More Than a Machine (Earth Day Sunday)

Psalm 8 | Psalm 19:1-4

Jeremy Richards

I recently finished a book called The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss by David Bentley Hart. In the book, Hart essentially challenges what we might call a materialist or a naturalist understanding of the world – the idea that all that exists is what can be seen, and that the world is essentially something like a machine chugging along with no reason, no truth, nothing transcendent within or without it. What ya see is what ya get, essentially.

The Church Gathered, the Church Sent

Acts 4:32-35 | John 20:19-31

Jeremy Richards

This sermon was preached at Grant Park’s first in-person worship service in the sanctuary in over a year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Brie and I are big fans of the show Friends. I know some of you are as well. I also know that some of you are not, and before I go on, I just need to use my pastoral authority to confront a very flawed, very problematic way of thinking when it comes to Friends. I have had people in this congregation say to me, “I don’t watch Friends, I watch Seinfeld,” as if it isn’t possible to watch them both. What a dualistic, exclusive way of thinking. As a church that prides itself on inclusivity, we should recognize that one can (and let’s be honest, should) watch both Friends and Seinfeld. Can I get an amen?

A Poor Conclusion (Easter)

Isaiah 25:6-9 | Mark 16:1-8

Jeremy Richards

Our Gospel reading this morning begins with three heartbroken women trudging towards a tomb – Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome. They are going through the rituals of grief, attending to a dead body in its third day of decay. This ritual, like all rituals that surround death, is meant to bring closure. Two days after the horrific events of Good Friday, these women still weep, they still mourn, but, if they are honest, there is a certain kind of relief that comes from these practices.

Love and...Condemnation?

Numbers 21:4-9 | John 3:14-21

Jeremy Richards

A couple years ago, I started meeting every so often with 3 other dads. I call them my “dad’s group.” Two of them would definitely not call themselves Christians (I’m not sure how they would identify themselves, probably agnostic), while the other has referred to himself as a “lapsed Catholic,” who actually went to Union Theological Seminary. When we get together we talk about a lot of different stuff. Obviously dad stuff is a big part of it, but it always surprises me how much they want to talk about faith. In fact, sometimes I’m afraid we talk too much about it, but they’re usually the ones who bring it up, not me.

So Dang Inconvenient!

Psalm 19 | John 2:13-22

Jeremy Richards

This past Monday, I met David and Tim at Laurelhurst Park. It was a beautiful day if you remember. The sun was out and so, naturally, were lots of people and their dogs. We sat at a picnic table to the west of the pond, in the off-leash dog park. It was just so nice to be outside, to be with people in person, to see other people around. It almost felt normal. Except, of course, I was still sitting on the opposite end of the picnic table from David and Tim and we were all wearing masks.

Faithful

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16 | Romans 4:13-25

Jeremy Richards

I love the pairing of our two scriptures today. In our reading from Genesis, we hear one of the accounts of God’s covenant with Abraham (there are actually a number of times in Genesis that God makes this covenant with Abraham, with slight variations), and then in Romans we hear Paul’s interpretation of this very story. Towards the end of our reading from Romans, Paul says explicitly that what was written centuries earlier about Abraham was written “not for [Abraham’s] sake alone, but for ours also.”