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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Easter II 2021

"...Which explains why Christ must not be just the good shepherd but something else as well, as He says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.” (St. John 10:7-9). We need this part of Christ’s sermon to make sure we don’t confuse Jesus with all other men who have stepped forward to claim our souls for their world saving projects: the thieves and robbers who are wholly different from the God who became Man so we could be led through the valley of the shadow of death and into the green pastures—-feasting forever beside the waters of comfort. Jesus is revealing to His creatures that He is more than a Man: He is the sacred space in which heaven and earth come together, the place where, as Jesus says, “...heaven will open, and the angels of God will be ascending and descending...” (St. John 1:51). This kind of a leader is wholly different from all others we will experience in this broken world; here is a Master who will use every part of Himself to drag our fallen creation into the new world only He can recreate. The thieves and robbers of all ages—in their own way—hold out to us the hope for some new world just around the corner, all we must do is die for them in countless ways small and great. In contrast, Christ is that actual, new world in the flesh, and He will die for us to ensure it will come to pass. There lies the difference between our God/King and all the other rulers of men: thieves and robbers will gladly feed us to the wolves if it serves their schemes and plans, Christ lays His life down so that no wolf can ever truly hurt us. Only a shepherd who has died for His sheep is a shepherd worth dying for; this is what it means to be the Good Shepherd; this is what it costs."


Sermon Date: April 18, 2021

Passage: St. John 10

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Easter I 2021

St. John watched his Creator have the life strangled out of Him by His own creatures; St. John walked God’s mother home after seeing evil murder love on the Cross; St. John sat in the upper room while St. Peter cried in the corner, defeated and broken after betraying the Messiah, but St. John also saw death and chaos and uncreation vanquished forever in the resurrected eyes of His beloved Lord and God and friend.  He has seen the only One who has overcome the world, the only One who has overcome the great unraveling of God’s good creation we daily see in our own decay and eventual death.  Christ came and died to reverse this unraveling, and He did so by using our own evil against evil, by using our own darkness to make the true light shine brighter than a thousand stars.  How can we possibly continue our resistance against such alien and overwhelming power?  What victory can we possible hope to gain against a Father willing to send His Son to die in our place, a Son who volunteers for this terrible honor, and the Holy Spirit who unites our murderous, backward race to the very Godhead saving us? " For the full sermon text, click the link above


Sermon Date: April 11, 2021

Passage: 1 St. John 5

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Easter Day 2021

Again, we may ask, “Why?” Well, because the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ was about more than one man coming back from the dead, as amazing as this event truly was; no, the resurrection of God the Son means the evil forces of this world have no power over us. What happened on that 1st Easter morning was more than just the resuscitation of Jesus Christ: He didn’t just wake up and get better; rather, Jesus was resurrected—transformed into a new type of physical existence: a living, breathing kept-promise come to life. The risen Christ is more than just a man back from the dead; He is the first member, the guarantee, of the inevitable new creation the Father has already revealed to us in the risen Son: the new way to be human where love and justice reign forever. Faith and trust in this new world is not some blind hope for the sake of comfort; no, faith and trust in the resurrection guarantees conflict with a world that would rather believe comforting lies than die in the truth, but within this conflict, within this cross-shaped life, we will be living for something more than a dream; we will finally be living for the world we were created to inhabit, the redeemed creation the God who is love is building first in our hearts and then in every corner and seam of this beautiful, broken world. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the great vindication of good over evil, the meek over the mighty, the righteous over the cruel. And, if we are God’s people, we too can march through this life already walking on resurrection ground knowing that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ." For the full sermon text, click the link above.


Sermon Date: April 4, 2021

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Palm Sunday 2021

"This God who would voluntarily suffer the humiliation and grief and pain of fallen human existence, culminating in the public death of a traitor, all because He loves us traitors, reveals to our fallen world and our fallen hearts the infinite potential greatness of our humanity reunited with God.  What would our world look like if we embraced this path?  St. Paul tells us just a few verses earlier, that for starters, we would “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than [our]selves” (Philippians 2:3).  Are we ready to live lives in which humility always trumps ambition or lives in which we put other members of the church always above ourselves?  No, probably not, but why?  Well, we have not yet embraced the trust and self-knowledge of God the Son. Jesus perfectly knows who He is because He knows His Father; Jesus can reveal the true love of God, even as we kill Him, because there is nothing this evil world can throw at Him which would unseat His relation to the Father—the only thing that actually matters, the only thing of eternal significance.  Torture and death are nothing when compared to the true, divine love which defines the relationship of God the Son and God the Father; pain and separation, poverty and humiliation, are nothing in the eternal history of which God is the righteous author.  And miraculously, through the death of Christ, made our death in the blood red waters of baptism, we share this unbreakable, everlasting connection to the Father.  The more willing we adopted sons and daughters of God are to daily put to death our own needs in order to give of ourselves to God and our spouses and children and neighbors and enemies, the closer we are to a love and satisfaction no ambition or possession or conquest could ever possibly provide.  What temporary achievement born of ambition could be greater than even a moment of divine love flowing through us in service to another immortal human being?  Christian, what is the greater achievement, becoming a senator or living a life of sacrificial love? What is the greater achievement, becoming president of the United States, or being faithful to one’s wife?  What is the greater achievement, becoming the chairman of Goldman-Sachs or lovingly sacrificing one’s ambition for God and the spouse and children He has temporarily given you? " For the full sermon text, click the link above


Sermon Date: March 28, 2021

Passage: Philippians 2; St. Matthew 27

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Lent V 2021

It is in this assured hope of resurrection that all free men live. It is in the person of Jesus Christ that all our questions are answered in the great “I AM.” Blessedly, in a world of fake news and powerful liars, there is no ambiguity in Christ’s invocation of the ancient Divine Name: the name God revealed to Moses before he led the 1st exodus of God’s people; the name Christ reveals to these men and to His disciples before He marches off to complete the 2nd exodus of God’s people—the very deliverance of God’s sons and daughters from the plague of death.  Jesus gives us no options anymore, no place to run or hide from the truth of who He is. The light of Christ, the light of God, is now shining into all the corners of the Earth and all the corners of our hearts; it will reveal brokenness and sorrow wherever it lands, but even as that light reveals to us our wounded, broken natures, it is this same light which illuminates the new path upon which we must walk, the new life which is our destiny. As St. Paul writes, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17). It is here, in the new life bestowed to us already by the God who died and lived that we might live forever, here is where we find the answer to the question of, “Why?” The Son who actually was there when the foundation of the world was laid has shown us love is worth dying for, good always triumphs over evil, and glory inevitably follows suffering. Why? Because the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have said, “Yes,” to new creation and, “No,” to death, and the Trinity’s, “Yes,” roaring through history, destroying death at Christ’s empty tomb, that roar will always drown out the, “No,” of evil. To view the complete sermon, click the link above


Sermon Date: March 21, 2021

Passage: St. John 8

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Lent IV 2021

But blessedly, Abraham and Sarah’s faith in themselves and their fallen culture would not be the last word in the story of salvation.  God as master of creation moved the barren womb of Sarah, giving she and her husband the son of promise: Isaac. St. Paul holds up the barren, unworthy womb of Sarah and says to us: “This is the kind of place where God’s grace goes to save the world.” Incredibly, Paul tells those who wish to be “under the law” that they are children of slavery, children of the covenant given to Moses at Sinai with its blessings for keeping the law and curses for breaking it; he tells the false teachers who see themselves as the natural descendants of Isaac that they are, in fact, slave children, and even more incendiary, he tells the faithful church that earthly Jerusalem itself is a slave camp of men and women tragically unable to follow the law they falsely believe will save them. This condemnation from St. Paul is an act of treason against his old life, a reversal only possible if a man knows he has been reborn into a new life of freedom and grace and glory. So then, the important question to ask is, “If those under the law aren’t the true sons of promise, who is?” Click the link above for the full sermon text.


Sermon Date: March 14, 2021

Passage: Galatians 4

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Lent II 2021

"It is this God of judgment and fire and might who is approached by a representative of the whole sinful world when she calls out, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.” (St. Matthew 15:22). Here, from the lips of an enemy, we finally hear unqualified praise and recognition of the Messiah. We see that because she is an enemy, a Gentile, a Canaanite her cries take on a meaning which no other class of person could provide. While the religious authorities dither and argue, plot and scheme, while the damned go about their daily lives, trading and being traded, this woman, blessed in the suffering of her daughter, makes herself a public spectacle because her intense love for her daughter has been enlisted by God the Holy Spirit to open her eyes to the only hope any of us have--a truth we are taught to deny and ignore our whole lives: all of our children will die unless the Lord, the Son of David has mercy upon them. This shattered, unclean woman--this “dog” as our Lord will describe her--has been given a gift denied the proud and the powerful: she knows nothing will save her daughter except the God/Man who has come to Canaan, come to this fallen earth, to slay serpents and send evil to hell forever." Click above for the full sermon text.


Sermon Date: February 28, 2021

Passage: St. Matthew 15

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Lent I 2021

So then, if our interior strength, depleted daily by age and battles long fought, if this strength is not going to see us through the fights which lie ahead—how could it since we face a tireless supernatural enemy and endless waves of his human partners—then our assured hope lies not in us, but in what we are made to be by the God who loves us. Jesus, the 2nd Adam, doesn’t need to prove He is the Son of God to the Devil, anymore than we have to prove to anyone that we are children of grace and the inheritors of the new earth to come. All we as Christ’s adopted brothers and sisters must do is trust in the promises of the Father: proclaimed in sacred Scripture and sealed in the new creation waters of baptism.  Jesus doesn’t need to turn stones into bread; He doesn’t need the adoration of His fellow countrymen; He doesn’t need the whole fallen world because He has already heard: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” And in turn, since we heard the same at our baptisms, we don’t need fresh miracles or pyrotechnics or emotionally manipulative messages or any of the other signs and wonders demanded by our entertainment intoxicated age. We don’t need 70 years of comfort until we die in our sleep. We can rest in Christ’s defeat of Satan in the Wilderness and on the Cross; we can rest in our union with the first-fruits of the resurrection harvest, secure in the truth that no devil or demon, plague or war can do any damage to the victory already won by Christ. We can run into burning buildings, sit next to dying plague victims, even throw ourselves on a live grenade to save our friends because we serve the living God, and He will never, ever leave us in the wilderness." Click the link above for the full sermon text.


Sermon Date: February 21, 2021

Passage: St. Matthew 4

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Quinquagesima 2021

"Christian love is about more than the old law we repeat every week at the beginning of our service: our pledge to “love our neighbor as ourselves;” if that noble ideal was the ultimate summit of love then you and I would be doomed.  If this dream shared among other religions and philosophies, a specter that has never been truly grasped, if this hope is all that love can be then we will continue to pound on the coffins of our loved ones and wonder why love wasn’t enough to save them.  This shadow cast by the true love isn’t enough (you know it; I know it; we all know it), and that is why our Communion service continues every week, it doesn’t just stop at the summary of the law, it makes us part of God’s loving sacrifice of Himself for a world that hated Him.  Jesus did not just love His neighbor as Himself; no, He pushed His enemies’ heads above the water as He drowned in the blood red sea of our sin.  Jesus didn’t hold anything back as He fought for the very soul of creation; He fought evil with the only weapon evil will never understand: pure, sacrificial, self-giving Christian love.  We eat His flesh and drink His blood each week to remember that the only love powerful enough to save the world is a love we have not yet begun to comprehend—a love we must live and die in to ever fully know.  We taste Christ’s death each week to know the love that saves." Click the link to read the full sermon text


Sermon Date: February 14, 2021

Passage: 1 Cor. 13 and St. Luke 18

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Sexagesima 2021

The Parable of the Sower Click the link above for the full sermon text.


Sermon Date: February 7, 2021

Passage: St. Luke 8