Finding Hope and Belonging in Changing Times
Rev. Heather Schoenewolf | November 8, 2026 | Twenty-Fourth Sunday After Pentecost
Scripture Readings: Psalm 145 and Jeremiah 29:4–12
What makes a place feel like home? Is it the building itself, the memories we carry, or the people who have shared our lives?
In her sermon “As Promised,” Rev. Heather Schoenewolf begins with affectionate memories of her grandparents’ house—a place filled with family gatherings, childhood adventures, and familiar comforts. When the house was sold after her grandmother’s death, she discovered an unexpected dimension of grief: losing a place that held so much of her family’s story.
That experience opens a reflection on belonging, change, and the enduring promises of God.
Living with Hope in Uncertain Times
In Jeremiah 29:4–12, the people of Israel find themselves far from home, exiled in Babylon. Their familiar world has been disrupted, and their sense of identity shaken.
Jeremiah offers a message that is both challenging and reassuring. Rather than promising an immediate return to the way things were, God calls the people to build houses, plant gardens, raise families, and invest in the future—even in unfamiliar circumstances.
As Rev. Heather explains:
“You need to do more than make it through the day. You need to live as those who have an assurance of a future.”
The promise isn't that life will remain unchanged. It's that God remains faithful and present through every season of change, grief, uncertainty, and joy.
A Church Formed by Place, Called Beyond It
Rev. Heather connects Jeremiah's message to the history of Community Presbyterian Church of Ben Avon. From the changing role of Woodland Church to the generations who have worshiped in the congregation's present building, CPCBA's story reflects both continuity and transformation.
Church buildings matter. They hold memories, bring people together, and help shape our faith. But the church's calling extends beyond its walls.
“The church of God cannot be bound to a singular place, but is built from heart to heart and spirit to spirit and action to action.”
We gather for worship to be formed by God's grace, then carry that formation into the world through compassion, justice, hospitality, and love.
A Question to Carry With Us
Rev. Heather closes by inviting us to consider how our church community has shaped our faith—and how God continues to work through us today.
As you watch the sermon or read the transcript, consider:
What places and communities have shaped your sense of belonging?
How might God be calling you to invest in hope, even amid uncertainty?
How can we carry the love we experience in Christian community into the world around us?
The hope God promises is not limited to a particular place or moment. It is a hope we are called to live out, wherever life takes us.
Watch the sermon below, and continue reading for the complete transcript.
Read the sermon: As Promised
God, we gather to learn all about you, that our lives might be formed and informed by your word and by your Spirit. We draw near to you, hoping to hear your good news so that we might put that news into action.
And so we pray that by the power of your Spirit, you will draw near to us; that as we approach your ancient word, we will be informed and formed by you. And may the words of my mouth and the meditation on all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, for you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
There are a few places that I dream about a lot, even though in my dreams they don’t often look like they did in real life.
I often dream of my grandparents’ house, 412 Marie Street, located in a small town just a few blocks back from the Monongahela River.
Now, there was a long, large picture window in my grandparents’ dining room, and I would stand on a little gray fuzzy stool and look out that window and wait for my cousins’ station wagon to pull up when we would gather for family meals.
And there was a first-floor bathroom. And this bathroom window we learned how to open from the outside so that my cousins and I could do many covert spy missions, as one does at their grandparents’ houses.
And there was a bedroom closet on the second floor that had not only a rail for hangers and a shelf for folding clothes, but an entire stairwell. And the stairwell led you up to the ceiling that opened into the attic that was above there.
I loved it there. I loved the smell of orange cookies and Palmolive dish soap and Marlboro cigarettes that greeted you when you walked in the door. I mean, we’re talking the ’70s and ’80s here. That’s like the fragrance.
I loved that the bedrooms were so big that my cousins and my sisters and I could make a big bunk room when we had a sleepover together.
And I loved that the sink in the kitchen had one of those little nozzles, those little hoses that you could use to spray off the dishes. And sometimes, hypothetically speaking, you could spray them out the kitchen window at your sisters or cousins when they were playing badminton in the backyard. That was like a nice added touch.
And I loved that the backyard of my grandparents connected to all of the backyards on the street, and that nobody cared if a gaggle of kids were running back and forth playing in all the yards.
After my grandma died, our family sold this home. And as I walked through the empty rooms of this space that had held so much of our family history, I realized that this was a part of grief that I hadn’t anticipated.
I hadn’t counted on losing place—a place that held so many of my stories and that connected me to the people who were mine.
My sense is that all of us who are seated here can think back on the stories of our lives and acknowledge that, for most of us, a sense of place is more than simply a location that you can type into Google Maps or the house number and street name that you can scratch on the front of a Christmas card envelope.
Place serves as the stage for our experiences, for the life that we live together. It’s where we gather and find connection and purpose and a sense of belonging.
Place is the vantage point that shapes our perspective as we look out into the world. And it’s the launching pad for all of the growth that we do as an individual and as a community.
Place helps make us us, doesn’t it?
Now, these familiar verses that I read just moments ago from the book of Jeremiah are addressed not just to an individual grieving the loss of a family home, but they are the prophetic words issued to an entire nation that is feeling displaced. You may notice the word “exile” surfaced in just these eight verses a number of times.
So the Babylonians had invaded Jerusalem. They had destroyed the temple, which was the locus for worship. The Babylonians had claimed power and sent the leaders and intelligentsia of the Jews into exile.
God’s people lost their sanctuary and their home. And as the words tell us, they lost more than just a place.
They lost a sense of identity. They lost a sense of purpose. They lost a sense of confidence that God was with them still.
Who were they without the house of worship their ancestors had built with their own hands? Who were they without the king that God had appointed? Who were they when they were strangers in a strange land or occupants of an occupied land?
And so Jeremiah speaks these words into a context with a truth that was hard for them to hear.
Unlike the false prophets that were all around them trying to tell them what they wanted to hear, Jeremiah says, “Uh-uh. Don’t listen to them.”
Jeremiah says, “This season of displacement and disease and disruption will stick around for some time. It will last generations.” We hear 70 years in our text for today. Babylon will retain power. Things won’t be what they were.
And Jeremiah assures them that God is still God. That God, who is the God of power and mercy and creation, the God who is love, the God who is guidance and wisdom, and all of the words that were listed in praise to God by the psalmist—God is still God, and God is still faithful and present.
And so Jeremiah says to the Jewish people, you have got to keep on living, to do the things that life demands even in an era of change and uncertainty.
But look more closely at what Jeremiah tells them.
Jeremiah says, “You need to build houses and plant gardens and get married and have kids and teach your kids how to get married and build their families. You need to do more than make it through the day.
“You need to live as those who have an assurance of a future.
“You need to live with your eye toward harvest time, with the birth, with the growth of many generations. You need to participate in a story of a God who is still at work in the world through us.”
They need to continue to receive the grace of a God who is, in fact, at work for their well-being. They need to still worship a God who assures them of a hope-filled future.
Now, as I stand here today, I say what pastors have told congregations for centuries or more: that the words of the prophet Jeremiah are not only the words to God’s people in an occupied land or a time of exile. They are God’s assurance to God’s people across time, and even to us too.
And whether the landscape in which we live our lives is one that reflects a current moment of confidence or uncertainty or joy or grief, in every place, at every time, in every season, God is our God and we are God’s people.
Whether the era is one of struggle or ease or grief or joy or clarity or disorientation—or all of the above at all the same time, Lord knows we’ve had moments like those, haven’t we?—God is the one who promises a future with hope.
And God calls us to invest in this vision so that God’s plans for God’s people can flourish.
Now, in the life of our own church history, we have known this to be true.
As the story of this place is told, we have claimed and heard a history that’s marked by different seasons of even changing place: of Woodland Church being a separate congregation, to becoming the program hub of this church’s life, to then its destruction during a fire during the filming of Lorenzo’s Oil.
We’ve heard the story of this building, of its construction and its renovation, becoming Community Church in Ben Avon and embracing yet another era in its future moving forward.
And we can think of the moments that led us to first step foot in this church.
My own first visit to this church was almost exactly 11 years ago today, when I was here to officiate the funeral—not the funeral, the wedding. Sorry.
The wedding of two people: one who had been a former youth worker here, and one who was the grandson of a family who had spent generations in this church, whose own grandparents were married here, and his grandparents before him.
All right, so back to the story here.
Whether we first got here through Wooden Ladder, or came to worship here back when the fellowship hall was still downstairs and not the current choir room, or whether we found our way to this place after moving to the community or looking for a church home that reflected the values of love and hospitality and mercy and inclusion and justice that we understand as God’s call, or whether we found our way here following a season of joy or grief—whatever it is that brought us here—as we gather in this space, we name that our story is marked with both a consistent yearning to feel God’s presence near and a desire to live into the hope that is ours through Christ.
We are reminded as we gather in this place that we are not only God’s people when we are here in these walls, but that when we gather here, we are formed and continually reformed over and over again by God’s grace.
God declares to us, as God has declared to God’s people across the millennia, that we belong to God and we are God’s people in the here and now of this space and time.
And as we step into the world living out God’s love, we are reminded that the church of God cannot be bound to a singular place, but is built from heart to heart and spirit to spirit and action to action, as God’s people invest in building God’s kingdom vision—not only here, but as we reach out into the world, enacting justice, caring for those who are vulnerable, extending mercy and compassion, and praising God in all seasons and all times.
The warmth of belonging, the shared sense of call, the resonance of our voices when we are here in this place allow us to not only be formed into the body of Christ, but to live as Christ’s body when we step out into this world.
So I invite you to consider: How has this place, this community, our shared sense of call formed you?
How has it informed your journey of faith? How has God been at work?
And how is God at work through us here and now?
May we continually praise the God who has formed us and informed us as a family of faith.
And may we live out God’s goodness and our call to love everywhere we go.
May it be so. Amen.
