While sermons are best enjoyed live and in-person, you can view our archive here. Clicking the Facebook or YouTube links at the top of the site will also allow you to watch a recording of many of them.
Two Stories of Temptation
By The Rev. Sherry Deets 1 Lent – March 9, 2014 Matthew 4:1-11 At Jesus’ baptism, the heavenly voice announces, “This is my Son, the Beloved.” And it seems that almost immediately afterwards, Jesus is tempted by the devil, who treats Jesus as if the reality of his identity is the question: “If you are the Son of God…” Are you really? Can you prove it? Jesus’ responses show him pondering an entirely different question: What does it mean for…
Jesus Lit Up Right In Front of Him
By The Rev. Sherry Deets Last Sunday of Epiphany/Transfiguration – March 2, 2014 Matthew 17:1-9 (As written by Barbara Brown Taylor in TextWeek) The story that we have just heard defies interpretation, although that has not stopped legions of interpreters from trying. It is the luminous story of a mystical encounter, not only between God and God’s Beloved but also between those at the center of the story and those who watch. Those at the center are Jesus, Moses and…
A Different Way to Relate to Each Other
By The Rev. Sherry Deets 7 Epiphany – February 23, 2014 Matthew 5:38-48 Turn the other cheek, go the extra mile and love your enemies. Have we heard these phrases so often that we don’t pay much attention to them? Are they simply niceties? Ideals? So if we are inclined to read over these familiar words too quickly, or if we want to dismiss these commands out of hand as pious idealisms, I’d urge us instead to slow down and…
The Church as a Bearer of Light
By The Rev. Sherry Deets Feast of the Presentation – February 2, 2014 Luke 2:22-40 Today we celebrate the presentation of Jesus in the temple. This feast occurs every year on February 2, the fortieth day after Christmas. Once every few years February 2 falls on a Sunday and so we can keep this celebration more fully than may be possible otherwise. Our Gospel from Luke recounts that forty days after his birth, Jesus is taken to the temple by…
Joseph’s Big Dream
By The Rev. Sherry Deets 4 Advent – December 22, 2013 Matthew 1:18-25 We’ve come to the darkest part of the year. Yesterday was the shortest and therefore, darkest, day of the year. We have come as well to a dark time for that young man Joseph that I just read about. He does everything he needs to do in preparation for his wedding. Then what he never imagined would happen, happens. His fiancee is pregnant. He knows he is…
A “Dorothy” Moment
By The Rev. Sherry Deets 3 Advent – December 15, 2013 Matthew 11:2-11 We might call it a “Dorothy” moment. We pull the curtain back to find that the person we trusted, the one we depended on, the one who raised our hopes, has let us down. We endured the dangers and journey of the “yellow brick road” because we believed someone’s advice or teaching or wisdom. But then we find out we don’t really know someone we thought we…
Good Works Do Not Make a Person Good, But a Good Person Does Good Works
By The Rev. Sherry Deets 2 Advent – December 8, 2013 Matthew 3:1-12 This is the second Sunday of Advent. Advent is that four-week period, or church season, in which we prepare for the coming of the Lord. We prepare not only for his coming as a baby at Christmas, but we also prepare for his coming into our lives today. In today’s gospel we hear about John the Baptist. John appears in the wilderness of Judea proclaiming, “Repent, for…
Kairos Is God’s Time
By The Rev. Sherry Deets 1 Advent – December 1, 2013 Matthew 24:36-44 And so we begin the church Season of Advent today. Advent is considered a time of waiting: expectant waiting. Waiting with anticipation for something new, something different, new life. Much like a woman waiting to give birth – think of Mary, pregnant with Jesus – a time of waiting for new life. We don’t usually have baptisms in the Season of Advent, but this Sunday the lessons…
What Kind of King Is This?
By The Rev. Sherry Deets 27 Pentecost, Proper 29 – November 24, 2013 Luke 23:33-43 So, this is the last Sunday in the church season of Pentecost and it is called Christ the King Sunday. The Biblical titles of Jesus Son of God, Messiah, and King have been so thoroughly absorbed as words for church and worship that their simple, earthly force is largely lost. Jesus’ crucifixion, however, did not occur on an altar between two candles, but outside the…
Things Are Not Always As They Appear
By The Rev. Sherry Deets 26 Pentecost, Proper 28 – November 17, 2013 Luke 21:5-19 The Temple, that most Jewish of places, the place where God touched the earth and held it still and safe. The Temple was stunning. The Temple was huge. The Temple was overwhelming, as befits the building that honors the God who alone is God. And the Temple was beautiful because Herod, that Roman stooge who styled himself as King of the Jews, had spent massive…
Whose Wife Will This Woman Be?
By The Rev. Sherry Deets 25 Pentecost, Proper 27 – November 10, 2013 Luke 20:27-38 The Sadducees were only one segment of the Jewish community in the time of Jesus. Generally speaking, they were the old aristocracy, with ties to the temple priesthood. They were the religious and social conservatives who, unlike other Jews, accepted as Scripture only the five books of Moses: Genesis through Deuteronomy. They denied not simply the resurrection of the dead, but spirits and angels as…
The Third Way of Jesus
By The Rev. Sherry Deets All Saints’ Sunday – November 3, 2013 Luke 6:20-31 The gospel for this All Saints’ Sunday comes from the Sermon on the Plain that Jesus preaches in Luke’s Gospel. The Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel may be more familiar, but what Luke gives us appears more provocative: it is a series of blessings followed by a parallel series of woes. Blessed are you who are poor, who are hungry, who…