lent – Storied Grace

On the Outside

A sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 15, 2026, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: 1 Samuel 16:1-13; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41; Psalm 23

Jesus finds him on the outside. His blindness has kept him at the margins, ignored, taken for granted. Jesus finds him, rubs mud on his eyes, tells him to wash, a foreshadowing of baptism and being sent out into the world. Jesus finds him on the outside. The healing has caused a controversy and the man is driven out of the synagogue, out of society, out of the company of respectable insiders. Jesus finds him on the outside. “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The outside is not where you want to be, but that’s where Jesus finds the man–and you.

Is There a Third Verse?

A Sermon for the Lent Lunch Series
Monday, March 9, 2026, at First United Methodist Church, Hot Springs, AR

Reading: Psalm 95

“I don’t like that second verse.” My friend Bill told me that during Morning Prayer. It was just him and me. He interrupted the service to make sure I knew that he did not like the second verse. What he meant by that was the second part of today’s psalm, verses 8-11, about hardening our hearts. Maybe we didn’t like it either. It ends with that foreboding message: “Therefore I swore in my anger that they should not enter my rest.” Bill said, “I don’t like that second verse. Is there a third verse?”

Save Us from the Time of Trial

A sermon for the First Sunday in Lent
February 22, 2026, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs

Readings: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11; Psalm 32

Every year on the first Sunday in Lent, our gospel passage is the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Immediately following his baptism, Matthew tells us that the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. But the ole tempter takes his time. Jesus has fasted for 40 days and 40 nights, and he is famished. There is some truth to those old Snickers commercials: you’re not you when you’re hungry. Jesus is at his weakest, most vulnerable, and that is when the devil shows up.

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.”