Gridley United Methodist Church

10/27/2025

Bishop Olewine's Monday Morning Musing:

Good Monday morning, Cal-Nev family.

Last week Rev. Philip Richards, a United Methodist pastor serving in New York, offered a reflection centering around the demolition of the East Wing of the White House. One sentence has stirred within me since then. He wrote, “That what makes a nation holy is not the shine of its marble but the mercy of its people.”

Mercy. Our scriptures say a lot about mercy. There are about 300 references to mercy throughout the bible. Countless more if you include synonyms like compassion, grace, forgiveness, kindness, and sympathy. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy." (Mt 5:7) "Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful" (Luke 6:36) "He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy..." (Micah 6:8)

Due to the ongoing government shutdown, this week SNAP benefits will end for over 40 million Americans who rely on that assistance to feed their families. With Food banks across the nation strained by previous cuts to funding and loss of additional funds because of the shutdown, non-profit and faith communities’ pantries are even more essential now than before.

There is almost a 100-year history of our government working together to help provide food assistance for the poor and vulnerable, especially children. The Food Stamp Act was codified in 1964 and after the 1968 CBS documentary, Hunger in America, which shocked many people with the images of starving children across our nation, there were bi-partisan efforts to refine and strengthen this support. Reinstituted under democratic presidents, it was expanded 5-fold while President Nixon, was in office. In a 1969 address to Congress, he said, “That hunger and malnutrition should persist in a land such as ours is embarrassing and intolerable,” expressing his determination “to put an end to hunger in America for all time.”

There have been differences in opinion across the political spectrum, sometimes strong differences, on how such a program should be run. But there has been a common value among many that no child should be hungry in America. Hunger impacts children’s ability to grow, to learn, to thrive. Marian Wright Edelman, the founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, said, “A nation that does not stand for its children does not stand for anything and will not stand tall in the future.”

As the shutdown continues, there are other important issues before Congress that deal with the fundamental quality of life for people in our country, not least of all the future of health care subsidies for families and seniors that make health care possible for them, that make it possible for a number of our congregations to be able to provide health care for their pastors and families.

I am praying for an emergence of bi-partisan support for mercy. I am praying in worship and in private. I am praying through letters and phone calls to elected representatives. I am praying by giving to our churches’ pantries to help fill the gap.

Will you pray with me in those ways, my Cal-Nev family?

Bishop Sandy

10/20/2025

Bishop Sandy's Monday Morning Musing:

Good Monday morning, Cal-Nev family.

On Saturday as I was walking back to my car after the rally at the Capitol, a woman sitting on a small wall with two others, said hello and asked me what church I was from, no doubt the collar and cross I was wearing giving her a clue about what I do. I stopped and shared that I was United Methodist.

The youngest of the three asked if I was pastor at the nearby Methodist church at which she had attended a NA meeting, saying that was the only meeting she every felt fully excepted as a q***r person. I explained I serve as the bishop and didn’t pastor one church but was so glad to know she had found a welcoming and safe space in one of our congregations. The woman who initially engaged me said she didn’t know Methodists were the kind of people who ordained women or accepted women as bishops and then proceeded to ask if I was q***r or an ally or whether Methodists accepted q***r folks.

After offering a very brief overview about women’s ordination, women bishops, our denominations long struggle over LGBTQIA+ inclusion, steps taken at the General Conference to move us towards being a more inclusive church and acknowledging the journey towards being a fully safe and affirming church was one we were still on, and that I did my best to be an ally in that journey, they began to offer me some of their life stories. One shared about rejection by family decades ago, another of being thrown out of the church they were raised in and the youngest, their journey as a transwoman.

I was moved by their courage, sharing with me without rancor or judgement, harm they had experienced and hurt they carried, especially by folks who claimed to be followers of Jesus. Despite the pain in their journey, there was an easy flowing conversation between them about what faith meant to them. I shared that I wish I could tell them they would find safety and embrace in any United Methodist Church they walked into but that wouldn’t be true yet. I did share where in the area they would experience that, though, if they ever were looking for a faith community with which to engage.

As our conversation was ending, I shared that while I couldn’t tell them that churches and Christians were no longer communities or people that could or would do harm to them, I shared that I knew beyond any shadow of doubt that God loved them, deeply, fully, as they are. They were beloved and precious in God’s sight. No matter what some churches say, no matter what people who claim to be Christians say, no matter what is going on in the politics of our day, God loves them. Full stop.

Siblings, United Methodism at its core has sought to be a big tent, or as some of us have been saying, a big table that has room enough for all, which means we make space for differences in theology and experience and biblical understandings, because it is God’s table and not ours. But when our theologies and biblical understandings and experiences harm others, we are called to let God work in and on us. We need a spirit of humility that allows us to examine what we believe and what Jesus would have us do for harm is not what we are called to. We need a spirit of grace that allows us to listen deeply to those we have harmed with our words, our exclusions, our justifications, and our proclamations. And when that harm goes in multiple directions, as it too often does, we need to sit with one another as best as we can, to hear one another, rooted in a deep belief that there isn’t anyone who isn’t deeply loved by God. Our hearts need changed. Our capacity to love as Christ loves needs stretched.

I yearn for the day when I will walk down a street, be stopped and asked what denomination I am, and I can say a United Methodist. And with confidence in my heart, add, we’re a people that know God loves you and we’re trying our best to love one another and the world as God loves us. How about we journey together? Then someone will know not only what I do by what I wear but know who I am, who we are, by how we live. In Christ, this day is possible, if we commit ourselves to walking with the Christ every day when we get up.

Will you journey with me toward this day, my Cal-Nev family?

Bishop Sandy

10/06/2025

Bishop Olewine's Monday Morning Musing:

Good Monday morning, Cal-Nev family.

As you are reading this, I am on my way toward eastern Canada for a week with beloved family and friends, so this is actually a Saturday afternoon musing!

I have been spending a lot of time contemplating what Jesus’ call to love our enemies means. I understand the words and even the reasons for teaching them. Repaying enmity with enmity, evil with evil, only multiplies the harm and destruction. But I often have joked that Jesus must have offered those words in the heat of the day in Palestine and must surely have been dehydrated. Who loves their enemies? Who has the capacity to even try? A nice sentiment but really?

If I am honest, for much of my early life, I don’t think I thought much about this commandment. I shrugged my shoulders, thinking I didn’t have any enemies. And later, as a pastor, when I would venture into a discussion on this, that was often the response from around the table. We don’t have any enemies. Over time I realized that when I brushed over this instruction, as if it didn’t apply to me, I did so generally from a state of privilege. There hasn’t been much on a regular basis that has hindered me. Generally, in the places I have lived, rules and laws and social norms have been made for people like me by people like me. Except for an occasional person who didn’t much like me, enmity seemed far away and of another time.

As my life brought me alongside a lot of people who are different than me and for whom the rules and laws and social norms in the places we have lived have not been made for them, I have come to know that those communities could well understand me as enemy. Even if they did, in every one of those places, the communities chose to love me rather than reject or destroy me. They didn’t hide the truth of their experience or soft-peddled it. They confronted me with the ways their worlds are a constant battle, established often by the systems around them that say they are less than, don’t count or unseen. Love your enemies. But how do you do that when others have determined you are the enemy?

Our Japanese American siblings know that experience too well and internment camps were the result. Now we watch as mostly people of color are rounded up, zip tied (even small children this weekend in Chicago) and hauled away by masked agents to unknown destinations. And our President recently stated publicly and honestly that he hates his enemies. Early last week, he told the gathering of our military leaders that we the people, those who see the world differently than him, are the enemy within and that our military should practice on us.

So, if I am an enemy, what does Jesus commandment mean to me? To us? Well, from those who have been my teachers, I have begun to scratch the surface of what loving enemies might mean. I know that loving enemies doesn’t mean acquiescing, quietly standing by while harm and hatred are spread. I know it doesn’t mean appeasing those in power in hopes things won’t get worse. I know it isn’t ignoring everything hoping it will just go away.

Loving our enemies at the very least means standing firm in loving our neighbors – all of our neighbors – standing up and speaking out that we are beloved community and not foes. It means interrupting and resisting the forces of evil, injustice, and oppression in all the ways they present themselves, just as we vowed in our baptism. Not in hate. Not in derision. Not in ridicule. But, in the grounded assurance of who we are to be and what we are to do as God’s people, seeking to participate in the in-breaking reign of the Most High. It means saying No to all that dehumanizes and separates and Yes to the ways of inclusion, community and love.

I suspect the road ahead is going to call me to keep deepening my understanding of Jesus’ commandment. With God’s help, I’ll try.

What does loving your enemies mean to you, my Cal-Nev family?

Bishop Sandy

10/04/2025

10/03/2025

Join Us This Sunday, for World Communion Sunday

09/29/2025

Pastor Martha's message September 21, 2025

Martha' Sermon Gridley United Methodist Church 9 21 25

09/29/2025

Bishop Olewine's Monday Morning Musing:

Good Monday morning, Cal-Nev family.

I woke with a start at 5 am this morning with Matthew 15:11 on my mind, “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” That passage has been ruminating in me for the last few weeks.

Governor Spencer Cox, following the murder of Charlie Kirk, said in one of his initial responses, “I hear all the time that words are violence. Words are not violence. Violence is violence. and there is one person responsible for what happened here…” When I heard him, I literally said out loud, “No, you’re wrong!”

Yet, he is not alone in that thinking. People across the political spectrum reference and wrestle with the violence of words and often reference the First Amendment when such discuss emerges. What are the limits, the boundaries of freedom and what is freedom of speech for? While I understand the robust discussion about such matters, as a person of faith and as a citizen, I stand firmly on the conviction that words matter. Speech matters.

While words don’t kill directly, they can denigrate, humiliate, and disparage. They can cover-up and obfuscate. They can lie. They can dictate, belittle, deny. They can fuel bigotry and hate. They can urge physical violence and do psychological violence to individuals and groups. They can bully and betray. I grew up with the adage, “Sticks and stone may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” While that was used to teach resiliency, not giving others the power to harm by their words, it simply is not the full truth. Words can hurt. Words can cut so deep that they take the life out of someone. Words can train someone to take the life from some else.

The writer of Ephesians tells us, “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths but only what is good for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption.” (Eph 4:29-30) And Paul tells us that the fruits of the Spirit are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.” (Gal 5:22-23) Is this not the ways we measure what comes out of our mouths?

Words can curse. Words can bless. Words can tear down. Words can build up.

I do not believe freedom in Christ is a call to anarchy or to do whatever makes me feel powerful and unfettered. The freedom in Christ is rooted and grounded in the love of God, a love which is extended to every human and all of creation. If my words and actions are in conflict with that love, then I am not rooted and ground in God. Sometimes I have to take a deep breath and ask God to guard my tongue, to stop me from using my tongue as a weapon. And sometimes I fail and have to ask for forgiveness. Always I pray for help to let my words bless and build up.

What do you think about the power of words, my Cal-Nev family?

Bishop Sandy

09/22/2025

Bishop Olewine's Monday Musings
Good Monday morning, Cal-Nev family.

Today is the final day of the week of the World Council of Churches Week of Prayer for Peace in Palestine and Israel. The scenes of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, families, elderly, children, youth, men and women, fleeing Gaza City in a long, slow, broken trail last week, so deeply reminiscent of similar scenes from the 1940s, made praying both difficult and essential.

This week the Jewish community around the world begins the holiest days of their year, beginning today with the observation of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. T’ruah, the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, shared this prayer as this week begins, a prayer for Gaza and to preserve our humanity:

O God, Spirit of all Humanity

Help us to acknowledge the destruction, trauma and devastation in Gaza,

To express the heartbreak for the tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians who have died — among them so many children,

For their lack of food, shelter, and medical care, For the destruction of people’s homes, For the millions of refugees the war has created,

For the hopelessness and despair.

We pray for a cessation of the violence and the safe return of the remaining hostages.

We pray for our ability to hold in our hearts at the same time the suffering of Israelis and Palestinians.

We pray that we don’t harden our hearts or refuse to see what is happening before our eyes. We pray we preserve our humanity.

We pray for the future of both peoples on this land, for the acknowledgement of both peoples’ right to self-determination and the freedom to live in justice and dignity.

We pray that there will be an awakening and a realization that the only path forward is one of coexistence. Amen.

May all of our prayers for the end to the genocide in Gaza and the violence in the West Bank, for the families of Palestinian prisoners and families of Israeli hostages, for courage from political leaders, combine to bring the in-breaking of peace with justice.

So that every person might sit under their vine and fig tree and no one shall be afraid. (Micah 4:4)

What are your prayers for the world, my Cal-Nev family?

Bishop Sandy

09/15/2025

Bishop Olewine's Monday Morning Musing:

Good Monday morning, Cal-Nev family.

Yesterday afternoon, I was able to be present virtually as people gathered in the celebration of life for a dear friend. Towards the end of the service, singers in the balcony of the church offered a musical tribute called Earth Song, written and composed by Frank Ticheli. The music struck me as hauntingly hopeful. Coupled with simple, yet profound words, it moved me even as I watched online. After the service concluded, I searched for the song, downloaded it and listened to again and again, letting it bathe my soul. Ticheli wrote:

Sing, Be, Live, See...
This dark stormy hour,
The wind, it stirs.
The scorched earth cries out in vain:
O war and power, you blind and blur.
The torn heart cries out in pain.

But music and singing have been my refuge,
And music and singing shall be my light.
A light of song, shining strong:
Alleluia! Alleluia.
Through darkness and pain and strife,
I'll Sing, I'll Be, I'll Live, See…
Peace.

Last week was hard. Many weeks seem hard now. Violence in its myriads of forms is unleashed and destroying lives, communities, ideas, and dreams. Values of dignity, respect, understanding, and inclusion are being crushed. The cruelty - the evil - of racism, homophobia and transphobia is celebrated, clothed in religious rhetoric, Christian nationalism and patriotism.

In such times, finding the things that hold our souls, especially when they feel bruised and crushed, is important. Keeping connected to goodness, compassion, mercy and love is indispensable. Scripture, music, poetry, art, the beauty of creation, the laughter of children, the touch of a loved one – keep us in touch with our humanity, keep us from becoming what we deplore.

Ticheli shared in an interview that he wrote the music first but that it kept calling to him for words, springing out of an intense weariness of war and a wish for peace. He shared, “When I was bullied as a kid, music was my refuge. I often thought about bullies in relation to this piece as well, because that’s where violence starts…. I wrote the text and the vulnerability of the message. I was trying to remind myself that I’m human, I’m breakable, but I can always find a way to heal through music.”

I’ll sing. I’ll be. I’ll live. See… My soul is holding on to that this morning.

What is holding your soul, my Cal-Nev family?

Bishop Sandy

09/08/2025

Bishop Olewine's Monday Morning Musing:

Good Monday morning, Cal-Nev family.

Catching my breath this morning after a long but fulfilling week and looking ahead to 3 more very full weeks, I turned my heart to the concept of Sabbath, of rest and to one of Wendall Berry’s collection of Sabbath poems. These poems have grounded, provoked and inspired me for a significant portion of my life.

Beginning in 1979 and continuing for about 40 years, Berry had an intentional practice of walking on Sunday mornings in the Kentucky countryside he called home. He let the beauty and brokenness of the woods and all that was in it fill him and be his place of rest and worship. He listened and looked and meditated. Then he created his art, his theology, of words.

Today, I was especially touched by a part of Sabbaths 1979, in which he wrote:

The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways that it cannot intend:
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended
By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours.
And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by your will, not ours….

When my calendar gets overfull, not allowing quality time to rest and be present to the One I cannot ever fully comprehend, I can easily get caught up in my agenda, my ideas, my understandings, my assumptions. I run on memory and trust, which can work for a while. But the longer I go between times of slowing down and making space to listen, the more I know I begin to run out of my agenda, assuming I am still in touch with God’s will.

And the notion that in Sabbath, the One I can never fully comprehend, gives me birth, preserves me, and gets to know me moves me to tears in its tenderness and intimacy. Why would I not make time for such a gift? And why do I forget how life-giving that gift is? Oh, Holy One, let me die into that rest.

Are you finding Sabbath moments in your lives, my Cal-Nev family?

Bishop Sandy

09/01/2025

Bishop Olewine's Monday Morning Musing:

Good Monday morning, Cal-Nev family.

As I awoke, I realized today is the official beginning of my second year serving among you. Somedays I am aware of how many of you I have yet to get to know and how much I have yet to learn. Others, I feel as if I have known and loved you all for many years. The latter is in large part due to the graciousness and flexibility; conversations and joint work you have been willing to share with me. I had no trouble beginning this day with prayers of gratitude and thanksgiving. I am so very grateful to God for your many kindnesses and humbled by the call to serve you.

One of my practices at the start of every appointment year is to crack open the Book of Discipline (okay, Metho-nerd alert) to read the role and responsibilities of the particular ministry that new year will encompass, whether as an elder in a local congregation or as a district superintendent, and now an episcopal leader. Doing so helps me do a check-in about what I have been doing and what I have neglected. It becomes a time of reflection, correction, and reorientation.

But, I have to also say that pretty much every year I end up laughing out loud at the list of things we clergy are to be about in our work. In the laughter, sometimes bordering on hysteria, I have found that rather than be overwhelmed by the list and feeling inadequate for the work ahead, I am simply reminded of the truth that no single human can do it all.

And maybe that is actually the point of the list – to remind us that no one can do it all! Taking ourselves a little less seriously and holding on to a spirit of humility is a good way to begin each year of our ministry, remembering that all of us can only live out our calling as disciples of the Christ in partnership with others, clergy and laity alike! While I generally refrain from referencing scriptures concerning battles without a lot of exegesis and context, I am reminded of Exodus 17:11-12, “Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses’s hands grew heavy, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on either side, so his hands were steady until the sun set.” Are we not called to hold each other up for the work that God has called us to?

It is no less true as an episcopal leader. We are to model and lead with a vital and renewing spirit; have an enquiring mind and a commitment to the teaching office; hold a vision for the church, that is discerning, inspiring, strategizing, equipping, implementing, and evaluating the fulfillment of the mission of the church; a prophetic commitment for the transformation of the Church and the world; a passion for the unity of the church; and have gifts for the ministry of administration, providing order and leading in new opportunities for ministry within the annual conference and oversight for the whole church! Whew – and that’s the condensed version.

So, as I pause today to reflect, correct, and reorient for year 2, I pray I won’t take myself too seriously, that I can laugh in humility and lead in such a way that we hold each other up for the Kin-dom work ahead.

In prayer and gratitude for you, my Cal-Nev family, here comes year 2!

Bishop Sandy

08/25/2025

Bishop Olewine's Monday Morning Musing:

Good Monday morning, Cal-Nev family.

Driving to Taylor Memorial UMC on Saturday, I listened to an episode of On Being, a favorite podcast of mine. It was a replay of a 2021 interview that Krista Tippett did with Joanna Macy, who just died in July at age 96, and Anita Barrows in which they explored their shared appreciation of and formation by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, the late 19th and early 20th century writer who was shaped by the drastically changing world in which he lived. Macy and Barrows had then just published a joint book with their new translations of Rilke’s work, done not least of all because they found in his writing powerful words for us in our own tumultuous time.

I was struck by their reflection on Rilke’s invitation to live the questions in his “Letters to a Young Poet.” Tippett shared from letter 4 in which Rilke wrote, “that experience of standing before great personal and civilizational questions, which right now have no answers, I ask you dear sir, to have patience with all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves, like closed rooms, like books written in a foreign language. Don’t try to find the answer now. They cannot be given anyway because you would not be able to live them, for everything is to be lived. Live the questions now. Perhaps you then may gradually, without noticing one day in the future, live into the answers.”

Navigating the uncertain waters when truth and equity and justice and compassion and peace all seem to be turned upside down and inside out; I am impatient for quick fixes. When they don’t happen or seem to work, frustration rises, sometimes to the point of feeling paralyzed to do anything. I find myself dumbfound that we live in a time when a sitting president of the USA shares that slavery wasn’t all that bad, that visas for severely injured children and adults from Gaza who need expert medical care are denied, when anyone with brown skin can be kidnapped off our streets and disappeared. The list is long and disillusionment great.

But Rilke’s invitation to live the questions pulled me back from the edge. It called me back to the place where I know paralysis as privilege and inaction as complicity. I know I don’t have all the answers I need or want, but I also cannot acquiesce. I need to keep asking questions, letting them guide my steps as a disciple and our life together as God’s people in the world.

What are those questions? For me, some of them are: what does it mean to share God’s love in this moment in real ways? How is the church supposed to be Christ’s body broken for the world’s sake? How can we commit to doing no harm, doing good and staying in love with God right now? What does it mean for us to accept the power God gives to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves? How do I live as a neighbor to those around me, especially those most vulnerable?

I know I’ll be stumbling my way through as I seek to live these questions, moving between doubt and assurance, uncertainty and faith, but my hope is that, as Rilke said, one day I may realize I have lived into the answers.

What are the questions you are being called to live into, my Cal-Nev family?

Bishop Sandy