wilderness – Storied Grace

When We Cannot See the Way

A sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent
March 1, 2026, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: Genesis 12:1-4a; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17; Psalm 121

My friend called me one day and said, “I just don’t know how this ends.” He was, you might say, in distress. The challenges of family life were becoming overwhelming. The d-word had been spoken: divorce. He was straining to see into the darkness, around the corner. He told me, “Sometimes I think I see light at the end of the tunnel, but then I realize it’s the light of an oncoming train.” He talked. I mostly listened and asked questions. We prayed. At the end of our time together, I offered him some advice I had once received: In times like this, when we don’t know how things will end and we feel out of control, faithfulness looks like putting one foot in front of the other and just trusting in Jesus come what may. Sometimes that is all we can do.

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.”