Sermons from the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer

"And when Peter says. 'You are the Messiah, the son of the living God', he is remembering the promise of God, the rock from which he was hewn and the quarry from which he was dug. He is remembering Abraham and Sarah. He is remembering the promise that God has made. But he is not just saying you're the person who reminds us of those things. He is saying you are the living embodiment of our deliverance. You are the one who will draw us all into a place of deeper love and understanding of God, that you will reconcile us to the one who made us, and you will indeed reconcile us to each other. This is the promise of God's Messiah. and so there are two kinds of remembering even here. The memory of what God may have meant or could have been or what was once. But also the deeper sense of remembering, which is the living today and acting into the reality of what we know to be true about God."

"There's something we have the capacity to overlook in this story because of the disappointing nature of our interaction with Jesus today. It's the amount of transformation that occurs in this reading. It's the magnificent, powerful amount of change for good, for love, for healing that is happening. The movement towards justice and reconciliation that is occurring all throughout the reading we hear today. We're so attentive to disappointment that we're not acknowledging the powerful transformation that is present."

"We are all in the same boat. Perhaps with different concerns, different perspectives, feeling different levels of faith right now. But in the midst of these extraordinary times, despite physical distancing, we are bound together."

"From today's gospel lesson we learn that when we believe we

have something to offer we find that there is more than enough for everyone. Not

only enough but twelve leftover baskets full of all the little broken pieces. Broken

little pieces like us, gathered together, and taken to feed the next place of

hunger. "

"What is the one thing? That's a question that can challenge us at many times in our lives. Sometimes even daily in our lives. What is the one thing most important? The thing that we are called to do. The thing that gives our life meaning. What is the one thing you're willing to live and die for?"

"'No, you'll tear up some of the wheat, too.' Which either means that God's helpers are a little overzealous and are going to screw it up. Or, more likely, that there are times when the wheat and the weeds are indistinguishable. That they grow up side by side. That in our life, while we are waiting for this time of perfect justice and while we are even seeking to work for this time of perfect justice, are lived experience is one where the good and the evil are side by side. And not only that, but where we don't actually always know which is which."

"Hope is a Biblical reality. The beautiful vision of a longed-for future. The very real need to live into that hope and to not abandon it because we don't always know what's coming next. This is Biblical."

"As I think about the kinds of times in which we live I keep holding on to this quote from Oscar Wilde's De Prefundis "I see also that to Christ imagination was simply a form of love and that to him love was Lord in the fullest meaning of the phrase. " This idea that part of living the lives of love for which we are called is using our imaginations. Is looking at the world imaginatively."

"Being justified in God isn't about being better than anyone else. It's not about being more pure than someone else. It's not about being more Godly. It's about living for God. It's about giving yourself to something greater."

"Our country has, through its whole history, chosen some people to value less than a sparrow. And so, our gospel for today has not been true for them. While they are valued by God more than the sparrows, our country has not valued them more than the sparrows. And so huge numbers of people in our country and around the world have taken their anger and their frustration and their mourning to the streets, because their hearts have broken. For many of them, their hearts have broken again. And so, their mourning and their anger has poured out into the streets. They are telling us what it's like to be valued less than the animals.

We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do as Christians, as Americans, to make sure that this gospel for today is true for all people. That everyone, when asked, "Aren't you worth more than many sparrows?", can know that the answer is unequivocally, "yes"."