Sermons Preached at Saint Mark's

Jesus said, “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower.… Read More

The Acts of the Apostles is one of my favorite books of the Bible—beautifully moving, playfully whimsical at times, and, if we are honest, profoundly problematic. … Read More

Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.… Read More

Forty years ago, the sage bard Wendell Berry wrote these words: “It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”… Read More

Mirrors aren’t always flattering. Ask anyone who’s ever been in a fitting room. They capture sides of us we don’t want to see. The good news, though, is that they’re not completely accurate.… Read More

“Vengeance is mine…,” says the Lord.” Oh. Ok… “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.” Wowzer. Is that, is that the gospel? Does that sound like good news to you? … Read More

I wonder what St. Paul would say to the women in our first reading. Just verses after the ones we hear today from Romans, Paul infamously tells us: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed.”… Read More

Have you noticed how tribalistic we have become in modernity? Wanting to move from just being frustrated by endless news cycles offering cascades of despairing reports, I’ve been digging down into the neurobiological and historical roots of our tribal tendencies, trying to better understand our current predicament. I’ve even been dipping into the astrobiological question, what defines “life” (more on that in the footnotes).… Read More

Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray.… Read More