The Third Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 6A-St. Mary's El Dorado

 The Rev. Canon Melanie Dickson Lemburg

The Third Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 6A

St. Mary’s El Dorado

June 14, 2026

 

       Good morning!  It is a delight to be with y’all on this third Sunday after Pentecost!  I’ve spent a good amount time with your wardens and your vestry, and let me tell you, y’all have got some excellent wardens--they are dedicated and hard-working and they love y’all and this congregation so much!  And y’all have got some really smart, faithful, and committed vestry people.  I have really appreciated working with all of them! You all are in steady hands.   

This past week, I loaded up my car and left my home and my family in Savannah to return to Little Rock, and as I pulled out of my driveway, I realized I didn’t know when I would be back or when I would see my family again.  Now let me be clear.  This sounds much more dramatic than it actually is. You see, we are in the process of trying to buy a house in Little Rock and sell the house in Savannah, and we may be about to get an offer on the Savannah house and we’re waiting to hear more on our offer in Little Rock.  So we do have a plan a and a plan b and a plan c of when we’ll next be together as a family, but it’s all still very fluid right now.

As a result, this week has felt coated in a residue of uncertainty for me. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t really appreciate uncertainty.  Oh, I try. Because I know that uncertainty is a part of life and being able to hold uncertainty is a key part of our spiritual development.  But I don’t like it.  

So this week, my spiritual practice has been to try to pay attention to the ways that I resist uncertainty.  I wonder how you feel about this?  Are you generally comfortable with uncertainty or do you have predictable ways that you try to manage or deal with uncertainty in your life?  Do you freeze in the face of uncertainty or withdraw?  Are you of the “don’t just stand there, do something!” in the face of uncertainty school?  This would look like getting busier and busier, both with things that matter and things that don’t.  Do you try to ignore the uncertainty and pretend everything is normal?  How do you normally engage with uncertainty in your life?  You’ve probably already guessed this about me, but I like to create multiple plans and then attempt to grab the uncertain area by the throat and wrestle it into one of my plans.  (Spoiler alert:  this often does not work well for me.) 

So this week, I’ve been trying to have my plans formulated but to also create space for the uncertainty in my life to dwell alongside me.  And it’s uncomfortable, which tells me that this is probably an area I need to continue to grow in.

The gospel reading and the Old Testament readings have been helpful companions for me this week in my discomfort with uncertainty.  In the story from Exodus, we see the Children of Israel are three months into their wandering in the wilderness.  They are just three months out from their miraculous escape from Egypt and Pharoah’s army, when they walked on the dry land between the parted waters of the Red Sea where God, through Moses, led them to safety.  They have tried to drink bitter water, which God (through Moses) has made sweet for them; they have been hungry and been taught how to gather the manna that God provides for them to eat.  They’ve even been attacked by the Amalekites and saved (again by God and Moses).  But the wandering and the uncertainty is starting to wear on them, and they are feeling the full impact of that way of life.  So God gives the people through Moses a word of encouragement in the form of a covenant:  “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.”  

In these words, God is promising the people that just as God has taken care of them and has not let anything happen to them, God will continue to offer them God’s presence and God’s protection.  They are and continue to be treasured by God.  And because of this special relationship, the people have a responsibility to God also.  They are called by God to obedience to God and to keeping the covenant.   And in this call, this invitation, God is giving God’s people the tools to navigate the next 39 years and 9 months of wandering in the wilderness of uncertainty:  Trust God.  Obey God.  Be faithful to God. 

The gospel reading for today from Matthew shows how Jesus sends the disciples out to proclaim that the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.  This sending out is a result of Jesus’ compassion; he sees that the people are “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd,” so he sends out his disciples as missionaries of good news, telling them to “go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.”  And then, Jesus gives the disciples further instruction on how to do this, and it is a master class in uncertainty, in vulnerability.  He tells them:  

“Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff... Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave… If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.” 

He tells them, you’re going to be handed over to the authorities, and when you are, prepare no defense, “for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”

Jesus is sending his disciples out with a call to wander in order to proclaim the good news.  He sends them out without a clear destination (that’s the definition of wandering) and his instructions make it clear that the call to wandering, the call to discipleship, involves a great deal of both vulnerability and uncertainty.  In fact, the call to wandering is, at its heart, a call to uncertainty. 

And again, he offers them the assurance that in the midst of their wandering and their uncertainty, they don’t have to worry because the Holy Spirit is with them, working in and through and around them.  The other key piece to Jesus’s call to the disciples to wander off into vulnerability and uncertainty is that there is a purpose to this uncertainty.  It is to spread the good news of the Kingdom of God and to offer healing and reconciliation in Jesus’s name to those who need it most as inspired by the Holy Spirit.  

So what does this mean for us?  That the call to discipleship, the call to following Jesus is a call to both vulnerability and uncertainty?  Just as I find myself in a season of uncertainty in my life, you at St. Mary’s may also be wandering around a bit in the wilderness of “what’s next?”.  Maybe this season is an important reminder for all of us that we cannot plan or control how or when the Holy Spirit shows up?  (And thank goodness for that because it is often so different/greater/better than our best laid plans!). 

God’s invitation to wander, to uncertainty is God’s invitation to us to trust God, to give our lives over to an unreasonable, unplannable and unplanned hope.  And then to see what sort of space opens up in our lives (of faith) when we live into God’s call to wander, to be uncertain, to be vulnerable, to be faithful, and to trust God—all for the sake of God’s purpose which is the spreading of the good news.  

Your invitation this week is to pay attention to how you encounter uncertainty in your life or in this church?  Pay attention to what is your general disposition toward uncertainty?  How is God calling you to wander, to step into uncertainty for the sake of the good news?  

I can’t wait to see how God’s Holy Spirit shows up and surprises us in our work here together!  May God give us all the power to trust God, to obey God, and to be faithful to God in this coming season.  

The First Sunday in Lent-St. Alban's Stuttgart & St. Peter's Tollville

The Rev Canon Melanie Dickson Lemburg

St. Peter’s and St. Alban’s, Tollville and Stuttgart

The First Sunday in Lent Year A

February 22, 2027

 

       About 7 years ago, my parents bought a farm in Northeast Mississippi.  Now, this might not seem like big news to y’all, here in the Arkansas Delta, but I have to admit that I thought they were crazy.  They were in their late 60’s at the time, so they had an eye toward doing this in retirement.  My dad is a lobbyist, and my mom is a retired teacher who also worked as a county court administrator.  They had always liked to garden, and they had this dream of owning a farm so they could grow their own food in the form of organic vegetables.  Together, with my youngest brother and his wife and newborn twin girls, they all embarked on the adventure of our family farm, learning all that they could about farming from YouTube videos.  

       About a year after they started their adventure, I asked my brother what had been most surprising to him about the whole endeavor.  He told me that farming had been for him a lesson in how little of life a person can actually control.  It was humbling, really, to recognize how much of farming was out of his control and that he couldn’t work his way or think his way out of hardships like drought or weeds or burst pipes in the barn.  

       My dad has shared his favorite quote about farming that’s not original to him.  (I suspect y’all have heard this before.) “God made farming hard, and then God invented weather.”  

       I’ve been thinking about all of this in light of our readings for this First Sunday in Lent, especially the Old Testament reading and the gospel.  In Genesis, we see Adam and Eve at work farming, tending the garden of Eden.  God gives them so much freedom and only one stipulation:  whatever you do, don’t eat of the fruit of one particular tree—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Anything else is fair game.  So what do they do?  They eat of that one tree.  And I can’t help but wonder why?  Was it because it was the one thing in the garden that was outside their control?  

       We see the counter to this potential need for control in how Jesus interacts with the devil in his temptations in the wilderness.  If you look closely, each one of the three temptations offered by the devil are temptations to control, to try to assert one’s will over trusting God’s care and providence.  And Jesus refuses to do that.  It is utterly astounding to me how he resists those temptations to try to exert control.  And each time he resists, he reiterates the call to trust only in God.

       When he says, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”  He is saying: “I trust God.”

       When he says, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ He is saying, “I trust God.”

       When he says, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him,’  he is saying, “I trust God.” 

And we see this supreme trust in God in the way he lives his life as well.  It is at the heart of his journey to the cross, which we will follow over the course of these forty days.  It is a slow, steady relinquishing of control, even to the point of giving himself up for death at the hands of his enemies.  

       So, what might all this have to teach us today?  Maybe y’all have already learned the lessons you need about control and trusting in God, but for me, it is a lesson I need to learn and re-learn just about every Lent.  

       A few years ago, I read the book A Different Kind of Fast:  Feeding our True Hungers in Lent by Christine Valters Paintner.  The book is essentially a Lenten retreat where the author invites the reader to take on a different type of fast during Lent and then using the space created by the fast to embrace more life-giving practices.  Each week, she offers a different practice, and for the sixth week she encourages the reader to “Fast from certainty and attempting to control the outcome of things so that you might grow in trust in the great mystery of life.”  Embrace the beauty of the unknown and be nourished by new possibilities we would have never dreamed.”[i]

       I’ve been thinking about that invitation a lot this week as I’ve been contemplating the ways that I most frequently act like Adam and Eve and contemplating the invitation to act more like Jesus in this area of control and putting my trust in God.  

       And something else that I’m reading currently has helped me in this contemplation.  It’s from the book titled the centuries wrap round us: a thousand ponderings on beauty, bridging, and being in an age of fear, fragmentation, and fragility by John Paul Lederach who is well known as a Mennonite and a successful peacebuilder/conflict mediator.  Lederach writes, “From Hannah Arendt I understood the greatest of all human paradoxes.  We have the capacity to remember but no power to change the past.  We have the capacity to imagine, but no power to control the future.  To embrace the paradox of powerlessness, to hold its extraordinary tension, humility remains the constant guidepost.”

He continues with his definition of humility writing, “Humility (n): The courage to hold your truth lightly enough that the light of another, even one you fear, can unexpectedly illuminate your path; also known as living with a tender tenacity.”[ii]

Let me read that one more time:  “Humility is the courage to hold your truth lightly enough that the light of another, even one you fear, can unexpectedly illuminate your path; also known as living with a tender tenacity.”  

Which goes back to farming, doesn’t it?  I can’t think of a better image of tender tenacity than little green shoots started from seeds and just beginning to spout up from the dirt.  And even the earth itself can teach us about this spiritual practice of humility.  The Latin word humus, which means earth, ground, or soil, is the root word for both human and humility.  

We are not strangers to dirt and dust in these early days of Lent; just the other day, we heard the haunting call to“remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

In light of all this, here are some questions I invite you to join me in considering this week.  Where in your life do you need to try to fast from seeking to control?  How might God be inviting you to practice humility—holding your own truth lightly enough that the light of another can also illumine your path?  Where in your life are you being invited to trust God, to trust others, to abandon all sense of control and to lean into uncertainty? Where is God offering you the nourishment of new possibilities?

In closing, I’ll share with you a blessing by the Methodist minister, artist, and poet Jan Richardson.  It’s titled:

Blessing the Dust

All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners

or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—

did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?

This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.

This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.

This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.

So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are

but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.[iii]

     

---

[i] Paintner, Christine Valters.  A Different Kind of Fast: Feeding our True Hungers in Lent. Broadleaf: Minneapolis, 2024, pp 29-31 in kindle edition.

[ii] Lederach, John Paul.  the centuries wrap round us: a thousand ponderings on beauty, bridging, and being in an age of fear, fragmentation, and fragility.  Outskirts Press:  2026, pp 15-16 in Kindle edition. 

[iii] Richardson, Jan.  from Circle of Grace:  A Book of Blessings for the Seasons. https://paintedprayerbook.com/2026/02/17/ash-wednesday-to-ask-where-love-will-lead-us

The Last Sunday after the Epiphany Year A-St. Barnabas, Foreman

 The Rev Canon Melanie Lemburg

St. Barnabas-Foreman, AR

The Last Sunday after the Epiphany-Year A

February 15, 2026

 

A letter to Kendyl Jo Ellis upon the occasion of her baptism. 

 

Dear Kendyl,

 

       Today is an exciting day in your life and in the life of the Church!  Today is the day when you will be baptized, and in and through your baptism, you will become an official member of the body of Christ, an official member of this church.  Today is also a day that has profound implications on how you will be raised and how you hopefully choose to live the rest of your life. 

       In your baptism, your family and godparents are acknowledging a deep truth about who you are.  They are recognizing that at your very creation, God knew you, loved you into being, and claimed you as God’s beloved.  

       There is nothing that you can ever do, sweet Kendyl, to change that.  You are and always will be God’s beloved.  And today, your family and godparents are saying “yes” to God; they are accepting your status as God’s beloved, your very belovedness, on your behalf.  

       You might be wondering (in that sweet little head of yours), “What does it mean to be God’s beloved?  Your belovedness has echoes and meaning in Jesus’s own life.  We see Jesus being claimed as God’s beloved in his own baptism (which we read about way back in January).  When he rises up out of the water after his baptism by John, Matthew tells us “a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”  And we are reminded of this encounter in our gospel reading again today.  Jesus and a few of his closest disciples have gone up the mountain to pray together, when he becomes transfigured, changed and charged in a dazzling light.  They see the figures of Moses and Elijah with him, a bright cloud comes and overshadows them all, and a voice speaks from the cloud saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”  Jesus reassures his disciples, tells them not to be afraid and not to tell anyone, and then he heads down the mountain where he begins preparing to face his death in Jerusalem.  

       It is in both Jesus’s life and in his death that we find what it means to be God’s beloved, what it looks like to live life as God’s beloved.  Jesus’s life is shaped by prayer and worship, both in solitude and in community; in the reading and study of scripture; in proclaiming the good news, that the Kingdom of God has come near, and doing his part to offer healing and reconciliation as his work in God’s kingdom.  He spends time with all different sorts of people, and especially with the people who were the most sick, the most lost, the most forgotten, the most marginalized.  And he is not afraid to speak truth to power.  Jesus gives up his life in death, in a pure act of self-giving love; and in his death, he proves that God’s love is stronger than absolutely anything, even death.  In his death, he opens for us the way for resurrection and new life.  And this is what you are being baptized into this day as well.  It is an essential part of what it means to be God’s beloved.  

       Sweet Kendyl, as your family says yes to your belovedness, they are promising to teach you about this way of Jesus and to help you learn how to live your life in similar fashion.  

       It is demanding work, living this life as God’s beloved.   Which is why you have all of us.  Each one of us is promising to support you as you live your life as God’s beloved, and you will support us as well.  We need each other to do this.  Because there will be times when your belovedness overcomes you like a blinding light, and sometimes, your belovedness will shimmer softly, just under the surface.  And sometimes you will need our help in holding up a mirror before you so you can see it.  We promise we will help you remember your belovedness; just as you will help us remember ours.

       Because, sweet Kendyl, every single person God has ever created is also God’s beloved.   No matter what.  That is also the truth of our baptism.  Today, we all will also reaffirm the promises that we will live our lives in a way that reflects our understanding of every person’s belovedness as well.  This means loving our neighbors as ourselves;  it means seeking and serving Christ in all persons.  It means respecting the dignity of every human being, and striving for justice and peace among all people.  

       Every single day of our lives, we are faced with choices about how we will treat people, how we will recognize and honor each person we encounter as God’s beloved.  Sometimes this choice shows up as a clear invitation between right and wrong, and sometimes it shows up in the quiet, daily persistence of being faithful.  Each one of us is called to live our lives in a way that reflects the truth of both our own belovedness as well as the belovedness of others, all together in the heart of God.

       May you never forget that you are God’s beloved, and may you live your life with joy and hope resting in the knowledge of your belovedness.

 

Your sister in Christ,

Melanie+

The Third Sunday of Advent_St. Mark's, Crossett

 The Rev. Canon Melanie Lemburg

The Third Sunday of Advent-Year A

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Crossett, AR

December 14, 2025

 

       “She might say no.”  This is the last line in Luci Shaw’s poem The Annunciatory Angel written about the Fra Angelica painting depicting the annunciation, when the angel Gabriel gives the news to Mary that she has been chosen by God to be the God-bearer, the mother of Jesus.  The poem is written from Gabriel’s perspective, and it ends with this haunting line: “She might say no.”  

       Of course, we know that Mary doesn’t say no.  Instead, she says “yes.”  First, she says, “Let it be unto me according to your word.”  And then she elaborates on her yes in the words we have spoken together this morning together in Canticle 15, what we in the church know of as the Magnificat.    

Listen again to how Mary says yes to God:

“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,

my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; * 
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed: *
the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name.

He has mercy on those who fear him *
in every generation.

He has shown the strength of his arm, *
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *
and has lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things, *
and the rich he has sent away empty.

He has come to the help of his servant Israel, *
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,

The promise he made to our fathers, *
to Abraham and his children for ever.”

 

       I heard an excellent ordination sermon yesterday delivered by the Rev Mark Nabors of St. Luke’s Hot Springs.  In this sermon, Mark spoke about how almost all of the prophets, except Mary, at first tried to say no to God.  I was captivated by this statement-first in that he had likened Mary to one of the prophets, which is both true and a way that I had never thought of her before, and second- that unlike most of the prophets, Mary doesn’t say no.  She says yes immediately.  And in her yes, Mary knits together God’s saving work woven like a ribbon through our past, present, and future.  Her yes is full of hope and something else that I’ve only been able to identify as whimsy:  the mighty are cast down, and the lowly are lifted up; the hungry are filled and the rich sent away empty

       This week I encountered another poem that has helped me reflect on this characteristic of whimsy in Mary’s yes.  The poem is by Lyndsay Rush.  She posts on Instagram under the handle “Mary Oliver’s Drunk Cousin”. 

Her poem is titled “Out on a Whim.” Here it is: 

Out On a Whim

Every morning I take a deep breath of hope / and horror / and exhale / My phone is full of hot air / and outside, it's worse / but still / I know we are not limited to either and or / outrage or apathy / histrionics or hibernation / all or nothing / we are knit for nuance / and hard-wired for joy / even in the face of atrocity / perhaps especially in the face of atrocity / look for the helpers, yes, / but look, too, for the dreamers / look for the hopeful / look for the artists and the noticers / those clawing their way towards peace / and even pleasure / amidst news that keeps breaking / and breaking / and breaking / if hatred is the hare, not the tortoise / if rage burns twice as bright but half as long / then let me be bolstered by whimsy / if empathy is extreme / and joy is an act of resistance / then dear god, let me be radicalized by whimsy / what could be finer fuel for our fight? / what could better remind us of our humanity? / what could possibly sustain us but this?

       What does it mean or look like to be bolstered by whimsy, to be radicalized by whimsy?   I think the opposite of whimsy is cynicism.  It’s a sort of weary practicality that often dwells under the surface of “but we’ve always done it that way.”  Or nothing will ever change, so why bother?  Underneath whimsy dwells hope, and it is hope that suffuses Mary’s “yes” and can inspire us in our own yeses to God and to others. Every yes we offer begins in curiosity (which is, perhaps, the sister to whimsy). 

       What are the ways we can connect with our whimsy this Advent in our own discernment to what God is inviting us into?  I’ve been reading a book for my Advent devotion by the writer Christine Valters Paintner titled Give Me A Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year  It’s about the  practice of the early church mothers and fathers offering to pilgrims a word for them to meditate upon.  She writes of this ancient practice: “The word being sought was not a theological explanation or counseling.  It was part of a relationship that had developed with the assumption that this word, when received by the disciple, would be life-giving.  It was meant for this person in this moment and season in their lives.”  

       Paintner’s book is a set of spiritual exercises to support someone in seeking a word to reflect upon for a coming year or season. She continues, “When we receive a word, often it is confirmed through synchronicities that continue to appear to us or a sense of felt rightness.  I sometimes describe this process of listening as looking for shimmers.  Shimmering is a way to describe when something in the world is calling to you, beckoning you, sometimes even urging you to pay closer attention.  Sometimes what shimmers is challenging, but we know that wrestling with it will yield something bigger in our lives.  Sometimes what shimmers invokes wonder and awe.  We notice a felt response in our bodies and spirits that asks us to attune more deeply to what is being revealed.”[i]

       Looking for shimmers in our lives or in the world around us is a spiritual practice that we can employ to help us be more open to curiosity, to whimsy.  It’s a way of living out of a posture of “yes” to God and those around us as opposed to living out of a posture of “no”.    

       This week, I invite you to look for the shimmers, the places of whimsy in your lives and in the world.  Where are the places in your life or in the world that are inviting your curiosity?  How might whimsy be equipping you, bolstering you, radicalizing you to say “yes” to God’s call in your life?  

 

---

[i] Paintner, Christine Valters. Give Me A Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year. Broadleaf Books:  Minneapolis, 2025, pp xi-xii.

The 2nd Sunday of Advent Year A_St. Mark's Jonesboro

St. Mark’s Jonesboro

The Second Sunday of Advent-Year A

December 7, 2025

       I’ve been thinking a lot about hope this week.  We had our inaugural Advent Teaching Mission and Lecture event for the diocese this weekend, where we got to hear the Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, one of the preeminent theologians of our time, offer her reflections on Hope in Despairing Times.  She spoke in very specific ways about how hope is both a practice and an action, and she also spoke about how joy is an essential component to hope.  

       Also this week, I attended the gathering for the transition officers from Provinces 6, 7, and 8 at Mustang Island in Texas.  There were about 16 of us there, representing 18 dioceses, and the numbers of churches looking for clergy in comparison with the number of clergy looking were off-putting, to say the least.  Know that I presented you to my colleagues for their consideration for any priests in their dioceses looking for a new cure.  And then together, we all prayed for you.  It was such a touching and tender moment, as we presented churches like you who had been entrusted to our care, and we prayed that God would send you who you need (and someone who also needs you).   

       But, back to hope….So often we think of hope as optimism, and it so much more than that.  Friday night in her lecture, Dr. Douglas stated, “Hope is the release of the resurrection spirit.”  And she talked about hope in terms of Jesus’s resurrection, how he was dead and then he was not, and how there is even a sort of playful quality to the resurrection accounts that is essential to hope.  “Hope is the release of the resurrection spirit.”  I suspect this is something that we can identify in our lives as well.  How often have you been surprised by a mini (or large) resurrection moment in your own life or in your life of faith?  Have you ever had something that seemed dead that came to life in new and unexpected ways?

The reading from Isaiah for today speaks to this as it begins with the words, “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,/ and a branch shall grow out of his roots.”  The passage goes on to talk about the peaceable kingdom that will be ushered in by God through this new kind of king.  It’s all about Israel’s future hope:  what it means to hope even when the future seems uncertain.  And it is also all about the connections between justice and peace.

       Because at this point in Israel’s history, things are really bad.  The once united kingdom has been divided into two; the king of the southern kingdom has sold out the northern kingdom to their mutual enemies, and the northern kingdom has fallen.  The people in the southern kingdom, including Isaiah, know that it’s only a matter of time until they, too, are conquered.  So they long for a new kind of king who will hold justice and peace together, a king who will be God’s agent in ushering in the peaceable kingdom where enemies, predators and prey will all lie down together and be at peace.  

       For Isaiah, he is looking at something that seems dead or dying, and he is hoping that new life will yet spring up from it. 

       This is not an unfounded hope.  It is, in fact, the hope of our calling as Christians, the resurrection hope.  It can be true for society, and it can be true for own lives as well.  As another writer puts it, “According to Isaiah, the transformation from a culture of fear to a world at peace begins with a stump.  Out of something that appears finished, lifeless, left-behind, comes the sign of new life—a green sprig.  This is how hope gets its start-it emerges as a tiny tendril in an unexpected place.”[i]  

       But here is what is so interesting about this image from Isaiah for me today.  Hope is likened to tiny, green sprig of new life and tender persistence.  It is alarming to think how easily it could get trampled out of existence, and yet it doesn’t.  

       This week, I encountered a new poem by Denise Levertov titled Making Peace.  Listen to the first part of this poem:

A voice from the dark called out,

             ‘The poets must give us

imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar

imagination of disaster. Peace, not only

the absence of war.’

                                   But peace, like a poem,

is not there ahead of itself,

can’t be imagined before it is made,

can’t be known except

in the words of its making,

grammar of justice,

syntax of mutual aid.

                                       A feeling towards it,

dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have

until we begin to utter its metaphors,

learning them as we speak.[ii]

 

       So, a key part of this hope that springs up like a tender, green shoot, is that it invites us to engage our imaginations to discern what are the shoots of hope and what are just weeds.  What tiny green shoots do we give energy to protect and nurture that will grow into branches of a once again healthy tree and what parts do we leave for nature to take its course?  There is a sort of communal cultivation and practice of hope that must engage our imaginations.  

       And the final essential component that we see in this dance in Isaiah between peace and hope is that they are all bound together by justice.  In her talk on Saturday, Dr. Douglas shared, “If we want peace, we have to create justice.  Peace follows justice.  [We must] nurture the conditions that foster life.”  And in her explanation of justice, Douglas shared what she calls a “reverse golden rule”:  “do not withhold from others that which you would not want withheld from yourself.”  So peace, hope, justice are all interrelated.

       Where are the tiny, shoots of tender new life and hope in your lives; in your midst here?  Where are you being surprised by resurrection hope and being invited to imagine how you can nurture it and participate in it? What is the role of peace and justice in the practicing of your hope? 

       In closing, I’ll offer you a spiritual practice for this Advent season (and beyond) that is articulated in Christine Valters Paintner’s book titled Give Me A Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year that has been helpful for me as a part of my own keeping of Advent this year.  You can do this reflection at the end of each day to reflect back over your day; or you can also do this to reflect back over the whole year.  You can also use this reflection to think about life here at St. Mark’s and your role in that.

       I invite you to close your eyes as I share this reflection with you if that would be helpful.

       Take a deep breath in and then out.  What are the most life-giving experiences for you?  When did you feel yourself most filled with love?  With hope?  Notice what comes to mind and stay with it.  Where are the tiny shoots of growth or new life in your life right now.  Is there anyone you want to offer gratitude for in these experiences?

Take another deep breath in and out.  What are the most life-draining experiences for you?  When did you feel most restless?  The least hopeful?  Notice what moments come to your mind and stay with them without judgement or trying to change them.  Is there anyone you want to offer forgiveness to for this experience?  Spend a few moments seeing if you are moved to extend forgiveness, even to yourself.  

Take another deep breath in and out.  How do you want to move forward?  What are your hopes?  How are you being invited to follow the Holy Spirit now?  How might you nurture the tiny, persistent, green shoots of hope and new life shared within you?  What do you want to ask from God to move more fully into your hopes?[iii]  

A voice from the dark called out,

             ‘The poets must give us

imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar

imagination of disaster. Peace, not only

the absence of war.’

                                   But peace, like a poem,

is not there ahead of itself,

can’t be imagined before it is made,

can’t be known except

in the words of its making,

grammar of justice,

syntax of mutual aid.

                                       A feeling towards it,

dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have

until we begin to utter its metaphors,

learning them as we speak

---

[i] From Feasting of the Word for the Isaiah passage for this week. I don’t have the book with me to cite author and page.  Sorry!

[ii] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53900/making-peace

[iii] I made some modifications to what was presented in the following book: Paintner, Christine Valters. Give Me A Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year. Broadleaf Books:  Minneapolis, 2025, Chapter 5. 

The Feast of St. Andrew_St. Andrew's Mountain Home

 The Feast of St. Andrew-transferred

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Mountain Home, AR

November 30, 2025

         Good morning!  I’m Melanie Lemburg, the new canon to the ordinary for the diocese, and I’m delighted to be here with you to celebrate your patronal feast day—the Feast of St. Andrew!  

      I’ve come here straight from our family Thanksgiving gathering at our family farm in Northeast Mississippi.  My parents and one brother have houses on the farm, and we were joined by my second brother and his family along with my husband and two kids.  And for one chaotic week, we all lived together again, all on top of each other (like puppies!).  Siblings sharing rooms, some even with their parents; all of us sharing bathrooms with a granddaughter’s boyfriend thrown into the mix. It has been an interesting week, being in such close quarters to those who are the nearest and dearest to my heart, and it has been both a gift and challenge to once again live so near to each other when we have been accustomed to being spread out around the country.     

      We have a number of factors coming together for us today:  it’s the first Sunday of Advent, and here, today, we also celebrate the life and ministry of Andrew the apostle and lift up how his witness inspires your witness here in this community. 

      And our readings for St. Andrew’s feast day have theme that winds through them like a ribbon that can speak to us today in this place, in this moment. 

      In the collect of the day, we ask God: “give us, who are called by your Holy Word, grace to follow [Jesus] without delay and to bring those near to us into his gracious presence…” In the Old Testament reading, we hear Moses saying to the people:  “Surely the commandment…is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away…No, the word is very near to you.”  In the epistle reading, we hear Paul writing to the Romans, “the word is very near to you.”  And in the gospel reading, we see Jesus walking near the brothers—Simon and Andrew- and he calls them to follow him, and immediately, they leave their nets and follow him.  

      In other stories of Andrew in the gospels, we see that Andrew has a particular gift of seeing what is nearby, and then bringing that person or resource to Jesus. He does this in the story of his call to follow Jesus in John’s gospel.  In that gospel, it is Andrew who encounters Jesus first, and then he goes and finds his brother Peter, saying to him, “We have found the Messiah,” and he brings Peter back to meet Jesus.  It is Andrew who brings the boy with five loaves and two fish to Jesus, and it is also Andrew who brings two Greeks to Jesus so that even the Gentiles might be taught by Jesus.  

      Andrew has a knack for noticing what and who are near him, and then, through his gentle encouragement, bringing them into Jesus’s presence.  

      And into this mix, we add the season of Advent, which is a slow uncovering, a gradual revealing of God with us, of the Word who is already near us, as we light our candles in the darkness.  

      And I can’t help but wonder what does this mean, that the word is already near to us?  How is that Word already being revealed in our midst?  In our families?  In this community?  In the chaos of our common life as a nation?  Where have you, like Andrew, noticed that the Word is already so very near to you?  What does it mean for us to try to seek the Word that is already near?  

      I have just started reading a new book as a part of my Advent observance this year.  The book is titled Give Me A Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year by Christine Valters Paintner, who is the online abbess at Abbey of the Arts, a virtual global monastery that offers resources to people to help nurture contemplative practice and creative expression.  In this book Paintner picks up the ancient monastic practice of identifying a word or phrase for reflection and spiritual nourishment for a season.  The seekers would often say to the desert mothers and fathers, “Give me a word.”  And this phrase is often repeated throughout the parables of the early church.  Paintner describes this word saying, “The word being sought was not a theological explanation or counseling.  It was part of a relationship that had developed with the assumption that this word, when received by the disciple, would be life-giving.  It was meant for this person in this moment and season in their lives.”  She continues, “When we receive a word, often it is confirmed through synchronicities that continue to appear to us or a sense of felt rightness.  I sometimes describe this process of listening as looking for shimmers.  Shimmering is a way to describe when something in the world is calling to you, beckoning you, sometimes even urging you to pay closer attention.  Sometimes what shimmers is challenging, but we know that wrestling with it will yield something bigger in our lives.  Sometimes what shimmers invokes wonder and awe.  We notice a felt response in our bodies and spirits that asks us to attune more deeply to what is being revealed.”[i]

      Advent is an appropriate season to be on the lookout for these shimmers, both in our individual lives as well as in our corporate life.  What in your individual life is invoking a sense of wonder or awe from the world near you?  Where are you as an individual being challenged?  

      And as you as a congregation allow yourselves to be inspired by Andrew, I wonder what shimmers near you all from the world nearby that beckon to your attention?  Who is near to you in this community who could be brought to Jesus by your kind and thoughtful witness?  

      Let us pray. Almighty God, who didst give such grace to thine apostle Andrew that he readily obeyed the call of thy Son Jesus Christ, and brought his brother with him: Give unto us, who are called by thy Word, grace to follow him without delay, and to bring those near to us into his gracious presence; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

 

---

[i] Paintner, Christine Valters. Give Me A Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year. Broadleaf Books:  Minneapolis, 2025, pp xi-xii.

The 23rd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 28C-All Saints' Russellville

The Rev Canon Melanie Dickson Lemburg

All Saints’ Russellville

The 23^rd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 28C

November 16, 2025

      Good morning!  I’m Melanie Lemburg, the new Canon to the Ordinary for the Diocese of Arkansas!  I’m delighted to be here with y’all this morning, and I’ve already appreciated the time I’ve gotten to spend working with your vestry and leadership, including Mercedes, as a part of this transition you are now in with her completion of her time here with y’all and your beginning wonderings of what is next for you as a community of faith.  

      I am here today both as a support for your services this morning, and also as an outward and visible sign that you are not in this alone.  The bishop will be walking along side you, much through my presence in support of you and your leadership as you all begin to discern together what’s next.  (Hopefully, he conveyed this to you also when he was with you last week!). I don’t think I need to name for you that transitions can be times of both trepidation and excitement, of anxiety and of hope for what’s next.  If you hear nothing else from me today, I hope that you will hear that you are not alone in this transition, and you have nothing to fear.

      This past week, I’ve been in Indiana facilitating a training for a group of clergy and lay leaders from around the Episcopal Church.  This training has been about conflict in the church and how to navigate it by managing our own individual anxiety and responses. As a part of this training, I share some of my own story about how I was forced out of my third parish as a result of a high level conflict.  It’s not an easy story to retell, and yet I do it every time we offer this training.  Through this story, I detail not only what happened, but also my own part in the conflict (because no matter how much we might want to believe it, none of us is every pure hero or pure villain, pure victim or pure oppressor.  We’re all always a complicated mix of both.  It’s the message that’s at the heart of the gospel).  And what I have found  is that in sharing my story of this utter failure in my ministry and how it has become the impetus for me to learn more about how conflict unfolds and can be managed by our own behaviors and interventions, it actually gives other people who are embroiled in conflict hope.  They find hope that healing can happen, even though it is often in the most of unexpected ways.  And that is the gift of the Holy Spirit’s continued presence in the Church and in the world.  

      Three of our readings for today give us hints of this hope, even through the bleakest of situations.  In the Old Testament reading, we see the prophet Malachi offering words of judgement on the present age, suggesting that God is going to purify what is impure through a righteous fire; but even in the midst of that, the faithful will find healing.  This is partnered with a psalm that invites God’s faithful to sing a new song:  a song to God’s victory and righteousness, and how we are invited to be participants in God’s equity.  

      Then we have the gospel reading from Luke where Jesus is teaching in the temple, promising his disciples and listeners that hard times are on the way, but he offers them the assurance of his presence and that they will have what they need to face these anxious times together.  The community that Luke is writing to has already experienced these occurrences, the destruction of the temple by the Romans, along with the dramatic divisions that the Roman occupation has wrought upon their homeland and their most intimate relationships. Our passage for today is one that is chock-full of anxiety and yet under the surface is the assurance that Jesus is with us and continues to provide what we need to persist.  Our gospel passage for today shows us how hope (and its practice) is the opposite of anxiety and can even be its antidote.   

Retired Episcopal Bishop and Native American elder Steven Charleston writes about how and where we find hope:  “What gives someone a positive outlook on life?  We might list things like faith, wisdom and love, but ironically one of the major sources of hope for many of us is our own brokenness.  It is not the absence of hurt in our lives, but just the opposite that gives us strength.  We have been through many struggles.  We have known loss, grief and fear.  We have experienced disappointment, betrayal, and confusion.  And because we have lived through these challenges, because we have come through to the other side, we believe in the power of the Spirit to bring us healing, reconciliation and renewal.  Hope is not a wish, but a lesson learned.”[i]  

      We find ourselves in world where it is so easy to become enslaved by the forces of anxiety that are currently running rampant through our public life and discourse:  the 24 hour news cycle; the entrenched divisions; the natural disasters and the seemingly, never-ending wars and conflicts.  And yet, each of us has the power to reengage with the lessons hope has taught us in difficult times and to become more deeply grounded in how we practice hope as the antidote to anxiety and fear.  

      This week, I invite you to contemplate what anxiety you are falling prey to these days?  Can you name that before God now and in the days to come and ask God for peace?    How is God inviting you to practice hope in your life and in the life of this community? What lessons can you recall from difficult times that can help you practice hope?

      In closing, I’ll share with you another quote from Bishop Charleston.  This is in the first chapter of his book Ladder to the Light:  An Indigenous Elder’s Meditations on Hope and Courage.   He writes, “Made for freedom.  We are not made for resignation.  Passive acceptance is not the code written into our spirit.  If that were true, as a species, we would have vanished long ago.  Instead, for millennia, we have shaken off the temptation to simply accept reality and the demand that we bend the knee, and we have stood up to struggle against the odds, to change the situation, and to find an answer and a healing.  Those deep drives are the energy we call hope.  Those active forces are what determine our future.  We are not made for resignation, but for freedom.”[ii]  

 

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[i] Posted on his Facebook page August 7, 2018

[ii] Charleston, Steven. Ladder to the Light:  An Indigenous Elder’s Meditations on Hope and Courage. Broadleaf books: Minneapolis, 2021, Kindle location 224 or 1711.