“When you were a young kid, did you ever stand on your head? My sisters and

I would have competitions, and we’d laugh and giggle at how funny the world

looked upside-down, as the trees grew down, not up. You’d have your feet

raised toward the blue lawn of the sky. You’d get a little dizzy, but the

world was so interesting from that vantage point. You saw things

differently. In the Sermon on the Mount—or the Sermon on the Plain, as Luke

has it—Jesus invites his hearers to stand on their heads, to see the world

upside-down.”

“In the race of life, we are all running together as one team in pursuit of one crown of victory. When we think about the communion of saints, when we think about the exemplars of Christian life, we often focus on the top one or two finishers in the field. But the shape of the race, our success or failure as a team, is determined as much by the slower runners in the middle and the back of the pack as it is by Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King kicking down the home straight for the win.“ Greg preaches on the twentieth Sunday after Pentecost.

Lectionary Readings: Joel 2:23-32; Psalm 65; 2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18; Luke 18:9-14

“If you really want to get to know someone, you can ask them about times

they felt small, or guilty, or loved so much that they at once felt fully

alive and fully unworthy. Or you could ask them about failure and success

and how the meaning of those words have, like the color of the leaves,

changed through the seasons of their lives. But maybe the question that

would take you deepest would be a question that you hadn’t thought to ask:

‘Can you tell me about your unanswered prayers?’”

“If you were to spend much time with the world’s richest, savviest business minds, you would likely be talking about getting into space. What the Internet provided for so many in entrepreneurial exploration, they want to pass along to another generation through space travel. But ultimately, like Columbus, the motive casts a long shadow over the expedition. The only way out of our mess, so the rich and smartest tell us, is to get out of this world.” Garrett preaches on the eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost.

Lectionary Readings: Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Psalm 66:1-11; 2 Timothy 2:8-15; Luke 17:11-19

“Our pets reveal what we hope and long to be true, for us and for the world around us. It’s not just the existential longing of poets and philosophers; it’s a longing made real and tangible through flesh and fur; slobbering tongue and contented cat’s purr. Through them, the walls in our lives, in our hearts, slowly begin falling horizontal and it is we who are tamed, made gentle, by love; it is we who find ourselves capable of deeper communion.“ Garrett preaches on the seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost at our Blessing of the Animals.

“I don’t know whether the fact that the rich man knows Lazarus’s name should be the last nail in the coffin of his condemnation or the first sign of a possible transformation. I don’t know that the rich man, simply by knowing Lazarus’s name, would ever have grown to care for him in that way that he should. But I do know that if he never saw Lazarus’s wounds, never heard his growling stomach, never got proximate enough to know his name—he would never have grown to care for him at all.” Greg preaches on the parable of Lazarus and the rich man on the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost.

Lectionary Readings: Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15; Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16; 1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31

“I grew up a child of the '90s, which means I grew up watching the Home Alone movies. From an early age, I had the deep fear that I was going to star in a real-life Home Alone movie. And so, like Macauley Caulkin, I became a master of the booby trap. I would construct these elaborate traps with the primary unit of armor being a rubber band. I recalled this childhood fascination this past week as I found myself yet again thinking about Jesus’ teachings about money and possessions.” Garrett preaches on the parable of the dishonest manager.

Lectionary Readings: Jeremiah 8:18-9:1; Psalm 79:1-9; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13

“The image of the Good Shepherd is a nice one, but it turns out that not all lost sheep want to be found. It seems nice in theory to be found; but in reality nobody wants to be found out. Nobody wants to have their deepest secrets and their most hidden thoughts discovered. Nobody wants to be exposed for who they really are. God, of course, has always already found us out. And yet God’s response is not the destruction promised in Jeremiah, but the joy revealed in Jesus.” Greg preaches on the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin.

Lectionary Readings: Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Psalm 14; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10

“Perhaps that’s the question that Jesus gives to the crowd: ‘What are you carrying? How’s that working for you?’ And tucked within it is an invitation to carry the cross. Perhaps Jesus knows that we, as humans, don’t have a choice about carrying things. But maybe we do have a choice about what we carry.”

Lectionary Readings: Jeremiah 18:1-11; Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17; Philemon 1-21; Luke 14:25-33

“Idolatry isn’t as hot a topic for us today as it was in Jeremiah’s time. I doubt that very many of us in this room have been tempted more than once a twice, for example, to sacrifice a bull before a statue of the god Baal. But the problem with idolatry isn’t really a problem of how you worship; it’s a problem of what you worship, what it is that you consider to be most worthy. And in that sense, I do think that there are idols that we worship in our society today.” Greg preaches on Labor Day weekend on the twelfth Sunday after Pentecost.

Lectionary Readings: Jeremiah 2:4-13; Psalm 81:1, 10-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14