Words of the Mouth and Meditations of the Heart

Sermon for Pentecost IX, 2023, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: Matthew 13:31-33,44-52   This morning’s Gospel reading has several short parables in a row that Matthew intends to use to illuminate aspects of the kingdom of God. Maybe they are about faith, how a small faith can still have great worth. Maybe it is about our relationship with God, where God would give up everything to keep a relationship with us alive. There is no common thread through these parables, no hidden message to be discovered that opens the heavens and the angels sing hallelujah. Each of the parables in the reading is a treasure itself found in God’s kingdom, a treasure that leads us to discover something new or something we didn’t think had any value. We are surrounded by yeast and flour, mustard seeds, fields, and pearls. But, those things won’t look like what we expect them to look like in our lives because they are metaphors. That is the challenge of reading these parables, ...

 Sermon for Pentecost VI, 2023, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY   Text: Romans 7:15-25a , Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30    Three weeks ago I was on vacation in the GTA, otherwise known as the Greater Toronto Area. GTA sounds cooler. We stayed in an AirBnB that had a washer and dryer, and on the night we did laundry, I threw a dishwasher packet into the clothes washer. My wife had said earlier that she had already dropped a laundry detergent packet in, but it didn’t register with me. When I realized what I had done, I told her, and said that I didn’t know why I had made that mistake. I take care of the laundry at home, as well as starting the dishwasher on occasion, so I know what the dishwasher packets look like. I knew that it was the wrong thing to do after it happened, but I did it for a reason that I couldn’t explain. The load I threw the dishwasher packet into were white and light-colored clothes, so there wasn’t a noticeable effect. Everythi...