Sermons 2026
Easter 5 May 3, 2026 "What is Your Legacy?"
What is your legacy?
There is something deeply human about wanting our lives to matter — not only in the present moment, but beyond it.
Not in a grand way, but in the quiet hope that something of who we are, and what we love, might endure.
Today’s readings provide a few images or truths that point to our legacies as Christians.
(Homily delivered by Jerry Henry, Managing Partner Faith-Based and Human Services Alexander Haas)
Easter 4, April 26, 2026 “The Shepherd’s Love Welcomes Me”
Over the past months, I have read two short but powerful books by the Irish author Claire Keegan. The books are titled Foster and Small Things Like These. They are both short, beautiful books. They are quiet, introspective, heartwarming, and heartbreaking. They open to us lives foreign to our own, but which we come to appreciate. I have enjoyed them so much that I have read each of them at least three times. Today, I want to focus on Foster.
Easter 3, April 19, 2026 “Thirsting for God”
I would like to begin by reading you a poem by Mary Oliver. It is from her collection of poems simply entitled Thirst. I think it is her best collection of poems because so many of the poems are about faith and her experiences of God. The poem I will read is part of a poem called “Six Recognitions of the Lord.” It is a six-part poem in which Oliver expresses different ways in which she has experienced God. I want to share with you part three.
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Easter 2, April 12, 2026 “The Beauty of Doubt”
A favorite television show of mine, one I have watched repeatedly, is “Rev.” It is a BBC show that started in 2010 and ran for three seasons. The show follows a vicar, Adam Smallbone, who is given a parish in London. The church is a Victorian monstrosity that is in ill repair. The congregation is small and quirky. They undergo many trials, some of which are funny and some of which are not. Toward the end of the third season, Adam’s life is falling apart. His church is being sold, his marriage is in trouble, and he is having doubts about his calling.
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Easter Day, April 5, 2026 "I have seen the Lord"
Easter has become a secular holiday in the way Christmas has. Most of our society celebrates Easter. Baskets filled with chocolate bunnies, marshmallow peeps, jellybeans, and cream eggs shout spring, but resurrection, not so much. Some companies have tried to put the Christ back in Easter by offering chocolate crosses and cross fidget spinners. However, I feel there is something deeply wrong about eating the symbol of our Lord’s torture and death, no matter how delicious the chocolate is. Using the cross to calm my fidgeting fingers also seems wrong. The cross is not a toy.
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Good Friday, Year A, April 3 2026 "Still Bleeding"
This week, I have received email notifications throughout each day recounting the events of Holy Week. The purpose is to make the events of the Passion feel immediate. We can float through Holy Week preoccupied by work, problems, the news, tiny distractions, or monumental ones. Then, as if by surprise, it is Good Friday.
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Maundy Thursday, April 2, 2026
Tonight, we mark Maundy Thursday. Tonight is also the second night of Passover for our Jewish friends. During the season of Passover, families and friends have a traditional meal called the Seder. The foods of the Seder meal are symbolic of the foods the Jews ate when they escaped from slavery in Egypt. Foods that did not need lots of preparation, such as unleavened bread. And foods that remind them of slavery, such as bitter herbs. Also, during this meal, there are traditional readings and a series of four questions that a child asks of the adults.
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Lent 6, March 29, 2026 “Passionate and Holy”
Every year, I am struck by the jarring juxtaposition of the two messages we receive in the readings on this Sunday. The Church calls today Passion Sunday [colon]: Palm Sunday. Yet we start today’s worship with Palm Sunday, so why does it not get top billing? Maybe it would be better if this Sunday was called Passion Week Sunday or the Sunday of Passion Week. Then I would be more comfortable with Palm Sunday coming after the colon.
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Lent 5, March 22, 2026 “An Old Well”
This fifth Sunday in Lent, we have readings that speak of despair, despair that leads to hope. Ezekiel wonders what he is to do with a valley of dry bones. Mary and Martha wonder how they will go on without their brother. The psalmist pleads, wonders, and waits. We may feel profound resonance with these readings as we wonder how we are to live in a world where war and unrest are everywhere.
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Lent 4, March 15 2026, "Sight Unseen"
How many of you have heard of the concept of cause and effect? I would expect most of you. According to Robert Baloh, professor of neurology and head and neck surgery at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, it is “Human nature is to look for cause and effect.” We believe that there are direct relationships between actions or events and their consequences. Professor Baloh goes on to say, “I see this daily when I see patients. They’re all sure something they ate or something they did caused their problem and their symptoms.”
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Lent 2, March 8, 2026 “Faith for the Journey”
There is a saying that no question is a dumb question. All questions are valid. Some say you may be asking a question that others need the answer to, but they are afraid to ask or do not know how to ask. However, as many of us have experienced, not all people adhere to that maxim. If you ask a question that others find dense, they may make fun of you. If a question doubts someone’s authority, they may seek to humiliate you. If they just don’t want to answer the question they may ignore you. These responses can leave us no better informed, and a little worse for the wear.
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Lent 1, February 22, 2026 “Temptation”
I bet that we all know today’s gospel story. We have heard it so often that some of us might be able to recite it. Jesus, having been baptized, is driven by the Holy Spirit into the Judean desert or wilderness. There he spends “forty days and forty nights” fasting and praying. At the end of the forty days, the Devil comes to tempt him with food, notoriety, and power. Jesus, being God’s anointed, does not give in. The Devil disappears, and Angels arrive to take care of Jesus, further affirming for us that he is God’s son.
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The Last Sunday After the Epithany, February 15, 2026 "Clouds"
Fogbanks and clouds have a way about them. They take away our sight and our sense of what surrounds us. Even the dark of night lets some light in. Fog and cloud can obscure everything until it is too late. That is one reason that it frightens us.
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Epithany 5, Februyary 8, 2026 "Good News"
Often, when I get stuck thinking about the readings for a Sunday and how to communicate and illuminate them, I go back to the old saw which asks, “What is the Good News in this?” Preachers are called to offer Good News just as Jesus did. Remember in Luke, Jesus is given the scroll of the book of Isaiah to read in the synagogue on the Sabbath. He opens the scroll and reads, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,/ because he has anointed me/ to bring good news to the poor./ He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives/ and recovery of sight to the blind,/ to set free those who are oppressed, /to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
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Epithany 4, February 1, 2026 “Guilt or Love?”
What is it about the Ten Commandments that makes certain Christians so focused on them? Some Christians are so fixated on the Ten Commandments that they must have them posted in courthouses, schools, town squares, and other public places. Of all the lists of religious laws in the Judeo-Christian scriptures, there is something about the Ten Commandments for some people that makes them the summation of faith, and particularly Christian faith.
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Epithany 3, January 25, 2026 "Jesus Calls"
The most memorable part of today’s gospel reading is Jesus’ calling of the disciples. What has always struck me about this call narrative is the response of the fisherman brothers—Simon and Andrew, James and John. When addressed by Jesus, they drop what they are doing and follow immediately. Imagine a call to a new life so powerful that you would leave your family, community, and job to follow a guy you have never met. Imagine being a fisherman who was being called to “fish for people.” They might have wondered what it meant to fish for people, but they followed because the power and charisma of Jesus was irresistible.
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Epithany 2 January 18, 2026 “The Point of Leadership”
Music has always been an important part of my life. When I was a little kid, my parents taught me how to use the cabinet record player. It was not a stereo console with two speakers and storage for your LPs that came along later. This was a cabinet about two feet wide and three or four feet tall. The speaker was in the lower part, and the turntable was in the top. Rather than plopping me in front of the TV, my mom would set me on a kitchen stool that would get me to just the right height. There I would sit putting forty-fives on the spindle and playing pop songs.
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Epithany 1 January 11, 2026 “Immersed in the Faith”
Baptism is an important rite of the church. Whether you have been baptized or not, what does baptism mean to you? As I was reading this week, I learned that in some evangelical traditions, baptism is a sign of stepping out of the world. Baptism is a denial of your former life and a denial of the world. I wondered about this, and I think I understand how that fits in with the way some religious people think.
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Christmas 2 January 4, 2026 “The Light of Christ”
The question arises, “Why was the Holy Family in Egypt to begin with?” According to the Gospel of Matthew, and only the Gospel of Matthew, the Holy Family was escaping persecution by King Herod. As Matthew tells it when the Magi were following the star to Bethlehem to see the child whose predictions would be the King of the Jews, they stopped in Jerusalem. There, they met King Herod. They told him of their prophesies. Herod got worried. Was this child king going to grow up to lead a rebellion against him and his family? There was only one way to prevent that: he would kill the child.
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