Category: worship

Christmas, Hope, worship

A Sermon for Christmas Eve

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

Luke 2:1-14 [15-20]

On Sunday, Advent III, I asked the congregation what they longed for. And the answers shared were individual yet also universal. The kind we all have. The kind we all carry on our hearts such as peace, healing, and acceptance.

Then in the days leading up to Sunday, Advent IV and on Advent IV (the last Sunday in Advent), something happened around here. On Wednesday during our free community meal, one of our regular friends said to me “Pastor, I brought my friend tonight. I told him that it is peaceful here.”

Someone’s longing for peace was and is answered here in this place. We can treasure these words in our hearts.

On Thursday, one of our Wednesday night volunteers said to “Pastor, thank you for allowing me to volunteer here even though I am not a member and do not attend worship.”

Someone’s longing for acceptance was and is answered here in this place. We can treasure these words in our hearts.

On Sunday night, another person who regularly eats with us here said to me and Pastor Josh of the Northern Illinois Synod office, “I fell on hard times and this place has helped me get back on my feet. Thank you.”

Someone’s longing for healing was and is answered here in this place. We can treasure these words in our hearts.

On that same night, on Sunday, Advent IV, I sat outside in my car looking through the Fellowship Hall windows. Watching people eat together, find warm clothes, connect with others, give and receive support. Within our walls, finding peace, acceptance, and healing. And I just cried at the beauty of it all. Cried like the shepherds must have done when witnessing what the world could be and just because a baby had been born to bring the good news to the poor. Good news of great joy.

I also cried, (sobbed really) because of the fragility of it all. Knowing the scene that I witnessed can fall apart so easily.

Tonight, is the night each year we dare to hope that our universal longings for peace, healing, and acceptance for all people in our world are or at least can be fulfilled. And like other universal longings, I think we want them to be fulfilled simply. Not in easy answers per se. But perhaps as answers staring us right in the face.

We long for simplicity and especially this night when we hear once again the story of the birth of yet another poor child, this one in a makeshift birthing center. So much already not in his favor. Yet somehow in his new life we hear a message that all can be well. That the God we hope for, long for is truly among us. Simply among us, incarnate in a baby.

Simplicity answering our longings. Opening up like the sky seems to do on this night for a group of lowly shepherds keeping watch by night. Watching not for peace on earth, but for predatory animals lurking in the shadows. Waiting to take their prey.

But instead of predators, the heavens erupt in celestial beings, and song, and joy. Because the longings of the poor have been seen by God. And God is sending hope, simple hope in human form. So human, Jesus-Emmanual-God-with-Us does not appear fully grown but as a baby. A newborn baby.

Perhaps all these things—a baby born in the night, shepherds feeling seen and heard by night’s sky—is why the hymn, Silent Night, has become an enduring part of our Christmas season each year. Why we always sing it. Why we know its words. Why it speaks to our hearts in universal longing. That in night’s silence, we see the holy. In night’s calm, we find hope in all being well at least for a time. In night’s star and moonlight, we sense peace, healing, and acceptance in the miracle of a baby whose future will be tenuous. Yet brims with the possibilities of a new beginning, a new earth, and a new time for all people.

Peace, healing, and acceptance fulfilled through the unexpected yet ordinary. The Good News simple. It’s application, it’s living, not. Amen. 

The grace of God has appeared in a baby. In tiny human form. Vulnerable. Needy. Alive. Let us care for this grace with love, tenderness, and compassion. Amen. 

Image by Svetlana from Pixabay

Faith, Love, worship

Vulnerability Creates Love: Thoughts from Maundy Thursday

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez


  I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13: 34-35*

In a chapter entitled, “Places We Go When the Heart is Open,” author and professor Brené Brown writes “there is a debate among researchers about whether love is an emotion.” [1]

Some researchers lean toward love being an action or an intention more than emotion. And some, like Dr. Brown seem to think love is a bit of both—a descriptive word for an emotion and its accompanying feelings as well as a verb full of actions.

Yet love, whether an emotion or action or both remains elusive. Author and social critic, bell hooks, writes in her book All About Love that:

“Everywhere we learn that love is important, and yet we are bombarded by its failure. In the realm of the political, among the religious, in our families, and in our romantic lives, we see little indication that love informs decisions, strengthens our understanding of community, or keeps us together. This bleak picture in no way alters the nature of our longing. We still hope that love will prevail. We still believe in love’s promise.” [2]

Today, as we begin the service of the three days, we hear once again the story of Jesus giving the disciples a new commandment, not an additional commandment added to the other ten, but a new commandment.

34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Yet in order to know who to love as Jesus commands, we must return to what Jesus has been showing us throughout the story of his life here, the story of his ministry on earth.

We know Jesus ate with sinners and tax collectors. Extortionists and soldiers.

We know Jesus healed people considered the “throw-aways.” The ones banished to the edges of their communities. Forced to beg or worse in order to survive.

We know that Jesus also healed the un-seen. People who did not count as much. Whose humanity was somehow lesser than others, children and women.

We know that Jesus taught all people—regardless—about what it means to be human and in relationship with one another and with God.

And we know that Jesus taught and lived a form of unheard-of-equality. He himself was no greater than his followers. Jesus was no greater than the servants serving him. No greater than human beings suffering enslavement.

Brené Brown writes “We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness, and affection.”

Jesus shows himself often to be vulnerable. In our text this evening, Jesus kneels as the servants and enslaved do. He disrobes. And while he is not fully naked, without his robe he is less protected, more vulnerable. Then he makes an offering to his disciples, his beloved disciples. And the offering is one of trust, respect, kindness, and affection.

In this action of love Jesus moves the disciples (all but one disciple that is) away from all that damages the tender roots of love: “shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection.”

And while Jesus does not say it in the Gospel of John, he does say something very important about love in Luke, chapter 10 in the parable of the Good Samaritan:

 “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Love your neighbor as yourself brings us back to Brene Brown’s work. She believes from her research that “we can love others only as much as we love ourselves.”

This love thing for others does not happen unless we are willing to be vulnerable with ourselves and others. And only if we are willing to heal the soil in which love cannot grow for ourselves and others. And only if we treat our own bodies with the tenderness that Jesus washed the feet of his friends, even the friend who betrayed him!

To love then is not easy. It is as layered as the gospel writers of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John as well as the Deuteronomist say it is. Love takes our hearts, our souls, our minds, and our strength. Not so much as to love but as to heal the blame, shame, disrespect, betrayal and withholding of affection that dampens and even kills love.  So yes, bell hooks, is correct. The picture of love is bleak in this world we live in. But it was also bleak when Jesus lived on this earth. And yet, he held hope for all creation that love was and is possible. And if Jesus showed us that love is still possible then I believe we too can remain hopeful and with open hearts for ourselves and others. Amen.

[1] Brown, Brené (2021) “Places We Go When the Heart is Open,” in Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience.

[2] hooks, bell (2001) all about love: new visions.

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

*The above post is based on John 13:1-17, 31b-35 and was originally heard as the Maundy Thursday sermon on April 17, 2025 in the midst of the congregation of St. Johns Lutheran Church, Rock Island, Illinois.

Antiracism, Liturgy, Racial Justice, Trauma, worship

Proclaiming Who We Want To Be

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

The congregation I serve, St. John’s Lutheran Church in Rock Island, Illinois, begins almost every worship gathering with some words. Part wording from Reconciling Works of which we are a Reconciled in Christ (RIC) congregation. Part stand against centuries of racism. Part land acknowledgement. These words continue to evolve over time with additions and refinements as we grow in awareness and understanding.

We call these words our centering statement. They differ from the beliefs we chant in our Christian creeds, the abridged origin story of the birth of Christianity. Words we sometimes question, embrace the mystery of, wonder about, balk at the embedded patriarchy of. The words of our centering statement that we gather with each week are who we want to be, who we intend to be. In a sense, an ideal. The best version of ourselves as individuals and a community following Jesus that we work toward and grow into word by word.

So, we assemble each week. Hear a few announcements (sometimes it seems like too many). Then sound stills and air shifts while in body and voice, one or all of us says:

Here at St. John’s, we create this place for all people by being a Reconciling in Christ (RIC) community which means we consciously work to publicly see, name, celebrate, advocate, and welcome people of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions. We also publicly support and work toward dismantling all minimizing and wounding isms including racism. In this ongoing work of full belonging for all people we acknowledge that the land we worship on this day was once the home to the first peoples of this area including the Sauk, Meskwaki, and Illini peoples. We acknowledge that their way of life was tragically altered and continues to be diminished.

Something then swirls in Spirit’s air. Surrounds us. Holds us. Sinks into our bodies as we begin breathing together. Inhaling in all we just said aloud and in our hearts. Exhaling out our daily sorrows. Three times before hearing music, the prelude. The part of our worship life that we (like so many congregations) tend to chat through. What we have just done though through word and breath allows us the space to absorb sound while we continue breathing, with our hands placed on our hearts or holding our shoulders in a hug.

This practice of saying, breathing, and listening connects us to ourselves, God, and one another. Reattached and restored, we enter our ancient, familiar, liturgical practices for the next hour. Concluding with being sent out into our human constructed communities. Hanging on to all of our words like anchors.