Courage; You Do Not Walk Alone

August 17, 2025 - The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

You may be seated.

Whenever I get asked to speak to a church, or when a group from a church comes to visit Plainsong Farm, which I am from, surprise if you didn't know, I am reminded of the early church, reminded of the apostles traveling from house church to house church, encouraging the communities as the churches testify to the work that is among them. And the apostles, too, testify to the work that they have seen in other places.

I'm reminded of the hospitality they share. Or what you, I hear, call brunch. I'm reminded that they share their struggle, they shared their struggles and wondered together what God might be saying to them now. How the apostles and the churches would try to encourage one another, to do that holy apostolic duty of keeping one another's courage up, to meet this moment in history, their moment in history, to keep one another's courage up, to follow the way of Jesus.

So, I am so grateful to be with you today. So grateful to share some of the small ways that I see God at work at Plainsong Farm, and to hear from you how God is at work here in this place. I'm so grateful to pray with you and to share struggles.

And phew, do we need courage. When Father John sent me a copy of the worship bulletin, he apologized for the text that he had put before a guest preacher. Jeremiah speaks that the word of the Lord is like fire. And in Luke, Jesus says, I came to bring fire. And in Hebrews, it is implied that following the way of Jesus might get you tortured, imprisoned, and facing the mouths of lions.

Oh, I need courage. Maybe you do too.

So before we go into these texts together, I'm going to teach you a song that we sing at the farm. If you don't know, Plainsong Farm is a 12-acre farm that is a ministry in the Diocese of the Great Lakes. We grow food for neighbors who need food. And we grow people. We bring young adults. Two of them are here, and I promised I would embarrass them by naming them. Luke and Erin are here. They come and live at the farm and ask big questions of God and the world and themselves.

We bring volunteers and school groups and church groups to do the same. We come out to the farm and let that setting be a place of wondering what God might be up to now.

And this, excuse me, I'm going to make sure I don't go over. So, I'm going to look at my watch.

The name Plainsong Farm, Plainsong, comes from the tradition of chanting the Psalms, which I am sure that many of you have experienced here in these pews, that many did before us, that the fathers and the mothers did when they thought Christianity and power are getting too married. Christianity is becoming more like Christian nationalism than the way of Christ.

And so we are going to go to the desert, and as an act of resistance, we are going to breathe and sing these Psalms that will renew us and turn us towards the way of life, give us courage to walk the path.

So let me sing you a song of courage, and I'm going to sing a line and invite you to sing it back to me. So it goes like this.

“Courage, my friends, you do not walk alone. We will walk with you, and sing your spirit home.”

Beautiful. Don't worry, we'll keep singing. So, we need courage for these texts. Jeremiah is a “the sky is actually falling” kind of prophet. He's not a prophet who says, “Repent, and the city will be saved.” Jeremiah tells the people that everything is about to change because of the injustices that were perpetrated by them in God's name.

We need courage to hear these words, because maybe they are familiar to us.

Jeremiah speaks of false prophets who paint dreams that nothing is going to change, that if you just get a little bit more, you will be protected. Nothing is going to change... the economic situation, the climate, how you live, and the way you live, it isn't going to change, say the false prophets. And Jeremiah says, no, that's not true.

For us at the farm, we deal every day with the reality that things are changing. You know, we talk about the weather, and we can't make any claims of what's normal anymore. One of the small, beautiful miracles that I got to witness at the farm in the last several years is, we bring young adults to the farm, and all of them are carrying climate anxiety and grief. All of them are saying, I don't know what the future will bring. And almost all of them have been told by adults, don't worry about it, we'll figure it out. Technology, something else, we'll figure this out.

And they say, “no!” Our young people are prophesying that things are about to change. So, one of the miracles that I saw was a woman in her seventies who knew quite a bit about changing worlds. She had buried one husband and was watching another partner decline into dementia, say to one of our Episcopal Service Corps fellows, "You are right, and I'm sorry. We didn't know.”

And the young woman who was holding all of this anxiety and grief about the future began to cry. And the older woman also began to cry. And the young woman said, “You knew... but you didn't know.”

Jeremiah tells us to not listen to those who say things are not about to change. And I don't want to overly conflate this with our moment around climate. This is just an example to move us into this text. Because we all know false promises of things not changing, right? We all cling to it. I all the time cling to it. Maybe if I can get a little bit more money in my 401k, I will be protected by the change. Maybe if I don't acknowledge my father's illness, I will be protected from that change that's happening all around me.

We all know the denial of false dreams.

Courage, my friends, you do not walk alone.

Reading Hebrews is a bit like going to a family reunion. With all the shorthand references to the years and years of family's misadventures, grandma's chicken, everybody groans, Uncle Bits references Lake George, and everybody laughs. Someone mentions cousin Art, and the room fills with sad smiles.

If you don't know the family, perhaps you've just married in or you're a child who's just made the transition from playing with kids to sitting with the adults at the card table, it might take years to learn all of those stories. Hebrews can be a bit like that. We read this litany of people, and we're trying to be like, who was tortured, and who was resurrected from the dead? I think that's Elijah, or was that Elisha? Oh, it's both.

But this is a beautiful story. That we do not walk alone into the change. That we stand in a long lineage of people who have walked into uncertain times, following the way of Christ for thousands of years now.

People have walked with courage, and they, this litany of people, they're not uncomplicated. Every single one of them has a, "Oooh, I don't know if I want to tell that part of their story." Maybe you know some people like that in your own life. Those saintly sinners, who you're not quite sure about telling their whole story, but you can't not tell their whole story, because it is just these kinds of saintly sinners that God uses to point to the way of Jesus.

So, now, if you will permit me, I'm going to invite you into another thing that we do at the farm, which is talk to one another, not just hearing one voice. So, I'd like to invite you to find a relatively friendly stranger next to you in the pew, and tell them the name of one person who teaches you to walk the way of Jesus with courage, who has taught you. Maybe there's someone in and amongst you now. Maybe there's someone in the memorial garden. Maybe there's someone in this litany of saints.

Turn to someone in the pew. Tell them the name of a "saintly sinner" that gives you courage to walk into the uncertainty, gives you courage to follow the way of Jesus. I'm going to give you a few moments......

Courage, my friends, you do not walk alone. We will walk with you. And sing your spirit home.

So, maybe so we can hear the great cacophony again, Can you just yell out first names? They turned weakness into strength. Courage, my friends. These people who you have named, these people in this great litany of faith, experimented towards the life of Christ. It was never complete in them. It's only ever complete in Jesus, who we follow.

But just like at the farm, we call it a living laboratory because we're always experimenting towards wholeness, experimenting towards resilience, experimenting towards hope. So, all of these people, this great cloud of witnesses that have been named, are experimenting and have experimented towards life. Not perfectly. But these are the shoulders on which we stand.

As we follow the path of Christ, may they give you courage for the journey. I know they do for me.

And one more time: “Courage, my friends, you do not walk alone. We will walk with you and sing your spirit home.”