"So here is the challenge: We will meet people on the path ahead who are not like us. Who do not share very many, or any of the identities that matter most to us. People who enjoy privilege we don’t, who defy norms we are used to. And some of those people, friends, are looking for Jesus. Some of those people are going to ask us the impossible question – what is to prevent me from being baptized? What is to prevent me from belonging to you, and with you, in your community of faith?" Preached for St. Philip's, Harlem, NY. text: Acts 8:26-40 and John 15:1-8 ..read more

"This Easter is harder to want, isn’t it? This is an Easter that is not about winning as much as it is about turning and re-orienting ourselves toward God and each other. This is an Easter that is less about a huge, visible victory and more about what happens to a small community of people when God passes through the locked doors of their fears, anxieties and expectations and opens up their life to the work of welcoming more and more people into their heart. " Preached for All Angels, Manhattan text: Luke 24:36b-48 ..read more

"Easter is not a fix, but it is an opening. Resurrection is an invitation.  It is a stone rolled away, opening up possibilities we could never have dreamed on our own, God’s possibilities for justice and hope, after trauma, for healing after brokenness, and for life after death." Preached for Trinity St. Paul, St. Simon, St John, New Rochelle, NY text: Mark 16:1-8 ..read more

"Friends, love isn’t a resource that can be used up or spent up. It isn’t all we need – Love is all we are. It is the engine that runs the world, the only action worth taking, the only identity worth living. " Text: John 13:1-17, 31b-35 Preached for St. Philip's, Harlem, New York ..read more

"So if the resurrected and living body of Jesus is the answer – what is the question? Here it is: How do we survive, when the temple where we meet God and find our own identities as God’s people is destroyed? How can we be God’s people, if we don’t have a place to meet with God? " Preached for St. Philip's, Harlem, New York City. text: John 2:13-22 ..read more

"Change is a thing that happens – you move to a new city, lose a relationship, a messiah is baptized and named. Transition is the process of a human being responding to change, and it takes a lot longer to happen than the change itself. Becoming a Seattleite takes a lot longer than just moving to Seattle.  A breakup last a lot longer than the moment you call it quits. And, as we see in our gospel this morning, being baptized and named as God’s beloved is not all it takes to become the Jesus who proclaims the good news of God’s kingdom come near." Preached for St. Matthew/San Mateo, Auburn ..read more

"Words create worlds. I think this is precisely what Jesus is about in our gospel reading tonight. We may be tempted, as humans who inhabit our particular culture to read the beatitudes and try to make them an individual prescription for who gets blessing and who doesn’t. For some of us this is the most obvious way to hear these words. But that is not what Jesus is up to, here. Jesus is not giving a prescription for who God loves, or even a recipe for how particular people might gain God’s attention and blessing. Jesus’ words are revealing a world. " Preached for St. Andrew's Episcopal Church ..read more

"This is how Jesus begins his big work of love and life and hope – with the one human being in front of him. This is how Jesus begins to author the story of God’s kingdom-  not with words but with an act of love, offering freedom and connection to the person who is yelling at him, and seems to be trying to take him down. " preached for St. John San Juan, Olympia text: Mark 1:21-28 ..read more

"It is such a big project, to see the full humanity of every person and every type of person in our lives. And yet I think this is the project of the incarnation, the big idea of Jesus Christ’s enfleshing among us. " Text: 1 Samuel 3:1-20 preached at St. John San Juan, Olympia WA ..read more

"One of the tasks of human existence is to figure out what to do with our own strangeness. Do we run from our shadows? Ignore them, try to erase or medicate them? Can we get close and somehow embrace the chaotic and unmanageable parts of who we are? " Text: Luke 2:1-20 Preached at St. John San Juan, Olympia, WA ..read more