Category: Sermons

Mercy Wild

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Sermon for Sunday, December 20, 2020 || Advent 4B || Luke 1:26-38

Last year, my children got really into singing Christmas carols. We had the Pentatonix Christmas albums on repeat pretty much all of Advent. The Pentatonix are a high energy a cappella group, and their version of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” opens one of their albums. It’s a really catchy track and it gets stuck in your head. It got stuck in my then five-year-old son’s head a lot. And he would walk around the house singing it. But he didn’t have all the words just right. He sang the first few lines correctly; you know, “Hark! The herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the newborn king.’” But then he would sing, “Peace on earth and mercy wild.”

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Sent by God (or Bible Hero Syndrome)

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Sermon for Sunday, December 13, 2020 || Advent 3B || John 1:6-8, 19-28
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Did you know that you have been sent by God? It’s true. We don’t often think about this reality because our lives stumble down winding roads on their way to various intermediate destinations that we might not even be aware of when we arrive at them. That last sentence was itself a circuitous adventure. But I really mean this. Each one of us, God has sent. Here. Now. This is not an ego thing. This is not someone claiming to be “God’s Gift” because he thinks he is “all that and a bag of chips,” as we used to say. No. This is the Gospel truth. God has sent each of us for a purpose that is written on our hearts, just waiting for our passion to speak it to the world.

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Weightlifting

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Sermon for Sunday, December 6, 2020 || Advent 2B || Isaiah 40:1-11

I hate running. I hate it. Unless running is happening in the context of a soccer game, then it is far down the list of things I want to do. Still, in the fall of 2019, Leah and I committed to going to the gym, and since I didn’t know anything about the machines or the free weights, I spent my gym time running on a treadmill. I didn’t exactly dread my workouts, but I sure didn’t look forward to them either. I spent all winter running three miles three times a week in order to be ready for the Mystic Irish 5K. Well, of course it was canceled at the beginning of the pandemic, and after that I lost what little motivation I had. Thankfully, Leah had just begun a new weight-lifting regimen using a book recommended by a friend. I watched her lifting some makeshift weights (the YMCA was closed by that point), and it actually looked fun. I decided to try it too, and so we purchased a really neat set of free weights that can size from five pounds all the way up to 50 pounds.

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Author-ity

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Sermon for Sunday, November 22, 2020 || Reign of Christ A || Ephesians 1:15-23
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When I first started writing novels, I did not plan for writing fiction to become one of my primary spiritual disciplines. I had no idea my novels would help me better envision God’s relationship to all of creation. And I definitely did not expect my hours and hours and hours of fantasy world-building would grant me a deeper understanding of what we celebrate today, the Reign of Christ.

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1,142 Thank Yous

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Sermon for Sunday, November 8, 2020 || Proper 27A || Matthew 25:1-13

I spent Election Day saying “thank you” to people, and it completely changed me. Going into November 3rd, I was a ball of raw nerves and tension and indigestion and fear. And while much of my tension remains, I found myself breathing a little easier despite the lack of immediate electoral clarity. I was even able to manage a four-hour chunk of sleep on Election Night. I had been praying for the election – for safety, especially, and for the process to run its course smoothly. I had been praying for those who are most vulnerable in our society, whose lives change more dramatically than mine does depending on who is in power. I had been praying for myself, for sleep, for peace, for patience. And still I was a ball of tension going into last Tuesday.

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The Upside Down

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Sermon for Sunday, November 1, 2020 || All Saints A || Matthew 5:1-12
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There are many ways to describe the overarching narrative of the Bible, the connective tissue that weaves through the many and varied voices and genres that make up the library of our Holy Scriptures. One theme describes God’s love and grace restoring all of creation back to God. Another tells a family story and invites all who read it to share in that story. A third way of viewing the thrust of the biblical narrative is what I’d like to focus on today. This third way sees our holy texts speaking to an upside down world – speaking God’s yearning for justice and peace in order to empower people to partner with God to turn the upside down world right side up.

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The Tinker and the Prince (A Fairy Tale Sermon)

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Sermon for Sunday, October 25, 2020 || Proper 25A || Matthew 22:34-46
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I’ve never done this before, but for today’s sermon, I wrote a fairy tale about the great commandment to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Here it is.

Once upon a time there was a young prince who had everything he could possibly desire and never spared a thought for anyone but himself. As his father, the king, lay dying, the young prince sat by his bedside so he would know the moment that he (the prince) would become king. The dying king was a just and loving sovereign, and he lamented that his indulgence had led his son down the lonely path of selfishness. So the king called upon her grace, the archbishop, who had the honor of crowning the new monarch upon the king’s death.

The king said to her, “Take my crown and remove the three jewels that adorn it. Only when my son shall fill those three settings with ornaments of his own shall you crown him king.”

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Prayer and Anxiety

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Sermon for Sunday, October 18, 2020 || Proper 24A || Exodus 33:12-23
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Today I’d like to talk about prayer and anxiety. You can probably figure out why these things are on my mind since we are less than three weeks from a presidential election, cases of covid-19 are spiking in our county, millions of people are out of work, many are on the verge of eviction, and the governor of Michigan was recently the target of an attempted kidnapping by a group by domestic terrorists. And that’s like ten percent of the stuff I wanted to put in this introduction. Whew. Deep breath.

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Three Kinds of Power (With a Lot of Help from Star Wars)

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Sermon for Sunday, October 4, 2020 || Proper 22A || Philippians 3:4b-14

Today, I want to talk about power. Like the word ‘love,’ we use the word ‘power’ to mean several things, which makes any discussion about power challenging. I’m going to move through three understandings of power, and I hope you will stick with me because the third one is the one we are aiming for. Also, I’m going to use Star Wars to illustrate the three types of power. (I’ve only used one Star Wars reference this year, so I’m well within my limits.)

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I Don’t Know (Third Base!)

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Sermon for Sunday, September 27, 2020 || Proper 21A || Matthew 21:23-32

There are a lot of contenders for most famous comedy routine of all time. There’s Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch or perhaps, “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!” There’s the cheeseburger skit from the early days of Saturday Night Live. There’s George Carlin’s seven words you can never say on TV (which are also words I won’t say in a sermon). But they all fall short of one comedy routine, the absolute pinnacle: the baseball routine of Abbott and Costello, commonly called “Who’s on first.” The Yankees have some players with very strange names, and as Abbott teaches the players to Costello, Costello gets increasingly confused and frustrated.

Abbott begins by telling him the infielders: “Who’s on first, What’s on second, I Don’t Know’s on third.”

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