Sermon: Jump: Trusting God to Heal Our Pride  Jump: Trusting God To Heal Our Pride In today’s Old Testament lesson we meet a dangerous man, a military general who led the army of Israel’s biggest enemy, Naaman. He didn’t share Israel’s beliefs, their theology, their God, their politics, or their ethics, yet God was at work in him.  He was a stranger, an enemy; but Naaman, had a severe problem. He carried a death sentence in his body… in his skin. He was a leper.  Keep in mind, he was…

Grumpy Jesus: Feelings and Focus Have you ever been grumpy? I don’t mean mere frustration; I mean, have you ever been in a place where no one could do anything right? Maybe you haven’t, but I bet you can notice it in other people.  That sounds a lot like Jesus in Today’s Gospel reading. The writer paints a picture where Jesus woke up on the wrong side of the bed. That scares some people, but if he can be grumpy, I guess it gives the rest of us hope. However, it’s…

Pentecost Sunday: Unified Diversity. Pentecost Sunday is a strange day on the church calendar because we want to celebrate, but the Acts reading about speaking in tongues and erratic spiritual experiences is a little unsettling. I’ve learned that if we talk too often about spiritual experiences, some people want to assign “labels” to us. Last week someone blasted me on Facebook (it’s not the first time…) for a comment I made on one Bishop Curry’s preaching videos. He preached that we need to stop being ashamed to talk about Jesus, and we need to all become…

Sermon: Seventh Sunday of Easter. Unity with God, Unity with Others. It’s the seventh Sunday of Easter, so I’ll begin with the truth this morning; I intended to preach from the Acts lesson about Paul and Silas in jail. “He’s in the jailhouse now.” was a great title! Then I would make a suitable joke about solidarity with Paul because both of us didn’t care for a jail cell. But there was a persistent nagging I couldn’t ignore. I couldn’t get away from the John passage about…

Do You Want to Get Well? Sermon for Sixth Sunday of Easter by Rian Adams A Sermon for the sixth Sunday of Easter..… A friend of mine is a retired Episcopal priest, but he was also a practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst for over four decades. We have the best talks when I visit. Once he told me a story of a patient who would make a significant step forward, then step backward. This repeatedly happened over a year. She would finally process her relationship with her father, only to find another reason to get mad at him again…

Sermon Fifth Sunday of Easter: You’re Not Easy to Love By Rian Adams Sermon, Fifth Sunday of Easter: Let’s hear the voice of Jesus, “I’m going away, but I will leave you with a new commandment; you should love one another as I have loved you.” This Gospel is a rewind, Jesus said these words at the last supper. John set the scene with Jesus eating dinner with his friends. Judas left and went out into the darkness. Then Jesus taught the remaining disciples the secret of the kingdom.     I…