Sermons from St. John the Divine

In this life, nothing is ever truly final or definitive without reference to all that God has done for us in our past, the pattern of restoration again and again, and ultimately finalized in Christ Jesus.

Let us never believe that our sins have no consequences. But let us never forget that our sins are no match for God’s forgiveness.

Shame and guilt tend to move us to self-hiding. God is a loving father who knows our failings. By confession and repentance, we find forgiveness and a true safe hiding place.

Psalm 63 provides a beautiful spiritual blueprint for the heart. We are designed by God for a loving worshiping relationship with him. This Lenten season, examine your heart. Incline your affections and longings on the Lord.

God loves it when we speak to him from our hearts. The Psalms are excellent examples of conversations with God. The psalms cover all human emotions from joy to depression, from anger to love, from desperation to satisfaction. What a blessing they are when we embrace the psalms in our own devotional life as followers of Jesus who desire to speak to the Father as the Son himself did!

Whether we feel confident in the Lord, or find ourselves asking hard questions, Psalm 27 invites us to dwell in his house.

The Psalms never let us get away with reflection on God in the abstract. They are born of real living and sinning and suffering and struggling and dying under the face of the Lord who reigns over it all. Which is why we can praise him.

We are called by Jesus to be a source of blessing to the world. From the Taliban to Isis, from the hurting to the sick, we are to be a source of joy and peace to all people.

The Devil is not very creative but he is relentlessly consistent, offering almost plausible reasons for Jesus to look at his calling a little differently, in ways that would avoid any suffering, any rejection, any death. Jesus refuses.

The message of Lent is not that we need to do a better job managing our sin. The message of Lent is that we need to do a better job of recognizing how our sin is dealt with.

We, who are Christ’s body, eat the mystical body of Christ and we are transfigured into his likeness. What is true of us in eternity is made available to us in this transfiguring moment at the table. We have been given a glimpse of a greater reality and we know that we are a part of it with God.

As we gaze in the face of the beloved son of God, our character is changed. His likeness becomes our likeness. His light becomes ours.

Do you understand what happens when you die? The hope of the resurrection does not have as powerful a place in our thinking today as it had for the early Christians. We have a messed-up understanding of our physical bodies in the age to come. We tend to conceive of heaven as a faraway place filled with non-material, disembodied spirits, but we too will receive resurrection bodies just like Jesus’s...

It makes all the difference that Christ was raised after being crucified rather than coming back to life after dying of natural causes.

Is there more to life than this? For the church in Corinth, many of its members were living for this life only. The encouragement is to see beyond the “now” to the “not yet” of eternal resurrection life. Living with a larger perspective impacts everything from our morals, to our view of wealth and poverty, to our understanding of the problem of evil in this world.

The Good News, that Jesus died for our sins and was raised to new life, continues to save us so that we can join God, as Christ's resurrected body, in this great project of love.

Resurrection faith may not change the outcome of events we all experience – like sin and death. But resurrection faith changes our relationship to what happens. Ultimately, it is all taken up in the resurrection of Jesus.

In so many ongoing ways we see in a mirror dimly. But it is God who sees perfectly – who we really are, what we are worth to Him, and what we will one day be.

Chapter 13 of First Corinthians is perhaps the most important chapter in the Bible. It is a poetic explanation of the meaning of love that Jesus shows us on the cross. Let the words of Paul speak as a vision for how to live your life grounded in the transforming love of Jesus.

When Jesus said the Messianic prophecy in Isaiah 61 had been fulfilled in him, we are left to wonder why there are still disunity, conflict, and suffering in the church and world. First Corinthians addresses these issues and more, especially in regard to problems in the church. It reminds us of why we need each other with our differing gifts, all unified in the Spirit.

The body of Christ has many members. Jesus’ vision for the Church includes a great diversity of gifts and types of people. How can we honor all the gifts and ministries of the spirit? Let us grow into the fullness of all that God has for his Church. What is your spiritual gift?

We see from the abundance of good wine that Jesus’ glory is to bring God’s abundant blessings into the world of human lack. Jesus’ hour to act through us is the minute the wine runs out for our brothers and sisters.

Despite living in a wine-depleting, party-pooper world, nothing can defeat the power of God to create new life in us.