Sermons

"For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, 'Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we...

The original source of the quote is uncertain,  but the words have stayed with me since I first heard them in seminary many years ago. “A preacher,” the theologian said, “should have the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.” Since I spent many years...

This weekend we observe the founding of our great nation in a July 4th celebration like no other in recent memory. No fireworks, no running of the Peachtree Road Race, no parades or baseball games, no large gatherings of family and friends. Many of these ways in which...

"Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me...Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones...none of these will lose their reward." It was Mother's Day 1961. A few months earlier the U.S. Supreme Court...

"Do not think I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and one's foes will be members of...

Keep, O Lord, your household the Church in your steadfast faith and love, that through your grace we may proclaim your truth with boldness and minister your justice with compassion. Those are the words of our collect, or prayer, for this Second Sunday after Pentecost,...

The pattern is the same every year. We celebrate Easter and God’s victory over death in the resurrection of Jesus, the son of God. Then 50 days later we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit to the disciples at Pentecost. And then the next Sunday, before we launch...

This week one of the principle feasts of the Church passed by, for the most part unnoticed and unobserved. The Feast of the Ascension comes each year 40 days after Easter, always on a Thursday, a day that most of us are not concerned with activities or feasts of the...

“Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting of the hope that is in you.” That verse from the First Letter of Peter leapt out at me this week.  I have to admit that hope is not something I’ve given a lot of thought to lately. Even...

“All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” I have been preaching for a little more than a quarter-century now, and in all those years I have never...

Here we are in week six of what has become our new normal – the people of our community scattered across Atlanta, and really now scattered across the country – still coming together on Sunday morning to worship. And once again, as has been the case every week,...

Well, this is our fifth Sunday of virtual church, livestreaming our service first from the sanctuary, and for three weeks now from our dining room. As we enter our sixth week of staying at home I wonder – how are you doing? Are you in a routine that feels fairly...

    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,...

    “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”     This opening line of the 22nd psalm is one of the most plaintive cries in Scripture, or indeed, in all of literature.     It is a cry of agony, despair, and abandonment....

    It is the last night of Jesus’ earthly life, the last time he will have dinner with his friends. The specter of betrayal and death is hanging over him.      So how does he spend this last meal with his friends, this last time...