Sermon for Trinity Sunday

As your bulletin cover points out, today is Trinity Sunday. The one day a year that is dedicated to a theological proposition. While there are multiple passages in the Christian scriptures that refer to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, nowhere is it explained or expanded upon. In fact, you may be surprised to learn that the idea of the Trinity was controversial for several centuries before being settled on after multiple councils of the Church in the fourth and fifth centuries. In the end, the idea that God is one God, who exists in the three persons, continues to this day to be something that many, if not most of us, struggle with.

Sermon for Pentecost Sunday

You know I half considered inviting you all to sing “Happy Birthday” with me this morning. It is, after all, the “birthday” of the Church. It is, in other words, the first day when the assembly of those who followed Jesus in his way and life claimed themselves as a community of faith and proclaimed that faith to others.

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter

Today we go back to the night before Jesus died. Today we go back to the great prayer that Jesus prayed for his disciples and those who would come after him. We hear only a snippet of that prayer this morning, but it’s a profound snippet. In this prayer Jesus prays that just as he and the father are in one another that he and we may be in one another. He prays for our unity so that the world may believe. And he prays that the love of God be in us and that he be in us as well.

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter

We too can find new ways of being if we are brave enough to choose a different path. Oftentimes the grace and healing we so desperately seek is within our grasp if we but choose an alternative approach that may, at first, seem too simple or is outside our field of vision.

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter

It seems to be human nature to want to belong. To be a part of a group. To have a sense of identity. In and of itself there’s nothing wrong with that. Belonging can bring us a great sense of comfort. But belonging can also have its shadow side. Haven’t we all felt the sting of not belonging. Of being on the outside looking in? How often have we experienced, either directly or indirectly, what happens when a group is exclusive, or worse, exclusionary?

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter

What does it mean to believe Jesus, or more specifically believe in Jesus? That might sound like an obvious question on the surface, but I would argue that we use this language without a lot of thought. In today’s gospel Jesus makes believing him a condition of being one of his sheep. He makes believing him be the key to eternal life. So what does it mean to believe Jesus? What does it mean to believe in him?

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter

The late author M. Scott Peck opens his book The Road Less Traveled with the words, “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.” If you have lived any length of time with any modicum of awareness you can recognize the truth of his words. Life is difficult and we most definitely live in difficult times. And that’s true even when there are good things to point to. It doesn’t take an avalanche to move from joy to struggle.