Words of the Mouth and Meditations of the Heart

Advent 1 sermon, delivered November 28, 2021 at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: Luke 21:25-36 A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. Happy New Year! No, I haven’t gone off of the deep end, and we haven’t skipped over Christmas to New Year’s Eve. Today is the Church’s new years day, the first Sunday of Advent and the first Sunday of Year C Bible readings, for those keeping track. It means that we finish reading the Gospel of Mark and begin to read the Gospel of Luke for the coming year. It also means that we have left the Ordinary Time of the church calendar and entered into a long arc of preparing for the presence of Christ in our lives, from his birth to his rebirth. We have changed the green hangings of Pentecost to the blue ones of Advent, represent...

 Pentecost 24, 2021 sermon delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Mark 12:38-44 The Widow’s Mite, the name of the reading we heard in this morning’s gospel, is a familiar story because it comes up in the fall when stewardship campaigns are going on. We hear about how a poor widow gave everything she had to the Temple treasury box, and how this is an example of faithful giving. The story can certainly be interpreted that way and be true, that we give to the church based on needs rather than on what we are willing to give. But there’s another side to this story that is not explored very often, one that examines the circumstances around the widow’s giving and the implications that has for her, and for us. To provide context to the widow’s donation to the Temple treasury, we have to understand that the society she lived in was paternalistic and conforming, that is, a person’s life was determined in large part by the norms and customs of the larger society they lived i...

 Sermon for 10/17/2021 delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY. Text: Mark 10:35-45 I have been at St. Paul’s now since 1998, 23 years this past Palm Sunday. That’s a long time, yet many of you don’t know my story, my walk along the path that has led me to where I am called by the Church, by you, to serve as a Deacon. Part of my story is echoed in the Gospel reading this morning, where James and John ask Jesus to grant them a place of honor and authority by sitting on his right and left. Being on the right side of someone with power and authority is a place of privilege, immediately at their dominant hand, ready to give to them whatever they need or to receive something for us to act on. We recite every Sunday the Nicene Creed, where we are reminded that Jesus ascended to heaven and sits at the right hand of God. To be on the right side of someone is to be in a position of being depended on, or being necessary to carry out that person’s wishes. It is the origin of ...

 Pentecost 18, 2021 sermon, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY. Text: Mark 9:38-50 The disciples approach Jesus with a concern in the reading this morning. They complain (or almost whine) to Jesus that someone else is casting out demons in his name, but isn’t a part of the group following Jesus. They aren’t with the “in” crowd, they aren’t one of the “cool kids” who hang out with Jesus and follow him everywhere he goes.They think that this person is committing a sin. But the sin here is not about breaking a religious law or laws, it is instead the sin of jealousy and possessiveness, and of working against others who do Jesus’ work. Curiously, Jesus’ response to their complaint is “So?” He is not too impressed with their concern and looks beyond it to why they are concerned. The disciples are focused on appearing pious or righteous rather than being focused on sharing their gifts from God with others, and they sound jealous, or at least defensive about this oth...

  Sermon for the 15th Sunday after Pentecost, 2021, text here . Delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY. I received an email from my Human Resources department a few weeks ago. The email informed me that I was about to max out on my paid time off, and that I should consider getting away from work for a while to rest and recharge. Not taking time off has snuck up on me, and it is something that I intend to act on in the weeks to come. When I read this morning’s Gospel passage, I could relate to Jesus, who was trying to get away from the busyness of his work. In Mark's Gospel readings, Jesus has been constantly teaching and being approached by crowds asking him to heal them. He gets no relief, and is getting tired. He needs to get away from it all and recenter himself. Last week, we read about him being challenged by religious authorities about not following rituals before eating, and he sets them straight on someone’s actions being more important than their inte...

 Pentecost 12, 2021 sermon delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: John 6:51-58 Jesus is scandalous. He riles people up with his teaching, points out where they think they follow the law but don’t, and holds them to the faith that they claim to have. But this time, in this morning’s reading, Jesus tops himself with an outrageous idea. He says that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood consume true food. Eating him gives us eternal life. The people who hear him say that are upset and call him on his words. What does he mean, exactly? The idea of eating Jesus’ body and drinking his blood is uncomfortable to hear and the image is distressing. Jesus’ followers and the early church theologians wrestled with that image, trying to reconcile it with the Son of God who brings salvation to the world. At face value, Jesus’ words are offensive and contradictory to who he is, and who we believe God to be. So what do we do with this image of cannibalism? How do we un...

9th Sunday after Pentecost sermon delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY  Text: John 6:1-21 This story of Jesus feeding the five thousand is the only miracle (or as John describes it, a sign) that appears in all four Gospels. And with a few variations, nearly all of the details are the same in all four Gospels. This similarity is significant, because the Gospel of John was written completely separately from the Gospel of Mark, and separately from Matthew and Luke who were reading Mark as they wrote their Gospels. This story was already a meaningful part of the life of the church in the years that the Gospels were written, and it was a way of telling the world who Jesus was. This story opens chapter 6 of John’s Gospel, which is so important to us now that we will read it for the next four Sundays as an interruption to reading through Mark’s Gospel this year. It is about Jesus, and bread, and much, much more. The story opens by telling us that the disciples, faced w...

   Delivered on the 6th Sunday after Pentecost, at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville KY. Text: Mark 6:1-13 There’s a familiar image in America of the hometown boy who leaves for greater things and then returns home to a celebration as a hero. Cassius Clay, the black American boxer who grew up in Louisville’s West End and eventually changed his name to Muhammad Ali, had a parade in his honor when he returned from the 1960 Olympics with a gold medal. “Who do you think you are?” “You got no right to be here, to be talking like that, to have what you have.” That was what he said he heard on the streets or in restaurants in Louisville in the days after the parade in his honor. And that was what Jesus heard when he returned to Nazareth where he had grown up. Jesus addressed the crowd that gathered around him, made up of people who had known him over the years and had grown up with him or had watched him grow up. They were astonished by what he was saying and teaching, and they...

 Pentecost 3, 2021 sermon Delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville KY Texts:  https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp6_RCL.html My nephew was recently on an epic vacation with a friend, and one of the pictures he posted on Facebook was of the trees in the northern California Redwood forest. He was near the tallest tree in the world named Hyperion that is 380 feet tall. That is 3 times longer than this sanctuary. Redwoods are the tallest trees in the world, and their height and size make them truly impressive. When I was in the Seattle area on vacation years ago, I was in awe of the size of the trees in the Olympic rain forest. They were huge compared to what I was used to. Note that what I have described was greater, the most, the first of the trees of the world. When I flew home to Louisville from Seattle, the trees here seemed so small, so short. Did that mean that they were less than the enormous fir trees in Washington? The three readings toda...

Sermon for Pentecost Sunday, 2021, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY. Based on the texts of John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15 and Acts 2:1-21 .  May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. The story of Pentecost has been one of my favorites for years, starting when I was learning a foreign language in high school. Once I learned how to express myself in a second language, I found an appreciation for the power of the Holy Spirit as it acted on the disciples, letting them connect and communicate with many others around them, in their own language. Now, to be clear, Luke is not writing about speaking in tongues as Paul does in his first letter to the church in Corinth. Paul’s mention is about an ecstatic language that God understands, and occurs when someone is full of the Spirit. Luke writes in Acts about tongues of fire that appeared above each of the disciples, a sign of the presence of the Holy S...