St George's Sermon Blog

  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 ...

Matt 5:13-20 So last week, Jesus began his great Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes, this beautiful series of blessings that instruct us on how to stay on the right path and to follow the heart of the law as God intended.   How we are called to walk the right path of Jesus by loving God and loving our neighbor through acts of costly service.   And then this week, Jesus continues his thoughts on the subject in his great sermon with a couple of metaphors to illustrate what he means.   He calls his disciples to be Salt and Light. Now to our modern ears telling his disciples that they are the salt of the earth might seem a little odd.   Afterall nowadays salt is generally considered to be a bad thing.   Everyone here has probably been told by a doctor at some point that they should attempt to reduce their salt intake or avoid salt.   It is associated with cheap, over processed, and all be it tasty, but generally unhealthy food.   Now granted, mayb...

Matt 5:1-13 Okay I am finally ready to talk about Minnesota, okay I am not actually ready but I am going to do it anyway.   And it fits, because we are now right smack dab in the middle of our series about what it means to be a means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.   And this week is when it starts to get hard.   Because the message in our lessons this week is pretty serious, and seriously misunderstood.   I mean they shouldn’t actually be that hard, really we all know what these texts say, the message is clear, we just don’t always like it. And so, we start today with our Gospel Lesson, where Jesus begins his great Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes.   And I am sure that this text is pretty familiar, probably very familiar.   I would say this passage is probably in the top 5 of most quoted scripture passages in the Bible.   Everyone knows the Beatitudes, but when we really look at them deeply and carefully, I am not sure they actually make ...