St. John’s Lutheran ChurchAlbany, New York6 April 2025 + Lent 5cJohn 12:1-8The Rev. Josh Evans Pop quiz! The woman who anoints Jesus is…A) Mary MagdaleneB) Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus and MarthaC) Mary, the mother of JamesD) an unknown womanE) all of the above There’s technically no wrong answerbecause the answer is indeed…E) …
St. John’s Lutheran ChurchAlbany, New York30 March 2025 + Lent 4cLuke 15:1-3, 11b-32The Rev. Josh Evans “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to [Jesus]. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ So he told them this parable…” Actually, …
St. John’s Lutheran ChurchAlbany, New York23 March 2025 + Lent 3cIsaiah 55:1-9The Rev. Josh Evans “Water! Water! We praise you, O God, for water –the rain that nourishes animals and plants,the water for drinking and bathing.We praise you, O God, for water. “We praise you, O God, for our water stories –a flood that cleansed …
St. John’s Lutheran ChurchAlbany, New York16 March 2025 + Lent 2cLuke 13:31-35The Rev. Josh Evans It’s an ancient image,rooted in the writings of the early churchand in scripture itself. Anselm of Canterbury, writing in the 11th century,speaks of Jesus as a mother who gathers us. The medieval mystic Julian of Norwich writesof Christ, our true …
St. John’s Lutheran ChurchAlbany, New York9 March 2025 + Lent 1cLuke 4:1-13The Rev. Josh Evans “The passion of Christ begins not in the week of suffering but already with the first day of his preaching,” as Dietrich Bonhoeffer observes, in a brief homily on this very gospel, preached to the students of the Berlin Technical …
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 Church25 February 2024 + Lent 2bMark 8:31-38; Gen. 17:1-7, 15-16Rev. Josh Evans Life is messy … so why would we expect the life of faith to be any different? Abraham, later exalted by Paul as the pinnacle of faith, was far from perfect. From the beginning of his call, when he was …
St. John’s Lutheran Church18 February 2024 + Lent 1bMark 1:9-15Rev. Josh Evans In the beginning was the wilderness. Every First Sunday in Lent, we hear this story. Three out of four gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – what biblical scholars call the “synoptic gospels,” for the way they “see together” the story of Jesus …
St. John’s Lutheran Church14 February 2024 + Ash WednesdayMatthew 6:1-6, 16-21Rev. Josh Evans “Do you guys ever think about dying?” Nothing brings a party to a screeching halt quite like an existential crisis. Barbie Land was a perfect utopia … until it wasn’t. Until the worries and anxieties of the very much not perfect Real …
Pastor Josh Evans 