preaching – Page 3 – Storied Grace

The Resurrection of the Body

A sermon for Easter Sunday
April 20, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: 1 Corinthians 15:19-26, John 20:1-18

“We believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” Like centuries of Christians before us, we confess those words week after week. We will say them in just a moment. We will say that we believe in resurrection–a physical and bodily resurrection. We don’t just believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We believe that we will be physically resurrected on the Last Day, too. That’s what we confess week after week.

Can These Bones Live?

A sermon for the Great Vigil of Easter
April 19, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: Ezekiel 37:1-14; Luke 24:1-12

“Mortal, can these bones live?” We heard that reading from Ezekiel a few moments ago. The Spirit of God whisks the prophet away to a desert graveyard, the scene of an old, forgotten battle, a place of death. Bones–dry bones–are all around. Life is nowhere to be found. And God asks: “Mortal, can these bones live?” I felt like I heard that question as I was leaving a nursing home room–Mary’s room–at the end of a dark hallway. Our hour pastoral visit had come to a close; Communion had been shared; she had bared her soul to me. As I walked away from that tomb of a room and to my car, I heard the old question: “Mortal, can these bones live?” The only answer I had was the same as Ezekiel’s: “O Lord GOD, you know.”

The Cross in a Dark Room

A sermon for Good Friday
April 18, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: Isaiah 52:13-53:12, Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9, John 18:1-19:42

Mary’s room was dark, like a tomb, there at the end of the nursing home hallway. At 97, it had been her home for 20 years. She had called for Communion and a pastoral visit because she was Episcopalian when she was a child and she always liked Episcopal priests. Mary’s room wasn’t only dark because she kept the lights off and curtains drawn, closed off to the world. It was also dark because she was lonely, desperately lonely; she was depressed, terribly depressed. At the end of her life, she was looking back and didn’t know what it was for. She carried regret. She carried hatred and anger. She carried shame.