Tag: Christianity

Fearing Death

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Sermon for Sunday, May 11, 2025 || Easter 4C || Psalm 23

Today, on this beautiful Sunday morning in springtime, when plants are growing and animals are having babies, we’re going to talk about…death. Now, as you can probably tell, I am not dead. So I have no special information to impart to you about what happens after we die. I have only my hope in the resurrection, that the essence of who God created us to be embraces new and abundant life in a way that we cannot even imagine in the midst of our physical existence. I have only this hope in the resurrection and my faith in the promise that Jesus makes to prepare a place for us and bring us to himself, so that where Christ is, we may also be.

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The Other Side of the Boat

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Sermon for Sunday, May 4, 2025 || Easter 3C || John 21:1-19

Let me start like this: I am not going to talk about Star Wars today. I was all prepared to write a sermon chock-full of Star Wars references because today is the unofficial Star Wars holiday, May the 4th, as in “May the Fourth be with you.” (And also with you.) But then I read the Gospel lesson for today, the story of Peter and the others fishing after the resurrection, and a powerful memory from my recent life surfaced. I feel compelled to share this memory with you instead of talking about Star Wars. And if you know me, then you know this compulsion must be pretty strong. So I’m going to spend a good chunk of this sermon sharing the story of my last conversation with a 101-year-old man the day before he died.

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Three Definitions of Passion

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Sermon for Sunday, April 13, 2025 || Palm/Passion C || Luke 22:39–23:49

At the end of today’s service, we will read the Passion Gospel together. This is the tragic and beautiful story of Jesus’ last hours, one of only a handful of stories that appears in all four accounts of the Gospel. We call this reading the “Passion” Gospel because the word “passion” comes from the Latin “passio,” (and Greek “pathos”) which mean “to suffer.” In English, when we say “passion,” we’re usually talking about a type of overwhelming devotion to something or an intense romantic connection to someone. But both of these English definitions benefit from the word’s origin, for both are things we will suffer for.

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With My Arms Spread Wide (updated)

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Sermon for Sunday, March 16, 2025 || Lent 2C || Luke 13:31-35

The world is a heavy place right now, and my last several sermons have been quite heavy in response. So today, I’d like to return to an imaginative space with a story sermon, the kind that I offer once or twice a year. Please imagine with me a letter written by Simon the Pharisee some years after the events described in this morning’s Gospel reading.

Simon, a servant of the Lord God, to Judith, my dearest sister and confidant: Peace to you and your house.

I know you think I only write to you when I need advice, but in this case, I write with a more urgent need. Yesterday in the marketplace something happened that shook me to my bones and caused me to let go of a secret I have been holding onto so very tightly for years. I need to tell you the truth about myself before you hear others slander me. I hope after you read these words you do not think less of me; rather, I hope you might consider joining me in my new-found freedom.

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Love Your Enemies

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Sermon for Sunday, February 23, 2025 || Epiphany 7C || Luke 6:27-38

(Content warning: I talk about the Holocaust in this sermon.)

Love your enemies. This is the most shocking thing Jesus says in the entire Gospel. Love your enemies. We read this and throw up our hands, thinking Jesus must have gone mad. How could we possibly do such a thing? The whole point of an enemy is that you don’t love them. Enemies are to be defeated and demeaned and destroyed, right? The history of our war torn world would say yes. But our savior says differently. Love your enemies, Jesus says. If we’re going to take Jesus seriously – take ALL of what he says seriously – then we need to wrestle with this command to love our enemies. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. What does it mean to love our enemies?

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Common Cause

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Sermon for Sunday, January 19, 2025 || Epiphany 2C || 1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Today’s sermon is about the Holy Spirit inspiring us to work for the common good. The word “common” is a word we use a lot in the Episcopal Church. Since the year 1549, our worship book has been called “The Book of Common Prayer.” This use of the adjective “common” embraces both of the word’s meanings. First, our prayer is “common” in that it is an everyday thing, a normal part of our routine. Walking to the bus is common. Eating a bowl of oatmeal is common. Washing the dishes is common. Second, our prayer is “common” in the sense of “shared together.” We hold things in common among people, like a shared fridge in an office. 

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Forty-Two

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Sermon for Sunday, January 12, 2025 || Epiphany 1C || Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

For this sermon, I’m going to do something a little different this morning. Today is my 42nd birthday, and if you’re even half the size nerd that I am, you know that the number 42 is a special one. In the strange and whimsical science fiction series The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the number 42 is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. This answer was determined by the superest supercomputer that ever existed, but when the computer spit out the answer “42” no one could agree as to the content of the question that would result in such an answer. So now they had to figure out the question. The subtext of this very silly premise is that we (1) cannot outsource our own seeking and (2) we must never stop learning and growing.

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The Painting in Nazareth

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Sermon for Sunday, January 5, 2025 || Christmas 2 || Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

This is a sermon about biblical role models. After the service, I would love to hear what character in the Bible inspires you like Joseph inspires me. So be thinking about for the next ten minutes while I talk.

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The Bedtime Story (Updated)

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Sermon for Tuesday, December 24, 2024 || Christmas Eve || Luke 2:1-20

Imagine with me a quiet moment when Jesus’ mother Mary and Mary Magdalene have gone for a walk together by the Sea of Galilee. The Ascension has come and gone, and they are missing Jesus. So Mary Magdalene asks his mother to tell her a story from Jesus’ childhood. Mary ponders for a moment and then begins:

As a boy, Jesus had trouble falling asleep. He wasn’t afraid of the dark or of monsters under his bed. He just had so much energy. Even a day full of running up hills and building rock forts couldn’t tire him out. When he couldn’t sleep, I would sing him a lullaby and run my fingers through his hair. Sometimes, after a few notes, he’d say, “Not tonight, Mama. Tell me the story instead.” The story. I was always glad when he asked me to tell him how he was born because, when the story remained silent in my heart, it always threatened to transform into a dream and vanish.

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The Christmas Pageant (Taylor’s Version)

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I wrote the dialogue and lyrics for this new Christmas Pageant, which kids from my church performed yesterday on the Fourth Sunday of Advent. It was a blast! (And, obviously, despite the assertion in the first paragraph, the real Taylor didn’t help us – but her music did.) Here’s the video of the pageant, followed by the script.

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