Thursday, May 30, 2013

Sermon Audio, 5/26/2013

Holy Trinity Sunday, Lectionary Year C

Romans 5:1-5

The Holy Trinity - Father, Son, Holy Spirit - is a bedrock Christian doctrine, as vital to our theology as it is irrelevant to our actual lives of faith. What does this confusing, beautiful, paradoxical doctrine tell us about our relationship with God?

Bonus: in this sermon, I divulge the most important piece of information regarding our new Bishop-elect here in the North/West Lower Michigan Synod of the ELCA.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Responses to Oklahoma Tornado and Weather-Related Tragedies


I heard about this tragedy from my friend Rev. Matt Titus while sitting next to him at the North/West Lower Michigan Synod Assembly.* He suggested that we pause our Assembly to pray for Oklahoma victims, and because I was the worship song leader I ended up leading that prayer before our Mountain Vespers worship on Monday evening. As an unexpectedly public voice in response to this situation, I feel some particular connection to what happened, as though my public prayers put me on the spot to respond in some more tangible way.

What am I talking about, you ask? Well, conveniently my friend and colleague Rev. Tim Brown has already written an excellent piece explaining the relationship of prayer and giving in response to tragedies.*** The crux of Tim's article is that "prayer must always lead to action," and he takes on both religious people who think prayer is sufficient in itself and atheists who think prayer is an entirely irrelevant response.****

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Sermon Audio, 5/19/2013

Pentecost, Lectionary Year C

Genesis 11:1-9 and Acts 2:1-21

I failed to record last week's sermon (really, I had my phone there, and thought I'd recorded it, but somehow it just doesn't exist), so here's one from this week at least. This week I talked about the ancient, amazing Tower of Babel story as a mythical explanation of human difference, then talked about how difference affects our experience as people. How does the Holy Spirit relate to human difference?

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Sermon Audio, 5/5/2013

Sixth Sunday of Easter, Lectionary Year C

Acts 16:9-15

The story of Lydia is a bigger deal than I thought it was. God did some amazing work back in Philippi, and as we celebrated Madalyn Claire's baptism at LCS on Sunday, God did some amazing work here as well.

Thanks to Brian Peterson, whose excellent commentary on this text at WorkingPreacher.org inspired a good deal of this sermon. 

Sermon Audio, 4/28/2013

Fifth Sunday of Easter, Lectionary Year C

Revelation 21:1-6

This might be my favorite part of the whole Bible, so as you might expect I got a bit worked up about it. God will be with us. God is already with us.