Sermon for 23rd Sunday after Pentecost – Matthew 25:1-13

Have you ever run out of gas? So, I used to have a trunk, and while I was driving, I ran out of gas. Now, you see those Hoosier Helper trunks driving around the city, and luckily one pulled up behind me after a short bit. I’m convinced they’re sent from God. Anyway, how I got into trouble was that the gas gauge wasn’t working. If you know about these, they’re a lot of work to replace. You have to change the whole gas tank, and it’s expensive. So, naturally I made do by just learning to track my odometer really closely. Which worked great for a while, until it didn’t. And funny how that’s always the least opportune time to run out of gas. How many times do we run out of gas in our lives?

Sermon for All Saints Day – Matthew 5:1-12

Anyone ready for this election to be over already? In two days we won’t have to see any more political ads or rallies, right? So, it bugs me how we hear a lot of conflicting messages from all sides. I know my own leanings, but at the same time I find myself wanting to dig deeper to find out what’s actually true. Because you can always interpret things in radically different ways. Maybe helpful. Maybe not so helpful. Like with today’s gospel reading – the beatitudes. Which just means “blessings” or sometimes “happiness”. A lot of folks call these the “Be Attitudes”. Their gist is that this is Jesus telling his disciples how to be better people. Like accept your helplessness to trust God more. Or work on your pride so that you can be pure in heart. A whole laundry list of spiritual disciplines. Not that I’m anti-discipline or anything. But what’s so great about being reviled and persecuted? I could just act like a jerk and check that one off my list real quick. So maybe there’s a better way to hear this.

Here I am in full splendor!

Sermon for 17th Sunday after Pentecost – Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32

Who watches the news a LOT more than you used to? I do. When the pandemic first hit, I started leaving the news on all the time, because I wanted to know more. In a lot of ways, it’s good. I feel a lot more informed, and I guess knowledge is power. But at the same time, it’s exhausting. There’s not a lot of good news out there. So many problems that we don’t understand. So many arguments. People I’ve known for ages saying things that I never would have expected and it makes me feel like I don’t know them the way I thought. Do you ever wonder how we got to this point?

Sermon for 14th Sunday after Pentecost – Ezekiel 33:7-11

Some of you know that in my weekday job, I manage a team of software engineers. If you don’t know what that’s like, maybe you’ve seen Big Bang Theory on TV. Better yet, I commend the Dilbert cartoons to you. A lot of truth there. Which probably means I’m more like the pointy-haired boss than I want to admit. Especially right about now. Because it’s time for year-end assessments. Where I have the joy, or dread, of talking with folks about what went well, and not so well. Not nearly as fun as sharing highs and lows with our confirmands! Now, these folks are high-achievers, so some conflict isn’t unusual. That’s the hard part. I’m not good with conflict. But it doesn’t help that we’re all facing a laundry list of conflicts. Politics, protests, pandemics. Folks are on edge. It’s overwhelming. But maybe it helps to know we’re not the only ones who have lived through such as these.

Sermon for 4th Sunday after Pentecost – Jeremiah 28:5-9

These days, it seems like everything’s up for grabs. We’ve overwhelmed with explosive issues of justice and righteousness. Stories keep coming to light about police brutality. We argue whether the entire policing system is utterly broken, or whether we just have a few bad actors that need to be brought to justice, though a few folks insist there’s nothing wrong at all. Or there’s all these confederate monuments aound the country, whether we tear them down because of the oppression they perpetuate, or whether we preserve them as painful reminders of our legacy of injustice. Or there’s the folks demanding to remove product branding like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben as racist tropes, and those who resent everything familiar being taken away from them. Everything’s up for grabs. You and I have our dead-set convictions. But in theory we all want the same thing. We want peace. So, who’s right?

Sermon for 3rd Sunday after Pentecost – Matthew 10:24-39

We’ve got a lot to argue about these days. Do we still have to hunker down at home, or do we start eating out again? Do we have to wear a mask or not? Do we gather for in-person worship or not? What do we really think of the president? What do we believe about the police? Systemic racism? Is it ever ok to bring any of this up in a sermon? At the end of the day, we all make our choices or answer our calls, I suppose. But not without a cost. We’re exhausted from all this fighting. Every day we witness a new worst case scenario that leaves us cynical. We struggle to hang onto some kind of hope for peace and justice even though we can’t see it right now.

So of course we look to Jesus to reassure us that this is only a passing phase. But Jesus doesn’t seem very reassuring today. He says “Do not think that 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 man against father, daughter against mother. One’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” That doesn’t sound like peace. That sounds like strife. Like Jesus wants us to be a bunch of Pharisees at each others’ throats in the name of some kind of righteousness. In what universe does this jive with what we know about Jesus as the source of forgiveness and community?

Sermon for Lent 1 – Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-70

The creation story raises more questions than it can even pretend to answer. So what do we do with it? This was my attempt to preach from outline, but didn’t quite go according to plan

Sermon for 5th Sunday after Epiphany – Matthew 5:13-20

Jesus says some pretty strange things, but today he says one of the strangest things of all. “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?” Does that make sense? No. It’s a super stable compound. Salt can’t go stale. It can’t lose its taste. Not that Jesus wants to be a chemistry teacher or anything. So, what does he mean?

Well, let’s start with the context. Jesus is going all around Galilee, teaching and preaching and healing every sickness. He becomes famous, because it’s an epidemic of folks who need miracles. So they start coming out from everywhere. The crowds get bigger. It gets overwhelming, because Jesus never gets a moment to himself. We’d be overwhelmed too. So Jesus goes up a hill to get away. His disciples find him there. And so begins his sermon on the mount. Last week we heard – blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Now, this is a controversial sermon, because what Jesus is saying, is that the ones who will inherit the kingdom of God aren’t the rich or powerful, but the poor and powerless, and where does that leave us if we aren’t them?

Sermon for 2nd Sunday of Christmas – Ephesians 1:3-14

So, some of you know I don’t care for sports. Probably because I hated gym class. How many times we had to pick teams. Teacher always picks a couple favorites to be captains. Never a surprise who those kids are, right? So they take turns picking kids, one by one, until guess who’s the only one left. Like usual. Good times! Couple decades of therapy. No big deal! Has this ever happened to you? Doesn’t have to be gym class. Have you ever applied for a job that you didn’t get? Some group that either didn’t let you join or kicked you out? When you find out that your so-called friends are getting together without you? Lots of different situations here. But is there anyone who hasn’t ever felt left out or left behind? So many popularity contests in the course of our lives, and are they ever fair?