Nepantlas, Altars, and Sabbath Practice
as Resistance
Deuteronomy 5:12-15
July 19, 2026- Lyndale UCC
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel
 
Breathe on us, Breath of God, fill us with life anew. Teach us to love as thou wouldst love and do as thou wouldst do. Amen.
 
In late May, I traveled to Austin, Texas with MARCH (Multifaith Anti-Racism, Change & Healing) colleagues, Rabbi Arielle Lekach-Rosenberg from Shir Tikvah and Rev. Hierald Osorto from San Pablo’s Lutheran Church. (Hierald is also Pastor Ben Master’s husband.) We were the first of two delegations that MARCH sent to begin to cultivate relationship with multifaith colleagues in Texas because so many of our Minnesota neighbors abducted by ICE have been sent to detention there.
 
Our trip began by meeting with Dr. Gregory Cuellar, a Hebrew Bible scholar, artist, and activist from Austin Presbyterian seminary. The very first thing Dr. Cuellar had us do was spend time at The Benson, which is the Latin American library at the University of Texas, reading the work of Gloria Anzaldua, a lesbian Chicana scholar and activist who died in 2004. Dr. Cuellar had set aside several of her essays that he insisted we hold and read before we did anything else in Texas.  Because Anzaldua’s writing had formed some of the most important ground on which I stood during my own coming out journey, I was thrilled to be able to read her drafts of essays on spiritual activism.
 
But Dr. Cuellar wanted to be explicit about why he asked us to start at The Benson. He said, for him, two of the most important lessons from Anzaldua’s writing are her exploration of nepantlas and altares/altars. Nepantla is a Nahuatl word that means “in-between space” or “crack.” She talks about the importance of nepantlas when a community is operating amidst deep suffering and oppression. When it seems like the dominant culture or Empire or oppression are all-powerful, it is critically important to remember that every system has nepantlas, has cracks, has spaces where resistance and resilience grow and thrive.
 
Anzaldua’s other point was the role that altares/altars play. Altars are some of the most important nepantlas there are. Altars can be a physical altar in our homes, they can be how we tattoo our bodies, they can be our gardens. But altars are spaces and times where we claim our humanity, our authenticity, our beauty, our joy. They are places and times where Empire or oppression don’t hold sway.
 
Dr. Cuellar wanted us to be grounded in the long, long history of nepantlas and altares in Texas, particularly amongst Latine and queer communities before we engaged in the history of the American Empire and its present manifestation in ICE. He then shared with us images from a stations of the cross project he had done with Operation Identification called Arte de Lagrimas: Refugee Artwork Project. The project used photos that Operation Identification had taken of the tattoos and the prayer cards and other sacred objects found on the bodies of people who had died in the Texas desert. The photos were originally used to help beloveds know what had happened to their kin. But this project created a stations of the cross in which participants were invited to view one or two photos and read the descriptions and then read outloud the prayers that those who had died had carried and likely prayed as they made their journey.
 
Dr Cuellar brought the photos out of storage for us to see and experience because he believes they form an important lens through which to do this ongoing neighboring and resisting of State violence. He wanted us to see the color and beauty and deep faith and joy AND the brutality of Empire's dehumanizing violence. The tattoos were a concrete example of Anzaldua’s nepantlas and the creation of an altar. Tattoos of the Virgen de Guadalupe and Jesus and their loved ones… each tattoo was a claiming of their own humanity, beauty and power. And rooting in hope. Both Anzaldua and Dr Cuellar urged/implored us to remember the cracks in Empire's violence, remember the hope, remember the joy.
 
It reminded me of my seminary professors teaching me that I must never preach about crucifixion without resurrection nor resurrection without crucifixion.[1]
 
As we do this work of resisting the growing authoritarianism and the ongoing violence of the Doctrine of Discovery, we must tell the truth of the violence and terror...and we must tell the truth of the love, joy, beauty, and power of the resistance.
 
The next day, Arielle and I visited the Hutto Detention Center, a private prison that only holds people on Administrative holds, meaning none of the people held there have any criminal charges. As we walked through the double 20-foot-high gates topped by razor wire, we were overwhelmed by the banality of evil as we were met with the banner above the check-in desk that read, Happy Correction Workers Appreciation Week as we passed people carrying cupcakes and balloons as they left work. Meanwhile, we met with a man who was kidnapped from the semi he was operating legally while he was in a legal asylum process. He’d been in Hutto for five months without a visitor. His wife had given birth to their first child by herself. And still, he and other detainees had been on strike, protesting the ill treatment and the wages that paid kitchen workers $3/day, laundry workers $2/day and cleaners $1/day and the fact that a phone call costs $ .21/min so it can take several days’ worth of work in order to pay for one phone call. Meanwhile, our taxes pay the privately-owned Hutto detention center $1000/day per detainee. And the man we visited fasted 1 ½ days a week and prayed and led worship services for others every day, sometimes twice a day. His arms were covered in beautiful tattoos…
​
Nepantlas… altars… resistance… resilience…
 
Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Holy One your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Holy One your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your children, or your slaves of any gender, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your slaves of any gender may rest as well as you.  Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Holy One your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Holy One your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.
 
We are considering Sabbath practice this morning.
 
Our text is from Deuteronomy and comes from the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments offer our ancestors and us a grounding in both things NOT to do and things TO DO that keep the community clear about who and whose we are. They are a strategy for rooting ourselves in sacred community and relationship with God as well as being able to resist the logic of Pharoah, and the logic of Rome, and the logic of the American Empire…
 
Our text for this morning lifts up keeping the Sabbath and explicitly talks about the entire community—including people of all ages, those who are resident aliens, those who are slaves, and all animals—everyone refraining from work and resting. In practice this commandment to NOT work on the Sabbath is paired with the tradition that you DO eat good food and sing and have conversation and tell stories. In some Orthodox Jewish traditions, it is a mikvah, a particular blessing, to have sex on the Sabbath.
 
The Sabbath is a deeply somatic, embodied experience. Refraining from work, which is an economic break, almost like a mini-Labor Day every week, is paired with deep community and relationship and somatic healing and rest. It is a time to remember our own humanity and the sacredness of all of creation.
 
Elsewhere in the biblical text, there is an explicit connection between the Sabbath, practiced every seven days and Sabbatical which is a deep rest for the land which is practiced every seven years. And the Sabbath and the sabbatical are deeply connected to Jubilee, which is the re-distribution of all assets which happens every seven times seven years.
 
The command to keep the Sabbath is given amidst the escape from Pharaoh’s enslavement. It is an explicit contrast to the ways of Pharaoh. And as Jesus and the early Christian community practiced sabbath, it was a stark contrast to the ways of Rome. And the invitation to us to keep the Sabbath, to rest, to eat good food, to relish in community and connection and our bodies… it is all in stark contrast to the ways of the American Empire.
The American Empire under which we are living has sought to commodify time… time is money. And this capitalist worldview means that everything is urgent. And only certain people may rest because only certain people are human. And certainly the land never rests… and re-distribution of resources is anathema.
 
But we are invited to be Sabbath-practicing people. It isn’t particularly complex. But Sabbath practice amidst the American Empire is the deepest kind of resistance. Put another way, sabbath practice is a nepantla… it is an altar…
 
[pause]
 
One of the photos in the Arte de Lagrimas stations of the cross exhibit is of a tattoo of Jesus set below a rose. The card next to it reads,
 
“This tattoo of the face of Jesus Christ positioned beneath a blooming rose, was found on the body of Juan, a 22-year-old migrant from Venezuela. He was recovered on a private ranch in Maverick County, Texas. Etched into his skin, the sacred image of Christ stood as a visible prayer for protection, endurance, and mercy along a journey marked by danger and displacement. In Venezuelan Catholic devotion, the rose often evokes fragile beauty blossoming through suffering- a testament to hope that survives despite agony. In carrying this sacred inscription, Juan bore witness to a faith that crossed deserts and borders with him, proclaiming that even in the harshest landscapes, Divine presence endured.”
 
Nepantlas… altars… resistance… resilience. May it be so.
 


[1] Rev Dr Stephen Ray and Rev Dr Serene Jones in particular.

​Glitter Resistance
Community Beatitudes by Rev. Ashley Horan and Matthew 10:40-42
June 28, 2026- Lyndale UCC
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel
 
Holy One, fabulous and fierce, campy Creator, joyous justice-maker, sacred liberator, touch my mouth and all of our hearts that the words about to be spoken and the words about to be heard might be your word. Amen.
 
This morning, on this 57th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising and Riot against police brutality, we are invited to reflect together on the theme of glitter resistance.
 
Glitter resistance? What does that mean? How is it sacred? How might it make a difference in our lives?
 
[pause]
 
When I was a newly ordained pastor and serving at Spirit of the Lakes UCC, I was part of a program that matched mostly retired UCC pastors with people in their first calls. It was particularly focused on justice work but also included all kinds of general mentoring. We talked regularly on the phone with our mentors and then, toward the end of the year, our mentors came for a visit.
 
My mentor was Bill Webber. Bill was one of the founders of the East Harlem Protestant Parish in 1948 and served as president of New York Theological Seminary from 1969 (the year I was born) until 1983. One of the programs he was best known for starting was a Master of Theology program in Sing Sing prison. By the time we were in conversation, Bill was in his late seventies and using his time to reflect on the lessons of his ministry in order to continue to shape and form young clergy.
 
During his visit toward the end of our mentorship, Bill said two things to me and to the community of Spirit of the Lakes that have continued to shape and form me. Quoting Colossians, he said the purpose of Christian community is to help every single member of the community grow in spiritual maturity and to help the whole community grow in collective maturity. The second thing he said was that he had learned again and again, that the gospel is most powerfully present amidst oppression and that as a man of great privilege, his own spiritual maturing had happened mostly when he put himself in solidarity and followership of those marginalized by systems of power. Being together as church is about journeying together toward spiritual maturity. And one of the most powerful ways to mature spiritually is to be in solidarity and followership of marginalized communities and to claim the particular presence of the gospel in marginalized communities that you are a member of. Whew…as they say, that’ll preach.
So one answer to our question is that glitter resistance is the invitation for those of us who are queer and trans to claim and celebrate the gospel’s fabulousness in our midst and for allies and co-conspirators to practice solidarity and followership of LGBTQ+ communities. But what does that mean?
 
On the cover of your bulletin is a quote from activist Dan Savage that offers one answer to how the gospel is manifest amidst queer and trans community.
 
“During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night, and it was the dance that kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for.”
 
Mourning, protest, and dancing…
 
Mourning and grief are not exactly the same thing. Grief is largely a solo, individual process that is sometimes isolating. While mourning is done in community. Mourning is the act of gathering in community to sing, and weep, and hold one another in our broken hearts. Mourning helps us metabolize grief. And collective mourning can help us regulate our nervous systems.
 
During the height of the AIDS crisis, so many were all alone in grief and shame. So many had been rejected by family. So to mourn together, to sing and remember the dead, to pray was to name the reality of oppression, yes. But it was also to begin to claim resurrection. It was to begin to metabolize the shame and allow ourselves to move toward action and resistance.
 
The mourning helped us move together in protest. The mourning helped us remember the love, believe in our own humanity and in the humanity of our community. And it helped us claim the love and humanity outloud and out proud. And, oh, the fabulousness of the protest… giant condoms over homophobic senators’ houses, brilliantly witty rejoinders to homophobic police officers, and so much camp and fashion and joy.
 
And the dancing… for me it was at the Timberline in Seattle, a queer Country Western bar. During those years when I was relatively newly out, working as an AIDS buddy, I would go to the Timberline several times a week. I wore by cowgirl boots, my jeans, and my cowgirl shirts and when I walked through the door and smelled the sawdust on the floor, saw all the regulars, and heard “Boot Scootin’ Boogy” and “I Got Friends in Low Places”, I knew I was home. Parenthetically, when I took my parents to the Timberline, my mom exclaimed, I didn’t know men still knew how to dance!
 
Glitter resistance is all about the spiritual wisdom of the interplay between mourning and protesting and dancing.
 
[pause]
 
We have all lived through a pretty brutal year… last June, Melissa and Mark Hortman and Gilbert were assassinated and John and Yvette Hoffman were seriously injured. In August of last year, twenty three people were shot and two children, Fletcher Merkel and Harper Moyski and the shooter, Robin Westman, were killed at Annunication School. And then in December, Operation Metro Surge began. I don’t have to tell you about the freezing cold, the ice, the abductions, the existential fear, the horror… the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti… the tear gas and green gas… the realization that our federal government has its guns trained on us.
 
It has been a brutal year… and the actions of the Supreme Court this week were brutal… and the ongoing assault on our trans beloveds continues… and we honestly don’t know what the coming months will hold… particularly as we approach the mid-term elections this Fall.
 
But I want to remind us that we have been decidedly fabulous members of the glitter resistance. When violence and death came to our Cities we lived the Community Beatitudes and our text from Matthew. We hold one another in mourning, we protest, and we sing and dance. Raise your hand… how many of you have visited the Renee Good or Alex Pretti memorials?  How many of you have been to a protest or a Singing Resistance action? How many of you have danced or made art or gotten a Resistance Loon tattoo??
 
My friends, on this Stonewall anniversary in which we mark glitter resistance, I want to say thank you. Thank you for ALL you are and have done. Thank you for the tears you have shed. Thank you for the refusal to accept that this is normal. Thank you for the thousands of dollars in mutual aid. Thank you for the soup made and the pastoral care given. Thank you for the Gender affirming care resolution at Annual Meeting. Thank you for the singing and dancing and the art made. Thank you for the way in which you have been and continue to be the manifestation of Christian community.
 
And please don’t stop. The Stonewall aunties and guncles, our siblings and ancestors are urging us onward. They are sending a three snap salute. “Keep going,” they are saying. “Keep up the glitter resistance fabulousness… you can do it. The world needs you now more than ever.”
 
Amen.
 

​We are Relationship
II Corinthians 13:11-14
Lyndale UCC- May 31, 2026
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel
 
“o day, arise! the atoms are dancing. the souls are dancing, overcome with ecstasy. i’ll whisper in your ear where their dance is taking them…” Life of the Dance, come and visit us this day. And may the words about to be spoken and the words about to be heard be Your word. Amen.
 
 Finally, brothers, sisters, siblings, farewell. Be restored; listen to my appeal; agree with one another; live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.
 
Today is Trinity Sunday. I don’t know about you, but I spent much of my life not being able to care less about marking Trinity Sunday. In seminary, I lost count of the number of people who told me I was heretical because I didn’t use Father-Son-Holy Spirit language… or who called the United Church of Christ apostate because some churches baptize in the name of the Creator, Christ and Holy Spirt instead of Father-Son-Holy Ghost language.
 
One of the primary reasons for this is that the scripture often associated with today is Matthew’s “Great Commission.” In particular, the verses that read: Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you
 
For much of Christian tradition the idea and language of the Trinity has become deeply intertwined with colonization, violence, and control. And I largely associated the Trinity with people seeking to control and punish me and my community.
 
If you have any of this pain associated with Trinity language or with attempts at forced control or punishment for who and how you are, I am deeply sorry. The use of Christian language and theology to harm people is wrong and is a deep distortion of the Christian path.
 
And, it is deeply ironic that the Trinity would be used to suggest a rigid and controlling and preciseness about God. Because the understanding of the Trinity and much of what our ancestors in faith were grappling with is deeply liberative.
 
It has been feminists like Roman Catholic theologian Elizabeth Johnson who’ve help guide my way on this journey. Johnson talks about the Trinity as God in God’s essence as relationship. But not precision and rigid exactness. God is, at God’s core, a dance of relationship, of moving and changing expressions and manifestations of love. Our cover art comes from a Catholic community that seeks to draw God as a circle dance in which God is many colors and genders and expressions.
 
David Weiss, himself explicitly rooted in feminist tradition, says it this way:
 
Augustine, who wrote an entire book on the doctrine [of the Trinity], comes closest to the truth when he remarked that finally the Trinity is a fence around a mystery. It speaks the Moreness of God, but it hides as much as it reveals. Ultimately, all our words fall short.
 
This much we can say: the mystery behind the fence is Love. Anything more—mapping the respective roles of the Three Persons, their exact relationship to each other, and the manner by which they are at once Three yet One—any of that is rampant speculation. Distraction. It pretends that human intellect can apprehend the inner workings of God.
 
The Truth is that naming God as Trinity—even as the words themselves twist in the Wind—simply says that the very ground of God is love. Divinity itself is not solitary because love is not solitary. Somehow—and this is the fence, not the mystery itself—somehow Divinity is multiple-yet-undivided: such that the very ground of holiness is love-flowing-in-community. The words barely do it justice. We come to the edge of God, and it is as though we sense a blazing brightness just beyond—or an absolute darkness that can’t be pierced—or a rushing wind—or a complete stillness. And all we truly know is that this which is Beyond us is full of love for all that is.
 
Now you may thinking, why in the world is she going on about this. I still couldn’t care less about Trinity Sunday… and that’s OK.
 
But want to say just a few more words about why I think David’s and Elizabeth’s scholarship and creativity about the Trinity matters in our lives.
 
We are living amidst a kind of toxic, distorted white Christian nationalism that threatens so much: the lives of many of us, our beloveds, our democracy, our very planet’s future. And much of the logic of this Christianity is rooted in hyper-individualism. It is rooted in an ethic of competition. It is rooted in the fear of being punished for disobedience of rigid rules or roles. It is rooted in hierarchy.
 
And all of this starts with an understanding of God as the ultimate ruler who metes out punishment for disobedience from above. This angry and punishing God relates to each of us as individuals and decides upon our individual salvation or damnation. In this system, the life of faith is the life of clear, precise answers and narrowly defined truth.
 
But how do our lives change if the heart of God is a Divine Dance of relationship… that the very ground of holiness is love-flowing-in-community? What if separated individuals competing against one another for scraps of salvation is a lie? What if Divinity is multiple-yet-undivided and so are we?
 
Rumi envisioned the relationship between atoms as a dance. Even though he was a 13th Century Sufi mystic, he presaged what quantum physicists like Einstein have shown: the essential unit in the universe is relationship. Moving and changing energy that is connected across distance is at the center of life.
 
Within Godself, there is energy and mystery and boundless love. So much so, that God poured all of God’s creativity into making a world that God calls good, over and over again. Whew, look at that water…. Wow that’s good…. Whew, look at those exquisite trees… wow, that’s good. Over and over again in Genesis, God calls creation good. It is only after God has created the earth creature, the adam, and notices that the adam is lonely that God says something isn’t good. Only loneliness, only lack of companions and relationship, only that is said to be not good.
 
And later, God pours Godself into human form in order to have an enfleshed experience… in order to know what it is like to be human… in order to be in more intimate relationship with us. And God pours God’s spirit into us and all of creation in order to create ongoing relationship…
 
What if we are closer to our Divine purpose when our hearts are attuned to the multiplicity that each of us is? What if we are not just one thing? What if we are the relationship between all of our selves?
 
What if we are closer to our Divine purpose when we are living as if there is no such thing as other people’s children? Or there is no such thing as my future that is separate from your future?
 
Jeremy Begbie reflected on the Trinity and described God as a musical chord (three distinct notes but also one foundational sound.) If God is best understood as harmony, how are we disciples of harmonic resonance?
 
A few years ago, I had the chance to sing with a group of queer people and allies. Our director was a Black gay man whose partner was quite ill. He chose a couple of pieces for us to sing, but he explained that Hezekiah Walker’s song, I Need You to Survive was the song he wanted us to begin and end each rehearsal with. Claire and Jeanine and I are going to sing it a bit later. But I’m going to share the lyrics of the chorus:
I need you, you need me
We're all a part of God's body
Stand with me, agree with me
We're all a part of God's body

It is Gods will, that every need be supplied
You are important to me, I need you to survive
You are important to me, I need you to survive
 
We are living in a world that stokes fear every day… we are told that we’re in competition with one another. But we worship a God whose essence is relationship, whose deepest yearning is love.


 Finally, brothers, sisters, siblings, farewell. Be restored; listen to my appeal; agree with one another; live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you. The grace of the [Incarnation of Love], the love of the Mysterious Dance, and the communion of the Energy Breathed Out be with all of you.
 
Amen.
 
 
 
 
 
 

​Solidarity of the Resurrection
John 20: 19-29
Lyndale UCC- April 12, 2026
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel
 
Gathered here in the mys’try of this hour. Gathered here in one strong body. Gathered here in the struggle and the power, Spirit, draw near.
 
This morning we get to read the powerful story of Thomas. In order to engage it better, it’s important to remember the context in which Thomas and the resurrected Jesus interact. Our text for today directly follows the story of Mary Magdalene encountering Jesus in the garden. That text begins: Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb…
 
Our text begins: [w]hen it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were, for fear of the religious authorities…
 
Our story about Thomas happens only hours after Mary’s discovery of the resurrection. And, perhaps more importantly, it is just a few short days after the trauma of the crucifixion. Most of the disciples are locked behind closed doors, hiding in terror for fear that the Roman authorities or religious ones will come to arrest them like they did Jesus. It is important to note that they are the ones who have run away and hidden, some even denying Jesus, instead of bearing witness to Jesus’ crucifixion like Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Salome, and John did.
 
Jesus does reveal the resurrection to Mary first, the one who was able to bear to stay with Jesus at the foot of the cross, to accompany him through his deepest pain, even when she couldn’t do anything to stop it. Her bearing witness to crucifixion means she is first to bear witness to resurrection, that is true.
 
But the Resurrected One isn’t deterred by the disciples’ fear, nor their betrayal. Instead, Jesus enters into their deepest fear, appearing to them behind the doors they’ve locked and offers them neither anger nor rebuke… Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.”
 
We don’t know where Thomas is at this point. Is his terror even deeper than his kindred? Is he too scared to be associated, even behind locked doors, with them? Is he so ashamed of having fled that he can’t bear to be seen? Is he in despair that the movement to which he has given his life for these last intense and transcendent years has been shattered in the matter of a few hours and he is immobilized? We don’t know.
 
I imagine that someone, Mary perhaps, goes and finds Thomas and brings him back into community. I imagine that she says to him, you can’t do this grieving alone, come be with us. Or maybe Thomas realizes this on his own. But for whatever reason, he returns to his kindred and they share with him their experience: yes, the crucifixion is real and we are still devasted, but life is stronger than death… the resurrection is also real.
 
But [Thomas] said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in Jesus’ hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in Jesus’ side, I will not believe.”
 
And like his kindred’s fear and betrayal, the Resurrected One does not scorn Thomas’ grief or despair. Instead, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then Jesus said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered Jesus, “My Lord and my God!”  
 
I have always loved this story… there is something about Thomas’ need for embodied, palpable assurance that his beloved is alive… there is something about Thomas’ need to be seen in his grief and despair… there is something about Jesus’ offering of their wounds… here, here are my hands where Empire sought to kill me… here, here is my side where the forces of pain and suffering sought to prove they had succeeded. It really did happen, I was gravely wounded. But that death-dealing cruelty, that pain was not the final word. Resurrection is. Resurrection for me and for you…
 
[pause]
 
I walked into the grocery store in the summer of 2024, thinking about my shopping list. I didn’t even see him. So I was a little startled when he asked, “did you have a knee replacement?” Pulling my mind out of my list, I looked up and saw an older African American man leaning on a cane. “No, I actually survived a serious car accident.” “Oh, my, praise God you are alive,” he said. “I had a knee replacement and I am so grateful to be walking. The pain was so bad for so long, I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to get around again,” he said. “I hear you,” I said, “I almost lost my leg, but they were able to save it and rebuild it. I feel so grateful to be alive and walking.” He put his hand on my arm and said, “bless you, sister, I will pray for you and your continued healing.” I touched his hand on my arm and said, “I will pray for your healing, too.”
 
We have lived through a winter of deep sorrow, suffering, and violence… so much has been destroyed. Lives shattered, lives snuffed out, hundreds of millions of dollars of damage… Our collective wounds are still very much visible. And our collective grief and exhaustion are palpable. Our collective experience of suffering and grief has changed us.
 
We have also individually been through some things. Some of us have had surgeries. Some of us have had projects we’ve spent years on destroyed, some of us have lost loved ones.
I love the way Janet Morley describes this reality:
 
The bodies of grownups
come with stretchmarks and scars,
faces that have been lived in,
relaxed breasts and bellies,
backs that give you trouble,
and well-worn feet:
flesh that is particular,
and obviously mortal.
They also come
with bruises on their heart,
wounds they can’t forget,
…And yet I think there is a flood of beauty
beyond the smoothness of youth;
and my heart aches for the grace of longing
that flows through bodies
no longer straining to be innocent,
but yearning for redemption.
 
Resurrection does not take away the pain of the crucifixion. The grief changes us forever.
 
But I find great comfort in the fact that God knows in God’s body what it means to suffer and die at the hands of Empire’s cruelty. That carnal knowledge, that knowing in God’s own body what it is to be mortal, and targeted, gives birth to a solidarity with our suffering, particularly with the suffering caused by oppression.
 
God embodied in the Resurrected Jesus came and found Mary and revealed themselves by calling her name. God embodied in the Resurrected Jesus came and found the disciples, hidden away, terrified and revealed themself by showing their wounded hands and side and offered a blessing of peace.
 
And God embodied in the Resurrected Jesus came and found Thomas, meeting him where he was, knowing that to offer him peace, Thomas needed to touch and feel the evidence of woundedness and healing.
 
All of these are stories of the pouring out of healing and grace… God with us in our deepest pain. And God with us, still bearing the body of a grownup who’s been through something, but having been resurrected.
 
My experience with the man in the grocery store isn’t universal. Sometimes people see me and look away from my scars. I don’t know why, but they can’t go there with me. Maybe they think they’re saving my dignity. But I always long for those connections when my grownup body is seen and met. I long for those times of encounter and blessing when we’ve known that being mortal entails pain and is so hard sometimes. And we also know that there is a beauty in the power of healing, of love’s power being stronger than death, in the solidarity of resurrection.
 
Amen.
 
 
 

​Easter Sunday
John 20:1-18
Lyndale UCC- April 5, 2026
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel and Rev. T. Michael Rock
 
Rebecca:
Resurrected and resurrecting one… you who call us each by name… speak to us now. Touch our mouths and all our hearts that the words about to be spoken and the words about to be heard be your word and not simply our own.
 
During this year’s Lent, we have been praying with the idea of Solidarity of the Incarnation. We’ve looked at it from a couple of different angles. The first is the way in which God has hallowed our flesh by taking on human form. God has sought intimacy with us by loving, resisting Empire, and healing… in short, by living an earthly life. Solidarity of the Incarnation.
 
And this solidarity of the Incarnation offers us an invitation to hallow “this here flesh” that is ours. It invites us to love our bodies, our gender identities, our sexualities, our disabilities, our scars and our desires. We are called to love y/our flesh and love it hard.
 
And then the Holy Week story invites us to see that the solidarity of the Incarnation becomes the solidarity of the cross.  The cross is a sign, as womanist theologian Delores Williams says, of God’s solidarity with the world’s crucified. Jesus’ life of healing and action to resist the Roman Empire that leads him to be executed as a political prisoner is an act of solidarity with all that Empire seeks to crucify.
 
Finally, the Easter story invites us to see that the solidarity of the Incarnation which becomes the solidarity of the cross, then becomes the solidarity of the Resurrection. The same God who hallows human flesh and journeys into the places of deepest violence and suffering to accompany us at our most difficult and trying times, is the same God who announces that no violence or death, no suffering or oppression is ever the last word. Instead, it is life, it is love, it is joy and justice that are eternal.
 
In life… in death… in life after death, God is radically with and for all of creation.
 
[pause]
 
It was 6:15 on Friday evening, September 1, 2023 and we had just turned onto Highway 55 outside of Hastings. We were caravanning with Teresa and Jim, Maggie’s brother and sister-in-law and Teresa started honking and swerved to miss an oncoming car that was driving diagonally into our lane. We were going 55 miles an hour and Maggie remembers me saying, “there isn’t anywhere for me to go, we’re going to get hit.”
 
I was conscious through the forty-five minutes it took to cut off the back of my seat, the door, and the roof of the car to get me out. And I distinctly remember two things: wondering if I was dying, and the hands that held me.
 
As I’ve reflected on that life-changing forty-five minutes and the two and a half years of healing thus far, I return again and again to the deep sense of calm I felt the whole time. It was as if the answer to my wondering about dying was the hands that held me, and treated me, and began my healing journey.
 
I now know that it was Dean and Julia’s hands. It was Dean who literally had my back with both of his large, strong hands after they cut the back of my seat off. He held me for most of those forty-five minutes, speaking calmly and explaining what was happening. And it was Julia who was able to reach over, calmly describing what she was doing, and place a tourniquet on my right leg which saved my life.
 
In their hands, I knew in my body God’s presence… in life, in death, in life after death.
 
[pause]
 
My favorite part of our scripture this morning is the interaction between Jesus and Mary. Jesus sees Mary’s deep, deep grief and asks her why she is weeping. This isn’t a judgement about the fact that she grieves. Instead, it is a question of deep compassion: do you want to tell me what is breaking your heart? Can I listen and bear witness to your sorrow? And after he helps carry her sorrow, he reveals himself to her:
 
Mary… And by speaking her name, she knows it is her beloved… Rabbouni
 
When has God asked about your deepest sorrow and then called your name to reveal their always-ness with you?
 
When has God-embodied-as-a-Dean-or-Julia held you in your most vulnerable times?
 
Where has resurrection met you?
 
Mary… Rabbouni…
 
And in that moment, Jesus embodies the truth of God’s always-ness with us: in life, in death, in life-after-death.
 
 
T. Michael:
Well folks we finally got here on the ground of Easter, another Pagan festival adopted by colonizing Christians. Knowing that it comes from Springtime celebrations of the goddess Eostre and that all the eggs and bunnies are taken from pagan celebrations around the Spring Equinox celebrating the rising of the sun in the East as symbols of new birth, new possibilities and new life. You gotta hand it to those early Christians. Adapt the best of those rituals of others and make them your own. 
 
What predates these co-opted rituals is the authentic stories of embodied change that Rebecca just talked about. These stories are not meant to be triumphant but move us through our grief to a deeper longing for love. These are the stories that remind us to be humble. 
 
At the center of this story is Mary Magdalene. She is the one that does not fear grief. She enters it. While Simon Peter, James and John run away when they see the stone rolled away, Mary lingers. Mary ponders in her heart why her teacher and friend had to die. After all, she was the one who once was being stoned and she lived. I have always wondered why the church adopted other religious observances instead of leaning into the story right there in this scripture story. 
 
Mary Magdalene may have been more revered than shunned if we weren’t so afraid of grief. If we weren’t so afraid of suffering and death. If we weren’t so afraid. Listen again to the power of this story, 
            The disciples run to the tomb
            Jesus is gone
            The disciples returned home
            Mary stayed and looked into the tomb
            Two angels were there and said, “Mary, why are you weeping?”
            Then Jesus appears and repeats the question, “Mary why are you weeping?”
            Mary then recognizes Jesus with “Rabbouni”
            Jesus asks Mary to return to the disciples to tell them that he is ascending
            Mary tells the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”.
 
The is Easter faith. Feeling the crucifixion in a real and embodied way. Stay in the moment. Notice those around you and remember the teaching. Jesus is not going to be around forever, in this form or the last one. Our Easter task is to be resurrection people. Our task is to walk through grief on the way to hope and understanding. Why are you weeping? What is making you weep? Is it the young mother who was trying to self-deport at the Whipple Building on Thursday being turned away because her papers were not in order? Is it the ongoing fear and intimidation being handed out by ICE agents? Is it the fact that we live in a world where young men feel that this is the only and best opportunity they have? Is it dropping billions of dollars of weapons in Iran when people are still suffering with a lack of food, housing, healthcare and education? What makes you weep? Is it because you carry your wounds alone? 
 
We need people to care about us. Being resurrection people is to care deeply, weep openly, love inclusively. Being resurrection people is to be free. 
 
One of the things that Rebecca and I share are these experiences of nearing death and being held through it all in peace and understanding. For me, surviving a diagnosis of metastatic colon cancer and being told I had maybe two years to live was an invitation to deepen into gratitude and stay in the grief. I was held by my amazing family through every step of the surgeries and treatment. I was held by my faith and friends and the spiritual juju that came at me from all directions. I continue to be held. I know that I will not live forever. I know that we are not meant to. I feel like a part of me died in that process. Other parts transformed and keep transforming. Weeping opens all of it and sets me free. Grief is necessary on the way to resurrection. Our sacred wounds are our greatest teachers. 
 
Rebecca’s car accident and the holding of Dean and Julia.
My metastatic cancer and the openness to love.
Mary’s weeping at the tomb of her beloved teacher. 
 
This is what Easter is before all the shouts of Hallelujah. 
 
May we all heed the sacred story invitation to live and weep like Mary Magdalene. Stay in the tomb long enough to see the angels and witness the Risen Christ. Every day and in every one. 
 
 

​Theological Reflection at 29th and Pillsbury
Good Friday Pilgrimage
April 3, 2026
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel
 
The story that Claire just shared, was one that was replicated all over our Cities. Sometimes there were whistle-blowing kindred who tried to stop what was happening and they were successful. But here, as in so many places, those who witnessed the terror could not stop it. They simply had to bear witness. It is an excruciating task, this bearing witness without being able to stop it. But it is a sacred role.
 
Mary, the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Salome, and John fulfilled the same role as they stood at the foot of the cross while Jesus was crucified. Unlike their kindred disciples they neither denied Jesus, nor ran away. Instead, they witnessed. They held vigil with Jesus. Even as Roman soldiers mocked and scorned, showing off their weapons, Mary, Mary, Salome, and John accompanied Jesus amidst the pain and suffering. This is sacred work. When we can’t prevent violence and terror from happening, this kind of accompaniment is some of the deepest acts of love. It is sacred solidarity.[1]
 
Today we are affirming, over and over again, that we never valorize or celebrate the cross. Instead the cross is a sign, as Delores Williams says, of God’s solidarity with the world’s crucified. Jesus’ life of healing and action to resist the Roman Empire that leads him to be executed as a political prisoner is an act of solidarity with all that Empire seeks to crucify. She calls it the solidarity of the cross.
 
Today we are invited to consider both of these kinds of solidarity… God’s solidarity with those crucified by Empire here and now… and our sacred solidarity… refusing to flee in fear, refusing to let our neighbors suffer alone… and, instead, bearing witness… and taking care of the car left behind, weeping with the family of those abducted, holding on to dignity, no matter the mocking and scorn directed our way.
 
This kind of deep solidarity causes us to tremble and weep and mourn. And we must not shy away from the grief. We must honor it… for those crucified and for the witnesses.
 
But we might also hold on to the reality that those who do not flee, that whose who bear witness, and who grieve, are also often the first to bear witness to resurrection… for even as we mark the power of violence and death today—here in our Cities and across the world. We can claim the reality that violence and death are never the end of the story.
 
 


[1] Elsa Tamez in conversation with the author, 1994.

​To Do Three Things: Love, Hold, Let Go
In Blackwater Woods, Ezekiel 37: 1-14
Lyndale UCC- March 8, 2026
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel
 
The lone wild bird in lofty flight is still with thee nor leaves thy sight. And I am thine, I rest in thee, Great Spirit come and rest in me.
 
Last Sunday, members of the Lyndale choir joined Shannon, my mom, and me at her assisted living where she is in hospice. Led by Rev. Claire Klein’s guitar, we sang some of my mom’s favorite hymns: You Have Come Down to the Lakeshore, Be Now My Vision, Abide with Me, Precious Lord, What Wonderous Love is This, Amazing Grace. We also sang some Scottish tunes, like the mournful Bonnie, Bonnie Banks O Loch Lomond. She needed a little help finding each of the hymns but she sang along to everything. And, at the end, when we invited her to, she prayed a classic Marguerite prayer—present, poetic, powerful. And then, after folks left, she retreated back into confusion and tiredness.
 
My mom is 90 and she entered hospice on Feb 1st.
 
It was only six weeks earlier that the resistance to Operation Metro Surge really began to ramp up. Many of us were going to weekly protests and vigils and setting up mutual aid funds and processes. And then Renee Good was murdered and the protests became daily instead of weekly. And the work of resistance became an invitation for 700 clergy to come to Minnesota to participate in a day of work stoppage and strike. And all of it was happening amidst sub-zero conditions. And we’ve set up Signal chats and patrols and school safety guards and grocery delivery systems and millions of dollars in rental assistance.
 
The juxtaposition of the intensity of the resistance, the need for urgency and perseverance and pushing back at all that ICE and the American Empire are trying to perpetrate on the one hand… and the slow loss of my mom’s cognitive abilities, the slow silencing of her voice into almost a whisper at times and pure silence at others, the loss of her muscle strength and the need to use a lift to help her transfer on the other is making me spend a lot of time in prayer and discernment. Persistence and letting go, resistance and surrender. To what am I called?
 
Our scriptural text for this morning is one of my favorite ones in all of scripture. God sets Ezekiel down in a valley of bones and they are very dry. And God asks Ezekiel, “can these bones live?” I was reminded of this story this week when Brian, a dear friend from college who is now a anti-death penalty attorney in Georgia texted me and asked if we could talk on the phone because he was feeling very sad about ICE and Iran and Ecuador. He asked how I was staying in the resistance, how we were doing it here in Minnesota. And as we talked he said his mother, when she was alive, used to ask him whenever he was discouraged, “can these bones live?” We then talked about how God commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones and that Ezekiel obeys the command. But that it takes three separate times of prophesying before the answer to God’s question is, “yes, these bones CAN live.” It takes a third time of prophesying before life actually happens. Persistence, keeping at it, even when the first two times seem to have failed. Can these bones live? Yes, but only if we push through the seeming power of death. Only if we keep following God’s command and prophesy, prophesy, prophesy.
 
It seems as if it could be an anthem for us Resistance Loons here in Minnesota.
 
But it’s not what God is speaking to me as I sit with my mom…
 
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.
 
As I ponder and pray about these seemingly opposite spiritual tasks, I had the chance to talk with several trusted beloveds. And one of them, an English major, said it sounded like the interplay between thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Another said it was really important to be clear who and what we are called to resist and to what and to whom we are called to surrender and let go into. They went on to say, it is precisely because we are called to surrender and let go into God’s infinite love, grace, and abiding spirit that we can have the power and the hope and the fortitude to resist evil. The resistance and the letting go are deeply interrelated.
 
How does that resonate or land on you?
 
I feel well-trained and ready for the persistent resistance. As someone trained in liberation and feminist theologies, I am deeply suspicious about the ask to surrender. For too long, systems of oppression, disguised as Christianity, have demanded of marginalized communities that they surrender their power, that they acquiesce to their own oppression, that they submit to those who mean them harm. But this is exactly what God calls us to resist. This is exactly the valley of dry bones into which God sets us and commands us to prophesy.
 
We are never called to surrender to that which would seek our humiliation. Never.
 
But we are called to recognize that we are mortal. And death is part of life. Knowing when to let go into death is deeply connected to the daily spiritual practice of letting go into God’s love. It is deeply connected to trusting God’s power and presence in life.
 
This Lent, we are exploring the theme of Solidarity of the Incarnation. And I am struck by how powerful it is that God so loves us that God took and takes on human form in order to make this journey of resistance and letting go with us. Jesus is such a powerful example of trusting and letting go into God’s love that he is able to resist Satan’s temptation in the wilderness. It is precisely Jesus’ letting go into God’s love that allows him to call out Empire’s abuses and resist them with his whole being. It is his surrender into God’s presence that allows him to be a channel of healing.
 
“and when the time comes to let it go, to let it go” ….I still don’t quite know how I’m going to let go of my mom. I can’t imagine a world without her presence. That is the honest truth. I find myself holding tight every time I hug her, every time I leave her. I am already anticipating the grief and sorrow. And I know so many of you have made this sacred, excruciating journey.
 
And I also deeply believe in the Solidarity of the Incarnation… in life, in death, in life after death. And I know in my bones that God receives that which we release—including each of us.
 
Amen.
 

​Mardi Gras Sunday
Matthew 17: 1-9
Lyndale UCC- February 15, 2026
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel
 
Touch our mouths… touch our hearts… may we laugh and dream your reality here and now, O God. Amen.
 
The last six years have been hard. The last year has been hard. And the last three months have been excruciating. Covid, the Uprising in response to the murder of George Floyd, Trump 2.0 and now Operation Metro Surge. It’s been a hard few years… few months…
 
It is important for us to acknowledge that these are perilous times. And many of us are weary. Many of us are triggered and hypervigilant. Many of us are numb. It is a lot.
 
But as I prepared for Mardi Gras Sunday, I went back and read a number of pieces about laughter and creativity and dancing – particularly amidst difficult times, particularly that Joe Bunce has sent me over the years. (Blessed be your memory, Joe!)
 
And I was reminded that one of the most powerful tools that colonizers and oppressors and would-be authoritarians use is despair. When people are so mired in the pain and misery of the present, they cannot dream of a future of liberation. When we are so focused on feeding our neighbors in hiding, and grieving the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and protecting trans and non-binary siblings who have come here for sanctuary, and defending gender affirming care for our children, we can become despairing and exhausted and unable to resist.
 
But one of the things that we know from many liberation movements is that one of the most powerful tools of resistance is laughter and dance and celebration. There is a deeply revolutionary spirit and power that is unleashed when we laugh and dance and celebrate. For when we are laughing, we are breathing deeply of the spirit. And when we are dancing, we are claiming a joy that may be in the future, but we are also claiming it in the here and now.
 
Theologians have this fancy word called eschatology. Eschatology is the study of hope. It is the study of the future. It is the study of time. And the thing about laughter and dancing and celebrating is that they can be a radical claiming of God’s hope and love and joy and justice—all of which may seem like they are far off in the future. But we can make them real in the here and now—if only for a few moments—when we laugh and sing and dance.
 
Through laughter and dancing and celebrating, those experiencing colonization can break the power-over dynamic by claiming their full humanity manifest in joy, now. Through laughter, they invert the bad to make it comical or playful. They can use the farcical for a dead-serious purpose, embodying that colonization’s defeat is already real because they are fully alive and free.
 
It was Christmas morning in 1987, and I was in the remote, mountainous Salvadoran village of Santa Marta as part of a small delegation of North American Christians and Jews representing the Accompaniment Movement. We awakened, disoriented, to the ground shaking. Quickly, an older man who was a leader in the community explained that the Salvadoran government was dropping bombs nearby to scare and intimidate the residents of Santa Marta. The contrast between the ground-shaking bombs and the early Christmas morning was lost on no one. With such a backdrop, we heard more about the village’s history, including the killing of this elder’s daughter, who had been pregnant with her first child, and the murder of his childhood friend, who had been attempting to defend his own family. The elder described in detail the ways in which colonization targets real bodies with torture, pain, and death.
 
But the story made a sharp turn when, after describing the history, we sat in silence and prayed. Then he said, “Do you know how I can tell which North Americans are going to last here with us?” After a pause in which no one answered, he continued, “The way I know that anyone is going to last here is that they know how to laugh, to sing, to dance, to experience joy . . . because the work we are doing is so difficult, we have to claim the promise of how the world is going to be, now. We have to live the promise. That’s what our faith teaches us.”
 
I have been thinking a lot about that Salvadoran elder’s wisdom. I’ve come back to it for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that this ICE occupation has made me think a lot about my experience in El Salvador amidst the Civil War there. The weapons, the tear gas, the federal government turning military might against its own people, the parallels are haunting.
 
But the Salvadoran elder has been speaking to me. And I have been so inspired by all of us: Singing Resistance in the streets…  the Powerderhorn Park Ice Sled rally filled with silliness and satire… the luminaries on Lake Nokomis spelling: ICE Out of Minnesota for planes landing and taking off at MSP… the ubiquitousness of sambusas made by Somali aunties and shared like a banquet at the Good and Pretti memorials.
 
And Reinhold Neibuhr has been speaking to me, too. He’s the author of the Serenity prayer that so many alcoholics and addicts pray, who also suggested that “[h]umor is a prelude to faith, and laughter is the beginning of prayer.”
 
I have to tell you that I have been experiencing this so much here in the Twin Cities. The joy of the resistance, the creativity, the art… I am so in love with us… and it is leading me deeper into faith and prayer. How about you?
 
Indigenous and African American activists talk about First, Second and Third Space. First space is the conditions of oppression and violence that mark much of daily life. Second space is the resistance, the knowing that something isn’t right, the refusal to settle for First Space. And Third Space are those experiences and times when, if only for a moment, or a day, or a collection of days, an experience of liberation, of healing, of wholeness free of oppression happens.
 
It is those moments of Third Space that fortify and encourage our living in Second Space in order to resist First Space.
 
The story of the Transfiguration that we read this morning is a story of Third Space. It is a story of Peter and James and John being gifted by Jesus with a vision of the future that will be but also already is. And it is not coincidence that Jesus allows them this experience of Third Space as a way to fortify them for the journey they must accompany him on through his arrest, trial, and execution. He knows they need it to have any chance at holding on to hope amidst their despair.
 
So, laughter and joy, humor and jokes are both the practice and sign of God’s liberation.
This claiming of a future promise in a present joy is one of the most powerful tools to defeat authoritarian attempts and movements of supremacy and hatred. They are also powerful tools for the more intimate and personal times of suffering and difficulty. Joe has been such a mentor to me in this… his last few years, and particularly his last year, was filled with a lot of pain and he didn’t shy away from naming that. But he also regularly shared with me his jokes and memes… laughter transported him into third space, and he brought me with him whenever we connected.
 
My friends, these are hard times, perilous times. Individually and collectively, we are journeying with a lot… And we are invited to be like Joe Bunce… we’re invited to follow Castor and take joy in simple things and maybe a little gamification… and we’re invited to sing to ICE agents and slide down Powderhorn hills in silly sleds.
 
And may God continue to bless us with Transfiguration moments that we might continue to live and act in love and justice. Amen.
 
 
 

​Come Follow Me
Matthew 4: 12, 17-23
Joint SpringHouse Service-January 24, 2026
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel
 
Come follow me…Come follow me…
 
This morning, I was supposed to share a bit about our justice ministries over the last year. But instead, I want to share a few reflections about the last three days.
 
The core of our scripture for this morning is this phrase: Come follow me. It is such a simple invitation on its surface. But, unlike the disciples who follow Jesus not knowing how the story ends, we know where Jesus’ path of radical love, solidarity, and healing takes him. Come follow me, Jesus invites us… come and share bread and life with one another… come and be healers… come and bear a softness of love…and use this shared bread, this healing balm, this softness of love as we, together confront Empire’s death-dealing.
 
Come follow me…
 
We had whistles, they had guns… Come follow me…
 
We are living through a moment in which the implications of being called into followership of Jesus are quite clear. And the juxtaposition of true followership and the distorted and diseased Christianity that is baptizing ICE’s violence is truly stark.
 
I was here for most of the day yesterday after Alex Pretti was murdered by ICE. SpringHouse was opened as a medic station, warming place, and a space offering pastoral care. There were several pastors, lots of food and warm drinks, street medic kits, and warm clothes for anyone to take. One young person with whom I spoke came in shaking and cold. They had witnessed the shooting and had been teargassed. They kept saying, “I can’t believe they killed him.” We gave them water, charged up their phone and just asked what they needed to tell us. After a while, they felt settled enough to gather their things and head out. As they were leaving, they said to me, “I don’t go to church, but I see why people come here, you all are so kind and it’s so hospitable.”
 
Not fifteen minutes later, one of the people in charge of the medic station came to T Michael, Susie Hayward, and me and said she didn’t know if her transgender child was safe as he had been among the protestors. She couldn’t get a hold of him and asked us to pray with her. With permission, we all laid hands on her and breathed together. Our hands and our breath were our prayer.
 
As I drove home, I passed an armored vehicle just a few blocks east of here and then, the rest of the drive was filled with thousands of candles lining the streets.
 
This is the juxtaposition: Alex Pretti bending to help his kindred human being and being murdered in cold blood;
 
This is the contrast: ICE brutally kidnapping mothers of three month olds and fathers of five year old’s wearing spider man backpacks and neighbors bringing food and keeping each other safe;
 
This is the choice: state violence or kindred washing the tear gas from one another's eyes.
 
My friends, Jesus’ invitation to followership of shared bread and tender love and healing balm may feel ridiculously naïve in the face of Empire’s guns and brutality. But it isn’t an individual call. Though it comes to each of us, and we must all make a decision, the invitation to collective response. What Empire fails to recognize is that when we follow Jesus’ call together… we become an unquenchable, an irrepressible power for collective liberation.
 
Come follow me… may we say yes… and may we go together. Amen.

This is My Child, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased
Matthew 3:13-17
January 11, 2026- Lyndale UCC
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel
 
For the past five weeks, ICE agents have sought to terrorize our Cities with Operation Metro Surge… they have attempted to kidnap our neighbors… and this week, they murdered 37 year old Renee Good, a legal observer, right in front of her wife and the family dog. It has been five week of capricious cruelty.
 
In response, so many of us have delivered food, raised money, accompanied school drop off and dismissal, have protested and prayed with our feet. Since Wednesday’s murder of Renee Good, I’ve joined with many of you in the streets…
 
How are we to be in this moment? What are we to do as Christians?
 
Our scripture for this morning declares: And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Child, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
 
This is my child, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased…
 
On Thursday, as I was walking along 34th street coming toward the memorial for Renee Good, I saw a Somali woman, Sophia, with a tray of food standing immobilized in the street. When I asked if I could help she said she was afraid of falling on the ice but she was trying to bring food to the mourners. Another person and I walked out into the street and we all linked arms and walked to 34th and Portland. As we did so she shared that she took the day off to cook in honor of Renee Good because she wanted to honor the white woman who died trying to protect her Somali community. When we got to the memorial, Sophia handed out sambusas. It felt like holy communion to all of us.
 
Then, as I left the memorial, I stopped at the corner of 34th and Portland where baracades had been constructed by the community and there were two fires and a table filled with food. A man stood calling to people to come warm themselves and get something to eat...
 
In the face of capricious cruelty, what are we to do? We choose community, connection, communion, and love as our tools of resistance.
 
Earlier on Thursday, T Michael and I joined clergy colleagues organized by Jewish Community Action in solidarity with secular organizers at the Whipple Building. We were organized into three groups to interrupt business as usual at 3 exits where ICE vehicles were leaving to terrorize our neighbors. I stood with colleagues as we spoke to ICE and CBP personnel and said, you have a choice.. you don't have to cooperate with evil. Our mandate is to love God and love our neighbor...several of the Latinx CBP folks thanked us for treating them like human beings...the moral injury was present in their eyes. We asked them why they were terrorizing our neighborhoods and asked them to leave...These, too, are God’s beloved…
 
On Friday, clergy were asked to be present at the Renee Good memorial site because there were threats that agitators were going to show up as our Muslim colleagues were sharing in Jumaa prayer. As I stood in the crowd, a white man approached me and asked if he could talk with me. He said he thought he probably was on a different side of the issue but he traveled from St Cloud to learn about what happened because he thought his social media feed wasn't telling him the real truth. He asked me to tell him what happened and why I was there. I shared what I knew and thanked him for taking the time to come and have face to face conversation. It felt like a moment of genuine connection and exactly the kind of antidote to the lies, disinformation, and violence.
 
This is my child, the beloved…
 
Yesterday, many of us marched with thousands of kindred Minnesotans in the ICE Out of Minnesota March. I was blessed to do so with beloved movement Chaplain colleagues. We split into pairs and sought to be a non-anxious presence amidst the crowd. That included being asked to help a woman who had fallen on the ice and likely broken her ankle. As a group of six folks attended to her, I helped get a car to drive her to the hospital. The whole group were strangers to each other but drawn together to help where there is harm. Because that's what we do here...
 
The crowd stretched for blocks and blocks carrying signs that declared "radicalized by human decency," "everybody deserves to live," "Minnesota stands for Good," and “ICE out for Good." There were puppets and rosaries, there were neighbors sharing sambusas, and hundreds of hand and toe warmers.
 
Today’s text declares "this is my child, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased." And I am so struck by the contast between the capricious cruelty of this moment and how so many are resisting by refusing to let go of their own and others' belovedness...
 
This is the only way...only love can cast out fear and death. Only love.
 
My friends, hear these words, You are my child, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased… may we go and do likewise. Amen.