Pastoral Prayer:

Spirit of Life, God of peace and justice, hear our prayers this morning
It is a new year and even the most cynical among us harbor some glimmer of hope that it will be better than the last

and yet this turning of the calendar brings not of a dawn of peace, but news of war and we are reminded anew of the work we must do to enact the kingdom of heaven here on earth.

We know prayers for peace and justice are not enough on their own, but we hope they may serve as a beginning, a way to open our hearts and orient our spirits towards love

For the people of Venezuela we pray, we pray for safety, comfort, and justice, for self-determination and fair elections and the ability to flourish free from oppressive leaders at home and control and violence from abroad

For the members of our armed forces who are deployed and their loved ones we pray, we pray that they be held in love, kept safe from physical and spiritual harm and asked only to obey just and legal orders

For our leaders at home we pray, may they learn to lead with wisdom, love and compassion. May they be guided not by greed and lust for power but by the better angels of their nature.

And for ourselves we pray, we pray for courage to speak out against violence and injustice, we pray for wisdom and patience as we discern our responses in a complex world, we pray that we may be guided by peace and love in this new year.

For this and for so much more left unspoken this morning, we pray.

Amen.

Sermon:

Friends, let me begin by saying I will, for the most part, be delivering the new years/winter themed sermon I planned today. I know yesterday’s United States military operation in Venezuela is on many of your minds, and this news brings many complex feelings and responses. I contemplated pivoting towards a sermon about peace, democracy, and unchecked power. And then I remembered German theologian Karl Barth’s declaration during the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany that the task was “to do theology and nothing but theology as though nothing had happened.” This was a strange statement coming from a Theologian who was instrumental in the formation of the confessing church that defied Hitler, was prohibited from writing and speaking in Germany, and eventually forced to flee the country. But Barth’s point was that in a world where an unjust regime was attempting to control so much of public life, we must resist their control over our spiritual life. This doesn’t mean we ignore what’s happening in the world and it doesn’t mean we don’t act on it. But it does mean that we do what we can to protect some sacred piece of autonomy. If the Trump administration controls what I preach every week, even if it’s preaching in defiance, that’s a lot of power we’re abdicating from this supposedly free pulpit. Theologian Hanna Reichel reminds us that they don’t need our love as long as they have our attention and our fear. So yes, let’s talk about if/how we as a community want to raise our voices for peace and justice. Let’s process how our faith calls us to respond in this moment. But let’s also tend to our souls for the long-term. Let’s find some spiritual fruits to nourish us for the new year and in doing so, remember that this administration and the news cycle don’t get to control what ideas we take the time to consider or how we grow spiritually. They don’t get to limit our imaginations and hijack our attention all the time.

And before I was thinking about war, I was spending my New Years thinking about discernment. About how we find clarity and direction. And I was actually thinking about how I’ve managed to learn my way around the three new cities I’ve lived in in just five years. In the age of GPS where we never have to navigate unassisted, this is no easy task. Portland in particular was hard for me. I think maybe it’s because the ocean was on the wrong side. I’m a child of the Atlantic. The water’s supposed to be to the east. And I never got used to the singular volcanic mountain peaks rising up seemingly out of nowhere. They were useless to me as navigational aids. Nashville didn’t offer quite the same level of geological confusion, but there was a park we walked in almost daily, with a massive tangle of side trails that left me regularly lost.

In both places, things only begin to click into place with the coming of winter. As the leaves fall away, it becomes easier to see. On the side trails at that Nashville park, I suddenly had a sightline through the branches to the main walk and bike path. In Portland, the bare oak tree in front of my window allowed me to glimpse the intersections connecting my street to the rest of the neighborhood, letting me see the layout of the city more clearly. As much as I mourned the loss of the beautiful leafy views, the winter months helped me to, quite literally, find my bearings. And now I’m having that experience here in Salem.

Almost every year in January, there are conversations about how it doesn’t feel right to start a new year in the winter. How we shouldn’t be making resolutions about fitness routines and bullet journals when most mammals are hibernating. Why don’t we start the new year in the fall we wonder, at harvest time, when school is back in session and summer vacations are winding down. This is when the Jewish New Year begins. Or in the spring, with new growth and new life blooming around us. This is when some Buddhist and Hindu traditions celebrate the new year. Often, I make peace with the Gregorian calendar’s winter new year by leaning into metaphors about how all life begins in the dark, whether in the womb or deep within the soil of the earth. I talk about the dormant period that is necessary before something new can grow.

But this year, it feels like we’ve been in the dark for more than just a season and it’s getting harder to make peace with it. This year, not even a week into 2026 and already on the brink of war, hibernating, while still necessary, feels impossible or irresponsible. So instead of reaching for the metaphors of winter’s long nights, I’m looking to the lessons of the short, but crystal clear days. Those unobstructed sightlines. The bare trees that provide us with an up close view of the earth’s scaffolding and allow us to see further into the distance than we could before. As I’ve learned in my attempts at navigating new cities, The leafless landscapes of these barren months provide us a chance to orient ourselves in an increasingly disorienting world. And that seems like a good way to start the new year.

Writer Madeline L’Engle tells us that winter reveals the structure of things. Isn’t that such a great image? When the deciduous trees and plants are unadorned with leaves and blossoms, the trunk and branches are exposed. Although we might use words like empty, skeletal or bare to describe these trees, they are in reality quite magnificent. What we are glimpsing is the structure that carries, supports, and nourishes the colorful beauty through the rest of the seasons. This is the source from which so much bounty and joy blooms. In winter, things are laid bare and we can see how strong, how healthy the underlying structures really are.

And so it is with our own lives as well. During times of loss or hardship, when we feel almost stripped bare, we are given a clearer view of the scaffolding that holds up our own lives. When fleeting things fall away, what remains at the center of your existence? Perhaps it’s your sense of self, your family and community, whether inherited or chosen, or maybe even your faith and spiritual life, your values system, your sense of belovedness as a child of God.

Winter can be a time to tend to these deep structures, to care for their health or to see them with new appreciative eyes. It can be a time of re-grounding in what is most important and ensuring that we are deeply rooted and able to support the weight of spring and summer’s fruits. I’ve often found winter a rich time to discover or deepen a spiritual practice, to spend time journaling, or in prayer or study. Perhaps, as we prepare to respond to the political realities in our country right now, winter is a good time to revisit the core values that drive our social activism. I’m contemplating launching an anti-fascist theology reading group this spring if there’s interest. Maybe you want to return to thinkers who write about non-violent resistance or radical hospitality. Maybe you want to go for long walks that help reconnect you with the earth, or volunteer at a direct service organization to reconnect you with your fellow humans. Do something to tend to the heartwood, the solid core of your soul that will hold you up and keep you in the work through failure, distraction, set-backs, and frustrations.

We’re doing this as a church community too, as we hold conversations about our church’s mission and begin work on a right relations process, and bylaws revision. These are all part of asking who we are at our core? What is essential to the identity of this place. What are our roots, and trunk and branches? Perhaps some things we thought were branches are actually leaves, and they can fall away for a time without damaging the structure. Or maybe we’ll discover things we thought were merely decorative blooms actually help support the whole tree. I hope you’ll consider being part of some of these conversations. I know it’s not as fun as classes and protests and potlucks, but we need to tend to the structures for any of those other pieces to be successful. It’s the important winter work that keeps a church healthy.

This kind of tending may seem really inward looking, but the thing about the winter landscape is at the same time it allows us to see more clearly the structure of things, it also allows us to see further. Winter is also a time for visioning. Without the leaves blocking our view, there is a spaciousness and clarity to the landscape that feels well suited to imaging new possibilities, for ourselves, our church, and our world.

Maybe this winter is inviting you to ask what leaves in your life you need to let fall so you can see more clearly. It will look different for each of us, but I would guess we all have something in our life that is taking up too much space, obstructing our view, or preventing something new and beautiful from unfurling in its place. Can we let it go of whatever it is we’re so desperately clinging to? If we can, maybe in the clearing, we’ll be able see a new path for ourselves, like Annie Dillard’s assertion that in winter she could walk to the Gulf of Mexico in a straight line. Can you see a new vocation emerging, or maybe a way through a challenge that until now had seemed like an impasse. Can you see what our church might look like in five or ten years? How we could grow spiritually and the good work we could be doing in the world? Can you imagine what another world might look like if we stay committed to the work of love and justice? For in the winter, Dillard tells us, walls become windows and doors open. Paths unclog. All that summer conceals she said, winter reveals. I am reminded of Martha Postlethwaite’s poem “Clearing,” where she offers this invitation:

create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is yours alone to sing
falls into your open cupped hands and you recognize and greet it. Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to the world
so worthy of rescue.

I love this concept of winter that Madeleine L’ENgle and Annie Dillard offer us. Winter as the time to tend to the structure of things, to make sure the bones are good while also looking towards distant horizons. Winter as a time to focus on both the bare essentials of the present and the wide open possibilities of the future. I love this because, for me, it hits a sweet spot between the winter urge to just hibernate and the social pressure to set really intense, productivity obsessed New Year's resolutions. It provides me with work to do in the New Year that is meaningful but gentle. Earnest but unrushed. I begin 2026 asking. How are the structures of my life holding up? What basics need tending? And what kind of future can I see when I clear away the clutter? How am I making space for new possibilities to emerge?

And if I forget that those are my questions this season, if I get bogged down at work, distracted by the daily stressors of life, lost in the mess of 24 hours news networks and social media alerts, I can simply go outside for a winter walk on a clear day and find my bearings again.

I hope 2026 brings us moments of joy, wonder, growth, and celebration. But I know it will likely also bring hard questions to answer, injustices to confront, and losses to grieve. All of those things will be easier if we do this winter work of assessing our structures and looking through the clearings towards new horizons. So this new year I invite you to embrace the spiritual gifts of this season. Let the winter landscape, in all it’s beautiful sparseness, guide you through this threshold.

May it be so. Happy New Year, dear ones. Amen.