Jessica Knight – Page 3 – St. Croix Church

Resilience is Messy (& so are we)

Author: Teena Brown • July 21, 2024

Jess Williams reflects on impulses she noticed in herself through a recent experience of asking her friends for help cleaning out her house, and found out she wasn’t alone. She points out how vulnerable it is to let others into your mess, even when that’s what you need most. Then she shares some wisdom gleaned from Fraggle Rock’s character, Marjory the Trash Heap, and Jeff Chu’s teaching on the theology of compost. She invites everyone to trust that God is most at home in the mess, and that all of our so-called failures can serve to nurture the soil of our lives.

The Spirit of Pride & The Resilience of The Suffering

Author: Teena Brown • June 16, 2024

Digging into our new teaching theme “The Roots of Resilience” Jess Williams reflects on the suffering we face throughout our lives, and what helps sustain us through it. She connects this to the history of Pride and the oppression of LGBTQ+ people, particularly in the church, and underlines why it’s so important for faith communities to listen deeply to, to learn from, to love, and to stand beside all who have been wronged by the church, whether that’s been based on race, religion, sexuality, or anything else.

Father carrying son on shoulders - arms outstretched

Let Go!

Author: Teena Brown • May 5, 2024

Jess Williams shares what she’s been learning about letting go. She considers the ways our culture glorifies independence, success, and getting by on your own, and how this is the opposite of the good life Jesus invited us into. Jess encourages us to let go of the things that keep us isolated and alone when what we need is the help and support of a loving community.

From Palms to Passion: The Path of Holy Week & Facing our Grief Together

Author: Teena Brown • March 24, 2024

On Palm Sunday, Jess considers what happens in the space between the Palms of the Triumphal Entry and the Passion of Christ, emphasizing the way Jesus walked toward human suffering and encourages his followers to do the same. Jess invites us to pay attention to the suffering in our own lives, so that we can pay attention to the suffering of others as well.

You Are The Beloved

Author: Teena Brown • March 3, 2024

On the 3rd Sunday of Lent, Jess is drawn to return to the baptism of Jesus and the revelation of our own belovedness. Reflecting on excerpts from Henri Nouwen’s book, Life of the Beloved, she invites us to consider the people who have revealed our belovedness to us, and encourages us to deepen our experience of living into (or ‘enfleshing’) our belovedness in our everyday lives. Jess demonstrates how letting ourselves be known can be a threshold we step through that allows The Beloved to find us, too.

Lessons in Love

Author: Teena Brown • January 28, 2024

In today’s homily, Jess expands on our theme “Being Rooted in Love Together” as she reflects on some lessons in love she’s picked up from her former self, (90’s evangelical teenage Jess) her current self, the apostle Paul, and everyone else. She suggests that greeting our differences with a loving embrace (instead of trying to convert each other) might be the only way to melt our barriers away.

The adoration of the Magi - google art project

Being Rooted in Love Together

Author: Teena Brown • January 7, 2024

Jess introduces our new teaching theme for the season ahead, ‘Being Rooted in Love Together’ and reflects on some of the ways she’s experienced this happening at SCC over the last year. She also shares some verses from Ephesians 3&4 that the Leadership Collective have spent time contemplating as we work on putting new language to our values, and nods to Epiphany and what it could mean for us today.

Confessions of Hope

Author: Teena Brown • December 3, 2023

With an invitation to an Honest Advent, Jess shares some confessions that begin with her own reluctance to welcome advent this year. She reflects on how speaking the truth in this way can help clear the air, and perhaps even make a little room in our hearts to welcome a Saviour. Then she considers why advent begins with apocalyptic passages about the end of the world, and connects this to our current context and how we might stay awake in this season — as we watch and wait for Christ’s arrival today.

Reflections on Loving God & Others

Author: Teena Brown • October 29, 2023

Jess Williams offers some reflections on her own journey of deconstruction that grappled with suffering/theodicy and conflicting views of God. She shares how letting one view break apart helped her discover and cling to a guiding principle that spans faith traditions: loving your neighbour as yourself.

Listen to the Longings of Your Heart

Author: Teena Brown • September 3, 2023

Jess Williams reflects on home and the longings of the heart that led her to St. Stephen. She talks about loving her heart for leading her well, and how her (sometimes messy!) life, and belonging to this community is teaching her to let go of perfectionism (fear!) and trust that our belovedness has nothing to do with what we are able to achieve or perform.