Sermons

Easter 2: April 28, 2019 Our Saviour It took a week to tell the story and it culminated with the proclamation of last Sunday. The Church understands plainly that last week’s “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” is the most important proclamation we know as Christians. It alots a week of telling the story, this Easter week, it has been a part of the daily readings each day. We conclude “Easter Week” with the passage that begins, “A week later …” Well, I guess that’s appropriate. Thomas. The story focuses on Thomas today. But we will continue to tell the story throughout 50 days until the day of Pentecost. I want to read to you a short excerpt from an Easter sermon, written some 1700 years ago. I have never done this before. But I do it because of the power and significance of the words for us today. And because it helps to teach us that this is a story, a proclamation, that has been repeated over and over again from that first Easter day. St. Gregory Nazianzus “On Holy Pasch” The Most ...

Palm Sunday 04/15/2019: Epiphany Spartanburg 9:00 am Homily Death required to complete the story of a life It has surprised me in the past that there is only one Sunday reserved for proclaiming this central event for what it means to be a Christian. My father died 34 years ago. Very often when I tell people, when I have occasion to tell something about my father, I talk about his death. I say, for example, that he died doing the things that he loved. His life was defined by being a Doctor and he loved the game of golf. Golf was one of those things that I’m grateful he taught me. When he died he was already at retirement age but had no sense, I think, that he would ever retire. His father had died with his boots on – as it were – a physician in a small rural town in Illinois. My father died with his boots on of a sudden heart attack while he was volunteering as a medic for the PGA Senior Open being played that year at a golf course in Castlerock, Colorado. From a very early age I...

Sun, Apr 7, 2019 Our Saviour Lent 5 04/08/2019 The Fifth Sunday in Lent Color: Purple Assigned Readings Lesson 1: Isaiah 43:16-21 Psalm: 126 Lesson 2: Philippians 3:4b-14 Gospel: John 12:1-8 what is Mary doing here? She is annointing Jesus’ feet, 6 days before the Passover. Look at the setting as we encounter Mary and Martha. It says plainly six days before the Passover Jesus was in Bethany, the home of Lazarus. Now, the great turning point in John’s Gospel is the raising of Lazarus. It is helpful to recognize the basic form of the story that structures the Gospels. Matthew Mark and Luke tell a story that basically hinges on the point where Jesus turns his face to Jerusalem. He moves his base of ministry from the north of Israel to Jerusalem. And Jerusalem of course is where he must go to meet his death. His death which is a saving death. A death which he is destined to overcome. A death where the full story ends with resurrection not with death. John’s Gospel is structured...