May 17, 2020 - Easter 6A

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God, in whose love we live, and move, and exist. Amen.

            What is the story that you live your life by? You know, what’s the story that you tell yourself to get through the daily grind, to make yourself get out of bed in the morning, to motivate yourself to do things that you don’t really want to do, to find hope in this pandemic? In a great book called Seculosity that I’ve mentioned before, the author says that religion is shorthand for whatever that story is. Religion is the thing that focuses our desires, ranks our priorities, and determines what we say “yes” and “no” to. And any story that you live by is a religion in this sense. So it’s not a question of which box do you check off for “religious affiliation,” it’s a question of your guiding principles and which gods you worship.

April 26, 2020 - Easter 3A

Lectionary Readings

In the name of the Risen Jesus. Amen.

            The Bible is full of wonderful and inspiring stories, and this one that Luke presents to us this morning, often called “The Road to Emmaus,” has got to be near the top of the list. For me, what’s so grand about this story is that it’s both every day and spectacular. It includes such normal things being on a commute and eating a meal and such an extraordinary thing as encountering the Risen Jesus. It’s easy to put ourselves into this story, and so for the sermon this morning that’s what I want to do – to consider this story not from the outside, but let’s get into it and let the Holy Spirit guide our imaginations that we, too, might encounter Jesus through it.

April 19, 2020 - Easter 2A

Lectionary Readings

In the name of the Risen Lord. Amen.

            Eastertide greetings to you all. I pray that you all are continuing to be safe and sane during this difficult time. And while we can’t physically gather with one another, I am so incredibly thankful that, through our prayers and with the aid of technology, we can still gather as the faithful people of God and be connected in this way. This morning, instead of primarily focusing on one of the Scriptural texts that were read, I want to focus on a liturgical text – the Pascha nostrum, which is the Latin title for “Christ our Passover.”

April 12, 2020 - Easter Sunday

Lectionary Readings

In the name of the Risen Lord. Amen.

            Alleluia, Christ is risen! I can’t tell you all how much I miss hearing “The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!” come echoing back at me. I miss you all. I miss the sundresses and the seersucker suits, the kids hopped up sugar from Easter candy, the college students returning home, having a church full of flowers, brass instruments, and most importantly – you. This is an Easter unlike any other in Church history, as the vast majority of responsible Christians around the world are not in church this morning. And that has to be acknowledged. I won’t pretend that this Easter is normal, because I never want empty churches to be the norm. The women at the tomb experienced both fear and joy, and so we have permission to feel both of those as well. We can be afraid of the Coronavirus while still being joyful that this is Easter.

April 11, 2020 - Easter Vigil

Lectionary Readings (and Daniel 3)

In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            We’ve arrived at the pinnacle not only of Holy Week, not only of all liturgies of the Church, but to the very pinnacle of all Creation. As we heard in the Exsultet, “This is the night when God led the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt… This is the night when all who believe in Christ are delivered from sin… This is the night when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the grave… How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined and humanity is reconciled to God.” This is the night. The Easter Vigil is the pinnacle of time and space because it is asynchronous with our understanding of time. By God’s sovereign grace, we are in a sacramental sort of time where God’s salvation is absolutely present to us. My role in this sermon is to serve a tour guide of sorts. Tonight’s liturgy and Scripture readings do all of the work, I merely will be pointing them out so that what becomes apparent is the legacy of God’s salvation.

March 29, 2020 - Lent 5A

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

            Jesus is the Resurrection. He says so in his own words in this morning’s passage from John. This passage about the raising of Lazarus is situated here, on the Fifth Sunday in Lent, because it is the final of the seven signs performed by Jesus in John, and the grandest. Next Sunday, we turn to Holy Week, so this event foreshadows Jesus’ own Resurrection. This incredible event, the raising of a dead man, also becomes the turning point for those who oppose Jesus, as this event is what leads them to commit to the plan to put him to death. But, by God’s grace, this Scripture passage also speaks to us in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic.

April 28, 2019 - Easter 2C

Lectionary Readings

Be with us, O Lord, for if you are with us, nothing else matters; and if you are not with us, nothing else matters. Amen.

            At the center of who we are, what we believe, and why we gather on Sunday morning is the Holy Eucharist. As we gather to share in the Lord’s Supper, we enter into a rich and deep story and set of symbols which point us towards the majesty and salvation of God. It has been said that "the Church makes the Eucharist and the Eucharist makes the Church,” and indeed, coming together to share in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup is not only our identity, but also our purpose. Put another way, others have said that the Eucharist is the “source and summit” of the Christian life. Everything that we do as Christians flows out of the Eucharist and returns back to this Great Thanksgiving.

April 21, 2019 - Easter Sunday

Lectionary Readings

In the name of the Risen Lord ☩ Amen.

            What a joy it is to be with you all on this most festive and holy morning! Every Easter is special, but this one seems a bit more grand than usual. This past Holy Week was a profound one and it really set the table for our celebration this morning. Having the brass quintet and full choir are amazing. The flowers are beautiful. And you all look absolutely fantastic in your Easter best. Easter is the epitome of what it means to be the Church, and am I am so glad that each and every one of you are here. Your presence makes our celebration that much more joyous. And I know some of you have traveled a good distance to be here this morning, I know some of you struggled to get your child to wear that clip-on tie, I know some of you are here only to make a family member happy. Thank you for the effort you put into being here, I pray that you are richly blessed through your participation in this Easter celebration.

November 2, 2018 - All Souls

O eternal Lord God, who holdest all souls in life: Give, we beseech thee, to thy whole Church in paradise and on earth thy light and thy peace; and grant that we, following the good examples of those who have served thee here and are now at rest, may at the last enter with them into thine unending joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

July 22, 2018 - Proper 11B

Lectionary Readings

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ☩ one God and mother of us all. Amen.

            You’ve probably heard the cliché “Good fences make good neighbors.” Maybe that’s true for some neighbors, but it simply doesn’t work when it comes to our faith. Good fences make terrible Christians. In the letter to the Ephesians, we heard this morning that “For Jesus is our peace; in his flesh he has made both Israel and Gentiles into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” The Greek actually says that Jesus “destroys the dividing portion of the fence.” You might know that the saying about good fences comes from a Robert Frost poem called “Mending Wall,” in which he makes the point that good fences do not actually make good neighbors. Frost writes “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” As we read in Ephesians, that something that doesn’t love a wall is called the Gospel.

April 29, 2018 - Easter 5B

Lectionary Readings

In the name of the Risen ☩ Lord. Amen.

            When it comes to Biblical passages about love, the most well-known is probably 1 Corinthians 13. You know, the one you’ve heard at nearly every wedding that you’ve ever been to: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious, or boastful, or rude.” And I have nothing against that passage, it’s a wonderful exploration of love. The passage that we heard today from the first epistle of John though is one that should be a part of our understanding of love, perhaps even more than the one from 1 Corinthians.

April 15, 2018 - Easter 3B

Lectionary Readings

In the name of the Risen ☩ Lord. Amen.

            Easter is, of course, at the center of our faith. In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul puts it clearly:  “If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain… If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins… If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” It’s true, the Resurrection is what animates our faith, undergirds our hope, and inspires our witness.

April 8, 2018 - Easter 2B

Lectionary Readings

In the name of the Risen ☩ Lord. Amen.

            The cardinal rule for preaching on Easter Sunday is “keep it simple.” So, last Sunday my point was essentially “Easter is God’s glorious and joyful joke.” The thing that you never want to do in an Easter sermon is to try to explain the Resurrection. For one, the Resurrection is beyond explanation, so any attempt to explain is going to fall flat, which is not what you want when you have a church full of people. And another reason for not explaining the Resurrection is that it turns the Resurrection into a historical event that people can either believe or not. It turns the Resurrection into an intellectual exercise instead of an experience of grace. Easter Sunday really is all about entering into the joy of Easter, not explaining it.

April 1, 2018 - Easter Day

Lectionary Readings

In the name of the Risen ☩ Lord. Amen.

            What a joy it is to see you all this morning in your Easter best. Easter is first and foremost a gift. It is the gift of new life from God and the joy that we have this morning is a gift as well. Each of you are a gift. It has been noted that the Resurrection is not an individual event that happened only to Jesus, but rather is the dawning of the new creation, of which we are all a part. Easter is a communal event because, by the grace and triumph of God’s love over the forces of sin and death, we are all raised to the new life of the Resurrection. So we are blessed beyond measure to have each of you with us this morning. By having more of the community of faith gathered here, we are that much closer to seeing the full grandeur of the Resurrection. In the name of the Risen Lord, welcome to each of you.

March 31, 2018 - Easter Vigil

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            This is the night. On this most blessed and holy evening, we encounter the fullness of all Christian liturgy. In the ancient church, people who were preparing for Baptism underwent an intense period of preparation, called the catechumenate. They learned about the faith before being baptized at the Easter Vigil. However, one thing that they did not learn about was the liturgy. Today, if you want to explore the faith, you can come and participate fully in our worship, you just don’t receive Eucharist until you are baptized. But in the ancient Church, the catechumens were dismissed after the prayers and did not ever see or learn about the Eucharist. And because Baptism happened once a year at the Vigil, and they were not yet baptized, they had never seen a Baptism or Easter Vigil.

April 30, 2017 - Easter 3A

Lectionary Readings

In the name of the Crucified and Risen Lord. Amen.

            If you were here last Sunday, you know that I wasn’t. I was on vacation and worshiped over at First Methodist, after all, the Wesley brothers were Anglican priests. I’ve taken the Sunday after Easter off for several years in a row now, and each Sunday after Easter the Gospel text is always the story of Jesus appearing to disciples, minus Thomas, who doesn’t, at first, believe that the Jesus is Risen. Since I haven’t preached on that text in several years, as I sat in a pew over at First Methodist and listened to a fine sermon by their pastor, I couldn’t help but have some ideas on how I would have approached that text. When I got home, I wrote down the ideas that came to me and came up with six different sermon themes based on that text.

April 16, 2017 - Easter

Lectionary Readings

In the name of the Risen Lord. Amen.

            As it is every Easter, my first word to you this morning is welcome. In the name of our Crucified and Risen Lord, welcome. As Martin Luther once said, “Our Lord has written the promise of Resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.” How right he was. It is a blessing to gather on a gorgeous day, in a beautiful church full of wonderful people in their Easter best to celebrate the Resurrection.

April 2, 2017 - Lent 5A

Lectionary Readings

Almighty God, may you guide us to seek your Truth: come whence it may, cost what it will, lead where it might. Amen.

            “Can these bones live?” “Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die - do you believe this?” These are questions of hope. Can we trust in something that seems impossible? Can we believe in something that seems to be contrary to our everyday experiences of death? Can we live our lives with a foundational story of abundance and life instead of one ruled by fear and death? This morning, that is question before us, can we be a people of hope?

May 8, 2016 - Easter 7C

Lectionary Readings

In the name of the Risen Lord. Amen.

            As Americans, freedom is in our cultural DNA. While freedom is something that most nations value, in the US we place a greater emphasis on it, with mottos such as “live free or die” and “give me liberty or give me death;” and the First Amendment focuses on the freedom of speech, religion, petition, assembly, and the press. But there are really two kinds of freedom, and when we confuse them, we miss the true import of freedom.

April 17, 2016 - Easter 4C

Lectionary Readings

In the name of the Risen Lord. Amen.

            Wasn’t Easter a magnificent day at St. Luke’s? The azaleas were in full bloom, the music was outstanding, the church was full of people, and we baptized three young girls. Easter was magnificent. Then Easter Monday came; and it’s not that Easter Monday was a particularly bad day, but it wasn’t quite a grand as Easter. On Easter we shouted with gusto the victory cry of “alleluia!” and we talked about how God conquered sin, death, pain, and evil in Jesus’ Resurrection. But then on Easter Monday, when we opened the newspaper or got on Facebook, we were reminded that our world is still full of sin, death, pain, and evil.