Episcopal Church Of The Holy Communion University City

The Rector preaches at the memorial for Roberta Gardner.

God has a stake in what happens in our world. God dreams of a world that is more loving, more generous, more equitable, more just. God is not just the God of the insiders. God hears the cry of the immigrant, of the foreigner, and those who have been red-lined into substandard housing. God invites us to behave differently.

The Rev. Beth Scriven takes on the question of "discernment" in the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus, King Solomon, and in our own day.

Today, in place of a sermon, Heidi Olliff tells the Godly Play Story: The Parable of the Mustard Seed.

Jesus' view of relationship has real world, and dare I say, political implications. With God there are no outcasts.

Bathsheba’s story is a prototypical story. Men have done this to women again and again. How can we break this cycle?

You and I will probably never live to see a permanent peace between Muslim, Jew, and Christian. We might not live to see peace among our siblings. But we can catch glimpses of the world as it could be. We simply need to practice keeping our hearts open.

When we have seen citizenship not as a resource to be defended, but as a project to be shared, we have been closer to the dream Jesus has for our world.

How do we discern God's Call?

In whom do we have faith? How can we be still?

I am convinced that God holds the souls of those who have taken their own life with compassion, with welcome, with love. I trust God welcomes those who die by suicide into the arms of mercy, just as God will welcome each and every one of us.

Human beings maybe were not made for the sabbath, but we are made for fellowship. We are made for communion. Human beings are made by God, created to challenge the divisions of our world and to come together.

God’s Spirit descends that ALL God’s people might hear the good news, that ALL God’s people, the Parthians, the Medes, the Elamites and the residents of Cappadocia, that the Koreans, the Mexicans, the Mexico-Americanos, the descendants of enslaved and free Africans and even the Anglo-Americans might know they are redeemed, they are forgiven, they are loved. Folks of every tribe and language and people and nation. God’s children of every orientation, and gender expression, and ability, and age, and skin color, and ethnicity, and race. All God’s children, all of them are to know God’s saving, redeeming love.

To talk about Mothers, to talk about motherhood, is to deal with dirty laundry. To discuss such an intimate relationship as the one between parent and child, without over-sentimentalizing, means we sometimes have to cut through the Hallmark propaganda.

Christ’s friendship carries us to a new country, a new way of living, of being. Jesus proposed moving society to a place where everyone, every class and kind and age, and race and orientation and gender and ability, where everyone was gathered together around a table. Indeed Christ said that this sharing, this friendship, was already how God sees us.

At Theology on Tap, Dr. Rebecca Messbarger talks about the surprising story of Pope Benedict XIV's love of science and dissection as we ask how faith and science can be related.

Like Philip and the other early followers of Jesus discovered, the Gospel is bigger than any one of us, bigger than any one identity. To fully see the beauty of God’s good news, we are going to have to try and wrap our embrace around the whole of humanity. To fully know the love of God, we have to learn to love, learn to be loved by all sorts and categories of people.

Our priest associated, the Rev. Marc Smith preaches about agriculture, God, and the Good Shepherd.

What would it mean for the church if we told the whole story of God, the whole story of Jesus? What would it mean if we embraced the messy, frustrating, the imperfections? What would it mean for our faith if we knew, deep in our bones, that God stood in solidarity with the wounded? That therefore God stands with each of us? What could it mean if we showed up, all of us, if our WHOLE community stood together, if no one was left out?  What would it mean for our world if we each showed up, our full selves, wounds and all?

Deacon Chester Hines preaches about Doubt, Faith, Thomas, and Dr. King.