Sermons from St. Anne's in-the-Fields episodes:

• June 28, 2020Pentecost 4 - Greg Johnston (6/28/20)

  “God had promised that Abraham would be the ancestor of many nations—and

  indeed, in some ways he’s become the spiritual ancestor of all the

  Abrahamic traditions, of all Jews and Christians and Muslims, four billion

  of us in the world today. And yet at this point in the story, that great

  lineage hangs by a thread. Abraham nearly kills his own son, nearly cutting

  off God’s promise to create a great people, nearly ending the story of the

  great love affair between God and the people of God before it’s really

  begun.”

  ...more

  

  ---

• June 21, 2020Pentecost 3 - Garrett Yates (6/21/20)

  “I remember sitting with a woman in the transept of the church an hour or

  so before the service one Sunday. She was bent over a little and weary, and

  I could tell that she was out of breath. She was sweating a little bit too.

  ‘Ma’am, is everything okay?’ She went on to tell me about how her husband

  had decided, after twenty-seven years, that he’d had enough… ‘I took the

  long way here this morning to your church, through the park, and here I am.

  To be honest, I’m just looking for a little peace.’ … I’ll never forget

  her, and I thought about her this week: out of breath and looking for

  peace. It feels a little bit like our society right now.”

  ...more

  

  ---

• June 14, 2020Pentecost 2 - Garrett Yates (6/14/20)

  “Back in 2008, Tania Luna founded Surprise Industries as a way to tap into

  our culture’s yearning to be surprised. For a small fee, Luna’s company

  would surprise you or your family or your company. You just paid a little

  monthly subscription fee, and you literally have no clue what will happen.

  Surprise Industries might show up at your workplace and unleash a hundred

  puppies. Or they might tee up a flash mob, or bring a circus act to your

  doorstep… Surprises, Luna discovered, have a paradoxical feature. They tell

  us we were wrong; yet paradoxically, we still yearn for this.”

  ...more

  

  ---

• June 07, 2020Trinity Sunday - Greg Johnston

  “Today is Trinity Sunday, the Sunday after Pentecost, when good preachers

  give bad sermons and bad preachers give you a blow-by-blow of Athanasian

  Creed. For my part, I’m stuck this week on the words of the Second Council

  of Constantinople in 553: ‘One of the Trinity was crucified in the flesh.’

  In other words, to believe in the Holy Trinity—to say that Jesus is God—is

  to say that when Jesus of Nazareth suffered and died on the Cross, God

  suffered and died on the cross. And so it is that ‘theologically speaking,’

  as the great American theologian James Cone writes in his final work, The

  Cross and the Lynching Tree, ‘Jesus was the “first lynchee.”’”

  ...more

  

  ---

• May 31, 2020Pentecost - Ellen Jennings (5/31/2020)

  “Although we long to be in each other’s homes, we do find common healing in

  God’s home - the outdoors. That is where we can find relief right now… and

  it is outdoors that different people can find the different gifts of the

  spirit - some are awed, some find counsel in walks with friends, some study

  nature and build their knowledge on family hikes, some share wisdom about

  planning a vegetable first garden, some seek understanding of their own

  muddled, frustrated thoughts sitting on the front steps at midnight with

  their mom, some find that the holiness of our sanctuary is also any space

  outside where they can see other people again, strangers or family or

  neighbors, kept safer by open air, wind, the Holy Spirit.”

  ...more

  

  ---

• May 24, 2020The Ascension - Garrett Yates (5/24/20)

  “If you were to look up depictions of the Ascension, and if you were to

  scroll past a lot of the pictures of Jesus levitating upwards like Buzz

  Lightyear, you might come across a strange image with two feet at the top

  of the icon, rising over the heads of the disciples, dangling down.

  Usually, you just see Christ’s ankles, hanging over the scene like a

  chandelier, and his feet are arched down like wings, splayed apart… It’s a

  strange scene, these disciples around their sacred object, in the midst of

  worship. Not beholding the Trinity, not behold Jesus reigning in power;

  lost in wonder, love, and praise, as they stare at a pair of wounded feet.”

  ...more

  

  ---

• May 17, 2020Easter 6 - God in the Mess - Greg Johnston (5/17/20)

  “The Epicurean gods are absent and quiet, and you should be too. The Stoic

  God is present, but loveless, and you should be too. And then here comes

  Paul crashing into the Roman world with a message about a very different

  kind of God. For Paul and for most other Jews, God was not the petty and

  capricious superhuman of Greek folk religion, nor was God the

  indifferent-but-happy Creator of the Epicureans or the universal Mind of

  the Stoics. God comes to us in the world, but God is not of the world. God

  interacts with us, but God doesn’t act like us.“

  ...more

  

  ---

• May 10, 2020Easter 5 - Margaret Bullitt-Jonas (5/10/20)

  We welcomed the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas to lead our 9am Forum with a

  talk titled "Rooted & Rising: Exploring Sacred Activism” and to preach at

  our 10am service on emotional and spiritual resilience in a time of climate

  emergency.

  ...more

  

  ---

• May 03, 2020Easter 4 - The Shadow of Death - Greg Johnston (5/3/20)

  “We are, all of us, ‘walking through the valley of the shadow of death’;

  not just now, but always, every day of our human lives. It’s a beautiful

  image for a grim situation. Imagine a flock of sheep wandering through the

  Judean countryside. These aren’t the happy green hills like the Emerald

  Isle or your old Windows XP background, but the dry and rocky hills east of

  Jerusalem, where the mountains roll down to the Jordan River and the Dead

  Sea. Picture the flock walking down into a deep valley, a dry river-bed, in

  the late afternoon, as it suddenly becomes dusk.”

  ...more

  

  ---

• April 26, 2020Easter 3 - The Road to Emmaus - Garrett Yates (4/26/20)

  “Emmaus can be the one-click purchase, or the pint of ice-cream, the ‘one

  more drink,’ or the secret lusts or fantasies of the heart. Here is one

  thing to note from the outset: while the disciples are on their way to

  intoxicate their sorrows at the Comfort Pub, Jesus doesn’t condemn them.He

  doesn’t say, ‘why are you going there? Why are you trying to mend your

  heart with that which can’t mend?’ He doesn’t say any of that. He joins

  them on their way; as they guiltily slouch towards Emmaus, he accompanies

  them.”

  ...more

  

  ---