A Selection of Recent St. Paul’s Sermons
Below are text versions of some of our recent sermons. Prefer to watch the sermon? Check out this link to our Youtube page!
Christmas Sermon - The Rev. Dr. Elise Feyerherm, Dec. 25, 2024
Christmas morning is a strange and liminal time – I have come to love it far more than Christmas Eve, because somehow it does not have to try so hard. Christmas morning does not strain to carry the weight of having to create magic, does not groan under the pressure to provide that perfect Christmas experience. Things are, in a way, so much more ordinary.
Who We are in Dangerous Times: A Stewardship Sermon - Nov 10, 2024
Stewardship refers to right relationship and right use of our talents, time and energy, and money for the purpose of doing God’s work in the world. I’d like to reflect on stewardship in light of the bible and current situation in our country.
Love and Forgiveness: Do They Matter? A Sermon by Rev. Won-Jae Hur - October 20, 2024
Does love have any power? It forgiveness possible?
The gospel and other readings today make the claim that loving service to others has the power to bring life and freedom out of unmerited suffering and death. Does love have any real power today in a world beset by overwhelming injustice and violence? Can we stake our lives as Jesus and his disciples did on the promise that the costly way of love saves and liberates us and others? Let me share a story of one person who helped me answer that question.
‘What Must I do to Inherit Eternal Life?’ - Sermon by Rev. Dr. Elise Feyerherm, Oct. 13th, 2024
“Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
The Jesuit scholars John Donahue and Daniel Harrington wrote about our gospel passage today that it is “the longest sustained treatment of any ethical issue in the gospel.
‘God Loves All’ - Sermon by Rev. Won-Jae Hur, September 8, 2024
Good morning. How good to be with you. As you and I start our journey together and walk the way that God has prepared for our church, I would like to reflect today on what I think the gospel story of the Syrophoenician woman tells us about the essence of the Christian path.
No one would blame you if you listened to the gospel reading about the Syrophoenician woman and reached this conclusion: on a bad day, even Jesus can be a jerk. It’s hard to read this story, and not feel like ‘what is going on here’? The woman is a mother who is desperately seeking help for her suffering girl. Jesus refuses her request to cast the demon out, and basically calls them ‘dogs’ – an incredibly offensive insult in that time. We don’t find another instance when he insults someone like this anywhere in the gospels. So why?
‘A Community for Vulnerability’ Sermon by Rev. Won-Jae Hur, September 22, 2024
In Mark’s gospel reading, Jesus teaches for the second time that the Messiah must suffer and die before being raised again to life. Mark then connects this to his teaching on true greatness. The disciples can’t understand the teaching about the Messiah, and they also can’t understand the teaching on true greatness, because Jesus will find them arguing about it later in the gospel.
Why were these teachigns so difficult for them to grasp? Part of the reason has to do with the fact that society in first-century, Roman-occupied Israel was defined by the values of honor and shame. Honor was connected with a person’s status in a community - by birth, family, or profession - and the recognition of that status by the community. A person’s status determined everything - who they could associate or do business with, who they could marry, even where they lived. Honor was a matter of survival, sometimes of life and death. So the issue of honor comes up between the disciples, because they understand community life according to what was common in their world. Jesus’ response to their jockeying for dominance is not to settle the question by elevating some above others. Instead, he teaches them a different vision of community. In God’s community, the person who has most honor and status is not the one who stands above others; it is the person who gives them up to serve others.