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I just realized that the title of this sermon is small time, small moment expectations and I can see that expectation in your faces. This is the first sermon of this new president. What will he say

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? As we commend this academic year as we emerge from a world that shook us to the core and alter our life patterns in unimaginable ways as we strive to retake our place in the now strange rhythms of

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normalcy. I come to the same question repeatedly, why are we here? We are? Re engaging our commitment to continue teaching, learning, laboring and living in a community of theological reflection and ministerial formation

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, But to what end? The voices of despair and defeatism are each day more strident. You have heard them, The institutional church is declining not only numbers, but also in cultural relevance. So why

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are we here each day? Our polarizing political and ideological differences re open our social fabric? Why are we here always lacerating convivial experience not only within neighborhoods and families, but also inside our own faith communities

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. Places that used to offer shelter from the occasional threats to the social body, our homes, our schools, our churches are no longer safe and hospitable spaces we can take for granted as places that will

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help us flourish and grow into old age. So why are we here framed this way? This question seems to be a little bit accusatory, as if I was trying to shake some sense into you by

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saying, are you aware that this may not be the best conditions to fulfill the mission of discipleship we think we are pursuing? But the question is in fact has deeper theological register for it may be heard

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as an invitation to explore in depth. The motivations not only of our christian commitments, but also of our persistence. When the world is not going, the way our desires intend. When the world we

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inhabit is in fact rubbing against the grain of our optimism, what keeps us grounded, what keeps us going for? One thing is certain about this unpredictable world we live in, we are not moving towards

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a determined future. We can clearly anticipate what word , a real realm of uncertainty and it is at those times that we ought to be reminded that people of faith are not constrained by mystery, but compelled

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by it. Last week while I was reading, walter Brueggemann is commentary on Isaiah to examine his interpretive take on this text, we just read. My attention was suddenly captured by an image on the Tv

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said that was silently flickering at a distance. Now , as seminary president speaking to you in front of your faculty, I have to say to you do not follow my example, focus on your reading.

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Do not get easily distracted, but as a preacher , I may want to suggest that sometimes it is precisely those moments of unsolicited interruption that may offer us an opportunity to catch a glimpse of mystery. So

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the moving image in front of me from a commercial of a product I was not able to identify was depicted in striking black and white. The scene show a mass of people at the shore line of a

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beach rushing to gather their belongings as a storm was approaching. Not only could you perceive the strength of the winds blowing away their belongings, but also the expressions of deep concern on people's faces as they ran

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to safety. But suddenly in the middle of that turmoil, the naked bag of a man appears in full screen. The man was running not with the crowd, but opposite to the crowd toward the sea

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. Nobody turned to ask or to just see why he was heading in the direction of the incoming storm . Because the sense of collective turmoil the images convey , and the way we have learned to perceive a

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world in chaos. I just imagine the man was running to save a stranded swimmer or help somebody in trouble gather his or her possessions, but as my mind was elaborating these conjectures, the camera lens open

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to show the whole body of this man who, carrying a surfboard was ready to catch a magnificent raging wave created by the storm winds. The end of the commercial gave closure to my interpretive disquisition, as

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a voiceover says. While the many joined the commotion , there is one who can appreciate the beauty of the wave and then the caption appears bring the wave . So I probably know why you are here occupying

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these pews and ready to embark on a new journey of theological exploration and ministerial formation even while cognizant of the storms that blow constantly our way, disrupting our lives and not naive about realities affecting our communities and

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our churches. You may be the ones who can see the beauty of the raging wave and perhaps have the courage to write it. But this disposition to imagine another possible world is not of our making.

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It is engender in us, by our ancestors in faith, who were forced to be resilient in the middle of social and cultural devastation If God promises were to be proclaimed to be true and enduring for it

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is in demonstrating that trust and endurance that we can say that we have faith. The prophetic tradition was tasked with reminding us that the God of Israel was a sustainer of life and a provider of abundant grace

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, even against the worldly signs. That pointed to the contrary, The author of Isaiah 54 grabs our attention with a metaphor that, while invested with the weight of patriarchy and outdated social systems, launches us

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to a more generative flight of poetic imagination. One can be tempted to see in this text about barren woman and echoed to other biblical texts in the old testament from an aging sarah to Rebecca, racial and

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Hannah, where the status of women is reduced to their capacity for biological reproduction, but rather than allowing other images of varying women's grip into mind to take over the interpretation of this text, I preferred to

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take seriously the context of this community the author is addressing, for it is in the context of imperial dominance and the cultural collapse produced by the forceful expulsion of people from their homes. That the metaphor of

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the barren woman illuminates the whole prophetic discourse, exiles after all, feel like a bearing woman. This possess rejected in this society. Their sustenance through time , not secure because they lack the social structures of

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support and welfare. So here, rather than determined by her biology, the metaphoric woman who cannot bear Children exemplifies the archetypical colonized subject. Who is determined by his or her social condition and stripped of a

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possibility for the future? These exiles are forced to live in the present moment, hoping they can have something to hold on once. The resources for sustenance are finally depleted. No doubt the people of God

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in exile raise the same questions we are pondering today . Our homes have been sacked and our lands occupied . Why are we here? The God who promised to benefit us as a chosen people seems to have

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abandoned us? Why are we here, time is running out to turn things around and build a more viable future. So why are we here? Can you hear the echoes of our current uncertainties? Are

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we experiencing the disruptions that make us exiles in our own communities, our families, our places of worship , and our own country because we no longer feel at home in places we took previously for granted.

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Are we experiencing being exiled even from creation? Unable to foresee the next natural disaster or the next pandemic ? And how to respond to it exile from places of certainty. We discover very often with trepidation that

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we can now go back to a world, a society and a church that no longer exist, that there is no return to that home that is so familiar, familiar and comforting and that guarantees to be

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what we expect it to be. And it is at this juncture of hopelessness that the God of the prophet speaks to his people as a mode of confession to assure them that our present this similarly moment of

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spiritual abandonment does not define God's deep relationship with us that this current language of ours is just about a brief moment, a pausing moment of keen awareness which holds us from our own reflective urge to always run

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in the same direction when the storms approximate to help us avoid our propensity, once we face difficulty and crisis to go back to our places of familiarity with the same people and the same costumes and the same

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behaviors for the sake of feeling secure and comfortable. But God's promise for the exiles is not one of restoration if by restoration. We mean bringing them back to a former state of being, but it's a

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promise of full emergence. The description of the I say and poet is of the people of God being gathered once again, not within the solidified stone walls of the city with its narrow protective gates, stone

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walls that have been collapsing again and again. But the people who will return to a surprisingly brilliant and colorful jewel city, an image that hints to a vision of full renovation, the people of Israel coming

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together to be the faithful community of a brand new reality. The prophet knew very well that the Children who will return from this time of exile will not come back the same. The Children who will return

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to this emerging community are now bringing the experience of many places and many cultures that have enriched and formed their minds and souls away from home. God will bring them together and it is not the role of

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the barren woman to bear these Children, but to welcome them as hers, for they will be her blessing. They will secure a future for the people of God. The call is to enlarge the site

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of our tent, to stretch out the car, the curtains and to make it easy for everyone to come in and not hold back. The people of God invited once again to practice radical hope through radical

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hospitality by having the courage to let go of all patterns and the traditions of their communities and ride the raging wave. Even when the storm made may make us ambivalent and tempt us to hold onto those systems

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of reliability that the winds of God are trying to blow away for it, is this storm of our days. What can give us the best moment as the church of christ to become relevant, faithful and

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hopeful once again. So why are we here? I would like to think that we are here because we are radically hopeful we are here because we know that this brief moment, maybe the pause, we

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need to think the church and you and to proclaim the word in ways that render palpable incarnations of christ in the witness of his people as paul says to the hebrews, a word that is spreading the curtains

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open and in doing that opens christ's own body so that people can experience God's redemptive care touch and compassion . The emerging community that seeks to do that needs to welcome all exiles, those who have marched away

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and left because our walls were too tight and impermeable . The church that emerges in God by radical hope welcomes the marginalized welcomes the culturally different the socially disposed those whose speech is readily recognized by our ears and

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those who challenge our heating with new accents, those whose identity lies deep within their soul and not in the contours of their bodies. Those who like the variant woman in pretty lyrical cultures do not conform to

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social normative itty that is the only church that can emerge faithful and hopeful in today's social cultural reality, the one that stretches its stand and spreads the curtains not only to let in, but to strengthen its

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stakes with diverse, new and surprising gifts. Why are we here? Because we hold the hope that the church of christ is about to be renewed, because we are convinced that we are just leaving a

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brief moment of expectation for what God is to make possible, is not yet seen or imagine. Meanwhile , let us engage theological education as a unique form of apprenticeship that will develop in us, the skills

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necessary to enlarge our sites, to stretch the curtains and to strengthen the stakes. God and only God will bring God's Children and they will be different. They will worship differently. They will leave their faith

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differently. They will speak in languages about God in ways we have not heard before, but like the magnificat magnificent raging wave. Believe me, they will