St. John’s Lutheran Church25 June 2023 + Lectionary 12a (4 Pentecost)Matthew 10.24-39Rev. Josh Evans Jesus doesn’t exactly hide the cost of following him. He puts it all out there. There’s no fine print here as he sends out his disciples “like sheep into the midst of wolves.” Picking up right where we left off last …
St. John’s Lutheran Church18 June 2023 + Lectionary 11a (3 Pentecost)Matthew 9.35–10.23Rev. Josh Evans Another Sunday, another call story. Actually, make that stories (plural). In the span of a few verses, one disciple becomes twelve – and probably more than that. They’re just the ones (the men) who get named. Their task: Proclaim the good …
St. John’s Lutheran Church11 June 2023 + Lectionary 10a (2 Pentecost)Matthew 9.9-13, 18-26Rev. Josh Evans (Video unavailable this week.) There’s admittedly a lot going on in this Sunday’s gospel reading: a call story, a resuscitation story, and a healing story. Where do we even start? It can feel a little suffocating – perhaps as claustrophobic …
St. John’s Lutheran Church4 June 2023 + The Holy TrinityMatthew 28.16-20Rev. Josh Evans People can become famous for many things. Some write best-selling novels. Others paint masterpiece artwork. And still others compose magnificent pieces of music. Me? I went viral for a TikTok video. Well, at least church-world viral. Two years ago, as I sat …
St. John’s Lutheran Church28 May 2023 + Day of PentecostActs 2.1-21Rev. Josh Evans (Video unavailable this week.) It was hands-down one of my favorite classes in seminary: Christian Mission and World Religions. Together we took field trips to an Islamic mosque in the suburbs of Chicago and a Buddhist temple in the heart of the …
St. John’s Lutheran Church21 May 2023 + Easter 7aJohn 17.1-11; Acts 1.6-14Rev. Josh Evans It’s been said that our Lutheran faith is one of paradox: sinner and saint, law and gospel, death and resurrection. True to such paradoxical roots, appropriately enough, our Easter season has been drawing to an end where it began – or …
St. John’s Lutheran Church14 May 2023 + Easter 6aJohn 14.15-21; Acts 17.22-31Rev. Josh Evans “Our great father, God almighty, who is Being, knew and loved us from before the beginning of time. And from his knowledge, in his marvelously deep love and through the eternal foreseeing counsel of the whole blessed Trinity, he wanted the …
St. John’s Lutheran Church7 May 2023 + Easter 5aJohn 14.1-14Rev. Josh Evans “Moving is so much fun!” … said no one, ever. It is, however, much, much easier when you have professionals doing the moving (thank you, St. John’s!). Moving with cats, on the other hand, is an exercise in patience. As we bounced between …
Continue reading An Exercise in Patience (and God’s Abiding Love)
St. John’s Lutheran Church23 April 2023 + Easter 3aLuke 24.13-35Rev. Josh Evans They could not have been a more different or mismatched pair. One was a socially awkward, insecure loner and compulsive liar, desperate to make a best friend. The other: a devout, eager, and ambitious, if not a tad pompous, self-imagined prodigy, ready to …
St. John’s Lutheran Church16 April 2023 + Easter 2aJohn 20.19-31Rev. Josh Evans Unbelievable. A word which, by definition, implies something too improbable to be believed, something extraordinary, outside the bounds of what we expect to be true. It can be exclaimed in complete and utter amazement after witnessing something truly spectacular … Unbelievable! Or in …
Pastor Josh Evans 