Sunday Sermons

Year C, Proper 9, Revised Common Lectionary
Isaiah 66:10-14
Psalm 66:1-8
Galatians 6:(1-6)7-16
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

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I spent this Fourth of July at a local celebration in the neighborhood Julia grew up in in Palo Alto. It’s a festival we’ve been to many times before, almost exactly the same every year: the neighborhood band playing “Stars and Stripes Forever” and sometimes a Queen or U2 song thrown in for variety; floats kids and their parents build out of wagons; dogs and bikes and babies on parade, sack races and three-legged races and a balloon toss; the adorable drill squad of six-year-olds moving their flags in unison, with the only change in the routine from fifty years ago that boys are now on the team too. The first time I went to this celebration I almost couldn’t believe it existed, so perfect in its quintessential Americana-ness. I almost expected to see Harold Hill from The Music Man walk around the corner. (more…)

Year C, Proper 8, RCL Track 2
1 Kings 19:15-16,19-21
Psalm 16
Galatians 5:1,13-25
Luke 9:51-62

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I don’t know how many times you’ve moved in your life. Some of us here today may have lived in the same place our whole life. Others may move from place to place each night looking for a safe place to sleep. And for others of us it may be in between, moving around every few years or so.

By my count I’ve moved about 14 or 15 times in my life. Growing up, my family moved roughly every three years. So I’ve had a lot of practice with the winnowing process of what to bring along and what not to. And yet all that practice doesn’t make it easy. I once had a Halloween costume with a pirate hat and plastic sword. I only ever wore it one time, but for some reason that hat and sword made it through more than one move. It just kept making it into a box. I might need it someday! (more…)

Year C, Day of Pentecost, Revised Common Lectionary
Genesis 11:1-9
Acts 2:1-21
John 14:8-17, 25-27
Psalm 104:25-35, 37

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They wanted to make a name for themselves.

They wanted to be somebody. To be big. To be famous.

So they decided to make a big tower.

Of course they did, right? It’s classic. Powerful people build things—particularly powerful men. To show how important you are, build something. A statue, a pyramid, a skyscraper, whatever it is, but make it huge. The bigger the better. Bigger than anybody else’s. That’s how you know you’re important. That’s how other people know you’re important. (more…)

Year C, 7 Easter, Revised Common Lectionary
Acts 16:16-34
Psalm 97
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
John 17:20-26

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Back when I was doing a yearlong residency as a hospital chaplain in Seattle, and then again during the years I was working on a doctorate in Berkeley, I often used to serve as what church lingo calls a “supply priest.” This is a priest who’s available to cover Sunday services when a congregation’s regular clergy aren’t available. It’s sort of like being a substitute teacher, except with vestments on, and with usually a better-behaved clientele. (more…)

Year C, 6 Easter, Revised Common Lectionary
Acts 16:9-15
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
John 5:1-9
Psalm 67

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Last year I met a youngish woman named—well, let’s call her Naomi. Naomi arrived at the church office one afternoon and politely asked for help charging her cell phone. She was in the process of making a long list of phone calls, looking for a place to live.

After years on the waiting list, Naomi had finally received a Section 8 housing voucher. Good news—or so it seemed. Because having a voucher can help you pay the rent … but only if you can find a vacancy with a landlord willing to rent to you in the first place. In California, unlike many other states, it’s legal for landlords to simply refuse to take Section 8 vouchers. But if you don’t use the voucher within a certain period of time, it expires. At the time I met her, Naomi had three weeks to find a place to live, or else be sent to square one to start all over again. There are 26,000 people on Sonoma County’s Section 8 waiting list. There are only 3,000 rental properties known to take Section 8 vouchers. And each year only about 300 of those actually turn over.[1] The odds didn’t look good. (more…)

Year C, 5 Easter, Revised Common Lectionary
Acts 11:1-18
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35
Psalm 148

Year C, 4 Easter, Revised Common Lectionary
Acts 9:36-43
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30
Psalm 23

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I hear these sheep passages differently since moving to Sonoma County … because I see sheep more often.

I didn’t see sheep too much in Berkeley. As the old radio ad said, Berkeley has cows, grazing up in the East Bay hills, but the only sheep I used to see there were petting-zoo sheep at the Little Farm in Tilden Park.

But here they’re just kind of around more. I saw flock after flock driving down Lakeville Highway toward a meeting in Vallejo last Friday. Last fall we went to the Gravenstein Apple Fair in Sebastopol and my daughter Abby watched a sheep-shearing demonstration, starting with a sheep shaped like a barrel and ending with a skinny buzz-cut sheep and massive, luxuriant piles of wool all over the ground. This is a place where people really raise sheep. (more…)

Year C, Easter 3, Revised Common Lectionary
Acts 9:1-6
Psalm 30
Revelation 5:11-14
John 21:1-19

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It doesn’t take a whole lot of time on pilgrimage in the Holy Land before you begin to learn to take some of the historic identifications of the holy places with a grain of salt.

It’s not that there aren’t holy sites that archeologists think could actually be historically authentic—like the Church of the Resurrection, as I said two weeks ago at Easter.  But when twenty centuries have supplied enough piety, pilgrimage, and potential income, holy sites tend to pop up exponentially.  So there are at least two birthplaces of John the Baptist; at least two sites where Jesus and his disciples held the Last Supper; and no less than four contenders for real Biblical town of Emmaus.  Those who visit Israel and Palestine looking to find places to venerate the mysteries of the faith … tend to find what they are looking for.  Those who go looking to pinpoint THE spot where they happened … are often disappointed. (more…)

Good Friday, All Years, Revised Common Lectionary
Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12
Psalm 22
Hebrews 10:16-25
John 18:1-19:42

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Why are we here today?

Are we here to remember the political execution of a small-time failed messiah, a man who got in the way of good government and good religion and ended up crushed between the gears of power?

Or are we here to celebrate the redemption of the world by its creator and Lord?

The fact that we are here to do both is the mystery of the cross. (more…)

Year C, 5 Lent, Revised Common Lectionary
Isaiah 43:16-21
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8
Psalm 126

Thus says the LORD: I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth.
Do you not perceive it?

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There’s a saying you hear a lot in the world of interviewing and hiring: past performance is the best indicator of future results. In other words, if you want to know what someone is likely to do if you hire them for a future job, don’t pay attention so much to what they say they’ll do. Pay attention to what they’ve done in the past. Someone who’s shown leadership skills in previous situations is likely to show those skills again. Someone who’s been resourceful, or flaky, or creative, in the past is likely to act those ways in the future. (more…)

Vigil Against Gun Violence

Genesis 4:2b, 4b-5, 8-10
Hosea 4:1-3
Luke 23:27-31
Matthew 5:1-9
Words of Outrage: Emma González

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Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness: Spread abroad your Spirit, that all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of Peace. Amen. 

That’s a prayer for peace from our prayer book. And like most of the prayers in our prayer book, it echoes the language of the scriptures. And so of course it doesn’t talk about guns; it talks about swords. (more…)

Year C, 3 Lent, Revised Common Lectionary

Exodus 3:1-15
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9
Psalm 63:1-8

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A little over a week ago we heard a spectacular and repellent example of something human beings are all too prone to doing: the phenomenon of “blaming the victim.”[1] It happened after the horrifying murders of Muslim worshipers in Christchurch, New Zealand. An Australian senator named Fraser Anning posted a statement saying the attack happened because Muslim people had chosen to immigrate to New Zealand in the first place. Other public officials rightly condemned his remarks, and you may have seen the viral video of a teenager hitting him with an egg a few days later—maybe not the ideal method, but an understandable reaction—and the senator responding by punching the teenager, spiraling from violent words into violent action. (more…)

Year C, 1 Lent, Revised Common Lectionary

Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Romans 10:8b-13
Luke 4:1-13
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16

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“Lead us not into temptation.”

We pray that line from the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday. But what is temptation, really? It’s worth wondering about, not only because today we hear the story of the temptation of Jesus in the desert, but also because I think our culture isn’t quite sure what to do with the notion of temptation. (more…)

Ash Wednesday, Revised Common Lectionary
Joel 2:1-2,12-17
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
Psalm 103:8-14

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I remember the flecks of ash on my car, that afternoon this past November. The reddish tinge in the sky; the smell of smoke in the air; and those little white flecks of ash all over the car roof and windscreen. Landing everywhere, of course, but visible especially there on that flat surface, against the blue paint. It was from the Camp Fire in Paradise, of course. I’d only seen those little white flecks one time before: a year earlier, when I was still living in the East Bay, and the smoke and the ash were coming from right here in Sonoma County. (more…)