Sermon: "Choose a Side", Genesis 39 (September 27, 2026)

There’s a fairly common narrative that’s told in certain parts of our society. It says that women frequently make false accusations against men as a way of social climbing or gaining notoriety at the man’s expense. Although researchers and law enforcement data say that this isn’t actually an especially frequent occurrence, a lot of people still embrace this narrative wholeheartedly. Stories like the one in today’s reading certainly don’t do anything to discourage this thinking - here we have a woman accusing a man of sexual advances that he did not make in order to get him in trouble and pull him down from a powerful position within the household. This story could be read as a cautionary tale about the inherent deceitfulness of women. 

Sermon: "Father of Hope", Genesis 12:1-9 (September 18, 2022)

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Most of you probably didn’t realize it, but last week, we made a shift in worship from using the Revised Common Lectionary to using the Narrative Lectionary. The Revised Common Lectionary, which has guided my preaching for most of the time I’ve been your pastor, is a three-year cycle of scripture readings based around the liturgical year (beginning with Advent). Its purpose is to ensure a more or less comprehensive survey of the Bible and to prevent repetitive preaching. The Narrative Lectionary, on the other hand, approaches scripture differently. It selects and orders biblical passages in such a way that it presents a cohesive narrative of God’s people. Over the course of each year in a four-year cycle (one for each of the gospels), the Narrative Lectionary moves from Genesis to the patriarchs and matriarchs of our faith, through the Kingdom of Israel and the prophets, through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, all the way to the history of the early Church, as if telling a single, continuous story.

Sermon: "You Know What They Say About Assuming..." Isaiah 65:1-9/1 Kings 19:1-15 (June 23, 2019)

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Today, I’d like to present to you a tale of three assumptions:

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Jezebel was a queen. She’d grown up a princess, the daughter of a Phoenician king. Because she was a beautiful woman of royal lineage, she’d married King Ahab of the northern kingdom of Israel as a gesture of peace and goodwill between their two nations. Her whole life had been shaped by the intrigues and politics of court, so she was no stranger to conflict. She wasn’t particularly seductive or devious, as tradition has made her out to be; she was just a product of her context.