St. John’s Lutheran ChurchAlbany, New York22 March 2026 + The Fifth Sunday in LentJohn 11:1-45The Rev. Josh Evans Lazarus was dead:to begin with.There is no doubt whatever about that.Lazarus was, in a Dickensian turn of phrase, as dead as a door-nail. Lazarus is dead,Jesus says plainly.Dead for four days,John tells us –a not insignificant detail,perhaps …
St. John’s Lutheran ChurchAlbany, New York15 March 2026 + The Fourth Sunday in LentJohn 9:1-41The Rev. Josh Evans Video unavailable this week. “Hold on…let me overthink this”might as well be my daily motto.It’s also an apt description for the story in John 9. What begins as a simple healing storyturns into a lengthy debate.Instead of …
St. John’s Lutheran ChurchAlbany, New York8 March 2026 + The Third Sunday in LentJohn 4:5-42; Exodus 17:1-7The Rev. Josh Evans No one could have imagined:back when they were getting ready to leave Egypt,hurriedly cooking, eating,packing up what little they had and could carry with them;on the bank of the Red Sea,the excitement swelling up inside …
St. John’s Lutheran ChurchAlbany, New York22 February 2026 + The First Sunday in LentGenesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Matthew 4:1-11The Rev. Josh Evans Since its inception in 1947,the so-called Doomsday Clock,an initiative of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,has served as a clever, if not ominous, visual,warning the public about how close we areto destroying our planetwith …
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 …
Pastor Josh Evans 