Church Calendar |
 
Worship. Serve. Grow.
HomeSermonsPage 30

Sermons (Page 30)

God’s Passionate Love

On Palm Sunday (Sunday of the Passion), the Rev. George Adamik reflects on the word “passion” and God’s steadfast love (Luke 22:14-23:56): “Often times, when we hear the word ‘passion’ — the Passion of Christ — it may bring to mind the suffering of Jesus, this violent death, this beating, the crown of thorns, rejection, hurt… And many would say Jesus did that for me; because Jesus did that, I’m saved. It’s a very common understanding, an ancient understanding. But at times, it presents the idea that somehow God the Father didn’t like us very much, that God the Father needed a sacrifice to love us again. I want to offer another lens to look at this word ‘passion’ — a minority opinion in the history of Christianity. It speaks to me, and I think it’s very Episcopalian.”

Stop Trying to Prove that You are Worthy

Philippians 3:4b-14
In 2009, a young musician stood before the cream of the crop of the political establishment and announced he was working on a concept album. An album, he noted, of someone whose life embodied hip-hop, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. That artist, of course was, Lin-Manuel Miranda, then only 29 years old. And the vennue was the White House during one of President Obama’s first famous poetry jams.

Tragedy and the Fig Tree

The Rev. Carr Holland meditates on tragedy and Jesus’s parable of the fig tree in Luke 13:1-9: “Life can be so fragile, and we don’t notice it most of the time. Jesus indicates life’s fragility and demands an urgency on our part. That urgency shows that life itself has carved out opportunity for us to seize hold God’s graciousness, to yield to it, and to grow.”

First Sunday in Lent

The Rev. George Adamik reflects on this season of Lent (Deuteronomy 26:1-11): “I invite you to consider how to change the rhythm of our lives, to open ourselves to who God is calling us to be. Lent can be that wonderful opportunity. It begins at baptism. It begins with remembering we’ve walked into a community. We’re not doing this alone.”

Ash Wednesday 2019

On Ash Wednesday, the Rev. George Adamik reflects on baptism as Lent begins: “What do we need to do to get back to the waters of baptism? How do we get out of our regular rhythm and do something different, to be about something different?”

Encountering the Real

The Rev. Javier Almendárez-Bautista reflects on Luke 9:28-36 (The Transfiguration): “What we call productivity is in reality the noise we make to prove to people that we are worthwhile… I hope that we will make room for being, just being, in a culture obsessed with busyness. I hope that—come what may—Christ may visit us on a lone mountain top and that he may walk down with us, wherever the road may lead.”

A View from a Point

The Rev. George Adamik recounts a trip to the grocery store and discusses the radical message of Luke 6:27-38: “We’ve fallen into a time when it’s difficult to be open to another viewpoint. We defend our point rather than trying to open ourselves to relationship, to understanding the other viewpoint… The reason I bring this up is to lead us to the gospel we just read. It may be difficult to hear from the point where we view things… The ministry of Jesus was predominately to those on the margins, to those on the periphery of culture, to the poor, to the oppressed, to the enslaved, to those who had no hope…”

A Meaningful Life

The Rev. Carr Holland meditates on the Beatitudes (Luke 6:17-26), vulnerability, and living a meaningful life: “At Yale, there is currently a course for which there are only 60 slots annually but about 250 applicants. It came about because of a realization in the divinity school that a key question of liberal arts education was missing: what makes for a meaningful life?”