Fooling With Scripture

Sermon preached (remotely) for First Christian Church of Fayetteville, NC, on Pentecost Sunday 2020. While the story of Pentecost is recorded in Acts 2, this sermon focuses on a passaged from the 12th chapter of Paul's first letter to the church in Corinth about the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

An examen prayer -- a way of reviewing your day or, in this case, your semester, with God -- which I recorded for my Barton College community at the end of the 2020 Spring semester. Two minute explanation and about 9 minute guided prayer.

A guided body scan for the Barton College Community during finals week -- and anyone else for whom it may be meaningful.

**If you or someone you know is in a crisis, help is available. You can call 1-800-273-TALK, or go to suicidepreventionlifeline.org/chat -- and more resources are available on my website at christonthepsychward.com/resources** This morning, I preached at First Baptist Church in Wilson, NC. My texts were 1 King 19:1-15 and Luke 8:26-39. I woke up this morning and realized the sermon I'd written wasn't what I needed to say. So I ditched it, and preached this instead -- on the tough topics of suicide, self-harm, and being the kind of church that's safe for people to share tough stuff in.

A sermon preached for St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in Wilson, NC, on a snowy 2nd Sunday of Advent. The texts for this Sunday are Baruch 5:1-9 • Philippians 1:3-11 • Luke 3:1-6. My thanks to the Rev. Marty Stebbins for the invitation and the 30 or so folks who braved the snow for this morning's services!

I was invited to preach at First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Fayetteville on Sunday, November 4, which was All Saints' Sunday as well as the Sunday before the 2018 midterm elections. My sermon was called "Showing Up," and was based on Exodus 1:8-22 and Luke 18:1-8. I was nervous to preach this sermon in this politically charged time. But this has been a year, and a week, of stepping outside of some of my comfort zones, and this felt like an important time to take a risk. I snapped the cover photo, of a rabbi speaking in front of the Department of Justice building in Washington, DC, during a Poor People's Campaign rally this past summer.

This is a talk I was invited to share at the 2018 Summer Institute on Theology and Disability in Raleigh, NC. I've only included my talk -- this was followed by a rich conversation, but I didn't have a good way to record the whole thing and also wanted people to be able to speak without worrying about being recorded.

This is a sermon I preached on January 7th, the 1st Sunday after Epiphany, at Cleveland Park Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, DC. The scripture passages were Genesis 1:1-4 and Mark 1:1-11.

This is a sermon I preached in the chapel at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, on December 24, 2017. The texts are Isaiah 9:2-7; Hebrews 1:1-4; and Luke 1:26-38. The service ended with the lighting of the Christ candle and the reading of the Nativity story from Luke's gospel. The image is by Palestinian artist Zaki Baboun. Please pray for all those at the Clinical Center during this season, who are courageously volunteering their very bodies in the search for new cures for some of the world's most difficult-to-treat medical conditions.

I was honored to be invited to preach at Dumbarton United Methodist Church here in Georgetown for the 1st Sunday of Advent. This Advent season, Dumbarton's theme is "The Journey to Bethlehem." Each Sunday, they are reflecting on different characters we encounter as we prepare for the coming of the Christ. This first Sunday was focused on Elizabeth and Zechariah. Having some familiarity with the story, and given all that is going on in our national news at this moment, a sermon title immediately popped into my head: “Maybe Men Should Just Shut Up?” And while eventually I could not reconcile the irony of me, a cis white man, delivering a sermon with that title, I did think the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah affords us an opportunity to reflect on speech and silence. On the times when we are called to speak up, and the times we are called to step back. And on the spiritual discernment required to know which is which.