Category Archives: Sermons

During this sermon series, Queering Genesis, with a focus on the life of Joseph, we’ve been exploring how God can be understood and made known through even the lives of unconventional people.  It may be that you sometimes feel like a very conventional person. Or it may be that you don’t. Either way, you areContinue reading “July 2022: Pay Attention [Queering Genesis]”

While I was at Amherst, spring – this time – was always my favorite time of year.  It still is today in Maine, where I live now with my wife and our animals. Yes, of course I loved spring here because it marks the evaporating smell of soy sauce on the sidewalks, but spring is alsoContinue reading “April 2022: Re-Member the Body: a Mid-Pandemic Queer Invocation [Amherst College]”

Today, we’re continuing our Lenten series titled “Disabling Lent,” an exploration of disability justice, anti-ableism, and God’s image through the whole and holy lives of disabled people. And in particular, I want to contrast two events recorded in the Gospel commonly attributed to John.  Neither of these stories are inherently about disabled people, but IContinue reading “March 2022: No Cure Necessary [Disabling Lent]”

I had two ideas for what I wanted to talk about today as we continue our series titled Ojalá. Last week, M encouraged us to release our judgment and self-judgment and to prevent perfection from preventing us from what is good. The week before that, S kicked off the series and invited us to beContinue reading “January 2022: Guilt, Shame, or Transformation?”

Today is our last week in this short series titled “What Helps, What Hurts.” Two weeks ago, S kicked us off, and she talked about systems of mutuality. And last week, K reminded us that God’s capacity is in every person. And mostly, I feel like they’ve said everything that needs to be said. ToContinue reading “November 2021: Self Care, Community Care, and Collective Healing”

Up on the ground level, far from our roots, we are susceptible to commodifying even our joy – a hustle culture that lures us to ossify our happiness into an income stream. We live in a culture where people of color must achieve far more than white people do in ministry, in our careers, in our academic lives, to compete for the seeming scarcity of empathy, respect, and opportunity.

But it’s also important to consider the invitation Jesus issues to those who do have power. Because sometimes that’s us, and we need to be able to recall these stories when opportunity knocks on our door – when our invitation comes. And that invitation is to a good betrayal.

I wanted to condense her into a single lesson for a single sermon. My instinct was to reduce Naomi into something bite-sized. But she refuses to be reduced. She’s not a paragon of faith without doubts or even of moral purity. The Davidic royal line is not a story of moral purity either. Along the way to Jesus, there are people who’ve done good things and people who’ve done terrible things. And God can use all of that, all of our choices, for good if we are still open to the possibility.

Empire was watching on that day, two thousand years ago, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem under a banner of peace. And empire is still watching today. This Palm Sunday is another theatrical call to us. Our times are not easy – and they never are. 

That was the leavening of love, or maybe the mathematics of the divine. Like a net, we are as strong as what we choose to weave together. And the consistency of this community fabric is not in its thread count, not in our numbers, but in our strength and our daring love.