Aaron Johnson +In the name of the loving, liberating, and life-giving God. Amen. Today’s lessons offer images of ascent: people climbing into the clouds and encountering God. In our first lesson, Moses is told to come up to Sinai to receive the law. The mountain is shrouded in cloud until the seventh day, when God appears to Moses “like a devouring fire,” and Moses stays forty days and nights. Scripture loves numbers; they carry symbolic weight. Seven speaks of completion or

Epiphany V – Isaiah 58:1-9a Church of the Atonement The Rev’d Charles Everson February 8, 2026 No one wakes up one morning and decides, on a whim, to run a marathon. No sane person rolls out of bed, laces up their shoes, and says, “Today feels like a good day to run 26 miles.” Marathon runners train. They stretch. They build endurance gradually, preparing their bodies over time for what lies ahead. To do otherwise would be foolish, even dangerous. And yet, that is often how w

Epiphany IV The Rev’d Charles Everson Church of the Atonement February 1, 2026 “For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.” A time to be born, and a time to die. A time to weep, and a time to laugh. A time to mourn, and a time to dance. Those words from Ecclesiastes remind us that life with God unfolds not all at once, but in seasons. We move through times of clarity and times of confusion, seasons of joy and seasons of sorrow. And that is tr