By Shannon Schaefer

• Belonging to Christ by Shannon Schaefer (2/9/2017)
  Sixth Sunday after Epiphany Deuteronomy 30:15-20 1 Corinthians 3:1-9 Matthew 5:21-37 In the days after the American election results, it was one of the big questions lingering in the air, a question I heard in prayer requests at church, whispered from downcast friends, and even bubbling up from some deep place in me: How do I talk to my family in this post-election moment? The concern stretched beyond the boundaries of family, to friends, and even neighbors. As a good friend said that first week, “I don’t know who my neighbors are, and I’m pretty sure they don’t know who I am either.” ...
• Embracing Place by Shannon Schaefer (10/7/2016)
  Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 What will I do? What will I do without exile, and a long night that stares at the water? -Mahmoud Darwish, from “Who Am I, Without Exile?” What is exile in American culture? What is home? The way we might define both perhaps differs dramatically from how they might have been defined a century ago, or how they are still defined in cultures less marked by our infatuation with transience. To know exile, we must first know home, and we are arguably a culture of non-places. With mobility a marker supposedly for our freedom, we fall too often for the lie that transience is the path to transcendence. We have perhaps embraced th...
• The Beginning of a Heavenly Sowing by Shannon Schaefer (7/27/2016)
  Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Luke 12:13-21 “Imitate the earth, O mortal. Bear fruit as it does; do not show yourself inferior to inanimate soil. After all, the earth does not nurture fruit for its own enjoyment, but for your benefit… Let the end of your harvesting be the beginning of a heavenly sowing.” -St. Basil the Great, “On Social Justice.” I arrived at the community garden early one morning, and followed the voices to the greenhouse at the back edge of the property. As I stepped through the door into the humidity, I was overwhelmed by the pungent aroma of soil and onions. Instead of the usual black trays of infant plants getting a good start on growth, before me were long rows of drying tables, he...
• A Morsel From Your Hand by Shannon Schaefer (6/1/2016)
  Third Sunday after Pentecost 1 Kings 17:8-24 As I lifted my eyes from the letter I was writing seated in the bookstore café, I searched for a thought while I watched a woman ride in the door on a Walmart motorized cart. My son, across from me, was lost in the pages of a fantasy novel. I looked back down, pen to the paper to finish my sentence, and when I looked up a moment later, she was next to our table, had come straight to us. She said, “hello,” then looked away, fighting the words and gearing up for rejection. Half through her explanation, feeling awkward and wanting to end her humiliation, I gently cut her off and said, “Do you need money?” Her answer was, “Yes, $26,” an amount so exact, so without expla...
• Becoming Home by Shannon Schaefer (3/2/2016)
  Fourth Sunday in Lent Joshua 5:9-12 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 "what is the word beyond. home. after home. where is it. this word. why can i not remember how to say this thing. this feeling that is my whole body." --Nayyirah Waheed “I think that love comes so seldom, so brittle, that I'm always knocked over by the offer of a little. But asking for a lot would take a lot of bravery.” A friend and I had spent the afternoon in the sun and the breeze talking about relationships, and after, I’d had this dawning vision that perhaps she was worthy of more love than sh...
• Who Is This? by Shannon Schaefer (8/19/2015)
  Thirteenth Sunday afar Pentecost Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time John 6:56-69 It is at the eucharistic table and in our liturgies that we likely most often encounter Jesus’s words in the gospel of John, that his flesh is true food, his blood true drink, and that when we eat and drink, we abide in him and he in us. Perhaps we couldn’t be blamed then if such claims of Jesus slide down into the belly of our hearts with ease, like comfort food, filled with familiarity and fond association. For those who have lived this story long, we hear bread and think body, body and think bread – a mingling of symbols and referents that comes as a hard-won accomplishment of good formation. Add to our formations the di...
• Storm of the Spirit by Shannon Schaefer (6/17/2015)
  Fourth Sunday after Pentecost Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time Psalm 107 Mark 4:35-41 Mid-May of this year, the Pew Research Center for Religion and Public Life released findings from a recent survey that indicates a decline in the number of Americans claiming Christian affiliation, especially among Mainline Protestants and Catholics. When the report was first released, reactions among those I know varied widely, from alarm, to those who met the findings with resignation and acceptance, or frankly as old news. As a divinity school student, preparing for perhaps a lifeti...
• Transfigured in Him by Shannon Schaefer (2/11/2015)
  Transfiguration Sunday Mark 9:2-9 “And he was transfigured before them.” – Mark 9:2 “I can’t explain the goings or the comings. You enter suddenly and I am nowhere again, inside the majesty.” – Rumi Dazzling white clothes, Moses and Elijah, voices from clouds – I am guilty of having sometimes rushed past the transfiguration accounts for how inaccessible such an experience of Jesus seems to me. Perhaps it’s a story challenging to preach or teach, as it offers no tidy moral imperative, no clear implication for how to live in light of the disciples’ witness. Instead, the transfiguration account is fluent in mystery, begging us to place ourselves in the narrative and walk around inside of it - clim...
• Like Those Who Dream by Shannon Schaefer (12/12/2014)
  Third Sunday in Advent Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 Psalm 16, Luke 1:46b-55 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 John 1:6-8, 19-28 The recent events of injustice surrounding race in our country – nay, so many events in our recent news which embody a quality of brokenness capable of tearing any attentive heart – have perhaps eased the challenge of entering into Advent as a season of waiting and crying out for the presence of God in our midst. The first Sunday of this season came just days after the most recent occasion for prote...
• Fruit of the Vine, Work of Human Hands by Shannon Schaefer (10/1/2014)
  Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20 Psalm 19 Philippians 3:4b-14 Matthew 21:33-46 “Wine is bottled poetry.” – Robert Louis Stevenson “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.” Our text this week of parable and interpretation raises a number of compelling questions for the church. Knowing the story as we do, it is perhaps understandable for us to look at Jesus’ interpretation of the parable of t...
• Junk-yard Dog by Shannon Schaefer (8/13/2014)
  Tenth Sunday after Pentecost Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time Genesis 45:1-15 Psalm 133 Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32 Matthew 15:10-28 “Junk-yard dog.” The first time he ever called her that, I bristled. Wish I could tell you it was said in private, out of ear-shot, but it wasn’t. It was his term of affection for her, said often to her face. I’d been coaching kids’ soccer for all of three weeks, eight year olds, and her mom had struggled to consistently get her to practices and games. So my assistant, a dear man and veteran coach, but living in a place where such ...
• A Glory that Breathes Life by Shannon Schaefer (5/23/2014)
  Sixth Sunday of Easter Acts 8:5-17 OR Acts 17:22-31 1 Peter 3:13-22 John 14:15-21 There is a glory that breathes life back in a corpse and brings strangers together as friends. Call that one back who fills the held-out robe of a thornbush with flowers, who clears muddied minds, who gives a two-day-old infant wisdom beyond anyone’s learning. “What baby?” you ask. There is a fountain, a passion circulating. I’m not saying this well, because I’m too much in the scatterbrain sweetness. Listen anyway. It must be sa...
• The Womb of the Church by Shannon Schaefer (3/11/2014)
  Second Sunday of Lent John 3:1-17 (18-21) It is dark, night, perhaps even the evening after Jesus goes on a rampage in the temple, flipping tables, coins flying, would-be sacrifices scattering. The Jews had confronted him, asking for a sign. He’d made quite the scene. Now in the dark, Nicodemus comes to Jesus. A leader of the Jews, an authority in the temple where such a scene was made, he comes to appease, smooth things over a little, perhaps appeal to the madman in hopes of preventing further disruption. It’s Passover, after all, and the temple at that. A repeat of such antics would be deeply shaming. Or perhaps the dark is more than simple night, and Nicodemus wants in, closer to the power he sees in the...
• Body Matters by Shannon Schaefer (1/1/2014)
  Second Sunday of Christmas Solemnity of the Epiphany Jeremiah 31:7-14 Psalm 147:12-20 Ephesians 1:3-14 John 1:1-18 “The Word became flesh and lived among us…” The deepest of human hopes has taken body, form: there is skin on God. Soft tissues wrap bone, the divine bound willingly in the swaddling clothes of human substance, fibered all through with yearning and will. The creator inhabits created form. There is no room for metaphor here; flesh on God is no parable, no allegory. Make no mistake: this is body, like yours, like m...
• To Sweet Impossible Blossom by Shannon Schaefer (11/7/2013)
  Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost Luke 20:27-38 “Indeed they cannot die anymore… being children of the resurrection.” It is these words of Jesus that cause my soul to catch; these my worn heart snags on. In the gospel text this week, the Sadducees come with a theoretical question concerning a resurrection they don’t believe in. Jesus knows their unbelief. Perhaps he knows he also won’t convince them, even appealing to the Torah, as he does. But he still answers the question. They’ve come up with the perfect quandary for Jesus. A woman marries seven brothers, gives not one of them a child to carry his name and tether her to him. In the res...
• To Rest in Requiring Hands by Shannon Schaefer (9/4/2013)
  Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time Jeremiah 18:1-11 Philemon 1-21 Luke 14:25-33 I have long admired hand-made pottery. So when a friend who had been throwing pots for some time asked me if I would be interested in learning, I was more than enthusiastic. All of my exposure to wheel-thrown pottery indicated a serene, meditative act, and I could use a bit more of that in my life. The first day at the wheel, I held my newly kneaded lump of clay, eager for peaceful art-making, when my friend instructed me to raise up my clay in both hands and slam it down on th...