You actually know how to show mercy because all of you want mercy so desperately for yourselves. You know what mercy is when you receive it — and you have received it — so why won’t you turn around and give it? Why? Is it because your hearts are covered in a callus that is fast becoming a skin made of stone? Let God circumcise that for you. Let him cut that callus off. Let him roll that stone away. That is resurrection. There is a powerful force for good at work in your lives, and his name is: God.

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Sermon for Proper 10, “To show mercy is to act like God.”

Readings from Deut. 30:9-14; Col. 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37.

Preached at Holy Trinity Church Inwood, 20 Cumming Street, New York, New York 10034, on July 14, 2019.

We might be tempted to say that the church has lost her power, or worse, that the Bible is just a fantasy and that these things never happened. But then we would have reached the wrong conclusion. What Isaiah and Jesus want us to know is that we can be true believers, we can be effective disciples — we can even be just as effective as the 72 — without always seeing results.

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Sermon for Proper 9, “Disciples don’t always see results.”

Readings from Isaiah 66:10-14; Galatians 6:[1-6], 7-16; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20.

Preached at Holy Trinity Church Inwood, 20 Cumming Street, New York, New York 10034, on July 7, 2019.

I follow a Lord who managed to reconcile Samaritan and Jew. And I follow a Lord who managed to reconcile Jew and Greek. And I follow the Lord who managed to reconcile woman and man, God and sinners. I believe he can manage to reconcile us. He manages to do it on the cross where he became a servant and Paul goes so far as to use the word slave. He did it on the cross where he became a slave to each and every one of us sinners, though we are. Where the temple of his body is destroyed, but the new temple of his life in the spirits begins, join me. Join me in this life of the spirit because I could use the company.

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Sermon for Proper 8, “Justice without retaliation.”

Readings from 1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21; Gal. 5:1, 13-25; Luke 9:51-62.

Preached at Holy Trinity Church Inwood, 20 Cumming Street, New York, New York 10034, on June 30, 2019.

Relationships are the stuff of God, words are the stuff of relationships, and we humans use words to be in relationships: with each other, and with God. This is the Trinity, and we are participants in the Trinity. A God who is not a Trinity would be unrelatable, and a God who is unrelatable would be unknowable as well as incomprehensible. Then where would we be?

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Sermon for Trinity Sunday.

Readings from Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15.

Preached at Holy Trinity Church Inwood, 20 Cumming Street, New York, New York 10034, on June 16, 2019.