The reflection by Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman presented on Sunday, May 3, 2026.

“We don’t know how our communities and national culture will be changed, but, we know, we do know, the way we are meant to stay on, the way of foot washing, the way of love. When we live in this way, loving one another, and continually expanding who we include as part of one another, we are connected to our longed for homes and past. We are connected to the place of abiding within the heart of God, both now, immediately, and in the life after this life. We are connected to one another in the one web of life, in the community of people seeking the way together.”

The reflection by Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman presented on Sunday, April 12, 2026.

“This Easter season, I'm praying that we, as individuals and as a church, will be as brave and generous as Jesus, telling the truth about the wounds we have received, and the wounds we have caused. Telling the story of the scars we bear and the scars for which we bear responsibility. At this moment, when the wider church, the body of Christ on earth, seems to be racked by the aggressive cancer of nationalism, we are called to love out loud with a fierce and tender love that leads to life; to see those scars, that illness for what it is, and to keep loving and creating. May we, like Thomas, be brave enough to ask all our questions. May we have faith in our questioning and in our believing.”

The reflection by Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman presented on Sunday, April 5, 2026.

“What will happen, though, when a ragtag bunch of resurrection believers offer testimony in response to state sanctioned death? What can happen when the dead get a chance to speak from beyond the veil, when a formerly dead man commissions his followers to speak on his behalf? Jesus is commissioning us to speak truth, to speak life on his behalf.”

The reflection by Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman presented on Sunday, March 29, 2026.

“This year, the price of empire, and our fear of it, may threaten to steal our alleluias from us. But the story of the whole week invites us to remain and not to give up our hosanna; to begin with hosanna, save us now. It invites us to cry out to God, to cry out for and with one another, to see the spirit in one another, to keep our voices fresh. To cry out in hope, to look clear eyed at the pain in the world, and to return again to hope, in the story of love that is stronger than death; stronger than the power of empire. Love that is profound enough to create and recreate and keep recreating the world.”

The reflection by Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman presented on March 22, 2026.

“As Ezekiel calls us to speak prophetically in places of exile and loss, Jesus calls us to find what is trapped in tombs, and wound in death cloths, and unbind them, and set them free…

“Resurrection is a group project, and it is our calling. Resurrection in this life, and into the next, is the promise of the gospel. So I pray that we may find the courage and the clarity to claim the promise of life and freedom; the courage and clarity to work together, to extend the promise; to speak, and vote, and act for the unbinding of each and every one of God’s children.”

The reflection by Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman presented on March 15, 2026.

Like that woman that the text in most of the world leaves unnamed, but some call the Illumined One. like her, we bring our own histories. The losses we've endured, the joys and satisfaction and meaning we have found in life. We bring that when we come to Jesus. We bring our questions, our honesty, our willingness to accept the gift that is offered…

Like Moses, we bring whatever gifts we have been given and our trust in God. Even if we begin to believe the voices all around us that are claiming that God has forsaken us… Like Moses, even then, we can act for the relief and nourishment of others. Acting in trust for the sake of life and healing, releasing the infinite grace that is already present…

The reflection by Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman presented on March 1, 2026.

The gift of the Spirit is a new life. It is a new mind and a new heart, unguarded and open to God's love, unguarded, and willing to learn from other disciples of God, other followers of God, in this path, and every path. We are called not to be confined by what has been, but to be free, free to see what is actually before us, and also free to have imagination for what God may yet be doing.

The reflection by Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman presented on Sunday, February 22, 2026.

God gives us holy power to become God's children, to become our true selves. God gives us the paradoxical power of being both vulnerable and authentic; the power to bless, and the power to speak truth in a lying world.

May this Lent work in all of us powerfully to bring us peace and to give us clarity, wisdom, and centeredness to be peacemakers.

The reflection by Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman presented on Sunday, January 25, 2026.

God calls us to walk into the future without knowing exactly where we are headed, to let go of old securities and certainties, and trust the God who promises to be with us wherever we go. The God who sent Jesus to invite us into wholeness and blessedness will empower us to take that wholeness and blessedness into the world, as witnesses to the light. We are sent to love, relentlessly, and to speak the whole truth, no matter how much the powerful pretend that what we see is not real.

The reflection by Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman presented on Sunday, January 18, 2026.

Witnesses watch events unfold, even when it breaks their hearts, even when they are tempted to look away. And witnessing is more than being a bystander or an onlooker. To witness is to do something active. It means bearing testimony. It means remembering what you saw, perhaps filming what you saw, perhaps writing it down. It means providing evidence of the truth of a thing.

No matter how shocking, or brutal, or inhumane, witnesses tell the story afterward…

In this moment, in our national story, we are being called to see the truth of what is going on, the whole truth. Because the place of oppression and suffering is the very place to meet the risen Christ. The place of oppression and suffering is the very place to participate in and proclaim the Empire of Love.

The reflection by Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman presented on Sunday, January 11, 2026.

We need a pause to remember our baptismal promises, whether we made them for ourselves or had them made for our infant selves and reaffirmed and claimed them as our own when we became adults: the promise to renounce the power of evil and seek the freedom of Christ; the promise, by the Grace of God, to be Christ’s disciple; to follow the way of Jesus; to resist oppression and evil; to show love and justice. We pause to remember those promises.

The reflection by Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman presented on Sunday, January 4, 2026.

In the face of fear, let us stick together. Let us defy empire, not with swords, but with wisdom, truth telling, courage and solidarity. Let us kneel in awe, not before the powerful, not before any political party, or high-tech billionaire, or entrenched system whose dominance seems inevitable. Instead, let us bow before the powerless Christ, whose birth marks the beginnings of God’s peace campaign. Let us come into silence and allow the infinite to greet us there us in a place beyond words.

The reflection by Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman presented on Sunday, December 21, 2025.

Advent invites us not simply to “be not afraid”, but to act with love in the midst of fear, despite anger or shame, despite that sense that we have been lied about in our country. We have been lied to, we have a sense of betrayal about what our country is doing and why. And despite that, through that, just like Joseph in his sense of betrayal and confusion and fear, we are called to act with love, to show up with courage, to reach out and say “take my hand”.

The reflection by Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman presented on Sunday, December 14, 2025.

Too often in the version of Christianity that is dominant in our culture, courage is defined through heroic masculinity. Courage is understood to be loud, and bold and certain. We’ve all heard those voices in the public square, but Mary (Luke 1: 26-56) and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1: 4-10) model for us a different courage. The courage to admit that they are perplexed. The courage to ask questions. The courage to hesitate and need more time. And the courage to take just one uncertain step forward. And then another. And then another. And they do not walk alone.

The reflection by Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman presented on Sunday, December 7, 2025.

If Jesus is really the one who brings God’s rule to fruition, why is our world still marked by exploitation, injustice, polarization and violence? Why are we still waiting 2000 Advent Seasons later? How long must we wait? Will Jesus really come to redeem those who suffer, or should we look for another? The Empire is still intact, Herod still reigns.

The reflection by Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman presented on Sunday, November 30, 2025.

We can approach our fear with compassion. We can have compassion for the other human beings caught up in inhumane systems. We can have compassion for the authors of cruelty who have turned so far away from their own humanity that cruelty seems good to them. We can be tender with our own fearful hearts. We can have compassion for our own fear. And we can claim our own courage.

The reflection by Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman presented on November 23, 2025.

The voice of power and the voice of prophecy run straight through church history. They also run straight through our biblical texts. Over and over again the tradition reminds us that it is the prophetic voice that brings us close to God, not the voice of power; the voice that speaks from the margins, not from the halls of power.

The reflection by Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman presented on Sunday, November 16, 2025.

Endurance is a tricky word. We think of it as solitary and internal, something we can will ourselves or force ourselves to do. But endurance is not born just of our own strength. We are not called on to clench our jaws and ball up our fists, and will ourselves through on our own power, day after day. Endurance is born out of trust in God to buoy us and enable us; enable us to keep going, to rest and move forward. This goes against all our cultural scripts about what strength is, and what courage is, and what endurance means.

The reflection by Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman presented on Sunday, November 9, 2025.

Living as we are now in times that converge on apocalyptic, when everything seems to be deteriorating all around us, what do we do with this? Jesus offers us a beautiful path through such anxiety: God is the god of the living, so live, give thanks, trust the truth, persevere in love.

The reflection by Rev. Jeanne Randall-Bodman presented on Sunday, November 2, 2025.

This small, delightful story (Exodus 1:15 - 21) is a message to us to remember that we too are called to resist evil. With whatever skills and knowledge we possess, wherever life places us, we are called to choose life with humility, creativity and courage.

I’m thinking today of the creativity that we are witnessing every day at the ICE building here in Portland, and I have to say that I have never been prouder to call myself an Oregonian than since the Frogs of Resistance starting dancing their whimsical and subversive dance in the streets. They are dancing to say no. Portland is not a war zone, it is not on fire, and it has not disappeared. They are dancing to say no to the authoritarian power-grab of ICE, to make a mockery of the lies that are being told — creatively, whimsically, with persistence daily they are dancing their resistance.