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A sermon for Maundy Thursday
April 6, 2023 The Rev. Mark Nabors, Vicar Readings: John 13:1-17, 31b-35 Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. We pray these words on Fridays in Morning Prayer. They also appear on Palm Sunday, as we enter the church to begin our observance of Holy Week. But I wonder if we’ve considered what it means to walk the way of the cross? We usually don’t really consider that until its meaning is made plain in our lives, until the changes and chances of this life visit us with a cross to bear, with suffering, with pain and hardship. We don’t consider what we’re saying until we are already on the road, walking the way of the cross.
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A sermon for the Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
April 2, 2023 The Rev. Mark Nabors, Vicar Readings: Matthew 26:14-27:66 Something is wrong and must be put right. Today we come to the end of our Lent sermon series, in which we have focused on the cross of Christ and how, through the cross, God in Christ does what we cannot and makes everything right again. We come to a final, but far from the final, image: on the cross, Christ, as both priest and victim, makes the atoning sacrifice for all sin. The early Christians would have primarily understood the cross through this lens of sacrifice. Sacrifice and blood make us squeamish today. We are far removed from the sacrificial system of the Old Testament. For our ancient forebears, however, sacrifice was a fact of life. A sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 26, 2023 The Rev. Mark Nabors, Vicar Readings: Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130: John 11:1-45 “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.” All the former Lutherans will know those words well. A text and tune composed by Martin Luther, this hymn evoques the image of Christus Victor, Christ the Victorious, even in the face of sin, death, and the evil one. Christ Jesus is the right man on our side, the man of God’s own choosing, in whose victory we share. A sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 18, 2023 The Rev. Mark Nabors, Vicar Readings: John 9 Something is wrong and must be put right. We can’t do it. Only God can do it, and God does it through the cross. Throughout Lent, we have been focusing on this question of how God accomplishes this on the cross. On the first Sunday in Lent, we said we are justified, made righteous through the righteousness of Christ. The cross opens up an avenue of grace for our justification, which we are granted at our baptisms into Christ’s death. Then we saw the cross as recapitulation: God in Christ writing a new story from a new tree, the cross, becoming the new Adam, so that we can share in the new humanity. Last week, we said Christ substituted himself for us, taking the just penalty for our sins so we can be free. Today we see the cross as ransom and redemption: Christ goes behind enemy lines, pays the price for our souls, and redeems us into a new relationship. A sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent
March 12, 2023 The Rev. Mark Nabors, Vicar Readings: Romans 5:1-11 What would be enough? What would be enough to correct, to rectify, to make up for, to forgive all of my past, present, and future wrongs? What would be enough to make the world right again? What on earth could be enough? A sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent
March 5, 2023 The Rev. Mark Nabors, Vicar Readings: John 3:1-17 Molly and I are quirky in a lot of ways, I suppose, but here’s one example: At one point, we had named all of our plants. There’s a little fir tree in a planter outside our front door; its name is Douglass. We had Iggy the Azalea. Rick and Judy Hampton once gifted us an aloe vera plant; its name is John Wayne. But the strangest one of all is our apple tree. It’s in our front yard, at one corner of our house. It’s old for an apple tree; you can tell just by looking at it. It’s twisted and its bark has been formed by all kinds of weather conditions. Its name: Jesus Christ the Apple Tree. A sermon preached for the First Sunday in Lent February 26, 2023 The Rev. Mark Nabors, Vicar Readings: Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11 Something is wrong and must be put right. That will be like a mantra for my sermons in Lent. But before we get there, I want to take us to the popular comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes” from my first Christmas, December 23, 1990. Calvin: I’m getting nervous about Christmas. Lent is a time for self-examination. A time to see where we’ve missed the mark, where we have fallen short. But here, at the start of our journey into self-examination, we might stop to worry with Calvin. We’re good, upstanding citizens, good Christians, even. But maybe good is more than just the absence of bad. Maybe there’s something deeper at play that we need to pay attention to.
A sermon for Ash Wednesday
February 22, 2023 The Rev. Mark Nabors, Vicar Readings: II Corinthians 5:20b-6:10 In parish halls and church basements across the country, week after week, something amazing happens. A group of people gathers to confess shortcomings and failures; they ask for support from one another; they love each other through their triumphs and their slip-ups; they recommit themselves to following a new way of life. I wish I could say this happened in the Sunday liturgy. Sometimes it does. But far too often we are too proud, too self-obsessed, or maybe too fearful to admit just what we are. We are too often more concerned with convincing others (and ourselves) that we have it all together instead of confessing that we’re sinners. No, I’m talking about groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Food Addicts Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Sex Addicts Anonymous, Pills Anonymous. Folks come to these groups because they are ready for a change and they need help. They come to confess their sins. They come, not because they have everything figured out, but precisely because they don’t. A sermon for the Last Sunday after Epiphany
February 19, 2023 The Rev. Mark Nabors, Vicar Readings: Exodus 24:12-18; Matthew 17:1-9 Today we come to the edge of Lent. We get in our final alleluias before we enter the penitential season. We soak up the last of Epiphany before entering the forty-year wilderness with the children of Israel to hear and live the calling to covenant with God. And before we journey to Jerusalem, to the cross, with Jesus and the disciples, Jesus takes us, along with Peter, James, and John, up a mountain. Here, at the edge of Lent, we catch a glimpse of the far side: Easter morning. A sermon preached for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
February 12, 2023 The Rev. Mark Nabors, Vicar Readings: Matthew 5:21-37 Whenever you read a gospel passage like the one we have today, you can feel the room go tense and the words just hang in the air until they crash to the floor in a big heap. So let’s name that tension and sense of discomfort. Jesus is talking about divorce, and it makes some of us, if not all of us, uncomfortable. Some of us have been divorced. We all know people—people we love and cherish—who have been divorced. Jesus is not flexible on the idea of divorce, but we know that divorces happen in our world. Relationships end for all kinds of reasons, many of them good and even holy reasons. I’m the child of divorce, and I thank God that my mother finally found the courage to leave an abusive relationship behind. |
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