Tag: connection

New Possibilities

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Sermon for Sunday, December 7, 2025 || Advent 2A || Isaiah 11:1-10

Today’s sermon is about the unexpected grace of new possibilities. As we continue in our Advent season of preparation and anticipation, we practice opening ourselves up to how God is moving in our lives in the same type of unexpected ways that God moved in the lives of Mary and Joseph as they welcomed Jesus into the world. Mary practiced this openness when she said “Yes” to the angel. Joseph practiced this openness when he made a family with Mary despite pressure to reject her. Our openness to new possibilities is a symptom of the hope we place in the God who makes all things new. So let’s talk about new possibilities today: first we’ll look at the beginning of this morning’s reading from the Prophet Isaiah, then we will talk about three ways we can test that the new possibilities we are reaching for come from God.

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Nine Pieces of the Spirit

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Sermon for Sunday, June 8, 2025 || Pentecost C || Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17, 25-27

Today, on this Feast of Pentecost, we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the gathering of Jesus’ first followers. And we celebrate the Spirit’s continued movement in our lives. The Spirit moves in so many ways that we might easily miss how the Spirit is present with us. So I’d like to take this sermon to talk through in brief nine ways we encounter the Holy Spirit. You have a handy bookmark in your program to help you remember the nine ways. Also, as a reminder of the Spirit’s presence among this gathering, we are going to map these nine ways of encountering the Holy Spirit upon the beautiful piece of stained glass art by our own Alison Ives that will hang above the altar for the next six months.

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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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To Catch Us All

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Sermon for Sunday, January 26, 2025 || Epiphany 3C || 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

Multiple people asked me to expand on my sermon from last Sunday about common cause. They asked me what I thought they could do to counter the forces of fracture and disintegration in our society. So I’d like to take the time this morning to dwell on one particular call to action, which, handily, springs from today’s reading from First Corinthians. This call to action is so simple that anyone can do it, but it does take time and attention to grow into a dedicated spiritual practice. The call is simply this: with God’s help, expand and deepen your connections with other people.

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Intercession

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Sermon for Sunday, October 30, 2022 || Proper 26C || 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12

The last three Sundays, I stumbled my way into a sermon series on prayer. Three weeks ago, we talked about prayers of thanksgiving shaping our lives. Two weeks ago, we talked about prayer as a response to God’s constant invitations. And last week, we talked about making sure God is the subject of our prayers and not our own egos. Which brings me to today. Today we’re going to talk about a specific type of prayer – intercessory prayer. So, with four Sundays in a row all on one topic, I’ve decided to call this month my “Accidental Sermon Series About Prayer.”

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Staying in Touch

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Sermon for Sunday, May 23, 2021 || Pentecost B || Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

Today is the day of Pentecost, the day we celebrate the Holy Spirit inspiring the first disciples of Jesus to spread his message of love and reconciliation to people of all nations. The inspiration of the Holy Spirit happened for the disciples in the wake of Jesus’ ascension. In the Gospel lesson today, Jesus tells his followers that when he is no longer physically present among them, he will send the Holy Spirit to lead them into all truth. Today, on the day of Pentecost, we celebrate this sending of the Spirit. And we believe that the Holy Spirit did not just descend on those first disciples, but fills each of us with the creative imagination of God.

I can think of no better feast day of the church to share Holy Communion for the first time since March 8, 2020. Every celebration of Holy Communion is a miniature Pentecost because we believe that the Holy Spirit descends upon the gifts of bread and wine, filling them with the presence of Christ and making them his Body and Blood. Later in this service, we will pray: “Gracious God…send your Holy Spirit upon these gifts that they may be the Sacrament of the Body of Christ and his Blood of the new Covenant.”

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In the Middle of Them

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Sermon for Sunday, September 6, 2020 || Proper 18A || Matthew 18:15-20

“For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Jesus says this amazing promise at the end of our Gospel reading this morning. We’ve heard this promise every week since we began worshiping together online at the start of the pandemic. At the end of the service of Morning Prayer, we say a prayer written in the early centuries of the Church by St. John Chrysostom: 

“Almighty God, you have given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplication to you; and you have promised through your well-beloved Son that when two or three are gathered together in his Name you will be in the midst of them…”

I am so thankful that our Gospel reading inspired John Chrysostom to write this prayer, especially in these days when we cannot be in close physical proximity with each other. The prayer reminds us of the singular truth that Christ connects us one to another. But “I am there among them” is a rather anemic translation. I “am in the midst of them” is better. The original language translates most directly to, “I am there in the middle of them.”

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Something of You in Each Other

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Sermon for Sunday, February 2, 2020 || Feast of the Presentation || Luke 2:22-40

Just a warning. This sermon leans heavily on my combined training as a political scientist and an ordained priest. It’s pretty heady. That’s why I’m going to start by talking about my favorite TV show.

In a Season Six episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Picard and the crew of the Enterprise race against time to complete a puzzle locked in the DNA of the various humanoid peoples of the galaxy. The Klingons, Romulans, and Cardassians are also trying to complete the puzzle, thinking it will lead them to a new weapon of great power. But in the end, the four groups arrive on a planet after needing each other to solve the genetic puzzle, and they encounter a recording from the original humanoid people of the galaxy. The recording tells them that those ancient humanoids traveled the stars and found none like themselves, so they decided to seed the primordial oceans on many worlds with their own DNA as their legacy. The recording says, “It was our hope that you would have to come together in fellowship and companionship to hear this message, and if you can see and hear me our hope has been fulfilled.” With swelling music in the background, the recording concludes: “There is something of us in each of you, and so something of you in each other.”

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You Will be Found

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Sermon for Sunday, August 26, 2018 || Proper 16B || John 6:56-69

Sometimes ordinary conversations spur the deepest of thoughts. This past Monday, I was cleaning up the breakfast dishes while listening to the kids talking to each other at the kitchen table. At their recent birthday party, they had decorated small terra cotta pots with glitter glue and stickers. Inside the pots they planted seeds that hopefully will grow into tiny spruce trees by Christmas. So there they sat at the kitchen table, and then they started listing off all the people they wanted to invite over to see their Christmas trees when they’re done growing.

They began with close family friends who had helped bake their birthday cake. Then they listed all their family members – Nana and Papa, Amma and Abba, their aunts and uncles and cousins. Then they moved onto friends who attended their party and their parents; then to other friends from school; then to people from church. They kept naming people they know, people with whom they have some level of relationship. And for a pair of four-year-olds, they had a pretty extensive list. Continue reading “You Will be Found” →

Willful Seeing

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Sermon for Sunday, June 12, 2016 || Proper 6C || Luke 7:36–8:3

willfulseeingThis is a sermon about seeing. I want you to remember that because for the first little bit, it will sound like it’s about other things. But this sermon is about seeing.

Today’s Gospel lesson tells the story of a Pharisee named Simon who invited Jesus to a dinner party at his house. Perhaps Simon had a custom of bringing all visiting rabbis into his house for a meal. Perhaps he had a soft spot for provincial teachers who, like Jesus, had ventured out their backwater villages to spread their words to the wider world. I can only assume a Pharisee like Simon brought such people into his home to stoke his own ego, to show them that they were hopelessly outmatched by his wealth and knowledge. Continue reading “Willful Seeing” →