Category: Sermons
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how human?
Maundy Thursday1 Corinthians 11:23-26John 13:1-17, 31b-35All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Austin, Tex. “How human is your Jesus?” That’s the question I ask myself from time to timeJust to see if I remember.“How human is the Son of God?”Just to make sure I haven’t lost the plot of the outlandish claim That whatever it was that set…
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planted, watered, fed
The stone is rolled away from our hearts, the embers of our love for the one who loved us first are fanned into flame, stilled hearts begin to beat, slack lungs fill with breath, adrenaline courses through every vein, and the body of Christ runs out into the world to find someone to tell. This…
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irrepressible thoughts of death day
Barbie must go on a journey of realizing that self-awareness is a genie that can’t be put back in the bottle. In the end she finally chooses to stay in the Real World and lean into becoming human: self-awareness, death, and all. She leaves behind life as she thought she knew it so she can…
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“god is under the rubble”
God comes into the world and calls for war to cease. God calls for a ceasefire: unconditional, total, now, and forever. A vision of the world that does not look like Mary’s song is not the work of God, and it is not the work of Jesus.
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the king’s party
The kingdom of heaven may be compared to this, but God help us all if the comparison is favorable. It may not seem like it, but we are closer to good news now than we were. At least now the story is starting to tell the truth, about the kings of this world and the…
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expanded horizons
I do actually wonder what my life would look like today if I didn’t have Lewis’s stories rooting around in my heart as I wandered from place to place looking for God. When I think about the pivotal moments in my spiritual life, I often think about how someone or a group of someones had…
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fifty-two thousand
The good news of the kingdom of God is that there is something better than your status quo. God loves us too much to leave us where God finds us. And when Jesus sends a few laborers out, it’s not to save the world, because that was never our job. We are the helpers, and…
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stepping out of time
Of all the places in all the universes that God Almighty could have been, God chose to be here with us, with you, this very night. God steps out of time of the dance of Death. God tears us all out of sync with life as we know it, and reaches into every corner of…
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growing into fairy tales
Anyone can ask, anyone can seek, anyone can find. Soon enough you find yourself seeking God’s face while you do the dishes and sing songs and share stories and laugh at the dog and cry, for sorrow and for shame and for beauty best of all. You find yourself seeking God’s face in a bit…
Noah Stansbury 