Enough Time to Do GoodHas audio
Resting, refraining, ceasing to do work on the Sabbath – helps the community delight in the gift of God’s goodness that might otherwise be missed in the frenzy of constant, anxious activity. But as Jesus...
Browse All Sermons
Search and filter our sermon archive by preacher, book of the Bible, or date.
The Prophet of all Prophets
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Pondered in her heart
Last year when I spent a week helping out at the migrant shelter in Tijuana, I met a woman who was very pregnant, within weeks of her due date. She was from Guatemala, from the...
Incarnation
The incarnation. This season is a celebration of the incarnation, of God who became flesh in Jesus Christ. These stories about the advent of Jesus, the stories about his birth and life and death—all of...
What should we do?
“What then should we do?” (Luke 3:10). That’s what the crowds say. That’s their response to John the Baptist, when he stands along the banks of the river Jordan, calling the people to repentance. “You...
You hold me, I hold you
I’ve mentioned before that I used to teach classes in prisons, mostly at one in Durham and another in Raleigh, both of them state prisons. But I also would drive up the highway to Butner...
Son of Man, Sophia of God
No lyric has ever stopped a tank. No sermon has ever ended patriarchy, especially a sermon delivered by a man. But here we are, trying again, with some words about a few Scriptures—an invitation to...