St. John’s Lutheran ChurchAlbany, New York12 May 2024 + Seventh Sunday of EasterJohn 17:6-19Rev. Josh Evans After attending the final funeral together, Carolyn Goodman, Fannie Lee Chaney, and Anne Schwerner stand alone in a New York City apartment. Inspired by a photograph captured of the three women in August of 1964, playwright Ajene D. Washington …
St. John’s Lutheran ChurchAlbany, New York28 April 2024 + Fifth Sunday of EasterActs 8:26-40; John 15:1-8Rev. Josh Evans He doesn’t even get a name, and yet he gives us one of the most profound stories of belonging in all of Scripture. “As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the …
St. John’s Lutheran ChurchAlbany, New York21 April 2024 + Fourth Sunday of EasterJohn 10:11-18Rev. Josh Evans Here are two words I never thought I’d hear together: “Swift scholar.” As in: a scholar – not of 18th century Anglo-Irish priest and satire author Jonathan Swift – but of 21st century singer-songwriter Taylor Swift … … who, …
St. John’s Lutheran ChurchAlbany, New York7 April 2024 + Second Sunday of EasterJohn 20:19-31Rev. Josh Evans If the villains of Holy Week are Judas and Peter, then the villain of Eastertide is Thomas. Doubting. Thomas. Who earns his infamous title not even for anything particularly egregious that he does … but solely for being absent …
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 …
Pastor Josh Evans 