Not Alone in the Wilderness
Guest Preacher: Christina Sparks
with Bill Oelfke
September 6, 2026
Jeremiah 29:4-7, Ezra 3:8-13
Bill Oelfke, on a new solidarity project for Haitian immigrants
This church has a proud history of supporting the people of Haiti. We have supported the work of Charlie Scott in his school for Haitian children and the child sponsorship program some of you may still be participating in. We also helped George McKay and Paul Morgan in their work to reforest the island and to help local people feed themselves through a community fish farm and processing plant.
So we're really involved with the Haitians over the years. Today, we are faced with a new challenge regarding not only Haitians, but people of other troubled countries who immigrate here seeking to become American citizens. As Christians, we must let all of these asylum seekers know that we care about them and we stand with them in their struggles.
One clear way is the wearing of symbolic fake ankle monitors- in an act of solidarity. It's a passive way to let our similarly restrained asylum seekers know that they're not alone.
They're not alone in their embarrassment and their humiliation.
This week, our church will be exploring a project of mass producing these symbolic items and encouraging members who would wish to participate to wear them from time to time. If this project is approved, I would like to dedicate it in the memory of Pierre Damas Bell Pierre was an athlete, decorated scholar, native of Haiti, who entered the United States legally at the border hoping to build a better life in America Immigration placed him in an ankle monitor in late July while his immigration proceedings continued.
On July 30th, Bell posted photographs on his Instagram page showing some of the recognition and awards that he had received along with a photo of his ankle monitor. In a caption, he wrote, "I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn't come here to commit crimes or to hurt anyone. Yet I'm now walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience."
The 20-year-old Wright State University student, Pierre Demas, killed himself on Monday, August 31st, after walking into traffic on Interstate 70.
I hope we can create a growing solidarity movement that guarantees that this will never happen to another precious soul.
Sermon from Elder Christina Sparks
Good morning.
Before I get started, I want to make note of how important, some of the things that Bill spoke about are.
September is Suicide Prevention Month, and I think what he spoke about really shows some of the intersectionality of suicide prevention. It's not just about everything we think about. It's about safety and security. It's about feeling seen and understood. It's about feeling like everything-- like there is hope.
Later this month, we are going to be hosting a... I don't know, it's not a workshop, a presentation, for Suicide Prevention Month, on September 20th in the afternoon, and I hope that you would all join us there as well.
I'm Christina. Thank you for having me today. If you had asked younger Christina what she thought her life would look like at almost 41, I can assure you that my current life looks absolutely nothing like what she would have said.
The conservatively raised, '90s purity culture girly would be shocked by me now. I had a plan, y'all. It was a cute little naive plan, but a plan nonetheless.
Amongst other things, I was going to get married, have some babies, have a career, the whole white picket fence thing, all of it. So I got married, I had some babies, and then I got divorced, and then I got remarried, and I acquired some more babies, and then I got divorced again And then, oh yeah, I realized maybe I'm a lot more gay than I originally anticipated, and thought it'd be really fun to come out to my parents at 40.
My therapist loves when I make dark humor jokes about it instead of processing the underlying emotions behind that. I'm a therapist too, guys, and these are only the highlight reel of the plot twists to my original plan and who I thought I was supposed to be.
The list goes on. The fact that I'm even standing in front of you preaching a sermon would be complete blasphemy to some people who once had influence over my decision-making processes. Christina circa the the early 2000s would have so many questions, and I'm so glad.
She needed to be shocked. She needed to deconstruct all of the beliefs that she'd been conditioned to believe about what her life was supposed to look like. It's been a journey to get here, and now I'm thankful for every part of that journey.
But that doesn't mean that everything was enjoyable, and it definitely doesn't mean that I understood what was happening or why it was happening at the time. In those moments, in those periods of time, I felt completely lost, like everything that I had planned was ruined, and everything I thought I knew was no longer true, and that's terrifying.
I'm guessing a lot of you have had similar times in your life, maybe several times, where the plans you made fell apart and where you're left wondering, "Why? And what now?" Maybe you lost your job, and maybe that not only impacts your financial circumstances, but it affects your perception of yourself as a person. Maybe your marriage or marriages didn't work out the way you had planned, and you wonder what's wrong with you. Maybe your child or children have needs that are much different than you thought they would be, and it hurts to listen to other parents talk about milestones and achievements and accomplishments. Maybe there was a health crisis or a diagnosis that changed the entire trajectory of your life, and you're left wondering, "What now?"
And perhaps you look around our world, our country, and you see hate and greed and systems of oppression all around us, and you wonder how this can possibly be the plan. We all go through times in life that make us question, that make us wonder why As much as we sometimes feel isolated in these moments and these times of our lives, we are not the first or only ones to struggle with plans that did not go as we anticipated.
The people of Israel knew this feeling. When the pastors are back next week, they'll begin our look in Exodus. For day, for today, we're gonna jump a little bit ahead in our story. After Joseph and his family had settled in Egypt, like we've heard over the past couple of weeks, their people grew in number.
After several generations, the rulers of Egypt didn't remember Joseph and what he did, and the rulers began to fear that the Israelites would take over. This led to the enslavement of the Israelites, the exodus from Egypt, 40 years of wandering around the desert, and eventually settling in Canaan, the Promised Land.
Later, during the reign of King Solomon, the temple was built, and the Ark of the Covenant, which had been the physical representation of God with them, was placed in the temple. This was a huge deal for the Israelites. This took them from being a wandering, nomadic, and largely displaced people to a secure and established nation.
This was the plan. This is what centuries of people had hoped for and believed was the final answer for their people. They had their land. They had God housed right where God was supposed to be within the temple. Things were good, and that lasted for several centuries until the plan did not go as planned anymore. Through a series of political situations that got really ugly, the Israelites were exiled to Babylon. Their city was destroyed, and their temple was burned to the ground. This was not what was supposed to happen. This was not the plan.
We've been there, looking around at the ashes of the life we had, wondering what now. The people were hoping and even expecting God to fix this immediately, but in the midst of this unplanned and devastating turn of events comes the prophet Jeremiah, and in his letter to the exiled Israelites, tells them to embrace the chaos, to settle in and unpack in the unknown.
Here's what he says.
"Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, 'Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage that that may, that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there and do not decrease, but seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.'" Jeremiah 29:4-7
When things in our lives happen that feel out of our control, it's easy to wanna detach ourselves from what's happening. The view-- we view times of shifting, of changing, as this bad place that we need to get ourselves out of as quickly as possible. But here, God is calling his people to settle in, to plant things, and grow things, maybe to grow ourselves in uncertainty.
God says, "Unpack, plant some things, and let's see what grows here in this unexpected place." And just like they did, we can as well, if we allow it.
During their time in exile, the Israelites figured out how to be God's people without a temple or a land of their own. During this time, they radically transformed how they practiced their faith. They established synagogues as the primary centers of worship, prayer, and community leadership. Prayer replaced temple sacrifices, and the Sabbath, dietary laws, and circumcision became central identifiers that set them apart from the Babylonian culture. The exile became a significant period of faith-building. Scribes and scholars gathered and wrote down, edited, and preserved vast portions of what we now read as the Old Testament to ensure that their story, laws, and covenant would not be erased by assimilation They did not just sit and wait for the time of transition to end before they continued their lives.
They lived well in the unplanned.
This time wasn't a punishment. It wasn't a detour or some place to sit and feel sorry for themselves as the lives they planned fell out from under them. No, this was a time of growth, and look what they did. They set up the foundation for the rest of their people for the rest of time. They shifted the way they worshiped so it could happen anywhere. They found ways to set themselves apart from other groups of people. They made sure that they wouldn't lose their identity, and they wrote down their story so that generation after generation would be able to see their journey, where they were and where they came from, their hurts, their traumas, their questions, their wondering, all of the times things didn't go the way they had planned, and all of the times they were able to take those times, those moments, and grow from them and through them and because of them.
As we continue in our story, we fast-forward about seventy years. The exile ends, and the Israelites are permitted to go back to their land. They go back in waves, and finally they set to the task of rebuilding the temple.
Let's look at the Book of Ezra.
"When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments were stationed to praise the Lord with trumpets and the Levites and sons of Asaph with cymbals according to the direction of King David of Israel. And they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel. And all the people responded with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord had been laid. But many of the priests and Levites and heads of family, old people who had seen the first house on its foundations, wept with a loud voice when they saw this house, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping, for the people shouted so loudly that the sound was heard far away." Ezra 3:8-13
So the Israelites have made it back to their homeland, and they get to begin the next phase of the plan that God called them to. And some of them, especially those who remembered what everything looked like before, mourned. This passage doesn't condemn or even scold the mourning. It simply lets it exist.
There's room for grief and change and transition, in hard decisions, and in things that feel out of our control. What God does not want us to do is to remain stagnant. It's easy to look at the past and only see things that felt good and secure, not the things we needed to leave behind in order to lean into the call that God has for us. There were others who enjoy-- who rejoiced explicitly, and they were also not condemned or scolded. Their joy was embraced. I really wanna highlight one thing from this passage in Ezra. It's this verse:
"So that the people could not distinguish the sound of joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping, for the people shouted so loudly that the sound was heard far away."
This dichotomy of mourning and celebration happening simultaneously.
As a therapist, something that I'm constantly telling people is that two seemingly opposing emotions can exist at the same time.
We can mourn and rejoice, be excited and be scared, be angry and be sad. It's okay to mourn the things we planned for or expected, while at the same time rejoicing in the future that has unfolded. It's okay to have fear and hope together. It's okay to be sad that things are not the way we expected them to be, while also loving and embracing that-- the life that came from those losses.
What areas of your life are you holding back your full energy or presence?
What circumstances are you treating as unwanted exile to Babylon instead of the place that God has called you to plant roots?
Maybe you've been waiting, withholding your full energy and heart, waiting for real life to begin again. But real life is happening right now. In the transition, in the unexpected, in the chaos, and in the calm.
God isn't waiting for your circumstances to change before He shows up. God is in the middle of it with you, helping you plant yourself.
For me, the real change happened when I stopped trying to be who others said I was supposed to be and aligned with who God actually called me to be, plot twists and all.
As a church, we've had to do the same thing. It'd be really easy to look around at our world right now and convince ourselves that there's no reason to get involved or to speak out against the things that we are witnessing, because it feels like a reality that's not actually real.
It would be easy to wait-- to just wait until things get back to normal instead of engaging in the world as it actually exists today.
It would be easy to hold back our best care and presence from the broken places right in front of us while we wait for an ideal reality.
But that reality won't ever come unless we make it so. And over the last couple of years, this congregation has made a purposeful decision to dig in and plant right here, to be fully affirming, to speak out against systems of oppression, and to stop waiting for an ideal world before we start loving like Jesus.
God isn't waiting for the chaos to clear before showing up. God is right here in the middle of it, helping us plant roots.
May you find peace, growth, and home in the unexpected.
Amen.
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