Sermons (Page 103)
Twenty Sixth Sunday After Pentecost
Friends, it may feel like an ending but our God reminds us it’s the beginning of something new. It’s the beginning of our call to live out our baptism. It’s a beginning that recalls God’s love as God suffered by the hands of a world that couldn’t acknowledge truth. It’s the beginning of a story where we, as people of faith, walk together as pilgrims – where we journey into a world to bring a new reality built on God’s justice, peace, and love. Indeed, it’s only the beginning….
Twenty Fifth Sunday After Pentecost
Sometimes, I think we know these things happen around us, we can see that brokenness exists, but we also find ourselves saying, “That’s just the way it is.” “The system isn’t perfect, but what’s the alternative….?”
All Saints Sunday
I love this Sunday. It might seem a strange thing to suggest that this day — All Saints Sunday — is one of my favorite holy days on the liturgical calendar. One of two days that confronts our human mortality and the inevitability of death head-on. First, there’s Ash Wednesday, where we are honest about our human condition, our sin, our brokenness, our frailty — marking our foreheads with ashes and proclaiming that we are dust. Today, there’s All Saints, where we remember the saints of the church and the saints of our own lives, particularly those who have died in the past year. We read their names out loud, we light candles, we ring bells. Often, we even bring photographs of departed loved ones and set them alongside icons of saints as a sort of altar of remembrance.
This year, I remember two saints of the church, who have long since died, but whose lives and memory have resurfaced in recent days…