Proclaim by Word and Example

This sermon was preached on April 19, 2015 at Grace Episcopal Church in Medford, MA. The texts for this sermon were:  Acts 3:12-19 ,  1 John 3:1-7 ,  Luke 24:36b-48 , and  Psalm 4 . At the end of a major holiday or even a minor one like this strange Massachusetts thing called Patriot’s Day I’ve been hearing about, I am often left with a profound sense of “Well, now what?” I think that emotion is heightened after Easter and Holy Week, the climax of our faith, come to a close. On Easter, the empty tomb is filled to the brim—with joy, triumph, meaning, and new life. But after the day itself fades and the lilies from the altar are given away one by one, the emptiness of the tomb begins to weigh heavy on my heart. Christ is risen, but now what? The truth is that Jesus is still gone to me, in so many ways. The Gospel passage from Luke today brings Jesus’s presence back to us. It is the second appearance of the resurrected Christ in Luke’s Gospel. In the first, Jesus walks...

This sermon was preached on Saturday, April 4, 2015 for the Great Vigil of Easter. The texts for this sermon are found here . Everyone loves a good comeback story. When, at the last minute, just when all hope seems lost, our hero overcomes the villain, the underdog surges ahead, the ball soars through the net as the buzzer sounds. We heard several stories tonight celebrating moments of the salvation story just like that, when God stepped in at the last moment to deliver his people. We heard how the animals clambered onto the ark as the rains began to fall. We heard how Abraham’s knife was stayed by an angel right as he was about to bring it down on his son. And we heard how the waters of the Red Sea crashed in over the pursuing Egyptian chariots just as the last of Israelite refugees scrambled safely onto the shore of the other side. The story of Easter is part of that story. It is the same story and it is also a different story. This time all was lost. Despite the mockery of th...

This sermon was preached on April 4, 2015 for Holy Saturday at Grace Episcopal Church in Medford, MA. The texts for this sermon were:  Lamentations 3:1-9, 19-24 ,  1 Peter 4:1-8 ,  John 19:38-42 , and  Psalm 31:1-4, 15-16 . Today we are gathered at the darkest moment of the Christian faith. The body hangs still and brutalized on the cross, Christ’s most loyal disciples have scattered. The nightmare of Good Friday is over, but the night lingers on. Jesus is dead. Into this moment, enter our two characters from the John passage today. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, wealthy, privileged and powerful elites of Jewish religious sects, people who had the most to lose by associating with Jesus. Indeed, John tells us that Joseph’s fear of the Jewish authorities kept him from revealing his discipleship to Christ. And yet here, right at the moment when he has everything to lose and nothing to gain, Joseph asks Pilate for permission to bury Jesus’s body. Nicodemus, who firs...