sermons
Something New
A Time for Growing & A Time for Rooting
Ivy Anthony and Lydia Shiu
May 17, 2026
Welcome, everyone.
We’ve been in a sermon series called Something New, reflecting on what it means to live like new life is still possible, and to make it so together. Inspired in part by poet and theologian Padraig O’Tuama’s reminder that the making of something new is often found not only in art, but in the vulnerable and risky work of cooperation itself: in communities learning how to care for and sustain one another, and imagine new ways forward together.
And this series has been inviting us not just to think about faith as an idea, but to live it more fully embodied and enacted in our everyday lives. Trusting that as we participate in love, creativity, courage, and connection, our lives widen toward one another and toward the making of a more just and life-giving world.
And because of that, today’s service will be just a little different than usual.
The hope of any sermon, or scripture study, or church service… is not only to listen or take in what is put out…
- It is to participate in the movement of God.
- To pay attention to our own stories, both personal and collective.
- To let ancient words meet our real lives with guidance and wisdom and provocation.
So this morning, Pastor Lydia and I will share the stage and there will be a couple of moments where we invite you to share with people around you. Nothing polished, just from the heart, an opportunity to notice what resonates, what season you might be in, and what God might be stirring among us together. *For folks on-line we’ll join you in the chat for those moments!*
We enter into this time trusting that the Spirit of God is very much alive and moving among us.
- Still unsettling what has grown stagnant in us.
- Still nurturing what longs to grow.
- Still helping us loosen roots that no longer give life, and planting new ones more deeply in love. . .love of neighbor, love of self, love of this world.
So today, we’re running with the theme: “A Time for Growing, and a Time for Rooting.”
Some of us arrive here eager for something new.
Some of us arrive exhausted by change.
Some of us are longing to be uprooted from what confines us.
And some of us are simply longing to belong somewhere again.
Wherever you find yourself this morning, we hope this service can be a space of freedom — participate as much as you feel inclined. But also a space that invites curiosity, and connection, a space where we can find God in scripture, in story, in one another, and maybe even within ourselves in new ways.
About 12 years ago, I started a small nonprofit called The Planting More Project. At its heart, it was about helping communities grow food and grow connection at the same time … Building outdoor classrooms, partnering with schools and food pantries, creating spaces where neighbors could nourish one another in tangible ways. Fresh produce for families. Garden beds that “seeded” student’s wonder and awe at growing things from tiny beginnings into something that could feed people.
And in the beginning, so much of that vision — so much of me getting that project off the ground depended on me utilizing a greenhouse. We found one at Costco, put it together and set it up in our backyard.
The greenhouse was so essential for all I needed, for new life to take off. It offered warmth, protection, consistency, light. It created the perfect environment for seeds to grow (become seedlings), and hundreds of them at once. These delicate little shoots of life that would never have survived the cold spring on their own . . and yet suddenly had what they needed to begin.
There’s something beautiful about that kind of container. And perhaps we all need them at certain moments in life. The beginning of a relationship. A new job. A spiritual awakening. A community that holds us while our roots are still fragile. Places where growth feels possible because the conditions are carefully tended and we are protected from the harshness outside — a shelter — a reprieve — a sanctuary.
During Covid — when the greenhouse wasn’t being used for its intended use, our daughters turned it into a “she-shed”, they set up all these fairy lights and got a rug and a couple of chairs. It was a haven in the midst of scariness.
“A time for comfort in the midst of a time of disorientation.”
And maybe especially right now, when the world can feel exhausting and unpredictable, there’s part of us that wouldn’t mind what a greenhouse can provide.
- Somewhere where the environment is controlled.
- Somewhere we understand the rules.
- Somewhere insulated from the wind and uncertainty and grief of the wider world.
But the truth about greenhouses is that while they are meant for beginnings, not permanence. Eventually, if a tomato plant is going to bear fruit, it has to leave the greenhouse. It has to be planted deeply into the ground. It has to learn the wind. The rain. The instability of weather. It has to strengthen roots that can hold in real soil, not just in a crowded/sheltered tray.
Because there is a difference between being kept alive… and truly growing.
And sometimes growth requires reimagining the containers we’ve been living in, not because they were bad or unnecessary, but because the life inside us has begun asking for more space, more depth, more sky.
“Maybe there’s…“a time for staying safe and a time for risking new growth.”
So my story is… not all of our containers are chosen.
I was uprooted when I was nine years old, from South Korea and placed anew, to the United States, specifically in a small town in Georgia. Disorienting doesn’t even begin to describe my experience. In this way, these days I am feeling like a potted plant. I was placed, as a child, into this container. A rigid, full of rules and regulations. After school I had a lovely tutor who helped me with English. We worked on my accent. Long ee vowel sounds were the hardest.
“Have a sit.” “Have a seat.” “Would you like a piece of gum?” “Let’s go to the beach.”
My parents tried to make us stop speaking Korean in the house, because they knew the more quickly we learned English and spoke it fluently, the better life we were going to experience. I lost my Korean accent and I miss it. Why did I have to contort my mother tongue so much, to have to lose the vowels and sounds and shapes that my ancestors carried?
and now…… and now that I am getting older, I’m starting to wonder, where, where was I rooted before? What did the land and the earth feel like? And what is this hard plastic that’s encompassing me? Where are other plants like me? Why are my roots all wrapped and tangled up unto itself?
“Potting up” means moving a plant into a larger pot so it has more room for its roots to grow. This is different than just re-potting. “Potting up” means specifically that you are moving it to a bigger container.
You generally “pot up” when:
- Roots are circling the pot (root-bound)
- Soil dries out very quickly — no more nutrients left
- Plant growth has slowed
Sometimes the world has already confined us – without our choosing.
And nowadays, after I’ve tried hard to be perfectly American, shedding as much of Korean as I could, as the detriment of my loss, grief, and sense of severing. When I have been so loyal to the American Dream and bought into it all from capitalism or Christianity, memorizing past American president names for the Citizenship Test I took when I turned 18. Now, I am hearing that those who were not born in the US, might have their citizenship taken away?
So as an immigrant, I feel like a potted plant. Growing, contained, and now dreaming of more, even with fears, because I miss being rooted, not just by myself, but to others. What does it look like for me to be potted up?
“Sounds like a time for reclaiming what was severed… and a time for becoming more fully yourself”
Sometimes when we talk about growth or “something new,” we imagine it as constant upward movement. Clear. Certain. Predictable. But maybe growth is less about perfection and more about learning when the containers that once held us — whether chosen or imposed, can no longer contain who we are becoming.
IVY: Because some containers shelter us when we are fragile.
LYDIA: And some containers shape us before we ever had the language or power to choose them.
IVY: Some keep us safe.
LYDIA: Some keep us small.
IVY: Some do both at the same time.
And spiritually, we can do this too. We can spend so much time trying to preserve how faith once felt — the clarity of it, the certainty of it, the greenhouse moment of it –– that we resist the very thing faith has always asked of us. Transformation. movement. reimagining.
And sometimes growth means asking harder questions:
What have I outgrown? What has outgrown me?
Because growth asks us to keep reading the world around us. To respond to new realities with courage and imagination. To let our roots deepen instead of remaining tangled in the same small spaces forever.
And that’s the hard part… not starting….but evolving.
There are seasons where things are growing…and seasons where things feel uprooted.
Seasons where we feel alive and expanding…and seasons where we feel stunted, grieving, stretched thin.. .
Which is part of why we were drawn to the familiar verses in Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3 — because they do not try to flatten those experiences or rush past them. It simply tells the truth, that being human means moving through many seasons. And maybe those rhythms are part of what remind us that we are alive. That we are still growing, still changing, still becoming.
So as we read these words together, I invite you to notice what resonates with you…
Notice what season feels close to your life right now.
Read Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (Common English Bible):
There’s a season for everything and a time for every matter under the heavens:a time for giving birth and a time for dying,
a time for planting and a time for uprooting what was planted,
a time for killing and a time for healing,
a time for tearing down and a time for building up,
a time for crying and a time for laughing,
a time for mourning and a time for dancing,
a time for throwing stones and a time for gathering stones,
a time for embracing and a time for avoiding embraces,
a time for searching and a time for losing,
a time for keeping and a time for throwing away,
a time for tearing and a time for repairing,
a time for keeping silent and a time for speaking,
a time for loving and a time for hating,
a time for war and a time for peace.
So take a moment for yourself, and just consider what season feels close to your life right now? (Or if none of the verses resonate — what line would add yourself?
“A time for _____ and a time for _____.”)
Now we invite you to turn to a few people near you (4-5 folks) and share what came to mind as you reflected on: What season feels close to your life right now?
Last summer I, along with Reed and his friend, and Scott physically walked our large greenhouse down the middle of the parkway to the local elementary school. Its long-standing spot in our backyard, now vacant.
The move had been coming for a while. Despite the greenhouse being a bumper-spot for incredibly healthy seedlings in those early years, I started noticing that year over year things weren’t growing as quickly or as vibrantly as they once had. Not because sunlight, warmth, or rich soil no longer mattered, but because over the years, the environment around the greenhouse had changed. The trees that line our backyard grew over those 10 years! –their branches and leaves started to block more and more sunlight from reaching the greenhouse. And little by little the conditions that once made growth possible in that exact spot no longer worked in the same way.
So we excavated the whole structure and moved it somewhere new — not because growth no longer mattered, but because it still did!
There are seasons in life where we need containers, structures, beliefs, distinct rhythms that help hold and shape us while we are becoming. And those containers can be beautiful and necessary. But sometimes there also comes a moment when what once nurtured growth can no longer hold all the life that is trying to emerge.
Whether I stepped away from faith entirely for a few years in high school and college, or whether I was more lovingly inspecting and deconstructing parts of my faith journey later on, I realized I still longed for the things that nourish me…rootedness and community.
Growth it seems is not only about becoming larger or freer as individuals– but freer together, discovering the people and communities where our roots can deepen alongside others. Where nourishment is shared. Where we remember we were never meant to grow alone.
Plants don’t grow alone– their root systems intertwine. Nutrient networks are shared. Ecosystems depend on each other, interdependence.
After finishing seminary, having learned all that I learned, studying alongside queer colleagues, studying to be pastors, learning about feminist theology and womanist theology and liberation theology, and historical critical method of approaching the Bible, in a predominantly White institution, I started to wonder, where my Asians at? There weren’t that many 2nd generation Asian Americans like me. I knew of a few other older Korean-American female pastors, but aside from that, all my Asian friends were generally attending conservative churches, working in tech or sciences, but theologically narrow, in my opinion, and the gospel was so much more expansive and liberative that most of grew up in. I wondered, are there others? Are others as frustrated as I am about Trump getting elected in 2016 backed by Christians? I wasn’t sure.
I started seeing on Facebook (back then when Facebook was hot) FB pages or groups like ex-evangelicals or progressive Christians. I wondered if there were progressive Asian American Christians. I didn’t find anything. So I started a group named, Progressive Asian American Christians.
A few weeks later I was having coffee with another seminary grad Asian woman and we shared many political and theological ideologies. She wrote an article a few weeks later called The Loneliness of being Progressive Asian American Christian, it got picked up by the Huffington Post and our group got 300 people in one day, thousands in a few weeks. I had found my people. That was 10 years. I actually found this role at Reservoir on the PAAC Facebook group eight years ago!
These days I’m finding Asian spiritual care practitioners who guides me through prayers called “Holy Hot Pot” (which I totally want to do here at Reservoir, so if you want to help me do it, reach out, Asian or not!) and we share liturgies inspired by Korean ancestral rituals. It’s given me access to roots that I didn’t even know existed. And leaning on their tree has given me rest and release from the tension I had been holding on all tangled up on my own.
If we keep going in Ecclesiastes we see that it doesn’t stop at naming the seasons of our lives. A chapter later, it reminds us that we were never meant to move through those seasons entirely alone.
In Chapter 4 it says:
9 Two are better than one because they have a good return for their hard work.
10 If either should fall, one can pick up the other. But how miserable are those who fall and don’t have a companion to help them up!
11 Also, if two lie down together, they can stay warm. But how can anyone stay warm alone?
12 Also, one can be overpowered, but two together can put up resistance. A three-ply cord doesn’t easily snap.
Creation itself reflects that same wisdom. Living things aren’t meant to stay sealed off forever. Roots intertwine underground. Nutrients are shared across ecosystems. Trees shelter one another. Growth happens through relationships, through belonging.
And maybe the best parts of faith are like that too. Rooted, yes. But still growing. Still reaching. Not abandoning what once helped us, but reimagining it and deepening it together. Allowing ourselves to keep reaching toward what gives life.
Because none of us grows well completely alone. We need people who help us stay rooted while also making space for new growth, people who nourish us, challenge us, accompany us, and help us imagine what could still be possible.
- Take a minute to reflect individually —- Where are you finding your roots — or longing for them — right now?
- Now share with a few people around you — Where are you finding your roots – or longing for them, right now?
We are going to move to a time of communion and also a time where the prayer team is available at the rear of the Sanctuary if you would appreciate 1:1 prayer.
As we move toward communion this morning, we come carrying all kinds of seasons with us.
Communion reminds us that faith has always been something shared at a table. On the night before his death, Jesus gathered with his friends and took ordinary things, bread and a cup of wine, and gave them new meaning. Bread broken as a sign of his body, broken in love for the world. A cup poured out as a sign of a new covenant — a new way forward shaped not by domination or fear, but by love and relationship.
And maybe that’s part of what we remember each time we come to this table, that God is always making something new among us whenever we remain connected to one another, through all seasons…. Whenever we forgive one another. Whenever we make room for people to bring their whole stories, histories and hopes to the table. Whenever we create spaces where people no longer have to grow all tangled up on their own.
So this morning, as you come forward to receive communion — (a gluten free cracker and grape juice), we also invite you to take a small plant from the tables behind the communion stations and place it in a basket along the wall installation.
And if you’d like, you can also splash a small bit of water onto the plant before you place it there, a small prayer of hope for what is still growing among us.
In this participation may you remember that we belong to one another, and to this living, growing world God continues to nurture among us. Come and receive nourishment, embody nourishment for one another and together may we tend what is still growing among us.
Benediction: May your days ahead be filled with a season that offers you life to the fullest. A time for rooting and a time for growing in the love of God, among one another, and with this living world that continues to nourish us all, with the Spirit of God.