St George's Sermon Blog

  Acts: 4: 32-35, 5:1-11; Luke 12: 13-21 Today is the Feast of St Francis, and it is particularly great that October 4 falls on a Sunday this year because this is also a jubilee year for St Francis marking 800 years since his death and inviting us to remember his enduring legacy and impact on the church.   The Feast of St Francis traditionally is a day across the church and especially in the Episcopal church where we often celebrate St Francis’ deep love of animals and nature with Pet Blessings and outdoor worship and all manner of animal and creation themed activities.   Which is good.   But we did all that last month when the bishop was here.   And now at least for me, I am just really thankful after this crazy month that we are back inside our clean, warm and newly unsmelly sanctuary.   And so instead, I think that this year we have a really wonderful opportunity to think more deeply about St Francis and the wider legacy of his life and what it can t...

Matt 21:23:32; Philippians 2:1-13 It’s fighting season in the lectionary.   Today in the Gospel of Matthew we see the religious authorities go and pick a fight with Jesus.   And this fight that they start with Jesus today goes on in our readings for the next 7 weeks.   These people, they just keep arguing, they keep attacking Jesus, one group after another, for like the next month and a half. And I just can’t.   I can’t do it.   Not this year.   I have preached through this series of readings before, and it does have a lot to teach us.   It’s good, see me in 3 years, we’ll talk about it, we’ll do it all.   But not this year.   Not when every time I turn on the TV, I see some of the most ridiculous political ads I have ever seen in my life (are we really fighting over which candidate likes football more?).   Not when we seem to have forgotten even the most basic rules of civil discourse.   Not when our church recently literally c...

Jonah 3:11-4:10; Matt 20:1-16 So today we have a set of stories from the bible that really get us thinking about the principle of scarcity and how it affects us.   Our Gospel lesson for today tells one of the more infuriating stories in the whole bible about a landowner who goes out and hires people to work for the harvest in his vineyard.   And he goes out time and time again to hire more and more workers throughout the day.   Some end up working a full 12-hour day and others for only a hour.   And then at the end of the day, when it’s time to get paid, the owner very publicly, very intentionally pays all the workers the same standard daily wage no matter how long or hard they have worked. And I am betting this story probably annoys you a little bit.   It’s okay, it does me too.   It violates our basic common sense of fairness.   What the owner does just doesn’t seem right.   Some people worked so hard and the others that came late barely wor...

  The Old Testament Scholar…, Proper 19 (A) – 2008 The Old Testament scholar Gerhard von Rad wrote: “Real forgiveness is not a purely interpersonal matter, but it reaches deeply into the relationship of men before God.” The three lectionary passages today, taken from the end of the book of Genesis, from St. Paul’s Letter to the Roman Christians, and from Matthew’s retelling of Jesus’ parable to his disciples, present us with profound lessons on tolerance and forgiveness. In the very last chapter of Genesis we read the finale of the Joseph story. There is nothing easy or light or sentimental in the ending of this story, one that reads like an exciting short novel. Out of jealousy and spite, the sons of Jacob had committed a grave crime against their brother Joseph. Years later they discover that their victim has survived and has become a great man in another land: Egypt. They, too, eventually go to this land to escape starvation, and their wronged brother is the only one who can sav...

  Matt 14:22-33 So last week while I was away you all got to hear the story about Jesus feeding the 5000 with only 5 loaves and 2 fish.   And you learned that God is Good, all the time and will always provide what we need.   And then today we pick the thread back up and hear this story about Jesus and the storms on the sea.   And it provides with yet another great opportunity to think about how God is present with us in good times and bad. At the beginning of our story, after accomplishing this great feeding miracle Jesus is very worn out, so he makes the disciples go on ahead of him to the other side of the sea.   And this is a bit of an interesting choice, because in the Gospels crossing to the “other side” of the sea is almost always a metaphor for going out to do ministry in the midst of new people in the world.   Often among gentiles or less receptive crowds.   And so in this way, it is not so different than other stories we have heard in our ...

  Sometimes Thinking…, Proper 13 (A) – 2005 July 31, 2005 Ken Kesselus Sometimes thinking in the Episcopal Church is too sophisticated. Sometimes, we tend to miss simple truths, stated plainly and simply. How many of us would feel comfortable in a congregation where the people express a form of the old time religion? One such church developed a kind of chant that expressed a simple truth. The preacher would shout, “God is good.” The congregation would enthusiastically reply, “All the time.” It was their way of affirming truths about the power of God to provide for God’s people. Is this a fundamental truth of the Christian Gospel? Today we learn anew from today’s Gospel that God is God—that God will provide what we need. We re-learn, in the midst of the Body of Christ, that God will lift up among us resources to accomplish holy and life-giving purposes. In today’s Gospel we encounter hungry people being met by a suggestion from the disciples that Jesus send them away to get somethin...

1Kings 3:5-12; Romans 8:26-39 Our season of discipleship is going to take a bit of a turn this week and instead of the Gospel we are going to take a look at our Old Testament Reading from the book of Kings today.   Now I always get a bit excited when I get to talk about this part of the bible because I actually wrote my Masters Thesis on the David Narratives so I have spent more concerted effort studying this part of the Bible than any other.   And well, the story of Saul, David and Solomon is also just a darn good story.   Though honestly a lot more complicated and frankly a heck of a lot racier than most of us would expect from the pages of a Holy Book.   Sure we all probably know a little bit already about David and Solomon.   That they were early kings of Israel and especially favored by God.   I bet everyone here knows the story of David and Goliath.   You might remember that David conquered Jerusalem and that Solomon built the temple.   Or...

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 Today our season of discipleship takes a turn toward growing things.   In gospel story for the week, we hear the first of the many parables that we will hear over the course of the summer that Jesus tells about farming and growing things.   Before the end of the season we will hear about seeds and plants, weeds and shrubs, vineyards and fruit trees.   But today we begin at the beginning with the planting of seeds. Now I have always loved all the agricultural metaphors in the bible.   For you see, my dad grew up on a farm, and was always a farmer at heart, even though we lived in town.   So instead, he turned his attention to gardening.   And he was a professional crop and soil scientist so you would not believe how much he managed to get out of that patch of garden in our yard.   It was quite the serious operation.   And I always loved to ‘help’ him with the garden.   He always had everything carefully planned for ma...

  Pentecost 6 (A) – Proper 9 [RCL] Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67; Psalm 45:11-18 or Song of Solomon 2:8-13; Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 Freedom For   This weekend marks 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence in the United States. Two hundred and fifty years. That is a remarkable milestone for a nation! Whatever country we inhabit, whatever our political convictions, it is worth pausing to give thanks for the freedoms we enjoy, for the generations who have sacrificed to preserve them. And, in the United States. for the democratic experiment that has endured longer than many thought possible. But anniversaries are not only occasions for celebration. They are also opportunities for reflection. They invite us to ask not only where we have been, but also who we have become. And so, on this weekend, perhaps the question before us is a simple one: What does freedom actually mean? For 250 years, Americans have debated that questi...

Jeremiah 28:5-9; Matt 10:40-42 So I have been thinking a lot this week about who we welcome and what it means to be a faithful community in the midst of difficulty and change.   Because the way of the gospel is and always has been hard and not always the easy or obvious choice.   And our readings today reflect this.   But they are also a bit tricky because both are just little bits of much larger stories that require a bit of context to understand. First, we have this little snippet from Jeremiah and his showdown with the false prophet Hananiah.   And here, God’s people have found themselves in a bit of a tight spot.   The growing Babylonian empire is threatening to swallow the land of Judah and it’s neighbors whole.   The kings and leaders of Judah and their people as a whole have turned away from the one true God to worship other gods and have put their trust in other foreign leaders.   And as a result, the old king and many of the country’s re...