St George's Sermon Blog

Luke 13:31-34; Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 We have made it to week two of Lent, and so now we are getting to the meaty part of the season.   We are well on our way, but we still have a long way to go.   This is where the rubber begins to hit the road so to speak.   10 days in, our Lenten practices are either starting to become habits or falling by the wayside.   It’s that time when we really want to start seeing results for our activities but they may not be here yet.   Our journey to the cross has really only just begun, but very often we wish the destination would come sooner, that change would come faster.   If only Easter would arrive as quickly as this the sudden change of seasons that came upon us this week, and yet we are still here waiting another month to enjoy our resurrection joy. And Jesus knows this.   This is not news.   We are not unique in trying to rush the process.   Our Gospel lesson this week reminds us of this simple fact....

  Luke 4:1-13;  Romans 10:8b-13 This is the first week in Lent as we begin our 40 day journey together with Jesus toward the cross.   Lent is an ancient and Holy time in the church.   Back in the earliest days of the church when Christianity was still a new religion, new Christians who were preparing to be baptized would undergo a special period of intensive preparation during the final 40 days before their baptism on Easter.   This period was designed to mirror other 40 day periods of preparation for an encounter with God found in the bible.   Like when Moses went up onto Mount Sinai for 40 days, and when Elijah journeyed for 40 days in the wilderness while escaping persecution and most importantly when Jesus fasted for 40 days in the wilderness and was tempted by the devil before the start of his public ministry in the Gospel story we hear today. As the church grew and became the dominant religion and as more and more people were baptized as infants o...

  Isaiah 58:1-12, 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.   The reading from Isaiah reminds us of the true nature of worship before God.   He warns us of the dangers of shallow worship, of saying the right things and doing right things while letting injustice fester at out feet.   Instead Isaiah call...

  Luke 9:28-43a We have made it to the end of our long Epiphany Season.   The last Sunday before the start of the season of Lent here at church. It is the day we say farewell to Alleluia and begin to transition to the more somber time of Lent.   And it is the day where we read the story of Jesus’s Transfiguration every year.   And let’s just take a moment to acknowledge right from the outset that this story is straight up weird.   Jesus goes up on a mountain gets super shiny, has a meeting with two dead guys, the disciples have this crazy holy theophany (which is really just a fancy word for when God talks directly to you) and then everyone leaves.   It’s weird, so weird.   Especially to modern ears.   And that’s okay.   God is weird.   Being a disciple is weird.   And sometimes, the weird stuff, because it is so outside of our normal experience is where we can learn the most about God and what he is calling us to do.   So to...

  Jeremiah 17:5-10 L uke 6:17-26 So we are getting close to the end of the Epiphany Season, and it is particularly long season this year so this week and next we are getting into a rare part of the lectionary.   We have read these lessons from Luke’s Sermon on the Plain exactly once in my career and by my calculations they won’t be back until 2049.   And sometimes I suspect this was intentional.   You see the lectionary was written by pastors and so sometimes I secretly think they did this on purpose because they didn’t want to have to preach on these texts very often.   It’s is much easier to just tuck them away in a deep dark corner, because while this sermon that Jesus gives in Luke is full of some of the Gospel’s most quotable bits, it also delivers a very difficult message.   One that perhaps we would rather not have to think too hard about. We tend to like Matthew’s recollection of this sermon a lot better.   It is longer, much less abrasive ...

  Luke 5:1-11 So this week is all about call stories in the church.   And this always presents a bit of a challenge.   Because professional ministers are always really good at understanding and telling our call stories.   It’s a big part of our formation process for ministry.   But is also creates a problem because I am the only one here today who decided to make a living out of doing ministry, but everyone here is called by God.   Everyone.   And when we hear these big dramatic bible stories and professional ministers talk about life changing experiences, it really easy to decide that they must be all about someone else.   But they’re not.   They’re about you too.   So today we are going to take a close look at the trio of call stories we heard today.   And they all come from very different times and places but they all end up having a surprisingly large amount in common.   Isaiah, Paul and Peter all experience powerful ca...

  Luke 2:22-40 Today, Feb 2 is exactly 40 days after Christmas and so we are celebrating the Feast of the Presentation of our Lord at the Temple in Jerusalem, Candlemas or Groundhog Day.   It is also what is called a cross-quarter day, which means it is exactly half way between the winter solstice and the equinox, start of winter and start of spring, so winter is half over today, but unfortunately that means we still have half to go.   For me this is always a rather difficult time of year.   The fun and joy of Christmas are long gone and all we have left are the bills.   January has been cold, gloomy and snowy, and spring is far away.   The news has been heart-wrenching lately. These are the doldrums of the year with many of our days filled with little more than the mundane tasks of everyday life. It is also a time of year when our faith can feel stretched thin.   It is easy to feel close to Jesus holding a candle on Christmas Eve, easy to see Go...

  Luke 4:14-21; 1Cor 12:12-31a This week, as we continue through the Season of Epiphany, we start to settle back into readings from the Gospel of Luke that will be with us for this whole year and despite this being the pattern we have followed for more than 50 years, they feel especially timely right now.  Because even though the Apostle Luke was almost definitely Jewish and probably had been his whole life, unlike the other Gospel writers, he likely was not from Judea or the Galilee or anywhere in the Holy Land, he spoke Greek as a first language and wrote his Gospel primarily for people living outside of Israel both Jews and Gentiles.  And so Luke, while he knows and tells many of the same stories as Matthew and Mark focuses far more on community and inclusion than his Judean counterparts.  And as the author of the Pentecost story we know so well, he is also far more interested the Holy Spirit and how it is active in the world and the lives of believers.  So L...

  Jesus’ Hour, Epiphany 2 (C) – 2013 January 20, 2013 Katerina Katsarka Whitley In this charming and exhilarating story, Jesus is the protagonist but says very little – only three short sentences – yet the whole story is filled with the light of his Epiphany. The account unfolds before us as images instead of narration. A wedding celebration is taking place and, as was the custom, the wedding is part of a feast. This is obviously a well-to-do family, perhaps the leading family in Cana, a small Galilean village. The first things the writer tells us is that Jesus’ mother is present at this joyous affair. Mary must have been a good friend of the bride’s family, and since the feast is given by the bride’s father, she is an invited guest; later, the bridegroom will take the new bride away from her family and she will belong to his family from then on. So here we are presented with the picture of a wealthy family entertaining the people of the village together with some special friends s...