All Souls Parish Sermons

The Rev. Michael Lemaire The sermon reflects on the Transfiguration as both a climactic epiphany and a hinge moment leading toward the cross. While the event reveals Jesus’ divine identity, the deeper transformation occurs in the disciples, whose understanding of God is challenged and expanded. The preacher argues that “believing is seeing”—our prior assumptions shape what we perceive, especially...

The Rev. Dr. Bill McNabb Returning to the pulpit after five years, the preacher reflects on finding a spiritual home at All Souls and celebrates a faith marked by joy, inclusivity, and life. Drawing on Jesus’ images of salt and light, he calls Christians to enhance the world with delight rather than gloom and to shine visibly against fear and oppression. Through stories from history, personal memo...

The Rev. Phil Brochard This sermon links Jesus’s Beatitudes and Micah’s call to justice, showing that faith is not about achieving moral perfection or offering extravagant sacrifice, but about paying attention to where God already is. God’s blessing rests with the vulnerable, the grieving, and the oppressed. True faithfulness means acting with justice, kindness, and humility in places of suffering...

The Rev. Phil Brochard Jesus begins his ministry not in peace but in response to political repression, moving away from power and proclaiming an anti-imperial vision of God’s reign. The kingdom of heaven is not about the afterlife but God’s justice breaking into the present, calling people to repentance, understood as transformation and new vision. Discipleship is risky, communal, and urgent, espe...

The Rev. Emily Boring The sermon proclaims that in a time marked by fear, cruelty, and division, the Christian calling is to witness to a deeper truth: love overcomes separation. Drawing on stories of communal resistance in Minnesota, the theology of John’s Gospel, and the season of Epiphany, the preacher names sin not as individual failure but as the illusion of separation. Jesus reveals that ill...

The Rev. Phil Brochard, Pastor Anthony Hughes, & Rabbi Rebekah Stern In a shared interfaith sermon, three clergy reflect on Isaiah 42 as a call to collective, gentle justice rooted in vulnerability rather than domination. Reading the “servant” as a symbol of communal responsibility, they explore how true power emerges through care, shared suffering, and relational strength. Together, they affirm t...

The Rev. Phil Brochard This sermon reflects on marriage, family, and faith through the lens of Mary’s example in Luke’s Gospel. Love, it argues, is not about perfection but about the capacity to hold joy, conflict, and mystery together. Drawing connections between Mary’s response to Jesus, long-term marriage, and Christian commitment, the preacher emphasizes that true freedom lies in choosing to g...

The Rev. Dr. Mark Richardson This sermon proclaims that Christmas reveals what is truly real: a world created from God’s longing to be present within it. Drawing from John’s Gospel, it affirms that God is found not above the material world but within it, shining light into real darkness without denying suffering. Through poetry, community stories, and personal testimony, the sermon calls listeners...

The Rev. Emily Boring

The Rev. Phil Brochard The sermon reimagines the Christmas story to recover its urgency and humanity, moving from a crowded, astonished stable to a close focus on Mary’s contemplative presence. While others celebrate, Mary treasures and ponders the moment, holding together joy, fear, and trust. Her response becomes a model for faith in chaotic times: God meets us where we are, without requiring es...

The Rev. Emily Boring The sermon reflects on a childhood fantasy of proving the virgin birth through science, using it to explore the deeper meaning of the incarnation. Rather than a mystery to be proven, the incarnation is revealed as God’s intimate entry into human life and suffering. In a world marked by violence and pain, Advent invites honest lament, the naming of darkness, and openness to a...

The Rev. Rachel Dykzeul John the Baptist’s question from prison—“Are you the one?”—reveals Advent as a season of uncertainty rather than clarity. Jesus does not arrive as expected, and John’s doubt mirrors our own questions about where God is amid suffering and injustice. Yet Jesus responds not with shame but with a reframing vision: the kingdom is already breaking in through healing, hospitality,...

The Rev. Phil Brochard The sermon uses Nomadland to illustrate how many people in America survive on society’s edge, making visible the injustice that keeps some secure while others live in precarity. This image leads to John the Baptist, a prophet living on the margins, whose harsh words to religious leaders expose both their complicity and their awareness that something is wrong. John calls them...

The Rev. Emily Boring The sermon uses Mary Oliver’s poem about the world descending into winter “rich mash” to explore how loss, darkness, and stillness are not endings but the ground of renewal. While nature’s cycles teach this intuitively, trusting the same process within our inner lives—especially during Advent—can be frightening. Stillness can uncover unprocessed grief or desired changes we’ve...

The Rev. Phil Brochard The sermon asks, “If Jesus is a king, what kind of king is he?” Using Luke’s crucifixion narrative, it shows that Jesus is a king who refuses to save himself even when mocked by religious leaders, Roman soldiers, and the criminal beside him. His kingship is revealed not through power or self-preservation but through self-giving love. In contrast to modern cultural tendencies...

The Rev. Michael Lemaire The sermon uses the story of the failed Millerite rapture predictions to explore why people long for the world to end: because the real world feels unbearably painful. Drawing on Jesus’s prophecy of the temple’s destruction, the preacher shows how ancient and modern communities alike cling to apocalyptic hope when everything familiar collapses. But prophecy and visions of...

The Rev. Phil Brochard The sermon reflects on All Saints and All Souls traditions—especially this year’s ofrenda—as ways of making the hope of resurrection tangible. It connects the congregation’s questions about the afterlife with the Gospel story in which the Sadducees challenge Jesus using an exaggerated scenario about a widow marrying seven brothers. Their real goal is to mock belief in resurr...

The Rev. Canon Sierra Reyes On All Saints’ Sunday, the preacher reflects on the hymn “When the Saints Go Marching In” and its line, “Lord, I want to be in that number.” The sermon explores the human longing to belong among the saints and reassures the congregation that sainthood is not earned but given — an identity rooted in God’s grace and baptismal love. The preacher honors both the famous “cap...

Michael Lewis, Senior Warden Michael reflects on stewardship through stories of faith, inclusion, and gratitude. Raised in the Black church, he learned that giving is joyful participation in community life. His journey to the Episcopal Church began when he and his husband David sought an affirming congregation for their marriage — finding both acceptance and history in the Episcopal tradition. For...

The Rev. Phil Brochard This sermon reflects on Jesus’ parable of the persistent widow as a call to steadfast faith and courage in troubled times. Just as the widow refused to give up on justice, we too are invited to persevere in prayer, community, and hope, trusting in God rather than in worldly power. Faith (the greek word pistis) is about where we place our trust; courage, as Brené Brown teache...

The Rev. Emily Boring This sermon contemplates the ten healed lepers, especially the nine who did not return to thank Jesus. Their silence is explored with empathy—shock, fear, or unready hearts may explain their absence. Healing, the preacher reminds, has stages. The Samaritan who does return becomes the first “Eucharistic disciple,” giving thanks to Jesus with the same word that grounds the Chur...

The Rev. Rachel Dykzeul The sermon reflects on the life of St. Francis of Assisi, who abandoned wealth and status after a vision redirected him to serve God rather than worldly success. Francis embraced poverty, compassion, and stewardship of all creation, making his legacy one of faith rather than wealth. Mother Rachel connects Francis’s example to the parish’s stewardship campaign, urging the co...

The Rev. Phil Brochard The sermon begins with Trump’s reflection on heaven and uses it to frame Luke’s parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The preacher highlights Jesus’ warnings about wealth, comfort, and distraction, which insulate people from others’ suffering. The rich man’s failure is not active cruelty but his inability to see Lazarus. Christian faith, the preacher insists, is a “mysticism...

The Rev. Emily Boring The sermon reflects on Jeremiah’s lament, choosing to dwell in grief rather than avoid it. Jeremiah’s tears are shown to be not just his own but also the tears of his people and of God, who grieves alongside humanity out of love. Emily+ emphasizes that grief, honestly expressed, is transformative, turning isolation into shared companionship and hope. Ultimately, God’s sorrow...

The Rev. Marguerite Judson The sermon contrasts Jeremiah’s vision of creation unraveling with Jesus’s parables of the lost sheep and lost coin. While humanity often brings devastation and folly upon itself, the gospel insists that God does not abandon us. Instead, God actively seeks out the lost and rejoices in their return—grace that comes not from our efforts but from God’s own Spirit.