St George's Sermon Blog

“Do you believe in the Son of Man?”,  Joseph Peters-Mathews   RCL:   1 Samuel 16:1-13, Ephesians 5:8-14, John 9:1-4, Psalm 23  Today’s gospel text is a lot: a lot of words and a lot of concepts. Within John’s narrative, today’s gospel comes from what scholars call “the Book of Signs,” John 1-12. In this section of the gospel, Jesus—God’s word made flesh, the light which the darkness could not overcome—is traveling around, performing miracles. These miracles are “signs” because they cause some people to come to have faith in him.  Later on, Jesus will say that those who believe without having seen are even more blessed.  As Jesus walks, he encounters a blind man. The disciples, operating under the assumption expressed in Exodus that “The sins of the father are visited upon the children,” ask Jesus whether this man’s blindness is the result of his sins or the sins of his parents. Jesus tells the disciples, “Neither. This man is blind so that God’s glory can b...

John 4:5-42 So now we have reached the third week of our Lenten journey through the wilderness and we have come to our third major story in our series of biblical stories about transformation and the way our relationship with God has the power to change everything.   And this week we heard the story of the Woman at the Well.   Once again, the story is long and complicated and dense, but at least this week, we have a story we know, or at least we think we do.   And also this story, more than the others is actually set in the wilderness, of sorts.   I mean they are right outside of town, but at the start of our story, a very human Jesus is sitting by a well and he is tired and thirsty.   And this is part of the power of the wilderness.   It draws our attention to our humanity, to the urgency of our basic needs, to the reality that self-sufficiency is always an illusion.   And this wilderness need gives him the opportunity to start a conversation wi...

  John 3:1-17; 7:36-53; 19:38-42 This week is the First week in a series of major stories we will be hearing from the Gospel of John for the rest of this Lenten season.   Each week for the next four weeks we will be hearing these long and complicated stories about how meeting Jesus changes the lives of 4 different people that he encounters during his ministry.   These stories are rich and beautiful and allow us to see examples of how people’s lives can be transformed by their relationship with Jesus and how they grow and change from these encounters. This week we begin our journey with the full story of Nicodemus.   How many of you have never heard the second two parts of this story before?   The regular lectionary only includes the first bit from John chapter 3 and I am willing to wager that the vast majority of even life-long Christians don’t know the rest of it.   And I mean granted, this first part of John chapter 3 is a great story all on its own, ...

  Matthew 4:1-11 Our gospel story begins this week, “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness” and so we are called during this season of Lent to follow Jesus out into the wilderness.   To follow Jesus along his 40 day journey through the wilderness along the road that ultimately leads through death to resurrection and new life.   And I’m not going to lie, that doesn’t immediately sound very fun.   The wilderness can be a scary place.   When we picture wilderness, we often picture a place of desolation, a place of loneliness.   Perhaps even a place of fear and danger, from wild animals, from the elements, almost as if nature itself is standing against us.   And honestly most frighteningly, the wilderness is often a place of profound change. And the Bible is filled with these wilderness journeys.   Just look at other wilderness journeys we encounter in the Biblical story: Adam & Eve cast out of paradise into the wilderness af...

  Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 Today, we join together to begin our Lenten journey to the cross.   These 40 days are a special time of dedication and focus in the church.   It is a season of repentance where we remember both our sinful nature and our need for God’s forgiveness.   But much more importantly it is a time for journeying with Jesus.   A time to focus more deeply on how Jesus is calling us and where Jesus is leading us to be.   And so, it is also a time where we often heighten our observance and engage in Lenten disciplines like prayer, mediation, bible study, fasting, almsgiving and service to others. The lessons appointed for today are perfectly designed to help us enter into Lent.   Our reading from Isaiah, a repeat from two weeks ago, talks quite pointedly about what God desires of our times of fasting a devotion.   In it, Isaiah reminds the people of Israel that one cannot meaningfully fast and humble ourselves before God if we are not...

 [RCL] Exodus 24:12-18; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Psalm 2; Matthew 17:1-9 How the Story Ends How many of you enjoy a good mystery story? If your favorite character is walking into doom, do you get nervous? Are you the kind of person who will skip to the last chapter and make sure everything’s okay before you go on? If so, do you bother to read the rest of the book after that? Sometimes, we can infer how the ending will unfold, depending on how far we are into the book. We still read the rest, because there are character developments and nuances that we might miss otherwise, which will make the ending even more meaningful and fully understood. The work of living out the story with the characters must be done, not despite but because we had that brief flash of knowing the ending from the middle of the story. Now what if you were reading and learned that one of the characters dies a horrible death, only to flip ahead and read the final pages—really quickly, of course—and find them on the page ...