Category: Gender
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Birthing Josie and Myself (An Account)
“We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. But, once recognized, those which do not enhance our future lose their power and can be altered.” – Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic” When I was a kid, my mom told me I’d never survive childbirth because I wasn’t strong like…
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God First (A Sermon on Judges 5:1-13)
Our relationship with God is supposed to shape who we are, and so that the call and the cry at the end of Judges, I’d argue, is best understood not as an apology for a monarchy, for a king here on earth to save us (even if that’s what the editors intended and what some…
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Grace Actually Restores (A Sermon on Ruth 2:8-13, 17-23)
A sermon given at Colonial Church on Mother’s Day: May 10, 2020. Listen to the sermon below or watch the whole service on YouTube. 8 Then Boaz said to Ruth, “Now listen, my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women. 9 Keep your eyes on…
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Grace Actually Makes Us Bold (A Sermon on Ruth 1:1-14 & 18-22)
A sermon given at Colonial Church on May 3, 2020. Listen to the sermon below or watch the whole service on YouTube. 1 In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to live in the country of Moab, he and his…
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A Christian Feminist Ethicist & Pastor on Sex and the Patriarchy
I was recently contacted by a journalist who was writing a piece about sexuality in the context of religion, and she reached out to me in particular as I identify as a feminist and a pastor. She asked me to respond to questions listed in italics below. In writing my response, I realized how much I’ve been…
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Love Story: Abby & Isaac’s Garden + T-Swift Wedding Meditation
*Note: My cousin Abby LOVES Taylor Swift. A few months ago, there was a viral tweet which invited people to list their top ten Taylor Swift songs. Since Abby isn’t on Twitter, I texted her to ask her top ten T-Swift songs and she responded with the following (of course, she didn’t exactly follow the…
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On Being a Bad Neighbor (A Sermon on Genesis 16)
A sermon given at Colonial Church on November 24, 2019. 16 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, bore him no children. She had an Egyptian slave-girl whose name was Hagar, 2 and Sarai said to Abram, “You see that the Lord has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave-girl; it may be that I…
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A Litany for Father’s Day
To you who have nurtured us, who have lived so that we might flourish and find life. To you who have cared for our becoming, who have given of yourself to make our futures possible. To you, our fathers, who co-labored us into being. To you, our fathers, who adopted us as your own. To…
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To love (eros) One’s Self
An opening invocation I gave at the “Love On” Event on November 11, 2018 “LOVE ON,” dreamed into being by Kelsey Kreider Starrs and friends, was a space to experience the healing presence of love in a variety of ways. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion…
Sara Wilhelm Garbers (she/they), M.Div., Ph.D. 