January 14. 2024 John 1:43-51 The calling of the disciples, the calling of anyone by God, to “Come and see,” is about more than saying “yes” so that the Lord can send us out. Philip, Nathaniel, Andrew, and Peter were not called and immediately sent. Their sending will happen three years after their calling. After three years of seeing what Jesus was doing, they would be sent to make more disciples, to baptize them, and to teach them to follow what Jesus had taught the first 12. Before Jesus call...
Jan 14, 2024•13 min
January 7, 2024 Baptism of the Lord Mark 1:4-11 Jesus enters the water of the Jordan River, and as his head breaks through the surface of the water, the heavens open up, and a voice calls out, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you, I am well pleased,” and the Holy Spirit descends like a dove. Emmanuel, God with us, entered the same water where many had left their sins behind so they could turn back toward God. The Son of God entered the murky waters of creation, taking upon himself the sins of ...
Jan 08, 2024•14 min
“The Season of the Great Resumption" Luke 2:22-38 December 31, 2023 - First Sunday After Christmas Simeon and Anna were both filled with expectations. For both, their expectations rested not in the cycle of the Temple but rather in the promise made by God to Israel – to raise up the messiah through the line of David. So, Simeon and Anna waited. Anna waited in the Temple for the coming of the Lord. Imagine spending day and night here in the Chapel, waiting for the Lord to be presented, not knowin...
Dec 31, 2023•16 min
Christmas Eve Luke 2:1-14 We want joy in our lives. When the world jerks us around, we look for ways to push back and fight back. That’s our story. But (and it’s a big but so you know it does not lie) the story that drew you in tonight is not a story of our initiative against the world's problems. We might find temporary relief in our story, but it rarely leads to the joy we feel tonight, the joy that was laid in a manger. Deep, abiding joy is the result of what God does. Mary sang. The shepherd...
Dec 25, 2023•15 min
December 24, 2023 - Advent 4 Luke 1:26-38 At a particular time and place, in a manner and through people that supersedes what we think to be the normal course of historical human events, God acted, begetting a Son who comes as the fulfillment of God’s promise for the salvation of humanity. Was the angel Gabriel lost? At each intersection between Heaven and Nazareth did Gabriel ask, “Where do I want to go?” Left? Right? Straight? “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” From the world’s point of...
Dec 24, 2023•9 min
December 10, 2023 | Mark 1:1-8 Like the Professor in All the Light We Cannot See , John the Baptist is broadcasting gospel good news in the middle of the night. We all want hope which is why we left our Christmas decorations up well into the new year during Christmas of 2020 when the darkness of death and despair was a kind of cloud around us. We all want hope which is why we put our Christmas decorations up earlier and earlier, year after year. We all want hope which is why we will gather on Ch...
Dec 10, 2023•15 min
December 3, 2023 Mark 13: 24-37 We have the time to wait. Waiting is one of the ways the Church Universal remains faithful to Christ. The work of the Church is to show and tell that Jesus Christ indeed has come and will come again. We shout that God is not done with us. The Church – yesterday, today, and tomorrow – has been commissioned to bear the light of the Light of the world. So then, the life of the Church is a life of waiting between two Advents. We proclaim that Christ was born of Mary a...
Dec 04, 2023•11 min
November 26, 2023 Matthew 25:31-46 | Christ the King Sunday The truth we cannot handle is that this final parable is not about the list of do-gooder achievements each of us counts. Before any of our good, bad, or indifferent works, God has been preparing a place for you for every last one of us. The sheep were invited to a place that was prepared for them, prepared for you. The place of punishment was not prepared for the goats. The goats do not have to go where they are going. They get to where...
Nov 27, 2023•10 min
November 19, 2023 Matthew 25:14-30 Whether we imagine God as a baby wearing golden fleece diapers, in a tuxedo t-shirt, as a sandal-wearing hippie, a tough and harsh dictator, or full of wrath and seeking revenge, that is the God we get. If we expect God to return, righting creation, making everything new as an eight-pound six-ounce baby, then we are missing the story and thus will miss Christ’s return and the fullness of the kingdom of heaven. Likewise, if we expect the wrath of God to come and...
Nov 20, 2023•15 min
November 5, 2023 Matthew 5:1-12 Jesus is the personification of the Beatitudes. The rich who became poor. He mourned over our Sin and rejection. He is the one who truly thirsts and hungers for righteousness so that we would be reconciled with God. He is the only person who is merciful to his enemies, the peacemaker willing to lay down his life for the sake of all Creation. Jesus is not offering his disciples moralistic if/then propositions. Jesus does the Beatitudes to the point of his death. An...
Nov 06, 2023•9 min
October 22, 2023 Matthew 22:15-22 Jesus knew their hypocrisy. Jesus knows our hypocrisy. The Pharisees and Herodians reached into their pockets, but Jesus did not. The idolatrous coin that condemns was not in Jesus’s pocket. Christ’s pocket was empty because, alone, he is fully faithful to the prayer he taught us, the prayer we will pray in just a few minutes. In taking our sin into His hand, you have been gifted his righteousness, no matter what you render to Caesar or how many times you have p...
Oct 23, 2023•15 min
October 15, 2023 Matthew 22:1-14 The Kingdom of Heaven is like a king giving his son a wedding banquet. The Kingdom of Heaven is like God, who throws a party for the Son. We, the baptized, Christ’s body, Christ’s bride, the church are not mentioned by name in this parable. We are so convinced that we need to work out our salvation that we turn grace into law and place ourselves in the parable when we are not yet there. The Priests and the Elders wanted to know who Jesus was. They wanted to know ...
Oct 16, 2023•12 min
October 8, 2023 Matthew 21:33-46 None of us can keep this church going. I cannot do it, nor can you. Walker Chapel, like every other church, is God’s. This is God’s church and God’s service. We are God’s people. This is where financial stewardship becomes important, as we are not only a part of the mission of Walker Chapel. What we do here in worship, discipleship, and mission is part of God’s larger work in making all of creation new, which places us in ministry alongside the saints that sustai...
Oct 10, 2023•15 min
October 1, 2023 Matthew 21:23-32 Jesus, it turns out, is a third kind of son, the one who both agrees to and does the will of the Father. In John’s gospel that last-yet-first son tells us exactly what the will of the Father is, that we believe in him. The King and the Kingdom are one and the same; but also, we are the Body of that King and so we are deputized to make promises with the authority of God, “All your sins are forgiven.” Faith in this Jesus tends to open things including our hearts, o...
Oct 02, 2023•13 min
September 17, 2023 Matthew 18:21-35 This is a parable about the Kingdom of God, and it is a parable about us. We are the unmerciful servant, wanting pity and mercy for ourselves while we will not, we cannot extend the same to others. So what’s to be done with us? Forgiveness – for us and others – is not easy. At times we do not want to forgive and at others, we want more than anything to be forgiven. Saint Paul is right. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Yet, Saint Paul would...
Sep 18, 2023•15 min
August 27, 2023 Romans 12:1-8 If we miss or do not understand what Paul’s “therefore” is there for, we can turn the task of transformation from gospel good news into another burdensome task. Without Paul’s “therefore,” without the previous 11 chapters of Paul detailing what the grace of God is and that we are the recipients of this grand gift, to live a transformed life as described by Paul is burdensome, if not down-right impossible. Without the “therefore” we do not hear the gospel; we do not ...
Aug 28, 2023•14 min
A few years ago, my friend Tony came to the church I was working to be our “Scholar in Residence.” While Tony was in town, he taught a few seminars and preached on Sunday morning. He traveled with his wife and children. When Tony did not have responsibilities at the church, he took his family sightseeing. They visited all the sites we who live close to the DC avoid during the summer months. The Washington Monument. The Lincoln Memorial. A few of the Smithsonian museums. Mount Vernon. After seein...
Aug 21, 2023•14 min
August 6, 2023 Romans 9:1-5 There are people we want to “save.” We wish they would heed the Good News, the same old song we proclaim week after week. “If only we could convince them of the truth we cling to,” we think, “then they will be OK.” But (and it is a big but so you know it does not lie), we remember that the story of blessing, redemption, and salvation is not ours to fulfill. God is at work. In Moses. In Christ. In Paul. In Israel. In you. In me. We cannot save anyone any more than we c...
Aug 08, 2023•16 min
July 30, 2023 Romans 8:26-29 While we may have a thing or two to teach Saint Paul about separation, Paul reminds the Church that when we feel alone or abandoned, the grace of God is ours. Whether we know it or not, God's grace is preveniently ours, meaning God's grace goes before us. Our best selves do not prevent a separation. There is no number of good deeds that can be done to make the grace of God more yours. Likewise, our worst selves do not "separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus...
Jul 31, 2023•17 min
July 23, 2023 Romans 8:12-25 Grace is not about finishing. It is about beginning. Grace is not about excuses. It is about newness. Grace is not about what we do. It is about what God is doing and has done. Grace produces hope because God is at work. Our hope is in the faithful work of God. The hope of God is bringing about a new thing by restoring all of creation. By God’s grace, our hope does not rest in what we do or leave undone. Instead, our hope is found in what God has done and is doing. O...
Jul 24, 2023•17 min
July 16, 2023 Romans 8:1-11 If it were up to me, I would cast pastors like Driscoll as the Nazi in the next Indiana Jones flick. It is preachers of false gospels like Driscoll whose face I would like God to melt. But as soon as I have done that, as soon as I have painted him the guilty one, I have fallen under that same condemning judgment. The scandal of Grace is that there is, therefore, now NO condemnation. Not for Mark, or me, or you. In Christ, we have not only been permitted to touch the a...
Jul 17, 2023•15 min
July 9, 2023 Romans 7:15-25 The key to our salvation, the thing that makes us right before God is not ignoring our Sin – out of sight, out of mind – or ignoring our need for a divine intervention. The key to our salvation is that in spite of our inability to follow God’s top-ten, which Jesus distilled into two things – love God and love one another – God's grace is ours. God’s grace frees us from the necessity of finding our identity in our good deeds. God’s grace frees us from our sins defining...
Jul 10, 2023•16 min
July 2, 2023 Hebrews 12:12-15 As recipients of God’s amazing Grace and as bearers of that Grace, we can expect that God will not leave us as we are or have been. God loves you just as you are, but God’s love is such that God will not leave you just as you are. When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well, she was sent back to her village with worth and value she did not have before encountering Jesus. Jesus called Zaccheaus down from a sycamore tree, and Zaccheaus was loved enough to host a me...
Jul 03, 2023•15 min
June 11, 2023 Galatians 2:15-21 In adding to the Gospel, Peter was annulling the Good News of what God had gone ahead and done for us in Jesus Christ. Each of us is attracted to false gospels; Paul even says that the law is written on our hearts— we WANT to be told what to do, if only so we can judge our neighbor’s shortcomings. All of us have fallen short of righteousness, scripture says, but that doesn’t stop us from measuring distances. Each of us, like Peter, adds lists of shoulds to what ot...
Jun 12, 2023•15 min
May 21, 2023 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 To say “No,” to the demands and needs of the empires of the world is no easy task because the empires of our world desperately depend on your “yes” and allegiance. And they, like the Devil tempting Jesus in the Wilderness, will offer us power and influence in exchange for our allegiance. If Jesus is Lord of all Creation, then Dr. Stanley Hauerwas is correct in his assertion that everything else is... Everything is the empires of the world. Everything is relig...
May 22, 2023•11 min
May 14, 2023 1 Peter 3:13-22 The busyness of life that we are so attracted to is one of the ways that we bury our heads in the sand or attempt to at the very least so that we don’t have to come face-to-face with the suffering of the world, or the fact that there are those whose identity is not honored by the church. But because Christ has died, because Christ has risen, and because Christ promises to come again, we are free from our sins, and from the busyness that we use as a distraction. Or, a...
May 15, 2023•11 min
April 23, 2023 1 Peter 1:17-23 Love in the way famed fictional-recording artist Billy Mac instructs us to in the hit movie Love Actually – from your fingers to your toes. Love the person in the pew next to you. Love the person who has not responded to the text message you sent days ago. Love your spouse, partner, children, best friend, mail person, Uber driver, stranger on the street, and the pastor who grinds your gears. Love the person you tell yourself you will never be able to love. Love the...
Apr 24, 2023•12 min
The stone was rolled away, the body gone, and we are unsure of what we are to do now. The unexpected happened. Mary Magdalen and the other Mary went to the tomb expecting to anoint Jesus’ lifeless body, but when they arrived, an angel told them, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.” [1] The dead man you are looking for is gone. Don’t believe me? Come see where his body is ...
Apr 19, 2023•10 min
Lent 4 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 The difficulties we carry from our past – the things we wish we had not said even if it was OK to say those things back then, the doors we locked while at traffic lights, the streets we crossed to avoid walking past someone, or the people we misidentified because of the nothing more than the color of their skin – were taken to the cross with Christ and buried. The result of this is God reconciling creation to God so that we can become instruments of God's reconciling...
Mar 19, 2023•15 min
The help we expect, the help we so desperately need, does not come from ourselves. The track record of human history tells this to be true, and yet time and time again, we turn to ourselves to make right that which we continue to taint with our sin. Cries of lament are our turning toward God, acknowledging our humanness, and opening ourselves to being transformed. It is in being transformed that we can act first by setting aside empty platitudes like “racism is too much, we have to give it to Go...
Feb 27, 2023•13 min
