Archives: Sermons

2-6-22 Transfiguration

February 6, 2022
St. Peter says “we didn’t follow cleverly devised myths when we made know to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Here he’s making a point not just about truth but about time. A myth can be true – the Greeks really did sack Troy. What marks a myth is not necessarily that it’s false, but that it’s a story handed down from one generation to another until you don’t know who…

1-30-22 Epiphany 3

January 30, 2022
The Christian message is without doubt a message that calls us to humility. We see this in our Old Testament lesson – Naaman has to be humbled, has to submit to the lowly words of Elisha without even getting to see Elisha’s face, has to give up his pride and wash himself in the dirty Jordan. And only then is he cleansed. And our epistle speaks to this humility directly: “Do not be haughty, but…

1-23-22 Epiphany 2

January 23, 2022
Jesus performed his first miracle at a wedding. This wasn’t an accident. God doesn’t do things on accident. This is what we prayed in our collect this morning, ‘Almighty and everlasting God, who governs all things in heaven and on earth.’ That’s our God. He’s in control. He’s not like us, we do things on accident all the time, He has a purpose for everything He does. In my house, “It was an accident” gets…

1-16-22 Baptism of Our Lord

January 16, 2022
The Baptism of Jesus, on the face of it, is probably the strangest thing Jesus does. His miracles aren’t surprising. Despite the modernist insistence that miracles can’t happen, miracles are precisely what have to happen once God invades His creation and becomes a man. Jesus is a walking miracle, God become man, and so miracles are bound to come from him. Jesus’ death, on the other hand, was so strange an occurrence that St. Peter…

1-9-22 Epiphany

January 9, 2022
“When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.” Today the joy of Christmas gives way to the joy of Epiphany. The word Epiphany means “appearing.” It means that something is now seen or made known. Christ was born in Bethlehem, and appeared to the shepherds on the night of his birth. Christ was taken to Jerusalem, as we heard last week, and appeared to those in the temple. But on the day…

1-2-22 Christmas 2

January 2, 2022
What happened on Christmas makes it very clear how God wants to deal with us. He comes as a humble little child, the angels speak peace, goodwill from God to men. The angels come as an army, that’s what a host is, and a heavenly host is an army of angels, but they come not to make war with us but to preach peace between God and us. And that peace is found in the…

12-26-21 Christmas 1

December 26, 2021
8 And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people. 9 Then some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the Freedmen (as it was called), and of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of those from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen. 10 But they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking. 11 Then they secretly instigated men who said, “We have heard him speak blasphemous…

12-19-21 Rorate Coeli

December 19, 2021
The Lord is at hand, St. Paul says. The Greek is literally, the Lord is near. We can think of this in two ways. First, that Jesus will soon return to judge the living and the dead, as we confess every Sunday. He is near, He is coming, we will see him soon with our own eyes. Second, it means that Jesus is now near to us, He is with us always, even to the…

12-15-21 The Millennium (Advent Midweek 3)

December 15, 2021
As we near the end of the season of Advent and prepare to receive our King at Christmas, we do well to consider what our King’s reign is like. There are many misunderstandings about the reign of Christ. There’s the misguided idea that the Church is responsible for paving the political way for Jesus to come and reign on earth. There’s the push from many so-called evangelicals to provide funding for the country of Israel,…

12-12-21 Gaudete

December 12, 2021
John the Baptist was the greatest preacher the world had ever seen. Unlike so many popular preachers today, he refused to pander to the crowds or cower before the elite: he was totally uncorruptible – no money would change what he preached, no political considerations decided what he said, no praise of men determined his words. He spoke the truth to power, called out the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, condemned the immorality of Herod. Jesus…
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