Holy Trinity Silicon Valley - Homilies & Sermons

The Palace of Versailles was built to keep everyone asking one question: where do I stand? We may laugh at blue coats and red heels, but Silicon Valley has its own ladder. It just has closer rungs. In this sermon, David McGaw looks at Paul's letter to the church in Philippi, a Roman colony of army veterans where life was organized around rank and privilege. Paul calls the church to regard one anot...

Peter asked Jesus how many times he must forgive, and offered a generous answer: seven. Jesus' reply, "seventy-seven times," moves forgiveness beyond anything we can count. In this sermon from Holy Trinity Silicon Valley, the Rev. John Gorin looks at the parable of the unmerciful servant (Matthew 18:21–35). He calls it both comforting and disturbing. It is comforting because it shows the scale of...

Summer's over but autumn hasn't shown up yet. Deacon Cindy Miller notices that we're living in that same gap spiritually: the Kingdom of God is here, and it also isn't here yet. She'll tell you she doesn't usually bother titling her sermons. This one she did, because the week leading up to it was one of the hardest she's had, and the in-between is where she found herself sitting with some genuinel...

Every team has conflict. Most of us just hope nobody brings it up. Rev. John Gorin starts this week with Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team and its second dysfunction, the fear of conflict, before turning to a much older one in Matthew 16. Jesus tells his disciples that whoever wants to save their life will lose it, and whoever loses it for his sake will find it. Every disciple has to...

For two thousand years, Christians have practiced their faith by gathering weekly as a church. So it may come as a surprise that Jesus mentions the church only three times in Matthew's Gospel. In one of them, He tells us almost everything we need to know about what the church is for. In this sermon, Rev. John Gorin turns to Peter's confession at Caesarea Philippi: "You are the Messiah, the Son of...

Elliot Haught opens with a fence. A redwood one, built in his Oakland front yard with a few friends after the contractor quotes came back way too high. It's a good fence. It marks where the private yard ends and the public sidewalk begins, and the gate works like a portal between the two. Boundaries do that. They're useful, and they're deeply human. They're also how we decide who's in and who's ou...

The best soccer players in the world aren't set apart by their touch. They're set apart by how often they lift their heads — scanning the field every few seconds, because the picture decays that fast. In this sermon from Ordinary Time, Mayo Adigun suggests the life of faith works much the same way. We have been given a true picture of the field: a God who reigns over chaos and is even now making a...

We know how to bring God our catastrophes. The harder question is what to do with the ordinary friction of being a person. Maybe that's the missed meal, the runny nose, the car that cuts us off, or the small things that quietly keep us from prayer and from our neighbors. Preaching from Matthew 14:13–21, Romans 8:35–39, and Nehemiah 9:16–21, Kate Lucky begins with two children's Bibles and the stor...

Interested in checking out Holy Trinity Silicon Valley? Head to https://www.holytrinitysv.org The night before D-Day, General Eisenhower had two meteorologists telling him opposite things, a hundred thousand troops waiting, and no way to push the decision onto anyone else. Most of us will never carry a choice that size. But we know the feeling of standing in front of a decision we don't feel quali...

What if the weeds in the field look exactly like the wheat? In this sermon on the parable of the wheat and the weeds (Matthew 13), David McGaw digs into a detail most of us miss: the "weed" Jesus names is darnel, a toxic false wheat that is nearly indistinguishable from the real thing until harvest. Its roots entangle with the wheat, which means you cannot rip it out without destroying the good cr...

Somewhere around thirty-five, our bodies start to slow down. Life in the Spirit works the other way. The older we get, the more vibrant and consequential our life in Christ is meant to become. In this sermon from Romans 8, Rev. John Gorin looks at three things the Holy Spirit does for us. He assures us of a future secured by the risen Christ. He helps us today, in the middle of the stubborn habits...

This week we celebrated 250 years as a country, with all the good and the hard parts of that history. But our scriptures point us to a freedom that goes deeper than any nation can offer. The prophet Zechariah calls believers "prisoners of hope," and it's a phrase worth sitting with. Because of who God is, hope never runs out. In this message by Deacon Cindy Millwer we look at Zechariah 9, Psalm 14...

What does it actually cost to follow Jesus, and what do we gain when we do? In this message from Holy Trinity Silicon Valley, Rector John Gorin turns to Matthew 10:37-39, where Jesus tells his disciples three times that loving family, comfort, or life itself more than him makes us "not worthy" of him. Drawing on the Greek word Axios, the root of our word "axiom," the message explores how worthines...

What happens when following Jesus moves from the joy of the harvest to the hard work of facing real opposition? Continuing our journey through Matthew's Gospel, this message picks up where Jesus commissions his disciples. He doesn't offer a sugarcoated vision, but speaks honest words about what lies ahead. He sends them out "like sheep among wolves," warning of councils, persecution, and even divi...

We live in the heart of Silicon Valley, a place that is completely obsessed with scaling up, massive innovation, and huge tech launches. It is easy to get caught up in wanting our own lives and careers to have that same kind of massive impact. In this episode, Rev. John Gorin asks a great question. What if the most important startup out there is not the next big tech company, but the one Jesus sta...

We all know that feeling when our internal "injustice radar" goes off. Maybe it is a terrible call by a referee during a game, a favorite artist getting snubbed at an award show, or a painful personal betrayal that cuts deep. In this episode, Rev. John Gorin talks about our natural instinct to demand justice and explains how Jesus completely flips the script by introducing a radical, life-changing...

What if a 500-foot cathedral could teach us more about the Trinity than a theology textbook? Returning refreshed from travels through Germany, England, and Wales, Rev. John Gorin moves past the ancient debates of the fourth-century church—the arguments over a single Greek word, homoousios—to ask a more personal question: How do we actually experience the Triune God? His answer takes us inside the...

A sound like wind. Tongues like fire. And a question that has shaped the Church for two thousand years: what is all of this for? On Pentecost Sunday, Deacon Cindy Miller turns to Acts 2 and to Paul's answer in 1 Corinthians 12 to explain that the manifestations of the Spirit are given, he writes, for the common good. Not for spiritual elites. Not gifts to collect. This is power lent for the sake o...

The Ascension arrives quietly. No trumpets, no fiery chariots, just a cloud, a question, and a commission. In this sermon on Acts 1, David McGaw sits with the disciples' last conversation with Jesus: Is it now? Are you finally bringing the kingdom back? The answer comes not as correction but as handoff. The kingdom is coming, but it's coming through you. Plural. All of you. Together. Drawing on N....

What does it actually mean to "abide" in Christ, and why does Jesus repeat the word eight times in just four verses? In this teaching on John 15, we sit with one of the most contemplated passages in all of Scripture, the vine and the branches. Drawing on voices from Augustine to Luther to Calvin, the sermon unpacks what Jesus meant when he called himself the true vine and invited his followers to...

Samuel Adams was called "the grand incendiary". He was man whose words were so dangerous the British sent soldiers to silence him. In a culture that prefers spiritual language tame and private, the simple sentence "I follow Christ" remains one of the most subversive things a person can say. A meditation on identity, pressure, and the long arc of faithful witness, from 1 Peter 2. When pressure rise...

In the heart of Silicon Valley, it is easy to believe that if we just had a little more data, we could finally solve our problems and ease our anxieties. We crave knowledge, stress over building massive data centers, and hire consultants and coaches to ensure we are on the right path. But what if the guidance we truly need is not found in acquiring more information, but in choosing who we follow?...

Two disciples walk the road to Emmaus, grief-heavy and uncertain. A stranger joins them. It is only when bread is broken at supper that they realize who has been beside them the whole way. In this sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter, Rector John Gorin traces a thread that runs through Scripture, the modern courtroom, and the ordinary rhythms of our lives: the weight of witness. Drawing on the ey...

Deacon Cindy Miller preaches on why the risen Christ's first words to his frightened disciples were "Peace be with you," and why he had to say them more than once. Drawing from John 20, Acts 2, and 1 Peter 1, she traces a thread from that locked upper room through Peter's bold Pentecost sermon to his letter written thirty years later, showing how even those closest to the events needed constant re...

On Good Friday, Deacon Cindy Miller walks us through the final hours of Jesus' life as recorded in John's Gospel, from the cross to the moment the soldiers find he has already died. What did Jesus mean when he said "It is finished"? Cindy traces the larger arc of Scripture, from Abraham's promise that "the Lord will provide the lamb" to the cross where that promise is fulfilled. In less than twent...