Second on the Mount

John 15:12-17

Sermon by Dr. George C. Anderson from Confirmation Sunday, January 11, 2026.

"What can be shocking today is when realize that Jesus wants us to be his friend. The kind of friend who speaks for him, acts on his behalf, and bears his love into the world even when it is uncomfortable, inconvenient, or risky. It means going to the places he went, welcoming the people he welcomed. It means not embarrassing his reputation by speaking and acting in selfish, cruel, unkind, or prejudicial ways and then pretending that this is what Jesus would do.

"I want you to think about that, because Jesus is asking you to be his friend."

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Colossians 3:1-17

*Sermon title comes from James K. A. Smith’s book, You Are What 

Sermon by the Rev. Elizabeth N.H. Link from Sunday, January 4, 2026.

"Friends, we worship today at the beginning of a new year. And we do so in anxious and uncertain days – days when many voices compete for our allegiance, our attention, and our trust. Knowing this, may we be a community that helps one another notice what we’re swimming in, and gently points one another back to Christ. May we be a community that bears with one another when it’s hard, that forgives when it would be easier to walk away, that sings the songs of Zion together, especially in a foreign place, until they begin to sound more familiar than the noise around us."

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Matthew 25:31-46

Sermon by the Rev. Ben Brannan from the First Sunday of Christmas, December 28, 2025.

"There is a temptation to sentimentalize the Christmas season—to wrap it in nostalgia and soft lighting and comforting music. But Jesus won’t let us do that because Christmas has consequences. Christmas, at its heart, is the declaration that God has chosen to be found not in power, but in presence. Not in domination, but in dignity. Not in abstraction, but in flesh and blood. If God has truly taken on human flesh, then every human body matters. Every person is an image bearer. Every life carries divine weight.

"The Word became flesh—and that flesh looks like you and me and the neighbor who needs help today. This is not an easy truth. It disrupts our assumptions about who is deserving and who is not. It challenges the narratives we tell ourselves about poverty, incarceration, addiction, immigration, and illness. Jesus does not ask us to decide whether the person who is hungry earned their hunger or the person in prisoner earned their sentence. He simply says, 'That’s where I am.'"

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Luke 2:1-20, John 1

Sermon by Dr. George C. Anderson from Christmas Eve, December 24, 2025.

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Luke 1:26-38, I John 4:7-12

Part IV of the Advent Sermon Series "Once Upon an Advent"

Sermon by the Rev. Elizabeth N.H. Link from the Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 21, 2025.

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Isaiah 35:1-10, Luke 2:8-20

Sermon by the Rev. Ben Brannan from the Third Sunday of Advent, December 14, 2025.

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Isaiah 9:2-7, Luke 3:1-6

Sermon by Dr. George C. Anderson from the Second Sunday of Advent, December 7, 2025.

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Isaiah 11 (selected verses), Luke 1 (selected verses)

Part I of the Advent Sermon Series "Once Upon an Advent"

Sermon by the Rev. Elizabeth N.H. Link from the first Sunday of Advent, November 30, 2025.

"No matter where we are or how we feel this Advent Sunday, God is still telling the same story:

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Luke 23:33-43

Sermon by the Rev. Ben Brannan from Christ the King Sunday, November 23, 2025.

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II Corinthians 1:3–7

Sermon by Dr. George C. Anderson from Sunday, November 16, 2025.

• "Sometimes encouragement looks like holding someone steady when they cannot hold steady themselves.

• "Sometimes it looks like absorbing the angry words of another without firing back—letting them sit with what they said without the comfort of your having said worse.

• "Sometimes it looks like sitting in a hospital room and saying nothing because nothing can be said that will help.

• "Sometimes it looks like offering a small word of support that helps another keep going during a very bad day.

• "And sometimes it looks like being the one person who doesn’t walk away when others do.

"This is the ministry Paul is naming—the ministry of presence that draws its strength from the God who is present with us. The God who in Jesus Christ stepped into our sorrow and our joy, into our failures and our hope, into our living and even into our dying."

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