St George's Sermon Blog

  Luke 11:1-13 Lord, Teach Us How to Pray, Proper 12 (C)  by  Katerina Katsarka Whitley Lord, teach us how to pray. “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily  bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive  everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time  of trial.” This is the Lord’s Prayer as found in the gospel of Luke. Prayer. What can one find to say about prayer in an environment where it can be used as a cover for hypocrisy, an easy mantra to fool the vulnerable?  “Our thoughts and prayers are with you,” politicians say to bereaved parents whose children were gunned down because these same politicians failed to do what is just and good. Even the ancients understood that empty prayers meant nothing. There was a saying in ancient Greece: “Together with Athena, move your own hands also.” Do something, don’t just pray! The disciples had witnessed that whenever their teacher, the one they called ...

Luke 10:38-42 So, I bet that at least a few of you here had a very visceral reaction when I started reading this text this morning.   I can almost feel the fists clenching, and the eyes narrowing, the bracing for what is to come.   I had a lady Ms Vikki, in my last congregation who was the perennial altar guild chair and powerpoint runner and general doer of all things, she was kind of our Deb, and she used to threaten to skip church on this Sunday (though she never actually did because she needed to be there to run the slide show) because she hated hearing pastors preach on this text.   And I bet that many of you faithful stalwart folks especially the women gathered here today have heard at least one really bad sermon on this text. The one that probably without meaning to manages to completely devalue your work in the church.   The one that accidentally implies that the largely unnoticed, unsung work of the congregation is somehow less important than the suppose...

  Luke 10:25-37 So now we are getting into the meaty part of this green season of the church year where we learn to follow Jesus and discover how to be his disciples.   All summer, we have been hearing stories about Jesus crossing over and breaking boundaries and reaching out to the least expected people imaginable.   He has taught and healed and cast out demons and then he even called out and sent his followers to join in his boundary breaking ministry. And now this week, we reach the capstone of this series of readings with our gospel story for today.   The Story of the Good Samaritan.   Which has to easily be one of the most popular stories in the whole Bible.   We love this story.   And we tell it so often that it’s easy to scarcely give it a second thought.   It’s just a simple object lesson about how we should be kind to strangers and help people in need right?   To us today it couldn’t really be more straightforward.   Clearly...

  Peace [RCL] 2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; Galatians 6:(1-6)7-16; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20  by  The Rev. Joslyn Ogden Schaefer   What do you think of when you hear the word “peace”? Many people first associate the word with internal positive emotional states like calmness, contentment, and acceptance. Others jump straight to external realities like harmony among groups of people, or the absence of it among nations. It’s a big and slippery concept – something most humans desire but few seem to experience consistently. Our faith tradition has a lot to say about peace. Shalom is the word in Hebrew, and it connotes well-being in every dimension of our lives. In the New Testament, the Greek word is eiréné . In today’s readings, both Jesus and Paul talk about peace. Instead of giving us suggestions for how to cultivate inner peace or tips for self-improvement, we hear that peace isn’t generated through our own efforts. Instead, God provides this spiritual gift to us. It is ...