Earlier this year a young man showed up at the church during my office hours to talk about his, as he called it, crumbling faith. He asked me: “how can I, how can anyone believe in the Christian God, when the greatest claim is that God is love and Christians have spent thousands of years killing, imprisoning, torturing, burning, forcibly converting, demeaning and belittling people who they think don’t follow their version (a contested version even among Christians) this God w

Jesus said, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me … Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do. In other words: the measuring stick for belief in God is the extent to which we do for others, what it is that Jesus did for us. Why? Because Jesus is the measuring stick: you know the way to God, Jesus says: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” I am the only truth, for I am God who is before all things,

I started seminary very soon out of my undergrad degree, which meant that I hadn’t had any time to build up much of an income or savings. So I started seminary without a lot of resources. I was lucky enough to get into the PhD program in theology right after seminary, but unlike other grad school programs, this admission came with no stipend. I took on a parish part time, which helped, but made it really difficult to focus on school or on the parish. I managed the best I coul

In our reading from Acts this morning, Peter is standing with the eleven other disciples when he raises his voice and challenges those Jews gathered before him: "Let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified." Jesus was raised from the dead to reign over all people. He is the Lord, your Lord: the one who made you, who gives you purpose, and the one who orders all things according to his purposes.

I want you to step with me, out of your own shoes for a moment, and put on those of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary that we hear about in this morning’s Gospel. They’re likely in deep grief - that feeling you’ve had that part of you that made space for someone you loved hollowed out so that you’re no longer connected to this world in the same way. So they go to see Jesus’s tomb, to remember, to pay tribute, to mourn. But when they get there, a huge earthquake shakes them ba

Just before the events we hear about this morning take place, Jesus had been telling his disciples that he had to go away to his Father so that he could send the Advocate or Holy Spirit to change and transform them into Jesus’s own likeness. The disciples really struggled though, to understand Jesus’s somewhat poetic, prayerful, abstract words. So he finally tells them plainly: “I came from God the Father and have come into the world; the time has come though and now I’m leav

This morning we have one of the most powerful sets of readings that takes place throughout the church year. From Ezekiel we hear about the dry bones - bones that, as St. Augustine remarks, are not just dry but without hope until God enfleshes them and puts his Spirit in them: “what has been scattered is gathered; what was lifeless is sanctified; what has perished rises again.” And we find this promise to enflesh and make alive in the Spirit fulfilled with Jesus’s raising Laza

I don’t remember being diagnosed with diabetes. I was only three when it happened and so having the condition was just who I was and I didn’t really think much about it as I got a little older. It wasn’t that anyone suggested that being diagnosed with diabetes was a result of sin, as Jesus’s disciples suggest of the blind man in our Gospel lesson this morning; but eventually I understood that people somehow saw my disease as problematic, or limiting. So when I came to our re

We often hear words like freedom or free will thrown around in various circles, so much so that it can be hard to define what exactly freedom is and so what it means. This matter of freedom is at the heart of Jesus’s approach to the woman at the well we hear about in our Gospel lesson this morning. We hear that Jesus is sitting at a well because he’s tired out by his journey. While he’s there a Samaritan woman comes along and Jesus asks her to give him a drink. This is an unu

One of my biggest pet peeves - exacerbated by youtube/tiktok/social media influencers - is when people try to domesticate God. Inevitably, they do this by taking passages of Scripture - without reference to other parts of Scripture understood through Jesus’s own life, death and resurrection - and apply them to a current situation. This is a form of idolatry that is technically called, eisegesis (reading a passage out of context). A good example of this has happened a few time