Voicing The Truth in a Truthless Era Reflections on Moral Courage and Identity Amid Civil Unrest Opening I always wondered what I would do during civil unrest like we have seen frequently in the United States and the Globe over the last 125 years. I spent my formative years in college studying the likes of Mahatmas Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Thich Nhat Hahn and Jesus. Eventually I would stumble into John Wesley, and he taught me a few... Read more
Counting the Cost: True Discipleship and the Challenge of Grace Sermon on Luke 14:25-33 Inspired by Bonhoeffer’s “The Cost of Discipleship” Introduction To openly be a Christian in first century Palestine, following Jesus’ death could mean a death sentence and one that was not taken lightly. Jesus’ followers by all accounts prior to the church councils did not see the same divinity in him that the later church fathers did. Jesus was a Jewish male who took his Judaism seriously,... Read more
Introduction I had a chuckle in church yesterday as we were saying our prayers, and we all exclaimed “Thanks Be to God!”. My juvenile 14-year-old mind immediately went to the thought that God’s name was Speedy. Giggling to myself, my 15-year-old looked at me in the way that 15-year-old look at their almost 50-year-old dad when you are supposed to be in church and serious and asked what I was laughing at. I told her the joke, she just rolled... Read more
A Reflection Deuteronomy 30:15-20 Introduction Change is inevitable. In Buddhism, they call it impermanence, the Stoics talk a lot about it as well. We are born, we learn to walk, we go to school, we go to work, we get married, have kids, retire and then die. Life is full of changes. This week, we are still in the same line of Lectionary texts that I preached last time I was with you. In my last message to you,... Read more
Introduction In this post for this week, I want to address the modern attack on empathy. Here, I want to explore how we can balance toughness and tenderness in a changing society. We are at a crossroads in America where being a nice guy and a good husband is coopted by toxic Christian values that strips away the rights and freedoms of everyone in his family who is not male. After years working in therapy and therapists across the nation... Read more
God’s Profound Care – Known, Protected, and Provided For Text: Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6, 9, 14-18; Matthew 6:25-34 Lectionary text for Proper 16, Season after Pentecost Sermon for Miller’s Station United Methodist Church 8/24/25 Introduction: The Universal Longings When we think about who God is and how God operates our lives, I want to invite you to consider God as intimately involved in our lives – God knows us, protects us, and provides for us, inviting us into a... Read more
We live in a period of time of great polarity. In America anyway, you are either left or right and both point to each other as wrong. The reality, they are part of the same bird. Instances of extreme human suffering—such as malnutrition, urban destruction, and concentration camps—are widely reported in contemporary media. Public discourse has increasingly referenced concepts like “toxic empathy,” suggesting a need to examine our collective capacity for compassion. In response to these challenging circumstances, it is... Read more
Introduction Imagine this, you are running an ultramarathon (a marathon that is any distance over a standard 26.2 mile marathon. I mostly ran 50k’s, though I did some 50 milers and one 100k), and you hit the dreaded wall. There are a lot of physiological reasons why we hit the wall and lots of training that goes into getting ready for it. For me, I would become massively uncomfortable for a few miles around mile 15-16. For inexperienced runners, if... Read more
I heard an interesting notion last week in my studies, how to read the book of Revelation as a dissident follower of Jesus. In my preaching, I rarely preached on the book of Revelation, now looking back, I really did not have much experience in the book. The Catholic tradition I grew up with did not spend a lot of time there as my Protestant friends did. Because of this, I was not seeped in the Apocalyptic language that drapes... Read more
This last weekend, my wife and I got away to celebrate our upcoming 25th anniversary in October. While trying to get our heads around the notion that we have been married 25 years and been together 28, we took time to walk in the woods in the place where we started our adventure following our marriage 25 years ago, The Adirondacks State Park system in New York. We stayed at the now closed Wilderness Lodge in Wilmington, NY, home of... Read more
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