Central United Methodist Church (Arlington, Virginia) Sermon Podcast

Befriending Death
Scripture: Romans 8:31–39 (CEB)
Preacher: Rev. Cathy Abbott
How might facing our own mortality help us live more fully?
In this message, Rev. Cathy Abbott reflects on what it means to befriend death—not by giving up on life, but by learning to approach our finiteness with greater trust in God, deeper dependence on others, and a renewed sense of wonder at the world around us.
Drawing on her experience of watching her father grow older and decline in health, Pastor Cathy shares her own struggle with mortality and the grief that accompanied his death. Even as a person of faith who believes in the resurrection, she found herself wrestling with fear, sadness, and the reality that death would eventually come for her, too. Her experience raises an important question: How do we face our own mortality as people who trust in God?
Our culture often keeps death at a distance. We may avoid talking about it, treat aging as something to resist at all costs, or believe that acknowledging death means giving up hope. But Pastor Cathy invites us to consider another possibility: that learning to befriend death can free us from some of our fear and help us live more intentionally in the time we have.
Drawing on the spiritual writing of Henri Nouwen, she explores the idea that befriending death is part of our spiritual formation. Rather than viewing death only as an enemy to fight, we can begin to see it as a homecoming—a return to the God who has never stopped loving us. Romans 8 offers a powerful assurance that neither death nor life, nor anything else in all creation, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
What might it look like to live with that kind of trust?
Pastor Cathy shares a story about a dying piano teacher whose hospice nurse asked her a simple question: “What does a good day look like?” At first, the answer was something as ordinary as being able to go to the bathroom independently. Eventually, the teacher expressed a desire to give piano lessons one last time. With the help of her hospice team, she did just that, and her students later gathered to give her a recital. Even near the end of her life, she found a way to share her gifts and receive the love of those around her.
This story reminds us that a good day does not have to look the way it once did. Even as our abilities change, there can still be purpose, connection, and joy. Befriending death invites us to ask what matters most now, what we can learn through difficult experiences, and how we might continue growing in love.
Pastor Cathy also explores Henri Nouwen’s suggestion that facing our mortality calls us to become like children again, acknowledging our dependence on God and on one another. In a culture that prizes independence, productivity, and control, allowing ourselves to receive care can be difficult. Yet we were never meant to navigate life alone. Learning to loosen our grip and lean into the love of others can become an act of faith.
Finally, drawing on the poetry of Mary Oliver and the example of Jane Goodall, Pastor Cathy invites us to approach life with curiosity and amazement. Mary Oliver imagined reaching the end of her life knowing she had been “married to amazement”—fully awake to the world rather than merely passing through it. Befriending death can help us appreciate the beauty, relationships, and ordinary gifts we might otherwise take for granted.
The invitation is not to stop grieving, ignore the realities of aging, or pretend that death is easy. It is to trust that God's love holds us through every season of life. As we become more at peace with our finiteness, we may discover a greater capacity to live each day with courage, wonder, and love.
Reflection Questions:
• What does a good day look like?
• Henri Nouwen suggests that befriending death involves becoming like a child again, leaning into dependence on God and on others. Is there a place in your life right now where you are resisting that kind of dependence? What might it look like to loosen your grip and lean in?
• Mary Oliver wrote that she wanted to live like someone “married to amazement,” fully awake to the world around her. What is something in your own life that you want to pay more attention to or not take for granted? What would it look like to live that way this week?
Support the show

You Are My Friends
Series: Love One Another
Scripture: John 15:12–17 (CEB)
Preacher: Rev. Sarah Harrison-McQueen
What does it mean for Jesus to call us friends?
As the Love One Another series comes to a close, Pastor Sarah reflects on Jesus’ words in John 15: “I no longer call you servants… I call you friends.” Jesus is gathered around a table with the people closest to him, knowing that difficult days are ahead. His final words to them are not simply instructions about what to do, but an invitation into a relationship grounded in love, friendship, and mutual care.
Throughout this series, the table has been an important image. We have seen Jesus gather with his friends, wash their feet, invite them to abide in him, and teach them to love one another. Now, on World Communion Sunday, that table becomes an image of the heavenly feast—a place where people from around the world gather, receive God's love, and remember that they belong.
Pastor Sarah explores the significance of Jesus calling his disciples friends. A servant follows instructions, but a friend is someone who is welcomed into the fullness of another person's life. Friendship changes the relationship. It recognizes equal dignity and worth, and it creates space for honesty, vulnerability, and mutual care.
Jesus does not call his disciples friends because they have earned it through perfect behavior, right beliefs, or impressive spiritual credentials. He chooses them. He invites them. He tells them there is a seat at the table for them.
That invitation extends to us as well.
Jesus says, “You did not choose me but I chose you.” We are loved first by God, and that love becomes the foundation for how we love others. We welcome others because God has first welcomed us. We make room at the table because God has already made room for us.
But receiving love can be surprisingly difficult. Pastor Sarah reflects on Peter's resistance to having Jesus wash his feet and the ways we may be much more comfortable serving others than allowing ourselves to be served. Yet friendship requires reciprocity. We need one another not only to survive, but to thrive. To accept love is not a passive act; it transforms our capacity to love others.
Pastor Sarah draws on the writing of Miroslav Volf to explore the practice of embrace: we become more capable of opening our arms to others when we understand that we ourselves have first been embraced by God. The love and welcome we extend to others flows from the love and welcome we have received.
On World Communion Sunday, Christians around the globe gather around tables of all kinds—sharing bread, remembering God's love, and living into Jesus' command to love one another. The heavenly feast is not simply something we hope to experience someday. Every time we gather, share, welcome, and love, we catch a glimpse of it.
The sermon closes with the beautiful image of a table that is wide, a welcome that is wide, and a community that becomes bread for a hungry world. We are blessed so that we can become a blessing. We receive the feast so that we can go out and set the table for others.
Jesus calls us friends, and then sends us out to love one another.
Reflection Questions:
• What do you value in friendships? How is this central to how we love one another?
• We rely on each other (“reciprocity”) to survive and to thrive. To accept love makes us better at loving others. Is this hard or easy for you?
Support the show

Abide
Series: Love One Another
Scripture: John 15:1–11 (CEB)
Preacher: Rev. Sarah Harrison-McQueen
What is the difference between simply passing through a place, a relationship, or even our faith, and truly settling in and abiding?
In this message, Pastor Sarah reflects on the difference between being a tourist and becoming rooted in a place. Drawing from her own experience spending time in Hawaii, she describes how staying long enough to return to the same cafés, recognize familiar faces, and settle into a different rhythm created a sense of belonging she never experienced on a short vacation. That experience becomes a window into Jesus’ invitation in John 15: “Remain in me, and I will remain in you.”
Jesus uses the image of a vine and its branches to describe what it means to stay connected to the source of life. A branch does not manufacture its own life; it receives nourishment from the vine. In the same way, Jesus invites us not simply to believe in him, but to abide—to remain, settle in, and become deeply rooted in the love of God.
Jesus gives this teaching to his disciples knowing that their world is about to fall apart. He knows they will face fear, grief, confusion, and uncertainty. His invitation is to remain connected even then, especially then. When life becomes frightening or overwhelming, we can be tempted to scatter, isolate, or disconnect. Jesus instead says: Come back to the vine. Stay connected to the source of life.
But abiding also involves pruning. Jesus speaks about branches being trimmed so that they can bear more fruit. Pastor Sarah explores pruning not as punishment, but as care—the loving work of making room for what produces love and joy. Sometimes what needs to be pruned is obvious: habits that isolate us, resentment, fear, or busyness. Other times it is more subtle, such as being physically present while our hearts and minds are somewhere else.
The passage also reminds us that our connection to Christ cannot be separated from our connection to one another. Just as branches are connected to the same vine, we are woven together as the body of Christ. Healthy community is a place where we both serve and are served, give and receive, and experience the nourishment that comes through genuine relationships.
Jesus says that abiding in him produces fruit, and Pastor Sarah identifies that fruit as love: love that crosses the road, sits at the table with unlikely guests, serves others, and flows into the neighborhood and the world.
The invitation is not to try harder or do more. It is to abide. To become more fully present—with God, with one another, and with the people and places where we have been planted.
Reflection Questions:
• How is your connection to Jesus as the “Source” of life also like your connection to others as a source of life and love and flourishing and joy?
• Think about a time when you truly settled into a place, a relationship, or a spiritual practice rather than just passing through it. What was different about that experience, and what did it produce in you?
• Jesus says that pruning is part of bearing fruit. What is something in your life right now that may need to be pruned so that you can stay more deeply connected to God and to the people around you?
Support the show

Show Us
Series: Love One Another
Scripture: John 14:8–14 (CEB)
Preacher: Brian Lamb
What do we do when we don't understand what is happening around us?
In the second message of our Love One Another worship series, guest preacher Brian Lamb continues exploring Jesus' final teachings to his disciples in the Gospel of John. Following last week's story of Jesus washing the disciples' feet, we return to what Jesus is teaching his friends during his final hours before the crucifixion.
Jesus tells his disciples, “Trust in God. Trust also in me.” But Philip is still searching for something he can understand. He asks Jesus to show them the Father, and Jesus responds by reminding him that the disciples have already been seeing God through everything Jesus has said and done.
Philip's question is one many of us can recognize. There are moments when life does not make sense, when circumstances leave us confused or grieving, and when we find ourselves asking, “How could this be happening?”
Brian reflects on the disciples' experience of witnessing Jesus' ministry. They had seen healing, miracles, compassion, and acts of love throughout Jesus' ministry, yet they still struggled to understand what they were seeing. Their doubts remind us that uncertainty and faith can exist together.
But Jesus offers something more than an explanation. He shows his disciples what it means to embody God's love in the world.
Brian explores the connection between trust, faith, and action. Faith is not simply something we possess as an idea or belief. It is something we practice. To trust Jesus means to follow the way he has shown us—to serve, to care, to love, and to make God's love visible through our lives.
The question becomes not simply, “Do I believe?” but “Am I doing faith?”
Brian shares his own story of discerning a call to ordained ministry and the moment when he asked God for one more sign. Through that experience, he reflects on what it means to trust God's direction even when we cannot see the entire path ahead.
That call to trust becomes a call to action. Jesus says, “I am the way,” and invites his disciples to follow the way he has laid out before them.
As we live in a world that can feel chaotic, confusing, and overwhelming, the sermon asks whether loving action can become an antidote to simply stewing over everything we cannot understand. Instead of withdrawing from the chaos or waiting until we have all the answers, what might it mean to trust God's goodness and respond by embodying the love of Jesus right where we are?
Brian also reflects on the ways churches can practice this kind of faith through their communities and ministries. When we care for people, feed young people, offer hospitality, and invest in our neighbors, we may not know exactly what the results will be. But we can trust that the seeds we plant in love may bear fruit in ways we cannot yet see.
Faith, in this sense, is something we do.
Reflection Questions:
• When it is hard to “understand” what is going on around us, can we find a way to move into loving action as an antidote to “stewing” about all of it?
• What is your relationship to “trusting” the goodness of God, and our own capacity to love one another?
Support the show

Famous Last Words
Series: Love One Another
Scripture: John 13:1–17; 34–35 (CEB)
Preacher: Pastor Sarah Harrison-McQueen
What would you want people to remember if you knew you were speaking to them for the last time?
In the first message of our Love One Another worship series, we turn to John 13 and the final hours Jesus spent with his disciples. Jesus knew his time with them was short, and he wanted them to remember what mattered most. But before he gave them his famous command to love one another, he showed them what that love looks like.
The sermon begins with the Netflix series Famous Last Words, in which well-known people are interviewed and the conversations are only released after they have died. Knowing that these may be their final words to the world, they have the opportunity to consider carefully what they want people to remember.
Jesus' final words to his disciples carry a similar weight.
Gathered around the table on the night before his crucifixion, Jesus knew what was coming. He knew Judas would betray him. He knew Peter would deny him. And yet Jesus got up from the table, wrapped a towel around his waist, and washed the feet of every one of his disciples.
Peter resisted. He could not understand why his teacher and Lord would kneel before him and perform the work of the lowliest servant. But Jesus invites Peter to receive this act of love rather than reject it.
This moment reminds us that discipleship is not only about serving others. It is also about learning to receive love, grace, help, and care. We receive God's love, we give that love away, and then we receive again. To serve and to be served are both part of following Jesus.
Jesus then tells his disciples to do what he has done. His example looks something like what we might call servant leadership, but Jesus goes beyond leadership as a strategy. He washes the feet of people who will fail him. His love is not dependent on whether someone has earned it, agrees with him, or will respond faithfully.
Jesus shows us servant love as a way of life.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus repeatedly crossed boundaries and made room at the table for people others considered unacceptable, unclean, unwelcome, or simply inconvenient. He ate with tax collectors, spoke with Samaritans, and welcomed people who made the religiously righteous uncomfortable.
This is the kind of neighboring Jesus calls his disciples to practice.
Henri Nouwen wrote that we become neighbors when we are willing to cross the road for one another. The question is not simply who belongs in our circle, but whether we are willing to notice who is on the other side of the road. What would it look like to learn names, notice needs, show up consistently, and become a trusted presence in our neighborhoods and communities?
Jesus' command to love one another is not about having perfect theology, building beautiful institutions, or simply knowing the right things. “Love each other just as I have loved you.”
And Jesus doesn't just tell us what love looks like. He shows us.
His famous last words were an invitation to a new way of living: to receive love and give it away, to cross the road, to kneel down and serve, and to love our neighbors—even when they are not the people we would have chosen.
At the end of the sermon, we are left with a simple image:
The towel is on the table.
We know what love looks like.
What will we do in response?
Reflection Questions:
• Peter resisted letting Jesus serve him. Are there moments in your own life when you find it difficult to receive love, help, or care from others? What gets in the way?
• Jesus washed the feet of people he knew would betray and deny him. Is there someone in your life, or in our current public life, whom you find it difficult to extend love and grace to? What would it look like to pick up the towel for that person?
• Henri Nouwen said we become neighbors when we are willing to cross the road. What road in your own neighborhood, workplace, or community is calling you to cross it? What has kept you on your side so far?
• Jesus said, “Since you know these things, you will be happy if you do them.” There is often a gap between knowing what love requires and actually doing it. What is one concrete act of neighboring you could take this week to begin closing that gap?
Support the show