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He Remembers Us

A sermon for Maundy Thursday
April 17, 2025 at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31b-35

I visited Mary in her home. It was a room in a nursing care facility; far from the best one in town. Just a single room. She kept the place dark. It was like going into a tomb. Mary was 97 years old and had lived in that dark room for going on 20 years. She had no family, no friends, she said. She had called because she was Episcopalian once, when she was a child. She had been baptized in an Episcopal church, and her aunt took her to Sunday school sometimes. Not often, it didn’t sound like. She didn’t like the nursing home chaplain who had come by, so she called me. She called and asked me to step into her darkness, into this living tomb at the end of the hall. I stayed for an hour or so, and she told me her story. I will share her story with you over the next three days.

Jesus, Remember Us

A sermon for the Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
April 13, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs AR

Readings: Luke 22:14-23:56

He must be the patron saint of deathbed conversions, of last minute pleas when your back is up against the wall, of foxhole prayers and “Hail, Mary” long shots. He must be, this thief on the cross beside Jesus. At the last minute, just before the end, he makes a request. It sounds like a humble request. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” The way Luke tells it today, the conversation is serene, almost peaceful at the end, akin to a last request before the hood goes on the head. I think it must have been less so, more of a conversation of groans, sighs, and screams than well strung together words. The thief screams out, pain coursing through his body, regret coursing through his mind, anxiety coursing through his soul: Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

In Memoriam: Gary Morrison

A sermon for the funeral of Gary Morrison
April 5, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: Isaiah 25:6-9; Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17; John 11:21-27

There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.

Today we gather to give thanks to God for our friend Gary. We gather in this church he loved so much to remember him, his quiet and kind faith, his perseverance in the face of adversity. We gather to support his family and friends and those who mourn. But most of all, we gather because St. Paul tells us that nothing in this world or in the world to come will ever be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Because Gary was baptized into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, he belongs to Christ forever. Nothing can take that away.

Sorry Not Sorry

A sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 30, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: II Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

“But he’s not sorry!” I was a counselor at Choir Camp, and I was in charge of the boys in 2nd-4th grade. Sometimes they fight. (Before I forget: Send your kids and grandkids to choir camp this summer. It’s a ministry sponsored by St. Luke’s and led by our own organist Charlie Rigsby.) Anyway, sometimes the boys fight, and I told the offending boy to apologize or he couldn’t go to the pool. I don’t remember any details. But I remember the other boys in the group spoke up. They weren’t involved in the dispute at all, but they spoke up to make sure I knew that the offender wasn’t actually sorry. He had even said it under his breath, they said. After the offender had apologized on command, under his breath, he had said, “sorry, not sorry.” So the other boys, indignant, offended at the injustice, had spoken up: “But he’s not sorry!” they had said. “He’s not sorry, so he shouldn’t get to go to the pool! It’s not right!” If you’ve worked with children, you’ve encountered this exact situation. If you work with adults, you have encountered it there, too. The offending boy had said, “sorry, not sorry,” and now Counselor Mark had to figure out what to do because the boys had all agreed, in council no less, that the apology did not count unless the offender meant what he said, and he shouldn’t get to go to the pool.

I Am the Bread of Life

A sermon for the Hot Springs Lent Lunch Series
March 17, 2025, at First United Methodist Church, Hot Springs, AR

Reading: John 6:22-35

“Can I get some bread over here?!” The little boy was with his mother at Olive Garden. “Can I get some bread?” The boy could not have been older than 7 or 8–old enough to know better, if you had asked me. He had already eaten, and his mother was waiting for the check. She kept telling him to be quiet because he had already eaten; he kept on. “Can I get some bread?” What came next really put me over; he started asking other customers if he could have a piece of their bread. “Can I have a piece of your bread?” The boy finally asked me. I was sitting there with a priest friend. We were enjoying our bread and had every intention of eating every bit of it ourselves. But we were in our priest collars, and it was Lent, and other people were looking, and wasn’t it the right thing to be charitable? My friend divided his breadstick in half and gave it to the boy. “Here, kid,” he said. “Now go sit down and give your mother a break.”

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.

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.