2025.06.29 | Back to the Garden
If you were to read a different English translation of the Bible, other than the New Revised Standard Version that we usually use here at Eden Church, you might be a little puzzled when you read Paul’s words about the fruits of the Spirit from Chapter 5 of Galatians. In many translations—including the Spanish version we read—the translators use the word “goodness” or, in Spanish, bondad, to translate the Greek word agathosune that Paul uses, while the NRSV uses the word, “generosity.”
I’m not exactly sure why the translators made this interpretive choice, but I can make some guesses. It might be because this particular word, agathosune, is used rarely in the New Testament, and the editors wanted to distinguish it from the other words that are used to denote “goodness.” Also, in English, we use the word “good” A LOT. “That was a good movie last night.” “Eating vegetables is good for your health.” “My mother always warned me to be good.” Each of these uses of the word “good” has a slightly different meaning—and yet none of them really comes close to what Paul means in Galatians.
For Paul, goodness is not passive, but active. It’s beneficial to others. It’s not so much about being good, but about doing good. And in this way, the word “generosity” really does come closer to capturing the spirit of agathosune than “goodness” does.
When I think about the kind of active goodness or generosity that Paul is talking about here, I go all the way back to the beginning of the Bible and the accounts of God’s goodness and generosity in the stories of creation. From the beginning, God created a planet filled with abundance and goodness.
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2025.06.22 | Rooted and Unshaken
Sam’s testimony on patience this morning is a reminder that this fruit of the Spirit isn’t about passivity or resignation. It’s not the patience or long-suffering of Job, sitting in ash and affliction. It’s something more active. It’s the kind of patience that knows there’s life beneath the surface, even when the branches look bare, it’s that resilience that Sam spoke of.
Jeremiah gives us this vivid image—not of a person, but of a tree. A tree planted by water, echoing our passage last week of Psalm 1. A tree that doesn’t panic in the drought. A tree that doesn’t clamor for quick fixes or shallow or superficial strength. It roots down. It reaches outward. It trusts in the unseen stream. While onlookers may not see much going on, growth is happening on a deeper level.
La reflexión de hoy sobre la paciencia nos invita a verla no como una espera pasiva o una simple perseverancia, sino como una confianza activa y arraigada en Dios. Al igual que el árbol de Jeremías 17, estamos llamados a estar arraigados, hundiendo nuestras raíces en el agua viva de Dios, incluso en tiempos de sequía. Si bien nuestro clima político y económico actual puede parecer una sequía, recordamos que quienes confían en el Señor no se angustian, ni siquiera cuando llega el calor. Esta clase de paciencia se trata de mantenerse conectados, recibir fuerza de Dios y de los demás, y dar fruto en cualquier época.
This is the patience we’re being called into as a congregation today.
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2025.06.15 | Like a Tree
If you read the Bible from cover to cover, you’ll notice that it is full of trees. From the beginning, in Genesis, we read of the bountiful garden of Eden, with the tree of life the tree of the knowledge of good and evil right in the middle of it, to the end, in Revelation, with its image of the New Jerusalem, and the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, and the leaves for the healing of the nations. And in between, there is the wise judge Deborah, dispensing her wisdom from beneath a palm tree. And there is the prophet Elijah, fleeing into the desert in fear for his life, collapsing under a broom tree, telling God he just can’t go on. And there is Jesus, who curses a fig tree that bears no fruit. And there is Paul, who says that we are the trees, that we bear the fruit when we are filled with the Holy Spirit.
We begin today not with one of these stories, but with a psalm, right from the very center of the Bible. As the first psalm in the book, Psalm 1 kind of sets the tone for all 150 of the psalms, and it communicates how we are to be grounded in the Torah, the way of life of one who listens to the wisdom of God, rather than the false teachings of the world. Like Paul, the psalmist compares us to trees. When we are in alignment with God, Psalm 1 reminds us, we are “like trees / planted by streams of water, / which yield their fruit in its season, / and their leaves do not wither. / In all that they do, they prosper.”
What better image to play with for a church named Eden, on the corner of Birch and Grove, beside a creek and a redwood forest, settled in a neighborhood called Cherryland, named after the orchards of William Meek—many of them cherry trees—planted in the 1860s? Like the psalmist's tree-–and like Paul’s tree of the Spirit—we are planted by a stream, bearing fruit.
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2025.06.08 | Freedom to Be Filled
Have you ever found yourself so vulnerable in speaking a language that is not your mother tongue, that you’re fumbling along, slurring your speech, axing the accent, thinking gosh I either sound like a baby or someone who’s had a bit too much to drink? Here’s an example for you: a common mistake for us gringos during the festivities of the new year, is to shout out Happy New Year! Now if you happen to be at a Latine party and a novice Spanish speaker, the ñ might be difficult to pronounce, and so your festive salutation may come out Feliz Ano or happy new anus, instead of Happy New Year.
Folks around will get a good laugh and chock it up to either inebriation, beginner’s Spanish, or both. But there’s also generally a warm reception from folks who hear effort and vulnerability. Speaking a non-native tongue, especially for mono-linguals, decenters self and one’s own group in an effort to commune with others on a deeper level. It seems that that is what Spirit had in mind at Pentecost. It was time for something both deeper, and broader for the Jesus movement, the freedom to be filled.
¿Alguna vez te has sentido tan vulnerable al hablar un idioma que no es tu lengua materna, que te cuesta hablar, arrastras las palabras, batallas con el acento y piensas: «Vaya, sueno como un bebé o como alguien que ha bebido demasiado»? Aquí tienes un ejemplo: Cuando uno se atreve decir «vamos a la playa», o «pasame una hoja de papel» en inglés. Piensalo. Por el acento a veces suena como otras palabras.
Los que hablan bien el idioma tal vez se rían, pero normalmente suele haber una cálida recepción por parte de quienes perciben el esfuerzo y la vulnerabilidad. Hablar una lengua extranjera, especialmente para quienes hablan solo un idioma, descentra al individuo y su propio grupo en un esfuerzo por conectar con los demás a un nivel más profundo. Parece que eso es lo que el Espíritu tenía en mente en Pentecostés. Era hora de algo más profundo y amplio para el movimiento de Jesús: la libertad de ser pleno.
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2025.06.01 | Freedom to Open
Good morning, Beloveds!
We’ve been talking about Freedom through this Easter season about the freedom that comes to us through the risen Christ. We’ve talked about the freedom to heal, to sing, to follow, to move forward, to rise again and to love. We’ve talked about Martin Luther’s, “Freedom of a Christian” whereby the love that opens in us through Jesus should also motivate us to serve one another because of that love.
Today’s theme is the “Freedom to Open” and in any normal liturgical year, I would find this phrase appropriate and inspiring in the week leading up to Pentecost. On the day of Pentecost, the disciples will experience a move of the Holy Spirit that removes barriers, unifies, and imbues them with a new perspective on the power and purpose Jesus gave them. This freedom will utterly transform them and birth the church. But in the challenging times in which WE are living, both freedom and openness feel like really challenging prospects.
The world has become a much scarier place in the last four months, the changes we have seen already have far exceeded the predictions being made prior to the election. The future feels really uncertain and unsafe right now.
Every day brings news of more selfishness, more cruelty, abuses of power, loss of freedoms and protections and the breaking of our systems of justice. There are heartbreaking horrors on the evening news every night. People are still trying to figure out how to respond. Many of my friends leap to activism, litigation, protest, and fighting back. While others feel it’s all too much to take in and too complicated to fix, they are so overwhelmed that it seems easier to give up and just look to protecting their own interests.
How can we be open to Hope despite this reality? How can we discern the ways God would have us respond? How can we establish God’s Shalom amidst all the noise and chaos? What would Jesus have us do?
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2025.05.25 | Freedom to Heal
There is an old joke out there about a Sunday School teacher—or maybe a preacher doing the Time with the Children—giving the children a little lesson about being industrious and prepared, and she said to the children, I’m going to describe something, and I want you to raise your hand when you know what it is.” The children were excited to show her what they knew and leaned forward eagerly. “I’m thinking of something that lives in trees and eats nuts …” No hands went up. “It can be gray or brown and it has a long bushy tail …” The children looked around the room at each other, but still no one raised a hand. “It chatters and sometimes it flips its tail when it’s excited …” Finally, one little boy shyly raised his hand, and the teacher breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Oh, good. What do you think it is?” “Well,” said the boy, “it sure sounds like a squirrel to me, but I know the answer’s got to be Jesus!”
Jesus may be the answer for Sunday School children, and lots of other people, but if one really looks at the Gospels and the ministry of Jesus, we might say instead that Jesus is the question.
Jesus asks a lot of questions.
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2025.05.18 | Freedom to Love
“Little children,” Jesus says in John’s Gospel, “I am with you only a little longer, Where I am going, you cannot come.” These words feel especially poignant today, don’t they? Because today we will gather again in this sanctuary at 3pm with mixed emotions—joy and gratitude, tinged with sadness—as we mark the retirement of our beloved Senior Minister after 22 faithful years.
One of Jesus’ final petitions to his disciples before he left them was a new commandment: “That you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” At first, it may not sound that new. But listen closely: “As I have loved you.” Not just any love. Not just convenient or comfortable love. But a radical and inclusive love. The kind of love that washes feet, eats with outcasts, touches the unclean, and remains faithful to the end.
This is the love Jesus commands us to embody. And as we learn again each Maundy Thursday, it’s not a suggestion. It’s the defining mark of Christian community, that which sums up the way of Jesus: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
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2025.05.11 | Freedom to Rise Again
During the seven weeks of Eastertide, following Easter Sunday, the lectionary readings assigned for each Sunday omit the reading from the Hebrew Bible and instead offer a reading from the Acts of the Apostles, lifting up the stories of the early church.
I’ve always loved reading the book of Acts, because it’s a great narrative, with all these wonderful stories about the early church. What a dream those early Christians are living! Not only are they growing exponentially, they’re doing everything a congregation is supposed to do—they’re studying and learning together, they’re worshipping and sharing communion, they’re sharing their gifts with each other, they’re praising God, and they’re witnessing miracles. In last week’s passage from Chapter 9, we witnessed the miraculous conversion of Saul, and this week, we have both the healing of Aeneas and the restoration of Tabitha—all from just one chapter.
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2025.05.04 | Freedom to Follow
To you, beloved community, grace and peace, hmm.
Today’s scripture recounts one of the most famous turning points in the early Jesus movement—the story of Saul, breathing threats and violence, traveling to Damascus, determined to silence the disciples of Jesus. He is a man of conviction, power, and control. And it is precisely there—on the road of domination—that God meets him.
Let’s be clear: Saul is not an outsider to religion. Nor is he a stranger to zeal. He is, in fact, convinced he is doing God's work. But the God he has imagined is one that upholds his own limited understanding of the world, and operates much like how he does, peddling in fear, exclusion, and righteous violence. And so God interrupts that journey—not to destroy Saul—but to disarm him. Have you ever had a moment like that? Were you ever convinced that you were in the right and others in the wrong, and you were so blinded by your own biases and convictions that you simply could not see the harm you were causing others?
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2025.04.27 | Freedom to Sing
On this day, we come to celebrate the second Sunday of Easter. For us, a full week has passed since the rock was rolled away and the tomb was found empty since Jesus was seen, outside the tomb. We continue to celebrate that Jesus has risen, that Jesus is the risen Christ.
But in the scripture reading we just heard, it is still the day that the tomb was found empty. That morning, Mary Magdalene had run to the disciples to tell them that she had seen Jesus. She shared the message Jesus instructed her to bring them. But they were not ready. They were mourning and confused. They had had not yet connected these events with the predictions Jesus had made. So they were closed up in their dwelling with the windows shut and the doors locked. They were grieving and afraid.
Will you pray with me…
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2025.04.20 | Freedom to Move Forward
This past week at Eden we have had a host of Holy Week activities, from a Palm Sunday protest parade to pruning our courtyard for the Easter egg hunt, to gathering around a sacred meal this past Thursday, to finally a guided Labyrinth meditation on Good Friday. Many thanks to the Estudio Bíblico for planning and leading our Maundy Thursday service around the greatest command and Jesus’ communion meal as portrayed in the Gospel of John, the feeding of the five thousand.
Muchas gracias al Estudio Bíblico por planificar y dirigir nuestro servicio del Jueves Santo en torno al mayor mandamiento y la cena de comunión de Jesús como se describe en el Evangelio según Juan, la alimentación de los cinco mil.
Yesterday, Holy Saturday was a time of liminality, a time to sit with the loss, to allow oneself to experience anguish and anger whether alone or in community. Many thousands were able to embody and vocalize just that in the streets yesterday. Today though we ponder Luke’s account of the empty tomb. Now, did anything peculiar stand out to you in this morning’s reading from Luke?
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2025.04.13 | Holy, Wholly, Hosanna
Greetings! Today we gather to celebrate Jesus’ “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem. It is a tale rich in imagery, metaphor and paradoxes. Let us remember that throughout the Bible, God uses the most unlikely people as his agents:
Joseph, a child sold into slavery by family who winds up saving the Hebrew people.
Moses the stutterer and exiled murder sent by God to free the Hebrews from Egypt.
David, the small meek boy-child not even worthy of consideration who becomes the great king of Israel.
Esther who saves her people from slaughter by her husband the king.
Paradox is at the heart of our Christian faith. We know them well, but tend to forget that they are paradoxical.
A virgin gave birth.
The son of God was born in a manger, a stable.
The baby who was king.
That Jesus was born a male but without male seed, without male matter.
Jesus was both God and human or God in the Flesh.
That through the brutal execution of crucifixion, there was victory.
That through death we have received life.
These are ideas that we understand and accept in our faith. But they are paradoxes, something made up of two opposite things which seems impossible but is achievable or true. With that in mind let us re-examine today’s scripture. Let us pray…
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2025.04.06 | Restoration
When I was a young girl in Washington, DC, I remember seeing a photo in Ebony Magazine of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King wearing a lei.
I was transfixed! Imagine, having a whole necklace made out of flowers! I wanted to learn how to get one of my own, and (even as a very young girl was a voracious reader) soon learned about a magical place called “Hawaii”.
This was my first introduction to the island chain which had very recently become our 50th State. As I grew older, I wanted to learn all that I could about Hawaiʻi. It was being marketed as a tropical paradise and as a place without racism. Living in DC during the last phase of Jim Crow, this was very meaningful.
That was my understanding of Hawaiʻi. A paradise in every sense of the word, physically beautiful, perfect weather, and an integrated population.
It was my dream to be there, and when I was ready for college, that dream became real.
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2025.03.30 | Different Pictures
One of the modern artists whose work I’ve enjoyed getting to know lately is someone whose work I first saw at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It’s the art of Chuck Close. Close is known for his large-format, photorealistic portraits, which are often so huge that they fill an entire wall. The fascinating thing about his portraits is that when you get really close to the painting, you don’t really realize you’re looking at someone’s face; what you see instead are tiny little squares full of shapes. But when you stand back from the painting and get some distance between yourself and the wall, all those little squares resolve into a fascinating, recognizable portrait of a human being. His work is essentially like a mosaic, made up of tiny individual pieces that individually are beautiful, but when put together as a whole, they make a complex and fascinating portrait.
What I didn’t know about Chuck Close, who died in 2021 at the age of 81, was that he suffered a debilitating medical crisis in 1988, when he experienced a collapsed artery in his spine that left him paralyzed. Paralysis would be a devastating event for anyone, really, but you can imagine that for an artist it would be particularly difficult since using his hands was his livelihood. After a period of therapy, Close was able to regain some use of his hands, but he had to modify his techniques in order to create the large scale paintings that he’s known for. Out of his brokenness, he found healing in creating art in a new way.
I’ve been thinking about the art of Chuck Close as I studied the scripture for this morning’s reading and the other readings from Matthew‘s gospel that we have been working with during this season of Lent and our worship series on healing and renewal.
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2025.03.23 | "Stories"
Blessed day, church. It's so good to be passing the peace again. Amen? There’s something healing about being together in community, sharing in the peace of Christ. Do you feel it? It’s a sense of belonging. Rest in that feeling. Hay algo sanador en estar juntos en comunidad, compartiendo la paz de Cristo. ¿Lo sientes? Have you ever had something happen to you that was so good you just couldn’t keep it to yourself? ¿Alguna vez te ha pasado algo tan bueno que no podías guardarlo para ti mismo? A moment of grace, a breakthrough, a healing? I know I have. And today, we’re going to talk about that—a story that’s too good to keep hidden, and the kind of healing that goes beyond just physical transformation.
Before we dive in, let’s take a look at the Scripture passage for today, where two blind men experience healing from Jesus. Let’s see what happened to them, and how it can teach us about the power of telling our stories.
The passage begins with two blind men who follow Jesus, crying out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” These men aren’t passive bystanders—they are active seekers. Matthew’s words are deliberate: “They followed him,” and “they asked for mercy.” Their agency and intention are highlighted, just as much as Jesus’ intervention. Nuestro pasaje de hoy comienza con dos ciegos que siguen a Jesús, clamando: “¡Ten misericordia de nosotros, Hijo de David!” Estos hombres no son espectadores pasivos, ellos son buscadores activos.
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2025.03.16 | Safe Keeping
I received some bad news recently. Perhaps you have already heard about this, but if not, I want to talk with you about it. About a month ago, I woke up to find out that I no longer exist. At least that is now the official position of the United States government. Over the last 14 years, more than 4,000 trans & gender-diverse people were reported murdered, 65% of whom were people of color.1 And now our government wants to strip us of our hard-won victories and make us disappear. In this time of extraordinary assaults on non-binary people, we need our allies to stand with us in our fight for human rights.
I was born with an intersex condition, raised in one gender & then transitioned to living in another gender. For a more than a quarter of a century, I have openly self-identified as a “Two Spirit” person. Now if you don’t know, Two Spirit is a term that the indigenous people of North America used to refer to the kind of human beings that exhibit “non-binary gender expressions.” It might imperfectly be defined as a kind of Gender Queer identity. Two Spirit is also used as a kind of umbrella term for individuals on the continuum of gender expressions. Such people have been part of the human family throughout time & across cultures. For example, there were:
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2025.03.09 | Treasure
Good morning church, welcome to the 260th Sunday of Lent. Could you imagine? For some of us it feels like we’re stuck in a moment and can’t get out of it. Sorry Pastor Ashley, we could have sang that U2 song today, but inspiration struck late last night. 260 Sundays happens to be 5 years. And today we commemorate 5 years since the pandemic lockdown, and so while we are definitely different than we were 5 years ago, we exclaim that we were and still are broken. While we have spent so much energy on community resilience and community empowerment, at times we find ourselves depleted, broken, and rough around the edges. As Bono says, “We’ve got to get ourselves together.”
Hoy conmemoramos los 5 años del confinamiento por la pandemia y, aunque definitivamente somos diferentes de lo que éramos hace 5 años, exclamamos que estábamos y seguimos estando destrozados. Si bien hemos dedicado tanta energía a la resiliencia y el empoderamiento de la comunidad, a veces nos sentimos agotados, destrozados y con los bordes ásperos. “Tenemos que recomponernos”.
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2025.03.05 | Shattered
Tonight, we begin our journey through the season of lent. Ash Wednesday, as the beginning of Lent, developed in the 5th - 6th centuries, and was mandated as a holy obligation in the 11th century. Although Protestants did not maintain this ritual for the most part, it has come back during the 20th century liturgical movement as an important time for reflection in which we reclaimed this symbol and ritual of our spiritual ancestors. It plays an important role in helping us make meaning in the brokenness of our lives—brokenness in ourselves, brokenness in our relationships, and brokenness in our communities and in our world. At times our lives feel as though they have been shattered. But God, through our relationship with Jesus, offers us the hope of healing, repair and transformation.
This is the essence of our readings tonight. In the reading from Matthew‘s gospel, Jesus invites us into relationship with him as a way of offering us rest and relief from our burdens and brokenness. And Henri Nouwen reminds us that only through returning to God again and again, and feeling God‘s faithful presence can we live with our brokenness and begin the search for healing and repair.
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2025.03.02 | Transfigured
Good morning, Beloveds!
Moments ago, you heard the recounting of the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus. What an amazing and powerful account it is! This vision, this experience that Peter, James and John had is considered “the mother of all epiphany stories,”1 and is found in all 3 of the synoptic gospels. Through their eyes we get see how Jesus’ identity as the Christ was revealed to his core disciples and, through them, to us. They were allowed to witness these events in order to strengthen their faith and ours. The passage is rich in imagery, with multiple layers of meaning, harmonizes with other scriptures and carries profound theological significance. It is a revelation that continues to unfold. There is far too much to unpack and I have had to leave out much of what the Holy Spirit shared with me, but I pray that you will find this reflection edifying.
Will you pray with me...
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2025.02.23 | FILL MY CUP WITH GRACE
We are called to live in a way that goes beyond what the world expects—an invitation to fill our cups with grace, and then to pour that grace into the lives of others. “Ama a tus enemigos, haz bien a los que te odian…”. Esto es un mensaje difícil, y a veces parece imposible, pero es el mandato de Jesús, que al amar a nuestros enemigos, podemos tener vidas más completas en Cristo. Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. These words are hard to preach, and even harder to live out. These words may feel impossible, but they are the counter-cultural path to a deeper, fuller life in Christ.
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