Vacation this Sunday and next so I’m not preaching. Off eating gelato with seminary classmates and talking theology with colleagues instead.

What I might have preached:
The dean while I was at seminary made a habit of praying for ‘peace with justice.’ Which I liked because although I was used to praying for peace and justice ‘with’ reminded me that if you want peace it’s actually tangled up with justice, that to really have one you have to sort out the other.
Which is an interesting thing to hold alongside this very tangled up Gospel.

Sermons I like:

Priest Downs, The Divine Household: Jesus, Division, and a Sword that cuts Injustice
“Each of these pieces: about the servants and the sparrows and the hairs and the hell: is about the household. A household kept and built by GOD. A household which embraces equality and rejects hierarchy; embraces public devotion and rejects private belief; embraces the worthless and successful; naming their true worth the same.”

Priest Collins, Stop Helping, Start Serving
“Helping someone avoid the truth of his or her dysfunction is not Christian.
What it is is a denial of the Christ that is in that person. It is a denial of the potential for resurrection that is in that person.”

Bishop Edwards, Ishmael and Willy Loman
“Jesus invites us to let go of what we cling to most tightly,
because those things are our chains.
The more we give away, the less we have,
but the more fully alive we become.
If we give our money, our time, our attention, our labor
for Jesus’ sake, it opens up a place in our souls
where we can breathe.”

Priest Romanik, Narcissism
“Jesus begins by imbuing his followers with power and authority and then proceeds to explain to them in detail that they are not the center of the universe, that life is not all about them.”