Tag: community

Doing What is Right

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Sermon for Sunday, November 16, 2025 || Proper 28C || 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

“Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.” So says Paul at the end of his second letter to the church of the Thessalonians. Other translations say: “don’t get discouraged in doing what is right”; “never tire of doing what is good”; and the venerable words of the King James, “But ye, brethren, be not weary in well doing.” All of these translations have two things in common. First, the idea of weariness. Second, the need to persevere in doing what is right. In these days of continuing political upheaval, fracturing of society, and disregard for the most vulnerable among us, along with violence, war, disease, oppression, and so many other things that break the heart of God, Paul’s words hit differently. Our weariness is bone deep, spirit deep. And yet our need to do right remains as potent as ever.

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Learning Humility

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Sermon for Sunday, October 26, 2025 || Proper 25C || Luke 18:9-14

Our last couple of sermons have been about big topics, about how the life of faith compels us to confront injustice, violence, and falsehood. Today, I’m going to change gears and tell you a personal story. The story is about me embracing humility – not as a matter of course, but as a last resort. I’m sharing this story today for three reasons. First, the end of the Gospel reading about exalting and humbling one’s self got me thinking about true humility. Second, today is the two-year anniversary of the climactic moment of the story, so it seems like a good day to share it. And third, talking about mental health openly is the way to destigmatize it, especially for people like me, who think we can just muscle our way through mental health issues.

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The Fabric of Faith

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Sermon for Sunday, October 5, 2025 || Proper 22C || 2 Timothy 1:1-14

This sermon is about community, about resisting the pull of isolation, especially in an age when we are all too often isolated from one another due to many and varied forces. The community we share in the church, when practiced at its beloved best, is the weave of the fabric of faith, into which God stitches our individual threads. Today I’d like to celebrate this weaving of beloved community and talk about how such weaving can, with God’s help, heal the world.

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New Book: “How to End Christian Nationalism”

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Recently, I was given the opportunity to be part of the team of folks helping to launch Amanda Tyler’s book How to End Christian Nationalism. After pre-ordering the book, the launch team sent me an uncorrected proof PDF of the text to read ahead of the book’s launch. I finished it just in time to get this reflection out ahead of the official release date, tomorrow, October 22nd. I was so glad to read this book, written by the lead organizer of Christians Against Christian Nationalism, because of Amanda Tyler’s long personal history with the issue, as well as her connections with so many others who she interviewed for the book.

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Introducing Trail Blaze Fiction

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Hello Friends!

I’m dropping in live during my sabbatical to tell you all about a new project I am working on. My last sabbatical I launched the Podcast for Nerdy Christians. This sabbatical, I am starting a Substack newsletter called Trail Blaze Fiction, a new experiment in participatory storytelling.

Each week beginning Friday, July 5, 2024, I will post a chapter of a brand new fantasy story. At the end of the post, readers will vote in a poll about where the story will go in the next chapter.

If that piques your interest, please join me over on Substack! (If not, no hard feelings. WheretheWind.com isn’t going anywhere.)

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The Stories We Tell

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Sermon for Sunday, April 14, 2024 || Easter 3B || Acts 3:12-19; Luke 24:36b-48

As I prepare to head off on sabbatical tomorrow, I’d like to use our sermon time today to talk about what I’m going to be doing and why. Ever since joining with a group of other local clergy two years ago to learn about faith-based community organizing, I have grown increasingly fascinated with storytelling. This may sound strange because I’ve been writing novels for a dozen years. But for some reason I’ve never linked being a writer with being a storyteller. I think this is because writing novels is a solitary experience, while storytelling happens in community. Faith-based community organizing coalesces around the stories people tell about themselves and their communities, their struggles and successes, their hopes and dreams and nightmares. These stories become the building blocks for specific justice-oriented actions that seek to improve the lives of everyone in the community.

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We Will Serve the Lord

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Sermon for Sunday, November 12, 2023 || Proper 27A || Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25

I began my very first paid job when I was fifteen. I worked at the independent bookstore, which my mother managed. I served the customers by offering recommendations, ringing up their orders, and gift-wrapping their purchase. I loved that job. My second job was waiting tables at the Logan’s Roadhouse, which is one of those steak restaurants where customers are encouraged to throw their peanut husks on the floor. I served the guests by taking their orders, refilling drinks, and sweeping up those countless peanut shells. I did not love that job. I worked at Olive Garden as a busser, as a camp counselor, and as an assistant at my seminary’s teaching library. Then I got ordained and started serving as a priest. Serving in the church is the only, what I would call, “adult” job I’ve ever had.

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Called to Freedom

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Sermon for Sunday, June 26, 2022 || Proper 8C || Galatians 5:1, 13-25

Back in college, I had a habit of writing verses of scripture in silver Sharpie on my guitar case. Every time a verse really grabbed me and burrowed itself into my heart, the verse wound up on the case until there were fourteen in all. The one at the very top of the case is from today’s lesson from Paul’s letter to the Galatians: “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become servants to one another.”

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High Noon (updated)

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Sermon for Sunday, September 12, 2021 || Proper 19A || Mark 8:27-38

I’m sure we’ve all watched this scene unfold in a film, a Western, perhaps starring John Wayne or Gary Cooper. The sheriff checks the rounds in his six-shooter, puts on his Stetson and shiny, star-shaped badge, and walks bowlegged out of his tin-roofed station. His spurs clink as he walks, and his boots kick up the dust of the main street running through town. At the same time, the batwing doors of the saloon swing outward, and the gun-slinging outlaw swaggers down the steps into the street. The outlaw wears a red bandanna and dark leather chaps and keeps his Colt .45 slung low on his hip, the better to draw quickly. They face each other at high noon out on the street. They are alone, though the whole town is watching from windows and roofs. A tumbleweed skitters across the road between them. There are no shadows. And the sheriff says, “This town ain’t big enough for the both of us.”

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Two Hands

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Sermon for Sunday, June 27, 2021 || Proper 8B || Mark 5:21-43

I’d like to talk this morning about hands, specifically about why I think God gave us two hands. But before I let you in on why I think God gave us two hands, I invite you to think back to a time when you remember holding someone’s hand. 

Perhaps, the hand you held was your child’s. When I was little, my parents would each hold one of my hands and do what we called, “1-2-3-whee!” (which is where you swing the kid by their arms as you’re walking). I absolutely love holding my children’s hands when we are walking, and they are finally tall enough where I don’t have to stoop to do it.

Perhaps, the hand you held was a parent’s hand as she lay dying. Your mother held your hand back…until she didn’t. You kept clinging even when the muscle tension left her fingers, and you can still feel her papery skin held in your hand all these years later. 

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