Words of the Mouth and Meditations of the Heart

Sermon for Easter V, 2026, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: John 14:1-14 If I tried really hard, I could mostly recite the first half of this morning’s gospel reading by heart, because it is an appointed reading for funerals, and because I read it two to three times a week on Thursdays at funerals I volunteer for. This passage is part of the Farewell Discourse in the Gospel of John, chapters 13-17, where Jesus says goodbye to his disciples and charges them with spreading his teachings to the world. He is wrapping up his time with them, reminding them of what he has taught them, forming them into a community that continues his work after he is gone. It starts with Jesus showing them selfless service by washing the feet of the disciples, and then moves on to acknowledging their distress when they find out he is leaving, and then ends with a long prayer for their guidance and protection. All of this takes place immediately before he is arrested in Gethsem...

Sermon for Easter II, 2026, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: John 20:19-31 Many years ago, the hospital lab I was working in had its three-year inspection, including a review of the operations manual for each section of the lab. One of the inspectors wanted to know where our procedure for writing procedures was. There was some eye-rolling because we had a self-explanatory template for writing procedures, so a procedure for writing procedures was not needed. That moment of defining a definition recalled conversations I have had with hard-core rationalists who claim that the only things that are true are what we can quantify. So, for example, I can measure out a pound of ground beef to make chili. How do I know it’s a pound? The scale I use tells me so. How do I know the scale is accurate? I use a standard weight to calibrate it. Who made that standard? How did they ensure that it was exactly one pound? You see where this is going, that we can go crazy t...

Stations of the Cross reflection, 2026, delivered at St. Francis of Assisi, Louisville, KY Station 14: Jesus is laid in the tomb      We adore you, oh Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.      When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who also was a disciple of      Jesus. He went o Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered to be given to him. Then           J oseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud, and laid it in his own new tomb which he         had hewn in the rock; and he rolled a great stone to the door tomb. Joseph of Arimathea asked for the body of Jesus when it was taken down from the cross. He did this to preserve Jesus’ dignity and his holiness in the face of an unjust death. Joseph of Arimathea’s example continues today as the volunteers of the St. Joseph of Arimath...

Good Friday, 2026 homily, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY One of my diaconal ordination charges is to "make Christ and his redemptive love known” to the world, and one way I do that is to volunteer with the St. Joseph of Arimathea Society. I attend funerals every Thursday, and I can confidently say that I have been to more funerals of people I didn’t know than of people I have known. More than half of our funerals have no one in attendance other than the volunteers, with the remaining funerals having family and/or friends present. Beyond addressing the loss and grief of those present, there is a recognition that a relationship has ended at death. And even when no one is present, there is awareness that relationships ended some time ago, whether through estrangement or being the last of the family to die. I experience brief sadness when I think of those relationships that have ended, things said that shouldn’t have been said, and things that needed to b...

Sermon for Lent III, 2026, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text:    Exodus 17:1-7 , John 4:5-42 The readings this morning are brought to you by the letter “W” for water. Moses found water in rocks, and Jesus asked a Samaritan woman for water from a well. I am reminded of a phrase you may have heard before that goes, “Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” That is a line from the epic poem The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner by Samuel Coleridge Taylor. The poem tells the story of a ship captain who is frustrated by an albatross that his crew believes is bringing wind to the ship’s sails, and he kills the bird. Misfortune then follows them, the ship and crew are lost, and the captain eventually makes it ashore. He is doomed to tell his story because of the weight of his guilt. At the end of the poem, the captain says “He prayeth best, who loveth best / All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, / He made and loveth all.” The...

Ash Wednesday reminds me that the church year is a cycle, a never-ending loop of time where we experience several different sets of emotions and spiritual events. We have the anticipation of Advent and Christmas, the wonder of Epiphany, the work of the Spirit at and after Pentecost, the elation of Easter, and now the sober reflection of Lent. Over the years, I have worked to make Lent a little different each year to keep it from becoming routine and stale, something that only lasts for the first two weeks. The tradition of Lent has been to confess sins and repent of them, but that seems too narrow when I confess my sins daily in Morning Prayer and on Sunday at the Eucharist. There is a necessary element of looking deeply and honestly at our failings, things we did that we shouldn’t have done, things we didn’t do that we should have done, and those are not part of daily devotions. This is an essential part of the Lenten experience, but not one that should lead us to wallow in our broken...

Sermon for Epiphany V, 2025, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY. Text: Matthew 5:13-20 I have been thinking about salt a lot recently, mostly as a question “Do you have any salt for sale?” at various hardware stores or places like Walmart or Meijer. Salt is a valuable thing to have at specific times, like when you need to sharpen flavors in a meal or melt snow and ice. So, when Jesus says “You are the salt of the earth,” I want to say, “Yeah, but I need to get out of my driveway. Is shoveling snow not enough to make a difference in the world?” Jesus also says that I am the light of the world, which is nice, but sunlight is better at melting snow than I am using salt. And then Jesus says he has not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it, and I start to think that maybe he’s going to do something about the people who run the stop sign at the end of my street. But the Gospels are not about seasoning food, or dealing with snow and ice, or enforcing someone’s la...

 Sermon for Epiphany II, 2026, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: Isaiah 49:1-7 , John 1:29-42 I was a late work bloomer, meaning that I didn’t start a serious career until I was 31. The opening sentences of this morning’s reading from Isaiah would have been lost on me at that age: “The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother's womb he named me. He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away.” To be fair, few of us know what we are called to do at birth, but it took quite a while for me to hear and understand that call, and to see myself as an effective part of God’s work. My epiphany came from looking back at the false starts and dead end jobs I had that became a revelation to myself of what I had to start with. And now as I look back in semi-retirement, it is much more obvious and I wish I had started sooner on the path I eventually followed. Bu...

Sermon for Christmas I, 2025, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: Matthew 2:13-18   A Merry Christmas to you all. I think for most of us, we had a good Christmas. We celebrated with family and friends, or had a quiet day, or maybe had to work and celebrated in another way. I have to think of my friend who is having her first Christmas without her mother and is having a hard time this season. Hearing her talk about it brings the day or two of celebration to a halt and the reality of life returns, but it doesn’t bother me. It is a reminder to me that my experience of Christmas is not shared by everyone, and our gospel reading this morning reflects this as well. Sometime after Jesus is born, Joseph and his family are warned by God to flee to Egypt to escape Herod’s murderous search to kill Jesus. We’re reading this just three days after Christmas, and tomorrow is the feast of the Holy Innocents, a commemoration of the death of all the children in and around ...