Category: Sermons

Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost (C) – Luke 14:1, 7-14

I hate this shirt.  The one I’m wearing now, I mean.  Which isn’t to say it’s not a comfortable shirt.  It’s made by R.J. Toomey, a manufacturer based out of Shrewsbury of all places, until they closed a year or two ago.  It’s extremely comfortable, for a dress shirt.  The collar isn’t complicated like most; it’s just a plastic strip that slips in easy.  And the shape of the shirt itself is like it was made for me; just the right size for the slightly-but-not-grossly-overweight upper body I carry around.  So, as clergy shirts go, I love this shirt.

Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost 21(C) – Isaiah 58:9b-14, Luke 13:10-17

My mother once told me that when she was a child, growing up in a church near Detroit, she was taught that one should not chew the bread when receiving communion.  This was the real Body of Christ you were putting in your mouth.  It had been transubstantiated into Jesus’ own flesh, whatever the appearance of it was on the outside.  You couldn’t bite into it, because if you did, it would—well, do what flesh did.  It would bleed.  Inside your mouth.  Which, can I be honest?  Is about one of the most disgusting things I can think of.

Funeral Sermon for Firmin Sillo – Luke 23:32-43

If I had to characterize my impression of Firmin in one word, it would be, “peaceful.”  That’s not to say that he always was so; I imagine I mostly got to see him at times when he was at his best, in low-key moments.  But Firmin always gave me the impression that most moments were low-key moments for him.  He was one to sit in a meeting, listening carefully, taking in all the information, processing it, and only speaking very occasionally—the kind of person you listened to when he spoke, because you knew when he did that it would be worth listening to.  He had a smile that would put you completely at ease, and his manner was clear, and quiet, and comfortable, and you always felt that even when he spoke about something with passion, he would do it in a peaceful, calm way.  I’ve always felt like he was the type of person that, if he were in the kitchen and a grease fire broke out, he would respond by going calmly to the pantry and taking out a bag of flour, and carefully measuring out about two cups, and slowly shaking the flour over top of the fire until the flames dissipated…

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost (17C) – Genesis 18:20-32, Luke 11:1-13

This passage from Genesis is on the short list of my favorites all across the scope of scripture.  It comes just on the tails of the story of the three visitors to Abraham and Sarah that we had last week.  In the few verses before our reading today, we get a peek into the mind of God, who stops to ask himself whether he should tell Abraham what he’s about to do in Sodom and Gomorrah.  Deciding that, if Abraham is to be the progenitor of his chosen people, he ought not hold back; he spills the beans.  And then Abraham gives us the first recorded instance of back-talk toward God.

Fifth Sunday After Pentecost (C) – The Shooting in Orlando – Luke 8:26-39

Terrorized by evil.  That’s what we are this week.  Not that this is a new thing.  Since 2001, we’ve lived in a country where our safety and security has come unbalanced.  We knew that other parts of the world—the Middle East, for example, or parts of Africa—lived in constant fear of what other people might do.  But that was over there.  Here in the United States, we were far removed from those sorts of things.  Not so anymore.  Oklahoma City was the first hint of it, but since then, the anger, and hatred, and violence have seemed unstoppable.  The World Trade Center.  The anthrax scare.  The Boston Marathon.  The Charleston shootings.  San Bernardino.  And now Orlando.

Holy Trinity Sunday (C) – Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

God the Father is Creator.  God the Son is Creator.  God the Spirit is Creator.

We have this wonderful illustration of God’s creativity in our Old Testament reading today from Proverbs.  Wisdom, here, one of God’s attributes, is presented as a separate, personal being; part of God, yes, and yet somehow separate from God, complete in and of itself.  God is so vast that he contains multitudes.  We get a bunch of these throughout the Old Testament:  The Word of God, the Spirit of God, the Name of God, and now, the Wisdom of God.  She is portrayed in the likeness of a young woman, yet somehow still older than creation itself.  Her role is to be a master craftsman, intimately involved in the creation of the universe.  It’s no wonder, perhaps; involved in a building project as vast as the universe, God might prefer not to do it alone.  He needs someone to hold plumb line while he marks it out with his divine pencil. 

Funeral of Lillian Twarog – Proverbs 31:25-31, 2 Corinthians 4:14-18, Luke 24:1-7

I love the choice of our first reading today, the one from Proverbs.  Just in general, it’s a delightful reading, because of its poetic description of a good and capable wife.  (You can extend it words to mother or grandmother if you like.)  It talks of her wisdom and her kindness, the way everyone praises her, and the way she fears the Lord.  But most of all, it’s the first verse in our selection today, verse 25, that I love as a choice for Lill’s funeral, the part that says “She laughs at the time to come,” because that’s the thing I will always remember about her.  Her laughter.

Seventh Sunday After Easter (C) – Acts 16:16-34

In 2002, after my first attempt at college, I dropped out and moved back in with my mother.  This meant that I also started attending church again.  There was a Lutheran church in the little town where I had gone to school, but it was a Wisconsin Synod church, people who make the Missouri Synod look about as conservative as Bernie Sanders, and so that was right out.  I tried a whole bunch of other congregations, but church in Michigan just wasn’t like church back home, and I much preferred sleeping in on Sundays.  That meant it was quite exciting to return back home, at least in that respect.  It won’t surprise you that my upbringing in the church was very important and meaningful to me.  The opportunity to plug back in was wonderful, and I signed up for a whole bunch of ministries right away.

Blue Christmas 2015 – Isaiah 40:1-14, 28-31; Matthew 2:1-18

Lully, lulla, thou little tiny child. / Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

The Coventry Carol has long been one of my favorite Christmas tunes.  I don’t know why.  I think it’s the close harmonies that intertwine to make a carol that doesn’t quite sound as joyful as most Christmas carols do.  It has a quieter beauty that somehow feels more like the Christmas I feel inside, than it does the one the rest of the world seems to be celebrating.

Festival of Christ the King (B) – Revelation 1:4-8

When I was in Vienna, my history professor took the class to see the Capuchin church.  We were studying the life and legacy of the Hapsburg monarchs, and this was the place where they were buried.  Now, I don’t much like crypts.  A few weeks earlier, we had gone to the Rupertskirche, I believe, though I’ve probably got the name wrong.  We went down to the newly rediscovered crypt, which had been hermetically sealed in the fourteenth century.  The bodies had stopped decaying, and we could see them, see the clothes they were buried in, and so forth.  I’m told I turned white as a sheet.  In any case, I wasn’t looking forward to the tombs of the emperors, but we went anyway, and I have to admit, it was a pretty interesting trip.