Sermon for Sunday, August 23, 2026 || Proper 16A || Exodus 1:8 – 2:10
Today we’re going to talk about the past, specifically about how the past is a story continually being written and rewritten. We’ll start with a few famous sayings about the past in order to ground us, and then we’ll look at the most ominous sentence in the entire Bible, which begins our reading from the book of Exodus this morning. By the end of this sermon, I hope we will all have a new appreciation for our roles in ensuring access to a story of the past that is as accurate to the events of history as possible.
Sermon for Sunday, February 19, 2017 || Epiphany 7A || Matthew 5:38-48
Just today and next week left in our Epiphany sermon series in which we are imagining our way into God’s eyes and trying to see ourselves as God sees us. God sees, names, and celebrates us as beloved, befriended, gifted, blessed, and enlightened. Last week we talked about God designing us to be unfinished products, always ready for further growth as we love and serve the Lord. So it might surprise you that we return to God’s point of view today and see that God also names us “finished.” How can we be both finished and unfinished at the same time? Well, this is one of those experiences of both/and reality so common where God is concerned.
More than any sermon in this series, I am least qualified to talk about this one. In the next few minutes I might say something that is true, but if I do, it will have been by accident because what I’m really going to do is talk about Adam’s point of view about God’s point of view. It springs from Jesus’ command at the end of today’s Gospel: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” In other words, be complete, be your entire self, be finished. Now from our own point of view, it is impossible to be our entire selves, to be finished as it were, because we still have many days ahead of us. But God’s point of view is, I think, entirely different.
Where the Wind... 