healing – Storied Grace

What are you carrying?

A sermon for Education Sunday
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 15
August 24, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: Isaiah 58:9b-14 ; Psalm 103:1-8 ; Hebrews 12:18-29 ; Luke 13:10-17

My mother was worried I would end up hunched over. I don’t remember how old I was, but maybe it was the start of junior high. My backpack was heavy with books, and at that time it was popular to just use a single strap instead of both straps of the backpack. My mother was worried that the heavy pack would hurt my back. She worried it would bend my back, induce scoliosis, like the woman in today’s gospel. She insisted I use both straps. And why, she wondered, was the school requiring us to carry so many heavy books? More on backpacks in a moment.

And they were afraid

A sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 7
June 22, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: Luke 8:26-39

There’s some part of us that likes to be scared. I’m not talking about the innocent Halloween type of scared. I’m talking about something darker, something buried deep down in secret places. The type of darkness that would drive people to flock to roadside shows to see people trapped in cages, dressed in tatters–the outcasts of society, the sick, the scary ones. Deep down, in some dark place, we like to be scared.

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.