St. John’s Lutheran Church28 March 2024 + Maundy ThursdayJohn 13:1-17, 31b-35Rev. Josh Evans I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. It’s so simple – deceptively, even – this new commandment at the heart of this day, so named Mandatum – “Commandment” – Thursday. I give you a new commandment, that you …
St. John’s Lutheran Church17 March 2024 + Lent 5bJeremiah 31:31-34; John 12:20-33Rev. Josh Evans It’s a changing and challenging world – shaped by bitter political rivalries, competing factions and parties vying for power, unrelenting wars and violence, displaced peoples fleeing persecution and oppression. In the midst of it all, Jeremiah prophesies. Jeremiah knows something of …
St. John’s Lutheran Church10 March 2024 + Lent 4bJohn 3:14-21Rev. Josh Evans It’s been printed on the bottom of shopping bags and fast food beverage cups. It’s often spotted on homemade poster board signs at sports games. By one count, it’s been translated into over a thousand different languages, and it’s quite possibly the one …
St. John’s Lutheran Church14 January 2024 + Epiphany 2bJohn 1:43-51Rev. Josh Evans Three simple words. One profound – and dangerous – invitation. “Come and see.” Words spoken by Philip to Nathanael, echoing Jesus’s own in the scene just one day before, as he calls Andrew and Simon Peter, the first of his disciples, on 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 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 …
St. John’s Lutheran Church6 April 2023 + Maundy ThursdayJohn 13.1-17, 31b-35Rev. Josh Evans This sermon begins with a story. It’s a story about saying goodbye. Tonight, we remember the story of the last meal that Jesus shared with his friends. They were probably sad, and maybe a little afraid. They didn’t know when, or even …
St. John’s Lutheran Church26 March 2023 + Lent 5aJohn 11.1-45; Ezekiel 37.1-14Rev. Josh Evans It’s probably the most famous prophecy in the book of Ezekiel: the valley of “dem dry bones.” Truthfully, it’s a bit of a terrifying vision: for these dry bones to suddenly shake and rattle and come together, with sinews and flesh …
Pastor Josh Evans 