Archives: Sermons

2-27-22 Quinquagesima

February 27, 2022
We know in part. There are limits to our knowledge. And this should keep us humble and at the same time excited. I say humble because we live in the age of intellectual arrogance. The elite claim to know what they can’t possibly know. Listen, for instance, to NPR’s “Science Friday,” and you will doubtlessly hear some scientist confidently assert what happened 130 million years ago – this week it was that felines, cats, went…

2-20-22 Sexagesima

February 20, 2022
The most precious thing you have is not your house or your car or your investments or your job or even your family. It is the Word of God. And if you guard it and keep it, it will bring you outrageously generous blessings. Jesus says it will produce fruit a hundredfold, that there is no one who follows Jesus who won’t receive a hundredfold back on this earth and in eternity. And so Jesus…

2-13-22 Septuagesima

February 13, 2022
In Matthew 19, a chapter before today’s Gospel reading, Jesus spoke with a rich young man. The young man asked, “What good deed must I do to have eternal life?” Well, if it’s a question of good deeds then the answer is God’s Law. Jesus referred him to the Ten Commandments. The young man supposed that he had kept all of them, so Jesus said, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess…

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…
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