Wherever there are those who long for God’s peaceable kingdom, there are saints. Wherever there are those who yearn for justice and peace, there are saints. Wherever there are those who imagine a different world where the differences among us are respected, admired, enjoyed, and delighted in, there are saints.

We have to learn one simple but lifelong lesson: that our lives in the Kingdom of God will have to be led by the Spirit of God’s wisdom, trusting in her leadership and guidance, instead of trusting in our own efforts.

Being made in God’s image also means that we are associated with God’s work in the world; we reinforce the values of God in a public way, whether we mean to or not.

It’s the same question Jesus has been putting to the religious leaders throughout Matthew’s Gospel: what if God is less impressed with our religious performances than we think? What if all God is really interested in is whether we can accept a gift?

What does motivate us to do good? What motivates us to do evil? Everyone struggles with this question, ..."I don’t trust those who are good for the sake of pleasing God."

I’m always struck by the resilience of the player who fails miserably and then shows up again the next day, or even the next inning, ready to keep playing...Let’s rely on one another, and especially on the God whose love never fails.

what we are left with in the meantime is the generosity of the owner of the vineyard, the one who says that the last will be first, the one who cares for all of creation ... God will gather all things back into God’s loving arms.

Whatever we can say about forgiveness, violence, and retribution as Christians, we should say only after writing in the dust: only after prayer, and contemplation; only after giving ourselves over to the silent language of God, the language of hope and resurrection...

Love, on the other hand, lives in the brilliant darkness of unpredictability, in the beautiful realm of the unknown. The love of God goes beyond human categories and definitions...Love never feels like a debt or a burden.

Late in the year 1623, a 51-year-old man was lying in bed, very sick, near death with typhus, a disease that is now all but eradicated due to simple modern […]

At times in our lives, everything seems to hinge on the label, either a label imposed by the outside, or a label that we wish to claim for ourselves.

In the silence of failure and loss ...–that’s where we really hear the voice of God. That’s where we connect with the Divine....And in the silence... when the waters threaten to overwhelm us, God comes to us, stretches out a hand, and before we know it, we are rescued.

The Gospels consistently teach us to move beyond the either/or thinking that so many of us rely on by default.

Almost forty years ago, the Apple Macintosh II came out. It was quite a machine for its time. It had a color display, Apple’s trademark one-button mouse, and a keyboard...The motto of the product was “The Power to Be Your Best,”

Glory is the opposite of shame. It allows us to be fully ourselves, to be fully known by God with no fear, no hesitation, no masks, no posturing or posing.

It’s been over ten years since Pixar released Inside Out, a film that has stuck with me deeply over that time... the film’s best insight is in the relationship between Joy and Sadness.

We exist, too, in extraordinary times, and yet the call to discipleship is often disappointingly ordinary. We pray, we study, we read, we share, we fellowship, we rejoice, we give thanks. We live in light of the Gospel... we seek the face of the loving God.

Into his world and ours, the Gospel of Matthew says, Jesus asks his followers to do nothing more than what he has come to do: to teach, to preach, and to heal, all with the ultimate goal of proclamation: listen! Jesus says, the kingdom of Heaven has come near.

Perhaps the most resonant connection between church and restaurant is memory. The English word “remember” has this beautiful origin: to re-member is to bring back into our bodies themselves--our members--something from the past. To re-member is to feel something from the past in your bones.

Duos are great until they break up (The White Stripes). Quartets have a lot of creative tension (The Beatles). But trios are a special kind of group, with each member contributing to what is often a very tight blend of harmony, melody, and rhythm in a stable and yet dynamic

Pentecost is music; Pentecost is improvisation; Pentecost is about the movement of the Spirit, about the Divine Dance that sets the early Church ablaze. Only the Spirit’s movement could have turned the frightened and confused Apostles into the kinds of witnesses they became to the extraordinary power of God’s Love

That the notion of God residing among one people, in one physical space, with border guards and patrols policing who gets to stay in and who has to keep out, is gone forever.

And so I invite you, today, as Jesus invites all of us, into this deep, unknown, and wonderful adventure of following Jesus’s Law of Love. If we love him, and we do, he will give us what we need to love and to be loved.

There was a time–some of us millennial elders remember it–when there were no ads on the internet. None. Zero. The internet was purely for science and research and making friends and education. But it didn’t take long.

With time and experience, I’ve realized that life is a series of valleys and pastures... “Carry on, my wayward son, there’ll be peace when you are done / Lay your weary head to rest / Don’t you cry no more.”

What we know about God, a beautiful truth that emerges from the story of Mary and Clopas and Jesus, is this: God always comes out to meet us. God greets us on the road wherever we are. God comes alongside us on our journey.

Not just any truth, but the truth of the Resurrected Christ, the truth of God’s vindication of Jesus’s faithfulness, the truth of God’s reckless and free love for all...

What you may not have expected is that Jesus’s love is resurrection love — the kind of love that raises people from the dead, the kind of love that brings them back from the brink of despair, confusion, addiction, loneliness, and anger.

What are the images that appear in your head when you hear the words “In the Beginning”? Maybe you see an image from a children’s Bible ... Maybe you picture a felt board where your Sunday School teacher placed the various elements of creation

On Good Friday, we contemplate the horror of a world without God, a world without love, a world in which nothing matters except a brief span of life, a tale, as Macbeth says, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Perhaps the most resonant connection between church and restaurant is memory. The English word “remember” has this beautiful origin: to re-member is to bring back into our bodies themselves--our members--something from the past. To re-member is to feel something from the past in your bones.

If we want to find him in the midst of a world of chaos and violence, he will be where he has always been: with those, like him,...and like all of us, who have the courage to cry out: God, where are you?...we need the reassurance of your loving care.

This voice—sometimes commanding and certain, sometimes quiet and almost silent—this voice is still there. Jesus is still calling us out of death into life, out of grief and pain into the consolations of the Spirit.

Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?”

He loves us completely, wholly, and perfectly, as we are, and he enables us to love that person as well. He tells us everything we’ve ever done. He sees the reality and totality of who we are...

Thank God for the forest and the trees. For the love we see clearly, and for the far greater love we cannot see, but that we know is there.

He became like us to liberate us. He became like us to forgive us and to enable us to forgive ourselves. He became like us to empower us toward repentance and the holy justice of God.

Ashes to ashes; dust to dust; love to love. Come, friends. Let us take the time to acknowledge what is true...Let us approach God exactly as we are, all of us wretched, all of us miserable, all of us utterly and completely beloved by our Maker.

ach of us has experienced something in life that we cannot fully explain, something we might call miraculous. And each of us has had moments of skepticism, times when disbelief felt easier than trust.

We the Church name these abuses of power for what they are: demonic manifestations. And at the same time, we proclaim the true power of the crucified and risen Christ

Blessed are all who, in the name of Christ, embrace God’s joyful foolishness, God’s upside-down reign, God’s simple, profound, endless love for all things God has made.

If you follow me, Jesus says, there’s just one more thing—you will have to loosen your grip on the nets that bind you. You will have to let me untangle what has become knotted, overcomplicated, and heavy.

Rather than a “Who are You?” “I’m the Messiah” exchange, we get a pointed, deep, penetrating question from Jesus. “What are you looking for?”

So now, friends, let’s go down to the river to pray, studying about that good old way—the way of Christ, the way of peace,... Good Lord, show us the way.