October 12, 2025
Drawing on today’s scripture passages, modern science and longstanding traditions like the Anglican harvest thanksgiving feast, this Harvest Thanksgiving sermon reflects on how gratitude is central to our humanity. Practicing gratitude, as exemplified by Jesus in the Eucharist (which means “thanksgiving”), and the Jewish festival of Shavuot, magnifies life’s pleasures and prevents us from taking blessings for granted. We are invited to discover the “place where our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” by using your unique gifts to serve others, thereby cultivating greater gratitude for God’s blessings.
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October 7, 2025
Whether due to our own failings, others’ actions, or global factors — life rarely goes as planned. Jesus’ disciples reacted to the challenging command to forgive by asking for more faith, perhaps believing faith might give them control over life’s disruptions. In this sermon, I challenge the idea that faith is a means to control our circumstances; rather faith is a gift that enables us to detach from our self-centered hopes and attach ourselves to God’s plan of salvation through a life of servant ministry.
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September 28, 2025
On the 132nd anniversary of the dedication of the present church building, the sermon highlights the history and founding principles of St. Barnabas’, connects these principles to the gospel reading of the Rich Man and Lazarus, and discusses how the church continues to fulfill its mission to the wider community today.
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September 21, 2025
September 21 2025 Sermon One might think that with 20+ years of experience preaching would be easy, perhaps as easy as dusting off a previous sermon based on the same text. I’ve never felt comfortable doing that. Preaching is a listening together to God’s voice. The words of scripture are alive; they are preached into […]
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September 14, 2025
Holy Cross Day is a good day, apart from Good Friday, to give some thought to the cross and its place in our believing and in our lives. We take the cross for granted! Crosses are ubiquitous. Crosses are found everywhere, in unexpected places in addition to where we would most expect to find a cross. The cross is a sign of God’s power to save – a sign of love and life.
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September 7, 2025
In today’s gospel reading, Jesus warns his listeners of steep cost of following him. His parables about a preparing to build a house and preparing for battle, can help us understand that we cannot bear the steep cost on our own. But if the gospel leaves you feel the price is too high, you can find hope in trusting God, the potter, to reshape you as we learn in today’s reading from Jeremiah.
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August 24, 2025
Today’s gospel reading tells of the healing of a crippled woman on the Sabbath (Luke 13:10-17). The “leader of the synagogue” reminded the congregation of the fourth commandment, telling them bluntly, without mincing his words: “there are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath day” (13:14). Who makes the rules by which God’s healing grace is set to work in a person’s life? If God be the healer, and if God longs for us to be healed of every-thing (and of any-thing) that afflicts us, then surely God is able to reach out and to heal on any day, and at any time of day, and in any place!
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August 17, 2025
Opening the door to exploring faith – the faith that draws us together in community and the faith we each claim – what is faith? And what part does faith play in our lives? It is a theme that runs through the scriptures assigned for these Sundays after Pentecost. Faith is the theme that stitches the Sunday readings together with often challenging and unsettling words and images from both Old and New Testaments.
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August 10, 2025
Jesus’s parable from Luke 12:32-40 teaches us to be vigilant and prepared, living with faith as we await God’s kingdom.
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August 3, 2025
We are all born of God’s love, but what gets in the way of us experiencing it? In this week’s sermon, we explore how our biological needs for security, power, and affection can dominate our lives and become our idols. We’ll look at the stories of the Israelites, the Colossians, and a man caught in a family feud to see how our attachments to worldly possessions and concerns can blind us to God’s love. We’ll discover that our life is a gift from God, and true wealth is not the accumulation of possessions but in being “rich toward God.” Join me as we consider what it means to be truly free and to set our minds on things above, on Christ.
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