Jesus' Grandmothers, V: Mary
February 11, 2024 • Katie Lancaster • Luke 2:41–52
A sermon series on Jesus’ grandmothers, and yet Mary is no grandmother. No. She is Theotokos. Bearer of God. Hagia Maria. Saint Mary. Panagia. Most Holy. Purissima. Most Pure. Our Lady of Tenderness. She Who Shows the Way. Throne of Wisdom. Mater Dolorosa, Mother of Sorrows. Her’s is a much more direct lineage to Jesus, the only one whose DNA courses through his veins. From that long pregnant walk to Bethlehem to her place at the foot of the cross, she is a woman of deepest joy and most weighty sorrow. She is not a grandmother to Jesus, but Mary propels us back toward the grandmothers of Jesus all the while allowing their stories to speak into his family tree, showing us again Mary’s place in this most holy pedigree.
The New O Antiphons, VI: O Lord of every path and passage way…
December 24, 2023 • William A. Evertsberg • Luke 2:1–20
It’s possible that Luke’s congregation was filled with blue collar people and Uber drivers and day laborers from the gig economy. Luke wanted his congregation to know that Jesus came for them too, in fact came primarily for them. Bible scholars are fond of talking about St. Luke’s pronounced, powerful, persistent, pervasive, peculiar preference for the poor, the pitiful, and the persecuted.
The New O Antiphons IV: O God of words and music, we give thanks…
December 10, 2023 • William A. Evertsberg • Luke 1:46–55
O God of words and music. They are the two integral components of divine worship. We couldn’t choir the proper praise if one or the other were missing: words and music, sermon and song. It’s Lisa’s job to make sure that you can hear the words within the music. She has her choirs ENUNCIATE! “And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly host praising God...” If it’s Lisa’s job to make sure that you hear the words within the music, it’s my job to make sure you hear the music within the words. Because words can sing, can’t they?
The Greatest of These, IV: Humility
October 1, 2023 • William A. Evertsberg • 1 Corinthians 13:4, Luke 14:7–11
I wanted to repeat what Oliver Cromwell wrote to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1650: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you might be mistaken.” Your wife might ask you a perfectly reasonable question, and you might answer with an attitude that suggests she really ought to know the answer without asking. “Who is Travis Kelce?” she might ask. “Only the most famous football player in America,” you might answer. In a million years, you would never condescend like that with anyone else in your life, but you are so secure in that relationship that you forget your manners.
The Valley of Lost Things, IV : The Party I Refused to Attend
May 14, 2023 • Katie Snipes Lancaster • Luke 15:25–32
A lost coin, found. A lost sheep, found. A lost son, found. After each lost thing found, a party. Luke chapter fifteen is simple enough, but it might hold everything we need to know about God. When we are lost, God goes after us. When we are lost, God seeks us until we are found. But here’s today’s question: will the older brother go to the party? Can he bear to celebrate? Jesus spins these fabulous little tales and we’re still thinking of them two thousand years later. We see ourselves in the younger brother. We see ourselves in the older brother. We even see ourselves in the father, watching his sons hurt and be hurt by each other and the world. We know this story is telling us something about ourselves. We intuitively know that we fit within this story. And two thousand years later, this story is still about us, getting lost, and God running out to greet us.
The Valley of Lost Things, III: Lost and Found
May 7, 2023 • William A. Evertsberg • Luke 15:11–24
Have you noticed that Shakespeare based his magnum opus, King Lear, on the same initial plot device as Jesus’ little parable? Foolishly, a man divides his inheritance to his heirs prematurely, while he is still alive. A man had two sons. A man had three daughters. All our stories begin this way, or most of them, because this is what is most precious to us, and most distressing.
The Valley of Lost Things, II: When You Get Dropped
April 30, 2023 • William A. Evertsberg • Luke 15:8–10
It's easy to lose a dime. Have you ever been dropped? Maybe they don’t even miss you. Maybe you’re a coin somebody dropped. Somebody estimated that here are 300 billion coins lying around on American beaches and streams and gutters or under your furniture at home or beneath vending machines.[1] I’ll do the math for you again. Even if every one of those missing coins was a penny, there is a fortune worth three billion dollars lying around somewhere—unmissed, unsought, and lost, but still valuable. Go look for it. [1]David Owen, “Penny Dreadful,” The New Yorker, March 31, 2008, p. 62.
The Valley of Lost Things, I: The Gospel Within the Gospel
April 23, 2023 • William A. Evertsberg • Luke 15:1–7
In the fifteenth chapter of the third Gospel, St. Luke gives us three linked parables of Jesus with a single, common theme: all three parables are about four lost things—a lost sheep, a lost coin, and two lost sons. Bible scholars sometimes call Luke Chapter 15 The Gospel Within the Gospel. I love that way of thinking about it. The Gospel Within the Gospel. Luke Chapter 15 is the terse précis of the entire Bible, the concise abstract to the sprawling dissertation the Bible finally turns out to be. If you are lost, says the entire Bible, God wants to find you.
The Unnamed, XII : The Gangsters
April 2, 2023 • William A. Evertsberg • Luke 23:32–43
It doesn’t seem fair, does it? To rape and pillage your whole life and then to steal salvation minutes before you take your last breath. But remember, this is St. Luke. Luke is the only evangelist to tell us this story, and Luke wants to tell us that Jesus dies just like he lived. It’s just one final instance of St. Luke hammering home his insistent point—that Jesus always cared for the least, the last, the lost, the lame, the leper, and the loser.
In The Meantime, IV : A Barn Shall Harbor Heaven
December 24, 2022 • William A. Evertsberg • Luke 2:1–20
In a few moments, Alyssa and Ryan will sing “O Holy Night” for us with their inimitable, empyreal voices, including that line “long lay the world in sin and error pining, until he appeared, and the soul felt its worth.” That’s what I want to talk about this evening. I just want to tell you one story about that line: “long lay the world in sin and error pining, until he appeared, and the soul felt its worth.”