Christmas Pageant 2022
This is the text of the Christmas Pageant I wrote for this year, which was performed by the children at the 10am service at St. Mark’s on December 18th.
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Tag: Jesus
Joseph’s Letter
Sermon for Sunday, December 11, 2022 || Advent 4A || Matthew 1:18-25
Imagine with me a letter written by Joseph to his father on the night Joseph had the dream of the angel that today’s Gospel reading narrated.
Joseph, eldest son and protégé, to Jacob, my father, mentor, and confidant: Blessings and peace to you, my mother, and my brothers and sisters.
By the time you read this letter, I will have left home. I awoke in the still hours of the night to write it, and I imagine that when I leave, the sun will be many hours from rising. I hope someday you will welcome me back into this house. I know it will not be tomorrow or the next day. But someday, I hope.
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Pretenders
Sermon for Sunday, November 13, 2022 || Proper 28C || Luke 21:5-19
You all know that one of my favorite Bible study exercises is reconstructing the questions Jesus wishes he would have been asked. So often in the Gospel, Jesus does not answer questions directly. People ask him questions, and frequently, his answers don’t line up with what they ask. This pattern happens often enough in the Gospel that I’d bet it was a hallmark of Jesus’ conversational style. And let me be clear, Jesus doesn’t dodge questions or spin them towards talking points like a politician. Rather, Jesus answers the deeper questions he hopes people would ask.
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The Uncommon Lives of Saints
Sermon for Sunday, November 6, 2022 || All Saints C || Ephesians 1:11-23
Today we celebrate the feast of All Saints. (The actual day was last Tuesday, November 1st, but we celebrate this holy day on the following Sunday.) I’d like to take this opportunity to talk with you about the saints, especially about how they can inspire us to follow Christ more closely.
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Mustard Seed Faith
Sermon for Sunday, October 2, 2022 || Proper 22C || Luke 17:5-10
“Increase our faith!” That’s what the disciples say to Jesus at the beginning of today’s Gospel reading. They are worried that they won’t have enough faith to do what he has commanded in the bit right before our reading today, namely forgive someone seven times. The disciples don’t think they have enough faith to do something like that, so they say: “Increase our faith!”
But Jesus doesn’t seem to be concerned with how much faith they have. He reaches for the smallest item available, a tiny mustard seed, and says, If you had this tiny amount of faith you could do amazing things. By using such an exaggeratedly small thing, Jesus says that the amount of faith doesn’t matter. Thinking of faith as a unit of measure makes no sense. I wouldn’t say, “Last year I had 25 faith, but this year I have 27.” Faith isn’t a statistic.
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Your Neighbor’s Cloak
Sermon for Sunday, September 18, 2022 || Proper 20C || Jeremiah 8:18–9:1; Luke 16:1-13
That was a weird story I just read, wasn’t it? A really weird story. I’m not going to pretend I really get it. Some of the stuff Jesus says, I’m like, “Yep. Right there with you Jesus. Love my neighbor as myself. Got it.” But not this story. The parable of the dishonest manager is just a really confusing parable. And it’s perfectly okay for us to be confused by a passage in the Bible. If we understood everything the Bible said on our first read through, it would not hold the depths of truth that it does hold. So, it’s okay if I finished reading that parable and you were sitting there scratching your heads. I don’t really get it either.
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Gone Astray
Sermon for Sunday, September 11, 2022 || Proper 19C || Luke 15:1-10
There’s a great moment in Handel’s Messiah where the composer musically paints a flock of sheep scattering. The text comes from Isaiah 53: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way.” Handel begins with the whole flock together: 🎶 “And we like sheep.” 🎶 Then every voice runs off on its own line for the “going astray” part: 🎶 “Have gone astr-a-a-a-a-a-ay.” This musical painting of sheep dashing off and getting lost happens over and over again. It’s a brilliant musical illustration of the verse and a pretty apt description of what happens to us when we “turn to our own way” and lose ourselves.
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The Fountain and the Cistern
Sermon for Sunday, August 28, 2022 || Proper 17C || Jeremiah 2:4-13
This is a sermon about idolatry. I want to plant that concept in your minds now because I’m going to talk about something else for a few minutes, and I don’t want you wondering where I’m going. Okay? This sermon is about idolatry.
When I was in Israel back in 2019 – it feels like a lifetime ago – I kept noticing something on the roofs of buildings that my American brain couldn’t quantify. They were these big black containers set up on metal stands and hooked up to pipes, cords, and a big solar panel. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what these containers were for. Then when someone told me, the answer was so obvious, I felt pretty silly that I hadn’t worked it out for myself. The containers were cisterns for water storage. In that arid part of the world, such a system was pretty important for maximizing what little rains came.
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Comforting Words / Challenging Words
Sermon for Sunday, August 14, 2022 || Proper 15C || Luke 12:49-56
There’s an old saying in church that Jesus came to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” We see this throughout the gospel when Jesus cares for and lifts up those on the margins of his society while at the same time denouncing the excesses and abuses of those in power. Jesus comforts and challenges in equal measure, depending on the needs and station of his subject.
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12 Moments, An Instructed Eucharist
This past Sunday, in lieu of a sermon, I presented an instructed Eucharist based on my pamphlet, 12 Moments. I commend it to you. You can watch what I said during three times of instruction during the service be viewing the YouTube video below. Or you can download the 12 Moments pamphlet by clicking here.
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Where the Wind... 