Do You Know What I Have Done To You? A Sermon
This sermon was preached at First United Methodist Church, Orange, Texas, on Maundy Thursday 2011. The Scripture is John 13:1-17, 31b-35. The camera pans out, and we see our hero, paralyzed, perhaps strapped to a chair. No escape. The James Bond villain, or perhaps an antagonist from CSI or some other police or mystery drama … Read more
An Identity Crisis
Eight years ago today (liturgically speaking) I preached for the first time in “big church”…not a devotional or talk but an actual sermon in the awe-inspiring sanctuary of St Paul’s United Methodist (Houston) on a Sunday morning: Transfiguration Sunday. It holds up, I think, and today seems oddly resonant. In honor of how the Holy … Read more
The Hour and the Day
Advent: Getting ready for the one, true, holy God to break into our fragmented, false, and unholy lives.
The Preaching Life: Countercultural
…there is a certain contrary character to all faithful preaching…The words of the sermon will be expressing our culture in need–beloved by God, but not itself God. So the preacher’s life, as well, will have certain countercultural strains to it. Perhaps simply being willing to become a preacher was already a beginning. In any case, … Read more
