Sermon for Sunday, February 4, 2024 || Epiphany 5B || Isaiah 40:21-31; Mark 1:29-39
A single, solitary verb in today’s Gospel reading got stuck in my mind this week, and this entire sermon has spun out from this one verb. It’s a sermon about the spiritual life, a sermon about how the spiritual life is not walked in a straight line, but in a spiral.
I’ll get to this special verb in a minute, but first let’s talk about Godly Play, this beautiful way we introduce the life and language of faith to the children of this church. Rather than teaching didactic lessons, Godly Play shares stories. The children sit in a circle with the storyteller and pay attention to the words of the story; the motions; the physical elements like sand, felt, and wooden figures; and even the silence in the midst of the story. After the story is finished, the adult mentor leads the children in a round of wondering, asking open-ended questions that purposefully do not have single correct answers in order to invite the children to put themselves into the story.
Continue reading “The Spiral”
Where the Wind... 