SERMONS

"Bethany" Sermon by The Rev. Derrick Hill April 6, 2025 Everything, even the bad things in life, can be an outward and visible sign of God's grace. Working in our lives. That is our Bethany. For many of you, your Bethany is probably right here at All Saints Church. It may be somewhere else. We need to find our Bethany. Because unless we find our Bethany and we can connect and we can be vulnerable, and we can tap into who Christ has created us to be.

"No More Excuses" Sermon by The Rev. Katie Nakamura March 31, 2025 Communion is a sacrament, an outward and visible and tangible and tasteful sign of an inward and unseen grace, an outward and visible and traceable sign of an internal message of love and abundance and belonging. We are journeying together through the rest of this season of lent, I just offer you that question once more to chew on in your own life and your own work and your own faith. What is it that through God's abundance and love, you have no more excuse for? And for that love and for that belonging, and for that abundance of grace and life which takes away all our excuses.

"Fully Human" Sermon by The Rev. Cindy Carter March 16, 2025 During the first four centuries of the church, the nature and relationship of the divine and the human in Jesus were hotly contested. But about 450 years after Jesus, the Council of Chalcedon firmly expressed the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation, recognizing Jesus as “truly God and truly man…in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.” (If you haven’t read about the conclusions of the Council of Chalcedon recently you can check it out on page 864 of The Book of Common Prayer , but maybe wait until after the sermon.) The incarnation, the “enfleshment,” Jesus as fully human and fully divine, the Son of God in the flesh. And the Word became flesh and lived among us. (John 1:14). If one can have a favorite church doctrine, this is mine. I love the doctrine of the incarnation and hold it as one the dearest parts of our faith. BUT…even though I do love this doctrine and what it tries to capture, I’m not saying that my understanding of it is perfect and without any questions. Now I don’t know about you, but most of the time I feel pretty comfortable with the God Jesus, but much of the time I have a harder time with the human Jesus. Jesus was 100 percent God and 100 percent human. It is a miracle that is impossible for us to understand completely, of course; but I believe we do have to deal with both of those aspects of this human being who was the incarnate God, the enfleshed. Today’s reading from Luke’s Gospel is a place where I think we can see the human Jesus very clearly. The reading occurs in what is many times called Luke’s “journey narrative.” That narrative begins after the Transfiguration in Luke, Chapter 9, with the words “he (that is Jesus) set his face to go to Jerusalem” and ends with his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, described in Luke, Chapter 19. In Luke’s writing, it takes Jesus long time to get to Jerusalem, and a lot goes on as he is on the way. Today’s reading gives us two glimpses of Jesus’ humanity, Jesus’ human vulnerability. First some Pharisees come to Jesus and tell him that Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee on behalf of the Roman Empire, wants to kill him. This Roman puppet was someone Jesus and other Jews would have considered little more than a collaborator with the Roman occupiers, but a very dangerous puppet and collaborator. He was the man who had ordered the beheading of John the Baptizer. Now usually the Pharisees were not portrayed as friends of Jesus, and we aren’t sure whether these men described in the reading were genuine in their warning or simply trying to manipulate Jesus and distract him from what he was really trying to do. But whatever their motivation, Jesus surely knew that Herod was a dangerous man. We hear Jesus dismiss Herod’s threat of death, knowing that he still has work to do, so much work to do. Healing, teaching, forgiving, opposing evil. But, Jesus the one who was 100 percent man, would suffer pain and would die a physical death. Going to Jerusalem, going to face arrest by Roman soldiers in a garden, going to die a humiliating death on a Roman cross. And, I don’t think the fact that we 21 st century Christians know the end of the story, an empty tomb and resurrection, should cause us to minimize the pain of that physical death. I often wonder if church attendance is so much higher on Easter morning than it is on Good Friday is because of our inability or our unwillingness to see the human side of Jesus. Sure there are some tense and disturbing moments during Holy Week, but we know that it’s all going to be okay come Easter. No, Jesus was faced with the ultimate human vulnerability. The vulnerability of our human mortality, of death. A second glimpse of Jesus human side is shown in today’s reading as Jesus travelled Jesus. He wept, he lamented, he grieved for the city and its inhabitants that he had sought to gather to himself, like a mama hen gathering her chicks under her wings. It hurt. But the city and its inhabitants would reject him and would continue to reject him as hung on a cross, perhaps most soundly as he hung on a cross. The vulnerability of risking and then experiencing failures and disappointments, of loving and then having that love rejected, of working and working and yet not achieving all we might want. And this is what incarnation is all about. To give up the invulnerability of God for the vulnerability of being human. To take on every single human emotion and feeling – from joy to lament to pain to dying. To know every human situation from temptation to death. To live with an open heart, so open that unconditional, fierce, protective love – the courage to risk rejection - could be shared with everyone. And, to do it all for us. That kind of courage, that willingness to risk, and that kind of openness and authenticity is what Jesus calls us to - each of us and all of us together as the church. To be courageous when others seek to oppose us or to distract us from the work God has given us to do, to love even when rejection is possible, and to do it for others with open hearts and minds. To be fully human. In the words of storyteller, researcher, and Episcopalian Brene Brown – To become fully human means learning to turn my gratitude for being alive into some concrete common good. It means growing gentler toward human weakness. It means practicing forgiveness of my and everyone else's hourly failures to live up to divine standards. It means learning to forget myself on a regular basis in order to attend to the other selves in my vicinity. It means living so that "I'm only human" does not become an excuse for anything. It means receiving the human condition as blessing and not curse, in all its achingly frail and redemptive reality. Or in the more ancient voice of Irenaeus, a Bishop of the early church. The glory of God is a human person fully alive. During this Lenten season, let us travel with Jesus as he approaches Jerusalem, the cross, and death. Let us take some time to sit with the human Jesus, with a side of Jesus that we may not understand or with which we may not be comfortable. And, may we hear his call to be fully alive, fully human as he was fully human. AMEN.

"We Are Beloved Dust" Sermon by The Rev. Brad Landry March 9, 2025 In the creation stories of Genesis, we learn that we are not worthless dirt. We learn that we are beloved dust. This sacred worth is our birthright as we are created in the image and likeness of God. And we, like Jesus, are marked as beloved. So more than a moral checklist or keeping the letter of the law this Lent, we have the Grace to live into our identity as beloved children of God.

"We Are All Part of One Body" Sermon by Breanna Carter February 9, 2025 As we leave these doors, you are called to be His disciple. A disciple, someone who follows Christ, is transformed by Him and is proclaiming his work to the world around us. We prove that we are disciples in how we love God, and then how we love his people. It's in how we love our families, and then how we love our friends, how we love our enemies and those who've wronged us. If and how we love those we don't agree with and those that we do, it's in how we live. Those who look like us and those who don't. You are called to be his disciple.

"God is Present in the Valleys" Sermon by The Rev. Ranie Neislar March 2, 2025 It is those valleys which fortify us in our faith. And that is what I hope we can all walk into as we experience lent. God is equally present in the valleys, and the more that we discern God's presence at these lower points of our lives, just like the followers are discerning these hard moments and their new season as they follow Jesus down off the mountain and to the cross, we are also called to do that, and in that we will persevere in our lives as disciples.

"Walk Lightly in the Light of Love" Sermon by The Rev. Brad Landry February 23, 2025 Both in the church and out in the world, so many times we are being forced to one side of the issue or another, becoming suspicious of those who believe differently than us, who look different than us, who were brought up differently than us. But you and I are called not to a culture war, but to a kingdom of God, where there is always a stranger to welcome, always a neighbor to befriend, and always an enemy to love. Let go of the burdens of fear, maybe you are trying too hard. Lightly, child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes. Feel lightly even though you're feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. Walk lightly in love, to ask God to help you, to forgive, to ask God to help you, to love. To walk lightly in the light of love.

"Blessed" Sermon by The Rev. Cindy Carter February 16, 2025  I don’t know about you, but as a priest with many seminary classmates and other preachers on my social media I tend to see a lot of religious memes. I have to admit that I do enjoy these, and there are some that make me smile or even chuckle every time they come up (and as you know most memes do tend to come up over and over again on social media). One of my favorites of these religious memes came to mind more than once as I was working on this sermon. I’m guessing many of you have probably seen it. It shows Jesus, sitting in his best first century rabbi pose, teaching his followers and saying, “Now listen up, I don’t want four different versions of this going around.” (As a preaching nerd, I find that meme hilarious. It makes me laugh every time I see it.) Of course, it came to mind because our Gospel reading for today, is a portion of what is usually called the “Sermon on the Plain,” and it resembles the familiar Beatitudes which we read in Matthew’s more famous “Sermon on the Mount.” But, there are differences. Both Luke and Matthew seem to have exercised considerable freedom in compiling their collections of Jesus’ teachings to meet their own literary and theological purposes. Neither can be shown to be a verbatim record of an actual preaching or teaching event in Jesus’ ministry. You see each of the Gospels presents the story of Jesus in a different way, and much of their richness is lost if we try to make them fit together in one consistent account. The Gospels all proclaim the Good News of God’s salvation in and through Jesus of Nazareth. But, they are concerned less with the biographical details of Jesus’ life than they are with what that life means for us and for the world. For example, the Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel (where we find the Sermon on the Mount) is a new Moses who fulfills the scripture and establishes the authority of his words. Perhaps that is why Matthew placed Jesus on a Mountain when he delivered his Sermon on the Mount – an allusion to Moses receiving God’s word on a mountain, something those who heard Matthew’s Gospel would have easily recognized. The Jesus of Luke’s Gospel is compassionate, a friend to outcasts. Jesus is the savior who came to seek and save the lost. Just before Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Plain, he prayed on a mountain before calling his inner circle, his apostles. And, then he came “down… and stood in a level place” to be near all those who had come to hear him and to be healed. (Pause) As we read the series of blessings and woes in today’s reading we hear echoes of other readings we have heard recently from Luke’s Gospel. We hear echoes of Mary’s Song, the Magnificat, from Luke, Chapter 1, that we heard in the season of Advent. He has shown the strength of his arm, he has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. And, we hear echoes of the scripture from the prophet Isaiah on which Jesus based his sermon in Nazareth, a reading we heard a few weeks ago from Luke, Chapter 4. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Blessed are you who are poor…who are hungry now…who weep now. Woe to you who are rich…who are full now…who are laughing now. It’s a sermon about who’s in and who’s out in God’s kingdom. And, frankly, it’s a little bit, maybe more than a little bit, unsettling. A few words about this unsettling picture. First, the blessing of the poor, the hungry, and consequently those who weep is not intended to idealize or glorify poverty. Rather, this blessing declares, what a commentator has called, God’s “prejudicial commitment to the poor.” One theologian has written - “God has a preferential love for the poor not because they are necessarily better than others, morally or religiously, but simply because they are poor and living in an inhuman situation that is contrary to God’s will. The ultimate basis for the privileged position of the poor is not the poor themselves but in God, in the gratuitous and universality of God’s…love.” Jesus was the human expression of how God loves; and in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is a compassionate friend to outcasts. And, that kind of love is scandalous, shocking, outrageous. Especially to those of us who are not poor or hungry. Rachel Held Evans, in her book Searching for Sunday , wrote “what makes the gospel offensive isn't who it keeps out but who it lets in.” The poor, the hungry, the weeping, the oppressed. Now, what Jesus was preaching here is what we call “eschatological.” It’s about how everything will be when God makes it all right. The coming of the kingdom will turn everything upside down and inside out. Every one of the conventional expectations that this world holds will be shattered when God’s kingdom comes in its fulness. Here and now the rich, the full, the laughing are on top; the poor, the hungry, the weeping are on the bottom. Not so in God’s kingdom. Now, I don’t know about you, but if that’s where we could end things with Jesus’ sermon this morning, well, God’s prejudicial commitment to the poor might sound just fine to me. Because I could know that God’s going to take care of it. Everything is going to be fine. But, you see, in this “sermon on the plain,” Jesus told us what God is like, who God is, and what God is up to. It is the same God we have heard in the words of the Old Testament prophets and all through scripture. And, once we know that, I believe that we must realize there are implications for the behavior of those of us here and now who are loved by God and love God back. There are implications for the behavior of those of us who have heard Jesus say, as he did in that sermon in Nazareth, that he was the very fulfillment of that scripture from Isaiah that talked about bringing good news to the poor and letting the oppressed go free. There are implications for our lives here and now if we dare to take the name of Jesus, if we dare to receive God’s love, if we love God back. My friends, there are implications for those of us who pray they kingdom, thy will be done. There are implications. AMEN.

"The Holy Spirit is Here" Sermon by The Rev. Brad Landry February 2, 2025 Our offering plates are too small. Our altar is too small. We are placing just a fraction of what we owe to God on this altar. From the nations, to Birmingham, to your grocery store, to your school. What we experience here is that light that enables us to shine in the darkness, to be the body and blood of Christ. To know that the Holy Spirit is not only active in Simeon and Anna, or the apostles or Jesus. The Holy Spirit is here, the Holy Spirit is here.