St. Andrew Presbyterian Church
  • Home
  • New Here?
    • Belonging Here
    • Contact Us
    • Directions
  • Who We Are
    • Stories
    • About Our Ministries
    • Leadership
    • Staff
    • Manantial de Vida Congregation
  • Worship
    • Worship in Absentia
    • Sermons
    • Audio excerpts
    • Aftertalk
  • News
    • On our Minds
    • Newsletter
  • Give
  • Get Involved
    • Choirs and Music
    • Social Groups
    • Community Service
    • Missions >
      • NICHE
      • Gulfport Mississippi 2008
      • Honduras 2012
      • Honduras 2015
      • Honduras 2018 >
        • NPH 2018 photos
    • Christian Formation
    • Sustainable Living
    • Worship
    • Youth Group
  • Calendar
  • File Cabinet
    • Donations - Electronic
    • Clerks Drawer
    • Elder/Deacon Resources
    • Policies and Procedures
    • Personnel and Budget Drawer
    • Media
    • Members & Metrics
    • Our Discernment Process
    • SHALOM
    • Directory & Deacons' Lists
  • Coronavirus Updates
  • Bridge Ministries Sunday

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Proper 28), Year B

11/14/2021

0 Comments

 

Scott Anderson

1 Samuel 1:4-20 † 1 Samuel 2:1-10 † Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25 † Mark 13:1-8
You can view a video of the service and sermon here.

Franz Dolp was a professor of economics at Oregon State University when he began, perhaps, the greatest work of his life. As a young father and professor, his marriage had eroded, and his dream of creating an Oregon homestead with it. When he drove away from the farm intended for “till death do us part,” it was with the good-bye blessing, “I hope that your next dream turns out better than your last.”[i]
He eventually found his way to forty acres on Shotpouch Creek. This logged-out, chaotic hot mess of vine maples, leggy hardwoods, and thorns was in the same Oregon coast mountains where his grandfather had made a hardscrabble homestead.

In his journal, Franz wrote that he had “made the mistake of visiting the farm after it was sold. The new owners had cut it all.”
I sat among the stumps and the swirling red dust, and I cried. When I moved to Shotpouch after leaving the farm, I realized that making a new home required more than building a cabin or planting an apple tree. It required some healing for me and for the land.”[ii]

“My work [at Shotpouch] grew out of a deeply experienced sense of loss,” he wrote, “the loss of what should be here.”[iii]

Robin Wall Kimmerer tells the story of how Franz Dolp, a wounded man, moved to live on wounded land at Shotpouch Creek in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, in a chapter she titles “Old Growth Children.” 

Franz wrote in his journal, “These forty acres were to be my retreat, my escape to the wild. But this was no pristine wilderness.” The land was razed by a series of clear-cuts over the years—first the venerable old-growth forest and then its children. No sooner had the Doug firs grown back than the loggers came for them again.[iv]
Picture
Everything is different after land is clear-cut. Sunshine is abundant, the soil is broken open and unstable, temperatures rise, the humus blanket gives way to exposed minerals. Forest ecosystems have tools for dealing with disturbances, of course. Early plants get to work on damage control, quickly. 

Read More
0 Comments

11th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Proper 6), Year B

6/13/2021

0 Comments

 

Maggie Breen

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13 † Psalm 20 † 2 Corinthians 5:6-10, 14-17 † Mark 4:26-34
You can view a video recording of this sermon here.

​
Do you know this plant? In Britain this weed is called Rosebay Willowherb. Perhaps you know it as Fireweed. This plant was packed full of meaning for me as a child. Still is. I wasn’t able to put words around what it meant to me until I was much older, but when I saw it, I knew unconsciously what it meant, and I involuntarily, quietly reacted to it.
Picture
Isn’t that the case with so much of what we experience? We take something in, and we react, sometimes quietly, sometimes less so, but so often out of these hard-earned unspoken assumptions that have this silent power to affect our lives and the lives of others.
​

Rosebay Willowherb, for me, used to be a sign of something bad and only something bad. It grew in my family’s yard starting in the late spring and early summer each year. Those stubborn stems with their long, thin, rough, dark green leaves that seemed to me to spiral like a screwdriver or a drill making its way through the low growth. And then as summer moved on those loud pink flowers, one atop the other, clamoring for the sky. And bees, lots of bees, would hang out in that slanting swath of pink and then the flowers would turn to these long thin seed capsules that would split open seemingly overnight to reveal this tangled mess of tiny, almost invisible brown seeds hidden in a mass of silk hairs that would carry them off in clouds.

Read More
0 Comments

First Sunday in Lent, Year B

2/21/2021

0 Comments

 

Scott Anderson

Genesis 9:8-17 † Psalm 25:1-10 † 1 Peter 3:18-22 † Mark 1:9-15
A video version of this sermon can be found here.

​Here’s a pro tip for you. When it comes to learning, repetition is less important than struggle. This is the insight of what is known as the generation effect according to David Epstein in his book Range.
Picture
Struggling to generate an answer on your own, even a wrong one, enhances subsequent learning.[i] It helps learning over the long-term in at least two ways—it makes it stick and it enhances our ability to apply our learning broadly. The struggle—doing the work—is the key. Epstein explains, “for learning that is both durable (it sticks) and flexible (it can be applied broadly), fast and easy is precisely the problem.”[ii]

Read More
0 Comments

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Proper 20, Year A

9/20/2020

0 Comments

 

Scott Anderson

Jonah 3:10-4:11 † Psalm 145:1-8 † Philippians 1:21-30 † Matthew 20:1-16
You can find a video copy of this sermon in the context of worship here.

They are both right, aren’t they? This is no case of fake news. It’s just a problem with perception and location and what’s fair.
​
The laborers who were hired first thing in the morning, who went out and put in their twelve hours under the hot sun cannot abide that they are paid the same as those last to join the party, who work an hour at best—and get just as much. It is not fair. Or, to be more precise, it is not equitable. This is true.
And yet, the landowner has an equally valid point, doesn’t he? Did I not keep our agreement? We negotiated for the usual day’s wage at the beginning. This is what I’ve given you. How have I wronged you?
Picture

Read More
0 Comments

    St. Andrew Sermons

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Advent
    Advocacy
    Allegory
    All Saints
    Annie Dillard
    Anti Racism
    Anti-Racism
    Ash Wednesday
    Auden
    Authority
    Baptism
    Beatitudes
    #BlackLivesMatter
    Bones
    Catechumenate
    Center Of Hope
    Christian Formation
    Christian Hope
    Christmas
    Clarity
    Climate Change
    Communion
    Compassion
    Confession
    Courage
    Creation Care
    Creative Process
    CS Lewis
    Dance
    Deacons
    Dealing With Death
    Desmond Tutu
    Despair
    Discernment
    Easter
    Economics
    Fairy Tales
    Faith
    Faithfulness
    Fecundity
    Footwashing
    Forgiveness
    Frederich Buechner
    Fred Rogers
    Generosity
    Godspell
    Good Friday
    Grace
    Gratitude
    Greatness
    Guns
    Hans Rosling
    Home
    Honduras
    Hope
    Housing
    Hulie Wigmen
    Incarnation
    Jan Dittmar
    Jimmy Nelson
    Judgment
    Julie Kae Sigars
    Justice
    Leadership
    Leigh Weber
    Lent
    Life In Christ
    Linda Ferguson
    Living In The Light
    Longing
    Love
    Maggie Breen
    Maundy Thursday
    Memory
    #MeToo
    Miracles
    Moral Injury
    Neighborliness
    New Life
    Newness Of Life
    Nicodemus
    NPH
    Palm Sunday
    Parables
    Peacemaking
    Pentecost
    People's Campaign
    Photography
    Poetry
    Pope Francis
    PTSD
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    REACH
    Reformation (New)
    Reign Of Christ
    Resilience
    Richard Powers
    Righteousness
    Robin Wall Kimmerer
    Role Of The Church
    Scott Anderson
    Security
    Sermon On The Mount
    Sermon On The Plain
    Sin
    Singing
    Social Media
    Solidarity
    Spiritual Formation
    Steadfast Love
    Temptation
    The Church
    Timothy Egan
    Transfiguration
    Trinity
    Tse-whit-zen
    Wendell Berry
    White Supremacy
    Wonder



​WORSHIP

Sunday 10am

PHONE:
425-272-5836


​OFFICE HOURS

Mon, wed, Thurs
10AM-12PM 
                                        

  • Home
  • New Here?
    • Belonging Here
    • Contact Us
    • Directions
  • Who We Are
    • Stories
    • About Our Ministries
    • Leadership
    • Staff
    • Manantial de Vida Congregation
  • Worship
    • Worship in Absentia
    • Sermons
    • Audio excerpts
    • Aftertalk
  • News
    • On our Minds
    • Newsletter
  • Give
  • Get Involved
    • Choirs and Music
    • Social Groups
    • Community Service
    • Missions >
      • NICHE
      • Gulfport Mississippi 2008
      • Honduras 2012
      • Honduras 2015
      • Honduras 2018 >
        • NPH 2018 photos
    • Christian Formation
    • Sustainable Living
    • Worship
    • Youth Group
  • Calendar
  • File Cabinet
    • Donations - Electronic
    • Clerks Drawer
    • Elder/Deacon Resources
    • Policies and Procedures
    • Personnel and Budget Drawer
    • Media
    • Members & Metrics
    • Our Discernment Process
    • SHALOM
    • Directory & Deacons' Lists
  • Coronavirus Updates
  • Bridge Ministries Sunday