Sermons from St. John the Divine

We are brought into the mutual love that the Father and the Son share. Through Jesus’ death, we are given his life. Their mutual knowing becomes our knowing. It becomes who we are. In Christ, in our deepest being, we too are made to be lovers like God.

Even Jesus’ closest friends had doubts believing in the resurrection and power of God. Most of the letters they later wrote were to overcome doubts the first generation of Christians had. That is why these letters in the New Testament are still relevant.

The greatest joy in mission is not only in seeing people come to Christ. It is in knowing the joy that Christ experiences seeing people come to him, in having one of his own lost sheep come home to the fold.

We too are Christ’s body. We too are sent out to the world as a wounded body. To bring the forgiveness we have received. To stop the cycle of violence. To own our wounds and allow the presence of Jesus, to heal us and forgive us. How do we do that? We do it the same way the disciples did, through intimate encounters with Jesus’ wounded body.

The resurrected Lord Jesus Christ invites us into the light of God. The incredible act of giving his life and rising to new life enables us to enter into a restored fellowship with the triune God. Walk in the light.

Before there is the joy, before we sing our “alleluias,” would that the news of the empty tomb might leave us a bit freshly disconcerted, perhaps even speechless for a moment…. How is it going to end for you?

The prophet Zechariah foretold The incarnation and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Hundreds of years before the advent of the Messiah, God spoke hope into a people returning from exile of a priestly king who would give his life as a great Shepherd. We are of people returning from the exile of the pandemic. Zechariah's words of hope bring encouragement to us as we regather in the Lord.

When we are honest with ourselves, that somewhere deep down we know we were made for more than this, we confess that we cannot get to it on our own. Then we may turn again to this broken and bloody body hanging by a beam and nailed to a tree. Here we can lay our lives down where Jesus laid down his for ours.

The arrival of a group of Gentiles signals the great climactic moment in the ministry of Jesus, the cross. As he gives his life for the life of the world, the world would never be the same. As Jesus is lifted up—glory! All nations stream to His light.

The Greeks who old Philip, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus,” is a reminder behind everything we do in the church and everything we Christians attend to in the world as living witnesses to him. People want to see Jesus and we need to introduce others to him by what we say and do. These words also remind preachers that the people have come to see Jesus and hear the gospel message. We’d better preach abou...

The only dark things in our lives that will judge us forever are those things we refuse to lay bare to the light of Christ and his Cross.

Like the bronze serpent Moses lift up for the Israelites to look at and be saved, Jesus says that he too will be lifted up and that all who look at him and believe in him will receive eternal life. The gospel declares that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins so that we can be forgiven. In an ironic twist, Jesus defeats Satan, not in power, but in weakness, giving a new definition and meaning to gr...

What happens on Sinai is a kind of vision of cosmic harmony: what it looks like when God wants to live with his people and God’s people let him!

What does Jesus have against pigeons? The cleansing of the temple is one of the only times we see Jesus visibly angry. But why? They had missed the heart of the authentic worshiper, and the heart of God.

Jesus invites us to follow him, to imitate him, to see what he sees, as he sees it. Jesus is offering us life, new life, life that is full and meaningful. But we must set our minds and hearts on the things of God. Those things that lovely, pure, beautiful, and true. We must stop trying to suck the life out of things that only make us blind or half-blind.

This is the thread that runs all the way through the Scriptures: our identity, our belonging, and our purpose flow from covenant faithfulness to God’s covenant faithfulness to us; it binds us to God, to one another as God’s people, and to God’s purposes to bless the whole world.

We have been through some real hardships in Texas this past week. Houston keeps having a series of 100-year floods and now a deep chill. In Genesis, after becoming disgusted with the state of human sin, God makes a covenant promise never to drown all flesh again. That, however, does not mean we won’t have natural disasters. At the cross, Jesus definitively deals with human sin, making a new and fi...

Who are you? What is your identity? The most important thing about you is that through Christ you are in relationship to God who will never break his promises to you.

In the transfiguration event, we are given a preview glimpse of who Jesus is in the fullness of his divine human nature. More than that, we are given a glimpse of the glory that is yet to be revealed in us. As we embark on the journey of Lent, let us see the vision of God’s glorious future in Christ as inspiration to fully enter into the transfiguration process.

Moses and Elijah, who died centuries before, engage in a mountaintop conversation with a transfigured Jesus. They are not dead but alive, speaking with God face to face. We await a similar future, receiving glorified bodies like Jesus’.

When our desire to be with God exceeds our desire to get everything else done, then we shall know we are growing in Christ and in his power and authority. . . Yet we become more and more like Jesus not by nature but by grace.

In our day of party politics and personal divisions, members of the church can often find it difficult to know how they ought to relate to the culture, and to one another. This is nothing new. The apostle Paul deals with a dividing issue of that day but gives guidance and principles applicable to our day.

I want our vision at St. John the Divine to be nothing less than that we seek to be a congregation where every member experiences himself or herself as called, chosen, and cherished by Jesus and sent by him as a missionary into one’s everyday life.