April 16, 2023 - The Second Sunday of Easter

Lectionary readings

Risen Lord, help us to receive the life-giving and life-changing gift of your love. Amen.

            Grace – the unearned, lavish, and abundant gift of God’s love towards us. I preach about and talk about grace a lot. There are different words that we can use to describe what grace is all about: there are aspects of peace, mercy, justice, hope, and belonging that are embedded in grace. But at its core, grace is a description of God’s love. God loves us not because we are particularly loveable or deserving, but because God is love and love loves to love. And so God loves us and wants us to abide and flourish in this love. Grace is the one-word way of conveying what Christians mean by love.

April 9, 2023 - Easter Sunday

Lectionary Readings

Risen Lord, help us to find ourselves hidden in your love. Amen.

            In the name of Jesus, welcome to each and every one of you. There’s nothing quite like an Easter morning and it fills my heart with joy to see each of you this morning. I hope and pray that your presence here is a gift to you – that you feel welcome in this place of beloved community and that you know God’s abundant love for you.

April 8, 2023 - Easter Vigil

O God of all time and space, be with us on this most holy night in which we are surrounded by the glory, grace, and wonder of Jesus’ Resurrection. Amen.

            This is the night that rings out with the notes of the same old song of God’s glory, grace, and wonder. And when I say that it’s the “same old song,” that is not at all a bad thing. In a world in which so many things are passing away, it is good to have something that abides, and that is what this night is about.

April 8, 2023 - Holy Saturday

Lectionary Readings

Help us to wait in faith, hope, and love, O Lord. Amen.

Throughout Holy Week, the sermons have focused on the Cross. And, originally, my plan was for that series to culminate and conclude yesterday, on Good Friday. By Holy Saturday, the cross has been endured and it now stands empty, having served its purpose as our attention shifts to the tomb. But as I was preparing this sermon, I couldn’t leave the cross behind; or rather, the cross still has more to say.

April 7, 2023 - Good Friday

Lectionary Readings

Gracious God, help us to follow your way of the cross which is the way of life. Amen.

            Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us. St. Paul wrote those words in a letter to the Corinthians and we know them from our Eucharistic celebrations. On Good Friday, those words take on an even deeper resonance as we consider Jesus’ death as the lamb of God who takes away the Sin of the world. This Holy Week, the sermons have been focusing on different ways of interpreting and understanding the cross of Christ. Today, as the cross is on full display, we consider the cross through the lens of Passover.

April 6, 2023 - Maundy Thursday

Lectionary Readings

Gracious God, help us to follow your way of the cross which is the way of life. Amen.

            My favorite type of movies are psychological thrillers. Movies like The Usual Suspects, Inception, Memento, or Interstellar all have a twist at the end that force us to go back and reinterpret everything that we had assumed about the plot of the movie. The same thing is true of the end of the Chronicles of Narnia series – the final chapter makes us reconsider the whole story. Well, the story of the God of Israel belongs in the category of psychological thriller in that sense.

April 5, 2023 - Holy Wednesday

Lectionary Readings

Gracious God, help us to follow your way of the cross which is the way of life. Amen.

            Perhaps you’ve heard the expression after asking for directions, “Well, you can’t get there from here.” Indeed, sometimes given our starting point, there doesn’t seem to be a way to get to our destination. For example, by car, I can’t just start driving and end up in France. Or, given my age, there’s no amount of training or practice that will ever lead to me playing tennis in the tournament at Wimbledon. We can’t always get there from here.

April 4, 2023 - Holy Tuesday

Lectionary Readings

Gracious God, help us to follow your way of the cross which is the way of life. Amen.

This Holy Week, we continue to consider different ways of approaching the cross, as it is something like a gem that shimmers differently depending on how the light hits it. Tonight, by focusing on the reading from First Corinthia

April 3, 2023 - Holy Monday

Lectionary Readings

Gracious God, help us to follow your way of the cross which is the way of life. Amen.

            In this week we call “holy,” the sermons are focusing on different aspects of the cross, which stands both at the center and the end of this week just as it stands at the center and the end of our faith. In each of these sermons, I’ll consider a different aspect of the cross with the aim of having a deeper appreciation for its beauty, power, and glory when we stand under its shadow on Good Friday.

April 2, 2023 - Palm Sunday

Lectionary Readings

Gracious God, help us to follow your way of the cross which is the way of life. Amen.

            Holy Week is a week for contemplation. This is a time when followers of Jesus reimmerse ourselves in the story of the salvation of the world. This week, we spend more time in prayer, more time at church, more time fasting so that we are more ready to receive the joys of Easter. If you’ve never done a full Holy Week, I invite and urge you to do as much as you can this year. We have liturgies every day this week, and, to be clear, we don’t have to. We could do just Maundy Thursday, one Good Friday liturgy, and go right to Easter Sunday.