Sermons

The season of Easter continues as we get a glimpse of the early church in Acts, how they shared everything and everyone had what they needed. In the gospel, we encounter how the risen Jesus greets the frightened disciples behind locked doors. He meets Thomas’s doubts and proclaims a word of peace. In this season, […]

Christ is risen! Jesus is alive, and God has swallowed up death forever. With Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, we may feel astonished and confused, unsure of what to make of the empty tomb. But this is why we gather: to proclaim, witness, praise, and affirm the liberating reality of Christ’s […]

On this night we begin the Three Days during which we participate once again in the saving power of Jesus’ passing over from death into life. The Maundy Thursday service includes the words of Jesus’ new commandment (mandatum, from which Maundy comes) to love one another. On this night in which Jesus was handed over […]

On this fifth Sunday of Lent we get one last covenant – a promise that God will be as close to us as a tattoo on our hearts. The psalm is a nod back to Ash Wednesday and an ask to create in us clean hearts. As we prepare our hearts to face the horror […]

Through our texts today, we are invited to lift up the things that scare and afflict us the most – snakes, sin and even death. In doing so, we remember God asks us not to lift these things up to condemn us but to save and heal us. What would it look like to be […]

The third covenant in this year’s Lenten readings is the central one of Israel’s history: the gift of the law to those God freed from slavery. The commandments begin with the statement that because God alone has freed us from the powers that oppressed us, we are to let nothing else claim first place in […]

This Sunday we remember another covenant. We are connected to a wide family of faith, as numerous as the stars, through Abraham and Sarah. In the gospel reading, Jesus poses this famous invitation to the crowd and disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow […]

In this first week of Lent, we hear the familiar story of promise with a rainbow and of wilderness. No matter what messiness we find ourselves in, this story reminds us we are not alone. While Satan may show up, there also promises to be wild beasts, angels and Jesus in the midst of it all.  […]

On Transfiguration Sunday, we get a glimpse of Jesus divine and it is both comforting and terrifying. In worship, we show up to encounter God in the water, in the word, at the table and in one another. May we wake up to God’s liberating light which shimmers in all people, places and beings.  Accompanying […]

 In Isaiah God is the one who sits above the earth with its inhabitants as small as grasshoppers and also strengthens the powerless. So in Jesus’ healing work we see the hand of the creator God, lifting up the sick woman to health and service (diakonia). Like Simon’s mother-in-law, we are lifted up and healed […]