Sermon: “Recipe for Repentance: Empathy”, John 13:1-17, 33b-35 (April 1, 2021--Maundy Thursday)

(This is the Maundy Thursday sermon for our Lenten series, "Recipe for Repentance".
Previous sermons can be found here, here, here, here, and here,

and the Ash Wednesday message can be found here.)

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I think I’ve mentioned it in the past, but it bears repeating that the word “Maundy” (which we see almost exclusively in the context of Holy Week) comes from the Latin word for “command”. While this holy day is most often associated with the Last Supper or the foot washing that we just read about, it’s named for the “new commandment” that Jesus gives the disciples: “Love one another as I have loved you.” As an aside, I always imagine Jesus smiling wryly as he calls this a “new” commandment, since it’s the exact same message he’s been trying to get across since day one of his ministry. But on Maundy Thursday, he elevates it from a suggestion or an instruction to a genuine commandment, on par with the Torah: Love one another as I have loved you.

Sermon: "You Can't Sit with Us!", Psalm 148/Acts 11:1-18 (May 19, 2019)

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As we approach the end of May, all the graduation announcements and “end-of-school” countdowns from students and teachers alike bring me back to that most magical time of life: high school. Love it or hate it (and I tended towards the latter category most of the time, myself) high school is a time of intensity—intense preparation, intense emotions, intense changes, intense loyalties…but most of all, intense identity politics. Few people can look back on their teenage years without recalling the all-important social hierarchy. (If you’ve blocked those years from your mind and need a refresher, just check out literally any teen comedy movie and it’ll all come flooding back to you.) A lucky few managed to transcend social groups, but for most of us, we knew where we belonged and where we definitely DIDN’T belong. We knew if we were cool or uncool, and if we didn’t necessarily fall neatly into one of those categories, we knew EXACTLY where we landed on the spectrum between the two extremes.