Parenting, Am I Right?
If there’s one thing that’s really frustrating about parenting, it’s how painful giving birth can be (I myself had to wake up at like 3am–ouch!). If there are two things that are frustrating, here’s the second: The insights into life…
Suffering and Fate
There’s a phrase that has been rattling around in my head for about a year: He suffered the same fate as us. It has come to shape the way I make decisions, especially difficult ones. Jesus did not save us…
Spiritual Asceticism
“Faith without works is dead.” So says James, bringing a difficult tension into the Christian life. Protestant Christianity, at least, with its emphasis on faith alone, has had a difficult time figuring out what to do with James’s words. I…
Keep the Whole Law
St. Paul wanted to convince the Galatians not to get circumcised, which you would think wouldn’t be that hard to do. Just a simple diagram is all it would take, with big letters at the top: “Really?!?” Controversy over! In…
The Monk’s 12 Step Program
Humility is one of those very difficult virtues to develop. What do we do to become more humble? What actions can we take? We hear more about being humbled–or even humiliated–than about humbling ourselves. My good friend Megan is quite…
Faith and Healing
In Acts 3, Peter and John heal a crippled beggar and later attribute the healing to faith in Jesus’ name. This raises all sorts of questions, especially in our culture this one: How can I get the same thing? How…
Unworthy of a Family
A friend recently told me of a family in Alabama who are trying to adopt a boy with Down syndrome from Russia, but have been so far unsuccessful. It seems they are in a legal battle with the Russian government…
A Wedding Sermon
I was privileged to perform my first wedding ceremony for my very dear friends Patrick and Luz in Los Angeles this past weekend. Below is, for the most part, the homily that I gave. A note about posting a bunch…
Day Old Manna
Here is the sermon I gave for our sunrise Easter service yesterday. Seems weird to be posting a couple of sermons lately, but an Easter reflection really would provide some closure to the posts from Lent. The title of this…
Saturday
[This is a sermon I gave to fellow students while I was in seminary. It is somewhat specific to that audience, but I thought I should maybe just put it out there for whoever to read. It is a reflection…
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