Category Archives: sermon

Because love is the miracle

Love is what it takes
to make the other
miracles true… Continue reading

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Karl Barth, St Paul, and the stickiness of sin

“Who … is aware of man’s real wretchedness, save he who is aware of God’s mercy?” Barth lectured his students in Bonn. We know our sin, we are convicted of it, Paul discovered his error in persecuting the followers of Jesus only when he was confronted by the living Christ himself, the revelation and reality of God’s saving mercy. Continue reading

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It’s (not too) complicated

It means beating swords into ploughshares, guns into shovels, removing them from the hands and the lives and the deaths of our children. There is no deeper shadow cast than the deaths of children, and the enormity of the problem before us is our mountain to climb. Continue reading

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Christ, the King, the way, the truth, the life

Standing before Pilate, Jesus conjures a vision of a kingdom in which the truth is not decided by the preferences of the powerful, nor is justice exacted by violence, nor does the law of the nations have the last word over it. The kingdom that Jesus brings is one in which the love of God stands resolute before the principalities that would lord it over him, and undermines them by refusing to accept the finality of their penalty of death. Continue reading

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For All Saints and All Souls

He has dwelt with us as our God; we are his people,
and God is with us; and as surely as Jesus wept for his own friend,
he will one day wipe every tear from our eyes. (after Revelation 21:1-6) Continue reading

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What if we were to listen …?

Do you ever wonder what happened afterwards, to Bartimaeus? Now that he was following Jesus with his eyes wide open, did the people listen to him any more kindly, or were they still telling him to be quiet, not to disturb their peace? Continue reading

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Follow

The man in the story is caught on the cusp of conversion, teetering on the brink of repentance, swaying toward Jesus but anchored by the lifestyle he has always known, the way it has always been. Continue reading

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To become whole

A sermon for the service of Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, including the Blessing of the Animals, at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio. Readings include Genesis 2:18-24 I heard not long ago of someone in this developed and modern … Continue reading

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Envy is the enemy of the gospel

A sermon for Sunday, September 26 at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid. In the readings, disciples of Moses and Jesus object to unauthorized deployment of the Spirit. In the news, images of border patrols chasing immigrants with horses, and … Continue reading

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Who is the greatest?

Because I am no greater than my enemy; I am no more beloved of God than my neighbour; I am created no closer to the image of God than the face that I love the least.  Continue reading

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