Sermon Audio 6/16/2013

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary Year C

Luke 7:36-8:3

Forgiveness and the kingdom of God. People seemed to like it, even though I may or may not have included them in describing people as "jerks," so I think that's good?

Sermon Audio 6/9/2013

Third Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary Year C

Luke 7:11-17

Today we hear about a couple of miraculous resurrections, by Jesus and Elijah. I have difficulty connecting to resurrection stories, at times because I tend to skip to the end of the story, and at other times because I have no idea what the end of a resurrection story might look like. Today's sermon offers (to me, at least) a take on the challenge and hope of resurrection.

Sermon Audio 6/2/2013

Second Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary Year C

Luke 7:1-10

My blog is called "Unexpected and Mysterious," and today's sermon hits pretty heavily on the "unexpected" side of that. God surprises us all the time.

Sermon Audio, 5/26/2013

Holy Trinity Sunday, Lectionary Year C

Romans 5:1-5

The Holy Trinity - Father, Son, Holy Spirit - is a bedrock Christian doctrine, as vital to our theology as it is irrelevant to our actual lives of faith. What does this confusing, beautiful, paradoxical doctrine tell us about our relationship with God?

Bonus: in this sermon, I divulge the most important piece of information regarding our new Bishop-elect here in the North/West Lower Michigan Synod of the ELCA.

Responses to Oklahoma Tornado and Weather-Related Tragedies

I heard about this tragedy from my friend Rev. Matt Titus while sitting next to him at the North/West Lower Michigan Synod Assembly.* He suggested that we pause our Assembly to pray for Oklahoma victims, and because I was the worship song leader I ended up leading that prayer before our Mountain Vespers worship on Monday evening. As an unexpectedly public voice in response to this situation, I feel some particular connection to what happened, as though my public prayers put me on the spot to respond in some more tangible way.

What am I talking about, you ask? Well, conveniently my friend and colleague Rev. Tim Brown has already written an excellent piece explaining the relationship of prayer and giving in response to tragedies.*** The crux of Tim's article is that "prayer must always lead to action," and he takes on both religious people who think prayer is sufficient in itself and atheists who think prayer is an entirely irrelevant response.****

Sermon Audio, 5/19/2013

Pentecost, Lectionary Year C

Genesis 11:1-9 and Acts 2:1-21

I failed to record last week's sermon (really, I had my phone there, and thought I'd recorded it, but somehow it just doesn't exist), so here's one from this week at least. This week I talked about the ancient, amazing Tower of Babel story as a mythical explanation of human difference, then talked about how difference affects our experience as people. How does the Holy Spirit relate to human difference?

Sermon Audio, 5/5/2013

Sixth Sunday of Easter, Lectionary Year C

Acts 16:9-15

The story of Lydia is a bigger deal than I thought it was. God did some amazing work back in Philippi, and as we celebrated Madalyn Claire's baptism at LCS on Sunday, God did some amazing work here as well.

Thanks to Brian Peterson, whose excellent commentary on this text at WorkingPreacher.org inspired a good deal of this sermon.