Sermons from Saint John’s

I’m sure that many of us have had the kind of friends who always cancel plans at the last minute; or the kinds of friends who lean on you for support, but disappear when you need them. Or the kinds of friends who say they don’t want any french fries, and then reach over to eat your french fries—right? But have you ever had the kind of friends who, when you’re all in a wedding party together, and t...

There’s a beautiful children’s book by Doris Stickney called Water Bugs & Dragonflies that tells the story of a little colony of water bugs who lived below the surface of quiet pond. They lived a busy life, scurrying around in the mud, doing whatever water bugs do. And one day, they noticed that one of them had disappeared. They looked up just in time to see her climbing up the stalk of a lily tha...

There’s a great talk from 2011 by a computer programmer named Rich Hickey with the title “Simple Made Easy.” The core idea is that although we often use these words interchangeably, “simple” and “easy” mean different things. Something is simple when it does or means or consists of exactly one thing. The opposite of “simple” is “complex”; complex things are made from simple things woven together in...

Imagine yourself in Boston in 1771. The Boston Massacre has happened. The Tea Party is yet to come. Imagine that you’re down on the Common, hanging out with a crowd of people listening to a popular preacher who’s visiting from out of town. Suddenly a group of local Tories arrive, parishioners of the Old North Church, along with a couple of British regulars in their famous red coats. And they ask t...

You know, I can’t help but think that this all would’ve turned out differently if the ancient Israelites had only had smartphones. In our reading from Exodus last Sunday, God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, including the second one: “You shall not make for yourself an idol.” (Exodus 20:4) And this Sunday, we read about the people doing exactly that: making and worshiping a golden calf. This is ty...

On Tuesday, The New York Times ran a fascinating story about a series of meetings between Christopher Olah, one of the cofounders of the AI company Anthropic, and religious leaders of different faiths, from all around the world. “The discussions served two purposes,” the Times reports: “to broach the possibility of AI consciousness, a controversial idea that Anthropic’s leaders had been unusually...

During the first week of my first college semester, I walked into my freshman seminar and met a guy named Phil. Phil was a really nice guy; also, he’d soon come to shatter my dearest hopes and dreams. That first day, after we’d all introduced ourselves, I turned to Phil and asked, “Are you a runner, Phil?” Now, I already knew Phil was a runner. He was a local legend; a kid from the next town over...

The landowner in today’s parable behaves more or less like you’d expect an ancient vineyard-owner to behave, at first. He sets out early in the morning, so that he doesn’t lose any of the precious daylight hours. He hires day laborers who are standing in the marketplace, because he needs extra help at harvest time. And he makes a deal to pay them the typical daily wage. A few hours later, he goes...

On December 16, 1956, a young woman made American cultural history with a nothing but a football, a helmet, and a dream. In the eyes of the world, her job that day was simply to hold the ball for a kicker. And she did. As the kicker ran forward at full speed, she carefully held the ball in place; as his leg swung back, she remained focused on the plan; and then, as the kicker’s foot flew forward,...

When Alice and I were married, one of my mother’s oldest friends gave us a wedding gift: a binder full of some of her family’s favorite recipes, with plenty of empty plastic page protectors for us to add our own. I’ve put a few recipes in there over the years, but I have to admit I’m not good at keeping up with it; in part because, try as I might, I can never seem to keep a printer working for mor...

The Presbyterian minister Eugene Peterson once wrote an essay entitled “The Ministry of Small Talk.” He begins it with a story from his youth: “My pastor, during my adolescent years [in the late ’40s] came often to our home. After a brief and awkward interval, he always said, ‘And how are things in your SOUL today?’ (He always pronounced ‘soul’ in capital letters.)” Teenage Eugene never said much;...

Who gave you your name? Do you go by the name your parents gave you at your birth? Is it a nickname that you got along the way? Is your name really your middle name? Has it changed, by marriage or by choice? Did it take time for you to discover what your true name really was? Do different people call you different things? (I can think of a number of people I know who affectionately call their spou...

Just before I left for vacation, movie theaters around the world began showing the epic action fantasy film The Odyssey. Has anyone seen it? I haven’t. And in fact, I forgot my copy of The Odyssey at home, so I didn’t even read any Homer on the beach. But I did read an adaptation that I hadn’t read before: a novel by Natalie Haynes entitled A Thousand Ships, a re-telling of the stories of the Troj...

So I have to admit: I don’t really like traveling. I might even say I really don’t like traveling, especially by plane. My problem with travel is not the being-in-a-new-place. It’s the uncertainty and the waiting that drive me nuts. I wait anxiously before a trip, worrying that the worst could happen. And then I spend my time away worrying about the trip home. And then I return home safe and sound...

In the next two weeks, we’ll hear two stories on two Sundays about sowing seeds. Anyone who’s ever seen me in a garden knows that I am not at all qualified to speak about seeds, although I’m very good at killing houseplants. But then again, Jesus was a carpenter and his disciples were mostly fishermen. And let’s be honest: it’s another warm summer day, and the Parable of the Sower doesn’t really n...

An Emerson College poll last year revealed a surprising paradox about news consumption in America: social media is the least-widely-trusted and most-widely-used source for information about the news. More than half of Americans reported that they put “not much trust” or “no trust at all” in the information they received from social media sites; even so, nearly 40% said that social media or YouTube...

This story of “The Binding of Isaac” is one of the most beautifully written stories in human history, about one of the most horrifying acts any of us could imagine. It raises some challenging questions for those of us who receive it as Holy Scripture. What kind of man would respond to a vision like this so immediately, with so few questions? Who is the God who would test someone in this way? Part...

I generally avoid making a big deal out of certain days that are widely celebrated in the world around us but aren’t Christian “holy days.” I don’t give a “Mother’s Day sermon.” There are no special prayers for Father’s Day. And that’s really because, while there are many people celebrating these days, many people find them hard; I’ve known more than a few people who avoid going to church on Mothe...

You’ve probably heard the saying, “We make plans, and God laughs.” I don’t always love this phrase. It does a good job of expressing the unpredictability of a world in which our best-laid plans so often go awry. But I think it makes God sound a little too mean-spirited. A few years ago, for example, I was training to run in the Bunker Hill Day road race. I was all ready to prove once and for all t...

There’s a story told by the Irish writer Frank O’Connor that comes from his childhood wandering through the countryside outside Cork in southern Ireland. If you recognize it, it’s probably because it was popularized by President John F. Kennedy, who re-told it in speeches several times. In his autobiography An Only Child, O’Connor writes, “When as kids we came to an orchard wall that seemed too hi...

This time of year is a season of goodbyes. At colleges around the country, graduating students are saying goodbye to their campuses and professors, to roommates and friends, and maybe even to education itself—although hopefully not to learning. In local schools, teachers are getting ready to say goodbye to this year’s class of students, and students are saying goodbye to friends as they scatter to...

People sometimes celebrate Pentecost as “the birthday of the Church,” with red balloons and a birthday cake at Coffee Hour. But I like to think of it as an anniversary, instead, because what begins at Pentecost is more like a marriage than a birth. What begins at Pentecost, or what begins in a wedding ceremony, is not a new individual’s life, but a new form of common life; a way of being together...

Imagine being one of Jesus’ disciples on that first Ascension Day, two thousand years ago. The last six weeks have been pretty crazy. You’d first come down to the city of Jerusalem for Passover with a group of friends who’d spent the last year following this remarkable man named Jesus as he traveled around Galilee. You’d heard him preaching about the coming of what he called the kingdom of God. Yo...

Nautical enthusiasts and dictionary editors alike have argued for centuries about the distinction between a ship and a boat. Everyone agrees that ships are big and boats are small; as Merriam-Webster puts it, “You can put a boat onto a ship, but you can’t put a ship onto a boat.”[1] What’s less clear is the exact nature of the distinction. Is a ship just a boat of a certain size? Or is a ship what...

Back in high school, when I ran cross-country and track, I’d often find myself lost with my friends somewhere in the Middlesex Fells. There were a few kids on the team who lived near the woods, and they could usually find their way around. Personally, I have a terrible sense of direction, and so it wasn’t that uncommon for me to get turned around, and come out half a mile further down South Border...