People change. Hearts and minds are moved. Our harshest oppressors can sometimes become our allies, even our friends. Grace changes us, which changes everything. But still so often we deny others the possibility of being made new in the ways that we ourselves have been made new. We withhold from others the same grace that has saved our very lives.
Tag: grace
Sermon: Thursday, December 25, 2014: Nativity of Our Lord — Christmas Day
Whatever stories you tell yourself about the kind of person you are, whatever immutable personal flaws or character defects you think define you, the poetry of Christmas morning says you are wrong. You are not all that you hide away in the dark. You are creations of the Word called into being by love. You shine with the light of God, which can never be extinguished in you or in this world.
Sermon: Sunday, November 23, 2014: Reign of Christ
In today’s gospel Jesus gives us an image of God’s judgment in which all the nations are gathered together and then people are recategorized, not on the basis of what nation, or what race, or what class, or what club they belong to, but on the basis of whether they have been turned in upon themselves or turned outward toward the needs of those around them. The deep irony in our all-to-common reading of this story is that in our anxiety about God’s judgment we begin to turn inward once again and begin the process of drawing the lines that separate us, sheep from goats.
By Proclamation 