This morning’s sermon, like the rest of the service, was written by Rev. Caitlin Cotter Coillberg, who is home sick today. It’s my pleasure to preach it in her stead:
“It is hard to be objective about Pirates.” That’s the opening sentence of activist, anthropologist, and anarchist David Graeber’s book Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia.
When I was 9 months old I was adopted by parents who had experienced great heartache and waited many years to have a child. I have always known I was adopted, and my parents always spoke of my biological parents with respect, with gratitude. And while they didn’t attach any particular religious or spiritual significance to my adoption, the rest of the world certainly did.
Once upon a time there was a visiting minister preaching a real barn burner about how the church was being called to go to great lengths, do great things. Near the end of his sermon he said “this church has really got to walk” and someone in the back yelled out, “Let her walk preacher!”
This really got the minister going. “Yes” he said, “this church has got to get up and run.” And someone else in the back shouted “Let her run, preacher!”
During the pandemic lockdown, one of the ways I cared for my spirit was by listening to podcasts. Of all of the new-to-me-sources of insight, comfort, and wisdom I discovered, the most powerful was “The Confessional” by Nadia Bolz Weber. A Lutheran pastor whose ministry has always been about serving those whom the Church traditionally excluded, Weber called her podcast “a no BS space for people to talk about the moments in our lives we are least proud of.”
