Sermon: "The Righteousness of Second Thoughts", Exodus 32:7-14/Mark 7:24-30 (September 12, 2021)

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This week, Idaho made the national news. Unfortunately, it was for an incredibly bleak reason. On Wednesday, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare activated “Crisis Standards of Care” for the Panhandle and North Central Health Districts. As far as I know, we were the first state to do so in any capacity. While this declaration hasn’t yet reached the southern part of the state, it is, quite frankly, terrifying that this is happening at all: that health care providers are being put in the position of having to determine who gets care and who doesn’t because our medical resources are stretched impossibly thin. While I maintain hope that this state of affairs will be short-lived and won’t reach our corner of the state, I have to admit that I’m not terribly optimistic.

Sermon: "Clear the Fog", Psalm 112:1-9/Matthew 5:13-20 (February 9, 2020)

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Today’s gospel reading, from the so-called “Sermon on the Mount”, is an important one. In it, Jesus offers a job description to all those who would call themselves his followers. As usual, his sermon is peppered with metaphors pulled from everyday life in the first century C.E., and given that he explicitly interprets those metaphors in verse 16, we can probably assume that Jesus expects all of his listeners to get what he’s trying to say.