I don’t normally read sermon collections, having experienced them as peculiar, self-indulgent, and disjointed. In my mind, sermons are oral events that God brings to life somewhere and somehow in the space between the preacher, Scripture, and the congregation. I had relegated written sermons to be like my incredibly beautiful and yet unequivocally unphotogenic friend […]
The Holy Spirit resides in my mattress … I’m pretty sure. The first time I noticed this was when I was in college, though I didn’t call it the Holy Spirit then. I would go to bed after struggling with a paper or project and would wake up with the perfect thing to fit in […]
Again this year, I am writing a liturgy for confirmation with confusion, questioning, and consternation. I love the kids who are being confirmed. I love the community and camaraderie they have developed in a year of meeting, retreating, questioning, wondering, discovering, and constructing. I love how they articulate their faith…not always complete, not always theologically […]
This dramatic reading is a re-imagining of two of Abraham’s wives—Sarah and Hagar. It attempts to both respect and conflate the various interpretations of each woman in Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions, and among the African-American community. The women are trying to explain their historical lives, understand their present identities, and the connections between the […]
Our congregation has used Taizé, Tenebrae, and narratives of the Passion in past Good Friday services. I grew up in a congregation that often used the 7 last words of Christ as a focal point. I wrote this liturgy to combine some of these elements, but also wanting to add some concrete way for people […]
The work of Lent is something of a spiritual house-cleaning: whether it involves organizing a back closet, bringing out and discarding things that need to go, adding something beautiful to a room, making space for a new guest. Hard work, but it sounds so beautiful when it’s something done in your heart and soul. But […]
A sermon on John 5:1-9 “Do you want to be made well?” What an Ash Wednesday question. On a day where we traditionally hear about our own sinfulness and are faced with our own mortality, “to dust you shall return,” what a question to consider. Of course we want to be made well. Of course […]
Lord God, God of beginnings, and endings, God of the past, God of the future, God of judgment, and God of grace, God of waiting, and God of fulfillment: Fulfill in us the coming of Christ. May we, O God, Like Mary, treasure and guard the coming of your kingdom deep within us Nourishing it […]
Six degrees of separation. Some of you may be familiar with this phrase from a movie with that title. Some of you may have played the “Six degrees of separation” game. The game challenges you to figure out if you are 6 degrees or less away from Kevin Bacon! This means you and Kevin are […]
A sermon on Lamentations 1:1-12 and John 11:17-37: Though it is in our lectionary, our Lamentations text – this prayer of pain and petition – is not something we hear every day. I doubt many of us could quote from Lamentations as easily as we could from Psalms, from Isaiah, or from any of the […]
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