This eight week sermon series explores basic Christian spiritual practices as ways of building up resiliency in times of crisis, chaos, uncertainty, and distress. Centering on the story of Peter walking on water, the series looks at body care, grief, forgiveness, anger, connection, grace, and gratitude.
Week 1: “Walking in the Storm”
Scripture: Matthew 14:22-33
An introductory sermon explores the image of Peter walking on the water, despite the storm. We often focus on the fact that Peter fell, but rarely give him credit for the steps he did manage. Remind your congregation that their faith offers them resources to walk through the storms of life, and that Christ is ready to help them up when (not if) they fall.
Faith is a muscle, one we can exercise and strengthen and enlarge. Jesus didn’t invite Peter to come to him on the water straight out of his fisherman’s boat on the day they met. Jesus walked with Peter on the dry land for a long time first, teaching him Torah, showing him miracles, healing his mother-in-law, explaining God’s kingdom to him. Jesus helped Peter build up his faith muscles until he was able to take a few tentative steps out into the storm with Christ.
Rev. Carol Holbrook Prickett.
Week 2: “Body Care”
Scripture: Psalm 31 + Romans 12:1-2
This psalm viscerally articulates how each part of us–our mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual selves–are interconnected. In times of crisis, it’s easy to let our bodies go untended, and Christianity has a long history of damning the body in favor of some untethered idea of “spirit.” Yet the body is the vessel God created and chose for our spirits, and so it deserves our care. In the snippet from Romans, Paul mentions that we are to present our bodies as a “living sacrifice.” Living sacrifices to God were the best animals a worshipper had to offer–the strongest, sleekest, most beautiful offerings. We are called not to sacrifice our bodies by destroying them, but to build them up, as our “spiritual worship.”
Body care is spiritual care. And I want to be clear: I’m not talking about diets and exercise. I’m not talking about changing your body. I’m talking about caring for the body you have in such a way that you feel safe and whole inside of it.
Rev. Carol Holbrook Prickett
Week 3: “Lament”
Scripture: Psalm 42
This is a classic psalm of lament, rich with the psalmist’s tears and trust. To lament is not just to cry, but to cry out—to direct your sadness, grief, confusion, and pain somewhere other than yourself. In scripture, we are taught to lament to God. Despite much of American Christianity emphasis on happiness and positivity, lament is a faithful act. Every biblical lament ends in a declaration of trust, that God is still good, that God is still present, that God is still the rock upon which we stand, even if we can’t feel it. Even if life isn’t good, God is still good.
Lament does not try to answer the question of why we are hurting. It is not satisfied with pat answers like “it’s all in God’s will” or “it’s for a greater purpose.” Lament does not talk about God. Lament talks to God.
Rev. Carol Holbrook Prickett
Week 4: “Forgiveness”
Scripture: Genesis 18:20-33 + Matthew 18:21-22
The Genesis scripture may not be familiar or comfortable for your congregation. We frequently quote scriptures extolling God’s compassion, mercy, and forgiveness, and rightfully so. But there are also stories in scripture of how hard it is for God to forgive, and the work that goes into God’s compassion. Such scriptures provide relief for us mere humans, who also struggle with the work of forgiving, especially if, in Matthew, we must do it over and over and over again. Forgiving requires an exhausting, complicated combination of mental and emotional and even physical effort. To forgive is to struggle with the limits of our own power, to say that we cannot go back and make things right in the past, but also to reach out and grasp the very heights of God’s power, to say that there may be a way to move forward rightly into the future.
Forgiving is spiritual work. Forgiveness is a form of spiritual rest. Forgiveness looks at the wounded heart and the troubled mind and says enough. Be still. So if we cannot forgive, then that suggests there is still work to be done, in the relationship, in our understanding of the situation, in our own souls. Don’t be afraid of the work, and don’t add guilt that it takes time. Because it simply does. But there is rest at the end.
Rev. Carol Holbrook Prickett
Week 5: “Anger”
Scripture: Psalm 103:6-12 + Ephesians 4:25-29
“Be angry,” Paul says, “but do not sin.” Scripture offers a path for us to engage the spiritual practice of anger without engaging in sinful, destructive patterns. Practicing anger as a spiritual discipline means learning to listen to our anger. Anger is a wonderful tool for clarifying our values. We do not get angry about things we do not care about, although it may seem that way on the surface. There is usually a problem under the problem—something that takes aim directly at our sense of self. The famous formulation for God’s nature–“slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love”–offers an image of holy anger and what it can accomplish. If we have the fortitude to dig deeply into our own anger, we can draw closer to God by learning to align our values with God’s values.
It is possible—very, very, very challenging, but possible—to be lovingly angry. God models that for us—angry at injustice, angry at faithlessness, but always pushing not to punish but to redeem, to transform the situation so that God’s values become ours once again.
Rev. Carol Holbrook Prickett
Week 6: “Connection”
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 12:12-27
1 Corinthians 12 is famous for a reason—Paul’s metaphor of the church community as a body continues to resonate in our communities today. We all have parts of our bodies we’d rather not deal with, yet we can’t cut them off without doing damage to the whole body. Connecting with others means caring about them, listening to them, and being vulnerable with them—allowing people to connect with us the way we are trying to connect with them. It also means seeing and cherishing the differences between us, that allow us to be stronger together.
We were made to be together. In our earliest stories of humanity, God creates Adam, and then immediately sees it’s not good for Adam to be alone. Humans need other humans. But we also see, not long after that, how it’s not always great to be together, either. Adam and Eve turn on each other. Their sons murder each other. It’s messy. Community is hard. Just being together, thrown together into families or office groups or classrooms, isn’t enough to suddenly make us feel loved. We have to engage the spiritual practice of connection.
Rev. Carol Holbrook Prickett
Week 7: “Grace”
Scripture: Exodus 33:12-23 + 1 Peter 4:8-11
Practicing grace means practicing just a little bit of detachment, leaving room for imperfection and difference. In Exodus, God graciously agrees to show Moses who God is–but only partly, so as not to overwhelm Moses. We often use grace and forgiveness as synonyms, but God’s graciousness to us is not merely reactive forgiveness. It is also proactive love. God neither guilts us nor controls us into perfection. God leaves us the space to be who we are, and to make the choices we will make. This is the dangerous grace of God, and it is the same grace we are called to extend to one another.
The spiritual practice of grace, is, to my mind, a lot like the practice of leaving space between vehicles. It means giving people a little space to mess up, to be distracted, to be unpredictable, to be inconvenient, without crashing into them. It means stepping back a little, not trying to control others or react to every little thing they do. It means leaving a little bit of room between you and someone else, so that their imperfections—and yours—don’t damage you both.
Rev. Carol Holbrook Prickett
Week 8: “Gratitude”
Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 5:12-24
Gratitude is rarely a controversial practice, and many Christians hold the 18th verse of this scripture as one of their favorites. Yet to “give thanks in all circumstances” is easier said than done, and a forced gratefulness can do real harm. Practicing gratitude, however, does not exclude us from lament or anger or exhaustion. It is simply a way of witnessing to Christ, taking ourself out of the world’s power, which is constantly trying to convince us to want more and more, and putting us into God’s power, through whom we have and are enough.
When we are allowed to hold onto our grief, or anger, or pain, with one hand, but also invited to grab hold of gratitude with the other, that’s when transformation can happen. When we are free to acknowledge all that is wrong in the world—and there is so, so much wrong in this world—yet also empowered to claim all that is good and beautiful and just—that’s when we gain strength to walk through the storms.
Rev. Carol Holbrook Prickett
Ministry Resources
Walking in the Storm Liturgy
Walking in the Storm Graphics (editable Canva templates)
- Facebook Post
- Facebook Cover Photo
- Weekly Quotes for Social Media (you are welcome to use my quotes or edit with sermon quotes of your own!)
Deep Well Worship 