Posted on March 14, 2025 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.
“Every Day Is Saturday!”
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Epiphany: Light’s Darkness

Posted on December 30, 2024 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

In describing your life, I can save you a lot of time. Life is summarized with two “S” words: surprises and setbacks. Stand for the Creed? There you have it.

Thank you for listening. Now for today’s boring sermon.

For non-believers (once called pagans but that’s not politically correct anymore although it still applies), it is winter’s slowing lightening to spring and all those budding stuff emerging from the ground, followed by the richness of spring’s hopes and summer’s heat and its frolicking. (I don’t know who frolics anymore, but it sounds like fun.) Ummmm. Easy, simple, convenient, and obviously and completely wrong.

For us, not-so-bright Christians? (Get it? “Bright.”) Where do we find the light? Where do we find light? We find light in darkness. In the darkness of darkness, we see, yes, light. We see light when we, well, when light is needed. This is what the Epiphany is all about.

When said, “I had an epiphany,” that’s just an idea. That’s from you. An Epiphany is something beyond yourselves but arrives within yourselves. The first is from the “pagans,” and the second is Divine.
During the darkness of indecision; light. Felt in the darkness of doubt; light, during haunting questions about life here or the life after here? You guessed it. Spell it out! Christians seek light in the darkness when light is most needed. How about the dark places of our lives that we refuse to admit and see? Or those dark places within us that we haven’t even uncovered yet?

Flashlight? Nay … needs batteries. Relying on our own nearsighted eyes looking inside ourselves? Nope. That’s called one-sided.

We seek the light that this holy day provides. A heavenly star that brought nations together, even if for a short time, to show that this light is universal and eternal. Those two “S’s” that happen to us are the same two two that happened to Jesus Christ. Those surprises and that setback.

I hate it when a friend tells me, “You gotta see that Netflix film. It’s great. The hero is killed in the end.” Am I surprised? No! Because now I know the ending. Why waste two hours when I already know the ending?

That’s what happens with our prayers. Try praying without providing God with the answer. That’s not prayer, that’s a command! Giving a solution or resolution to God? If answered with your wish, you tell your friends for years to come about how your prayer was answered with your answer. Surprise? Nada. (whispering) That’s called idolatry.

Pray is always buttressed through the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, you will be enlightened with more insights and guidances than you can imagine. There are many unexpected surprises during this beautiful journey of life. (“unexpected surprises” is redundant, but you get the meaning.) Coupled with life’s setbacks – full of troubles, trembles, and travails.

Epiphany shows us today that all is okay. Motel 6 spokesman Tom Bodett famously said, “We’ll leave the light on for you.”

Well, how about the story of our faith? Three kings (whose names we can never remember), a villainous governor (whose name we all know), two tired parents (we know them), an unnamed donkey with a map and magic marker yellowing directions to Egypt, shepherds (all without names) wondering if their sheep are still in the hills, angels (no names provided) looming all about…and only one bright lone star constantly shining through all of our darknesses of fears, doubts, uncertainties, and despairs. As well as life’s joys, successes, and peace. Always hoping that the latter outweighs the former. The song “Away in the manager?” Forget about it. Away? So, very wrong.

Apparently, with a joyful smile on his sleepy face is this newborn babe full of surprises and setbacks for both himself and for us. He’s asking us to be “newborns” each day.

What are their names? They are the Divine star of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit saying to us every Sunday (and those other misnamed days), “Our light is forever brightly lit and lovingly burning away for every one of you.”

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Stupidly Sad Billboards

Posted on December 23, 2024 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

“Black Lives Matter”

“Real Men Love Their Babies”

“Love Lives Here”

“Slow Down, We Can Wait” (a funeral home)

“Fair Housing Is Your Right” (Black couple holding a baby)

“Speeders Killed My Brother” (sister holding picture of her brother)

“Jesus Is The Answer” (what’s the question?)

“Hate Has No Home Here”

“Democrats Can Vote Republican” (election year)

I’m buying my own billboard…

“Polacks Are People Too!”

Truly, stupidly sad…

billboards I view while carefully driving while wishing the best for all people…

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Rosary to Saint Joseph

Posted on December 21, 2024 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

“Hail Joseph! No, it’s ‘Hi Joe,’
Blessed are you to hear the dreamy voice of an angel to receive your pregnant wife, Mary.

Blessed are you, Joe, among men. Pray for us to hear and heed the silent messages of your angels and to respond, as you gracefully did, again and again.

Thanks Joe for consistently listening and never, ever speaking one, single word. Your actions spoke so much louder and larger than words. Amen.

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keep your fork

Posted on December 20, 2024 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.
“Keep Your Fork”
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A Season(s) of Grief and Joy

Posted on December 18, 2024 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

“Grief, for me, has held so many unexpected emotions. We most often think of sadness, and there is much sadness in grief. But there is also relief, there is anger, there is defeat, there even is joy. I thought it was humorous as I was making the reminder flyer for this service that at the top, I wrote a description of this service and how though it is a season of joy, many of us are mourning and I invited you to come together as we mourn.. And then at the bottom, on the same paper, in the same strokes of my typing, I invited you later this week to spread the joy of the Christmas season.  

And the reality of those -grief and joy- coexisting is the reality that we live in. Remembering the people that we have lost is often painful, but even in the hardest of it, at funeral services and even bedsides of hospitals immediately after a death, I have experienced laughter with friends and families, sharing stories of our departed loved ones.
In this season though, it can feel unnatural to be experiencing sadness at a time when so many around us are experiencing joy, but our world is full of these seemingly opposites coinciding, this great juxtaposition.  
 
We must not succumb to the darkness, to the sadness of it all.  And yet we must at the same time make space in this season of joy for the sadness of our grief. Because yes, this is a season of joy, and yes, there will be joy and laughter in remembering stories of our lost loved ones or remembering holidays gone by, but there is also sadness.  

Sadness that they are no longer celebrating with us. Sadness that things are not as they once were. Sadness in our inability to do the things that we once could. Sadness that our holidays look different than they once were. Sadness that our world is changing in a way that we are uncomfortable with. So much sadness can exist in the remembering.  

The memories continue to live.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Tibetan monk and peace advocate, once said: “Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”
 
This is the hope that we cling to. We hope that we experience God’s comfort. We hope that we experience some rest from the often overwhelmingness of grief. We hope we experience God’s life and light in the midst of death and darkness. We hope that tomorrow will be better than today.  

And in the meantime, we endure.  We grieve. We honor our loved ones.

We allow for tears in a season of joy. And we allow for joy in a season of grief.”

(written by Alexis Johnson, Chaplain of Alexian Village of Milwaukee)

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In Between Time

Posted on December 16, 2024 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.
“In Between” Time
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Who is Jesus Christ?

Posted on September 16, 2024 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

Jesus asks the others who do people say that I am. What an  unknowable question to ask. Jesus doesn’t know that he’s the son of God? Jesus doesn’t know that he is God? Jesus doesn’t know that he’s the son of a carpenter? That his mother loves blue dresses. 

Why is it important for him to ask other people who he is?  A tad self-involved, don’t you think? Do we ask other people who they think we are? Never. We show them. Who we are is seen in and through our words and actions. Even seen in our inaction not unheard in our words. 

But not Jesus Christ. He wants to play Drew Carey holding that thin microphone, in front of an television audience, asking Johnny Gilbert (I think he’s dead) to bring up the next contestants. 

“Who do people say that I am,” asks the Son of God. First one says, “John the Baptist.” Urnnn. Jesus replies, “If I’m not mistaken you’re able to see my head.” Next loser guesses Elijah to which host Jesus says, “He died centuries ago, do your homework.”

Jesus repeats the question before the first commercial break and the guy who wants everyone to like him (check his identity) announces, “One of the prophets!”  Jesus smilingly says, “You just gave a genetic answer that could amount to anyone but yes, I am one of the prophets. But you still lose.” Urnnn.

The first pope buzzes in with the correct answer and Jesus kindly looks at him and solemnly nods his head. (Break for commercial.)

Minutes later, after too many commercials, in this make-believe quiz show, our host predicts suffering for himself and needing “flint” for his cheeks, not rebelling and never, ever turning back, (declaring) “See, the Lord God is my help; who will prove me wrong?”

Who proved him wrong was the first pope! He was born Simon, the gameshow host changed his name to Peter and now renames him Satan. (That’s a lot of visits to City Hall and filling out all those forms about changing your name.)

Jesus played many serious games with his disciples. They so very often either ignored, questioned, didn’t understand or thought only of themselves. Sound a bit like us?

Jesus played us and we fell for it. The division of uncovering personal identity is always 3/4 for and about you and 1/4 for the others to either guess, gossip about or just makeup. Jesus today made it the opposite by offering 3/4 of himself to others and nobody got it, or got him—gameshow over. In postproduction add the clapping, laughter, and closing credits and then put the show on the schedule.

How else can you successfully and joyfully your live – both mentally and spiritually except with the 3/4 of you growing and evolving within and for you, through the grace of God, the witness of our host Jesus Christ, and the ever-present presence of the Holy Spirit.

The unknowing 1/4? That’s up to the watching audience.

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“The Wizard of ‘God’”

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

Francis Phillip Wuppermann (June 1, 1890 – September 18, 1949), known professionally as Frank Morgan, was an American character actor.

Better known to us as the Frank Morgan who famously played the “Wizard” in “The Wizard of Oz” in 1939. He was hardly the star whose name’s in the title. There’s darling Judy Garland trying to find a home that she already possessed. Her traveling companions after the Kansas tornado are a brainless straw man, a heartless tin man, and a lion who believes himself to be a coward. All three gentlemen are wrong about themselves.

All the characters now living in her tornado mind but loving in her real life. Even that “wizard,” Frank Morgan, was simply a traveling magician.

Comes now to us and a supposedly consoling friend tells you in your time of tornado troubles, “God only gives you what you can handle.” What a stupid, senseless sentence of belief. Surely ends further conversation. How can you argue with God? The “Frank Morgan’s God” is conveniently hidden behind the curtain pulling levels, wheeling wheels, switching switches galore, and just for effect? Expelling smoke. (Adding smoke is always a good touch for a wizard.)

“God will only give you what you can handle.” Limitless then, by any count. Pretty safe statement but awkwardly clumsy and dangerous theology.

A wife and mother writes:

“Well-meaning friends often share this misquoted truth with me when they learn of our family’s circumstances over the past few years. Many quote it as a verse straight from the Bible.We moved cross-country with two toddlers and, within a week of moving, were surprised by the news I was pregnant with boy-girl twins. Meanwhile, my husband changed careers and had to figure out a brand-new field on his own. I gave birth to the twins only to discover shortly after holding them in my arms that one of them had Down syndrome.

Two months later, COVID-19 hit and I had to supervise my two older children doing school from home while I breastfed newborn twins. While continuing to reel from the news that we were suddenly parents of a child with special needs, we discovered the other twin had a rare disease that would require very involved at-home medical care and multiple surgeries. In between surgeries, our baby with Down syndrome began having brain-damaging seizures that required multiple hospitalizations.

All these events took place in rapid succession. The emotional toll on our family is incredible. Suffice to say, the weight on our souls has felt absolutely unbearable, and we’ve been clinging to Christ for dear life.”

Is this wife and mother subject to the smoke and Frank’s pulling away at those heavenly levels? Is this wife and mother another Job, David or Moses story? Does God give us all these troubles the same way God gives us gifts and blessings that we think about so very often?

The answer to both is “no.” Does God even have a quota in mind of how much pain and blessings for each of us? Again, the answer to both is a resounding “no.”

The solution is not found through Judy or Frank but those three guys – straw, tin, and a durable wagging tail. Brains, heart, and courage.

God does not dole out curses nor does He dole out blessings. What God does provide for each of us is a heart, critically thinking and discerning. An influencing heart full of compassion and caring. And all buttressed through the courage of our living faith.

Those are the divine gifts gifted for any of our lives. Who removes the false notions of God’s curtain? It’s our soul filled intuition. The movie has Toto pulling the curtain open but our great faith has the movie of the Holy Spirit – staring three of her wonderful seven gifts.

Now, do you think you can handle that?

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“Do You Like Yourself?”

Posted on May 26, 2024 by Rev. Joe Jagodensky, SDS.

I wonder what it’s like to like yourself. What does it feel and look like?

Would you wake up smiling at this new day to balance that baffling one before? Is your head even with your back and your steps lighter? Does that bright blue sweater replace the solidly black one you often wear? Do you need less salt on your food because you’re now able to taste the food’s flavors and then enjoy one scoop of ice cream when you wanted two? Do you copy your nearby cat at mid-afternoon and close your eyes for thirty glorious minutes?

Does liking yourself soften your car’s music not to bother the one next to yours and is your “Thank you” authentic to the cashier with all her tattoos in full view?

Nearing eighty years, can you smile, replacing a curse word, when that top button will just not button?

During that party, that corner is now replaced with a fake plant because you are mingling, engaging, and enjoying the company of others as they are enjoying yours. Is this what it is like to like yourself? To be yourself. Does liking yourself help others to like themselves? Isn’t this a beautiful virus?

Liking is only the primer before the final coat of love. Isn’t, “Love one another as you love yourself” written somewhere? Yet, how can that happen, occur, and transform your and other’s lives; unless you, don’t kinda, but sincerely like…

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