Special Audio: Fiery Furnace Story from Daniel at Great Vigil of Easter

For the third year in a row, I got to read the Fiery Furnace story at the Vigil. It's so much fun! Everyone in the assembly gets a part (Satrap? Trigon player?), and together we perform the most fun reading of the year. I hope you enjoy this reading, and I hope it inspires you to attend the Vigil next year!

Daniel 3:1-29

To hear this podcast: listen here, use this link, or use iTunes or Google Play Music to subscribe or listen by searching "Tengwall."

Sermon Audio 4/15/2017 Vigil of Easter

Lutheran Church of the Savior, Kalamazoo 

Third Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary Year A

Romans 6:3-11 

God brings life from death. The entire Vigil - fire, story, song, baptism, Eucharist - show that this is what God does and who God is. A short sermon to reiterate all we've experienced at the Great Vigil of Easter. 

To hear this podcast: listen here, use this link, or use iTunes or Google Play Music to subscribe or listen by searching "Tengwall."

Sermon Audio 4/2/2017, Fifth Sunday of Lent A

Lutheran Church of the Savior, Kalamazoo 

Fifth Sunday of Lent, Lectionary Year A

John 11:1-45 

Resurrection and new life are God's work, even in the season of Lent. 

To hear this podcast: listen here, use this link, or use iTunes or Google Play Music to subscribe or listen by searching "Tengwall."

Sermon Audio 4/6/2016, Commemoration of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (transferred)

St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Kalamazoo MI

Commemoration of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (April 9, transferred)

Romans 6:3-11

Bonus sermon: Today I was blessed with the opportunity to preach and preside at midweek Eucharist at St. Luke's Episcopal Church. Always a wonderful worship experience, whether I am leading or sitting in the back row. 

Not a lot of original thought from me in this sermon, instead favoring heavy quotations from the apostle Paul, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Rev. Dr. Robert Saler, all of whom know better than me how to talk about following Jesus in this world. 

Sermon 3/26/2016 Vigil of Easter

Lutheran Church of the Savior, Kalamazoo 

Resurrection of Our Lord: Vigil of Easter

Luke 24:1-12 

On this night of fire and water, Word and sacrament, sacred story and ridiculous tale, we heard the Good News of God's love for us in Jesus Christ. And we saw the Good News, and tasted it, and smelled it, and touched it. 

As always, listen here, use this link, or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes by searching "Tengwall."

Sermon Audio 4/19/2014 Vigil of Easter

Lutheran Church of the Savior, Kalamazoo

Vigil of Easter 2014

Romans 6:3-11

The Vigil is the richest, most Spirit-filled worship experience of our year, and this was no exception. I began our Vigil sermon with some of my favorite stories about Micah, my one-year-old, and the hilariously churchy habits he's already picked up from his parents. (Presumably he'll someday have hilariously healthy habits picked up from the therapist he requires after his upbringing, and maybe those stories will make my sermons as well) These stories led to talk of baptism and faith and belief and how we truly know that God's story in Jesus Christ is our story.

As always, listen here or on iTunes by searching "Tengwall."

Sermon Audio, 3/30/2013, Vigil of Easter

Vigil of Easter

Luke 24:1-12

The stories of the Vigil tell us that God is always the same, and is always making things new.

In this sermon I also continued my accidental tradition of writing a new hymn text for Holy Week, because why not? And I talked about Doctor Who, as I was at that very moment missing the midseason premiere.

Sermon Audio, 3/3/2013

Third Sunday of Lent, Lectionary Year C

Isaiah 55: 1-9

We read this passage from Isaiah 55 every year at the Vigil of Easter, as one of the great Hebrew Scripture stories of God's mercy and faithfulness through all of human history. Set alongside such rich, popular tales as the creation story, Noah and the flood, crossing the red sea, Ezekiel's dry bones, and Daniel's friends in the fiery furnace, what is it about this Isaiah reading that makes it an annual requirement at our most sacred gathering of the year?

Note: I think this sermon starts off slow but turns awesome toward the end. 

Lent and Holy Week 2013

Lent and Holy Week 2013

Our journey with Jesus to the cross and through the resurrection begins this year on Transfiguration Sunday, February 10^th. That morning we will “bury the alleluia.” Alleluia is the word the church uses to best express our celebration and joy we feel at the rising of our savior. That morning our Sunday School kids will create an alleluia banner, and during our children’s sermon we will “bury” it, keeping the alleluia in a box on display as a reminder of our buried hope until Easter morning, when we will open the box and again rejoice in shouting our alleluias to the heavens. This ritualized loss of an important word becomes part of our communal Lenten discipline. After worship we will also burn palms this morning to make ashes for Ash Wednesday, so bring in last year’s palms if you have them. Did you know that Pastor Andrew has used last year’s palms as office decoration ever since last Palm Sunday? 

Next comes Ash Wednesday, when we will supplement our usual 7pm Ash Wednesday worship at LCS by joining with our friends from Sunnyside UMC to offer Ash Wednesday worship all day long in various locations around Kalamazoo. Stay tuned for details of times and locations, but the idea is to bring worship to the people where you live and work and spend your day, and to be a public witness to the power of God’s love in our lives. 

November 2012 Newsletter Article

The following is reprinted from Lutheran Church of the Savior's monthly newsletter.

Treasure, too, you have entrusted,

gain through pow’rs your grace conferred;

ours to use for home and kindred,

and to spread the gospel word.

Open wide our hands in sharing,

as we heed Christ’s ageless call

healing, teaching, and reclaiming

serving you by loving all.

-          Robert L. Edwards, , “God, Whose Giving Knows No Ending,” ELW 678

In the past year, I have received so many blessings that I barely know where to begin. Sarah and I had just finished our amazing wedding and moved to our rented house in Battle Creek to start the often-hilarious process of transforming from two independent adults into one family. We had a baby, already three months old, who loves to smile and laugh (taking after his mother) and stare at brightly-colored moving objects (after his father, of course). I am thankful to have received six weeks of paid parental leave, time to learn now to be a dad, to change diapers and teach my kid to smile and tell him about how much fun it will be for him to mow the lawn in a few years.

God has also richly blessed Lutheran Church of the Savior. We have supported the Free Store from dream to reality. We have greatly increased our number of volunteers there and at our nearby Loaves and Fishes pantry, and have given record support to local ministry partners like Kairos House and Ministry With Community. We have welcomed new visitors, baptized babies, and commended into God’s eternal care some of our most beloved older members. We hosted our first-ever Family Fest in September, gathering some 70 people of all ages for fun, games, and elephant ears. We paid off our mortgage just last month, and began completing long-awaited building upgrades while planning how to better use our resources for mission and outreach. We deepened our relationship with our neighbors at Sunnyside United Methodist Church, from service to the community to the most vibrant, wonderful Easter Vigil worship Kalamazoo has ever seen.

2012 Lent 15: April Newsletter Article

April 2012 Newsletter article

O Christ, create new hearts in us

that beat in time with yours,

that, joined by faith with your great heart,

become love’s open doors.

We are your body, risen Christ;

our hearts, our hands we yield

that through our life and ministry

your love may be revealed.

- Herman G. Stuempfle Jr., “O Christ, Your Heart, Compassionate,” ELW 722

Last week I found myself reading an online review of a book about how religion can be useful to atheists. Rather than digging into the core argument of either the review or the book, I want to talk about one particularly valuable insight.

“If you ask people in modern western societies whether they are religious, they tend to answer by telling you what they believe (or don't believe). When you examine religion as a universal human phenomenon, however, its connections with belief are far more tenuous.” (John Gray, http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2012/02/religion-atheism-atheists)

2012 Lent 14: Holy Week

Holy Week is Coming Soon!

This year Holy Week is the first week of April, and Lutheran Church of the Savior will be celebrating Palm Sunday / Sunday of the Passion and the Three Days, or the Triduum, of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Vigil of Easter on Saturday evening. Each of these worship experiences is unique and features ancient ritual in current expression. 

·         Palm Sunday / Sunday of the Passion (4/1/12) will begin with a procession of the congregation featuring new Eco-Palms, fair-trade plants that benefit Lutheran World Relief, handed out by our Sunday School kids. We'll stay with the Palm longer than usual, allowing that celebration to shape our entire gathering until after Holy Communion, when we will turn to an interactive reading of the Passion of Our Lord. As if all that is not enough, this is also the Sunday we will welcome BenJammin and Analisa Gauthier to help lead music. Our plan is that they will join us one Sunday morning per month, enhancing our worship experience with instruments and interactivity.

·         Maundy Thursday (4/5/12) will again include the ancient ritual of foot-washing, emphasizing our humility before we partake in Holy Communion as Jesus and his disciples did on the night in which he was betrayed. This year we will partner with Sunnyside UMC on this day. Sunnyside will host a noon Maundy Thursday gathering, while LCS hosts one at 7:00pm

2012 Lent 12: Love and Justice Are Our Future Because They Are God's Present

Below is the manuscript of the sermon I preached on 3/25/12 at Lutheran Church of the Savior. Normally I don't publish sermon scripts because I preach from notes or scribbles, but this week I have a nearly-passable script. I even stuck to it, though certainly not word-for-word. The text is Jeremiah 31:31-34, which is quoted in its entirety (NRSV) in the body of the sermon.


1.    This past Monday, my wife Sarah and I were at a continuing education event in Chicago, listening to Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver. Nadia founded House maybe three or five years ago, and it’s the hippest (hipster-est?) church in the whole ELCA. Anyway, at one point on Monday, the bishop of Metro Chicago Synod got up and asked her a question about where her congregation is going. Her response really stuck with me: “I’m good at the present. I’m not very good at the future,” she said, which is quite a way to tell a bishop to buzz off. I laughed & thought, Who IS ‘good at the future’? What would that even mean?