Our lives are lived around food.  In our happiest of celebrations, we eat together! In our saddest moments… we eat together! We celebrate births, graduations and marriages by eating! When we die… our family and loved ones come together and eat. The power of the table to nourish, to fill, to make and sustain relationships and to comfort and heal, is amazing.

When doubt comes your way, sit with it.  Invite it to purify your faith.  Invite it to teach you to trust God beyond feelings and experiences, beyond signs and wonders, beyond spiritual consolation.  Invite God to use trials and doubts to transform you. 

Matthew 26:26-46 Today is Maundy Thursday.  It’s the first of the great three days of the Paschal Triduum, the final three days of Lent: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, that is the Vigil of Easter.  Tonight we remember our Lord’s institution of Holy Communion at the Last Supper.  Where he instructed his disciples to eat and drink a meal of his body and blood in remembrance of him.  Then, according to the Gospel of John, he washed his disciples’ feet and procl

Today is our church’s day of great celebration! The Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ! Alleluia! And we come to know Jesus’s resurrection story because Mary Magdalene goes back to Jesus’s tomb the day after the Sabbath, what we now call Sunday, and encounters the first, alarming Easter morning.

Jesus’ tears precede Lazarus’ return, so does the pain and suffering of the cross precede the joy of Resurrection. Assuring us that while suffering is indeed very very real; suffering does not get the last word.

Jesus invites us to find a place of calm in Him. To have our vision reset. To receive the clarity and groundedness that the man born blind received in our Gospel reading today. Because we may not be able to navigate through all the smoke and clouds in our lives, but in Jesus Christ we will experience clarity of vision. We will find groundedness in unsettling times. We may even feel the peace which surpasses all understanding.

As I reflect on my time in Honduras and the impressiveness of that giant monument Christo del Picacho, I know Jesus was present there.  But He was present just as much, if not more, in the smiles of children, in the tears of parents, in the concerned faces of people living on the edge of poverty, in the hearts of Hondurans worried about the fate of loved ones in the US.

Jesus tells us today, that due to our blessed nature, we have become like these useful things. Indeed, we have become not only useful, but essential to the world as it is promised to us when God’s Kingdom comes.

Let’s start believing in God’s world as pictured in these beatitudes and let’s dash the false hope that is rooted in brutality on the rocks of history. We can be a balm for the wounds of our society. We acknowledge today how God’s mercy pours out and blesses and pray for the Holy Spirit to empower us to follow God’s lead in mercy.

Jesus calls us, like he called Peter and Andrew and James and John on that lake shore 2000 years ago.  He calls us to follow Him, to transform our minds, and to learn the ways of His Kingdom.  Not the ways of Ungodly Empire, but the divine way of being that Jesus called the Kingdom.  Let us follow Jesus’ call to bear witness to the sin of Ungodly Empire and to transform our minds and manifest the goodness and love of Christ’s Kingdom with our lives.

The Holy Spirit inspires faith in us.  The Holy Spirit inspires good works in us.  The Holy Spirit inspires spiritual growth in us.  The Holy Spirit is guiding us and loving us and revealing the truth to us.  Let us heed John the Baptist’s call and follow Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, God’s Chosen One.  Let us respond to this gift of God with our lives and trust in God’s goodness and love to guide us and shape us, and to guide and shape our world

This is the beginning of Jesus’s ministry. It is his public commissioning. All now know that Jesus is the Messiah who walks alongside sinners, stepping into the cleansing waters making them now bearers of the promise of forgiveness, righteousness and new life.  

On this last Sunday in Christmas, in great joy and celebration for the birth of Christ, I give thanks and praise to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit for the great Epiphany - the manifestation - of God’s promises.

Repenting, turning our hearts – our whole lives – toward God, is our Advent preparation for the coming Christ child, for Jesus who we know as Savior and Lord.

Matthew 24:36-44 What do movies like Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, and Fight Club have in common with the church year? Specifically with how the lectionary presents the story of Jesus? Well, all those movies start off at the end of the story. They show you what happens toward the end and then relate the story of how the characters got where they are. That’s kind of like what happens on the first Sunday in Advent, the beginning of the church year—when the Gospel reading alwa

This summer I was blessed with a three month sabbatical. I want to express my tremendous gratitude to you all for this opportunity! Being a pastor is a challenging career but one of the few careers where one is provided the opportunity to take sabbatical leave to focus on rest, spiritual renewal, and personal projects. I want to thank Rev Ryan and our staff who stepped up during my time away, and also to thank all the people of St. Matthew for supporting by providing this tim

“… ‘You will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” (Luke 2:12b-14). In this season of twinkling lights and cold evenings, these words from Luke’s gospel are heard in shops, malls, and our own living rooms as we begin listening to Christmas carols. The words ring so familia

The end of time as we know it cannot be truly known by you or by me, because it does not belong to us. But what does belong to us is the Gospel, the Word of God, and the Sacraments which anchors us as we weather the storms around us.

Let us look the mystery of death straight in the eye and gain whatever wisdom it has to offer.  We have no reason to fear death, because Jesus conquered death and opened the way to eternal life for all.  So we can trust and hope and be filled with joyful expectation about whatever’s next.

May you continue to move forward in faith. Now. May God help us to listen. Now. Help us to indeed listen carefully, actively, constantly, for hope…. Now and forever. To listen …for as long as it takes…