Immanuel Anglican Church

"There is more truth in honest doubt than in habitual recitation of the great creeds." In walking with Jesus, we sometimes face a yawning gap where our expectation and our experience don't meet. We offer this yawning gap to God as lament, being honest with Him in the midst of calamity. Listen as Dr. Andrew Schmutzer unearths the truth of how the Psalms teach us to be honest with God in the face of...

“Balking” is what we do when we don’t like where Jesus is leading us. But can we change our conversations with Him in such a way that our hearts are more willing to follow?

Shame is the painful feeling that we are not enough and therefore unworthy of love. In response we tend to hide and hate. But as we see in his conversation with Peter on the beach, Jesus has come to heal our shame.

Jesus approaches doubting Thomas with patience, compassion, and grace, meeting him where he is at and then inviting him into fuller faith. Jesus knows what it means to exercise faith in the impossible, so even though we all experience doubt, with Christ's faith within us we can put doubt in its place. Deacon Brett Crull from Church of the Resurrection preaches from John 20.

Fear gets inside us - like a paralyzing virus. After his resurrection, Jesus brought the cure of shalom to his disciples who were locked down with fear. How do we absorb Jesus' peace after we have been infected with fear? Father Aaron unpacks the Easter conversation between Jesus and his disciples in John 20.

Canon Theologian Stephen Gauthier talks about how Jesus meets us in our disillusionment and dashed hopes. This is the second in the Eastertide series "Life After Death: 7 Conversations with Jesus."

Jesus staged an intervention to save his relationship with the Church in Laodicea, whose material wealth made them spiritually lukewarm. In this Good Friday sermon, Father Aaron Damiani challenges us to consider how personal indulgence has diminished our need for God.

How does the resurrected Christ interact with people who are grieving? Father Aaron explored this question in Jesus' conversation with Mary Magdalene in John 20. This is the first in the Eastertide series "Life After Death: 7 Conversations with Jesus."

Bullies will kick sand in our face and then shame us for being blind. When toxic people have discouraged & distracted us, we need to hear King Jesus advocate for us and rally us on in the good race we are running. Hear Father Aaron preach on Jesus' letter to the Church in Philadelphia from Revelation 3.

Jesus gives everyone an invitation to come into his house- where we can let our hair down, be fully loved, and stop pretending. But as Bishop Stewart Ruch explains from Luke 13, we can't get in the house without letting go of the things that make us feel secure in this life.

How can we influence culture without getting seduced by it? If we want to share in Jesus' cultural influence, we must receive his cultural immune system. Hear more about Jesus' letter to the church in Thyatira in Revelation 2 in the series "Return to Your First Love."

When our fellow Chicagoans suspect us of being extreme for the things we believe, how should we respond? It's tempting to respond to suspicion by living a double life in the city. To help us find a better way, Father Aaron draws resources from Jesus' letter to the church in Pergamum, an ancient city much like Chicago. In this letter, Jesus points the church to their ultimate hope.

In his exposition of Jesus's letter to the church in Smyrna, Father Stephen Gauthier reflects on the purposes of God for temptations, slander and poverty.

Fatigue makes false lovers of us all. When our love for God has dimmed, how can Jesus restore it? Hear Father Aaron's sermon about Jesus' letter to his church in the ancient city of Ephesus.

If we would hear from God during Lent, we must learn to filter out all the noise. Father Aaron offers insights from Revelation 1 that will help us better listen to Jesus during the season of Lent.

Why do so many bands - and churches- break up? Father Aaron concludes the series "This is My Body" by exploring this question in light of 1 Corinthians 13. The Church of Jesus must resist the temptation to play the song of comparison & the song of resentment - because we have a much better song to play. And the city is listening.

When we ignore those with low status in the church, we are discarding the people that God has chosen to bless us. In this teaching from I Corinthians, Father Aaron describes two gifts that we can receive from those we outrank.

Father Aaron Damiani delivers a lecture to the Student Theological Society of Moody Bible Institute called "The Baptized Imagination in a Pornographic Age." How can we feed our hungry imaginations without succumbing either to hedonism or moralism?

Do you feel like an outsider in the church community? Do you have an internal voice that says, "You don't truly belong here, because you're too _____"? In this teaching from I Corinthians 12, Father Aaron describes how Jesus Christ created a new family where no one would be left out.

How can we exercise the gifts we have from the Holy Spirit without comparison and division? In this teaching from I Corinthians 12, Father Aaron describes how spiritual gifts bond us to the Lord and to each other.

How can we live out our identity as the Body of Christ with integrity? In his teaching from I Corinthians 11, Father Stephen Gauthier challenges us to exercise the habits of love, service and humility towards our brothers and sisters. In doing so, we prepare ourselves for the Body of Christ in the Eucharist. This is the first teaching in our Epiphany series called "This is My Body."

We learn from the example of John the Baptist that humble witness flows from and leads to intimacy with the Father.

Most of us fall short in our capacity to love the people in our life. How can the love of God become complete in us as we follow Jesus? In this final sermon in the series "The Long-Awaited Advent," Father Aaron teaches about the three stages of growth in the love of God from I John 4.

Most of the time, having peace is about having control over situations we care about. In an Advent reflection from Romans 5:1-11, Father Aaron Damiani invites us to move from having control to having confidence in the Prince of Peace.

Hope is a powerful thing, and rightly ordered hope can lead to inexpressible joy in Jesus Christ, but out of order it can lead to a roller coaster of anxiety, disappointment, and even despair. The apostle Peter grounds Christian Hope in the Resurrection of Jesus and the Return of Jesus. If we order our hopes according to these pillars of our faith and if we always place ultimate Hope in the Resurr...