Easter 2 – 4/12/26 – Faith Sets Us Free
Welcome to Bright Sunday! It’s a tradition in Christian churches to take the Sunday after Easter as a day to catch our breath after the solemnity of Lent and the triumph of Easter. Interestingly, it’s also known in Latin as Risus Paschalis – literally laughing Easter. Now, why is it called laughing Easter? Because God pulled the biggest joke of all time with Easter. You see, the authorities thought that Jesus, who had strangely accepted his fate without resistance, was…
Easter Day – 4/5/26 – The Whole Body is on the Path
Matthew 28:1-10 After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the…
4/3/26 – Good Friday Sermon
Good Friday is always hard. It’s hard to spend time at the foot of the cross, as witnesses, as lovers of Jesus, and to hold just a fraction of the pain, and the horror, in our own bodies, just the smallest fraction of it. We know Easter’s coming, for those folks who actually stood with Jesus, for Mary, and Jesus’ mother, and the beloved disciple, their agony came with no promise of swift resolution, with the assurance that everything really…
4/2/26 – Maundy Thursday sermon
Recently, I was talking with someone who’d visited St. Ben’s for Sunday worship. They seemed pleased with their visit, they seemed satisfied with their experience of worship here, and of the liturgy. Yet something they said stayed with me: it was quite the show, they said, it was good theater. While I don’t think for a moment that these comments were intended to be disparaging in any way, they did have me thinking about what the experience of worship in…
Lent 5 – 3/22/26 – The Acceptance of Suffering
The video is missing the first few moments of the sermon because of a technical issue. John 11:1-45 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This…
Lent 4 – 3/15/26 – Does God Make Your Knees Tremble?
John 9:1-41 As Jesus walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in…
Lent 3 – 3/8/26 – Conversation is Transformative
John 4:5-42 Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you,…
Lent 2 – 3/1/26 – May each of our lives be a blessing
Genesis 12:1-4a The Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went,…
Lent 1 – 2/22/26 – Beware crafty voices
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said…
Ash Wednesday – 2/18/26 – Sermon for Ash Wednesday: memento mori
In the early 15th century, the monastic and mystic, Thomas À Kempis wrote a meditation on death: “Very quickly our life here will end” he wrote. “ … In every word and deed, we must live our lives today as if we were to die tonight. … if we are not ready to die today, how will we be ready to die tomorrow? Tomorrow is not certain. We can’t even guarantee there will be a tomorrow. “What does…