Sermons from St. John’s Episcopal Church

Keep It Simple. Fr. Louis Harris. May 25, 2025.

From the propers this week, Fr. Harris reflects on the way our culture prizes the grand and dramatic, while the Gospel calls us to attend to the small, the quiet, and the steady. In Acts, Saint Paul receives not a vision of angels but a dream of an ordinary man. The New Life is not lived in fireworks, but in attentiveness and imitation. Bread and wine, prayer, and fellowship are the essential dimensions of Christian life. God is not absent from the big moments, but He is most often found in the plain details of daily life.

One job. Fr. David Houk. May 18, 2025.

John 13:31-35. At the last supper, Jesus gives his disciples his one commandment.

How to Live Well. Fr. Louis Harris. May 11, 2025.

From the propers this week, Fr. Harris reflects on how Easter’s quieting invites us to examine our ideals. We live in a culture that glorifies achievement, efficiency, and productivity. These are not the virtues the Gospel celebrates. Instead, Scripture honors humility, charity, and beauty. In Acts, a simple woman named Dorcas is raised from the dead because her acts of kindness bore witness to God. We are called not to chase greatness, but to create beauty and offer love, wherever we are. In the small and faithful, God's glory is revealed. The resurrection transforms not only death, but also what it means to live well.

Luck. Fr. David Houk. May 4, 2025.

John 21:1-19. Faith requires an outlook that God is good, Christ is alive, and that his risen presence is active in your life.

These wounds, too? Fr. Louis Harris. April 27, 2025.

From the propers this week, Fr. Harris observes how we repeatedly forget and rediscover truths, especially Easter's radical message. Though we confess Christ's resurrection, we often live as if nothing changed. Yet this event transforms reality: the crucified Jesus rose with His wounds, revealing God's plan to redeem all suffering. Easter means death becomes birth, brokenness becomes glory. Our pain, both inflicted and endured, will be made whole. The Apostles didn't preach superiority but forgiveness, inviting all into this hope. We bring our wounds to the Altar, trusting God to make all things new. The Resurrection isn't just history. It is God's promise to heal creation.

The future is now. Fr. David Houk. Easter Day: April 20, 2025.

Luke 24:1-12. With the resurrection of Christ, God’s future restoration of the world has begun.

The Spirit of Flint. Father Louis Harris. April 13, 2025.

From the propers this week, Father Harris reflected on the scandal of the Cross: Why did God submit to humiliation, torture, and death? He didn’t fight back. He endured betrayal, mockery, and suffocation — Why? This is the heart of Christianity: not vague spirituality, but the plain and hard truth that the creator of all things embraced suffering for the good of his creation. And we’re called to the same. The world prizes power, security, and comfort, yet our path is flint-hard surrender — loving our enemies, sacrificing for the poor and imprisoned, and suffering for the good of others. When we submit to this love, a fire is kindled that will ignite the world. The Cross isn’t just history — it’s a mission. It's our mission, demonstrated for us by God himself.

Poured out. Fr. David Houk. April 5, 2025.

John 12:1-8. Mary extravagantly pours out a pound of costly perfume of pure nard on Jesus’s feet. It’s a picture of Jesus’s extravagant love poured out for us on the cross.

Cut It Down. Fr. Louis Harris. March 25, 2025.

From the propers this week, Fr. Harris preaches on a challenging Gospel passage where Jesus confronts the assumption that suffering is God's punishment. When bystanders recall Galileans slain by Pilate and victims of a collapsed tower, Jesus refutes the idea that their deaths signaled their sinfulness. Instead, He warns, “Unless you repent, you will all perish.” Fr. Harris exposes our modern tendency to judge others’ suffering as deserved—homelessness, addiction, violence—while complacently assuming our own righteousness. True repentance, he explains, is a “re-thinking,” a turn inward to examine what rules our hearts. Lent calls us to confront our personal “Pharaohs”—greed, trauma, comfort—and be reshaped by God’s sacrificial love, embodied in the Eucharist. The answer isn’t outward judgment but feeding our starved souls at the altar.

The Hen. Fr. David Houk. March 16, 2025.

Luke 13:31-35. Jesus chooses an unlikely animal to describe his Messianic mission, challenging our understanding of the nature of God.