Words of the Mouth and Meditations of the Heart

 Sermon for Epiphany VI, 2022, delivered at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY. Text: Luke 6:17-26 Our Gospel reading this morning is known as the Beatitudes, delivered in Luke’s version as the sermon on the plain. These pronouncements of blessings and warnings are also found in the Gospel of Matthew, but in that version, Jesus is on a mount. In either case, the setting is similar to Moses bringing the ten commandments down from Mt. Sinai to the faithful as rules for righteous living. Except that these aren’t commandments. Let’s hear them again, the blesseds and the woes, but rearranged into couplets: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. / "But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. / "Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.” “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. / "Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and we...

 Epiphany III Texts: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 , 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a , Luke 4:14-21 I have a confession to make. In Eucharistic Prayer A, when we recite the Holy Mystery “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again,” I sometimes say “Christ has come again” and it is because of Paul’s metaphor of faithful Christians making up and being the body of Christ in the reading this morning. It is a wonderful and accurate metaphor because we become the Body of Christ when we gather together, as a community to worship, and as a community that serves the needs of people in the city. We are fed as a community, a body, at the altar with the sacraments of bread and wine to refresh and renew us spiritually, so that we can continue to be the Body in the world. When we leave at the end of the service, we don’t stop being the body. We spread out, still as a community of believers, connected by faith, to be the eyes, ears, hands, and feet of Jesus, still doing his work in the world. ...

 Christmas II, 2022 sermon delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville KY Text: Jeremiah 31:7-14 If you take the time to read the whole book of Jeremiah, you’ll find that it is depressing. Jeremiah was not a happy person. He was not someone you would want to invite to a party. He wrote pages and pages of criticism and in fact, his writing left such an impression that there’s a term for a long list of woes and complaints: a jeremiad. Yet, in the middle of this really depressing book of gloom and doom are three chapters expressing hope and joy, and our Old Testament reading this morning comes from one of those chapters. Those three chapters are called the Book of Comfort because they provide a sense of comfort and relief from the negative story and laments of the previous chapters. After hearing Jeremiah recount how God is punishing Israel for the sins of its inhabitants, we hear about a future where people are happy, and celebrating the goodness of grain and wine and oil, a...

 Christmas I sermon delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY, December 26, 2021 Text: John 1:1-18 , Isaiah 61:10 - 62:3 In the beginning. It isn’t by accident that those words are heard twice in scripture: once in Genesis, and once in the Gospel of John we just heard. John purposefully used those same words to indicate that the origin of Jesus, God incarnate, shared the moment that God created this universe, this world, and us. Genesis tells us that God brought Creation into existence, including Jesus, making God the center of all Creation. Every day of creation was finished with the proclamation that it was good. That goodness eventually became the Word, Jesus who lived among us, and helped us start a new relationship with God that was also declared good. So today we find ourselves starting something new again: a new church year, now four weeks old, and a new calendar year a week from now. In the middle of this newness is Christmas, a celebration of the beginning o...

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...