St George's Sermon Blog

  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 ...

  Matt 4:12-23 This week we continue ongoing Epiphany series about what it means to be called be called by God and how we live and grow as Jesus’s disciples.   Which seems fitting as we gather together to reflect on our ministry together at our annual meeting, rejoice in all we have done in the past year and begin to look toward our future together.   To help us on our journey, in our lesson is week, we essentially heard another version of the story from last week about Jesus meeting and calling Peter to be among his first disciples.   Only this time we hear it from the Gospel of Matthew . So one day, Jesus is walking by the sea in Capernaum and he meets two pairs of brothers Peter and Andrew and James and John while they are out cleaning up after a night of fishing and he calls them to follow him.   He tells them he will make them “fishers of people” and they immediately leave their stuff and follow him.   Now often when we hear this story, it is eas...

  Matt 3:13-17 This is the start of the season after Epiphany here in the church.   It is the season of time between Christmas and Lent where we begin to discover who Jesus is and what it means to be his disciples.   It is a time we will begin to consider what it means to be called by God and how that affects us.   Over the next several weeks we will hear a whole series of readings where Jesus suddenly appears in the lives of those around him and we will see how his presence changes everything.   And how being near Jesus gets people to do all sorts of new, weird and scary things.   How Jesus pushes people out of their comfort zones and into new things.   And how amazing things happen when he does. This first week we hear the story of the Baptism of Our Lord from the book of Matthew.   In this story Jesus comes into the wilderness to be baptized by John.   And John flatly refuses.   Because the whole idea is absurd in the face of it...

Matt 2:13-23 Today is the second Sunday of Christmas the bookend to the Christmas season.   On Christmas Eve we all heard the old familiar story of Mary and Joseph huddled around the baby Jesus peaceful in the manger.   We heard of glad tidings of great joy announced by the host of heavenly angels and the joy of the shepherds come to worship the Messiah.   We welcomed the new light coming into the world and rejoiced at its appearing.   But today, we hear the dark side of the Christmas story.   Today we turn to the Gospel of Matthew and we hear a very different account.    One that many, probably most of us would rather ignore.   In fact, it never ceases to amaze me how many lifelong Christians remain totally unfamiliar with this story.   For although the first visitors to the newborn Jesus, the shepherds, the angles and even the magi were all joyful and filled with praise, beneath their glad tidings danger was lurking.   For in thi...