Sermons Archives - Page 13 of 54 - St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church

The Parable of the Lost Sons

April 18, 2022

A sermon by Dr. John E. (Jay) Phelan:
Any first century Jew who heard a story that began, “A man had two sons . . . would think, Uh oh. Any story starting this way will only lead to trouble. The Torah is simply full of sibling rivalry. Consider the case of the first siblings—Cain and his younger brother Abel. Here we find not only the first murder, but the first worship war. Cain is infuriated that for some reason his way of worship is deemed inferior to that of Abel and kills him, When God confronts him, he responds with a line that is with us to this day: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The human family does not get off to a very good start. But it continues.

The Baby

April 18, 2022

“Why is this night different from all other nights?”
The youngest child asks this question at the seder dinner, during the Jewish Passover, which begins tomorrow. The answer is about history that on this night God sent the angel of death to kill the firstborn sons of the Egyptians (who had enslaved the Jews), but the Israelites were told to sacrifice a lamb and smear the blood on the door of their houses so that the angel would know to “pass over” their homes.

An Invitation to Come and Find Ritual Healing in the Holy Week Liturgies

April 18, 2022

Today’s Homily is a brief invitation to enter into and to cross sacred thresholds. I invite you to come to church to participate in and to be fully immersed within the healing power of each of the Holy Week liturgies. Come and inhabit the sacred narratives of the Passion, Crucifixion, death, burial, and Resurrection of Jesus in the Holy Scriptures; through the practice of ancient rituals entrusted to us by our faithful ancestors – the hymns, processions, chanting, foot-washing, consecrations of bread, wine, water, oil, and fire; but most of all, come wholeheartedly to intentionally be with one other.

Love and Death

April 5, 2022

Yesterday, some of us were a part of a Lenten Retreat given by Saint Johns for our Older Wiser Laity, our OWLs, wherein several members made presentations in art, and song, and poetry on the Seven Last Words of Christ. One of those presentations we were privileged to hear, by our own Dr. Paula Cooey, drew from her decades of experience teaching an ethics course at Macalester College, called “Love and Death.”

A Personal Reflection on the Life and Legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

April 1, 2022

FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 1968
The morning confirmed what many refused to believe the day before. The nightmare was real. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, a champion of social justice and equality for all, had been mortally stricken by an assassin’s bullet at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN.

My Body, My Blood

March 29, 2022

A sermon by Jayan Koshy for the Feast of the Annunciation.

The Sunflowers

March 25, 2022

Which is worse:
-Bombing a maternity hospital or a military base?
-Detonating a bomb in a church or in a prison?
-Assaulting a senior citizen or a teenager?
-Shooting a black person or a white person?

It’s tempting to rate sins, to put them in a hierarchy, to assign each a relative value in terms of how many people suffered or died, the degree of vulnerability of the victims, the motivation of the perpetrator, or the cultural and historical context in which the transgression took place.

How to Stand

March 15, 2022

I was reminded recently of an Ash Wednesday, during my time in seminary working at Trinity Wall Street. Between services, volunteers of the church, lay and ordained, would stand for hours in the nave, administering ashes to any as wanted to receive.

Say No to Satan: Turn to Scripture, Prayer, Love, and Serving Others

March 8, 2022

I will be 40 years old tomorrow and even though there is literally no time for me to be reading self-help books, to prepare for my mid-life crisis I researched Arthur C. Brooks’ new bestseller, From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life. Brooks is a Harvard Professor, PhD social scientist, musician, best-selling author, and columnist at The Atlantic. His compelling research reveals and affirms much of the same wisdom disclosed in today’s Gospel and in our Christian tradition of observing a holy Lent.

A Deepening Faith, or Recalling Our God Consciousness

March 8, 2022

What does it mean to fight for freedom? What does it mean to struggle against oppression? For Black people, descendants of Africans who were enslaved, that struggle for freedom has often coincided with our faith in something bigger than ourselves, our faith in the Divine creator of the universe. Against all odds, we have relied on the power of the Divine to help pull us through no matter how bleak the situation we were in may have been.

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