Sermon: Sunday, August 2, 2015: Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

It is time for us to break camp and start looking for Jesus. We, who have been fed well in this place and in many places like this, are now called to get in the boat and cross the lake. We are heading into the wilderness, not just our congregation, but our whole society. Don’t you feel it? The illusory promise of life on demand has failed us, as it always does, and now is the moment of our liberation. We are disencamping from the economy of scarcity, from the politics of fear, from the policies of segregation, from the spirituality of hoarding. We must if we are going to live. We must if we are going to be free. We must if there is to be any future at all. We must leave what we have known, the idol of security, for the promise of real prosperity.

Sermon: Sunday, July 19, 2015: Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Although we may desire a relationship with God that comes with the promise that nothing will change, that is not the God we worship. We worship the God who creates something out of nothing. We follow the God of the tent and the tabernacle, a God who is at work in history, always moving from the center to the margin. We are members of a nation that began when God called Abraham to leave his home and set out for lands he’d never seen. We are descended from those who were liberated from the captivity of comfort and learned to be free by wandering in the wilderness. We are a part of the generation that has returned from exile to rebuild the church. We are the ones Christ called to leave our nets and follow. We are members of the body that finds new life on the other side of every death. We are God’s own people (Eph. 1:14).

Sermon: Sunday, July 12, 2015: Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

I will be gathering tomorrow morning at 10:30am at the James Randolph Center on LaSalle St downtown for the next Moral Monday protest, where at least 200 other people of faith are expected to be as well. My goal is not only to participate in the protest, but to listen to the voices and stories of those whose lives are placed in jeopardy by the failure of our elected leaders to govern wisely. I want to hear their stories first-hand so that I can share them with you and with others more accurately. I invite you to join me.