Sermons – Mark 4:9: Recent Episodes
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In the Resurrection of Christ with its promise of new creation lies our only real hope for all that ails us. Why then do so many reject or ignore this great gift from God the Father? For those with ears … Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Trinity Sunday C, June 16, 2019. Play the video before you read the sermon. Lectionary texts: Proverbs 8.1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5.1-5; John 16.12-15. In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy … Continue reading →
Sermon originally delivered on Ascension Sunday, May 13, 2018. Lectionary texts: Acts 1.1-11; Psalm 93; Ephesians 1.15-23; Luke 24.44-53. In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today we celebrate our Lord’s ascension into … Continue reading →
Sermon originally preached on Easter 3C, Sunday, April 10, 2016. Lectionary texts: Acts 9.1-20; Psalm 30; Revelation 5.11-15; John 21.1-19. In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. The past two weeks we have … Continue reading →
Sermon originally delivered on Easter 4B, Good Shepherd Sunday, April 25, 2021. Lectionary texts: Acts 4.1-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3.16-24; St. John 10.11-18. In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today is … Continue reading →
Sermon originally preached on Easter Sunday, April 4, 2021. Lectionary texts: Acts 10.34-43; 1 Corinthians 15.1-11; St. John 20.1-18. In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today we celebrate the Resurrection of our … Continue reading →
Everyone who is devout and a lover of God, let them enjoy this beautiful and radiant Feast of Feasts! If anyone is a wise servant, rejoice and enter into the joy of the LordIf anyone has been wearied in fasting, … Continue reading →
What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised … Continue reading →
Lectionary texts: Isaiah 52.13-53.12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 4.14-16, 5.7-9; John 18-19. In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Remember, LORD, what has happened to us; look, and see our disgrace. You, LORD, reign forever; your throne … Continue reading →
Sermon originally delivered on Passion (Palm) Sunday, April 9, 2017. Lectionary texts: Isaiah 50.4-9a; Psalm 31.9-16; Philippians 2.5-11; Matthew 21.1-11. Passion narrative: Matthew 26.14-27.66. In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. In our … Continue reading →
The Father’s love for us was and is made known supremely in Jesus, the Son of God. The coeternal Son who existed with God from all eternity (Jn 1.1-5) took on our flesh to destroy Sin’s power over us and to bear the Father’s just wrath on our sins to spare us and make us fit to stand in God’s direct presence forever (Rom 5.6-11, 8.1-4; Rev 7.9-17). All who believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came to be a sacrifice for our sins and who was raised by God from the dead are washed clean by his blood shed for us on the cross. As St. Paul tells us in our epistle lesson this morning, this was an act of pure grace on the Father’s part. None of us deserve this mercy because before Christ’s Incarnation, we were still God’s enemies. But those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and only those who believe Jesus is the Son of God, are no longer God’s enemies. Instead, we are God’s children (Jn 1.12) and therefore we have a future hope and inheritance: God’s new world, the new heavens and earth. In Christ, we see the very heart and face of the Father healing the sick, casting out the demonic and defeating Evil and the powers behind it. And because of the resurrection, those of us who are united to Christ by faith are promised a share in God’s new world. Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Ascension Sunday, May 13, 2018. Lectionary texts: Acts 1.1-11; Psalm 93; Ephesians 1.15-23; Luke 24.44-53. In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today we celebrate our Lord’s ascension into heaven. … Continue reading →
Lectionary texts: Acts 10.34-43; Easter Anthems; Colossians 3.1-4; St. Matthew 28.1-10. In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today we celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. But what should it mean … Continue reading →
Everyone who is devout and a lover of God, let them enjoy this beautiful and radiant Feast of Feasts! If anyone is a wise servant, rejoice and enter into the joy of the LordIf anyone has been wearied in fasting, … Continue reading →
What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised … Continue reading →
Lectionary texts: Isaiah 52.13-53.12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 4.14-16, 5.7-9; John 18-19. In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Remember, LORD, what has happened to us; look, and see our disgrace. You, LORD, reign forever; your throne … Continue reading →
From the sermon archives—an appropriate Lenten reflection Lectionary texts: Romans 5.6-11, 6.3-11; St. John 7.37-39. In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today is a huge day in the life of your family. … Continue reading →
We need to be sober in our thinking about the power of Sin and see it as God sees it—a force that corrupts and destroys God’s precious image-bearers and good creation. This is why God hates Sin and this is why we can expect to receive God’s wrath on our sins: they are symptoms of the problem that God hates. God is first and foremost a God of love and if that is true, God must also be a God of justice. Why? Because God cannot and will not ultimately allow anything or anyone in his creation to continue corrupting it and his image-bearing creatures. God loves us too much to allow us to be victims of injustice and all the evil that flows from the power of Sin. Since we are powerless to break Sin’s grip on us, and since God is the only person who can free us from our slavery to it, God must intervene to destroy Sin and set things right, the very essence of justice. Otherwise, we would be doomed to be forever in Sin’s grip, catastrophically and permanently separated from God’s eternal love for us and excluded from God’s great heavenly banquet he has prepared for us so that we can enjoy him forever. It means that we would forever be trapped in our worst selves and that violence, greed, selfishness, cruelty, rapacity, suffering, hurt, brokenness, and alienation would continue to rule unchecked in our lives and God’s world. If God really is love, God cannot let this state of affairs go on forever, and when we understand this we can begin to see God’s justice as a positive thing. If we are going to follow God, we have to be sure that God loves us enough and has the requisite power to put all things to rights. To be sure, punishment is involved in this making-right process, but the overall thrust of God’s justice is restorative and healing because the heart of God his merciful, kind, generous, and loving. God does not create us to destroy us; God created us so that we can enjoy him and rule his world faithfully and wisely on his behalf. Continue reading →
The foretaste of the Messianic banquet that will be ongoing in God’s new creation reminds us to keep our eyes on Jesus the prize because the ordinary things of this life will be transformed when he returns and made more beautiful and abundant than we can ever imagine, just like the new wine Jesus made. Think about the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen—husbands, this is a good time to turn to your wife and tell her she is that most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, it’s a good old-creation, anti-doghouse practice—and then try to imagine things more beautiful and abundant than that, i.e., try to imagine the unimaginable. This will give you a clue as to what awaits us in God’s new heavens and earth. I don’t know all that that entails, but I do know that our resurrected bodies will be inexpressively beautiful and without defect or sickness or any kind of malady. We will drink the finest wines without becoming intoxicated and we won’t desire to become intoxicated because we will be enjoying unbroken communion and fellowship with God the Father and the Lamb. There won’t be an addictive or lonely bone in our new body. The intimacy we enjoy only partly now, we will enjoy in full then. We won’t worry about being unloved or abandoned by God or others because we will be living in the light of God’s presence and the Lamb’s forever! Continue reading →
So you have died with Christ and are raised with him, even at your ripe young age! You have been delivered from the dark empire of slavery to the empire of freedom and life and light, the Father’s kingdom. Now what? Well, for starters it means you no longer need to be afraid as you grow older. You have peace with God, real peace, a peace that was terribly costly to God, and you also have life that cannot be taken from you. Sure your mortal body will die, and you’ll understand what that means when you grow older, but that’s nothing more than a transition until the Lord returns and raises you from the dead and gives you a new body to live in his new world. As a baptized Christian you have no reason to fear death because you know Christ is the Resurrection and the Life (John 11.25) and you know that where he is, there you will be with him by virtue of your baptism that signals his great love for you and his power to rescue you from Sin and Death! It means you will reject living your life in ways that tell God you don’t want anything to do with him. It means you will reject false realities and will be willing to speak out boldly against them. It means you will be willing to love even the most unloveable people (and unfortunately you will come to know your fair share of them), starting with yourself. It means you will be willing to speak out against injustices of all kinds. It means you will have compassion for people, realizing they are without a Good Shepherd who will love and heal them just like he is loving and healing you, and so you will be willing to share your baptismal faith with them. There’s more to this reality, but certainly not less. Continue reading →
Below is a sermon from Saint John Chrysostom, believed to be the first Christmas sermon ever preached. Whether it was, this sermon is the first extant Christmas sermon we have. Preached in Antioch in 386 AD, the year St. Augustine … Continue reading →
From the sermon archives. Lectionary texts: Isaiah 52.7-10; Isaiah 11; Hebrews 1.1-12; John 1.1-14. In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Merry Christmas my beloved! During this past Advent season we looked into … Continue reading →
Starting next Sunday, August 7, Sunday sermons/podcasts will be published directly on St. Augustine Anglican Church’s website. Visit there to read or listen to future sermons. Sermon delivered on Trinity 7C, Sunday, July 31, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, … Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Trinity 6C, Sunday, July 24, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, click here. Lectionary texts: Hosea 1.2-10; Psalm 85; Colossians 2.6-19; St. Luke 11.1-13. … Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Trinity 5C, Sunday, July 17, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, click here. Lectionary texts: Amos 8.1-12; Psalm 52; Colossians 1.15-28; St. Luke 10.38-42. … Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Trinity 4C, Sunday, July 10, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, click here. Lectionary texts: Amos 7.7-17; Psalm 82; Colossians 1.1-14; St. Luke 10.25-37. … Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Trinity 3C, Sunday, July 3, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, click here. Lectionary texts: 2 Kings 5.1-14; Psalm 30; Galatians 6.1-16; St. Luke … Continue reading →
So what do we do when we are in desperate times, wondering if God has abandoned us? Well, many of us try to tough it out on our own. Instead of remembering that God is faithful to his people, we seek human solutions to alleviate our desperation. How’s that working out for you? I know it never has worked for me. No, as we have seen, we are called to remember, both collectively and individually, and then to rely on each other to remind ourselves that God never leaves us alone. In other words, we are to love each other and be there for each other when we sense God’s absence, just the way all healthy families help each other in good times and bad. Never underestimate the power of godly folk to help lighten your load as they walk with you through the dark valleys of life. The very act of remembering and relying on each other help us focus on God instead of ourselves. It reminds us to be patient and to trust God to act on our behalf in God’s good time and ways. That’s not easy for us god-wannabes but it is the only real option we have if we are not to totally lose heart and hope. When we remember, we are reminded that God is not some inconsistent ogre who delights in torturing us or who behaves erratically toward us as we do toward God and each other. God loved us enough to become human and die for us to free us from his just condemnation and an eternity apart from him, even while we were still sinners and his enemies. If God loves us that much, why would God abandon us now in our darkest hours? Continue reading →
Happy Fathers’ Day! Sermon delivered on Trinity 1C, Sunday, June 19, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. There is no audio podcast of today’s sermon. Lectionary texts: 1 Kings 19.1-15a; Psalms 42-43; Galatians 3.23-29; St. Luke 8.26-39. In … Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Trinity Sunday C, June 12, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, click here. Lectionary texts: Proverbs 8.1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5.1-5; St. John … Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Trinity Sunday C, June 12, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, click here. Lectionary texts: Acts 2.1-11; Psalm 104.26-37; Romans 8.14-17; John 14.8-17, 25-27. … Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Ascension Sunday (transferred), May 29, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Father Wylie gets all whiny when we ask for a written manuscript. Nobody’s got time for a whiny priest, especially on Ascension Sunday, so … Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Easter 6C, Sunday, May 22, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, usually somewhat different from the text below, click here. Lectionary texts: Acts16.9-15; Psalm … Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Easter 5C, Sunday, May 15, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Father Wylie is a slug and gets all whiny when we ask for a written manuscript. Nobody’s got time for a whiny priest, especially … Continue reading →
In telling us this story, St. John is surely telling us that the power of Jesus is typically not made known in stunning ways, in ways the world recognizes as spectacular, although there are notable and numerous exceptions to this rule. Christ making all things new is not about razzle-dazzle or eye-popping special effects that we love to see at the movies. Instead, it is about the quiet way of Christ with his people, with St. Peter, with you and me, agapaoing us in all our unloveliness, forgiving all our failures and betrayals and denials, recognizing our limitations, but also seeing our potential and putting us to work for him, despite who we can be, out of his sheer grace and love for us. There is nothing we have said or not said, thought or not thought, done or not done that is beyond the healing love and forgiveness of our crucified and risen Savior, nothing that will not eventually be put to rights, even if we must wait for it to be put to rights in God’s new heavens and earth. If you cannot find real hope, real comfort, real healing in this reality and promise, my beloved, surely you are to be pitied most of all. St. Paul found it on the road to Damascus, St. Peter found it as have countless other Christians across time and cultures. Let us join this happy and forgiven throng so that like the psalmist in today’s lesson, we too can make the bold proclamation of conquering death through Christ our own! Continue reading →
Yes, in this world, we will have trouble. But Jesus encourages us, “Take heart; I have overcome the world.” And so, Christian, when you or those that you love are plagued by disease, when you’re walking through the valley of the shadow of death, remember that sickness and death don’t have the final word; Christ does. Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, [they] will live” (John 11:25). When darkness overshadows you and evil seems to surround you, remember that God is making all things new, that His purposes and plans cannot be stopped, that “all things work together for good for those who love God” (Romans 8:28). Continue reading →
Many of us still don’t anticipate the Resurrection of the Dead and like the women at Christ's Tomb, we remain afraid. But we needn’t be if we keep our eyes on the prize of Resurrection and new creation. And let’s be clear about the nature of our Ultimate Prize. Resurrection is about the continuity of bodily existence, albeit in radically new way. We’ll look at this more in two weeks. For right now, when the angels spoke of Christ being raised from the dead (as did Christ’s first followers) they had in mind bodily, physical existence, not some ephemeral disembodied state, the stuff of gnosticism and other new age religions. As St. Peter proclaimed in our NT lesson, the disciples ate, drank, and spoke with the Risen Lord. You don’t do that with a disembodied spirit. And as St. Paul proclaimed in our epistle lesson, Death is not finally destroyed until Christ returns to finish his saving work and the dead are raised. Our loved ones who have died in the faith of Christ are safely in Christ’s care and protection in heaven (Phil 1.21-23), but they are still dead and remain so until the time Christ gives them their new bodies patterned after his own. Resurrection is emphatically not about dying and going to heaven. It is about new bodily existence where we have bodies that are fitted to live in God’s new heavens and earth, a world that will surely be inexpressibly beautiful because God our Father is inexpressibly beautiful, a world where sickness and sighing and alienation and fear and anger and sorrow and madness and incompleteness are no more. More importantly, whatever that world looks like it will be a world where Death is abolished forever and we will never be separated from our loved ones who have died in the peace and love of Christ, no matter how hard their mortal death might have been. Best of all, we will never be separated from God our Father again the way we are now. As our first human ancestors enjoyed intimate fellowship with God in a way none of us can ever experience because of the Fall as we saw last night, so God promises to live directly with us in all his glory and we will be allowed to live in his direct Presence, all because of Christ’s saving Death on the Cross. It is the prize above all prizes, a prize that makes the prizes we strive for pale in comparison; it is worthy of our best striving, labor, and efforts to follow Christ and his Way. Nothing else will do because nothing else ends in life. This promised new world is made possible only by the love and power of God. None can attain it on their own, only by the mercy and grace of God manifested through Christ. When we keep our eyes on this prize, we are truly looking for the living among the living because we are looking at the only Power who can give us eternal life, Jesus Christ, our Crucified, Risen, and Ascended Lord. Resurrection is not a concept, my beloved, it is a person, and his Name is Jesus Christ, the only Son God. Without him we have no hope for real life, either in this world or the next, and all our other efforts to find life and meaning and purpose are utterly futile. When we seek the living among the living, i.e., when we seek to give our lives and ourselves totally to Christ and live as he calls us to live, we must keep our eyes on this prize of Resurrection and new creation. I cannot speak for you, but whenever I have taken my eyes off this prize, my search for the living invariably results in me looking for the living among the dead instead of the living. Listen if you have ears to hear. Continue reading →
Everyone who is devout and a lover of God, let them enjoy this beautiful and radiant Feast of Feasts! If anyone is a wise servant, rejoice and enter into the joy of the LordIf anyone has been wearied in fasting, … Continue reading →
What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised … Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Good Friday, April 15, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Father Sang gets all whiny when we ask for a written manuscript. Nobody’s got time for a whiny priest, especially on Good Friday, so click … Continue reading →
Through His death and His resurrection, Jesus put death to death. In our epistle lesson, Paul reminds of what took place after the foot washing. As Jesus & His disciples celebrated the Passover, He gave new significance to the elements of the meal, instituting the Lord’s Supper. Jesus said the bread was His body and the wine was “the new covenant in [His] blood” (1 Corinthians 11:24-25). Like the foot washing, the Last Supper pointed to Jesus’ impending death on the cross, that his body would be broke and His blood would be shed. Continue reading →
Everything has changed because of Christ crucified and raised from the dead. That’s why we call it the Good News of Jesus Christ! We are no longer dead people walking, but rather Christ’s own forever, sealed with his precious blood and confirmed every time we come to the Table to feed on his body and blood. No, if you really love your Lord and have even an inkling as to what great love has effected your salvation and changed the course of history forever, how can you possibly stay away from our Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil services? You will rob Easter Sunday of its great power and joy if you fail to participate in these saving events. And on an even more somber note, if you are unwilling to give Christ your all as you are able, especially this week, you are likely living a lie and a delusion regarding your relationship with Christ and you probably need to take it up with him in prayer. So let none of us be too hasty to celebrate the Pascha next Sunday without first pondering and agonizing and reflecting on the great and astonishing love of God that flows from God’s very heart, a heart that was pierced by a Roman soldier’s spear, a heart through which a saving love was poured out for you and your salvation. To be sure, this isn’t a pretty or fun thing to do or contemplate. But if you commit yourself to walking with Christ this Holy Week it will change you in ways you cannot imagine or envision, and for the good. It will help you recognize God’s visitation to you in Christ and it will change you because it is the Good News of our salvation. Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Lent 5C, Sunday, April 3, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Passiontide begins today. If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, click here. Lectionary texts: Isaiah 43.16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3.4b-14; … Continue reading →
But how do we make [the parable of the prodigal son] our own? But how do we make this parable our own? We aren’t part of ancient Israel looking for God to return to end our exile that this parable addresses in part. Or are we? Is there anyone here today, if you are old enough, who does not long for God to rescue us and those we love from our exile to Sin and Death? St. Paul in our epistle lesson has answers for us. We can make Christ’s parable about the prodigal son our own precisely because of what Christ has done for us in his Death and Resurrection. We have the hope of being rescued from Sin and Death because of Christ’s death on the cross, a Death that atoned for our sins, freed us from our slavery to the power of Sin, and restored us to a right relationship with God starting right now and lasting for all eternity. As we have seen before there is a great mystery in all this because all of us still sin in this mortal life, despite the NT’s claim that Sin’s power has been broken in us. Neither are we told how this all works, presumably because such knowledge is well above our pay grade and our salvation isn’t contingent on us having that knowledge. The NT simply insists that it is true and calls us to have faith to believe it despite its mystery and ambiguity and our unanswered questions. Like the ancient Israelites on the verge of entering the promised land, St. Paul calls us to look back to Christ’s Death so that we are able to look forward to the promise of Resurrection and new creation that Christ’s Resurrection signals. Continue reading →
The offer the prophet announces is not for physical food, but for something more vital: that which nourishes the soul. Spiritual sustenance was also something God’s people lacked. At the beginning of v. 2, the prophet asks, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” The reason God’s people faced famines, plagues, attacks from their enemies, and exile from their land is because they had turned away from the God who had called them to be His people, brought them out slavery, and led them to the fruitful and abundant land they could call their home. Instead of worshipping God alone and following His commands, God’s people worshipped false gods, practiced sexual immorality, and oppressed the poor and helpless, taking advantage of the most vulnerable people in society to benefit themselves. They turned to sin and selfish ambition thinking they would bring happiness and contentment, but they would ultimately fail to deliver. We could say that God’s people had exchanged the lavish banquet God offered for a plate of gruel. Elsewhere, God puts it this way: “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water” (Jer. 2:13). Continue reading →
Lent is a season that helps us recall what life is really all about. It helps us focus on God’s beauty and love and power and forgiveness, reminding us the true joy involved in being reconciled to God so that we can truly be God’s image-bearing creatures. It points us to our deepest longings and desires as humans and God’s image-bearers, to be loved and to love, to pursue mercy and goodness and beauty and truth. Lent exposes the shallowness and falsehood of our disordered longings and desires to be selfish and ruthless and cruel, with all the accompanying fear and anxiety. It reminds us our lust for power, sex, money, security, status, and hedonistic pleasure is all a sham and will eventually lead to our eternal destruction as St. Paul warns us in our epistle lesson. None of these things can give life or provide real security because Death is universal and makes these disordered desires a sham and delusion. Lent reminds us what is real and what has real worth. It gives us the opportunity to examine ourselves in the light of God’s judgment and mercy and to develop the holy habits that will help us to remember the power and love of God through prayer, repentance, self-reflection, worship, Bible reading and study, and regular participation in the Holy Eucharist where we feed on the Bread of Life, the very bread that gives us life forever, Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead. Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Lent 1C, Sunday, March 6, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Father Wylie gets all whiny when we ask for a written manuscript. Nobody’s got time for a whiny priest, especially during Lent, so click … Continue reading →
If we ever hope to be reconciled to God our Father so that we can live with him forever in the new creation, we must first acknowledge our utter helplessness to fix ourselves so that we are no longer alienated from God. This means that we must first have the wisdom and humility (gifts of God’s grace) to acknowledge the fact that we are all slaves to the power of Sin. Too often we speak of our sins and think of them as misdeeds or acts of wrongdoing, the root cause of our alienation to God. This diminishes the problem of Sin to an absurdly reductionist level. This thinking implies that we can get right with God by simply adjusting our behavior or changing our thinking on certain things or making better choices—the current darling of excuses for our feel-good culture. This is a fatal mistake on our part, however, because it implies that we can fix ourselves and our problems, that if we repent of our bad choices or thinking or behavior, our sin problem with God goes away. But the whole of Scripture makes very clear that there is something vastly more sinister going on. There is something desperately wrong in the world and our lives—the problem of Sin— and we know it in our bones, despite our best efforts to deny it. But left to our own devices, we don’t have the ability to defeat the power of Sin in our lives and we delude ourselves if we think otherwise. Don’t believe me? How about those sins you confess? I bet you never do them again after you confess them, do you? Or how about your resolution to do better in some areas of your life? How is that working out for you? If we are honest with ourselves, try as we may, we must acknowledge that our efforts matter very little when it comes to turning away from our sins. Why? Because we are up against a power that is far greater than us, a power that seeks our destruction and undoing as God’s image-bearers, a power that will ultimately lead to our permanent death. The sins that we focus on are not the root cause of our alienation from God. Rather, just as a fever is a symptom of a larger problem, not the problem itself, our sins reflect our slavery to the power of Sin, again defined as an outside and malevolent force that has enslaved us. We acknowledged this very starkly in our Commination Service this noon when we acknowledged that without the cross of Jesus Christ and his presence in our lives, we are condemned to utter and complete destruction forever. This should both humble us and scare the hell out of us—literally. Until we get our thinking straight on this, we will surely have and live out a half-hearted faith (at best) because we live under the delusion that we can fix ourselves so that we are pleasing to God and set ourselves up for a self-righteousness complex. When we think like this, we inevitably dismiss the cross of Jesus Christ and the life-saving gift God the Father offers us all in and through his Son. But when we understand that Sin is a power we cannot overcome on our own and there is nothing we can do or say that will change our status before God, we are ready to hear the Good News of Jesus Christ, crucified and raised from the dead. Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Transfiguration Sunday C, February 27, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Father Sang gets all whiny when we ask for a written manuscript—mainly because he doesn’t have one—but we digress. Nobody’s got time for a … Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Sunday, February 20, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. There is no written manuscript for today’s sermon. Listen to the audio podcast here. Lectionary texts: Nehemiah 2.17-20; Psalm 8; Ephesians 3.14-21; St. Matthew 16.13-19.
This is a vision [about resurrection and new creation] that is compelling and worthy of all our striving. It proclaims a new world reclaimed by God, a world in which we get to live directly in God’s presence forever, a world therefore devoid of suffering, sorrow, sickness, and death, a world in which we are finally and perfectly healed forever, a world where we can finally be free to be God’s image-bearers who go about their business of tending to God’s new world with God’s blessing. It is a world where we will be reunited with our loved ones who have died in Christ, never to be separated again. And after our bodies are raised, death will be abolished forever as St. Paul tells us in today’s lesson. Death cannot be abolished until then, even for Christians, because death involves our bodies and souls, and until we receive our new bodies, death still reigns. While our loved ones who died in Christ are safely in his care as they await their new resurrection or spiritual bodies, they are still dead because they do not yet enjoy new bodily existence where their souls are reunited to their bodies. So we can remember them and miss them and find comfort that they are safe in Christ, but we can’t touch them or see them or hear them or feel them or smell them like we did when they were alive in their mortal bodies. The resurrection promises that this will all change one day when we and they are given new bodies. Whatever that looks like it is worthy of our highest calling and striving because it is a vision that exalts both God and humans, a vision beyond our wildest longings and desires and hopes. If what I have described does not stir you to want to give your ultimate allegiance to Christ, the One who makes it all possible because only Christ is the Resurrection and the Life, blame my inability to cast the vision for all it’s worth, not the vision itself with its incomprehensible richness and beauty that point to the power and fathomless love of God the Father for us as his human image-bearers. When it comes in full, whatever it looks like, God’s new creation will fully honor human beings and consummate our life-giving relationship with God the Father, our Creator. Continue reading →
Up to this point we have only been talking about bad news and if you are feeling depressed by what we have said that is understandable. The human condition is a depressing situation without the help and mercy of God. We need to look no further than the madness and lunacy that swirls around us and within us in our increasingly unhinged and godless society. But it is to the glory of God that the bad news will not have the final say. The dark powers that have enslaved us to the power of Sin—an impenetrable mystery itself—have already been defeated on Calvary. That is why we call it Good Friday, not Bad Friday! We will never be ready to hear the Good News of Jesus Christ if we do not understand and accept the bad news of the human condition left unaided, hard as that is to hear. It is a terrible thing to live in a cursed world and the gospel is our only real hope and solution for our predicament. The gospel is not a good idea or a good theory. It’s Good News because something happened that changed the world in which we live and if you do not believe that, you have no gospel at all and are much to be pitied. When St. Paul talks about Christ dying for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, he probably has more in mind than just Isaiah 53 and a handful of other OT proof-texts. He is talking about the strange power of God (to us ) at work to free his originally good creation from the corrupting and death-dealing powers of Evil and Sin. Of course consistent with his creative purposes, God chose to do this primarily through human agency, first in his call to Israel and then through Christ, the one faithful Israelite. God did and does this for us because God loves us. That is the essence of the meaning of Christ dying for sin. Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on the Feast of Candlemas (transferred), Sunday, January 30, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Father Wylie gets all whiny in a PhD kinda way when we ask for a written manuscript. Nobody’s got time for … Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Epiphany 3C, Sunday, January 23, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Father Sang gets all whiny when we ask for a written manuscript. Nobody’s got time for a whiny priest, especially in the new year, … Continue reading →
The foretaste of the Messianic banquet that will be ongoing in God’s new creation reminds us to keep our eyes on Jesus the prize because the ordinary things of this life will be transformed when he returns and made more beautiful and abundant than we can ever imagine, just like the new wine Jesus made. Think about the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen—husbands, this is a good time to turn to your wife and tell her she is that most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, it’s a good old-creation, anti-doghouse practice—and then try to imagine things more beautiful and abundant than that, i.e., try to imagine the unimaginable. This will give you a clue as to what awaits us in God’s new heavens and earth. I don’t know all that that entails, but I do know that our resurrected bodies will be inexpressively beautiful and without defect or sickness or any kind of malady. We will drink the finest wines without becoming intoxicated and we won’t desire to become intoxicated because we will be enjoying unbroken communion and fellowship with God the Father and the Lamb. There won’t be an addictive or lonely bone in our new body. The intimacy we enjoy only partly now, we will enjoy in full then. We won’t worry about being unloved or abandoned by God or others because we will be living in the light of God’s presence and the Lamb’s forever! Continue reading →
Remembering your baptism points you away from yourself and what you have done and points you to Jesus, and what He has done for you. As one theologian explains, “In times of doubt, fear, and even despair, those who worry about God’s love for them, and those who question their salvation or their participation in Christ, should not look inward where they will probably find even more reasons to doubt their salvation. Rather, they must look outside themselves . . . Christians in need of assurance should understand that their salvation is an objective fact, sealed in an event in space and time, as tangible as water . . . Instead of building our hope on the shifting sands of our own works or inner lives, we can have confidence that what Christ did for us is a fact” (Gene Veith, Jr., The Spirituality of the Cross, 59, 43-44). Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on the Feast of the Epiphany (transferred), Sunday, January 2, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Father Sang gets all whiny when we ask for a written manuscript. Nobody’s got time for a whiny priest, especially … Continue reading →
Whether the first sermon preached, it is the first extant Christmas sermon we have. Preached in Antioch in 386 AD, the year St. Augustine of Hippo converted to Christianity, and recited to St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH on Christmas … Continue reading →
We celebrate Christmas on the heels of Advent because Christmas announces definitively what the prophets proclaimed long ago: That God would come into the world to rescue all creation from the Curse, and us from his terrible but just judgment on our sins, that although we all must endure death and stand before the judgment seat of Christ because of our sins, eternal separation from God the Father, i.e. Hell, is no longer our destination because we are covered by the Blood of the Lamb shed for us. Christmas announces in no uncertain terms what Isaiah and the writer of Hebrews proclaim in our OT and epistle lessons tonight: God’s salvation has begun in the birth of our Savior. This is God’s light and power shining in the darkness of our lives, not human power that inevitably must fail. This is God coming to rescue us from Death, Judgment, and Hell so that we can live with him forever in heaven, the promised new creation. Christmas announces that creation matters to God our Creator, that humans are supremely important to God because God became human to rescue us from all that seeks to destroy us. Christmas begins to reveal in ways the OT prophets could not the character and heart of God the Father because God chose to reveal himself to us in ways our puny and fallible minds could finally understand so that we could begin to obey him and love him in ways we simply couldn’t before Christ was born. This too is the light shining in the darkness as St. John announces in his gospel, and try as the dark powers will to snuff out Christ’s light, they will fail utterly because nothing is more powerful than the power of God. Continue reading →
Brothers and sisters, the Advent of Christ has changed everything. Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again! And when He does, we need not fear a fiery judgment, for Christ has taken captive death and Hell. In Him, our hope for eternal life is secure. We can boldly proclaim with St. Paul, “I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39). Continue reading →
Heaven is a gift that is freely bestowed upon those who are trusting Jesus Christ to save them. If you are trusting, then Jesus is preparing a place for you. My Beloved, for those in Christ, a new and beautiful day will dawn, when we close our eyes in death. Those who know Christ as their Savior and Lord can have assurance. Assurance that He is preparing a place for you. Continue reading →
I urge us all not to be faint of heart or people who have no hope, but rather to focus this Advent on the return of Christ with its great hope and promise that God will restore all things to at least their original goodness and in judging the world will put all things to rights, i.e., long for God’s judgment with its perfect justice. Let each of us do this with great humility, realizing that none will escape the judgment of Christ and all are worthy of eternal separation from him—the very definition of Hell—except by the mercy and grace of God. Let this holy fear lead us not to despair over our own sins because we know our sins have been dealt with once and for all, but rather let this holy fear strengthen our resolve to lead lives that are worthy of the Name we love and honor: Jesus Christ, the only Son of God. He is our merciful Savior and just Judge, and he calls us to follow him each day, imitating his love and goodness and mercy and justice in all we encounter. Let us therefore be people known for proclaiming and living out the hope and promise of God’s judgment with its promise of God’s perfect justice. Advent is a time of darkness, symbolic of the darkness of this sin-stained world. But fear not! The light has come into the world and by it we are promised a spectacular future and purposeful present. Therefore let us all keep our lamps burning brightly for Christ, lamps powered by the very love of God, as we await our just and merciful Savior’s return to finish his saving work and bring about the promised new heavens and earth. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever. Continue reading →
What is truth? God’s great love for sinners like you and me, a love so great that God was willing to become human and shed his blood to rescue us from our slavery to Sin and to conquer Evil by the self-giving power of love. And in so conquering Sin, Death, and Evil, God has pronounced judgment on it all and those who commit and perpetrate it. Evildoers may seem to win the day, but their victory is pyrrhic and short-lived. Their day of destruction and judgment is coming and what a terrible day that will be. That is the truth. If you believe it, you will treat it like the eternal treasure it is and live accordingly. Continue reading →
And so I ask you this this morning, my beloved. Is Christ your bedrock foundation on which you stand? Do you see him and the promise of salvation in and through him as your only real hope to navigate through these tumultuous times? If Christ is your bedrock foundation, you already know that what I am about to say is true. If he is not, then why isn’t he? After all, you profess him as Lord! Part of the answer is that the Church over the last 100 years or so has lost her bold voice in living and proclaiming Jesus Christ and him crucified and raised from the dead. I don’t have time to explore why that happened other than to say that parts of Christ's Church have stopped believing her own story! Perhaps it is too fantastic for our “sophisticated” thinking. Whatever the reason, when we take the truth and reality of Christ’s resurrection out of the picture and stop teaching and proclaiming it, no one should be surprised that many Christians in the West refuse to stake their very lives on its reality. Simply put, the Church has lost her cred. Why should we expect outsiders to believe our story when many of us don’t even believe it, let alone stake our lives and future on it? Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on 3 before Advent B, Sunday, November 7, 2021 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Bishop Dobbs gets all grumpy when we ask for a written manuscript. Nobody’s got time for a grumpy bishop so click here … Continue reading →
This OT promise finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ and his story contained in the NT. If the evil one has ever tried to deceive you about how God feels about death, look no further than our gospel lesson this morning to find the antidote. We see the Son of God, God become human, snorting in anger—the Greek word for the English phrase “greatly disturbed” literally means to snort in anger—at the tomb of his dead friend Lazarus as the emotions of the crowd and those he loves, as well as his own human emotions, are aroused by the wicked reality of his friend’s death. Sure, Jesus knew he was going to revive Lazarus, a preview of coming attractions when he raises the dead at his second coming, not to mention his own resurrection, but this did not stop our Lord from being offended by death. So if you ever think that God takes any pleasure in our death, look no further than our Lord standing at Lazarus’ tomb and snorting in anger over this obscene evil. That’s the kind of God we love and worship, and thankfully God has the power to do something about it. The Son of God resuscitated his friend and then went on to die a godforsaken and terrible death to spare us from God’s just judgment on our sins and free us from our slavery to Sin. In bearing the weight of our sins and taking on the full brunt of God’s terrible judgment on all our sin and evil, our Lord Jesus made it possible for us to stand again in God’s direct presence because we no longer wear our filthy, sin-stained rags that got us thrown out of paradise in the first place. Yes, of course we all still sin in our mortal life. But the NT is adamant in its insistence that on the cross, God the Father has taken care of the vexing problem of human sin and the separation it causes us, and in doing so, has broken the dark Powers’ stranglehold on us forever. And in raising Jesus from the dead, God has broken the power of Death forever. As St. Paul tells us in Romans 6.3-8, those who are baptized in Christ share in his death and resurrection. Where he is, so we will be with him. We didn’t earn this and we sure don’t deserve it, but it’s ours anyway because life and death always have been about the power of God, not our own muddled ways and thinking. Continue reading →
The story contained in the Bible as a five-act play is a story of creation, goodness, order, sin, and redemption. It is ultimately the story of how God’s power plays itself out in his creation and our lives and how we are to cooperate with our Lord’s power made known supremely in Jesus Christ, God become human. The arc of the story points us to new creation, not a disembodied eternity in heaven. Creation matters to God. We matter to God, and God has gone to great lengths to show us this. In the story of Scripture we find our future and our hope: healing, life forever with God in perfect communion with him, forgiveness, mercy, justice, beauty, truth, and righteousness. Best of all, God calls each of us to play our role in his world starting imperfectly right now and being transformed into utter perfection on the blessed day of our Lord’s return. Continue reading →
Is your God big enough, awesome enough, just enough, and merciful enough for you to love and give your ultimate allegiance to or is the god you worship one of your own making? In the former, you will find strength and purpose and hope sufficient for all contingencies and with them sweet peace, the peace of Christ who loves you and who died for you so that you could be with him in God’s new world forever. In the latter you will find nothing by incompleteness, disorder, madness, and ultimately death because that is the way of all false gods. Chose the real thing, my beloved, the God and Father made known to us supremely in Jesus Christ mediated by the Holy Spirit and contained in God’s holy Word, the very gift of God himself. Give your life to Christ and choose real freedom, hope, and life, despite the changes and chances of life. That God is big enough for all our problems and fears. Continue reading →
God’s ultimate answer to Job—and to all those who suffer—comes not from “the whirlwind” of Job 38, but from a manger in Bethlehem. The fact that God Himself takes on human flesh illustrates that God not only sees us in our suffering, but He understands it, and He cares for us. God does not remain distant or far-removed from human suffering, but instead, He makes Himself vulnerable and chooses to enter into it. This is the beauty of the Incarnation: “God, who cannot get sick, who cannot grow hungry, who cannot bleed, who cannot die—this God comes near” to us in Christ (Kelly Kapic, Embodied Hope, 89). Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Trinity 18B, Sunday, October 3, 2021 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Father Sang gets all whiny when we ask for a written manuscript. Nobody’s got time for a whiny priest so click here to listen … Continue reading →
Let us start by acknowledging the terrifying truth that God is no doting old grandpa, willing to look the other way with a wink and a snicker at our sins. To the contrary, it is not too strong a statement to say that God hates evil and sin in all its variety. Why? Not because God is some angry bully waiting to come down hard on wrongdoers. If that were the case, why would God have made us in his image? Why are we still even here? It’s not because of our own virtue and righteousness! No, God hates evil and sin of any kind because sin corrupts us and dehumanizes us, i.e., it slowly erases God’s image in us so that we can no longer be his stewards called to run God’s world as God created us to do. And this should make sense to us because we all know how evil can evoke anger. Continue reading →
Sanctification takes place when we avail ourselves of the means of grace that God has given us, when we do the kinds of things we do when we gather for worship. We must humbly confess that “following the devices and desires of our own hearts” leads us down the wrong path and ask God to guide us in His ways instead. As our Psalm instructs us, we learn the “way of the righteous” from God’s Word as we meditate on it. God’s Word reveals God’s ways. But not only does God’s Word give us commands and principles to guide the way that we live, it also tells the gospel message—the story of how God is redeeming us—and the whole world—through the death and resurrection of His Son. As we read the gospel message—and as we see it reenacted as we celebrate the Eucharist—God’s Spirit is at work, shaping and molding us into the kind of people that God calls us to be. Confession, Holy Communion, regular reading and study of Scripture—these are just a few of the ways that we can “draw near to God” as our epistle reading admonishes us (4:7), but when we do, we can be assured that he will “draw near to [us]” and cultivate in us the gift of wisdom from above. Continue reading →
The wise know Christ for who he is—the embodiment of the Living God—and believe his promise that we are freed from our sins by his blood and by the sending of the Holy Spirit, and that one day we too will have eternal life in a new embodied existence, all because of the Father’s great love, mercy, and grace. Fools reject this and live their lives accordingly. It’s no small thing to have to deny ourselves, our base and disordered desires in us, and be willing to learn how to live in the manner of Christ. It takes a lifetime and none of us do it perfectly. In fact, most of us do it rather imperfectly most of the time. But Christ is the only way for us to ever enjoy eternal life in the manner the NT promises it. Are you wise in this matter or a fool? Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Trinity 14B, Sunday, September 5, 2021 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Father Sang does not do written manuscripts anymore because he is too big a shot. Nobody’s got time for that so click here to … Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Trinity 13B, Sunday, August 29, 2021 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Father Wylie is a new daddy and gets all whiny when we ask for a written manuscript. Nobody’s got time for a whiny priest … Continue reading →
The point, as St. John tells us in his vision of the new heavens and earth, is that we become living stones by God’s power, not our own. On our own we will fail. And even with God’s power we will sometimes fail and miss the mark. We are that badly broken and alienated from God. But God’s love and power and mercy are greater than our brokenness and weaknesses. Nothing is too hard for God, my beloved! After all, he created this universe out of nothing and has the power to raise the dead. Do you think he will renege on his promise to give us life through his Son? No he will not!! God the Father has raised Christ from the dead to proclaim the inauguration of his new world, a world we get a glimpse of in our NT lesson today. God loves us and is grieved by our slavery to Sin and the rebellion and alienation it has produced. And God loves his good creation and will not let it be permanently destroyed. The same power that spoke worlds into existence and raised Christ from the dead is available to us right now if we stop being afraid and fully embrace our resurrection hope. It is the power to be living stones full of God’s boldness, grace, mercy, love, goodness, righteousness, and justice with the power to embody those qualities and more to each other and to God’s world for the love and sake of his Son who has rescued us from Sin and Death. Continue reading →
When we partake of the Eucharist, Jesus feeds us with his body and blood. We enter into communion with him and with one another. Unlike other food, which becomes part of us, Jesus in the sacrament of Holy Communion, the sacred bread and wine makes us more like him. Therefore we, too, are to be bread for the world to many who are searching for the bread of life in the Lord Jesus. The living bread sustains us and prepares us for that day when we will come to the heavenly banquet. It is a pledge of future glory. It is the means by which Christ fulfills his promise, “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). When we eat the Bread of Life Jesus lives in us and we live in the Lord. God provides us with food, through Jesus, for our journey through this life. Continue reading →
To drive his point home, Christ repeated multiple times that he is the bread of life who will raise to life those whom the Father gives him on the last day, yet the crowd hears but doesn’t understand or believe. Think about it. Christ is God become human speaking to his image-bearing creatures, the very people God the Father had called out to bring God’s healing love and reconciliation to bear on his sin-sick and evil-infested world. If there ever was anyone who could be classified as a master teacher who knew how to reach his pupils, surely Christ would be that person. But inexplicably the people do not have ears to hear, eyes to see, or minds to comprehend. Instead, after hearing the breathtaking promise of Christ to heal and reconcile them to God, and to raise them up on the last day to enjoy life fully as God created them to live it and desired for them (and us) to have, they complained about him rather than accepting the most precious gift they could ever receive! Remarkable. And if we are honest with ourselves, things haven’t changed much from Christ’s day to ours. Many of us still don’t want to accept Christ’s gift of eternal life by giving ourselves to him in faith and obedience. We, like them, are a profoundly broken and hopeless people because we are all slaves to the power of Sin, that alien and hostile power that has enslaved us and compels us to continue our ongoing rebellion and hostility toward God. There is no such thing as self-help and self-improvement. People do not come to know Christ through their own effort as Christ himself repeatedly reminds us in our gospel lesson. If this is true—and our own experience affirms the awful reality of the human condition—how can we ever hope to be the people St. Paul exhorts us to be in his epistle? How can we put away all the bitterness and rancor that plagues the human race? How can we control our anger and truly love God and neighbors when our hearts (wills) are naturally at war against them? How can we proclaim the love of Christ if no one will listen? How can we work consistently to build each other up and love each other here in our parish family with a love that encourages each other to conform to the Father’s created order rather than to cave to our own disordered desires? Answer? On our own it is impossible and if we try to be the people St. Paul calls us to be and do the things he calls us to do on our own power, we will be danger of falling into despair and/or becoming neurotic because self-help and self-improvement are a lie and a delusion. We only come to Christ by the grace and power of God. Period. Those who are enslaved to the power of Sin (that would be all of us) cannot simply be told to stop sinning. It won’t happen. We must be freed from our slavery to Sin. Those who cannot hear or see the Truth of the gospel cannot be helped by assigning blame to them or offering advice, no matter how good the advice is. They have to be healed, and only Christ has the power to heal us from our sin-sickness and free us from the steely grip of Sin’s enslavement. Putting on Christ, feeding on him through holy communion, regular Scripture reading and study, prayer, Christian fellowship, and service are ordinary ways we put on Christ, i.e., ways we submit to Christ and allow him to heal and transform us, all fueled by our faith in the efficacy of his healing and saving power, a faith that is itself a gift from our Father’s generous and loving heart. Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Trinity 9B, Sunday, August 1, 2021 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, usually somewhat different from the text below, click here. Lectionary texts: 2 Samuel … Continue reading →
So if you are struggling with your faith, do the things that will cultivate Christ’s power. I beseech you, my beloved. Give yourself completely to Christ if you have not done so already. Please. Don’t hold back. Don’t be afraid. He loves you and he will not ultimately fail you because he is the only one who remains faithful to the Father! Cultivate his presence and power. He is our only hope to rescue and heal us from our sin-sickness! Read Scripture regularly. Partake in the Holy Eucharist as St. John exhorts us to do in our gospel lesson (listen if you have ears). Enjoy sweet fellowship with God’s faithful people, remembering our Lord’s promise to his fearful disciples in the midst of a life-threatening storm. Don’t be afraid, it is me, and only I have the power to save you. I know your lives are no less stormy. Trust in my power, and if you begin to doubt that power, meditate on my death and resurrection because in these events are your only hope and future. Doing so will remind you of the surprising and sometimes unpredictable power of God. Now to him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever. Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Trinity 7B, Sunday, July 18, 2021 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Like Father Wylie, Father Sang gets all whiny when we ask for a written manuscript. Nobody’s got time for yet another whiny priest so … Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Trinity 6B, Sunday, July 11, 2021 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Father Wylie gets all whiny when we ask for a written manuscript. Nobody’s got time for a whiny priest so click here to listen … Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Trinity 5B, Sunday, July 4, 2021 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, usually somewhat different from the text below, click here. Lectionary texts: 2 Samuel … Continue reading →
So what is St. Mark trying to tell us in these gripping stories of faith, fear, and healing? We start with the woman. Here we see a person of great faith. She was convinced that if she could just touch Jesus’ clothing, she would be healed. Indeed, our Lord confirmed that her great faith had healed her once she did touch his clothes. So is St. Mark telling us that healing depends on faith? After all, we’ve all heard a version of this claim before. Doesn’t this scene prove that it’s true? Not so fast my jumping-to-wrong-conclusions friends! While Christ did tell the woman that her faith had healed her, it was clearly his power that had caused the healing. Notice the remarkable statement Jesus made before he told her that her faith had made her well. As soon as she touched him, Christ felt power go out from him and he said so. It was his healing power, aided but not dependent on the woman’s great faith, that had caused her to be healed. Furthermore, the woman’s faith wasn’t perfect. After all she approached Jesus from behind because she was afraid. But she was also desperate and her faith overcame her fear. Sound familiar? So let none of us hold the mistaken idea that we are healed (or not healed) based on the amount of faith we have. That’s bad theology, my beloved, because it puts the focus on us and our powerlessness, instead of the Lord and his power. Also in this poignant scene of healing, faith, and fear, St. Mark surely wants us to see that even with all of life’s pressures, even when it feels like we are about to drown in the sea of life with all of its brokenness, sickness, suffering, and sorrow, we can approach Jesus and he will make room for us because of his great love for us. Christ reflects his Father’s huge heart for his wayward children. Continue reading →
We have a God who walks with us, not only in the easy times, but also in the storms and the trials that we face in our lives. God is the one who can calm the storms for us, the one who can bring us the hope and the knowledge that we need to face any situation, however dire we may feel that the situation is. Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Trinity 2B, Sunday, June 13, 2021 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, usually somewhat different from the text below, click here. Lectionary texts: 1 … Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on the Feast of Corpus Christi (transferred), Sunday, June 6, 2021 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Father Jorden celebrates his 50th ordination anniversary with us today but gets all whiny when we ask for a written … Continue reading →
It is to brothers and sisters that Paul writes his letter to the Romans. These brothers and sisters are a mix of Jewish and Gentile Christians, most of whom he had never met. Brothers and sisters? That is no small statement, In Christ, with all the things in the world that might divide us, such divisions are insignificant next to that which connects us. Brothers and sisters, brought together by a promise, and now we share one name, belong to the same kingdom, and a new future together. Continue reading →
The Holy Spirit dwells inside those who believe in Jesus Christ! The Holy Spirit is present throughout our daily lives. The Holy Spirit is our comfort, our seal, our breath and our joy! Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on the Feast of the Ascension (transferred), Sunday, May 16, 2021 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Father Wylie, like Father Sang, gets all whiny when we ask for a written manuscript. Nobody’s got time for whiny … Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Easter 6B, Sunday, May 9, 2021 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Father Sang gets all whiny when we ask for a written manuscript. Nobody’s got time for that so click here to listen to the … Continue reading →
So you have died with Christ and are raised with him, even at your ripe young age! You have been delivered from the dark empire of slavery to the empire of freedom and life and light, the Father’s kingdom. Now what? Well, for starters it means you no longer need to be afraid as you grow older. You have peace with God, real peace, a peace that was terribly costly to God, and you also have life that cannot be taken from you. Sure your mortal body will die, and you’ll understand what that means when you grow older, but that’s nothing more than a transition until the Lord returns and raises you from the dead and gives you a new body to live in his new world. As a baptized Christian you have no reason to fear death because you know Christ is the Resurrection and the Life (John 11.25) and you know that where he is, there you will be with him by virtue of your baptism that signals his great love for you and his power to rescue you from Sin and Death! It means you will reject living your life in ways that tell God you don’t want anything to do with him. It means you will reject false realities and will be willing to speak out boldly against them. It means you will be willing to love even the most unloveable people (and unfortunately you will come to know your fair share of them), starting with yourself. It means you will be willing to speak out against injustices of all kinds. It means you will have compassion for people, realizing they are without a Good Shepherd who will love and heal them just like he is loving and healing you, and so you will be willing to share your baptismal faith with them. There’s more to this reality, but certainly not less. Continue reading →
What Ss. Peter and John were proclaiming, along with the early Church, is that only Jesus is God become human and only his saving death can break our slavery to Sin and restore us to our rightful place as God’s image-bearers. In other words, Christianity has a truth that other religions simply do not because only Jesus Christ is raised from the dead. Neither is God’s love closed to anyone. All are invited to put their faith in Jesus Christ and no one is shut out expect through their own stubborn refusal to see and believe the truth that is in Christ. Now of course the history of Christianity is littered with all kinds of folly that has accompanied our proclaimed faith in Christ and all kinds of wickedness that has sadly accompanied real Christian wisdom. But human wickedness and folly do not negate the truth of the claim itself! Jesus Christ is raised from the dead, proving he is who he claimed to be, not to mention the testimony of hundreds of millions of people over time and culture, our little parish being a blessed microcosm of that collective witness! Christ himself tells us this today in rather stark terms: you’ll never know me or that my claims are true if you don’t know the One who sent me, i.e., God. Why? Because the Father and I are one and that kind of deep intimate relationship characterizes the relationship my followers have with me. Confess me as your Lord and live like you believe it, and you will know that my claim to be the only way to the Father is true (John 14.6). Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Easter 3B, Sunday, April 18, 2021 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Father Wylie gets all whiny and pouty when he has to submit a written manuscript of his sermon (he’s a PhD dontcha know). We … Continue reading →
In community, the disciples found faith in the risen Christ. Thomas, for some reason, was not with them when the Lord came. Separated from the community, he found faith more difficult. Faith in the Lord, while personal, is not a private affair. In the faith of one, the faith of another may be strengthened. Formation in faith for the disciples had its communal experience - together they learned and found faith in the Lord. Continue reading →
So how can our Easter Faith assist us in the living of our days in this increasingly mad and bizarre world? Time limits me to two basic ideas to get you jump-started in our own thinking and reflections. First, Christ’s Resurrection invites us to look at our present world and evaluate it using different criteria. Instead of looking at the past and present to assess our future prospects, what if we use our future hope of new creation to assess our present world? When we assess our future prospects using the past and present, how can there really be any hope? The human condition hasn’t changed. Science and technology, while making our lives so much better and easier in some ways, has not changed who we are. Human rapacity, sin, selfishness, pride, greed, and lust for power (to name just a few) continue unabated and unchanged by any of our scientific advancements, the Star Trek myth notwithstanding. In fact, if anything, technology has exposed human wickedness in unprecedented ways. We have instant access to an unending stream of bad news and human madness and evil. Death still reigns. People still suffer. Old age and infirmity still come. We are still alienated to each other and the God-ordained institutions of marriage and family are crumbling before our eyes. Our nation becomes increasingly divided and there are very few voices of reason out there these days. Based on this, what is our realistic hope for the future? This is the old world order at its finest and worst, and with it comes darkness, despair, sickness, and death. Continue reading →
Everyone who is devout and a lover of God, let them enjoy this beautiful and radiant Feast of Feasts! If anyone is a wise servant, rejoice and enter into the joy of the LordIf anyone has been wearied in fasting, … Continue reading →
What about you? Are you struggling tonight with issues of failure and darkness? Are you allowing Satan to whisper in your ear that you are no good and beyond any hope for God to love someone like you? Do you suffer guilt or fear or despair or alienation because like the dying man or the people of Jerusalem you don’t believe that God could possibly love the likes of you? Do you desperately seek healing and reconciliation with the Source and Author of all life but are afraid that you will get wrath and judgment instead? If so, listen to the stories of Jesus’ crucifixion and really come to grips with it. Dare to believe the great love you see poured out for you. Dare to believe that like Barabbas, Jesus is taking your place on the cross. Dare to hear the gracious words of Isaiah and Hebrews in tonight’s lessons that by his wounds you are healed and that you do not have to live life alone and afraid because you have God’s very Spirit living in you and shaping you slowly into the human God created you to be. Dare to believe the truth of St. Paul’s statement that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus and understand there are no exceptions to the great truth. None. Then let the healing forgiveness that you see flow from Christ’s side on the cross flow down on you so that by the power of the Spirit you might know what real healing and forgiveness are all about, just the way the dying man did and countless others have. Don’t succumb to the lies of the Evil One or your own broken fears. Look on the cross of Calvary and realize the one who is dying there is none other than God himself and he is doing so because he desperately wants you to feel his healing love and forgiveness so that he can equip you to help him bring in his kingdom and promised new creation. A God like that will never abandon you or remain aloof from your problems and hurts. And when, by God’s grace, you finally know what’s good about Good Friday, you really will have Good News, now and for all eternity. I pray that God grant each of us the grace to accept without reservation the wondrous love he offers to the whole world on Calvary. Continue reading →
Sermon delivered on Maundy Thursday, April 1, 2021 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH. Father Wylie gets in a snit when he has to submit a written manuscript of his sermon. We don’t want that so click here to … Continue reading →
Because we belong to Christ we have hope for the future and strength to bear our present trials because we have this eternal hope. If God is for us, who or what can ever be against us? There is now no condemnation for us who put our hope and trust in Christ, believing that the Father and the Son accomplished what needed to be accomplished on our behalf to rescue us from our exile from God. In practical terms, this means we can bring our guilt and our shame to the foot of the cross and know we are forgiven and therefore it is possible for us to be healed of our sin sickness and self-loathing. We no longer have to fear God’s rejection of us or doubt that God loves us. We no longer have to listen to voices of condemnation, either from our enemies or from within ourselves. They are simply lies because Christ has suffered our condemnation and reconciled us to God. We don’t need to prove ourselves worthy because God has already declared us to be worthy despite our unworthiness. It means that despite the hurt we have caused, the evil we have been party to, and the damage we have done in our lives, we are forgiven and loved by God because of what Christ did for us. If this does not cause us to give our lives totally to Christ so that our thinking, doing, speaking, and values all flow from him and his teaching, it means either we have not come to grips with our new reality or we do not believe it. But we have no reason not to believe it because as our baptism testifies, we now share in Christ’s death so that we can share in his resurrection. We are no longer our own; we now belong to Christ. Our old filthy rags, what the NT refers to as our Old Man, our sinful, fallen self, are replaced by the white garments of Christ, the New Man. Satan’s power over us has been broken and we are no longer his slaves or slaves to Sin and Evil, and therefore our destiny is no longer Death. We are no longer utterly undone and without hope. No matter the state of our self-loathing or how much others may despise us for our faith, no matter how imperfect our faith is or how imperfectly we live it, when we give our lives to Christ in thanksgiving for his life-giving death for us, we become God’s beloved, plain and simple, and not even the powers of Hell can separate us from Christ’s love. This is the result of Christ’s Passion, my beloved, and why we must focus on the events of this coming Holy Week, reflecting on Christ’s great love for us and our response to that great love. Continue reading →
God took the initiative to offer his Son on the cross in order to do something we could never do: save ourselves. Jesus took the punishment we deserved and became the instrument of atonement for our guilt to the Father. We are forgiven because of his suffering and death. This is why, for Christians, the crucifix, in all its brutality, is the most powerful image of God’s love and concern for each of us. Continue reading →