Note: I read the Gospel and begin the sermon from one of the pews, rather than from the pulpit. I move to the pulpit after a couple minutes. It may be impossible to know this from the audio context.

What does it mean to apologize; to forgive; to reconcile?

How do we judge the value of these things, and how do we recognize sincerity?

God offers us grace without any price, but grace always comes at the cost...

Immediately preceding this reading, Peter confessed Jesus to be Messiah, and Jesus told him "good job!" Well, essentially. 

This week we see a different side of Peter and a different message from Jesus, who tells Peter in no uncertain terms that love requires sacrifice. God is providing the lamb. Anyone trying to distract him from this is at odds with God's will.

What do we do with this?

Support the ...

This sermon takes place the week after a challenging congregational meeting. I don't mean "challenging", as in code for "look, the roof is fire and the floor is fire and everything is fire!". I mean it in the sense that we had a couple of important decisions to make, and a member spoke from the depths of their heart and then left the meeting when the vote went another way. 

It was **challenging**. ...

Gospel: Matthew 9:35-10:8

The Holy Gospel according to Matthew, the ninth chapter.  

Glory to you, O Lord!

35Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. 36When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37Then he said to his disci...

I'm experimenting with some different things, and one of them is moving to manuscript preaching after not using them in about fifteen years, except rarely. This sermon focuses on the idea that our own stories and the stories of those around us make a real difference, well beyond what we'd typically consider. 

December 2020. Now that’s a month to tell stories about.

I was concluding an interim at The Lutheran Churc...

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr wrote in his “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” that his opinion had become that the white moderate was the biggest obstacle to the cause of justice for black and brown people. He defines them, not by their ideology, but by their actions that frustrate the advancement of civil rights and prolong the suffering of black and brown people because the white moderate is more devoted to “order” than justice;...

The Transfiguration is a moment that gives a foretaste of completion — not just of the Law and the Prophets, but of an old covenant as the disciples witness the birth pangs of a new one and wonder what they’ve really become a part of in following Jesus. 

And the voice says, “Listen to him”. 

And we, as ever, are bad at this. 

And now here we are, faced with a new reality that God is not only creating us, ...

We often think hope to be a function of love. It is. Yet hope in the midst of loss isn't something that always heals. Sometimes it has a dampening effect on our healing because it feels like a gloss over our woundedness for the easing of the present's awkwardness rather than a soothing balm for our wounded heart.

Love sits in pain, cleanses the wound, and walks forward with us. Jesus' pronouncements of bless...

“The Pharisees, who we’re lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him.”

This was their response to the poorly named  Parable of the Dishonest Manager, and was the reason Jesus told this parable about Lazarus and the Rich Man.  It isn’t that Pharisees we’re particularly uncaring or insensitive, it’s more that they were comfortable as a social class, privileged as a religious class, and seemed to be people who th...