Sermons

If our lives are not transformed by meeting Jesus the Christ by encountering the true and living God the encounter is for naught. In seeing Jesus’ transfigured body in holding him in our hands as Bread God admonishes us to listen to Jesus. Mountain top experiences going to thin places are for the good of the world not just the good of our feelings.

In these directions Jesus uses what would have been a familiar rabbinical rhetorical device where the second statement seeks to deepen, intensify and radicalize the first. Jesus has made clear that he has not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. The Law has been a gift from God. What Jesus pulls those committed to following him toward is that keeping the mere letter of the law is not enough. Love itself must be the true guide.

From the smokiest Anglo-Catholic parish to the plainest puritan one with clear glass only it doesn’t matter how pretty, severe, or stark our worship is if we’re not sharing our bread with the hungry, bringing the homeless poor into our houses; and covering the naked it doesn’t matter. If we’re avoiding eye contact or staying in a bubble, choosing not to learn about systemic racism or housing policy or mass incarceration so that we can loose the bonds of injustice, undo the thongs of the yoke, let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke we will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

The texts are great today.Micah summarizes the whole of the law and the prophets:“He has told you, O mortal, what is good;and what does the Lord require of youbut to do justice, and to love kindness,and to walk humbly with your God?”The psalmist lays out who will abide with God:He has sworn to do no

Matthew’s quotation is intended to remind his readers that the preaching ministry begun by Jesus in Galilee in fulfillment of Scripture would eventually issue in the mission to the Gentiles. That’s us. Epiphany season, extension with Magi knowing good news of the same God, us sharing that good news, Jesus’ direction in great commission.

The next part is uncomfortable but following Jesus leads to one place – the cross – so some discomfort along the way is part of the bargain. 

The sermon for Sunday, January 8, 2023 was preached by the Most Rev. Melissa Skelton. Archbishop Skelton is the bishop provisional of the Diocese of Olympia. She is the retired Archbishop of British Columbia and Yukon and Bishop of New Westminster. The sermon for Baptism of the Lord was preached from the following manuscript as

Jesus being named on the eighth day and following the rituals of his people is a solidification of what we proclaim at Christmas: God became flesh and lived among us. God came to live among us to save us from ourselves and the mistakes and sins we commit things done and left undone every day of every week of every year. Recording Jesus’ circumcision is recording how truly human Jesus was as he continued to be fully God so that as Paul says we might receive adoption as children. Because we are children of God we have become heirs of God’s salvation.

The Rev. Joseph Peters-Mathews is the vicar of St. Hilda St. Patrick. The sermon for December 25, 2022 was preached as a response to the texts appointed for a Third Service of Christmas. As is his custom, on Christmas Day, Fr. Joseph read the Nativity Sermon of St. John Chrysostom, originally found from the Antiochian

The Rev. Joseph Peters-Mathews is the vicar of St. Hilda St. Patrick. The sermon for Christmas Eve was based on the manuscript below and preached as a response to Luke 2.1-20. A few weeks ago a friend of mine texted me.He was in New Orleans for a work conferenceand his partner hadn’t gone with him.He