This morning I want to focus on Peter, one of the main characters in our Gospel reading for today. Peter appears frequently throughout the Gospel of Matthew. Some of his appearances are humorous and some are tragic, but they are always human. He is full of all the good and bad that is in each […]
Our Gospel passage for this week is tough. It seems to be verse after verse of raising the bar. Don’t just keep yourself from killing other people, don’t even get angry with them. Don’t just keep yourself from committing adultery, don’t even allow yourself to look at another person with lust. Don’t divorce. Don’t lie. […]
You are the salt of the earth. . . You are the light of the world. I want you to listen to these words from Jesus very closely. They are so familiar to us that it is easy to miss the profound message in them. You are the salt of the earth. . . You […]
On Thursday this past week, when both my children were finally back in school after 10 days of illness and I was trying to awaken my own illness-recovering brain, I spied an email sent to me by someone I hadn’t heard from in a long time (not anyone from St. Andrew’s). This person was sending […]
When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” John 1:38 Very frequently when someone comes to meet with me to talk about a personal concern, I begin our time together by asking, “What brings you here today?” Or to put it another way, “How can I help […]
Whether we call ourselves Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Mormon, Sikh, Agnostic, Atheist, Consumerist, Secularist, Humanist, or whatever, we follow a religion. All human beings are innately religious. We are made to be religious. The dictionary defines religion as, “1. the belief in and worship of a superhuman power or powers, especially a God or gods.” […]
Painting by Christian Weber Have you heard the story about the little boy who was riding his tricycle down a sidewalk? Suddenly, one of the little wheels on the back fell off. The little boy jumped off his trike and said, “I’ll be damned!” At that very moment a priest happened to be walking by, […]
There are so many sermons that could be preached from our Gospel reading for this morning, all of them equally important and valid, but as I doubt very much that you want to listen to me for the entire day, I am focusing on one particular part of the reading: “If anyone strikes you on […]
Did you know that they make glasses that cause the wearer’s vision to be turned upside-down? When you look through the glasses, up is down, left is right and right is left. The idea behind the lesson is to help us understand how our eyes take in what they see and then flip it upside-down […]
I have mentioned in a previous sermon that I am participating in a one-year Ignatian retreat. Learning and practicing the various Ignatian spiritual exercises has been a true gift. My favorite practice from Ignatius is the practice of approaching Scripture with one’s imagination. Ignatius believed that God uses everything to speak to us, including our […]