Sermons

It is so wonderful to be here with you this glorious morning. So many people have worked hard to create the beauty of this service - and the three others that preceded it this week. The altar guild has been busy polishing silver, ironing linens, and preparing our...

Dear friends in Christ: On this most holy night, in which our Lord Jesus passed over from death to life, the Church invites her members, dispersed throughout the world, to gather in vigil and prayer. For this is the Passover of the Lord, in which, by hearing God’s...

"I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." These are the words that Jesus said to his disciples on the last night of his life. Love one another. Jesus was a man...

"Sir, we wish to see Jesus." That was the request of some Greeks who were visiting a festival in Jerusalem, or someplace close by. They ask this of one of Jesus' disciples, Philip, who tells his friend Andrew. The two of them go to Jesus with the request. I've read...

Sunday morning has a language all its own, full of words that we seldom, if ever, use other times of the week. Words like repentance, righteousness, grace, incarnation. Words that I suspect we  would be hard pressed to easily define. Sometimes the strange...

Every year during Lent we begin our service with a version of the Ten Commandments, either the full reading of them as we did today, or a condensed  version of what Jesus calls the two greatest commandments – to love God and to love your neighbor. The...

Today's service is a little bit different from what we would normally do on the Second Sunday in Lent. As you know, this week our parishioner David Abner died after a stay in hospice. David's children preferred not to have a formal funeral for their father, but will...

The story of the rainbow is a curious reading for the first Sunday in Lent. We are at the beginning of the most somber season of the church year, a time set aside for reflection and repentance, for fasting and self-denial. We began the service today with the Great...

Today is the last Sunday of the season of Epiphany, those weeks between Christmas and the beginning of Lent.   Epiphany ends every year with the reading we heard today, the story of the Transfiguration – the ultimate mountaintop experience where Jesus meets...

Today's reading from the prophet Isaiah finds the people of Israel in deep despair, wondering if they've been abandoned by God. The land that God promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the land that God led them to after freeing them from slavery in Egypt; the land...

When I was in college someone gave me a button that I probably still have in a drawer somewhere. “Question Authority” it boldly proclaims. “Question authority” was a philosophy that suited a journalism student well. In fact, I spent my college years, and many years...

Our Old Testament reading opens today with the prophet Jonah on a beach in the Mediterranean.  This is no beach vacation. Jonah looks stunned and confused. You would, too, if you had just spent three days in the belly of a giant fish, then were spewed out onto...

Have you ever wondered how the Bible came into being? Who wrote the many different books that we consider scripture, and who decided what to include in the official Bible and what to leave out? There is no clear-cut answer to those questions. With a few exceptions,...

It is good to be gathered here with you on this beautiful night, the night that we celebrate the birth of a baby who will change the world. Everything about this evening is special – the music that our choirs have practiced for so many hours; the beautiful flowers and...

Mary knew. Those are the words on a sign of a church I pass coming here every day. I imagine that some might wonder what these two words actually mean.  If I texted that question to one of my younger friends, they might respond IYKYK. Or for those of us who still...