Today I’m going to talk about grace. This is a word we use a lot in church, but “grace” is one of those concepts that defies easy definition. So this morning, we’re going to try to squeeze our way to an understanding of grace by looking at how we use the word in other contexts and then by looking at the story of the Apostle Paul.
Continue reading “By the Grace of God”
Today is a special feast day in the church. We call today the Feast of the Presentation, and this feast celebrates the event in the life of Jesus when Mary and Joseph brought their infant son to the Temple in Jerusalem to present him to the Lord and make a sacrifice. Today, I’d like to focus on the practice of presenting something to God in this sacred worship space. I’m going to speak abstractly for the second half of this sermon, so let me start with the concrete moment in the service that we call The Presentation.
Continue reading “The Presentation”
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.
Continue reading “To Catch Us All”
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.
Continue reading “Forty-Two”
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.
Continue reading “The Painting in Nazareth”
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.
Continue reading “The Bedtime Story (Updated)”
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.
Continue reading “The Christmas Pageant (Taylor’s Version)”
There’s a wonderful scene in the movie The Two Towers, which is the middle film of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I know I talk a lot about Star Wars in sermons, but my love for The Lord of the Rings is even greater than my love for Star Wars. So stick with me while I describe the scene. The people of Edoras have left their homes to take shelter in the great bastion known as Helm’s Deep. A few days before the flight to the supposedly impregnable fortress, the wizard Gandalf raced out of Edoras on his majestic steed Shadowfax in order to round up the cavalry spread across the country of Rohan. “Look to my coming at first light on the fifth day,” Gandalf told Aragorn. “At dawn, look to the east.”
Continue reading “The Dawn from on High”
Today, on the last Sunday of the church year, we celebrate the Reign of Christ. We celebrate the universal scope of God’s presence breathing life and meaning throughout creation. We celebrate that the true God is always bigger than our cramped understandings of God. And we do more than celebrate today. On this day, we renew our conviction to participate in the Reign of Christ as we pray for God’s reign to be present on earth as it is in heaven.
Continue reading “Ah! Bright Wings”
Every night at dinner at my house, my family shares a simple ritual before we say grace. We go around the table and say where we saw kindness that day. When Leah and I take our turns, our kindness is often that the other person made dinner. Many times, mine also come from people at this church whose kindness ripples out in a multitude of ways. Every kindness we share at dinner stems from a small, simple act, and each alone doesn’t seem like it amounts to much. But when we collect the kindnesses together, we add them, like stitches, to a great tapestry of goodness and love.
Continue reading “Love and Good Deeds”
Where the Wind... 