Storied Grace

The Fox’s Tab

A sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent
March 16, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

I should have checked the door. I knew I should have. I was a graduate student in Fayetteville, and I was house sitting for a friend of mine. She had a small farm with about 25 chickens. Every morning I opened the chicken house so they could run free. Every evening I shut the door to the chicken house to keep them safe through the night. I should have checked the door. I had agreed to house sit, but I had to go out of town the night before they returned. No problem; the neighbor would watch everything when I left. When I returned, my friend gave me a gift for watching the house. I asked about the chickens. She got a look on her face. “They’re gone, Mark.” The door hadn’t been shut that night I left. A family of foxes had come in. All 25 chickens were gone. I felt terrible. I knew I should have checked that door before leaving town that night. I just had this feeling. I wanted to help–let me contribute to help you all get more chickens. “Put it on my tab,” I said. “Put it on my tab.”

Called into the Wilderness

A sermon for the First Sunday in Lent
March 9, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13

Why would you want to go into the wilderness, into the desert? Before I went to seminary, I was the children and youth minister at St. Thomas’ in Springdale. Part of my job was to teach Sunday school. Whenever I taught a Bible story that took place in the desert, like our gospel today, I would get a sandbox, about 2 foot by 4 foot. The curriculum we used would give me a sort of script. It would sound something like this: “The desert is a big place, and we have a small piece of it here today. The desert is a strange and wild place. At night it gets very cold. During the day it gets very hot. There are wild animals, and not very much food or water. The desert is not a place you want to go to alone.”

Breaking through Denial

A sermon for Ash Wednesday
March 5, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, Arkansas

Readings: 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10

In parish halls and church basements, in classrooms and parlors across the country, week after week after week, something amazing happens. A group of people gathers to confess shortcomings and failures; they ask for support from one another; they love each other through their triumphs and their slip-ups; they recommit themselves to following a new way of life. I wish I could say this happened in the Sunday liturgy. Sometimes it does. I think it happens often on a Sunday here. But far too often we are too proud, too self-obsessed, or maybe too fearful to admit just what we are. We are too often more concerned with convincing others (and ourselves) that we have it all together instead of confessing that we’re sinners. No, I’m talking about groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Food Addicts Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Sex Addicts Anonymous, Pills Anonymous. Folks come to these groups because they are ready for a change and they need help. They come to confess their sins. They come, not because they have everything figured out, but precisely because they don’t.

Who Are You?

A sermon for Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras to celebrate retiring the church debt
March 4, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, Arkansas

Readings: John 1:19-28

Who are you? This is the question for John the Baptist today. Who are you? You’re preaching some crazy stuff. Who are you? You’re agitating the comfortable and comforting the agitated. Who are you? John is clear about who he is and about who he is not. He is not the Messiah. He is not the Savior. He is not God in the flesh. But he is the one who has been sent to proclaim his coming, to get the road readied, to command our attention.

Prayerful Transfiguration

A sermon for the Last Sunday after Epiphany
March 2, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, Arkansas

Readings: Luke 9:28-43a

Luke’s a little different compared to Matthew and Mark. John’s the big outlier, of course–the most different of all the gospels. But among Matthew, Mark, and Luke, together called the synoptic gospels, Luke’s a little different. Luke gives us stories the others don’t have. It’s because of Luke that we have the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. Could you imagine being a Christian without those? Luke focuses on children and women more. It is Luke, and Luke alone, that gives us the story of Mary’s visit by the angel Gabriel, of Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth where she sings her song. Could you imagine being a Christian without that? Luke also has a particular focus on the Resurrection. Mark leaves us at the empty tomb; Matthew takes us to a mountain for the Great Commission. But Luke… Luke gives us the road to Emmaus, the visit in the room, the promise of the Holy Spirit. Could you imagine being a Christian without that? Luke goes on to give us the book of Acts. Acts is how the church lived all of this out: how we put into practice the Good Samaritan and Prodigal Son; how we say yes to God along with Mary; how we look for the resurrected Christ to visit us on the road and in the assembly; how we wait expectantly for the Holy Spirit day by day. That’s all Luke. And that brings us to today, the last Sunday after the Epiphany where we always read the story of the Transfiguration. It’s recorded in Matthew and Mark, too, but today we read from Luke, and yes, there are some small differences. Some important small differences.

The Affirming Flame

A sermon preached for the Last Sunday after Epiphany
February 22, 2022, St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Stuttgart, Arkansas

This sermon was preached three years ago immediately after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While it is not what I will preach this Sunday, it remains timely.

***

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Those words were written by W. H. Auden, a 20th century poet who helped translate the psalms in our own Book of Common Prayer. They are an excerpt from a poem entitled September 1, 1939. September 1, 1939: the day Germany invaded Poland, kicking off the bloody second world war. In the first stanza of the poem, Auden writes,

Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

In Memoriam: Carol Caldwell Hollingshead

A sermon for the funeral of Carol Hollingshead
February 22, 2025

Readings: John 14:1-6

Today we gather to give thanks to God for a wonderful lady, a faithful woman who sat just over there. We gather to pray in this church that she loved and that she worked for and supported. We gather to lift up her family, friends, and all who mourn. And we gather because we have a sure and certain hope that nothing, not even death, will separate Carol or any of us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Because Carol was baptized into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, she is with Christ even now, held in his arms of mercy, peace, and love. Death is not strong enough to take that away; God can never lie.

Trees by the Water

A sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
February 16, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: Jeremiah 17:5-10; Psalm 1

Over and over, Holy Scripture compares us to trees. I know you’re flattered. We heard two such references today. In our reading from Jeremiah, the person who trusts in God is like a tree by streams of water. So, too, in the psalm. The righteous person, the psalmist says, is like that tree, connected to live-giving waters, that bears fruit and with leaves that do not wither. Both readings present us with another option, though. In each, the person who does not trust in God but tries to save themselves, the person who seeks to do evil, the person who takes the world into their hands–that person is like a dried-out shrub, like chaff which the wind blows away.

Never Buy a Boat

A sermon for the 5th Sunday after Epiphany
February 9, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: Luke 5:1-11

“Never get a truck because people will never stop asking to borrow it.” I got that advice from a good friend in Sewanee. We were sitting in his living room, and he was ribbing me about my car. “You need a new car,” he had said. At that time I was driving the best my high school wages could buy 15 years before: A Mazda Protege with a salvaged title. Over the years the A/C had gone out, the paint was rusting off, and the car squealed loud enough to wake the dead. Perhaps worst of all, it had a faulty seatbelt in the front passenger seat. Molly often got stuck in that seatbelt and had to figure out a way to slither out, once in a full-length evening gown and high heels. “Yes, you need a new car, Mark,” my friend said. “But never get a truck because people will never stop asking to borrow it.” If we asked Simon Peter today, he might tell us something similar: “Never buy a boat, because people will never stop asking you if they can use it.”

Tracing Glory

A sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany
January 26, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Luke 4:14-30

“In Epiphany we trace all the glory of his grace.” Those words belong to a hymn in our previous hymnal, the Hymnal 1940. The hymn explains the seasons of the church year. It’s especially appropriate for children, and it’s also a favorite of Kathy Randel’s, our outreach coordinator, who has made sure I know it. And, to the hymn’s credit, it explains exactly what we are doing this Epiphany season. We are recounting how the glory of God is revealed through Christ: as the magi follow a star and visit a child; as Jesus is baptized and the Father speaks; as Jesus turns water into wine at a wedding; and eventually, as Jesus is transfigured in dazzling white on a mountaintop.