Senior Sermon: Amber Cody (March 20, 2019)

Our reading for tonight comes from 1 Corinthians 12:7-11, it’s one of my favorites because it shows that no one can be perfect, but we can all contribute to the kingdom of God with the gifts we have.

⁷To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.⁸To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, ⁹to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, ¹⁰to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. ¹¹All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

Hi, I am Amber Cody, a lot of you know me, I am the social media correspondent for LSA, I’m going to tell you my testimony tonight!

A testimony is your story of how God has been present in your faith life, and how you have come to know God. We each have a story whether we know it or not, and this mine!

So just a little bit of my background, I was born and raised, baptized and confirmed in an ELCA Lutheran church, and my parents were married in an ELCA Lutheran church, just at Trinity actually, down the road. So, God and the church were always very present in my life, but most of the time, God did not really exist outside of the church for me.

God was always very interesting me, I annoyed my Sunday school teachers by asking a lot of questions, and would even ask my poor pastor the most daring questions I could think of as a thirteen-year-old, like “Are demons still real in the 21^st century,” and “do Jews go to heaven?” The second question was asked out of concern for a boy I had a crush on at the time.

After I got confirmed as an 8^th grader, my family and I no longer had a pressing need to go to church every week because I no longer was required to take notes on the Pastor’s sermon for confirmation, (thank God). Then, with our busy schedules and a mix of family crises, our weekly visits to church turned to every other week, then monthly, and then hardly at all.

Throughout this time, I was dealing with the angst of high school, and the strong faith I had built up through my youth, and years of Sunday school was starting to crumble away. However, even though I wasn’t reaching out to God, I didn’t know it at the time, but He was reaching out to me.

Some of my best friends at school were going to a weekly Wednesday worship and Friday bible study. Wanting to escape some of my stress at home, and wanting to hang out with my friends, I started attending the nondenominational worship and bible studies. My love of asking questions was encouraged and welcomed at these events and I was eventually going to the church on Wednesday worship, Thursday bible study, Friday morning bible study and Friday night bible studies. It was through conversations with loving friends, patient leaders, and the music at worships that I was able to reconnect with God in a deeper capacity than I had ever felt before. God helped me get out of the dark place I was at in my life through an unexpected source, not the church I had always contained Him to after all, but my real-life friends, and real-life community. The Friday night bible studies took place at my best friend’s house down the street where we would stay up until 2am talking about theology, and the really tough questions I never dared to bring to my pastor like: “What if I don’t go to heaven?” or “What if there isn’t a heaven at all?” and “How can we be sure that Jesus really has saved us?” “How do I wrestle with the fact that I am not worthy being saved?”

It was only through asking the scariest questions I had, and trusting my community not to judge me, but to embrace me, that I was able to rely on the strong foundation I had built as a child and grow into the woman of God I am constantly trying to be today.

            Going into college, having a faith community was incredibly important to me because it was what had sustained me through high school years. During my freshman year of college, I tried Intervarsity, Cru, Newman Catholic, a couple different bible studies, and the Lutheran Student Association. Ultimately, I was able to find my community in LSA. This was because I was tired of pretending, as I did with my nondenominational friends, that I didn’t support LGBTQ+ rights, and I could no longer hold my tongue when it came to this issue. LSA was, and still is the only religious organization on this campus where I could proudly be an ally without fear of judgement or entering into conversations where LGBTQ+ people are considered anything less than God’s loved children.

The other thing that drew me to LSA was the food, because there is honestly no better way to share authentic conversations than over a steaming bowl of homemade soup.

So, I have been a part of LSA for the past three years, and I have now been on the leadership team for the past year, where I have been able to use my skills as a communicator and possibly an aspiring photographer to further our community, and further the community of God as the social media correspondent. You may have seen me taking pictures in worship a few times before!

In the end, my testimony is a story of how God was walking along with me my entire life through the different church communities I have been part of. He has been most present in the relationships I have, and the friends I have made especially here in this church as a part of LSA. 

Now throughout the rest of the service, I encourage you think about how God has been present in your life, and how your story ties into God’s story. During dinner tonight, there will be questions on the tables to guide discussion with each other.

Thank you for listening! Amen.

Senior Amber Cody serves as Social Media Coordinator for LSA, and on the Gracefully Welcome team. A Social Work and Spanish major at UW-EC, she's heading to UW-Madison to pursue a graduate degree in Social Work.