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The Other Road

  Friends, here we are, at the very end of the Christmas season: Epiphany. We’re also in a whole new year, 2026, and on the first Sunday of the new year I have a beloved annual tradition of researching what the top New Year’s resolutions were, and then sharing them with my flock. All the information I’m about to share with you comes from a data collection group called Statista, the exact same researchers I quoted from last year. They surveyed 539 American adults between the ages of 18 and 80 in October and November of last year. Bear in mind, the numbers you’re about to hear won’t add up to 100 because some of the folks surveyed reported that they weren’t going to make any New Year’s Resolutions, and many folks gave a long list of resolutions that overlapped with other folks’ lists. So–the top New Year’s Resolutions for 2026: Exercise more (48%) Save more money (46%) Eat healthier (45%) Spend more time with family and friends (42%) Lose weight (31%) Improve performance at work (24%...
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Adoring

  Froeliche Weihnacht, friends. That’s “merry Christmas” in German. Now you have an ice breaking anecdote for your next awkward family dinner. Today is Christmas Eve, the day we’ve been looking forward to. Maybe. Kind of. It’s the day our kids have been looking forward to, anyway. Christmas Eve is a lot of different kinds of things, depending on who you are, and who you’re celebrating with. It could be a day of church with your family (thanks for coming!). It could be a day of baking cookies and drinking hot chocolate while watching Miracle on 34th Street.  Or Home Alone . Or Elf . Or Love Actually . Or Die Hard . Hey, whatever floats your boat. It could be a day of singing carols around the piano. It could be a day where you dry shampoo your hair and run around the house for half an hour, already late for service, trying to find your other shoe. It could be one of three days every year where you have to tolerate the presence of your mother in law without picking an argument. ...
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Sharing

  Friends, we’re now in the third of four weeks of Advent, and now that we’re past the halfway point, our ancient foremothers and forefathers planned this day to give us a break, and a reward. In the first week of Advent, we generally hear something apocalyptic, about the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus, but nothing about his birth story, or anything even remotely Christmas-y. In the second week, we usually meet an important cousin, John the Baptist, but still, nothing cute, fun, or festive. Plus, those first two Sundays we light those dark purple candles. The first two weeks, historically, have centered on the themes of hope and peace, and have required seriousness, atonement, and discipline from us. Week three is different. It’s Gaudete Sunday. “Gaudete” is a Latin word that means “rejoice”. Instead of lighting another dark, somber, purple candle, we light the happy pink candle! If pink is your favorite color, this is your Sunday! Today we focus on the spiritual g...
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Brooding

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  Friends, we’re now in the Second Sunday in Advent. The painting you see up on the screen is one I asked Mary to put up there, so you’d have it for reference, because I’m going to draw your attention to it in a few minutes. In the meantime: take a look, and consider what you see up there. Now that we’re in week 2 of Advent, we’re spending some time with the first of the vital characters that help bring us Jesus–his weird cousin John the Baptist. Preachers with a sense of humor (and that very much includes me) adore our friend John. Stage actors portraying him have a field day. He’s not a calm, cozy character, the one who would hold your hand and read you a gentle bedtime story while sipping some chamomile tea. He’s a walking cartoon character, and the evangelist Matthew wanted to make sure we knew that. There’s “rough around the edges”, and then there’s this guy. Despite having mild mannered, highly respectable parents–a Temple priest and his doting wife–John the Baptist chooses t...
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Waiting

  What do we do when we need to wait? It’s what this season is all about. Today is like New Year’s Day in the Church. No, not for the secular calendar. Y’all still have a whole month of 2025 left. But Advent begins the new Church year, and we begin in the void. There’s no John the Baptist, there’s no Jesus, Mary and Elizabeth don’t even know they’re expecting yet. In the next few weeks we’ll slowly fill the void with the familiar: next week the tree goes up, we hear the prophesy of Isaiah, Gabriel visits both Zechariah and Mary, and the poinsettia orders come in (thanks Jan!), and the sanctuary will be full of pretty red flowers. But we don’t have any of that yet. We kick off Advent not with nice baby news, but with apocalyptic warnings: a random person in a field will be taken, a random woman minding her own business in her kitchen will be taken, your house might be broken into, and no one knows when. Get ready! Jesus had a major flair for the dramatic. If you’re a nerd, like me, ...
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My Best Self

  This story introduces us to a new group: the Sadducees. Another group that doesn’t love Jesus’ public ministry, and, interestingly, a rival to the Pharisees. The Sadducees were a wealthy, aristocratic Jewish sect. They had control over the Temple in Jerusalem–believed by Jesus’ friends and neighbors to be the very home of God–as well as the Sanhedrin, the court that charges Jesus with blasphemy and hands him over to be crucified by Pontius Pilate. The Sadducees are very powerful, and this story sets up an important upset, one piece in the puzzle that puts Jesus on the cross on Good Friday. The Sadducees had two crucial differences from the Pharisees, and one of them was their political views. The Pharisees were deeply opposed to the Roman occupation of Palestine. The Sadducees, on the other hand, were loyal to Rome, and benefited greatly from that loyalty. The other difference had to do with theology, specifically beliefs about what happens after you die. I learned a little quip ...
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Fun Sized

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  Today we observe All Saints’ Day. It’s a day of remembrance: for the folks from this congregation who passed away in the last year, for our loved ones who passed recently, for our loved ones who passed years or even decades ago, and for the billions of souls in the history of the world who went on to life eternal. We didn’t know them, but God did. All those folks in heaven, and us here on earth, are connected through the Communion of Saints. This is one of my favorite holidays in the entire church year, but it’s not the easiest one to present to you guys. We have some absolutely epic All Saints hymns, but they can be hard to sing, especially today’s closing hymn. I’m asking you to indulge me, and I don’t have something cute and simple like “Jingle Bells” to put in the order of service as a peace offering. We don’t carve pumpkins or turkeys or decorate a tree or make baskets for All Saints, we don’t give or receive presents, and I have no particular reason to give anyone chocolate...
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