Sermon: Sunday, October 26, 2014: Reformation Sunday

If the reformations of the past in science and society have anything to teach us, it is that there is life on the other side of these upheavals. It’s too early to know with any certainty where the church will be on the other side of this moment of evolution, but if we can pull back from our obsessive interest with describing what is and look at the signs of what is becoming, we might be encouraged to notice that there is a movement taking shape at the intersection of religion, politics, economics and identity. People around the world are crying out for new ways of ordering their life together in ways that are ethical, sustainable, and hospitable. More and more we want to find ways to live with dignity in the presence of diversity, to engage difference rather than to simply tolerate it.

Sermon: Sunday, October 28, 2012: Reformation Sunday

Texts:  Jeremiah 31:31-34  +  Psalm 46  +  Romans 3:19-28  +  John 8:31-36 Welcome to the 495th edition of Reformation Sunday!  In the church in which I grew up, Reformation Sunday was kind of a big deal.  It was the day when we confirmed groups of ninth graders who’d spent two or three years in Wednesday … Continue reading Sermon: Sunday, October 28, 2012: Reformation Sunday

Sermon: Sunday, March 4, 2012: Second Sunday in Lent

[Holding aloft a copy of the Pocket Edition of Luther’s Small Catechism] Was ist das? Dies ist ein geschenk.  This is a present.  It’s a gift from us to you.  These little pocket editions of Luther’s Small Catechism have been floating around the church, in one form or another, for almost five hundred years now.  … Continue reading Sermon: Sunday, March 4, 2012: Second Sunday in Lent