Sermons

Come, Eat, Taste Again Your Salvation

“The gospel of Luke bounces from table to table, meal to meal, and while the details are omitted, I cannot help filling them in with my imagination. You can smell the smoke from the fish. Candlelight reflects off the slick oil in a bowl on the table. Bread is broken. There is wine in cups.

Why did Luke take such pains to include food at every turn in his gospel? Luke wants us to know that this Jesus is the same Jesus who died, who was buried, who has returned—changed yes, but still the same, wounded, hungry, and yearning to be with his people.”

Read Sermon »

Drifting Apart

“It never ceases to amaze me how easily the church, even our beloved Episcopal Church, slips into a kind of legalism, using scripture to lend credence to creating even more rules and rubrics, higher walls and thicker barriers, in a world already drifting apart, especially when all we crave is community, connection, and healing. We yearn to come together!”

Read Sermon »

Sparks of Connection

“The spiritual greats of our faith tradition tell us that fasting is an opportunity to draw closer to God. In giving something up for a short season, we create necessary space to focus new or renewed attention on our connection with God. I wish I could say this has worked for me. But, more often than not, when I am fasting, I seem to become more keenly aware of my appetites, my hunger, my grumbling stomach or my fuzzy decaffeinated brain. So, how is it that we cultivate space for God? Or, more importantly, how do we cultivate the desire to find our way across the gulfs between us and the one who made us?”

Read Sermon »

Liturgy and Dignity

“This is why we practice our faith together over and over with rituals and rites that affirm we are worthy of love and dignity, that we are created in the image and likeness of God. Because none of us can believe on our own, each and every day, that we are loveable and deserving of love. We have to hold this truth together in community, reminding and being reminded by one another, by the nearness of sacraments like Eucharist and baptism, by the stories of the saints and Jesus himself,.”

Read Sermon »

It’s A Whole Mood

Craig’s eyes were filled with tears, while a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, and then I was swept up in that moment too, feeling all my own feels, in the candlelight and the fragrance of cedar and pine, and the music and the tears. It was, as the kids say, a whole mood! Well, ok, I’m told the kids don’t say that anymore. But, whatever. When I saw my dear colleague weeping and smiling, that was my first reaction, to resonate with it in all its emotional complexity. How could I not.

Read Sermon »

Holy Interruptions

“… The call of God on our lives interrupts our allegiance to the often death dealing, sacrificial systems of the world. God’s call, interrupts the economies that exploit, interrupts the politics that prioritize power over generosity, that prizes our love of guns over the lives of our children, that puts “national interest” over the imperative to welcome strangers and immigrants. The call of the one true God, the God of Abraham and Sarah of Isaac and Rebekah and Leah, of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, is a call away from the all the plans we once had, interrupts the business as usual of the world and calls us into a faith that feeds the hungry, visits and cares for the sick, listens to the story of the lonely and the abandoned, that let’s Christ show up in all the interruptions of the life of ministry and discipleship…”

Read Sermon »

Facing God

“The way to God, is not a way that leads us out of this world. God can be known and experienced, God’s power can be shared and apprehended, God’s face is available to us, right here, and right now. Jesus says, he is the way and the truth and the life, and invites us to know him. So look for him, friends, by loving others, by serving, by seeing and knowing that each face around you is shimmering with the glory and grace of a God who loves you and all of creation with a fierce and unending love. Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have seen the face of God.”

Read Sermon »

A Sermon Honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.

Becoming Beloved Community means all of us, across every line and barrier, white and black and brown, gay, straight, trans, gender queer, non-binary, poor, rich, Muslim, Christian, atheist, and Jew, spiritual or not – all of us get free together or we don’t get free at all. The work of creating beloved communities includes liberation for all people, and, indeed, on this Earth Day Sunday, we are reminded that the “network of mutuality” and “garment of destiny” includes this precious planet, our island home, all creatures and ecosystems, and neighborhoods – the land and the water and the air which sustain life – our liberation is connected to all that is. We cannot get free alone.

Read Sermon »

What Do You See? An Easter Sermon

When you look in the mirror, what do you see? This body we are given, this flesh and blood and a heart that pumps, if our faith is to be believed, this body is made in the very image and likeness of God. When you peer into the mirror, is it the face of God you see blinking back at you?

Read Sermon »

Sermon for Paula Cooey’s Funeral

A sermon for the funeral of Paula Cooey, by the Rev. Jered Weber-JohnsonSt. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church, St. Paul, MN.March 30th, 2023 https://youtube.com/live/Nd6egxtImro A

Read Sermon »

Memorial Sermon for Betty Myers

A sermon by the Rev. Jered Weber-JohnsonMarch 16th, 2023St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church, St. Paul, MN https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NziE6WAZWOY&t=2768s It will come as no surprise to

Read Sermon »

Love For Real

God gave up power, glory, strength, and infinity, and came among us as one known by his suffering, without power, and constrained by the structures of the world. In short, God sacrificed everything because God loves us. Today the invitation is the same and yet ever new. Can we accept that love? Can we believe in it, yield to it, rest in it, be renewed and reborn by it?

Read Sermon »
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Copyright © 2020 St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church

St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church
[email protected]
651.228.1172
60 Kent St N, St. Paul, MN 55102-2232
Map & Directions

Skip to content