 Photo I took in 2016 on my way to my ecclesiastical council held in a small country church outside of Clarksville, IA. Spoiler: It went well and I was approved for ordination pending call. The final episode of “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” aired 34 years ago. (Side note: I'm not sure how 1992 is actually 34 years ago but here we are). I was 12…just months away from a tumultuous 13. And I got permission to stay up later than usual to watch Johnny's very last show.
Bette Midler was his final guest. And after participating in the interview portion of the show, she came out on the stage and began to sing, “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road).” The moment was intimate. Tender. A little melancholy, and deeply human. And I'm certain that at least somewhere during that number all of America–including me–shed a tear. Not because someone died or because something failed. Simply because something meaningful was ending. And because endings—even good ones—deserve witness. As we approach this sabbatical season, that scene keeps coming back to me. I know and you know this isn’t goodbye. But it is a pause. A breath. A stepping away after years of “being in the room where it happened” (as they say in the musical Hamilton). And there have been so many rooms filled with preparing, preaching, planning, responding, carrying, loving, building, and always becoming. Rooms heavy with grief and light with laughter, and often some measure of both. When we come to the edge of a season like this, one can't help but look at the road that led them there. This has certainly been true for me. As I look back I recall that it took me a long time to understand God’s call into ministry. Longer still to act on it. And longer than that to reconcile that call with my sexuality. I tried to think my way out of it. Reason my way around it. Delay it. Negotiate with it. Explain it away. Maybe some of you know what that feels like too? Maybe not necessarily about ministry, but about a truth that will not let you go. That quiet thing in each of us that keeps nudging us toward honesty, courage, healing, or wholeness. That thing that calls us forward and asks more of us than we think we can give. Sometimes threatening the life we thought we were supposed to build. Sometimes letting go of certainty entirely. And somehow, through all of that negotiating and delaying and explaining away—grace just kept showing up anyway. Persistent. Patient. Stubborn. And time and again I was asked to trust that the old hymn lyric was true: 'Tis grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home. I'm being asked to trust that again…so are you. And we know we can. Because we have shared so much. We have shared baptisms and funerals, hospital rooms and fellowship hall laughter, hard conversations and holy silence. We have shared ordinary Sundays and extraordinary moments. We have shown up for one another in grief and celebration, in exhaustion and hope. We have tried to be Church–not perfectly, but faithfully. And through it all we have become more than we ever knew we could be. One thing ministry has taught me is that God rarely works through certainty. More often it's through willingness. Through presence. Through people who say yes while still carrying questions. That's been true of me. And from the conversations we’ve had, I know it's been true of you too. So even though I don't know how this part goes–and likely you don't either–we can lean in. Trusting that that same grace will be there. The same grace that led me to pulpit supply at St. Paul long before I was ever your pastor. The same grace that allowed me to say yes to submitting my ministerial profile for the open pastoral role here at St. Paul after my predecessor retired, even though I swore I would never serve as a local church pastor again. The same grace that led us through a pandemic, and through a music program rebuild, and through devastating losses, all the way through to glimpses of a hopeful tomorrow. I am SO incredibly grateful for this community. For what we've built together. For the ways we have grown each other. For the grace that has carried us this far. My almost 13 year-old self, watching Johnny Carson listen to Bette Midler sing him out on that May night in 1992, could have never dreamed that grace would lead me here. But the tenderness and the ache of that transition feels very similar now. Not because everything is ending. But because something meaningful deserves to be honored before the next thing begins. So before I step away, allow me to take a moment to honor this first 6-year chapter with you by saying thank you. Thank you for the trust and the laughter. For the hard conversations. For letting me speak a bit of what I hope has been truth into your lives week after week. Thank you for teaching me what a handful of loving, determined people can do together. Thank you for showing up and simply being Church with me. As the song goes: "Thanks for the cheer. I hope you didn't mind my bending your ear…" Grace really has brought us safe this far. And I trust grace to lead us forward through this sabbatical summer, and onto what God has in store for us next. I have a feeling we’re just getting started. I hope to see you this Sunday as we consecrate this threshold moment with a Blessing of Hands. And together, we’ll make it one more for the road…that long, long road. On the journey with you, Pr. Melissa  For somewhere around fourteen years, I have owned a bread machine. That sentence feels oddly insufficient for something that has become such a steady companion in my life.
Over the years, I have made more loaves of bread in that machine than I could possibly count. Sandwich bread. Gift bread. “Someone is having a hard week” bread. “Congratulations” bread. “I don’t know what else to do, so I’ll make bread” bread. I have watched dough rise through that little window in the top more times than I could ever number. And yes—I have prayed over and into that bread. Not in some formal, liturgical sense (though maybe sometimes in that way too), but in the ordinary, human way of pouring thought and love into the work of your hands. I have prayed while measuring flour. Prayed while checking ingredients against a recipe I know by heart. Prayed while wrapping a still-warm loaf before carrying it to someone’s front door. That machine has made bread that has been shared through three different churches, across two different states, in seasons of heartbreak and seasons of joy. And last week, it made its final loaf. Or at least, what I am fairly certain is its final loaf. Mid-bake, it started making a strange whirring sound unlike anything I had heard before. Then came the smell. Then the smoke. Enough smoke that my spouse came to get me from the other room. After fourteen years of faithful service, I suspect the motor finally gave up. And I’ll admit: I had feelings about that. Which probably sounds ridiculous unless you’ve ever had some ordinary object become woven into the fabric of your actual life. See, for me, this wasn’t just a machine. It was a companion in ministry. A quiet participant in pastoral care. A faithful little workhorse that helped me show up for people when words felt inadequate. Somehow, the timing here feels fitting. Around two weeks before sabbatical, my faithful machine groaned, sputtered, smoked, and announced that it was done. I happen to think there’s something almost offensively on-the-nose about that. One of my favorite poets who also happens to be a farmer, Wendell Berry, has shaped how I think about stewardship over the years. In his writing, Berry often speaks about stewardship not as possessing something else, but as caring for it. For him–and me–things are meant to be used well. Repaired when possible. Honored when finished, but not worshiped. My bread machine has not been discarded in frustration. It has been retired with gratitude. Fourteen years. Countless loaves. More prayers than I could name. It has helped me feed people I love and have shepherded in Illinois and Iowa. It has helped me make something nourishing when life felt like anything but. In a word, my bread machine did its work faithfully. Lest you think the bread making is over–it’s not. I will buy another bread machine sometime soon. There will be more dough. More yeast. More waiting. More watching through that little window as something ordinary transforms. But this particular companion has earned its rest. Maybe that’s true of more than appliances. Maybe sabbatical is, in part, learning the difference between being finished and simply being invited to lay something down for a while. Maybe we’re all invited to use this time not to produce, but to rest. Not to keep giving from a near-empty bucket, but to receive. To let the motor cool. To stop measuring and mixing for a season, and simply be present to what is already rising. Maybe that is the point of sabbatical, of the program year here at St. Paul coming to an end this Sunday on Pentecost, and of summertime in general. Perhaps this is a season not to pause in the work. Perhaps it is the work—the slow, unglamorous, necessary work of becoming someone who can receive as well as give. Of trusting that not everything depends on us. Of making peace with rest that does not need to be earned. Of learning, again, to wait beside the window while something ordinary transforms…even if that ordinary something is us. So as we move from one season to the next, my prayer for all of us is that we would learn to receive what we so readily offer others: grace, rest, nourishment, and time. That we would trust what can happen in the waiting, and resist the urge to force what needs time. On the journey with you, Pr. Melissa  In our dining room window, there hangs a circular stained glass piece made by a dear friend of mine, Rev. Ellis Arnold. It's beautiful–and it holds a secret. Every single piece of glass in it is clear.
What appears purple in the photograph–and sometimes blue, sometimes green or pink with a kind of glow, sometimes nearly invisible–is actually trichroic glass. It catches and bends light so that color emerges depending on the angle, the time of day, the source of illumination. The color is never fixed. It changes. Ellis is one of the creative people I'll be spending time with during my upcoming sabbatical. They've promised to teach me how to make simple stained glass, and I find myself drawn to that invitation for reasons that go far beyond learning a new skill. For me, there is something deeply spiritual about paying attention to light. About slowing down enough to notice the way beauty shifts depending on perspective, season, and illumination. Something that speaks in ways that words never quite can. I wonder if that's true of people too. I think there are parts of us that remain hidden until something illuminates them: grief, joy, courage, tenderness, creativity, resilience. Sometimes it takes loss for those things to become visible. Sometimes it takes love. Sometimes rest. Sometimes another human being seeing us clearly enough that something inside us finally begins to glimmer again. Maybe that's part of what spiritual life actually is after all: becoming people who know how to receive light–and hold onto it when it comes. I believe each and every one of us carry light inside us. Every act of kindness received and passed on. Every moment of genuine awe. Every time we chose softness instead of cynicism. Every grief that deepened us instead of hardening us. Every experience of being loved when we felt unlovable. It all leaves something behind. Like light caught in glass. In recent weeks–both during worship and in blogs–I’ve talked a bit about the wonderful and strange gift of sabbatical. For me, it means stepping away from the rhythms of ministry that have shaped my days for years–the meetings, the preparing, the showing up. It means sitting beside people like Ellis who spend their lives paying attention to light and texture and beauty, and being reminded that the world cannot be reduced to efficiency or explained in a bullet point. But sabbatical doesn’t belong only to me. I think y’all are also being invited into something during these months. Not the same thing–you're not stepping away from your lives and your work. But maybe there is a quieter invitation here: to notice what has been buried beneath the noise. To let something in you catch the light again. Many of us have spent a long time in survival mode. Tightened. Defended. Distracted. The light is still there–but it can become hard to see beneath all the layers of exhaustion and doing and performing. Then something happens. A conversation. A piece of music. A quiet morning. A stained glass window catching the sun at just the right angle–and suddenly something inside us shines again for reasons we cannot fully explain. Not because the light was newly created. But because it was finally given a way to emerge. The mystic and activist Howard Thurman once wrote that “there is something in every one of us that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in ourselves.” And I can’t help but think that the most genuine parts of us are often the places where light has entered deeply enough to remain. Not untouched places–transformed places. I’m not going to pretend I know exactly what sabbatical will look like for you or for me. I’m fairly certain that sabbatical isn't magic. That rest won’t always feel restful. And that light–no matter how much any of us want it to–won’t always show up on our schedules. But I believe it shows up all the same. And I am trusting that when it does it will touch our souls so deeply that there is no way we will be the same. The Celtic Christian tradition has always understood something that our efficiency-obsessed world keeps trying to make us forget: that the Light we seek is not far off. It is not something we have to earn or manufacture or perform our way into. It is already here–already in us. It is the same Light that sparked creation. It is the same Light that the darkness has never overcome. And it is the same Light that flickers in every act of tenderness and every moment of honest grief and every time someone chose to love when they could have walked away. That is the Light I'm praying for us. Not a light that fixes everything or makes us shine on command–but the slow, quiet work of transformation. The kind that doesn't announce itself. The kind that just–changes us, when we are finally still enough to receive it. Just like that trichroic glass. On the journey with you, Pr. Melissa  This Sunday Mother’s Day shows up on our calendars. And Father’s Day won’t be far behind next month on June 21st. Over the past 6 years with you all here at St. Paul, I’ve gotten more than a few questions about why I haven’t planned something specifically tailored to both holidays during worship on their respective Sundays–or really even mentioned the holidays at all from the pulpit.
The truth is, the Church and these holidays have a relationship that really is not as simple as some would have us believe. Or to say it like the relationship status on Facebook status says it: It’s complicated. But before we start unpacking all of that, let’s first pause for a bit of history. The first Mother’s Day in the United States wasn’t a brunch holiday or a flower giveaway. It was a worship service. It came out of the work of women who were organizing for public health, tending to communities devastated by war, and calling for peace in a world that kept breaking itself apart. It was rooted in grief. In justice. In the stubborn belief that care matters in a world that often forgets that it does. Father’s Day followed later, also beginning in church, often connected to loss and remembrance. It didn’t even become a national holiday until decades after Mother’s Day. These days started in sacred spaces—but not as sentimental celebrations of perfect families. They started as ways of telling the truth about love and loss and responsibility in a complicated world. And then, over time, they got… cleaned up. As so many things tend to do. The holidays became simpler. Easier to market. Easier to manage. Easier to fit into a worship service without anyone feeling too uncomfortable. But that simplicity has come at a cost. Because in any given pew, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are far more complicated than carnations, barbecue grills, and narrow views of parenthood blessed from the pulpit would lead us to believe. These days hold grief for people whose parents have died. They stir up complicated relationships—estrangement, absence, harm. They ignore that choosing not to become parents is also a sacred choice, and one that has no holiday on our calendars or section in the greeting card aisle. They press on the quiet ache of those who wanted to be parents and aren’t. They overlook the reality that many people are parenting in ways that don’t fit a neat category. They ignore the truth that family, for many of us, has had to be rebuilt, redefined, or chosen. But there’s another layer to contend with here as well: Mother’s Day and Father’s Day reinforce a gender binary that does not hold the fullness of who we are as humans. And yes—some will read this and write it off as “woke.” But what we’re really talking about is whether the church is willing to tell the truth about the people with whom we share space and community–both inside these walls and beyond them. Because we know people who don’t fit the categories of “mother” or “father”. People who have given birth and don’t identify as women. People who are parenting outside of “traditional” roles altogether. We know that life simply isn’t that tidy. So perhaps a church–particularly one that is Open and Affirming–might think twice about uncritically centering “mothers” and “fathers” as fixed, universal identities. Because doing so doesn’t just miss people—it erases them in some fundamental ways. Church–at its best–is supposed to be a place where people are seen—not squeezed into categories that don’t fit. And this isn’t just a cultural issue. It’s a theological one. The gospel itself refuses to reduce family to something simple or biological. Jesus didn’t spend his time reinforcing traditional family structures. He expanded them. Disrupted them. Reimagined them. Jesus built community out of people who were not related by blood. He centered relationships that were chosen, not assumed. He made belonging bigger than what any one definition could hold. Which, for me, at least, means that the question for us as a community of faith isn’t whether we acknowledge Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. The question is: What story are we telling when we do? Are we telling a story about perfect families that don’t actually exist? Or are we telling the truth about the ways love shows up—messy, complicated, hard-earned, and real? At St. Paul, we work hard to hold tensions and lean into both paradox and mystery. We are not generally a people who are interested in pretending that things are simple–even if they seem like it on paper. Perhaps my mistake has been thinking that simply not acknowledging that such complexities are present would make them any less complicated. Perhaps this year we can try something new. Perhaps this year–this Sunday–this Mother’s Day and later on Father’s Day–we can hold the complexities honestly. We can name the gratitude where it’s real. We can make space for grief where it’s present. We can honor the many ways people nurture, protect, and care for life. We can refuse to pretend that all families look the same—or should. And we–just as Jesus did–can keep widening the circle. Because if these days began as acts of truth-telling—about love, loss, and responsibility—then maybe our call now is not to make them prettier–or ignore them altogether. Maybe our call is to make them truer. To tell the truth about the families we come from. The families we’ve lost. The families we’ve chosen. And the ways we are still, all of us, learning how to care for one another in a world that desperately needs more care. That’s the kind of church we’re trying to be here at St. Paul. Not one that avoids the hard edges. But one that trusts that truth—spoken with care—can hold all of us…even if the truth is somewhat complicated. On the journey with you, Pr. Melissa |
Pastor Melissa enjoying time on her hammock.
Rev. Melissa Sternhagen
Rev. Melissa Sternhagen was called as the pastor of St. Paul Congregational UCC in June of 2020. Prior to her call to St. Paul, Pr. Melissa worked as a hospice chaplain in the Ames, IA area, following pastorates at rural churches in Central Iowa and Southern Illinois. Pr. Melissa is a second-career pastor with a background in agribusiness and production & supply operations. She received her M.Div. from Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, MO, and holds a MA Ed. in Adult Education and Training, and a BA in Organizational Communications. Archives
May 2026
Categories |
RSS Feed