by Shaun O'Reilly | Feb 2, 2026 | Uncategorized
The days are growing longer. Light is creeping back into our Truckee Meadows, minute by minute, as we move deeper into Epiphany. In this period of lengthening days, with earlier sunrises and later sunsets, it’s also the liturgical season when we celebrate Christ as the light of the world—and when we ask what it means to walk in that light ourselves.
We brought up the idea of vision and mission statements at our congregational annual meeting. It will be good to revisit what we proclaim together as Faith Lutheran Church.
And it’s just wonderful, and challenging, and… exciting that in our Lectionary on the VERY NEXT SUNDAY we get the beginning of Jesus’ sermon on the mount. We get the beatitudes—the “blessed are” promises. And they run so counter to the way our world, and so our worldly brains and practices and habits, run!
Jesus announces, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
What might this look like in our lives? The person struggling with doubt about their faith—poor in spirit—finds themselves at home in God’s kingdom? The neighbor grieving a loss discovers comfort not in platitudes but in the presence of those who sit with them in silence? The colleague who doesn’t claw their way to the top but treats others with gentleness inherits something far more lasting than a corner office? The person burning with a desire for justice, even when it seems impossible, will find themselves satisfied in ways the world can’t measure?
Believing Jesus, we believe these promises drive us toward God and community. Jesus goes first and embodies these promises for us all. And then we give them to each other and our neighbors!
We revisit this list of blessed ones, like a vision statement, meeting us in our different needs over times and helping us celebrate the diversity of community. We need the mourner and the meek, the merciful and the peacemaker. We need those hungering for righteousness to wake us up, and those pure in heart to show us what love looks like without agenda.
Here’s the beautiful, frustrating truth: we are all always in a walk with God, who redeems us—not the list of things we accomplish or the spiritual disciplines we master. In our daily dying and rising with Christ, we are being made into these promises that serve the world. This is grace at work, shaping us into people who bless rather than conquer, who mourn rather than deny, who seek peace rather than victory.
Thanks be to God for this hard, blessed, life-changing way.
Life growing up! Light in the darkness!,
+ Pastor Shaun
by Shaun O'Reilly | Dec 2, 2025 | Uncategorized
Friends in Faith,
Happiest of holidays to you, and blessed Advent season.
Things are different for me this year. Amanda and I are sharing our first married Thanksgiving, Advent, and Christmas together. And I can feel the difference. There is more to expect, more to share, and more to prepare!
And I think that’s fitting for Advent, really. The word means arrival—it is a time of anticipation. Something new is afoot! For the church, it’s also an intentional season of receiving God’s gifts—the ones that run counter to our obsessive culture. That’s worth paying attention to. With God there is expectation, an invitation to share, and this focused time of preparation. I hope, for you, it will be fruitful and rich and like light in the dark.
We have entered the New Year for the church, year A, and this year will draw from the gospel of Matthew. In worship this Advent we’ll explore major themes as Jesus fulfills the law, calls sinners, builds a church, and gives his life.
Four themes will shape the rhythm of our Sundays:
- Desperation (the way out)
- Recognition (being found and made whole)
- Repair (healing)
- Presence (God-with-us)
Week 1 – We walk a new way, called to awaken to reality of Jesus’ life and death. The law has brought judgment and leaves us lost, bound, needing a way through. Our Advent longing is for a road home
Week 2 – We Repent, as the Kingdom is Near. The call of Jesus is that piercing moment when someone finally sees you, names you, calls you back.”Our Advent longing is to be found.
Week 3 – We re-create, as life is New. We know the reality of hurt, relationships that fracture, spirits that need mending. The church Jesus builds is community meant for the mending. We are a restorative community and our Advent longing is for healing.
Week 4 – We show up, as God shows up! Emmanuel—Love incarnate, breathing, present in the flesh. A light has shined in our need and despair, our dark and hopelessness. We see that, all along, Our longing is for the living God.
We are blessed by each other this Advent, so I hope we’ll see you on Sundays for worship or Wednesdays for Soup Supper and Evening prayer. God’s good gifts abound, and we’re called to expect, experience, and share!
+Pr Shaun
by Shaun O'Reilly | Nov 1, 2025 | Uncategorized
Friends in Faith,
Luther chose the eve of All Saints’ Day, October 31, to post his Ninety-Five Theses in Wittenberg because he wanted the crowds gathering for the feast day to see his challenge to the church. These two commemorations fall within a day of each other, but we honor them on separate Sundays when our community gathers for worship. Join us as we observe All Saints Sunday on November 2nd, when we will remember our Faithful Departed through readings, prayers, and the lighting of candles in their memory.
In the spirit of that celebration, let me share a powerful witness to the communion of saints I encountered during my 2022 pilgrimage to Cappadocia, Turkey.
Among the remarkable rock-cut churches we toured at the Göreme Open Air Museum—a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985—ancient murals still glow with surprising freshness and vibrancy. Centuries ago, volcanic eruptions blanketed these valleys with soft tuff stone that early Christians carved into homes, chapels, and places of refuge. By the 4th century, believers fleeing persecution found sanctuary in these caves, and over the following centuries they created stunning examples of Middle Byzantine monumental art. The painted churches we see today date from the 10th to 13th centuries.
The most striking is called Karanlik Kilise—the “Dark Church”—where the dim atmosphere has exquisitely preserved the vivid colors painted directly onto stone. Among the many images adorning these walls, one scene particularly struck me: a Byzantine depiction of Christ’s Harrowing of Hades. In this icon, our risen Lord storms the gates of death itself, seizing Adam and Eve by the wrists while David and Solomon look on in hope. Evil lies trampled beneath Jesus’ feet. This is resurrection. This is hope for our loved ones who have died.
Standing in those ancient chapels, gazing up at these renderings of hope painted on walls and ceilings, I felt the living connection across centuries. The resurrection hope that sustained those early Christians—for hundreds and thousands of years—is the same faith in love’s triumph that knits us together today.
Martin Luther nailed his theses to the church door in hope of reform and freedom. Byzantine artists depicted Christ liberating the saints from death’s captivity as a defiant statement against evil and tyrannical powers that parade their pretend, temporal might.
Take heart, friends, and be full of Christian faith, for our God is a rescuing and reforming Savior. May we remain ever awake to the promise of the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Blessed All Saints, friends.
+Pr Shaun
by Shaun O'Reilly | Sep 22, 2025 | Uncategorized
Friends in Faith,
This month I come to you still celebrating my recent wedding and celebrating the community at Faith Lutheran too! Amanda and I had an amazing time in Texas with family and friends, and I didn’t quite know I would feel all the things I was feeling down there. Many of my own friends and family are still in that area, and some I hadn’t seen in years. But they came out and celebrated and supported us and our adventure, and it gave us the gift of community.
But I know Amanda and I want to say thank you to you here in Reno as well. Thank you for your energy and welcome, your good wishes and blessings and gifts. You have given, and continue to give us, the gift of community.
With all that in mind, I mentioned in my sermon on Sunday that Fred Niedner had taught us about the gospel of Luke back in January at our “Bible Retreat.” He said:
You and I are more like Luke’s audience than those of the other gospels, and Jesus is inhabiting our story. Luke’s Jesus travels around, and always stops for meals, and he tells parables in which we so easily find ourselves learning what the truest treasure of life is. The same thing Heaven treasures: People! Relationships! Friends. Which is all Jesus ended up with—his only treasure. He had no money, no institution, not even a home his estate could sell. He had only friends. That was his treasure, and our life works the same way.
Friends, I can see and feel and notice my life working in the same way. Even (or especially) fresh off of getting married last week.
I am so lucky to marry Amanda and that she said “I Do.”And I know … as excited we are about being married, and making a life together, and opening wedding gifts, what we know we’re already treasuring so much is that loving people are surrounding us. In marriage you’re probably supposed to say that your partner is the “One Treasure,” and that’s got a truth to it.
But I’m fresh from the front lines, to report to you — it’s about all of us. And it’s about heavenly treasure! And it’s people, relationships, friends.
So thank you for the lesson. But thank you most for the incarnation of community.
My wife and I treasure you,
+ Pastor Shaun
by Shaun O'Reilly | Aug 10, 2025 | Uncategorized
8/10/25, Luke 12:32-40
9th Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, Faith Lutheran Church
Pastor Shaun O’Reilly
Sometimes faith or belief can seem fickle. Like shifting sand.
But maybe, in part, it’s because it’s always alive, and relational, and on the move.
Take this story that feels true to me, for instance:
There was once a man who had been shipwrecked on an uninhabited desert island. There he lived alone for ten whole years before finally being rescued by a passing aircraft. Before leaving the island one of the rescuers asked if they could see where the man had lived during his time on the island. And so… he brought the small group to a clearing where there were three buildings.
Pointing to the first he said, “This was my home; I built it when I first moved here all those years ago.”
“What about the building beside it?” Asked one of the rescuers.
“Oh, that is where I would worship every week,” he replied.
“And the building beside that?” They asked.
And the man replied: “Don’t bring that up! That is where I used to worship.”
For hundreds of years, Lutherans have claimed a motto about faith: “Sola Fide.” Only faith. And the essence is: if you want to relate to the God of the Scriptures, and of Jesus, there is not a certain thing you must do or achieve; it is by grace through faith.
It is a gift that you don’t earn.
And yet that is not a stagnant, immovable state of being. In fact, Luther implored that faith was both a Spirit gift arriving, as on the breath of God to you, but not there to stay: it’s on the move! And as it grabs us and we hold on, we take off together.
Luther said: “Oh, faith is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, so it is impossible for it not to be constantly doing what is good. Faith does not ask if good works are to be done, but before one can ask, faith has already done them and is constantly active.”
There is only faith. … and it is believing and doing.
In our scriptures today are stories about faith. From one of the earliest stories of Abraham, to 2,000 years later a writer of Hebrews celebrating the faith of the ancients — The stories and songs and letters today are cosmic celebrations
of the Gift of the Divine running through and with people!
The gift of faith, causing responses and bearing up good works.
So think with me of Abram, who will become Abraham, in Genesis. And remember right before his emergence, do you remember the tower of Babel, a story centered on reverence?
In creation, God breathed into the mud and created human beings. And in their decision for their fine creation, human beings take the mud (the way the story goes) and burn it (almost deconstructing the way God used the mud), and they make bricks to stack up to the heavens.
It’s their time to shine, it’s their creation.
They have all they need, they are all they need. Just look.
But in the ancient myth, God thwarts the building plans by causing them to be unable to communicate with each other, it’s the birth of multiple languages. So the great, universal human project of their own reverence fails. And where does the story go?
It goes… not to another big successful city, or to the highest king or queen, or some fine ruling empire of achievers. The story zooms in, way in, on a traveling family. Not large. In fact, Abram’s wife, Sarai hasn’t had any child and they are older folks now.
From the heights of human ingenuity building the largest tower, it zooms way in on wandering shepherds living out of tents.
(We talked about this last week in the class on Shalom, but shepherds are lower class kind of people in the scriptures. We tend to glamorize some of them, because they get a miraculous visit from angels outside of Bethlehem at Jesus’ birth, and so there are cute representations of shepherds, because it’s Christmas— but as laborers with stubborn animals in the fields day and night their status was low, they are the overlooked, they are often not welcome at any semi-dignified table with others.
And this is where the Divine story zooms in! Where faith and God’s activity go.
As it will in Bethlehem and as it does in our lives … God shows up in the low places.
God shows up to be with …. As Augustine famously said:
“Without God, we cannot. Without us, God will not.”
Babel’s story was a human-centered creation that falls into separation and distance, and the Abram story is where the needy are called into Divine community and relationship, and faith finds this traveling family, to be with them.
All our scriptures in the lectionary today are drawing us OUT of being left on our own, or seeking or own reverence, and drawing us TO the great blessing — both for us and for others (remember that’s what Abraham is told: “through you all will be blessed”) — we are drawn to the great blessing of Life in the Way.
Last week it was a rich ruler wanting Jesus to advise him on money issues, and Jesus advised distance and generosity. In the gospel today, that’s still there … and there’s also the comfort: Yes, light your lamps, let faith be active, be ready and responsive, and also: Do it without fear. I’ve got you. Faith has us.
What did Abram need for the journey today? Like, What do we need?
Maybe the gift, and strength, and action of faith again, to hope, like God tells Abram:
I say to you today “Don’t be afraid. I’m with you. I am your shield. I am your reward!”
And so the psalm can sing today.
A king isn’t saved by a great army;
a warrior not delivered by strength.
The war horse is vain hope,
and its great might cannot save.
Our soul waits for the Lord;
God is our help and shield.
Even when there is so much to fear. So much to trouble the heart. When we are wandering, like I know we feel we often are, and often these days. When leadership motivated by decent values seems impossible. When pride and bigotry seem to be the driving factors of policy makers. When we are stuck crying for an end to war and conflict in Gaza, Thailand, Cambodia, Colombia, South Sudan, Myanmar, Ukraine and Ethiopia. When people and children cry out for food.
When protection for those vulnerable — God’s preferential option— is needed, and yet the gap between the 1% and rest grows wider, and uglier, and wider still …
Here we stand, and God zooms in. Shield and hope. Giving us the Kingdom.
Outstretched arms for the wandering. For a struggling family and their longing.
So we might … be found in faith too. And we might see and know in our humility, and in our brokenness, the unfailing treasure of heaven is no loss and no destruction.
It is God, in Christ, for you, with you, making faith right now.
