Category: Sermons
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Peace as presence in the spiritual life
Like all of us, I am an idolator—both in ways I am aware of, and doubtless in even more I have yet to get my head around. The object of what would seem to be my highest devotion is both a material condition and a state of mind. Like the root of much individual and…
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The multivalent Lamb of God
A sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year C: Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30 ** In January of 2011, I spent two weeks in Rome on a study trip, pondering the paradoxes of the Eternal City. My most fond and vivid and absurd memory of the trip took place on January 21 just…
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Find your ‘Mary moment’
A sermon for Easter Sunday, Year C: Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26; John 20:1-18 ** I had some friends in and after college who went to work on political campaigns full-time. It took them weeks to recover from the post-election funk when their candidates lost. And who can blame them? They put so much…
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A sermon for Good Friday
A sermon for Good Friday: Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 10:16-25; John 18:1-19:42 My teacher and later colleague Tony Lewis once talked to our class about the “holy incomprehensibility” of the liturgy. He didn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t understand the words of these ancient prayers. I think he meant that the density of them…
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Salvation all the while: Palm Sunday according to Luke
Since late January I’ve been preaching weekly as a long-term supply priest at Trinity+St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco. It’s been mostly from the aisle with no notes, but you can watch/listen here. For Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter, at least, I’ve returned to manuscripts … A sermon for Palm Sunday, Year C: Luke 19:28-40; Isaiah…
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The “whole armor of God” and the gospel of peace
A sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost: 1 Kings 8:22-30, 41-43; Psalm 84; Ephesians 6:10-20; John 6:56-69 ** This week I repeatedly re-lived a memory from, I think, my junior year of college. I was walking down Regent St. in Madison, WI. I was talking to my mother on my brand new cell phone: my…
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Destined for Adoption (Baptism & Ephesians 1)
A sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost: 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19; Psalm 24; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29 ** “If … you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility … you will acquire many exotic new facts.” Thus begins my favorite passage in David Foster Wallace’s 1996 novel Infinite Jest.…
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Teaching Sermon: The Eucharistic Prayer
A sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter: Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 22:24-30; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8 This sermon was preached as part of an Eastertide series examining different parts of the Sunday liturgy. You can find the “Praying Cards” I mention near the end over on Creative Commons Prayer. ** “Do this in remembrance of…
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Glory and mercy at the heart of Mark’s Gospel
A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent: Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Psalm 22:22-30; Romans 4:13-25; Mark 8:31-38 ** “O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy …” That’s how our Collect of the Day for this second Sunday of Lent begins. It’s probably characteristic of our … indirect church communication style that such a profound…
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“Speak tenderly” and … : Prophets on the cusp of hope in Isaiah 40
Second Sunday of Advent: Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8 Listen to this sermon. ** Here’s what you need to know about Isaiah to understand the peculiar mixed emotions of the passage we heard this morning: Almost all of what comes before this passage was written in the time of a historical prophet named Isaiah. Isaiah served…