In this sermon we focus on the significance of the ashes. Along with reflecting on our mortality as humans in light of the eternity of God's presence, we consider how the ashes also remind us that we are also called to live our lives as gifts that God has given us. In particular we think about how the ashes as small particles remind us that everything is interconnected and sharing in the life of God's creation.

In this sermon we consider the social implications of the transfiguration of Jesus as it speaks to the call of non-violence and peacemaking. We talk about a recent AEI survey on evangelicals and violence, a nine-year-old girl pepper sprayed by police, a former Guantanamo prison inmate, and cancel culture. All in light of the mountain where Jesus is transfigured and what it has to do with liberation and making peace.

In this sermon we talk about the theme of service and what it means to serve the world. We set it in the context of Jesus’ teaching the disciples that the Son of Man came to serve and give his life as a ransom for many. We focus specifically on Jesus healing Peter’s mother-in-law. We unpack the significant of the words fever, raised, and served in that moment. Fever has social implications. Raised prefigured the resurrection. Serving is indicative of the resurrected life. We argue that serving the world means resisting death in all its form in society that move to diminish human life.

In this sermon we we draw on Jesus’ teaching with authority in the synagogue and (mostly) Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians about eating meat sacrificed to idols in order to talk about the question of authority, truth, reality, knowledge and information, love, the news, first century dining-out habits in Rome, a Christian conscience versus merely abiding by a list of dos and don’ts, biases versus ideologies (think streams of living water versus broken cisterns), and something you might do to help you discern the truth in any given moment. 

In this sermon we look at the story of Jonah. We consider the power dynamics between Jonah from Israel and the Nineveh, the capital of Assyria and the world’s superpower at the time. We talk about the connection between mercy and justice, and that reconciliation is not merely glossing over the wrongs but truly facing them. We see that the church’s witness, shaped by Jesus, is to demonstrate or make a spectacle of the powers in order to mirror back to them their own brokenness. It is to drag out burdens through the street in to show what this empire is doing to me (thank you very much David Benjamin Blower for this line). 

In this sermon we consider how Nathanael teaches us to address a cultural moment like ours in America on the heels of the capitol riots a couple weeks ago. We consider that part of what Epiphany is about is learning how to get Jesus right. We consider how truth and one’s perception of reality are on trial today and that we live in a culture of “truth decay”. We name, again, the confusion and co-opting of Christianity by right wing politics, particularly in white Evangelicals. We name both the acute and chronic forms of violence in American that existed previously and beyond the capitol riots. From Nathanael we consider what it means to be free from falsehood and deceit, what it means to be able to question truthfully, and the ability to be changed by a truth you did not previously believe.

In this sermon we reflect on the rioting and pillaging of the United States capitol on January 6 in light of the gospel reading on the first of Epiphany, which is the story about Herod and Magi. We consider the Magi’s ability to discern the truth and to resist the violence of dictators like Herod. We consider the confusion and co-opting of Christianity by right wing politics in America today. We name the delusion of white evangelical Christians in this culture. We reflect on the Tonto principle of Christian ethics (thank you Stanley Hauerwas) in order to address the confusion of a Christian identity versus an American one. 

In this sermon we talk about home and the new, we talk about baseball and knowing some again for the first time (thank you T.S. Elliot and Bart Giamatti), how God is both where we come from and where we are going, what it means to rest in God, how humans are the only creature that resist what they are created to be, and how God in Christ retells the story of creation but with a better ending.

In this sermon we look at the words Simeon and Anna spoke of Jesus as a baby. We consider what it means for an ending to also be a beginning, about how our lives contribute to what’s next, and having a fierce joy despite the evidence. And all of this with some help from Wendell Berry.

In this sermon we explore two aspects of the nativity scene: the manger and the shepherds. We consider the ordinariness of the shepherds, the eucharistic connections to the manger, of Jesus as God’s provision for the life of the world, why there are even donkeys in the nativity scene, and what Howard Thurman has to say about the work of Christmas. Merry Christmas!