Sermons at Church of the Holy Comforter

“A system of economic injustice, a system that keeps whole groups of people down on a permanent basis, binds all of us in slavery to a system of sin.”

“Being church, like our relationship with God, is an unfolding mystery, an ongoing journey that never stands still, never freezes in time.”

“We are being called to take on the energy and the imagination of those first believers and find new and effective ways of doing God's work in the world.”

“The genius of our faith may be that God loves us, and loves this world that we inhabit, so much that God came to share it with us, to live in it and experience it with us.”

“We're called not just to care for ourselves, but to cultivate a culture that brings us closer to the kingdom of heaven, a culture that reflects our baptismal promise to ‘respect the dignity of every human being.'”

“When it all gets too much for us, we wonder where God is, or whether God is asleep while the boat is sinking. But in the next moment we can remember that we have been given faith by the grace of God.”

“The parables remind us that it is not up to us to guarantee the results. It is only up to us to make sure the seeds are planted.”

“God's dream for us calls us to enlarge our capacity for love.”

“Through the power of the Holy Trinity, working through the ongoing action of our baptism into the life and death of Christ, we are all being called, every day.”

“The Holy Spirit, our teacher in the present day, is following us and is ever-present, as the one “called alongside,” teaching us, coaching us, energizing us, encouraging us not to lose hope.”

“I hope we all believe in a gracious God who wants us to choose hope over fear, cynicism, and despair.”

“God in Jesus Christ knows us and loves us as friends, as friends of the heart.”

“No branch bears fruit by itself apart from the vine as a whole. The life-giving force that surges through the vine to sustain us all is God’s love.”

“Our faith is fed by John’s Gospel because of its insistence that the power of God is the power of love, and the power of love is the power of God.”

“Like the disciples, we, too, are called to proclaim the same good news even if we have doubts, even if we are still startled and terrified by what might await us in the resurrection life.”

“Our lives and our self-understanding have been transformed by the risen Christ.”

“We tell ourselves a story that continues to live, that persists in our imaginations, that takes root in our hearts.”

“The cross, an instrument of death, has by God’s grace and God’s power, through Jesus of Nazareth, become a source of transformation and life.”

“God sacrifices God’s very self, in pain and in agony, to show us the horror of the pain and the agony we inflict on each other.”

“We are called to tell God’s story, and instead we insist on telling the story of empire.”

“Part of our life of faith lies in wrestling with the mystery of the Incarnation, wondering persistently about Jesus as fully human and Jesus as fully divine.”

“Who are we in relation to the self, in relation to other people, in relation to nature and the world around us, in relation to God?”

“We don’t have to wait for generations to learn of God’s punishment for our modern-day idolatry. We can clearly see the consequences.”

“The theology of the cross tells us that God not only loves us, but also suffers with us.”

“Our God is a God of second chances, and third and fourth and fifth chances. That’s called grace. And our God sustains us to get through the test eventually, no matter how profoundly we have failed in the past. That’s called redemption.”

“Seasons of penitence call us to turn around, to change our thinking, to remember that it is in God that we live and move and have our being.”

“Jesus knew and he taught that God’s awesome power was nothing more or less than love: God’s never-failing, never-ending love for all of creation and for everyone living in it.”

“We need to be careful with our talk about personal demons, even if we understand them as a metaphor for the internal struggles resulting in that individual’s illness and pain.”

“God is calling all of us all the time. God calls us each individually, and God collectively calls entire communities—like the Church of the Holy Comforter.”

“At the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry as presented by Mark, God declares God’s love for Jesus, the Son, the Beloved. . .  the center of our faith. And that same Jesus spends his whole ministry showing us how much God loves the rest of us as well.”

“The Savior of the world whom we worship, the fully human and fully divine Son of God, started out his human life as a refugee.”

“God has bestowed grace upon each of us as individuals, and upon all of us together as the human race.”

“The coming of the Word of God into human life, into human flesh, was a new act of God so that our lives themselves could be made new.”

“Mary was willing to devote her whole body, everything she had, to answer God’s call and help realize God’s redemptive vision for the whole world.”

“I invite us all to include in our personal spiritual practice asking ourselves every so often, ‘Who is Jesus Christ? Who is Jesus Christ for me?’”

“God has sent his most powerful messenger, his own son, to show us the way through the desert, the wilderness of bad news, and to bring us home.”

“In becoming human in Jesus Christ God becomes present, God shows up for us, in a new and powerful way, and our lives are changed forever.”

“Those of us who do identify as Christians are being reminded that that the lives we live are more telling than the identities we claim.”

“Jesus tells us that the best use of the gifts God has given us is to invest them in the transformation of human life.”

“In faith we press on in our journey through wilderness and hostile terrain, through the chaos and brokenness of human history.”

“When we look at each other with pure hearts, we see each other as we truly are, in all our humanity; we see each other with generosity, compassion, and love.”

“We have done the very opposite of what Jesus told us was the summary of all the law and the prophets: Love God with all that you are, and Love your neighbor as yourself. We too often forget that we can’t be loving God if we don’t also love our neighbor.”

“I believe in a God who constantly calls me to ask myself ‘justice for whom?’ and ‘justice for what?’”

“Focusing on what it really means to be a child of God—it’s like a wedding: a cause for joy, for celebration. Like a wedding, it is a new beginning.”

“Our faith is more profoundly about our understanding of how we are to be human beings living in the world, and our understanding of what it means to be human, period.”

“God becomes human in Jesus Christ, in other words, to show us the greatest possibilities of our own humanity.”

“That’s the worst thing about envy—it blinds us to the reality, to the necessity of God’s grace.”

“God asks us to be a people of compassion and forgiveness, to make it a habit of our nature.”

“Our sacred meal leads us to tell a new story of justice and compassion, and leave behind the old stories of cruelty and caste.”

“Jesus’ suffering and death is vital and central to his identity, because in Jesus God shows us that God suffers, too.”

“The Incarnation, God become human in Jesus of Nazareth, is a doctrine and a mystery; it is an animating, energizing force for the life we live in common with all people.”