Sermons

As I reflect on my life, I realize that my own understanding of who Jesus is has changed many times. When I was a child, he was the subject of many stories that I was told in Sunday school and in church. I believed that he was God because that’s what people, that’s what adults, […]

Jeff and John were an older couple when I knew them. They had married a few years before, when same-sex marriage had been legalized, but they had been together for many decades. They were faithful members of the congregation, rarely missing a Sunday and their gregarious and extroverted personalities meant that they could always be

I have a fragment of a memory from when I was a young child. I don’t know how old I was, but I was not yet tall enough to see over the top of the counters in our kitchen. My mother was in the kitchen, cooking, and I was reaching my hands up over the

But the thing David had done was evil in the Lord’s sight. Just two weeks ago, I was preaching about the promise and blessing that God sees us—all of us, all our brokenness and woundedness, and seeing us completely, God has compassion for us. And there is a wonderful good news to that reality—that we

God had warned them. The people longed for a king. They desired to be like the other nations, with a ruler that would fight their battles for them, with a figurehead that would represent their aspirations and glory. Then they would be respected. Then they would fit in on the world stage. But God was

I wonder how Jesus knew? As he stood aside from the other disciples with Peter, how did he know it was Satan speaking in the words of his disciple and friend? Where had he heard these words before so as to recognize them so quickly? It is a startling story we hear today, because his

When I was in seminary, I knew a dear little church community, St. Chad’s, Loves Park. It was located about two hours outside of Chicago, a small, struggling congregation in a small, struggling, rust belt town. But they dreamt big dreams and they had big hearts to match and they approached their work and ministry

When you are young, some things seem to stretch on forever—the last hour of the school day before the bell rings, the wait for the sun to rise on Christmas morning, or the length of a summer day. For me, it was riding in the car, whether my parents were out running errands or we

Be prepared. Growing up in the scouts, it was a message that I heard time and again. Indeed, it is the official motto of the scouts, “Be prepared,” and is taught to every teen from an early age. Now, if I’m being honest, this messaging was at least partly about, maybe even mostly about, making

If I were to ask you to describe what a progressive, socially active church looks like, I suspect most people would eventually get around to describing something along the lines of a church with contemporary worship, praise music, perhaps even some slide shows to jazz up the sermon. Yet, in my experience, the churches most