Mother Claire's Sermons

In 2003, 27-year-old Army Private First Class Robert Shrode was gravely wounded when an Iraqi rocket propelled grenade struck his vehicle. The blast tore through his body, resulting in the amputation of most of his right arm just below the elbow. His face and body were extensively scarred and heavily embedded with shrapnel fragments. Like many blast survivors, Shrode returned home “honeycombed” with shrapnel. He faced ongoing health challenges from the RPG. Part of his treatment plan included periodic surgery to remove shrapnel that had worked its way to the surface through normal body movement and the passage of time. His choices were to live with the uncertainty of where that shrapnel might make its way to inside his body or the temporary pain to harvest the shrapnel and provide him relief and healing. This week’s parable is similar in format to last week’s. You might notice that there are missing verses; this week we are missing five verses between the parable and Jesus’ explanation...

My three-year-old LOVES the capitol building. I can not overemphasize how much she loves that building. Every time she sees it, she will yell “CAPITOL!” and she’s always on the lookout for it, even when I have assured her that she will not be able to see the capitol from 48th and Old Cheney. Her enthusiasm makes it impossible to go “familiarity blind” to the capitol, as I had gone. While it was always nice to see the capitol driving into town when I would come back for a visit, I quickly would go back to not noticing it again when driving around town. Because I grew up in Lincoln. Every time I wanted to go from my house to the university campus or downtown I had to drive by the capitol building - a building I would eventually work in. I was a Cornhusker Girls State citizen the summer after my sophomore year in high school and we were given a ton of time to explore the capitol - something I might have loved if I was from a different part of the state or didn’t have a mother who made it ...

I like to joke that there are five things that make me the most patriotic: air shows, the Olympics, leaving the country and coming back, salads that involve no lettuce but copious amounts of mayonnaise, and Rocky IV. As I was reflecting on that list - all of which are true - I tried to discern what all of those items have in common. And as much as an air show and mayonnaise might not seem related, they are in how they engender an emotional response in me. When I was interviewing for my first job out of seminary, looking at moving to Colorado after five years in Virginia, the folks at Grace and St. Stephen’s took my family to a restaurant across the street from the church for lunch. When we sat down, we got water in those big plastic Pepsi cups - if you’ve lived in the Midwest for any amount of time, you know which ones I’m talking about. And my husband saw those cups and said to me, “I’m home.” It’s not that those cups are any better. It’s the emotional threads that they tie together. ...