Sermons

Our whole service today reminds us that we will die, and that even in that frailty God loves us and redeems us in Jesus. We should repent. We may fast or abstain. We may take on a spiritual discipline. We may give more. None of those things, though earns us salvation. None of them earns us God’s love. Through nothing we’ve done. As far as the east is from the west, so far has God removed our sins from us.

While we probably don’t experience those specific events, we do have our own kinds of mountaintop experiences, where we write glowingly of sunrises, soft breezes, warm friends, music, and quiet time. Whether we do or not, God is available to us, even in all the troubles that swirl around us in this world from Ukraine to those whom our systems fail and need to use our pantry and sock box. God is available to us in Bread and Wine eating Jesus’ Flesh and Blood. And God is available to us when we sit and pray, like Jesus did on the mountaintop with his disciples.

Go ahead; right the wrongs of the world and fight injustice … but do so with guidance from the Holy Spirit … and if the fruits of your labour are judgment, resentment, and vengeance, then you know something’s gone wrong.

The sermon for Sunday, February 13, was preached by Valerie Cole Kelley, a member of St. Hilda St. Patrick who has served on the Bishop’s Committee, as senior warden, and is a retired educator. How do you encounter the Divine in scripture? We each bring our own experiences, language, culture, attitudes, mood, and temperaments with

The Sermon for Sunday, February 6, 2022 was read by Tyson Connor a member of St. Hilda St. Patrick and a therapist. It was written by the Rev. Cn. Whitney Rice, Canon for Evangelism & Discipleship Development for the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri. It was made available from Sermons that Work, a ministry of The Episcopal Church.

The sermon for Sunday, January 30, 2022, was preached extemporaneously as a response to 1 Corinthians 13.1-13.

In fulfilling the words from Isaiah, Jesus assures those who are oppressed that God is on their side and that they will be set free. Also in pronouncing that he is the fulfillment of of these words from Isaiah, Jesus sets the agenda for his church — his ministers and body in the world today…There is legislation pending in our own legislature that would make a huge difference in remedying mass incarceration — and there’s still work to go.

The wedding party didn’t do anything to warrant or earn more wine than they needed and certainly not wine that is being so celebrated. Jesus just gave it freely so that his disciples and we could believe. There are lots of ways to theologize and allegorize this passage that only appears in John. But as someone in Bible study pointed out this week when John wants to theologize, John does it. When we just take this text on its face there’s Good News of the abundance of God and that what we need, what God is here.

Just as Jesus became human that we might become divine, he went into the water that it all might be sanctified. Jesus didn’t need a sin washing. But the whole creation needed the Word to become flesh and dwell among us. When we forget scripture screaming to us who God is and what God has done we’re often left even more unfilled because of all the ways that we individually and collectively fail to measure up and just quite can’t seem to save ourselves.

The Rev. Joseph Peters-Mathews is the vicar of St. Hilda St. Patrick Episcopal Church. The sermon for Thursday, January 6, 2022 was preached extemporaneously as a response to the texts for Epiphany.