this experience. I was in the front helping to lead this year’s new class as the words spilled out of their mouths even though they, too, have no idea how much they will lean on these very same words in the coming months.

Instinctively, you can know why those words are so important. For any journey in life, it is probably long. And it is almost always better with other people. As I stood there yesterday with my eyes welling up with tears of gratitude and heartwarming reflection, I realized my role in this new academic year is drastically different. I am still on this long journey and I most definitely still need people to help me and keep me company along the way. But, I am no longer in the deconstructive phase of my seminary career. That has certainly been done already. And now, in year 2 of 3, is when I start to build. My charge this year is to dream and listen and establish more of who I am as a theologian, a pastor, a friend, a partner, and a contributing member of society. The second piece of that charge is to then do it. It is a serious and compelling task, but also one of the most glorious and most exciting ones I know to exist.

And the final piece of that charge, which hit me like a ton of bricks yesterday, is that I stand with those God put with me. New students, congregants, old friends, colleagues, family, it doesn’t matter. We all need somebody and I have now had the time and just enough training (though never enough training) to be that somebody you can trust and lean on and fall into and whatever else you may need.

So as I stood there yesterday, I prayed that I could be a part of someone else’s journey. I prayed I would be a helpful and calming and friendly presence in my community because we are all on a crazy journey that is long and challenging and prone to be lonely. I did not have to do it alone, by God’s design and God’s grace. So I open the invitation: come with me. You don’t have to have the answers, know the questions, contain the energy, or even understand where the heck you are right now. And you certainly don’t have to be alone. We can do our best to figure it all out together. Come with me?