Showing us how truly compassionate God is with examples from Chapter 6 of Mark’s Gospel and throughout the Bible, showing His true Kingly character as merciful, loving, protecting, and sacrificial; calling us to be like Jesus in seeing and meeting the needs of others before they can even ask, serving as living examples that point toward the true nature of the loving and compassionate God we worship.

From the Pulpit to the Streets (StDavidsACNA)

The God We Worship

Sermon asking several key questions about how Jesus sent out his Disciples and gave them authority in Mark Chapter 6, noting that the same instructions (found also in Matthew 10) still apply to his disciples today: following what Jesus himself had done, asking us to trust that God will provide all that’s needed to reach the lost, share our hope, and bring healing and restoration—all by the Father’s will and authority through the power of his Holy Spirit.

Sent Out With Authority

Taking note of the public nature of Jesus’ ministry in Mark’s Chapter 5 account of two totally opposite people taking advantage of His accessibility, sharing in common a bold courage driven by fear and desperation yet possessing a living hope in the Christ who with compassionate heart miraculously ministers to each of them, reminding us where our true hope lies—in all times of fear and desperation and even in the face of death, we can boldly approach Jesus, letting our fear collide with faith and pouring out our story, then watching and waiting for His saving grace.

When Faith and Fear Collide

Trinity Sunday Sermon urging us to see all the world as a reflection of the Triune God, perceiving and knowing the true reality of God and ourselves: that because of our baptism into Jesus’ death on the cross, we now bear the image of Christ, born again from above through the power of the Holy Spirit, and so are each a beloved child of the Father who looks at us always with the same great love with which He looks at His son in whom He is well pleased.

The Sigh of God and The Return to Divine Love

Tracing the connection between the rejection Jesus faced even from his own Disciples in John 14 and the rejection we will face in the world when we choose to call him Lord; as we too have received the Holy Spirit, we are called with an extraordinary mission to bear witness to Jesus, to go out and serve others at all costs, pointing them toward the God who alone can transform our hearts and truly give us new life.

To See God and Live

Examining the final prayers of Jesus for his Disciples in John Chapter 17 and finds a model of Jesus' love for all his followers, as He and the Father seek to protect us, sanctify us, and see us filled with His all-surpassing heavenly joy, for which we are called to stand firm on the foundation of His Holy Word and to trust and obey His ways at all times.

Protected, Sanctified, and Filled With Joy

Finding in Jesus’ farewell to his Disciples in John 15 the model for how to love one another as Christ has loved us: a picture of the boundless eternal love that the Son has always shared with his Father in Heaven as he remains ever faithful to His ways, and we will share in that same love when we surrender our own wills and walk by His strength in those same ways, able to truly love one another and experience lasting fulfillment in the real joy that comes only from abiding in God’s love.

Abide In My Love

Drawing from the rich text of John 12:20-36 and Jesus’ revelation that the time for his sacrificial death had finally come to illustrate how His disciples (and we) must be confronted with the reality of His sacrificial death which fully conquers sin’s curse and the truth that only by giving up our inward selfishness and dying to sin can we experience new life here on earth and an eternal way of living in the age to come.

Truly, Truly: The Hour Has Come

Revealing in Chapter 2 of John’s Gospel and elsewhere in Scripture the importance of God confirming His Word through visible signs; encouraging us to look at the greatest of signs--the cross of Christ by which Jesus’ disciples believed, and to proclaim that true and good news that Jesus Christ is the son of God who died and was raised to life so that we could be saved and have eternal life by having faith in Him.

Jesus Cleanses The Temple

Asking us to reflect on whether we trust that the Lord will provide for us as He provided for Abraham’s sacrifice in Genesis Ch 22 – pointing the way toward God’s ultimate provision for us in the sacrifice of His own beloved Son on the cross, by which we know that we never have to face life’s challenges from our own strength alone: the good news is that in Christ Jesus we are already saved and accepted by God the Father as His beloved sons and daughters.

Following The Lord Who Provides, Abides, and Confides

Affirming the truth so powerfully demonstrated through Jesus’ baptism in Mark 1:9-13 - that in Christ we are all God’s beloved sons and daughters, and this truth must be the foundation for our lives; so that even as we acknowledge our sins, we may not lose sight of who we really are and be overwhelmed by any false sense of shame and guilt, because in the victory of Christ on the cross we are forever the Beloved of God.

In Christ "You Are My Beloved"

Sermon revealing in the story of Jesus’ Glorious Transfiguration in Mark Chapter 9 the foreshadowing of a New Exodus in Christ, where by his death and resurrection we have the hope that life will continue through Him, as he prepared the way for us to follow, with the promise that we will one day leave death and enter with joy into the eternal life of God’s Kingdom.

The Transfiguration - A Glimpse of the Future

Hghlighting in Mark 1:29-39 the progression of Jesus from the Synagogue to healing Peter’s mother-in-law at home to praying in a desolate place the truth that Christ was found in each of those places, representing God’s willingness to be everywhere sought and found by those who seek to know Him and experience His healing Grace and Love.

God In Christ Is Everywhere And For Everyone

Sermon based on the end of Matthew Chapter 28 exhorting us to accept the mission Jesus left His disciples with—to go out and in turn make disciples of all nations; with the hope in faith that if we obey, He will be with us, and we will see the fruit of our mission to share the great news of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Obedience Precedes Understanding

Sermon examining the truly astonishing character of Jesus’ call to his Disciples, his words and actions serving to show his followers then and now that He is truly the answer to all that afflicts humanity, and the one we can trust to heal us and give us hope for His Kingdom to come.

Amazing and Astonishing

Sermons preached at St. David's Anglican Church, Burbank, CA

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From the Pulpit to the Streets (StDavidsACNA)

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