Never The Chameleon

About Never The Chameleon

Anna Madsen is a Public Theologian, a rostered ELCA pastor, and yet serves out her call on her own platform--unaffiliated with the ELCA--of OMG: Center for Theological Conversation. She and her family live north of Duluth, Minnesota, and host The Spent Dandelion Theological Retreat Center. This podcast will tend to be audioclips of her Substack blog as well as her sermons and presentations. The title of her podcast comes from a passage of Kaj Munk, the Danish resistance preacher and martyr, killed by the Nazis for his prophetic pulpit speech. He wrote: "And remember the signs of the Christian Church have been the Lion, the Lamb, the Dove, and the Fish…but never the chameleon." revdrannam.substack.com (https://revdrannam.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Anna Madsen

Category

news · religion & spirituality

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

7 Nov 2024

Latest episode

18 Feb 2026

Latest episodes

25 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   18 Feb 2026

   Dressing Your Dust

   Dressing your Dust Every Ash Wednesday, I am reminded of a piece I wrote not long after the death of my husband Bill: he was killed in the same accident that gave my son his brain injury. The story concerns the moments when I stood in front of my late husband’s closet, charged by the funeral home with choosing the clothes in which he’d be cremated. Two days before, this, picking out his outfit, would have been his task. He’d picked out his own clothes since he was young. Good Lord, he was still young. Didn’t matter. Today it was my task. My absurd job. My surreal chore. Even this awful request of the funeral director led my mind down paths that should not have been mine. But there I was, standing before that closet while my mind was racing down each of them. And what difference does it make? It’s laughable, really, choosing clothes that nothing but the inside of a box will see. Anyhow, he’ll be cremated, turned back into dust. Bill won’t be in a coffin for longer than the Memorial Service. Still….naked, in a coffin? Somehow that just seems…not right. I can’t for the life of me say why, but it’s not right. And so there I stood, these thoughts in my mind, these clothes before me, and his body waiting, no choice in the matter, for my selection. So. Intake of breath. If he were here, what would he choose? Ties? Clearly out. Brand new suit? Out… though he sure looked good in it. But he was being taken under, and was not the undertaker, I thought. So no suit. He was not a suit guy. He was the anti-suit guy. That helped. Jeans, then. His favorite jeans. He was far more organized than I ever will be, so I knew right where to find them. I kept them perfectly folded as I laid them on the floor. And hiking boots, of course. Of course hiking boots, still with the dust of the Alps on them. I set them next to the jeans. I grinned when I decided on the shirt. I would surely hear it, even all the way from where-ever-he-was, if I didn’t wrap him up in an Ohio State T-Shirt. “That’s The Ohio State to you,” I could almost hear him say. Since all the OSU shirts were all his favorites, it took some time to pick the right one, the perfect one for the occasion. Silly me. Of course it had to be the one emblazoned with TBDBTL. So jeans, and a TBDBTL t-shirt, and hiking boots. Is that it? I thought. Anything more? Yep. Something was missing…what was missing….? Ah. His alb. His pastoral alb. He needs his pastoral alb. And so I reached in to the closet and I found his alb, and I took it, and I held it, and I held it close. He was so honored to wear that alb. I took it off the hanger, and I folded it neatly, and placed it on the stack of clothes, and found a bag, and placed his outfit for The Day inside of the bag, and I grabbed the handles, and I walked out the door to bring him his clothes. ——————- Today is Ash Wednesday. It marks the beginning of spring. That’s what Lent means, in Latin. Spring. New beginnings. It can be a somber time, I suppose. I know of all the arguments against saying and singing Alleluia on Sundays in Lent. But as for me, give me the Alleluias. Every Sunday is an announcement of Easter, after all, of new beginnings, and I firmly believe that it is in the dark that God’s light is most clearly seen…and when we most clearly need to see it. Just as I say that Holy Saturday is the most honest day, I think Lent is the most honest season: the pivot place between death and life, despair and hope. It begins with Ash Wednesday, the day of declared dustness. We are born of dust, and we return to dust. And that’s just the way it is. We have no choice about our dustiness. But we do have choices, in-between. Like our clothes. We can choose our clothes. We can choose what to wear, what to pull on that reveals most fully who we are called to be, that makes it easier to do it and be it. We can choose the outfits we will slip on, the ones that reveal to all the world, and not just the inside of a box, what our agenda for the day will be. Sometimes, I think, we reach for something in the closet that isn’t quite right: either the outfit clashes with itself, or the outfit clashes with ourselves: the ‘self’ God loves, and wants us to love, which is the ‘self’ we are baptized and freed to be. When we pull on what’s right, we feel right. When our day is consistent with itself and with ourselves, and with God’s vision of who we are called to be, we feel more than right. We feel alive. We are living, breathing, dressed dust, clothed in our outfit, and our identity as a beloved child of God, for the day. Get full access to Anna Madsen at revdrannam.substack.com/subscribe (https://revdrannam.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

2. 

   6 Jan 2026

   But Where's Home?

   The trouble is, we can’t have just spent the season of Advent talking about, urging, setting up repentance as an expected and holy expression of faith, and then revile those who actually have an Epiphany and up and repent. That’s the thought banging around in my head on this day when the Church marks the beginning of the season of Epiphany, and our nation marks the January 6 insurrection, and meanwhile, everyone is marking MAGA’s cracks in its base. It’s a fair bet that lots of even lifelong Christians aren’t quite sure of what the purpose of the season of Epiphany is, but we might know that it has something to do with the Magi. And if we know that it has something to do with the Magi, we might know that it has something to do with them “going home by another way,” which might be as much thanks to balladeers like James Taylor and Bruce Cockburn as it is brother Matthew. If you remember, Matthew tells us that Herod had heard that the Magi were on the loose in his land, because they’d heard news of a new king of the Jews in his land, and they wanted to give him, this baby, their honor. Weak, petty, and greedy kings do not approve of rising counter powers, even if in swaddling clothes, so facetiously, Herod invited the Magi to return to his lair following their discovery of the young king, “so that I may also go and pay this new king homage.” Thankfully, after they honored the baby Jesus, and just in the nick of time, the Magi were warned to go home by another way: as Bruce Cockburn sings in his majestic song, “Cry of a Tiny Babe,” they’d “Come to pay their respects to the fragile little king/Get pretty close to wrecking everything/Cause the governing body of the Holy Land/Is that of Herod, a paranoid man.” Epiphany, you see, marks their epiphany, one which led them home and away from aiding and abetting a corrupt ruler. It still leads us into a season of our own epiphanies, a word which literally means, “to make manifest,” or “to be shown.” The season of Epiphany is a time to be open to new ways, new patterns, new realizations. It’s an inherently vulnerable time, then, because if something new is made manifest, it means that what you had thought to be true isn’t now, maybe never was, isn’t quite as fully understood as you’d assumed, or something simply hadn’t ever dawned on you before, so to speak. So there’s some engaged risk, then, involved both with encountering that truth, and with identifying a new way forward. It’s a period where you may need to admit that you were wrong, misguided, and need to change. Insofar as any of that is true, Epiphany is a season, then, that takes both mindfulness and courage. The part of this Jesus/Magi/Herod story, the catchy part that catches people, is this phrase, “The Magi went home by another way.” People are drawn to “by another way,” because it “makes manifest” the Magi’s clear rebellion to the authoritarian orders. These wise ones up and subverted, what was, for all intents and purposes, the law, and well done Magi, I’m here to say, and well done anyone else who does the same against cruel orders! But today, what is catching my attention, is less that notion than the word ‘home.’ Funny how we breeze right by “home,” taking for granted that they must have actually had a home to which they could return. ~~~~~ So it appears that there are breaks, right now, growing fractures, beginning in MAGA world. The most obvious example is Marjorie Taylor Greene’s very public defection, but those Trump tariffs are doing a number on even his most conservative ag and manufacturing supporters; health insurance spikes, traceable to Trump’s bill, are kicking in and hitting at Trump voters—perhaps most of all, if you look at red states, generally lower income states, who will be terribly affected by the increases; friends and family, even citizens and non-criminals, are being plucked off the streets by nameless faceless people; and this Venezuela (and Cuba? and Greenland?) number seems definitely not America First. Oil Execs First, maybe, but not America First. And, to the point of this reflection, there one can detect, some embarrassment, some rueing, some regretting, some what-was-I-thinking of those who voted for Trump, defended Trump, or been silently complicit as Trump and his administration have codified hate, racism, bigotry, misogyny, cruelty, and autocracy. Now, some explain MAGA by saying that it has had such appeal because it’s been a community, a club, and family of sorts. It’s tapped into a tribal yearning, Us not Them, Us vs. Them, that exploits a hard-wired human tendency. It’s been, therefore, a home. But…what if it is no longer a home? What if once-MAGA adherents don’t find MAGA to be a place where they feel at home anymore? And here’s the epiphanic quandary. Those of us who have long objected to Trump’s agenda, those of us who knew of the destruction and hardship it would bring, who couldn’t believe that others couldn’t see it because it was spelled out for all to know, those of us who see now unfolding exactly what we foresaw, we are heartbroken about the fear and trauma in immigrant communities, disabilities communities, queer communities, poor communities; about the threats to education, art, history, public lands, public services, water; about our national reputation in the global sphere…I mean, where do I stop, there’s so much dismay. And anger. There’s so much anger. Many of us are ourselves victims of the MAGA agenda, and feel very little compunction to easily trust, let alone forgive, those who once supported it. Our anger is legit, let me be clear, and worthy of vent. But also true, though, is that those who would be tempted to leave MAGA are aware of the fury of that anger directed toward them. It is hot and they feel the heat. They might even know that they have earned the singe. So some parallel binds, then: Those on the left have legit disdain for Trump and MAGA, and, also desire to welcome more people to the resistance movement. Those on the right are increasingly uncomfortable with Trump’s agenda and their part in it, but do not feel any sense of welcome to the resistance movement, and so have no where to go. They’d like to go home another way, can see another way, but have no home. These people desperately need a new home. And those in the resistance need more people in our camp. It’s not only MAGA which needs to admit that they need to change. It’s time for those of us on the left to tap into mindfulness and courage to welcome them home. ~~~~~ In my research for my last book, Joyful Defiance: Death Does Not Have The Last Word, I noticed that across references, the theme of home kept recurring. When one felt Joy, repeatedly authors made the analogy that was that one was at home. The more that I fussed with that observation, the more it dawned on me that likewise, when someone despairs, it’s as if one is home-less. Without a home, you might feel like you have no reliable safe place. Now, if you are merely away from home, for whatever reason you just can’t get back to it as quickly as you might like, you feel unsettled, and perhaps home-sick. Nevertheless, there is some confidence that you will walk up its path again. I think those in MAGA and it’s Mar-A-Lago home are beginning to feel restless, maybe somewhere between feeling homeless—there’s no where for them to go—and homesick—they have a hunch that there is someplace which could hold them and their newfound, refound, values, and maybe even a community to boot. Many of us just were ‘home for the holidays.’ We know that sometimes being home isn’t the romanticized image of holiday perfection that seasonal coffee commercials and Hallmark movies might project. But people come ‘home’ anyway, because there is something there that unites them, and makes them feel safe enough to come back anyway, bringing their quirks, idiosyncrasies, grudges, memories of infractions and hurt, regrets and their hopes right along with them. I wonder if this Epiphany season, then, marked both by the Magi who went home by another way, and the insurrectionists who stormed the People’s Home, perhaps both people in MAGA and in the Resistance Movement can have an Epiphany of their own. Perhaps followers of Donald Trump can recognize that they have been co-opted by a despot, a dictator, one who cares nothing for them or anyone unless they are a tool to his own objectives. And perhaps people in the resistance can start rolling out the carpets, brewing the coffee, and, in this season of light, flipping on the porch light, so that those who have been part of MAGA, and are beginning to have an epiphany that maybe that wasn’t the best decision ever, can, even if by a long and winding other way, pull up a chair, a protest sign, a pen during our next letter writing campaign, and come on home. Get full access to Anna Madsen at revdrannam.substack.com/subscribe (https://revdrannam.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

3. 

   5 Jan 2026

   Thus Says The Lord

   I preached the below yesterday on the last Sunday in the Christmas season and the morning after the Trump administration opted to illegally bomb Venezuela. First, the texts on which I depended, and then the sermon. ~~~~~ First Reading: Jeremiah 31:7-14 7 Thus says the Lord: Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob,  and raise shouts for the chief of the nations; proclaim, give praise, and say,  “Save, O Lord, your people,  the remnant of Israel.” 8 See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north,  and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame,  those with child and those in labor, together;  a great company, they shall return here. 9 With weeping they shall come,  and with consolations I will lead them back, I will let them walk by brooks of water,  in a straight path in which they shall not stumble; for I am as a father to Israel,  and Ephraim is as my firstborn. 10 Hear the word of the Lord, O nations,  and declare it in the coastlands far away; say, “The one who scattered Israel will gather them,  and will keep them as a shepherd a flock.” 11 For the Lord has ransomed Jacob,  and has redeemed Jacob’s people from hands too strong for them. 12 They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion,  and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord, over the grain, the wine, and the oil,  and over the young of the flock and the herd; their life shall become like a watered garden,  and they shall never languish again. 13 Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance,  and the young men and the old shall be merry.  14 I will give the priests their fill of fatness,  and my people shall be satisfied with my bounty, says the Lord. The Gospel is from John 1:1-18. 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The Word was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through the Word, without whom not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in the Word was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.  6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.]   10 The light was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of a man, but of God.  14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15 (John testified to him and cried out, “This was the one of whom I said, ‘The one who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ ”) 16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made God known. Grace to you and peace from our incarnate Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. On April 25, 1981, the US Navy commissioned a lethal nuclear submarine to be named “Corpus Christi.” Actually, the word that was, and still is used wasn’t ‘commissioned,’ but rather “christened,’ as in ‘baptized.’ Well, this just made the matter even worse. See, “Corpus Christi” means, in Latin, ‘The Body of Christ.’ I was 12 years old at the time, but I still remember my father, his low resonant voice quivering in furious words from the pulpit at Grace Lutheran Church in Eau Claire Wisconsin, condemning Ronald Reagan’s approval of these words for this weapon. Dad knew he was adding his voice to those of the Conference of Catholic Bishops, all 270 of them expressing words of appalled objections to placing the name of the Prince of Peace onto a nuclear submarine designed solely for massive destruction of God’s creatures and creation. One Jesuit theologian, a Rev. Richard McSorley, wrote in the Catholic Standard that “we have a new type of blasphemy…We call [the sub] Corpus Christi. What does God think of that? Do we think God feels honored by the words? Are we honored?” Their collective words gained traction, and ultimately, Reagan quietly saved face, renaming the submarine “The City of Corpus Christi,” maintaining that the vessel would just be honoring the Texas town. Dad knew that his role as preacher in the pulpit in the sanctuary was to speak the Word of God, and that the Word of God said different things than the words one might hear outside of the sanctuary, but that the People of God came to hear not the same thing but rather a re-orienting thing, a reminding thing of who and whose they were. The Word of God indicts, consoles, cajoles, and emboldens those who believe in the risen Christ. It’s a hefty thing, to hear, to speak, to live it. This story about my father came to mind thanks to the Jeremiah/John combo of today, coupled with our administration’s decision yesterday to illegally bomb Venezuela and kidnap its—very much granted illegally elected—President Maduro, and his wife. God, I do believe, would like a Word. The World Council of Churches, a federation to which we the ELCA belongs, has sure offered a Word, though, Holy Smokes: “The attacks conducted by the United States of America in Venezuela and the capture and detention of President Maduro and his wife are stunningly flagrant violations of international law. These actions set a dangerous precedent and example for others who seek to shrug off all constraints against the use of armed aggression and brute force to achieve political objectives. The World Council of Churches calls urgently for the cessation of such attacks, for respect for the principles of international law and sovereignty of States, for the resolution of disputes through dialogue and diplomacy rather than by armed violence, and for the United Nations and the Organization of American States to take swift action to ensure all members respect the relevant charters and conventions. In these dangerous and uncertain times, the world needs wise and courageous leaders for peace, rather than the proliferation of conflicts and the normalization of international illegality risking a deeper descent into chaos. We pray for wisdom and peace to prevail in this context and in other parts of the world.” Their unequivocal words, words which are as loud as my father’s were 45 years ago, are thoroughly grounded in God’s Word. The question before us is whether we will listen to the Word of God rather than the words of the world. So, “Thus says the Lord,” thunders Jeremiah to his people and now to us this morning. First thing we hear from that passage: Thus says the Lord. It’s a turn of phrase in the Hebrew tradition, very much meaning that God’s Word stands behind what follows. You can trust what is being said, because these are not the speaker’s words, but the Lord’s words being spoken, and you can trust, must trust, the Lord. Thus says the Lord. Not some power-hungry despot. Nor one’s own self-deprecating inner voice. Nor some marketing, especially this time of year, that says that you are not beloved enough, beautiful enough, young enough, rich enough, or simply enough. No, the Lord speaks this Word, and with it says something new. // Now, if there were to be a word cloud made up of these passages, the biggest bubble of the word cloud would be WORD. “Word” appears a whopping 33 times total throughout our readings. So the word for ‘word’ in Greek is ‘logos.’ That’s why we have bio-logists, namely people who have a word about bios, life. When Karl was so injured and tiny in Germany, we had therapists—that word means, in Greek, to heal—who were his Logo-therapeuten, his speech-healers, speech therapists. I am a theo-logian, because I have some words—some say too many, especially at sermon time—to say about Theos, namely God. So when John tells us that in the beginning there wasn’t just a logos, but rather the Logos, well, a person ought to sit up and pay attention. And you don’t need to have been an English major to catch a reference, an allusion here about this Word, immediately at the start of John’s Gospel, because of all the words John could have chosen to launch his gospel, he chose these: “In the beginning.” Not the first time we’ve heard these words launch a biblical book, followed by some speaking. “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. And then God said.” In the beginning was the Word, says John. In the beginning, God said, says Genesis. God said, “Let there be light! Let there be seas and sky and earth, and let the earth put forth vegetation, and let there be the sun and the moon and the stars, and let there be fish and birds and animals.” And finally, God said, “Let there be humans, humans in our image, humans who have dominion over it all.” Now, I realize I’m taking a little liberty here, injecting Genesis into the mix: it’s not like there isn’t enough to preach about sans the creation story. But a friend of mine in high school still teases me about how in college, we were taught to begin the first paragraph of our papers with a broad statement and then whittle it down to our thesis statement—a bit like an upside down triangle. So I did. “Throughout the ages,” I said, and I got an A on it, for the record. John must have had the same English prof, though he took it a step further: “In the beginning of it all,” John writes, but what John is wanting to do here is root the story of Jesus not just with Mary and Joseph, all due respect to Matthew and Luke, and not just with the genealogy of Joseph, thank you for your service Matthew, but into the very essence of God and God’s delighted vision for creation and way of creating from the primordial get-go! In the beginning, he says. Right from then, there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and this same Word has threaded itself through time, and then the same Word became flesh, and we are still telling the Word of God across the world even in this collective space right now. John wants to remind us that God was from the beginning, and Jesus was God, and therefore also from the Beginning, and now John very much wants us to know that God who has spoken since the beginning of time and through the prophets has now put flesh on the Word, making the intentions and essence and presence of God accessible in history, tangible, incarnate: The Word Incarnate literally means a God with flesh on! Carne, as in, well, just to make my point, carnivore, carnal, chili con carne. Flesh on the Word Bones of God means that we need not speculate about who God is, there is no room to impose our notions or expectations of God onto God, there’s little latitude now to act in God’s name when God’s name has no business being attached to our act-ions when our actions reflect not God’s agenda but ours: that is what it is to take God’s name in vain, by the way, attaching God’s name to a way of being in the world that has nothing to do with what has been revealed in God’s speech, not least of all in Jesus, which is why it is imperative that I say every pulpit opportunity I have that Christian nationalism is nothing but a heretical word mashup rising dangerously, and likewise America First, because in the beginning God created the world, God so loved the world that God sent the Word into it, which yes, of course happens to include the US, right along with Somalia, Venezuela, Iran, and all the other not-coincidentally non-white countries our present administration has attached with words like “evil,” and “garbage.” Moreover, if you look at the Story of God told with words we say we treasure in our Bible, you see and hear that God consistently aligns most of all with the people who are most suffering, and with the people who serve those who are most suffering, not with the powerful, the rich, and the proud. I am not making it up. We believe in Jesus, the Word Incarnate, the embodied Word, the one who walked among us, and who revealed God’s will and ways in tenderness, mercy, and radical love and welcome to strangers, misfits, the forlorn, the subjugated, the broken—and to the powerful, the rich, and the proud, yes, but by telling them directly, in no uncertain words, the sort that would probably get me run out of this pulpit were I to give it a whirl, to knock it off. Still not making it up. We hear that this en-fleshed God “lived among us!” I like even better the way the late theologian Eugene Peterson translated it in The Message, “God moved into the neighborhood!” God moved into the neighborhood. And listen to this dropped Word: “The light was in the world, and the world came into being through him.” The whole world is God’s neighborhood. And therefore the whole world is our neighborhood, and there is no place for bullies in the neighborhood of God. Dominate, as we hear in Genesis, does not mean what humanity has tended to want it to mean. Jesus’ entire life was one of “You have heard it said, but I say unto you a new Word.” This Incarnate Word is not about domination as the world understands it, not about power as the world understands it, not about violence, not about oppression; it’s not about isolation, fear, loneliness, enduring grief; it’s not about exploitation and mockery; it’s not about self-protection and a scarcity mindset; it’s not about despondency or apathy; it’s not about grimness or pursed lips; it’s not about division and sameness; and it’s certainly not about violently overturning another country for the exploitation of oil that benefits the gazillionaires, especially as we simultaneously tout that we are a Christian nation. Like, just this morning the Wall Street Journal reported that reps from Wall Street finance, energy, and defense firms are already on their way to Venezuela to “investigate investment prospects,” and no one not anyone needs to be sitting down to hear that. I tell you what my Dad woulda had a word here from this pulpit today. Sheesh even I quiver to think of it. See, instead of all this nonsense, we hear today “What has come into being in the Word was life.” None of that above business is life-giving: it’s life-taking, life-sapping, life-denying. This is the most bananas “You have heard it said” that Jesus offers up: You have heard it said that death has the final word. But I say unto you, death does have a word, oh yes it does, but it is not the last one. Life does, because I am the Word who promises that at the end of every day, and all our days, life awaits. We no longer need to act out of death, or in deference to death, but are instead liberated for life, to steward life, to announce life, to embody life. I know enough of you now to know of many deaths which have touched so many of you, my family and myself included. Even if I were not to know a single soul here, I’d know that in this single sanctuary there are countless deaths of loved ones, relationships, regrets, addictions, dreams, ways of life, expectations. Jeremiah would know it too: he tells us of a people who have been in exile, who have suffered deaths caused by pride, and the death of pride; the death of a nation, and the deaths endured because of warring nations. We hear plainly words of weeping and mourning, because God’s spoken promise does not deny nor erase the realities of death: I like to remind people that the risen Jesus still had the scars. But it does deny the ultimacy of the realities of death. And God’s promise denies those who claim ultimacy over the Word of God, who try to redefine the Word of God as it benefits them. And here’s where we circle back to both the beginning of this sermon, and the beginning. In the beginning was the Word, a Word which breathed life into creation, a creation which God declared to be ever so good. That Word became flesh in Jesus born of Mary, who had some words of her own to drop. John, as well as Matthew, Mark, and Luke, not to mention Paul, and all the rest of the Epistles, paid attention to Jesus because they believed that he was God incarnate, and therefore what he did is what God would have done, and, in effect, did, and the lessons that we learned from Jesus were to be understood in a “Thus says the LORD” sort of way! They wanted us to hear a word that walked in the neighborhood of the world forgiving. Offering mercy. Expressing righteous anger. Healing. Teaching. Exhorting. Feeding. Welcoming. Upending systems that center the powerful and the rich rather than the misfits, the outcast, the powerless, and the poor. THAT’s the Word Incarnate, the tangibility of God. In a few moments, we will be celebrating the tangibility of God in the Eucharist, Holy Communion, when we receive quite literally the Body of Christ. Corpus Christi. And with it, we become, guess what, the body of Christ. Corpus Christi. Rumor has it that Francis Assisi said, “Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words.” It’s quite possible that he didn’t actually say that, but the point remains. It doesn’t need to be either/or, though, but both/and. We can preach the Gospel with words, announcing loudly that death no longer wins, that there is no need to amass, to protect, to dominate. Speak what needs to be said, write what needs to be written, redefine words which need to be re-understood. We can also incarnate the Gospel by embodying it, incarnating it, by showing up where there is death or fear, wrapping arms around those who grieve, welcoming those who are vulnerable, especially these days; sharing and celebrating the goodness of God: good food, good beverages, good music, good art, good beauty, because God declared such things good, so very good. Like, it matters, people. Words wake up every day with one goal before them: Have meaning. So if we say that we are a Christian, it means something. It means everything, actually. We too wake up every day with meaning, with a purpose, wired not to advance destruction but to advance, absorb, and announce the Word of love in a world mad with so many words of hate, even to our own selves. We actually are Christened, and we actually are the Corpus Christi. So now, refreshed in the Word, go, be, do, trust, speak the Word, for it has spoken to you from the beginning. Thus says the Lord. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1981/11/26/bishop-resists-naming-a-sub-corpus-christi/b8cf3981-9301-4ba7-a965-ccbe7b1246de/ Get full access to Anna Madsen at revdrannam.substack.com/subscribe (https://revdrannam.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

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