This is going to be something of a slippery sermon. It’s going to be slippery because I’m going to be skating a very fine line when I talk about the difference between human rules and God’s commandments. I’ll make sure to warn you when I get to the slippery part, but first let’s talk about why this is our sermon topic today.
Continue reading “Human Precepts and God’s Commands”
I don’t often preach about the psalm, but today’s reading begins with a particularly beautiful verse that captured my imagination this Tuesday, my normal sermon writing day. I was planning on writing at the Westerly Library while my kids were at theatre camp, but the back rear tire of my car had a screw embedded in it, causing a slow leak. Thankfully the guys at Town Fair Tire could take my walk in. I grabbed a seat in the waiting area, under harsh fluorescent lights, trying to ignore America’s Funniest Videos on the TV. I sat there, hoping the Holy Spirit would nudge me toward some words to share with you. (Don’t worry, the tire place will become important in a few minutes; I’m not just talking about it to pad the length of this sermon.)
Continue reading “A Lantern to My Feet”
Yesterday was the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. I spent a long time this week deciding whether or not I should frame my sermon around this auspicious day or ignore it, considering that our faith as followers of Jesus reaches far beyond the borders of a single country. The more I pondered, the more convicted I became that I should talk about the 250th anniversary of the United States of America in order to draw some parallels between our country and our faith. Both our country and our faith derive from high ideals. Both our country and our faith have been elevated by visionaries. Both have been sullied by villains. And today, on the first day of Year 251, both remain unfinished. That’s what we’re going to talk about for the next ten minutes: the unfinished nature of our country and our faith.
Continue reading “Unfinished Country, Unfinished Faith”
Today we’re going to talk about spiritual gifts. I know we read the difficult story of the Binding of Isaac this morning, but I preached on it the last time it came up in the rotation, so I can point you to that sermon if you’d like. We’re going to talk about spiritual gifts this morning for two reasons. First, in today’s second lesson, St. Paul talks about God’s “free gift of eternal life.” Second, I’ve been preaching a lot recently about walking in this fractured and fractious world, trying to hold on to hope, grow in grace, do justice, and live in the liberating light of God’s love. The practice of discerning, cultivating, and sharing our spiritual gifts guides us in this walk with Jesus Christ. And so today, I’d like to talk about giftedness.
Continue reading “Charisma”
Today, I’d like to talk about Hagar. Specifically, I’d like to talk about Hagar’s vision and how God grants us the same capacity for faithful seeing that Hagar has. First, though, you might be wondering who Hagar is. Hagar is an Egyptian servant (or slave) in the household of Abraham and Sarah. When God promises Abraham (then called Abram) that God will give him countless descendants, the old couple don’t know what to do. They’ve never had children of their own, and now they’re way too old. Taking God’s promise into her own hands, Sarah (then called Sarai) offers her servant Hagar to Abraham, saying, “It may be that I shall obtain children by her.” (If this sounds eerily like The Handmaid’s Tale, it is.)
Continue reading “The God Who Sees (updated)”
It has been about nine months since I preached a sermon about hope, so I think we’re due for one today. Hope is one of those slippery theological concepts because true, enduring hope differs from the more common Pollyanna-ish, reality-defying hope. But since we more often encounter the Pollyanna-ish hope, such a watered down version of hope tends to creep to the forefront of our minds. St. Paul, however, describes a much more hard-won hope, one that begins in suffering. And that’s the hope we’re going to talk about today. Also, a little bit of Calvin and Hobbes, but we’ll get to that in a minute or two.
Continue reading “Hope Does Not Disappoint Us”
Today is our Youth Sunday at St. Mark’s, and to celebrate we invited the Godly Play kids to ask me any questions they desired. We collected a list of twelve questions, ten of which are autobiographical in nature. We’ll run through those quickly. The last two are absolute theological doozies, so we’ll spend the bulk of this sermon tackling those two. Here we go with the first ten.
Continue reading “How Old is God? (and other questions)”
At the end of his second letter to the church in Corinth, St. Paul writes these memorable words of blessing: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” As we celebrate the Holy Trinity today, I’d like to focus on the three words that Paul associates with this fundamental truth of Creation: grace, love, and communion.
Continue reading “Grace, Love, Sharing”
One of the most powerful words in the English language is the first person plural pronoun “We.” That’s what we are going to talk about today on this day when celebrate the birth of the church and baptize a child into this wonderful part of God’s household. We’re going to talk about the power of collaboration and how our community of encouragement, togetherness, and mutual support is a prophetic enterprise in a world of increasing fracture and isolation.
Continue reading “Collaborators”
I didn’t preach yesterday, so for today’s post I decided to share with you what I said at the delegates’ assembly for the new faith-based community organization I have been a part of building for the last four years. This meeting, which happened about two weeks ago, included choosing of issues and choosing a name. We chose “SAIL,” which stands for the Southeast Alliance for Interfaith Leadership. I am so excited to help launch this organization publicly in the fall. I had the job at this meeting to talk about the “why” behind our organizing. Here’s what I said, written in partnership with our lead organizer Pat Speer.
Continue reading “Why Do We Need to Organize?”
Where the Wind... 