St George's Sermon Blog

  John 14:8-17 Today is the great festival of Pentecost in the church.   One of a handful of major festivals that shape the whole of the church year.   It is the birthday of the church, the festival of the Holy Spirit.   But it is also one the grates a bit against Episcopalian sensibilities.   Because quite frankly Pentecost can be a little intimidating.   I mean just look at the story, rushing wind, tongues of fire, people suddenly and impulsively speaking in foreign languages, generally making a public spectacle of themselves.   Maybe that is why this is a holiday where we tend to keep our celebrations smaller.   Anyone can handle Christmas and Easter.   They deal with discrete historical events, events that perhaps most importantly happened to someone else.   We can easily sit by and stand as silent witnesses to the events of Jesus’s birth, life and death, but not Pentecost.   In a world full of spectator events, Pentecost is a...

  Acts 16:16-40; John 17:20-26 Now I must confess, I did sort of a mean thing to you all.   Last week we talked about the conversion of Lydia and start of Paul’s ministry in Philippi.   And I made it sound so fun and easy.   I told you all you have to do is show up and God will do the work, the Holy Spirit will change the world.   And that is absolutely true.   But what I didn’t tell you last week is that sometimes showing up is hard.   Sometimes showing up is dangerous.   Sometimes showing up can be deadly. Because Paul’s story in Philippi doesn’t end with Lydia’s conversion.   Her and her household are baptized and they invite Paul and Silas to stay with them.   And it was fine at first because Lydia wasn’t actually from Philippi and her household weren’t actually Romans and who really cares what a woman does.   But then before too long all hell breaks loose.   And that is our story today, what happens when Paul decides to ...

  Act 16:9-16, John 14:23-29 Our journey in Acts continues this week, and much like the book of Acts itself we have been alternating back and forth between stories about Peter and stories about Paul.   So this week we turn our attention back to Paul.   And he has come a very long way since we last encountered him on the road to Damascus.   Several years have passed and he has spent time and learned alongside the other disciples in Antioch and Jerusalem and had quite a bit of success traveling among the synagogues of Syria and Turkey and founding churches there. And then in today’s episode, Paul suddenly has a vision for spreading his mission into mainland Greece, so he and a couple of his friends head out and set sail to the city of Philippi.   Now this may seem pretty normal to us, but in reality, sailing off to Philippi was a pretty radical choice.   Philippi was nothing like the Greek cities in Syria and Turkey where Paul had recently been founding c...

  So the story I told you from 2 weeks ago about Peter baptizing the first gentile believers is back again in our readings this week.   And the I told you this story from Acts then as an example of how Peter had to keep learning and growing even after the resurrection.   We know that Peter was an imperfect leader, that he wasn’t always open to change.   And he wasn’t meant to be.   What is important is that Peter kept trying, kept learning, kept following Jesus.   And that Jesus kept working on and with Peter to further the Gospel even after his return to heaven. And now this week, we hear of what comes of all that work.   And the little passage we heard today in Acts 11 is actually a recap of Acts chapter 10.   And I am actually really thankful the lectionary authors gave us this version of the story.   First of all because the version in Acts 10 is 48 verses long, and if we had to read the whole thing, the poor lector might pass out. ...

  John 21:1-19 I know we like to spend a lot of time talking about women leaders in the church, but this week we are going to take some time instead to talk about the men who Jesus chooses to be leaders in his church.   Specifically, two very important men, Peter and Paul. The first great public leaders of the church.   Between them they really were the two most authoritative voices in the early church.   Peter with his work in Jerusalem and the surrounding regions and Paul with his groundbreaking ministry to the gentile peoples across the empire in Turkey, Greece and eventually as far as Rome.   They both converted thousands, founded dozens of churches, wrote letters so instructive and important we still read them today and laid the foundations that allowed he church of Jesus Christ to survive, grow and thrive into a community of faith that has sustained billions of people for more than 2000 years.   These were undeniably great leaders who accomplished a...

  My Lord and My God, Easter 2 (C) – 2016 April 03, 2016 Anthony F.M. Clavier Doubt is a complicated matter. It can indicate a critical mind, one that asks questions, and never takes things at face value. The opposite is a gullible mind: one that is the delight of unscrupulous sales persons, dangerous politicians, and many televangelists. There’s another type of doubt, one driven by deep emotion, an emotion stimulated by loss. It’s a form of despair, a despair that clings to loss and refuses to believe that there is any future other than one described by that which is lost. Life will never be the same again. Friends assure us that we will get over our loss of a job, an ambition, our loss of a relationship or the death of a dear one but we don’t want to hear it. We can’t believe it. Saint Thomas’s doubt is of this second type. Instead of becoming the patron saint of those who never take things at face value, Thomas might well be the hero of people who are never on time. For some rea...

Luke 24:1-12 Alleluia Christ is Risen, The Lord is Risen Indeed Alleluia! It is Easter morning.   Christ has risen we have made it through the darkness.   Today we begin a new day, but it may not be exactly what we expected.    And of course, because it is Easter the women are back.   I love that about Easter, because the Easter story is always about women.   Every story, every account, even Paul and the early church Fathers acknowledge it, everyone knows women saw first, women knew first, women told the story first, women were the first evangelists. And so, our women come, a big group of them.   And they are ready, because these are the same women who ended our Passion story last Sunday.   They are the ones who stood at the foot of the cross, the ones who stayed to watch as Jesus’s body was taken down.   Our story tells us right before this: “ The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body...

  Luke 19:28-40; 22:14-23:56 Palm Sunday always a weird sort of day to me.   Such strong dichotomies. It begins with a celebration and ends with death.   It begins in protest and ends in sorrow.   And it is a day that shows us that crowds are powerful.   For good or ill, crowds are powerful.   This year we are living in the Gospel of Luke and I like Luke.   He is more focused on the disciples, and because he writes for a wider audience, he is better at taking in the bigger picture.   And we began our day with Jesus’s Triumphal Entry, which especially in Luke can only be described as protest march.   While the other Gospel writers remember the crowd shouting in Jewish slogans in Aramaic, Luke remembers how they shouted Roman slogans reserved for emperors, governors and generals to an unarmed man, born as a peasant and riding on a donkey.   We hear them shout "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and ...

  John 12:1-8 So our 40 day journey through Lent together is beginning to draw to a close.   This is the last regular Sunday in Lent.   Next week will mark the start of Holy Week with Palm Sunday and the Reading of the Passion.   And so today we complete out Lenten journey by reading this beautiful little story about Mary anointing Jesus’s feet.   And it is for us a fitting end to this season of discipleship and learning to listen to the Holy Spirit as we prepare for what Jesus has in store for us.   But first, lets step back for a moment for a moment and see where we are.   Not so long ago, in the story we last heard on All Saints Day, Jesus raised Mary’s brother Lazarus after he had been dead for 4 days.   We all probably know that story well.   But, there is a lesser known segue between that stories and this one that is very important.   As soon as the word gets out about Jesus raising Lazarus, Jesus gets very famous and popular a...

Sermon provided by Rev Ben Adams of All.together Campus Ministry In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Mother of us All. Amen. Well good morning dear people of St. George’s! What a pleasure it is to be back here with you today, and since it’s been a while since I last preached, I thought I’d reintroduce myself. So, my name is Ben Adams and I serve as the Pastor of All.together Campus Ministry, a Lutheran/Episcopal campus ministry in Dearborn and Detroit. We serve the students, staff, and faculty of Wayne State University, Henry Ford College, and the University of Michigan Dearborn. I can proudly say that in less than four years we have cultivated a vibrant community of faith from the seeds we have been sowing on each of our campuses.   And we are doing some exciting things. This academic year in particular is culminating this coming May with a group of fourteen traveling to Holden Village, a remote retreat center deep in the Cascade Mountains of Washington st...