Field Notes: Stories from St. Martin's

What kind of landowner keeps sending servants to tenants who beat and kill them? What kind of father sends his own son? In this sermon on the parable of the wicked tenants, we look at Jesus' constant confrontations with the Pharisees and discover they aren't about picking a fight. They're about a love that refuses to quit. Jesus never gave up on the Pharisees. He never gives up on the...

Some people spent this week being told they do not belong. Here is the good news we could not keep to ourselves: God's love does not need a permit. In this sermon on Matthew 21:23-32, we step into the temple the morning after Jesus turned over the tables and threw the gate wide open. The people in charge show up demanding to know by what authority he welcomes the ones they would keep out. Jesu...

We all carry an unwritten mental ledger, constantly tracking who hurt us, who owes us, or who forgot to say thank you. But what happens when we bring that scorekeeping mindset into our faith? In this sermon by the Rev. Alan D. Bentrup, we explore Peter’s question to Jesus about forgiveness and dive into the parable of the unforgiving servant. Rather than asking us to work harder at forgiving, Jesu...

Peter says the truest thing he will ever say, and within the hour Jesus calls him Satan. We hear "Get behind me" as a door slamming. What if it is an arm across your chest instead? This week Peter wants to order things his own way, and so do we. We ration our love like the tank is almost empty. The people closest to us first, the stranger maybe, the one who wronged us never. Then Paul re...

When Jesus asked His disciples, "Who do you say that I am?" He was not looking for a textbook answer. He was asking what our lives reveal about Him to the world. In this sermon, the Rev. Mark Odieny reflects on how our actions, choices, and treatment of others proclaim who Jesus is far more loudly than our words ever could. Drawing from personal stories of his father in Africa, biblical...

In this powerful sermon, William Pearson explores the encounter between Jesus and the Canaanite woman in the Gospel of Matthew [00:03]. Set right after Jesus' teaching on ritual purity, this story reveals a radical, boundary-breaking faith that confronts social hierarchies, prejudice, and human expectations [00:26].Discover how a mother's desperate love and unrelenting faith allowed her to...

The Reverend Ellen Singer delivers the sermon for the 11th Sunday after Pentecost, "God in the Silence".

In 1897 a group of Texas educators went looking for a cooler place to hold a summer school. Boulder, Colorado, won the contract. The trouble was the site: a bare mesa at the foot of the mountains with nothing on it but grass and rock and a view. Thousands of people would soon board trains in Fort Worth, ride north, and arrive at the end of a long journey, hungry. Boulder had fifty three days. Hold...

The Rev. Dr. Sean Neil of Grace Lutheran delivers the sermon for the 8th Sunday after Pentecost, "God Likes You!"

The Reverend Ellen Singer preaches her sermon for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost.

All week at Vacation Bible School the kids learned a "festal shout," two big words for whenever they saw how amazing God is. Wow, God! This VBS Sunday children's message starts there, with the line from our psalm, happy are the people who know the festal shout, and turns it loose on a place every kid in Keller knows: the Fort Worth Zoo. There is a marker at the zoo that tells a story...

Outside Pilot Point there is a cemetery called St. John's, the oldest Black cemetery in Denton County. Around four hundred people are buried there, and only about twenty graves still have a stone. Someone working to save it said these people have been buried twice. Once in the ground, and once by being forgotten. This short homily from our early service starts on that ground and lets Paul answ...

Three historical markers stand within a few steps of each other on a trail in North Arlington. One remembers a peacemaker who freed captives and brought them home. One remembers a raid that attacked a village. One remembers a treaty that opened a people's land to be taken. A mercy, a killing, and a displacement, all on the same small patch of ground. That is where this sermon begins. It turns...

A land company promised poor settlers nearly two million acres of North Texas. For some of them the promise fell apart and left only graves on the prairie. That is where this sermon begins, at a roadside marker in Grapevine, and it turns out to be where Paul begins too. In Romans 4 he points us to a promise made to a man whose body was as good as dead and a womb that was closed, and he tells us wh...

You leave vacation days on the table. You overschedule the summer. You live like the whole thing falls apart if you stop. This Trinity Sunday sermon is the Gospel’s answer to that exhaustion: you are not the main character of the story. God is. Drawing on Genesis 1, Psalm 8, 2 Corinthians 13, and the Great Commission in Matthew 28, we walk through what the Trinity actually means for a tired life....

In this Pentecost Sunday message, the Rev. Mark Odieny opens with a disarmingly honest confession: as a youth leader in Kenya, he once faked speaking in tongues to meet the expectations of his peers. That moment of pretending becomes the launching pad for a frank exploration of how deeply human the desire to perform and impress truly is. Drawing on 1 Corinthians, Mark connects the divisions in the...

What does your mom have to do with evangelism? More than you think. This sermon starts with a simple question: if you wanted to tell someone about a woman who shaped your life, what would you say? You wouldn't hand them a spreadsheet. You wouldn't list her measurable outputs. You'd testify -- about how she loved you, showed up for you, changed you. So why do we think sharing our faith...

On the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Fr. Alan Bentrup preaches from Acts 7, John 14, and 1 Peter 2 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Keller, Texas. Two of the most misused texts in the New Testament show up in this week's readings. John 14 has been turned into a border checkpoint. 1 Peter 2 has been stamped onto a flag. Both readings have been used to draw the circle small and keep people out....

The Reverend Ayo Omoniyi delivers his sermon for Good Shepherd Sunday, "Jesus is the Door."

What does it mean that the risen Jesus keeps saying the same thing? To frightened disciples behind a locked door. To Thomas in his doubt. Over and over: "Peace be with you."In this Easter Sunday sermon at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Keller, Texas, Fr. Alan explores John 20:19-31 and what the resurrection has to do with a plumber named Mike Jesus, a week of doubt, and the moment...

All week we have been listening. A crowd. Water poured out. A hammer. And then silence. T onight the ground shook. In this Great Vigil of Easter service from St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Keller, Texas, Fr. Alan offers a brief reflection on what the resurrection actually sounds like: not a quiet next chapter, but an earthquake. The sound of a door torn off its hinges from the inside. The so...

Easter is not optimism. The people in this story are not people for whom hope came easy. They watched their friend die. They buried him. They came back to the tomb in the dark because they didn't know where else to go. Jeremiah wrote to survivors who had lost everything: the people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness. Not after the wilderness. In it. That is the world Mary Mag...

You know this sound. The hammer comes down. The nail bites in. The sound is blunt and final and it does not apologize for itself. In this Good Friday sermon from St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Keller, Texas, Fr. Alan sits with that sound and refuses to move past it too quickly. Because before we get to Easter, we have to hear what love actually sounds like when it goes all the way. It was no...

On the night before his crucifixion, Jesus picked up a basin and poured water. In this Maundy Thursday sermon from St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Keller, Texas, Fr. Alan explores the soundscape of the upper room: the water poured out, Peter's protest, the silence of sleeping disciples, and the kiss of a friend who had already decided to betray him. All of it. And still the water kept pou...

The Rev. Mark Odieny preaches on Ezekiel 37:1-14.