In the wake of the killing of Renée Good — a mother, spouse, and poet shot by federal agents in south Minneapolis on January 7 — this sermon reflects on what happened when a scheduled ICE-response training went forward anyway at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church that same evening. Amid leftover Christmas decorations and candlelight lit in Renée's memory, the pastor finds a living image of the Gospel of John's opening declaration: that darkness has not overcome the light.
Drawing on the Wesleyan understanding of justification and sanctification, the sermon explores the "paradigm-shifting moments" that reorder a life or a culture — from personal turning points to collective ones like 9/11, COVID, or October 7 — and asks what it means for the coming of Christ to be the ultimate such shift. Turning to John's prologue and David Bentley Hart's reflections on its translation, the sermon frames Christ as the Logos who displaces the "gospel of empire" with a gospel of hope, care, and interconnected creation.
Set against this year's Season of Creation theme of salt, soil, and seawater, the message closes with a call to hold onto that light in a season marked by real darkness — trusting, as every empire eventually learns, that its claim to inevitability is a lie, while the loving presence of God is not.
