The Parish Church of Connersville, Indiana

Sermons

How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things! But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:14-17).

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The Sunday Next Before Easter 2024

If you hear my voice, and the voice of God reigns in your heart, then you are the people born of blood and iron nails, the people made from the sacrificial love which bore the weight of sin and death that humanity might rise from the ashes of despair into the dawning light of eternity. We will spend this holy week remembering that glorious day of days because we must remember we are not Judas; we must drown out the black voices in our world trying to convince us to die in despair and misery so they can feed off our time and treasure and broken hearts. Roar back at them, ‘My seed shall serve him, and they shall be counted unto the Lord for a generation; I shall serve Him, and death will be my defeated foe.


Sermon Date: March 24, 2024

Passage: Matthew 27

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The Fifth Sunday in Lent 2024

If salvation, if life beyond the few years we spend on this fallen planet is a matter of our common sense or collective wisdom, then our race is as doomed as these confused and angry men. St. John, however, has already told us how the children of God are born, ‘But to all who did receive [Jesus], who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God’ (St. John 1:12-13). Every plank upon which the self-righteous, Christ denying men of today’s reading stand—whether it be their ethnic lineage or assumed cultural superiority or adherence to the law or allegiance to their way of life—all of these tokens of false hope are ripped away from them by the God/Man’s revelation that He alone is the cure for death. Truly, all our false hopes become meaningless when the Word of God made flesh proclaims Himself as the perfect liberation from the great plague of human existence, from the death which robs all of us of our humanity.


Sermon Date: March 17, 2024

Passage: St. John 8

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The Fourth Sunday in Lent 2024

The first step to salvation, the first step to being among the true sons of promise is to know we are all barren, but blessedly, God gives life to the barren. God looked upon the barren, childless Sarah: guilty of unbelief, pride, jealousy, and attempted murder; He looked upon her, and He united her to the Trinity’s world saving mission by giving her the son of promise. He gave her a life she didn’t deserve because God keeps His promises. The salvation of the world took its first step forward through a tiny heartbeat inside the womb of an old woman given up for dead. That heartbeat would grow up to be the man Isaac and from him would come generations of men and women, each in their own way a living testimony to the throbbing, human need for salvation. Until another woman, clothed in her virginity, was blessed with the new life which would take away all barrenness—the Son of Promise who came to reverse the fall of man, to restore the garden of creation, to create new life in us where men see only death. It is Jesus Christ’s resurrected glory which changed Paul from persecutor to martyr, and it is Christ’s resurrected glory which should lead all of us barren, unfruitful, human deserts to join in with prophets and apostles, saying, “Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband” (Galatians 4:27). God’s grace is for the barren, and so the barren can now rejoice. We can rejoice instead of worrying, we can rejoice instead of complicating our lives with all the fruitless pursuits of our neighbors, we can rejoice and know that Christ has promised life to those who believe; He has promised everything to those who are free. By God’s grace, we are the sons and daughters of promise, and by God’s grace we are free.


Sermon Date: March 10, 2024

Passage: Galatians 3

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The Third Sunday in Lent 2024

In the end, it all comes down to what we love. If we love God more than sex or fear or money or our things, then we will act in a way which reveals our love. If I love God more than my money, giving alms for the poor will not be a burden but an act of love. If I love God more than my favorite distraction, a daily hour spent praying and fortifying my soul in His Word will not be a burden but an act of love. If I love God more than myself, I will trust in Him rather than even my most cherished personal beliefs. To follow St. Paul’s apostolic command to be the light of this dark world is to live a life that is not our own. It is to live in the light which illuminates all darkness, the righteousness which brings good even out of evil. It is to live in the love which pillages the spoils of Satan and carries us home in His arms.


Sermon Date: March 3, 2024

Passage: St. Luke 11

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The Second Sunday in Lent 2024

Her reply to Jesus should be familiar to us all, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’  In the ancient world, calling oneself a dog was not flattering or cute. This phrase is one of humility and abasement, and as she kneels before the God who has humbled and abased Himself by becoming one of us, whose future holds the humiliation of the cross, our Lord recognizes one of His own. He sees in her reply the faith which can only come from the Holy Ghost. A faith Jesus describes as a ‘mega’ faith. And so, our Lord gives her the scraps from His table; He heals her daughter. And mind you, these are scraps, for just as the glorious medicine of immortality we will experience at each Lord’s Supper is only a foretaste of the endless wedding feast to come, so too is this miraculous healing merely a paltry morsel compared to the endless restoration and reconciliation of the new life to come. The healing Jesus provides for this faithful woman points to a future in which Gentiles from every tribe will be welcomed into the people of God to receive a permanent healing.  Jesus recognizes, just as He did with the centurion, that this woman is a harbinger of that future glory.


Sermon Date: February 25, 2024

Passage: St. Matthew 18

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The First Sunday in Lent 2024

We see in the seeming weakness of Christ a strength which confounds us, a strength which cares nothing about itself, a strength which can only be showed by God stripped of His rightful glory, standing before His first rebellious creature. This strength, of course, appears to be madness to the world, but that is because the world has placed its faith in the transitory dreams of dying men. Christ does not have this deficiency; Christ has nothing in the wilderness but His faith in the promises of His Heavenly Father, and when everything is stripped away from us that is all any of us really have too. I ask, what of our possessions will we carry with us when we go one last time to the hospital? What satiated desire or treasured lust will comfort us when the walls we have built around ourselves come down and the wilderness finally finds us?


Sermon Date: February 18, 2024

Passage: Matthew 4

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Quinquagesima 2024

But, of course, death is not the end. We do not love as Christ has loved for no reason; we do not sacrifice ourselves every day for no purpose. This sacrificial love is not masochistic or absurd; we love in the way Christ loves because we will one day live in the way Christ lives. Our resurrected king is Himself the beginning of the new creation for which we daily pray, and the language of that new land will be the very love we read about today. Just as Paul can tell us to live without fear of death because Christ’s resurrection proves death can be defeated, so too does Christ’s resurrection prove that we can freely live lives devoted to God’s love. We no longer have to be enslaved by the myths and superstitions floating around our lost and troubled land; we can be free from those lies and daily prepare ourselves for the new heaven and earth which awaits us. It is that new earth which will soon be our reality, and we will wonder how we ever lived without the love that unites and frees and gives forever. In humanity’s best moments, we can sense that this promised country lies just across the horizon; in our best moments, we can feel God’s love drawing us to its immaculate shores. Why would we settle for less?


Sermon Date: February 11, 2024

Passage: 1 Corinthians 13

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The Third Sunday after the Epiphany 2024

I don’t care who we are, there will be a part of this New Covenant way of life against which every fiber of our being will scream at us to resist, and that is how we will know for what we need to pray and fast for to beseech divine assistance. We will not conquer our particular evil on our own any more than fallen humanity was able to conquer death on its own. Here, we might be tempted to say, ‘Ok pastor, you want me to follow in Christ’s footsteps, to take up my cross, to bless my persecutors, to live in harmony, and intimately associate with the people I have every right to hate, but wasn’t Christ divine? I’m not divine, so won’t I be graded on a curve?’ The short answer is, ‘No.’ We won’t be graded on a curve because that’s not how any of this works. Our salvation is not a negotiation; it is a surrender. Part of ending our suicidal rebellion is submitting to a way of life which will seem absolutely crazy to a world obsessed with comfort and power and pleasure. Part of cutting ties with the fading hopes of this fallen world is for us to pray that the Holy Spirit do the impossible in our lives—that He would take the weak and sinful people we are and daily transform us into the kind of people who will live out Romans 12 without giving a damn about the consequences. In short, that the Holy Spirit would make us Christians actually represent that name in a way our undefeated Savior would recognize. If that isn’t our daily quest, we should stop calling ourselves Christians; if that isn’t why we get up every day, we should stop taking our Lord’s name in vain.


Sermon Date: January 21, 2024

Passage: Romans 12

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The Second Sunday after the Epiphany 2024

St. Paul tells us to ‘Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, endure in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality’ (Romans 12:9-13). Until verse 9 of chapter 12, ἀγάπη—the word Paul uses to describe genuine, sacrificial love—had always been used to describe the divine love, publicly revealed in the Son’s sacrifice of Himself for the sins of the world, but here (in the already in-breaking new world Christ’s resurrection made a sure reality) Paul reveals that a Christian’s love for others will be infused with a divine character. Our love, through the power of the Holy Spirit, will be painful as we shed layer after layer of the unnecessary trappings of this fallen world—as we focus our lives on uttering the unconditional, ‘YES,’ to all that Christ asks of us. Yes, I will be my brother’s keeper. Yes, I will zealously seek out good works for the kingdom of God. Yes, I will rejoice in the face of the violent and seductive tribulations of the fallen world. Yes, I will pray like I’m before the throne room of the Almighty God. Yes, I will open the home Christ gave me to bring the lost into His kingdom. Yes, I will do all of that and more because I am ready to be so fervent in thy Spirit that I burn on His altar as a sign and symbol to all men that God is on the march and wrath and love are coming with Him. We will be scarred in this world if we are Christ’s, but we can take it if the measure of our strength is God and not man.


Sermon Date: January 16, 2024

Passage: Romans 12

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The First Sunday after Epiphany 2024

Here is why Christian ethics is so much more than a list of things to do or not do, so God won’t be mad at us. We are living in the merciful age foretold by the prophets. As we read in Isaiah, ‘Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising’ (Isaiah 60:1-3). We are living in the light of this prophecy, and so our lives are governed by something bigger than the moral calculations of politicians or celebrities, blind professors or internet keyboard warriors; none of these victims of our ever-changing age are allowed to have sway over a living sacrifice. How could they? I am not my own. What about my anger or disordered sexual feelings, aren’t these just manifestations of who I really am? No, because I am not my own. What about my past sins and the shame I carry from all those I have hurt with my terrible selfishness, isn’t that who I really am? No, because I am not my own. It is God’s love which makes a dead man alive: a son of wrath into a son of grace. We are more than we could ever be without Him, for without Him we will live as empty, unloving imitations of the glorious, fully-realized humanity which is every Christ follower’s destiny.


Sermon Date: January 7, 2024

Passage: Romans 12