Sermon: “Sensing the Sacred: When We Thirst”, Exodus 17:1-7/John 4:5-30 (March 15, 2020)

(This is the fourth sermon in our Lenten series, "Sensing the Sacred". 

The others can be found here, here, and here.)

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This week’s sermon is a bit of an outlier in our Lenten series, in that we’ll be talking about “thirst”, and thirst isn’t considered one of the traditional senses. However, technically speaking, a sense is any faculty by which we perceive stimuli originating from outside or inside the body.[1] Since our thirst is a way for us to perceive a need of our body, I’d argue that it can be considered a sense just as much as smell, sight, taste, sound, or touch (also, Lent is six weeks long so I had to get creative. Cut me some slack, here).

Sermon: "Sensing the Sacred: Do You Not Perceive It?", Numbers 21:4-9/John 3:1-17 (March 8, 2020)

(This is the third sermon in our Lenten series, "Sensing the Sacred". 

The others can be found here and here.)

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Out of all of the senses that we’ll be talking about during Lent, sight is the one that we tend to rely on the most. It’s on the front lines of our perception. A very unscientific poll that I found online indicated that, if they had to choose one sense to lose, only 4% of respondents would be willing to give up their sight—the lowest percentage of all the possible responses.[1] Conventional knowledge says that “seeing is believing,” and while it may not be the ONLY path to belief, it certainly helps. This proverb even has a 21st century iteration—“Pics [pictures] or it didn’t happen.” Different words, same sentiment: if it can’t be observed with the eyes, then it’s irrelevant. 

Prayer Cairn Revisited

Today was a beautiful day in Caldwell (60 degrees and sunny...sorry, Rochesterians!) so I decided to take a break from sermon writing and take care of a project I've been meaning to do for a while: neatening up the church's prayer cairn.

Sermon: “Sensing the Sacred: Taste the Divine”, Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7/Matthew 4:1-11 (March 1, 2020)

(This is the second sermon in our Lenten series, "Sensing the Sacred". 

The first sermon can be found here.)

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Food is DANGEROUS. Or at least, we tend to think of food as dangerous. How many of you have ever described yourself as “bad” for taking a second helping at dinner? How many of you have ever described dessert as “a temptation”? If you’re giving something up for Lent, how many of you have chosen to forgo some sort of food item? Our relationship with food isn’t all lighthearted self-deprivation, either: over 30 million Americans struggle with disordered eating;[1] for these people, any event involving food is a minefield of emotional, physical, and psychological danger. What’s more, about 32 million Americans have allergies to food, with 200,000 people being hospitalized for them in the U.S. every year.[2] For these people, the prospect of eating food at any given time can literally be a matter of life and death. Suffice it to say, even though food is the necessary fuel to sustain human life, many of us have a complicated relationship with it, for all sorts of reasons.

Sermon: "Sensing the Sacred: A Clean Slate", Psalm 51:1-17/2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10 (February 26, 2020--Ash Wednesday)

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Lent is such a rich liturgical season, but it’s one that we often struggle to embrace. Most of us know the overarching themes—penitence, solemnity, self-discipline, sacrifice—but our understanding often doesn’t go much deeper than a superficial awareness of those buzzwords. This is the result of historical Protestant suspicion of all things Catholic: mid-week observances and liturgical seasons reeked of popery, so generations of Protestants have rejected anything associated with Lent or its rituals beyond normal Sunday worship. Although the pendulum has begun to swing back the other way and we’ve begun to reclaim these ancient traditions, we’ve lost a lot of the understanding that comes with consistency. As a result, we’ve inherited a pre-Easter that’s heavy on asceticism but light on pretty much anything else.

Sermon: "Get It?" Matthew 17:1-9/Acts 8:26-39 (February 23, 2020--Transfiguration Sunday)

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Some of you may not know this about me, but while I’ve been ordained for almost six years now, I’ve actually been working in churches professionally for more than ten years. The vast majority of the time, my career has been focused on Christian Education. I was also a Religious Studies major in college before that, so you might say that I have a bit of experience—both formal and “on the job”—learning and teaching about God.

Sermon: “Who Are You?”, Deuteronomy 30:15-20/1 Corinthians 3:1-9 (February 16, 2020)

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“Who am I?” That’s the question at the root of both of our scripture readings today. This may surprise you; after all, the words of the Deuteronomy passage have a loaded and complex history that has very little to do with identity. The phrase “Choose life” has been co-opted by Hollywood for the 1996 film “Trainspotting” (a movie about drug use); it’s been used to adorn t-shirts in the ‘80s in a suicide prevention campaign; it’s been embraced by the “pro-life” movement to bolster their position.[1] But we can assume with a fair amount of certainty that Moses didn’t have issues like drugs, suicide, or abortion on his mind when he originally made this speech.