Read or download the text from past sermons. The most recent sermon is typically available online by 3 PM each Monday.
Sermons
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Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
February 2, 2025
Based on Psalm 71:1-6. The Psalmist Finds Refuge in God
Saturday, February 1, 2025. We had a fire today. People worry so much about fire.
So begins the journal entry of 15 year old Lauren Olamina in Parable of the Sower, a 1993 speculative fiction novel by Octavia Butler.
As she wrote this book thirty years ago, Octavia Butler imagined what might happen in the mid 2020s if we did not address the core challenges of that time.
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Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
January 26, 2025
Based on Luke 4:14-30. Jesus Preaches in His Own Hometown
Every so often in the cycle of Sundays comes along a passage from the Revised Common Lectionary that matches the present moment more perfectly than any preacher could manufacture on their own.
This is one such Sunday.
Jesus, preaching good news in his own hometown, with specific examples from the Scriptures of what that good news looks like.
It is hard to hear.
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Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
January 19, 2024
Based on Isaiah 62:1-2. Committing to the Vision of Beloved Community.
One of five questions we ask of baptismal candidates - or those making promises for children - is this:
Trusting in the gracious mercy of God, do you turn from the ways of sin and renounce evil and its power in the world?
And then we are invited to respond: I do. Or even more emphatically: I renounce them!
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Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
January 12, 2024
Based on Genesis 1:1-2 and Luke 3:21-22. Water, Spirit, Grace, Being
This is the font of identity: where we remember who we really are and to whom we really belong.
This is the font of identity, where we remember the crashing waters of creation and the hovering, swooping, wind-swept Spirit brooding over them like a mother hen. That same Water and Spirit continues calling us, collectively, to new creation over and over and over again.
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Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
December 29, 2024
Based on Colossians 3:12-17. Clothing ourselves with hope.
Sometimes, all it takes is a wardrobe change to bring out a better side of life.
Sweatpants and hoodies can bring comfort for a while, especially in the wake of the holiday hubbub, but one day, perhaps even today, the skirt comes back out, the lipstick comes back on, and you’re a whole new you, ready again to face the world with courage and with hope.
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Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
December 24, 2024
Hope has been hard to hold on to for many of us this holiday season, as we age and as we agonize, as the loss of ones we love (just this year or multiple decades ago) feels frightfully unbearable, as we close out yet another hottest year on record, as the genocide in Gaza enters its second year funded by our tax dollars and The Little Town of Bethlehem has canceled Christmas yet again.
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Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
December 22, 2024
Based on Luke 1:46b-55, Mary Sings Out Her Soul
When the women of the Bible start to sing, it turns out, the powers that be in this world better watch out!
When the prophet Miriam starts to sing in the Book of Exodus, seas part, chariots fail, and those who were formerly enslaved dance on foot through the mud and the muck to a spiritual and social freedom on the other side.
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Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
December 15, 2024
Based on Isaiah 12:2-4. With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.
Would you believe me if I told you that, in spite of 2024 being the hottest year on record and the near certainty that climate legislation is going nowhere anytime soon and in fact may even be reversed, the chief climate scientist for the Nature Conservancy has hope?!
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Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
December 8, 2024
Based on Philippians 1:3-11. Paul Writes From Prison
The story I am about to tell you is true; names and details have been changed to protect the vulnerable.
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Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
November 10, 2024
Based on Matthew 14:13-16. Jesus Responds to Tyrannical Power
What do we do when tyrannical power appears to win the day? That is the question before us this morning.
Do we run for cover? Do we cling to a savior? Do we blame the powers that be for being the powers that be? Or do we roll up our sleeves and get to work, healing the sick, repairing the harm, feeding the hungry, expanding the movement for justice and peace through nonviolent radical love?
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Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
November 3, 2024
Based on Genesis 1:1-3. God says, “Let There Be!” And There IS!
Being, we think, or at least I think, is serenity. Stillness. Oneness with all that is. Peace in the Eternal Now, as Eckhart Tolle might say.
So what do we do when the now is chaotic? Turbulent? Anything but peace?
Author Anna Blaedel, who writes on the theopoetic intersections of spiritual, academic, and activist engagement, says simply this week what we know in our bones to be true:
Nothing is fine.
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Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
November 3, 2024
Based on Genesis 1:1-3. God says, “Let There Be!” And There IS!
Being, we think, or at least I think, is serenity. Stillness. Oneness with all that is. Peace in the Eternal Now, as Eckhart Tolle might say.
So what do we do when the now is chaotic? Turbulent? Anything but peace?
Author Anna Blaedel, who writes on the theopoetic intersections of spiritual, academic, and activist engagement, says simply this week what we know in our bones to be true:
Nothing is fine.
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Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
October 20, 2024
Based on Matthew 5:43-44. Jesus Tells Us to Love Our Enemies
It was not until I was in my early twenties that I truly knew what it meant to have an enemy.
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Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
October 13, 2024
Based on Philippians 4:8-9. Paul Tells Us To Be Good People
The heart of the message from Paul’s Letter to the Philippians today might be summed up in highly successful 1988 advertising campaign from Nike: Just Do It!
Our faith bids us tell the truth; so just do it. Our faith bids us act with honor, so just do it. Our faith bids us to act modestly, to live in gratitude, to act commendably: so just do it.
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Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
October 6, 2024
Based on Matthew 9:9-12. Jesus and Matthew Party with the Misfits.
In the recovery community, I have learned, one of many slogans that keep the addict from relapse is this: we are not bad people trying to be good; we are sick people trying to get well.
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Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquiest
September 29, 2024
Based on John 4:1-15. Jesus and a Woman Meet at a Well.
When I was interviewing to become your Pastor here at SPC, a member of the Pastor Nominating Committee offered a seemingly throw-away line that has stuck with me ever since:
People come to Shepherdstown, this person said, when they are ready to be healed.
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Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
September 15, 2024
Based on Leviticus 19:34 and “I Find the Earring That Broke Loose from My Ear the Night a White Woman Told Me the World Would Save Her” by Ashley M. Jones
Last week I asked the Session to describe, in their personal experience, what it feels like to be included. Their responses were visceral.
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Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
Septermber 8, 2024
Based on Genesis 2:18. God sees the need for human community.
It was just another day at the ballpark in Hagerstown when peals of joy leapt from the throat of young Abigail Barnett, beloved child of SPC.
Look Mom! she said. All my church friends are here!
And we were.
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Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
September 1, 2024
Based on Song of Solomon 2:8-13
Way back in June, I polled the folks who gather for Bible at the Bar on what should be the next topic of discussion. What about marriage? someone offered.
Others cringed.
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Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
August 25, 2024
Based on John 6:63 and “Ode to Bread” by Pablo Neruda
Friends, it has been a month!
I had no idea when we began this sojourn through the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, and its discourse on Jesus as The Bread of Life, that we would land where we have landed from one week to the next.
As I shared with one of you mid-week, it seems as if the sermons this month have been preaching me, rather than the other way around.