February 27, 2026

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Dear Friends,


We are about to embark on a long journey through the Gospel of John. I just want to take a minute to tell you that everything you know about the Gospel of John is wrong.

Well not everything. But the Gospel of John is comedy. You will hear jokes throughout the Gospel over the next few Sundays. You might even catch yourself chuckling—in church! Quelle horreur!

I have a sneaking suspicion, based on nothing but my own reading and sense of humor, that the Gospel of John was meant to be funny, at least in parts. And this Sunday we get a pun, or double entendre, to set up a scene at night, during a conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Well, that’s what he says in English. Or perhaps put better: “No one can see the kingdom of God with our being begotten from above.” But that’s not what John wrote. John wrote: ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω σοι, ἐὰν μή τις γεννηθῇ ἄνωθεν, οὐ δύναται ἰδεῖν τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ.

Did you see that word ‘ἄνωθεν’? That word has a couple of meanings: first is "from above"; the second is “again”. Nicodemus becomes perplexed. Jesus means ‘from above’—Nicodemus understands ‘again’. This is a classic comedy bit, where two people understands the same word two different ways. Entire episodes have been crafted from such a misunderstanding. And I think that the original hearers of John’s Gospel—because most of them would have been hearers rather than readers—probably laughed. Good old Nicodemus, more like Nicodumba— never mind. 

It’s ok to laugh. John is actually full of funny bits. Laughter is a gift—humor is one of the great ways we understand the world. Laughter can both make peace and do great harm. But it is really a gift—laughter changes a room, it shuffles the emotional deck, it clears the mind. And it’s part of John’s gospel.

Later church fathers would also use humor—because what happens to hell is kind of funny. They would say, the Devil came up to try to trap souls, to lead Jesus astray. And then he thought he won! Jesus died. So he came back down to hell—and all he found was a big empty room. Because Jesus cleared it out and took them all to heaven. They thought the idea of the smug devil gloating over the death of Jesus only to find that Jesus swiped all his souls and took them away, was very funny.

I find it comforting to think there is humor in the universe—the ways dogs bark, the birds that get expressive, the way that people across the world laugh, the way slapstick translates across cultures. John’s humor is in many ways lost to us—any time you have to explain a joke it loses its power, and many of these jokes in the Gospel, well, need to be translated. But come to church and laugh—it’s good for you.


See you soon,


Pastor John

 

 

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February 20, 2026

 

Dear Friends,

This week we have what I like to call an OSA Special: a service in which we are going to be doing several things all at once. We are installing our Council, welcoming our Wayfarers, and we also receive one of my favorite pericopes of the whole three-year cycle: the temptation of Adam and Eve and the temptation of Jesus. It’s going to be a lot!

Our liturgy is very focused on Word and Sacrament, what we call the means of grace. But this Sunday, given all that is going on, we shift our focus a bit. We focus on what the means of grace do. The Word of God and the Sacraments shape us, form us, unite us. They comfort us, strengthen us, free us. This Sunday, we see that in action, as some people make promises to serve our church community or to explore their faith, and God makes the promises of forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation to us.

The texts this week bear a human tension: the first is the Fall, the human failure at the time of testing, and the second is Jesus’s overcoming of the time trial. It is good for us to remember that there is no human who has ever been found perfect at the time of testing. We have all fallen short of the glory of God. I hope that in that realization we find humility and compassion, both for others and for ourselves.

However, humility does not mean humiliation, and that we fail does not mean that we should not strive. If we cannot be perfect, we should strive to be better. If we cannot remake ourselves, we should try to reform. If we cannot change completely, perhaps we can change some. And we can do it because Christ calls us to it.

So we turn our focus in the liturgy to the way the Word works among us. We see in the people evidence of the Spirit’s work, sometimes gentle, sometime with such a rush we are powerless before it. But everywhere we turn on Sunday, we will see dance of the Holy Trinity, leading us to community, to service, to care. That’s what makes church so beautiful.


See you soon,


Pastor John

 

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Wednesday, February 18, 2026

 

Hey all,

Today marks the beginning of Lent! Join us as we begin our time of self-examination, growth, and change with our Ash Wednesday service at 7:30 pm.

One of my favorite passages from the New Testament is read tonight, Paul's urgent plea to the Corinthians not to falter on their walk of faith. Don't wait for some day down the road to change for the better: now is the acceptable time, Paul says. Now.

I know that I have been guilty in the past for waiting for the right time to do things. But when it comes to following Jesus, now is always the right time. We are not a science experiment: conditions do not need to be perfect. Indeed, conditions will only get worse if we wait! The time to let go of whatever is hindering you from your life with God is always right now: let go and follow him. 

See you tonight!

Pastor John

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February 13, 2026

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Dear Friends,

Lent is almost here! We’ve been reading a book called Journey to the Cross: Devotions for Lent that has nice way of framing repentance, the practice of Lent. They say, “Lent is a particular time for repentance, which does not meat that we atone for our sins, or even that we feel deep shame about them. Repentance is taking a different course in the light of the fact that Jesus atoned for our sins and bore our shame on the cross.”

I like that—repentance doesn’t mean beating our breasts in public, shaving our heads, and so on. Indeed, shame and guilt are signpost feelings, not places for us dwell. Repentance is taking a different course. It is a path towards freedom. Taking a different course is a good definition, because the Greek word for repentance means simply to change direction, to turn around. Feeling guilty or ashamed? Take a different course? Feeling despairing, dull, tired and tiresome? Try a new direction, listening to Jesus and obeying his commands. Feeling stuck, powerless, surrounded? Remember that Jesus is the one that atones for sins and bears the shame—so cast it off your shoulders, and take the first step in a new direction.

I have long thought about the relationship between spiritual guidance and mental health. And I do believe there is a conflict when it comes to guilt and shame: I happen to think, so long as they are feelings that warn, confront, and therefore point toward a different direction, they are not only healthy but necessary. “Have you no shame, sir?” one might be asked. And I supposed the right way to answer, or perhaps the way I’d like to answer, is “I hope I’m ashamed of the shameful things. But I don’t need to be trapped in them. And I hope that I can press on to the shameless things, to joy.” I can say, “I’m sorry,” but I don’t feel ashamed to say it.

But! Before we get to Lent, first we celebrate Domingo Gordo! This means a potluck. Bring a dish you are not ashamed to share, something tasty and delicious, something that makes you happy. If that’s a kale salad, bring that. If it’s a big bucket of fried chicken, bring that. The point is to share, to delight, and to try something new. This is the Sunday of the Transfiguration, and there may be no better time to discover some new dish, and how can that happen for someone else if you don’t bring one? You are giving of yourself, sharing your life with others at a potluck.

See you soon!

Pastor John

 

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February 6, 2026

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Dear Friends,

It’s shaping up to be another cold weekend—I’ve been told by reliable sources that it’s going to be below freezing, with arctic winds, deep freezing temperatures, the whole nine yards. At OSA this leads to some discomfort, since our windows don’t all close. You might be sitting in the kitchen, trying to work during co-working hours, and you’ll find yourself in a hat and gloves. There are drafty corners upstairs, cold spots downstairs, and refrigerated spaces everywhere between. On the one hand, we never lack for fresh air, which the pandemic showed is really important for general health. But on the other hand, it’s bad for our heating bill, our comfort, and hospitality. Weekends like this show why we are moving into the next phase of our capital campaign: we need to restore our windows.

We have to restore our windows because it’s too darn expensive to replace them and would disrupt the aesthetic of our building. Our century-old windows still have good bones, and can be restored and restocked with energy-efficient glass, and that’s our best option. So over time, we hope to restore all our windows so that we can be snug in the winter, and eventually move to cooling in the summer. The glass we will use will help to keep the extreme temperatures out and the milder temperatures in.

About cooling: it is my hope, dream, goal, and perhaps simply flight of fancy to get our building to be fossil-fuel free by 2030. We have made strides in that direction. We cut our gas line and turned those appliances electric. We have a deal with ConEd that purchases electricity from a solar farm. We are fixing up the facade, tightening our building envelope. I hope—I dream—that someday we’ll be able to turn off our boiler for good and just rely on air source and ground source heat pumps for both heating and cooling—better for the earth, and better for our own comfort.

It might seem weird to be reading about building stuff with the world in the state that it is. But everything happening now is of a piece, and large piece of the authoritarian pie are fossil fuel interests.

This Sunday Jesus tells his followers to be salt of the earth and light for the world. He means we have been given the Spirit for the sake of the world. Part of our discipleship is the care of creation, and I believe that if our little church can become a fossil-fuel free place, it will inspire other places to do the same. It’s hard and expensive and a real challenge. But climate change is both an urgent and critically important crisis, one that in scope and consequence dwarfs all others. It undergirds and funds the fevered dreams of the authoritarian powers of this world, so breaking the grip of fossil fuels also means breaking free. That futures is greener, cleaner, and freer than our present. And if we can shine a little light on that path, we will be blessed.

These mundane things of the world—our buildings, our cars, the things we use barely thinking about them, these are still the things of discipleship. Eugene Peterson once said that discipleship is a long obedience in a single direction.  That means our untold, everyday choices—sometimes that's where the light comes in, the salt comes through.


See you soon,

Pastor John

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