Sermons

By Choosing God’s Love, We Are A Family: An Easter Vigil Sermon

The Holy Women teach us how to speak the joyful truth in love even when we feel afraid. We must ensure that women on the margins of dominant culture, who have survived the horrors of coloniality, can speak joyful truth in love, especially in the face of man-babies who are terrified of love and truth. Marginalized women have been proclaiming the joyful and life-giving Gospel truth for centuries.

Read Sermon »

The Rev. Dr. Craig Lemming April 4, 2026

Bringing Saint Joseph’s Integrity Back

“Note that in today’s Gospel, Joseph does not speak a single word. Joseph acts with quiet yet life-saving integrity. Perhaps Joseph has no words because, as Abraham Joshua Heschel says, ‘There is not enough grandeur in our souls to be able to unravel in words the knot of time and eternity.'”

Read Sermon »

The Rev. Dr. Craig Lemming December 21, 2025

God’s Present Continuous Creativity

The destruction of evil can become more than a mere distraction. The destruction of evil can become an idol. When we stare too long at the evil being done, we might unconsciously become so obsessed with destruction, that we forget God’s Present Continuous creation.

Read Sermon »

The Rev. Dr. Craig Lemming November 16, 2025

Healing the Wounds of Idolatry: Cultivating A Love Ethic with the Lowly of Heart

“To turn away from worshipping the death-dealing idol of the Second Amendment and its anti-liturgies of gun violence requires a complete re-evaluation of our values. To turn away from cracked cisterns that hold no water, and to turn back to God, the fountain of living water, requires a complete change of heart. “

Read Sermon »

The Rev. Dr. Craig Lemming August 31, 2025

Be Comforted, Saturated, and Strengthened in God’s Eternal Diversity

“What languages and cultures saturate your daily life? Who made your shoes? Who picked your coffee beans? What are the untold origins of the music you love? Racist, xenophobic, Christian Nationalism will fail. God loves diversity.”

Read Sermon »

The Rev. Dr. Craig Lemming June 8, 2025

In the Risen Christ Our Own Bodies Become Bridges Between Us and Them

“The more we try to make exclusive distinctions between us and them, the more God makes differing bodies bridges between them and us. Holy Baptism and Holy Communion are the sacramental sites of God’s bridge-building in our very bodies.”

Read Sermon »

The Rev. Dr. Craig Lemming May 18, 2025

We’re Coming Out: Filled with Christ’s Spirit We Refuse Empire’s Erasures

“This Great Vigil of Easter removes Empire’s fears, erasures, and stone-cold-heartedness and replaces God’s holy, loving, and liberating spirit within our hearts of flesh. Christ’s love fills us so fully that we too come out of Empire’s tombs.”

Read Sermon »

The Rev. Dr. Craig Lemming April 19, 2025

Return and Rejoice: Be Reconciled to God, Neighbor, and Self in Love

Rejoice, Mother Church: and come together all of you that love her: sing with joy, you that have been in sorrow: that you may exult, and be filled from the breasts of God’s consolation. Amen.
Tho…

Read Sermon »

The Rev. Dr. Craig Lemming March 31, 2025

True Repentance Is Changed Behavior Rooted in Mercy, Tenderness, and Compassion

I don’t know what you did to cope, but I retreated into old school love songs to survive last week. Many of us feel betrayed. Betrayed across lines of gender, race, and class. Betrayal hurts both the victims and the perpetrators. I cope with this pain of betrayal by overindulging in old school love songs.

Read Sermon »

The Rev. Dr. Craig Lemming January 26, 2025

Let the Holy Spirit’s Love Burn Away the Chaff of Fear and Ignorance in You

The waters of baptism and fire of the Holy Spirit frighten us because they are the birth pangs of new life. New life in kinship with the very people we have comfortably curated our lives to ignore, to forget, and to betray. Renewing our Baptismal Covenant reminds us that baptism into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus requires us to keep our word. To keep our promises to love God and to love all our neighbors as ourselves, in thought, word, and deed.

Read Sermon »

The Rev. Dr. Craig Lemming January 12, 2025

God’s Incarnation Sanctifies Our Humanity: Open Your Sacred Gift of Presence

Do you find yourself in that land of deep darkness? Do you know someone working, watching, or weeping through grief, betrayal, or terror? Tonight, God’s Word and Sacrament remind us, that God became as human as you and me. So that in sanctifying our humanity we can shine God’s light into one another’s lives. Your presence in another person’s life is sacred. You are enough. You are loved.

Read Sermon »

The Rev. Dr. Craig Lemming December 24, 2024

Receiving then Becoming God’s Sustenance Between Mountaintops and Deserts

“We feel ashamed to tell the truth about the lowest nadirs in life when we are overwhelmed, exhausted, and depressed. Yet, telling the truth – the good, the bad, and the ugly – sets us all free.”

Read Sermon »

The Rev. Dr. Craig Lemming August 18, 2024

Visit St. John's

Hunger Relief

Housing

Health Care

Sacraments

Events

About

Groups