Imagine, you standing in front of Duke Chapel. You just finished seeing all the stained glass, someone was playing the organ inside, and you are looking at the sculpture of John Wesley. You feel a deep sense of awe in you. The birds are chirping and the flowers are blooming. Then a stranger comes up […]
Luke
Salvation Coming Home
Next Sunday, we will be remembering loved ones who have died – and we will be using alternate texts from the lectionary for All Saints Day. And so today – while I will just be preaching on the Zaccheus story – I thought that we could hear – two gospel texts read from Luke – […]
Pray Always
There was a certain woman in a church I was once a part of. Every single Sunday, during every prayer and sharing time, when the microphone was passed around this woman would stand up and make a lengthy announcement about some type of justice work, inviting us to participation and prayer: “Come and join the anti-war […]
Return to Praise
It would be enough if all we take from our gospel text today is a recognition of the goodness of gratitude. It would be enough if the only moment that lingers with us from this story – is glimpsing a healed man falling at Jesus’ feet, crying out, “Thank you!” “i thank You God for […]
Ablaze
I grew up in extended family structures where there would be lots of cooks in the kitchen. When food was being made and served and eaten people would comment on it and say things like, “Hey, why are you making it that way?” It wasn’t considered rude during a meal to poke in someone else’s […]
Remembering the Impossible
This past Wednesday, I was standing at a local coffee shop waiting for my iced coffee. Over the loud speakers, turned up a little too loud, poured out the chorus of Bob Marley’s song Three Little Birds, and it was starting to grate on me: Don’t worry about a thing ‘Cause every little thing gonna […]
Found by Love
In this season of Lent we’ve been focusing on God’s radical invitation to abundance. So far we’ve encountered the image of God as a mother hen who fiercely and tenderly protects her brood. We’ve pondered God as a gardener who fertilizes a fig tree – even when it bears no fruit. And we’ve hiked with […]
Grace Reaches Deeper
In our text for today from Luke’s gospel, Jesus finds himself in a crowd. Or to put it more clearly – a crowd, yet again – has found and surrounded him, listening to him teach. From this mix of disciples and onlookers, curious and skeptical alike, packed around him, a few people pipe up: “Hey, […]
Mother Hen
Tonight we are in the season of Lent, 2 Sundays and 10 days in. A quarter of the way through 40 days. There are a bunch of ways of conceiving of seasons in church year and one of those I’m thinking about tonight is as journeys. We can imagine Advent, the weeks leading up to […]
Alone
Sometime at the beginning of the COVID pandemic I found myself watching a few seasons of the survival reality TV series ALONE. Contestants of various hardy backgrounds – trappers and hunters and loggers and preppers and First Nations folks – would volunteer to be dropped off alone into some north county wilderness location with a […]
From Glory to Glory
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition of iconography – supposedly one of the first icons that every monk-painter must paint at the start of their apprenticeship is the vision of the Christ, transfigured and shining on the mountaintop with Moses and Elijah, and the stunned disciples nearby. Of all the biblical scenes that could be chosen […]
Truth on Level Ground
I was going to begin this sermon with a reflection on how these words of blessing and woe, providence and warning, hit us all differently depending on where we sit or stand when we hear them. I was going to begin this sermon talking about the many different sorts of people from different places, socioeconomic […]
True Treasure
Have you ever reached a crossroads in life? I am sure you all have. Where you can metaphorically choose one path or another path in life. I think life presents many crossroads. And this is exactly what is placed before the disciples and the prophet Isaiah. The Triune God calls for them to follow in […]
When Good News Turns Bad
What brings you to church? Why are we all seated here on a Sunday evening, when there is sports to watch, movies and shows to stream, messy houses to clean up, homework to do? There are all sorts of great reasons to be a part of our church community… from chasing away the Sunday-evening scaries […]
Only One Sermon
I’ve heard it said that every preacher throughout their life really only has a handful of sermons that they preach over and over again. No matter how different the scripture text before them or the crisis confronting the community or the ordinariness of a moment – when a holy word is called for – in […]
Expecting the Spirit
I’ve noticed a change in the marketing algorithms targeting me in the last couple weeks as I scrolled the internet. At this start of the New Year – the product placements shifted away from Christmas deals and self-indulgence to an emphasis on self-improvement. New Year, New You type products. The ad that ironically got me to […]
Magnifying the Mighty One
Each year in December the music streaming platform Spotify sends each account their Spotify Wrapped year-end report to click through. It’s exciting to get the news of the number of hours you listened to music in the past year, what your top artists and albums and most played songs were, and for which groups you […]
Forgiveness of sins
The Easter story is so familiar to us that I think we miss the shock, perhaps even the terror, of someone coming back from the dead. Especially when, as we hear in our passage from Acts, this Jesus, back from the dead, is God’s judge. We hear that this Jesus is the one who has […]
Wounded peace
On Palm Sunday we stand at the edge of Lent, looking toward Easter. Today, with our story from Luke’s Gospel, with Jesus riding into Jerusalem, the crowds sweep us into holy week. In the story, the people line the street. The air is electric with excitement. The multitudes show up to welcome Jesus, to welcome […]
Prodigal God
The story centers on the impatience of the younger of the two sons. He wants his inheritance before the death of his father. I’ll read verse 12: “He said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me’” (Lk. 15:12). When the father dies, the son will get […]
Wait
Psalm 27:14, “Wait for God; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for God.” When a bible passage repeats a phrase, that’s usually a signal to pay attention. So I thought we’d pay attention to those words. “Wait for God.” This is a Psalm about waiting. Lent is a season of waiting—we gather […]
Wild Patience
The devil quotes scripture. This book that we read from every week can be twisted. Its words can be made to serve evil purposes. That’s not a surprise to anyone, of course. We look around and see the Bible used to harm all the time. We have it in our own Anabaptist history. Let me […]
Sending
Numbers 6:24-26 (VT #826), Jeremiah 29:4-11 (VT #783), Isaiah 52:7 (VT #781), Luke 4:16-19, 21 (VT #292), Matthew 28:16, 18-20 (VT #451) This is the last sermon in this series on what I’ve learned about the Christian life, through our worship together. We started seven weeks ago with our gathering, then we moved through the […]
Sharing
Colossians 3:15-17 (VT #818), 2 Corinthians 5:17-20 (VT #785), Luke 24:13-35 (VT #470) We share. That’s what we do here. That’s what church is about for us. Not just here, during worship on Sundays, but with the rest of our lives, too. We share meals together in our homes. We share stories about our lives. […]