“The first we can learn from Daniel is to pray big prayers. Daniel prayed for an extraordinary thing—to be able to know and interpret a king’s dream with the consequence of failure being death. When the last time you prayed a big, bold prayer? Not the kind of, “God, please help me find a parking spot!” kind of prayer. A prayer that takes real faith to pray because what if God doesn’t answer in the way we want God to? A kind of prayer that asks, in hope, but what if God does?”

Preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church on November 22, 2020.

“You have only one wild and precious life to lead. You have only this time in history. No one knows how many days on Earth we get to live. No one knows how long it will be until that day when, as Revelation says, God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. If you knew that today was your All Saints Day, how would you want to spend the next year? Who would you forgive? Who would you tell truth to? Whose voices would you listen to? What leaders would you follow? How would you spend your time?”

Preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church on November 1, 2020.

“In 2020, I wonder if Paul would write, “though we see through a screen dimly.” The kind of seeing where you see all the right parts, but it is not quite the real thing. Just like how for months, we have seen church only through a screen.”

Preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church on September 27, 2020.

“Jonah is so deep in his dungeon of resentment that he cannot see all the good that has just happened. He misses out on enjoying what God can do. He misses the opportunity partner with the newly repentant Ninevites in creating a more just and beautiful world.”

Preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church on September 20, 2020.

“This chapter is bleak. We are in the ugly middle of Joseph’s story. The lectionary leaves us with the great-grandson of Abraham betrayed and enslaved. It is as dark as the pit he is thrown into. Genesis 37 says nothing of God’s sovereignty or hope for Joseph’s future. Much later, Joseph will tell his brothers, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.” But he does not say that today. Today, we have no evidence that God will use any of this for good. Today, we have only the pit, only the horrific betrayal of Joseph’s own family, only his sale into bondage and slavery.”

Preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church on August 9 , 2020.

“I believe this country is in the midst of a Kairos moment right now. In the past week, we have seen peaceful protests in over 500 cities in every state in America and across the globe. Millions and millions of people are uniting on a scale many generations have not seen before to denounce the evils of racism and demand a new, just system. It is a reckoning about what public safety and criminal justice mean and if our current system is able to achieve those ends. It is a moment in history of mass solidarity and cooperation. ”

Preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church on June 7, 2020.

“I believe this is what God is saying to us this morning—there is no situation or person that is beyond God’s reach. There is no one, no place, no time outside of God’s love.”

Preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church on May 17, 2020.

“So what does this story mean? It means that resurrection is not the “happy ending” of the story. Resurrection is the joyful middle of a long, hard story. This story means that the experience of death changes us permanently. ”

Preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church on April 19, 2020.

“When meditating on Psalm 23 this week, I was drawn immediately to the line, “for you are with me.” In a new season of “social distancing” and isolation, there is nothing I have needed more than to know that God is with me.”

Preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church on March 22, 2020.

“These are temptations straight from the mouth of Satan, but they’re temptations that we see and experience today, in our day-to-day lives. “

A dialogue sermon written and preached with Rev. Alexandra Mauney at Southminster Presbyterian Church for the First Sunday of Lent on March 1, 2020.

“Ashes to Ashes. Dust to dust. It’s a refrain we repeat every year at the beginning of Lent and this year, I’m struck by how much is contained in those little letters—“to.” Ashes to Ashes. Dust to Dust. All that we know, and love, and experience is merely in between our beginning and ending as dust. “

Preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church on February 26, 2020.

“Baptism. Discipline. Ministry. That is the path of Jesus and it is the path we as Christians must follow. Our stories, like his, begin with our baptism into the body of Christ.”

Preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church on January 12, 2020.