Dr. Jim Rigby's Sermons:
Lessons in Living

Join us Sundays at 8:30 or 10:45 for worship and at 9:30 for
Jim's Sunday school lesson on the same topic.


All sermon videos can be found at Vimeo.com/staopen

Jim Rigby's blog: www.jimrigby.org


May 13: "Remembering Sophia"

Jim: "Wheareas most male theologians insist on translating "God" as male, they just as vociferously refuse to translate the word "spirit", which is female in Hebrew, as female. So, what you have is a very imbalanced view of the text we've been given. The female part of the story has been taken out, and it creates an imbalance that we're gonna look at today, that I think does a lot more damage than maybe you've realized, in your life. If we want the rapturous joy that scripture is talking about, we have to break the handcuffs that the Church has put on these images."

Audio file (Mp3)


Sermon Series: "Beatitudes
as Keys to Happiness"

Jim: "[The] Beatitudes are the very beginning of Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount" and they're trying to make us shift our idea of what makes us happy. Nothing else Jesus says is gonna make sense if we trust our judgment about our own lives, thinking that the things we've clutched after in the past, that have made us so unhappy and feel so alone, are gonna somehow work, into the future. Jesus starts with a little, very strange poem that inverts that and gives us a different idea. What it's trying to do is get us to the foundation of who we are as human beings, so that we won't think our happiness comes and goes with what happens to us."

May 6: "Blessed are the Persecuted"

Jim: "You're being asked to stand up for your brothers and sisters, even if it makes you unpopular. I don't know if you've noticed it or not, but universal love doesn't play well, and the people closest to you may the ones who punish you the most... for thinking bigger than the family, for thinking bigger than the nation, for thinking bigger than Christianity. It's very understandable that this would be a hard lesson for us to believe: that there is a happiness that we can only experience when we don't let that kind of intimidation shut down our heart."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video

Apr. 29: "Blessed are the Peacemakers"

Jim: "War, battle, struggle, violence... most of the time doesn't begin where we think it does. Most people -- all the peace movements around the country -- assume that it's hate and fear that cause war. Sometimes that's true. What James is saying, [is that] if you really look at the wars that our nation has fought since World War II, you're not gonna find that as an essential cause. What James is saying is it's our desires that are unresolved, and they turn on one another. Unless you consecrate your desires to a cause, they will turn, within you, into pain and misery. The greatest cause, if the sages of history are right, is our common happiness.

Doesn't your heart know, that when you go the way of comfort, when you go the way of ease, that you wind up with habits, addictions and numbness? You are being called, from the very ground of your being, to the highest purpose of all, to work for the common happiness."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

Apr. 15: "Blessed are the Pure in Heart"

Jim: "It's not faith if you won't look at reality because you're afraid that there's nothing sacred there. That's not faith. Faith is trusting enough that if you open your eyes, what you're looking for will be there. And if it's not there in the form you want it to be there, that you will be able to learn enough and grow enough where that'll be ok."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

Mar. 25: "Blessed are the Merciful"

Jim: "You cannot fight a wound, you can only heal it. So, ultimately, what Jesus is saying here, is when you see the ugliness of the world -- the insanity of the world -- instead of despairing, say 'This is a wound. It's a world wound. And what the world needs from me is to be a healer.'"

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

Mar. 18: "Blessed are They Who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness"

Jim: "All the beatitudes are talking about the foundation you have for the world. They're all talking about how we perceive the world. They're not thing that we do, necessarily, they're facts about our happiness. They're ways of going deeper into our understanding of happiness and making it larger. You are closer to the great happiness if you long for a humane world, than you are if you've become satified with an inhumane one."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

Mar. 11: "Blessed are the Meek"

Jim: "Before we can understand and find the courage to live lives of compassion, we have to realize that happiness is not found in domination, it's not found acquisition, possessions, status, or any of those things. When we are humble, when we are dedicated, we can receive the gift and the beauty of life itself."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

Mar. 4: "Blessed are Those Who Mourn"

Jim: "Not just our scriptures, but scriptures all over the world say, that if you can learn to understand your grief, it will unlock so much of life. It seems impossible, but the grieving is healing. The pain we experience in life is transformed into a beauty. There's still a tenderness there, there's still a sadness there, but grieving is the most creative work that we do."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

Feb. 26: "Blessed are the Poor in Spirit"

Jim: "When we don't realize that our greatest treasures are within us... [when] we think that there's something outside of us we have to get... we can become very vicious in the pursuit of that something, or very frightened, very fearful. Part of the reason these poems were written, is to help us go deeper, to a place of peace beyond desire and fear. When Jesus talks about "Blessed are the poor in spirit", it's a type of detachment from fear and desire."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


April 22 - "Earth Day"

Jim: "We've been taught that the sacred is always someplace else. It's some invisible realm or some invisible place within us. And we never (or seldom) are taught to recognize the sacred right in front of us in our ordinary lives. We think of our situation as like a treehouse in the Tree of Life and we don't realize we're branches growing out of it. We are the children of nature. If we could feel that, I think we would know precisely what to do."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

Easter: "Is There a Shelter From Life's Storms?"

Jim: "Easter, for me, is the hardest sermon of the year. Because, as many of you know, I'm trying to have religion link us into reality, and this is a place where the bridge is particularly broken, in terms of the symbols. And so, when we go through the Easter story, it's particularly hard to make links into your life. If the symbols of religion do not illumine your everyday life, they lead you away from the place you are looking for: for the love, for the awareness, for the living. We're going to try to make that bridge."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

Palm Sunday "Protest" Service

On April 1st, St. Andrew's celebrated Palm Sunday in a different way. Remembering that the Biblical story of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem was basically a protest, we invited the congregation to make protest signs related to topics and causes they care about. We marched with the signs and palm leaves, singing "We can do it, we can change the world!" Our children also sang and performed a skit. Check out the great explanation of the concept that was included in Sunday's bulletin.

Watch parts of the service: Streaming Video

Jim's segment on universal human rights: Audio file (Mp3)

Karen's segment on the protection and education of children: Audio file (Mp3)

Combined text of Jim's and Karen's talks: Transcript (pdf)


Feb. 19: "Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant"

Jim: "It's not enough to tolerate people. And these days, it's not even enough to celebrate them. If you will not fight for your brothers and sisters, you are not the community of Christ."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

Feb. 12: "Moving Beyond Sexism"

Jim: (Regarding inclusive, non-sexist language) "I want to figure out how we can take ownership of this language. It's not enough to agree with this intellectually. We have to commit to one another that this will be a value that we will live out, and suffer for, if necessary. Religion in our day will either be a beautiful funeral for the old, or a painful birth of the new. So I want to call you to pain today. But a pain with hope."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

February 5 - "Right of Conscience"

Jim: "You are entrusted, as a human being, with a conscience. To violate your conscience because any human council, any church, any government tells you to do so, is to violate who you most essentially are. What we're being asked to do - implored to do - is to found our lives on the right of conscience."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

Sermon Series: "MLK: Radical for Love"

Jim: "What has been done to Dr. King, to me, is a travesty. The radical message has been taken out. Every year, Martin Luther King Day has been harder for me to get through. Dr. King has been a life hero of mine, and it has been very difficult to watch as he's translated from prophet to mere cultural icon. Gone is his criticism of hierarchy and capitalism. Gone is his talk of a revolution of love AND justice. The radical Martin Luther King has been muffled. In truth, Martin Luther King stands in the tradition of the Biblical prophets, so in this series we are going to look at the radical voices of scripture that Dr. King used. This will be our way of restoring him to his proper place as an American prophet for justice and a radical idea of love."

January 29 - "Mountaintop Living"

Jim: "What got Dr. King to the mountaintop was a willingness to share the common suffering of the world. We want to stand, shoulder to shoulder, with Dr. King, but we cannot do that unless we go through radical changes, in ourselves and how we see the world."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

January 22 - "MLK: Crossing the Line"

Jim: "[Baptism is] annointing us - it's christening us - to cross the line. To be revolutionaries for love. I think that's always been the calling. Called out. Remember the word "church"... "ecclesia" means "called out". Called out of our power, called out of our country, called out of our religion, called out of our prejudice to be friends of humankind. Do you serve human beings, or do you serve things? Are you prepared to choose human good over any kind of status, any kind of possessions, any kind of group that you're a part of? Are you willing to come out of those limited forms of happiness and be an ambassador for all people?"

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

January 15 - "Soulforce: Turning the Other Cheek
as a Revolutionary Technique"

Jim: "As animals, we're kind of born believing in violence. Dr. King and Jesus came to talk about a different way. You have to realize, though, that your animal bodies will not agree with this lesson today. What Jesus is talking about, what Gandhi is talking about, what Buddha is talking about, what Dr. King is talking about is going into a life-long training to convince yourself that violence is not the best way."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

January 8 - "Why Charity is Not Enough"

Jim: "Prejudice is the hardedst thing to see. If you have a prejudice, you can't see it because you're seeing through it. It's the lens with which you look at the world. Listen to the parables. They help us to move from an idea of charity to an idea of justice. Not as shame, not as a burden, but aa an incredible gift."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

January 1 - "Justice: The Worship that God Wants?"

Jim: "The prophet is in the business of healing the whole human community, so what seems like painful criticism is actually a painful resetting of our broken bones, so that we may live together with a hope of happiness for all."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

Sermon Series: "Light From the Darkness:
The Mystical Hymns of Christmas"

Jim: "We forget who we are, as human beings. Simply to fit into this culture well is to forget who you are as a human being, probably. Very, very difficult. What the Christmas hymns are, and the reason we're going through this series, is every one of them that we're using is this beautiful, deep, mystical understanding of how the Sacred enters our life."

December 25 - "How Silently, How Silently the Wondrous Gift is Given"

Jim: "If you don't know where you are on a map, the map is useless. In the same way, if you don't know who you are, in any religion or any philosophy, it is useless to you. It will put you on a journey that will not get anywhere. It doesn't matter what you know or what you do, if you're a stranger to your own heart. Ultimately, every teacher has to lead you to yourself, or they have betrayed you. Where you know it's your life and you're allowed to open up your own eyes... you're not being told what to think or to believe, you're being taught how to see. That's the gift the true teacher gives us."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

December 24 - "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear"

Jim: "The song that the angels are singing IS the message. Whether you believe in angels or not, this author was trying to focus on that song: 'Peace on the earth, good will to all.' And I think what he believed is that's what's written in your heart. That when you're not afraid, your greatest joy, your greatest happiness extends to all beings. And that when you get frightened out of that, you're less happy. You're less complete... you feel less. This is what every loving, human teacher has tried to bring out in us: to take the joy we have in our little world and try to open it up to everybody. That's what Christmas is about."

Audio file (Mp3)       Transcript (pdf)

December 18 - "Love's Pure Light"

Jim: "When you realize that these are symbols, they become much, much bigger. If you've been taught you're supposed to believe in the symbols as objects of history, instead of having them illumine your real life, it can be really frightening. But symbols reveal things about the world. There's a sense in which, if you only look AT a telescope, and never THROUGH the telescope, you don't really know what the heavens are. And if you only look AT a microscope and never THROUGH the microscope, you don't really know what life is, at a fundamental level. So, not looking AT symbols, but instead looking THROUGH the symbols, at your life, can be incredibly revealing.

When you hear the Christmas story, you realize that you're hearing the story of the cosmos, put in miniature. And you're understanding something vital about the human condition, about who you fundamentally are."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

December 11 - "The Hopes and Fears of All the Years Are Met in                            Thee Tonight"

Jim: "John taught that when you've taken the Word in, it makes you free. So any teaching that tells you how to think is not the Word... not this Word, anyway. Any religion that tells you what to do is not this Word. When you hear this Word, you will know that you, too, are a child of God. And you will feel not just the freedom to take responsibility, but the duty to take responsibility for your life in all that you do."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

December 4 - "God Rules the World With Truth and Grace"

Jim: "We are looking at a new idea of power. How does God govern the world? If it were a human being, it would be power. What I'd like for us to do, is to begin the process of reframing theology, at least experimentally in your head, around how a loving God would govern. We know how a violent human being would do it. But how would the source of nature, who loves us from the inside out, govern and control?"

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

November 27 - "What Child is This?"

Jim: "Picture yourself as that infant that you used to be. It's not gone. That innocent awareness is underneath all the other things that make you unhappy, that make you afraid. So Jesus lifts up a child and says, 'Become this again.' 'Receive other people like this.'"

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

Sermon Series: "Prayer"


Jim: "We're gonna look for about two months, at what prayer means to the modern mind. Once we grasp, scientifically, the reality of the world, how do we get back to that sense of mystical joy and unity with other beings that is always the point of religion? That's what makes religion worth doing. If we don't have the scientific piece, life gets crazy in one direction. If we don't have the inner life, the emotional life, then we may know a lot of facts, but life doesn't have much meaning. So what we're trying to do, is bring those together."

November 20 - "For Thine is the Kindom"

(The word "kindom" was coined by mujerista theologian Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz. We use it because God transcends gender, and to emphasize that we are all one world family.)

Jim: "Usually when people begin on their faith journey, prayer means, for them, a conversation with an invisible person. Because when you're a child, that's about as close as you can get to the sense that you're connected to a mystery. Nothing wrong with it, but what Jesus is trying to give us is something deeper and more profound than that. Jesus doesn't want you to have an idea of the sacred, Jesus wants you to have an experience of it. And not only just experience of it, but have that be the animating source of your life and your being.

When we study prayer, it's presented as though we're speaking to an invisible person. If that works for you, I'm not saying to change it. But if it doesn't work for you, I'm saying that it was always deeper than that, anyway."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

November 13 - "Lead Us Not Into Temptation"

Scripture: Micah 6:6-8 (The Inclusive Bible)

"What shall I bring when I come before YHWH*, and bow down before God on high?" you ask. "Am I to come before God with burnt offerings? With year-old calves? Will YHWH be placated by thousands of rams or ten thousand rivers of oil? Should I offer my firstborn for my wrongdoings - the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?"

Listen here, mortal: God has already made abundantly clear what "good" is, and what YHWH needs from you: simply do justice, love kindness, and humbly walk with your God.


*"YHWH" represents the divine name found in the Hebrew text. It represents the divine mystery, and is not pronounced. Instead, we say "God" or some other term of reverence.


Jim: "The question is: Does the prophetic faith call us to change the world, or just to sit there with our hands folded and watch it go to hell?"

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

November 6 - "Forgive Us Our Debts"

Jim: "You don't want to be a cog in a machine. That's not what you want -- that's not who you are. You've always wanted to serve humankind. You've always known that you had a destiny to work and sacrifice and share -- and give a gift that nobody else that's ever lived could give. That's who you are.

In your life -- this week -- you will face, time and time again, decisions of power and entitlement. Maybe small. But they could be the place where big seeds are planted for the future."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

October 30 - "Why wasn't my prayer answered?"

Jim: "The whole point is to tune our hearts to whatever the sacred source is, not to change it, so that it does our will. Our unhappiness does not come because we're not getting our wishes granted. Unhappiness comes because we're out of tune -- with life, with nature. Even within ourselves we're out of tune. So prayer is a way of going deeper. You may not even want to use that word. However it is you go deeper to find your roots into life, into humankind, that's what Jesus is talking about. Jesus isn't talking about religion, he's talking about life."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

October 23 - "What do I pray for?"

Jim: "This thing that you point at, that you call 'you', is ephemeral, fleeting, impermanent. And what Jesus wants you to find, is that within you that is not fleeting, impermanent. Jesus is saying, 'It's not about me. It's not about a person. I'm embodying something that I want you to express.'"

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

October 16 - "What if I don't believe?"

Jim: "Every animal in nature comes into the world with a set of instructions. Birds are born, if not knowing what to sing, with a predisposition that when they hear a certain song, to imitate that. They're born with a predisposition to build a nest, to fly in certain directions and not other directions... they're born with instructions. Seeds are born with insructions. Insects are born with instructions.

Many modern people believe that human beings, alone, in the world are born as orphans in nature. We're born as objects into the world and we have no guidance to which to turn. That's one possibility, but the other possibility is that we've lost contact. That we, indeed, are not truly outside of nature, it just looks that way. And the purpose of religion is to reconnect. To reestablish contact.

We've lost contact with that out of which we shine."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

October 9 - "Who Am I Praying To?"

Jim: "These symbols were never intended to be taken literally, and great damage has been done by the church, in teaching the symbols of religion as if they were historic scientific facts. But there's also poverty from not understanding what the symbols are talking about. A great deal of my experience and your experience isn't logical. The universe is pretty strange. So, the symbols are trying to remind us and connect us to that depth of experience."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

October 2 - "Does Prayer Still Make Sense to the Modern Mind?"

Jim: "Once you leave the "Santa Claus God" behind, what do you do with that beautiful, joyful place inside of you that feels connected to every other being? I would suggest that prayer is whatever it is that gives you that stillness."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

Sermon Series: "The Art of Living"


September 25 - "The Art of Living - Letting Go"

Jim: "To stop and celebrate when somebody's born, and to stop and celebrate when they get married, as they age, when they die -- that ability to let go, and do it on a regular basis -- the earlier we learn that art, the richer our life is going to be."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

September 18 - "The Art of Living - Healing"

Jim: "When Jesus looked out at the crowd and saw its turmoil, he didn't get angry. He didn't get judgmental. It says his heart broke. His heart broke at the pain that was there. And he said something really remarkable. He said, 'The harvest is ripe.'

Do you realize the opportunity, when a culture is dying, for people to choose the spiritual life? What an opportunity that is to teach love."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

September 11 - "The Art of Living - Forgiveness"

Jim: "The idea of forgiveness - not understood in the way most of us were taught it: one on one, somebody's done something to you, you drop it, forget it - I think Jesus was more profound than that. And I think it had personal ramifications, but I also think it was the view of what it means to be a human being."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

September 4 - "The Art of Living - Friendship"

Jim: "Friendship is the foundation of nations and of religion itself. We need each other. We need a sacrmental community."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

August 28 - "The Art of Living - Ordination"

Jim: "People who bring artfulness and express their joy of living can be ministers in all sorts of walks of life. I want you to feel that way about your life -- that what you're doing is important. What we're looking for is that thing you love, that you make a gift to the world."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video

August 21 - "The Art of Living - Baptism (part 2)"

Jim: "Who are you, as a human being in the world? When you answer that question, the rest of it is gonna get clear very quickly."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

August 14 - "The Art of Living - Baptism (part 1)"

Jim: "When you're trying to figure out the art of life, you're gonna need more than two rituals to get through the journey. What I want to do is look at scripture, not in the way that it's normally given, but as permission to live. And not just with your head, but deep in your heart."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

August 7 - "The Art of Living - Introduction"

Jim: (Quoting Vincent Van Gogh) "'I can do very well without God, both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my very life: the power to create.'

What if somebody had taught him that that creativity IS God? What if, instead of believing that God is this missing person... invisible explanation for everything... if he had been told that he is a child of the earth, and this rapturous love affair with colors, with flowers, with fields, WAS the spiritual life? That's not what his religion taught him, so he broke apart.

You discover the sacred in your creativity, in your kindness, in your art, in your craft. I've talked about music, art, dance... that may not be what it is for you. It may be something that I don't figure out. But YOU can, when you realize that the love you have of something is an expression of that mystery... that in your own way, you are singing from your soul."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

July Sermons

In July, Jim Rigby was on writing leave, so we had other capable and interesting people from our church community deliver the Sunday sermons.

July 31 - "The Problem With Shame" by Laura Westerlage

Laura: "Jesus did not want people to be dehumanized at the cost of following God. Rather, Jesus was trying to empower his listeners to stand up for their personhood, to stand up against shaming."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

July 24 - "Transitions" by Rev. Nan Jenkins

Nan: "I suppose that one could say that transitions are synonymous with life, actually, for without them we would continue to be like babies -- still drinking milk, still wearing diapers. Without change, without transitions, life doesn't happen." and "That's the value of faith. It isn't about what happens after we die. It's about how we live our lives before we die."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

July 17 - "How to Be a Person" by Dr. Robert Jensen

From "How to Be a Poet" by Wendell Berry: "There are no unsacred places. There are only sacred places and desecrated places."

Bob: "Rightly employed, human creativity should deepen our humility, not entrench our arrogance. I think the way that we humans divide up the world into the sacred and the unsacred is born of that arrogance... that belief that we understand the world and we can rank the value of places. Either all the world is sacred, or none of it is. It is not up to us humans to make those designations. We are not the creative force behind this world, we are only part of this world. With humans, the sacred will survive where there is that deep reverence for life. When that reverence recedes, desecration is sure to advance. We have a choice: either we treat all the world as sacred, or we condemn to death the world as we know it."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

July 10 - "Seeking the One Together" by Rev. Katrina Shawgo

Katrina: "We are each a part of the Life Force of this world. We are each equally called to enjoy this creation, and to be good stewards of it. And, we are each equally loved by the God who is in us, creating in us."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

July 3 - "Choosing" by Rev. Ilene Dunn

Ilene: "Joshua didn't say, 'Choose according to what yesterday meant' or, 'Choose according to what the future may bring', but 'Choose this day' the principles, the priorities, the behaviors, the theology that'll center you and your path."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


"We are trying, in this sermon series, to frame everything in Christianity around love. We're starting with the rules, the rituals, the dogmas, and say 'What would these mean if they were really interpreted by love alone?' The church often says that Christianity boils down to what you believe, or what you do, or some ritual that you perform. And those are all fine, but they are ways where we can still be unloving. So what I wanted to do is take each little plank of Christianity and say 'What would that mean in the light of love alone?'" --Jim Rigby


June 26: "Loving Oneself as Other"

Jim: "When you were taught to love the symbols of the sacred instead of the sacred itself; when you fall in love with ideas like God, ideas like Jesus, ideas like heaven -- any human understanding of the Mystery; when you think that's what you're supposed to hold onto, then when life changes it can tear your heart out. The purpose of the symbols is to take you deeper. When I love you as an expression of the Ground of Being, and when you accept that love as an expression from the Ground of Being, then the circle is complete. The symbols of religion call us to that unified Ground of Being... to feel our roots in it."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


June 19: "From Evangelism to Communion"

Jim: "Today we are going to look at the concept of evangelism. What could this concept mean, interpreted by love? You do have a message to take out into the world, but it isn't converting other people, it isn't brainwashing them, it isn't propaganda. It's a joyous message of a communion of all the people who are willing to change their hearts and tune their hearts to one another."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


June 12 - Babs Miller: "Loving Perseverance"

Babs: "Whatever your cause, you are called by God to lovingly persist in the pursuit of your dream of justice. You must not lose faith, and you cannot let fear stop you."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


June 5: "From Righteousness to Justice"

Jim: "We are interconnected in a very deep and profound way. We humans -- we living beings -- are interconnected at a very profound level. And when we pull back from one another, we feel powerless... depleted... and it may be that the fatigue that you feel, as an American, is not that you've been doing too much for your brothers and sisters in the world, but you've believed the propaganda that you're powerless; that you're so small and so helpless that you can't do anything for the rest of the world."

Later: "Your resolution to be a human being and nothing less, is a revolutionary act, because it can cost you your job, it can cost you your friends, family, everything... just simply not to sell out your own humanity."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


May 29: "The Other"

1st Scripture Reading: Leviticus 25:8-14 (from The Inclusive Bible)

Count off seven "weeks" of years -- seven times seven years -- so that the seven Sabbaths of years come to a period of forty-nine years. Then, on the tenth day of the seventh month -- the Day of Atonement -- sound the trumpet through-out all your land. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim freedom in the land for all its inhabitants. It is your year of Jubilee: each of you is to return to your ancestral land, to your own family. The fiftieth year is a Jubilee for you; do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines. For it is a Jubilee and it is to be holy for you. Eat only what comes directly from the fields. In this year of Jubilee all of you are to return to your ancestral land. If you sell or buy land among yourselves, neither of you may use the calculation of the Jubilee year to cheat one another.

2nd Scripture Reading: Luke 4:16-19 (from The Inclusive Bible)

Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. Entering the synagogue on the Sabbath, as was his habit, Jesus stood up to do the reading. When the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him, he unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: "The Spirit of our God is upon me: because the Most High has anointed me to bring Good News to those who are poor. God has sent me to proclaim liberty to those held captive, recover of sight to those who are blind, and release to those in prison -- to proclaim the year of our God's favor."


Jim: "To have an apolitical Gospel, means that I can love you in the abstract and take advantage of you in practice. I see this first sermon of Jesus as a call to a kind of spiritual revolution. It's got inner peace, it's got the hopes that go beyond this world, it doesn't reduce spirituality to politics, but it's a spirituality that includes politics. This calling -- this Gospel -- has implications about the world. Politics is how we treat each other. Love that does justice is not mixing politics with the Gospel. It IS the Gospel."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


May 22: "A Sabbath for Humans"

Jim: "When Jesus says the sabbath is made for humans, not humans for the sabbath, that should be translated "religion is made for human beings, not human beings for religion." So as long as we can be religious and honor nature, as long as we can be religious and honor life, as long as we can be religious and honor universal human rights, then religion is a good thing. But when religion trumps any of those foundational values, you put religion to the side and choose love."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


May 15: "From Moralism to Sacramental Community"

Jim: "As long as you have one scapegoat in your theology, I would suggest you've not begun to understand Jesus Christ. This is a love that doesn't need to be defined by fear or hatred. It's a love that can shape an entire worldview on compassion. And it's not a weakness. It's a strength. It's a power. And it guides us. But here's the thing: to do it, you have to stop judging other people.

What we're being called to is a different understanding of humankind and of theology. And it's got to be radical, which means it's not defined by the culture in which you were born, and it's got to be universal, which means it doesn't stop with the people you like."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


May 8: "Honor Thy Roots"

Jim: "This passage, 'Honor your mother and father', can be understood in ways that make us very small and selfish and pull back from one another. It can be a foundation out of which we grow to include the whole world. Any type of religion can make us smaller, meaner... or it can open us and pull us out."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


May 1: "From Prolife to Peacemaker"

Jim: "It doesn't take a hateful person to do hateful things. Sometimes our view of love is just too small. Jesus came to teach us, but for these ancient teachings to make sense, we have to make a certain sacrifice. That is the sacrifice of putting our culture within the context of the words, not these words within the context or our culture."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


April 24: "Love Wins"

Jim: "Most views of the atonement, I think, are very sick, and they leave you with an idea of God that you don't want to worship. A lot of people have left religion and Christianity, not because of anything Jesus said or did, but because of these horrible expressions of superstition.

Christianity is about love... everything in the theology is about love. It illustrates some aspect of love, and none of it's about guilt or shame or abuse, even if the church has used it that way."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


April 17: "From Creationism to Cosmology"

Jim: "Creationism is not cosmology. Cosmology is where you know who you are in the universe. You have sense of reverence for life and for nature, and you feel that you're a part of that web. That's what the stories and the symbols are supposed to lead us to. We're gonna try to find a middle course today, between magical thinking and mechanistic thinking. Between creationism and technology as a reward and end, in and of itself."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


April 10: "Sabbath as Reality Check"

Jim: "Religion, if it's not going to be very strange and hurtful, has to call us back to our own center. It has to be a place where we remember who we are. We should never be too busy to live and to love."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


April 3: "Trinity as the Circle of Life"

Jim: "I believe the great symbols of our faith can be refurbished, but we have to translate them from the world that people lived in when they were spoken, to the world we live in now. If a symbol doesn't take you deeper into your life it's broken. That doesn't mean it can't be fixed, but we have to do the work of animating it. For the church to be viable, we have to be willing to be a lot less comfortable than most churches are."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


March 27: "From Indoctrination to Initiation"

Jim: "The initiation that world needs, and is waiting for, is not into the church and not into religion. It's into life. It produces a different kind of human being. Indoctrination doesn't do that. There's something in you that's strong enough to make it through life. There's something within you that's wise enough to guide you through life. There's something within you that's kind enough to respond the way you hope to in life. But it requires outgrowing the initial images that a child would be attracted to."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


March 20: "From Sect to Universal"

Jim: "Jesus is right. There's only one way. That way is universal love, and any religion that takes you someplace else will lead to pain, confusion and suffering."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


March 13: "From Magic to Mystery"

Jim: "As we've learned more and more about the processes that brought the world into being, we've lost a lot of the magic. And the question is, can we get that back? Keep our scientific mind, not go back to the superstition, but to have that same sense of enchantment - that same sense of wonder that the ancients had. I think that's what religion is all about. To receive the mystery, we have to stop falling back into magic."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


March 6: "Does God Exist?"

Jim: "Theologically, we've come to believe in our symbols so they don't really refer to anything outside themselves. That's a huge problem. If I had been asked to be the translator for the Ten Commandments, I would translate the Second Commandment as 'Don't worship your image of God.' Never come to think that your symbol of the sacred is the sacred itself."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


February 27: "Why is There Suffering?"

Jim: "How do we keep trusting life in the face of suffering? That's the real question that our scriptures call us to ask."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


February 20: "From Literalism to Symbols"

Jim: "Symbols are a type of poetry. They don't refer to themselves. Once symbols of religion become self-referential -- once they become religious,and what they're pointing to is other religion --they no longer illumine the life that we're seeking."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


February 13: "The Integrity Principle"

Jim: "What you're looking for is in here [points to chest] sitting in your chest, and the person next to you, and the person next to you, and the person on the other side of the world that you've never met. In our common humanity. When we're lifted up into that life, into that vision, there's nothing -- nothing -- that can stop us."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


February 6: "From Rules to Principles"

Jim: "You have two choices: you're either going to die OF something, or you're going to die FOR something. Paul isn't talking about sacrifice, he's talking about joy -- they're not two separate things. There is nothing more blissful than living out your highest principle."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


January 30: "From Ritual to Sacred Art"

Jim: "Art can be something that masks your cruelty, or it can take you deeper into life, in a way that you give yourself fully, not only to life, but to other people."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


January 23: "From Belief to Scientific Faith"

Jim: "Do you remember that moment, when you're sitting there and you're thinking, 'Ok, they told me that someday this will all make sense. I realize now, someday will never come. I'd better take responsibility for my own mind'? To be a loving person requires an honesty... a full use of one's mind."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


January 16: "The Search"

Jim quoting Billy Graham: "You started on the great quest the moment you were born. It was many years, perhaps, before you realized it. Before it became apparent that you were constantly searching. Searching for something you never had. Searching for something that was more important than anything in life."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


January 9: "From Fear of God to Courage to Love"

Jim: "A religion of fear has certain results, and a religion that's seeking love and contact and compassion has a very different path that it's going to walk."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


Christmas and the 7 Secrets of Life

January 2: "Part 7: Everything is Connected"

Jim: "You gotta let go of the old wineskins to take in the new wine. The old wineskins are theological -- they're liturgical -- and they may be as comfortable as they can be. But if you're gonna stay close to the Sacred, at some point you and I, both, have to let go of them."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


December 26: "Part 6: Life is Unconquerable"

Jim (paraphrasing Howard Thurmon): "When you don't know what else to do for the world, ask the question: "What brings you to life?" Do that, for what the world needs most of all is human beings that have come to life."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


December 24: "Part 5: Life is What We Give Back"

Jim: "It's really important to realize that it's not enough to love the Christmas figurines. The Christmas story is supposed to be a window into our real lives today, in a way where the song that they heard on Christmas -- peace on earth, good will to all -- is translated into our real lives. When you look at your nativity scene and you feel that joy toward this one porcelain figure, realize that you could feel that way toward infants all over the world, adults all over the world, and you could enter into a world next week where everyone was your family."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


December 19: "Part 4: Life Isn't What Happens to You"

Jim: "The hope that we talk about at Christmas is only real if it's real in your life. To come together and sing songs about people who died 2000 years ago and had angels in their lives, is nowhere near the religion that calls us to sing the song of our own time and our own life -- of the God who lives with us -- Emmanuel. But to receive that gift, you have to let go everything about your past that causes you shame. You have to understand that God sees you like a lover sees you. And whatever you think you've done that disqualifies you for hope is an obstacle... and you need to let it go."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


December 12: "Part 3: Life is Pattern"

Jim: "When you turn the page to John, you have, I think, a real charter to be poetic. Because what John does is start with a prologue, and it's almost like the legend on a map that tells you that what you're seeing on the map is in coded form. Don't look for blue roads, right? Don't look for red towns. It's a coded message. There are some things you only say like that. Things that are too large - too strange - have got to be put in poetic form, because literal, human language doesn't capture the deepest parts of our experience."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


December 5: "Part 2: Life is a Polarity"

Jim: "'A child will be born.' Of course. When all the arguments are over, when all the wars have been fought, new life will be born. What is that going to look like and will we be in alignment with it?"

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


November 28: "Part 1: Life Grows Out of Death"

Jim: "The joy that we feel at Christmas could be a permanent way of life, if the roots went deep. See, it's how we keep the roots superficial and don't look at the implications for how we live the rest of the year, that we have a couple of weeks of joy, and just the excitement of being alive, and then know that the rest of the year is going to be a desert"

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)



"Five Commitments: What We Owe One Another"

November 21: "Part 5: Community"

Jim: "I believe that every one of us has a fundamental decision to make, in life, between the values that come from cooperation and the values that come from competition."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


November 14: "Part 4: Living in the Whole"

Jim: "To say, 'What does the situation look like on the other side of the table?', regardless of who's sitting there - that's the principle of universality. It goes beyond being a member of a sect, being a member of a country, or any limitation of the human condition. It's asking the question of how we could live, breathe, and talk in a way that would serve the common good - the common life."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


November 7: "Part 3: Lifelong Learning"

Jim: "A lot of what education is doing is returning to those same basic truths: Nature is our home, humankind is our family, and reason is our light."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


October 31: "Part 2: Live From the Roots"

Jim: "The word "radical", in this culture, means "extremist"; is linked with violence. But how 'bout we turn to the dictionary and see that it means coming from the roots of something. Jesus Christ was a radical. Jesus Christ came from the roots. He was not defined by the factions that people had to choose from. Jesus calls us to the roots, that we might speak the truth to one another, in love."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


October 24: "Part 1: A Covenant of Kindness"

Jim: "We need a trust in kindness that replaces our trust in violence. We have to commit ourselves to being the kind of community that embodies our highest ideals."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


Earlier October Sermons

October 17: "Salvation"

Jim: "Theology has a crisis that it's going through. Whenever we learn new things about the world, the containers of the message need to be redone. The message, in many ways, is timeless. The symbols speak to the very core of our being. But when we become rigid about the containers in which they're being stored, we step outside of reality and we get in a combat with truth itself. We are learning new things about the world, and theology has to always be born and reborn. Heaven doesn't have to be someplace else. Heaven can be me coming to this place and realizing the miracle of this moment, this place, this time."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


October 10: "What Do We Do With the Idea of Sin?"

Jim: "When symbols have been misused, it's very hard to reclaim them. It's very important, when you read scripture, to realize that you're looking at a time capsule. And that the words have changed, the concepts have changed, but the point was always to bring people to love. You have to feel permission to grow and outgrow childish religion. What you're turning toward, is the life you've always wanted to live and the arms of love."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


October 3: "Love Begins When We Listen"

Jim: "The problem isn't that we don't know what to do. The problem is confusion at a deeper level: we don't know who we are. We don't realize we're children of God, and we don't realize that love is the most powerful thing within us. [Jesus] tries to teach us that we cannot hate another person without wounding ourselves."

Audio file (Mp3)       Transcript (pdf)



September Sermons

Series: Self Defense from a Fundamentalist Attack

On September 5th, Jim began this series and described it this way: "Galatians is a textbook dismantling fundamentalism. It talks about legalism as a mistake, it talks about literalism as a mistake, it talks about sectarian[ism] as a mistake, and it certainly talks about scapegoating as a mistake. And we will look at each one of those as we go through this month. When we talk about 'fundamentalism', we're not talking about 'fundamentalists', because the fact is, we all come in and out of that mental state, that wants it to be about OUR group, that wants things to be literal, in black and white, that wants to know what the pecking order is. The very first fundamentalist any one of us needs to deal with is the one in the mirror."

Watch Streaming Videos of this Series

September 26: "Part Four: Love Fulfills the Law"

Jim: "To say 'God is Love' is the ultimate challenge to religions of fear. What would your religion be like if it were motivated by love, and you completely took fear out of it? John says, 'Love casts out fear.' According to John, we would see each other as the sacred that we're searching for. When we love, we open ourselves to the sacred."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

September 19: "Part Three: Spiritual Grownups"

Jim: "When we stop using religion to divide the world and to take advantage of one another, then we're talking about what Jesus was talking about. The kind of love that doesn't tear the world apart requires a very mature ability to reason and seek out justice."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

September 12: "Part Two: Scapegoats"

Jim: "It's so much quicker to blame our problems on other people than it is to look at complexity. Even when we find the perfect scapegoat, we're still not dealing with the problem. And more importantly, perhaps, we're not meeting that human need for community and for actual relatedness that comes from nurturing each other, caring about each other, sharing life together."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)

September 5: "Part One: Literalism" (Scripture - Galatians 4:21-5:1)

Jim: "We all can 'circle the wagons'... we all can try to make things simple... we all try to find a safe place in the pecking order. Paul is simply trying to call us to something beyond that."

Audio file (Mp3)      Streaming Video       Transcript (pdf)


August Sermons

August 29: "The Trial"

Audio file (Mp3)

Jim: "I want to say to whoever hears this message - whether Presbyterian or not - if you will not disobey an unjust law, you are not 'working within the system to dismantle oppression.' You ARE the oppression."

For details about Janie Spahr and her trial, visit this site

August 22: Babs Miller fills in for Jim and delivers the sermon entitled "What Does It Mean to Offer Hospitality?"

Audio file (Mp3)      Transcript (pdf)     Streaming Video

Babs: "It is when we build our capacity for community that souls flourish and we lay a foundation for a just, peaceful and healing world that truly includes the least and most broken among us."

August 15: "Taste"

Audio file (Mp3)      Transcript (pdf)     Streaming Video

Jim: "We can get a kind of thirstiness -- a kind of itch -- that the more we scratch it the worse it gets. When we desire something or someone, that's not always loving, but it can be the first step toward being loving."

August 8: "For Everything, There is a Season"

Audio file (Mp3)      Transcript (pdf)

Jim: "Unrealistic religion can cave in on people very quickly and at the worst possible times. But a faith that's built on reality and finding the sacred in the ordinary is almost invulnerable."

August 1: "Onward, Through the Fog!"

Audio file (Mp3)      Transcript (pdf)     Streaming Video

Jim: "What is it that you are going to use to navigate through life? And is it going to work in the fog that we're headed into? Religion can either wake us up, or strengthen the trance. And we kind of have to choose which of those it's going to be."


Guest Speakers in July

In July we heard from four guest speakers while Jim was gone. Check them out!

July 4 – Barbara McCarty, regular attendee at St. Andrew’s and past moderator of the Presbytery.

"What IS Security?" Audio file (Mp3)       Transcript (pdf)      Streaming Video

July 11 - Rev. Dr. Ilene Dunn – Pastor of Madison Square Presbyterian Church in San Antonio.

"The House Built on a Strong Foundation" Audio file (Mp3)       Transcript (pdf)

July 18 – Laura Westerlage, member of St. Andrew’s and student at Austin Seminary.

"The Radical Inclusiveness of God's Grace" Audio file (Mp3)       Transcript (pdf)

July 25 – Bob Jensen, member of St. Andrew’s and UT Professor of Journalism.

"Why Are We Here?" Audio file (Mp3)       Transcript (pdf)      Streaming Video


June Sermons

June 27: "The Beatitudes as a Revolutionary Manifesto"

Audio file (Mp3)       Transcript (pdf)      Streaming Video

Jim: "When everybody gets comfortable, we're going in the wrong direction. To be a loving human being requires a toleration of ambiguity that does not come naturally."

June 20

Audio file (Mp3)       Transcript (pdf)      Streaming Video

Jim: "The word "church" is a not very good translation of the word "ekklesia." In Greek that means "called out." The early Christians were those who heard the call -- outside their culture, outside their economic status, outside the systems of violence, outside the systems of domination -- heard a call to be universal ministers to the world. That is what it means to answer the call."

June 13: "In Times of Fear"

Audio file (Mp3)       Transcript (pdf)

Jim: "The Psalms lead us to those places in the heart that sometimes we least want to go. But then the wisdom on the page of the psalm awakens the wisdom in our own heart."

June 6

Audio file (Mp3)       Transcript (pdf)      Streaming Video

Scripture: Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (The Inclusive Bible) Hear, O Israel: YHWH, our God, YHWH is One! You are to love YHWH, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. Let these words that I command you today be written in your heart. Teach them diligently to your children, and repeat them constantly -- when you are at home, when you are walking down a road, when you lie down at night and when you get up in the morning. Tie them on your hand as a reminder; wear them as a circlet on your forehead; write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Jim: "One of the most important decisions you will ever make in your life, if not the most important, is whether your spiritual life will be animated out of fear or out of love."

Previous Sermons and Sermon Series

Around the World in 40 Days: A Loving Look at World Religions from a Christian Perspective

The world is getting smaller and smaller. If we do not learn to respect human differences, our prospects as a species look dim. This sermon series will move around the globe to study the similarities and differences between world religions. Each week we will take a world scripture and a Christian text to find a common depth between them. The last week will show that even atheism can be a source of wisdom and love and need not end the dialog between respectful human beings. From Part 1: "We have a duty to be world citizens - and it's not comfortable, but it's wonderful once we start doing that - but that is the calling a Christian has."


April 11 audio: Part 1: What a Christian can learn from Hinduism       Transcript (pdf)

Jim: "There is one religion in the world. I am not a relativist. It's a religion you see all around the world in the depth of every true religion, which is universal love. And when you're called to be "in Christ", you're being called to love that way and live that way."

"What we're called to do as Christians: to be more than your religion, to be more than your nation, to be more than the narrow frame you would draw around your own survival."

"We will never know the depths of Christianity if we stay in sectarian Christianity."

April 18 audio: Part 2: What a Christian can learn from Buddhism      Transcript (pdf)     Streaming Video

Jim: "There is an incredible difference between a religion of belief and a religion of awareness. When I was exposed to Buddhism, I not only realized the value of a religion of awareness, but I realized that's what Jesus was talking about."

"What Jesus is teaching us is how to see the divine in each other."

April 25 audio: Part 3: What a Christian can learn from Taoism      Transcript (pdf)     Streaming Video

Jim: "For many people, that idea of a vengeful, vindictive God has been what derailed them from theology in general. It's helpful to realize it was never intended that way, at the start. Yes, it's been used that way, but it's talking at a deeper level."

"Love is the most powerful and enduring force in the universe."

Lao-tzu: "The tao [the way] that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding."

May 2 audio: Part 4: What a Christian can learn from Confucianism      Transcript (pdf)

Jim: "Like Confucius, you were born in a time of great change and turmoil. Every understanding is tottering now. The exciting thing is that just like Confucius, you can live by principles. Know that no matter how tumultuous your world is, you begin to change the world when you change yourself."

Confucius: "They who know the truth are not equal to they who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it."

May 9 audio: Part 5: What a Christian can learn from Native American religion       Transcript (pdf)      Streaming Video

Jim: "It seems to me, with the history of how people on this continent treated the Native Americans, that there's a humility that I think is required when we lift up the teachings."

"The indigenous people around the world have something to teach us. People who've stayed close to the earth have something to teach us that we've lost... and that we need, to survive as a species."

Black Elk: "The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us."

May 16 audio: Part 6: What a Christian can learn from Judaism       Transcript (pdf)      Streaming Video

Jim focuses on the passages from the Hebrew Scriptures known as the "Jubilee texts." These words are echoed by Jesus when he teaches in the temple.

Jim: "If you take "Jubilee" out of Christianity -- the social justice message: on earth as it is in heaven -- when you take that out of Christianity, you're not talking about what Jesus was talking about."

May 23 audio: Part 7: What a Christian can learn from Islam      Transcript (pdf)      Streaming Video

Jim: "If you call yourself a Christian, you have a duty not to take up the enemies that anyone else tells you to take up. All religions have to get past power. All religions have to get past belief. And get down to what the prophets have really come to tell us, and that's that love is at the core. It's at the core of life, it's at the core of the universe, it's the core of each of us."

May 30 audio: Part 8: Can Atheism Be Spiritual?      Transcript (pdf)      Streaming Video

Jim: "We need to build a bridge between theism and non-theism, because that's where the hope of humankind lies."



Easter 2010 (audio) Transcript (pdf)

Jim: "We need to come to life, wherever we are. The resurrection happens when we stop seeing the sacred only in Jesus, and begin to see it in each other."



The Disciples' Prayer

All the sermons in Jim's series on prayer are based on Matthew 6:7-13, as follows from The Inclusive Bible: “And when you pray, don’t babble like the Gentiles. They think God will hear them if they use a lot of words. Don’t imitate them. Your God knows what you need before you ask it. This is how you are to pray: ‘God in heaven, hallowed be your name! May your reign come; may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven: give us today the bread of Tomorrow. And forgive us our debts, as we hereby forgive those who re indebted to us. Don’t put us to the test, but free us from evil.’”

February 7 audio: The Disciples' Prayer, Part 1 Text: transcript (pdf)

Jim delivers a very personal introduction to this series, as he relates the ideas to his very recent experience of the death of his father.

February 14 audio: The Disciples' Prayer, Part 2 Text: transcript (pdf)

The symbol of heaven and its meaning today.

February 21 audio: The Disciples' Prayer, Part 3 Text: transcript (pdf)

The phrase "Hallowed be thy name." can have a new depth of meaning and make us mindful of the ground of our being.

February 28 audio: The Disciples' Prayer, Part 4 Text: transcript (pdf)

Jim: "To pray for it to be 'on earth, as it is in heaven' means to give ourselves to that voice we hear right now, calling us to care... to be an ambassador for another kind of world."

March 7 audio: The Disciples' Prayer, Part 5 Text: transcript (pdf)

"Give us this day our daily bread." Can a 21st century person ask for gifts from "out there", or is prayer meant to be something much deeper than most of us realize?

March 14 audio: The Disciples' Prayer, Part 6 Text: transcript (pdf)

"Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." Jim: "If there's going to be hope for our species, we need to learn this art of forgiveness."

March 21 audio: The Disciples' Prayer, Part 7 Text: transcript (pdf)

"Lead us not into temptation." Jim: "The point is that every spiritual pilgrim will run across certain crises as they grow." Our awareness of the choices that will confront us on the path is crucial to our spiritual maturation.

March 28 audio: The Disciples' Prayer, Part 8 Text: transcript (pdf)

"For thine is the kin-dom, the power, and the glory forever." (We use the word "kin-dom",coined by theologian Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, because God transcends gender, and to emphasize our familial relationship with each other, both here and world-wide.) Jim: "The true source of happiness is giving everything we have and are to the common life."


Humor in the Bible

January 3 audio: Part 1: "Balaam's Ass" Text: transcript (in Word)

This sermon is based on the story of Balaam and his donkey, found in Numbers 22:21-35.

January 10 audio: Part 2: "Baldy and the Bears" Text: transcript (in Word)

This story, involving the prophet Elisha, is found in II Kings 2:23-25.

January 17 audio: Part 3: "The Incompetent Exorcists" Text: transcript (in Word)

Acts 19:13-16 is where you can find this teaching story about some exorcists who got in over their heads.

January 24 audio: Part 4: "When Pigs Fly" Text: transcript (in Word)

A herd of pigs runs into the lake in this story. But who are the pigs, really? Matthew 8:28-34

January 31 audio: Part 5: "The Algebra of Bigotry" Text: transcript (in Word)

Paul attempts to jolt Titus from his prejudice. Titus 7:1-16


Advent/Christmas Series

November 29 (first Sunday in Advent) Audio: "Giving Birth to Hope, Part 1" Text: transcript (in Word)

December 6 Audio: "Giving Birth to Hope, Part 2: Mary" Text: transcript (in Word)

December 13 Audio: "Giving Birth to Hope, Part 3: Waiting" Text: transcript (in Word)

December 20 Audio: "Giving Birth to Hope, Part 4: The Importance of Song" Text: transcript (in Word)
Streaming Video

December 24: "Giving Birth to Hope, Part 5: Angels" Only text is available: transcript (in Word)

December 27 Audio: "Giving Birth to Hope, Part 6: Hope Speaks" Text: transcript (in Word)


Thanksgiving 2009

The Challenges and Hope of a Realistic Look at Thanksgiving



Finding Your Path

Genesis 2: Eden Song

The book of Genesis is not history or science. It is sacred poetry. The images of the creation story are not meant to shame us, but ask how we have "fallen" out of nature and how we might find our way back in.

“On Love,” based on I Corinthians 13.


July’s Super Summer Extravaganza

While Jim was on writing leave, these speakers brought us great sermons from diverse standpoints:

The Gospel According to Monty Python

British comedy group Monty Python made some of the most insightful critiques of religion ever. There is nothing more respectful of the sacred mystery than a good laugh at human efforts to capture it in religious forms. This series of sermons will examine the jokes of Monty Python as a way of understanding the teachings of Jesus.

Each sermon is based on an inoffensive scene from either “Life of Brian” or “The Meaning of Life” and a related Scriptural passage in which Jesus makes the same critique of religion.

Warning! Watch the full movies only if you are not easily offended. And watch “The Meaning of Life” only if nothing offends you.

May 24: The Journey: Learning to Re-Image God

Our special guest was the Rev. Nan Jenkins, retired minister from First Presbyterian Church in Elgin. Drawing from Genesis 12:1–2 and 4–9, Ruth 1:7–22, and Luke 9:1–6, Rev. Jenkins shared the experiences of her journey of faith. (Audio and transcript (in Word) available.)

Resurrection Stories, the Risen Christ, and Life

Each of the Gospels relates a story of an encounter with the risen Christ — resurrection stories, as they are called. In many of these stories, the encounter comes in the form of mistaken identity. The disciples come to recognize the risen Christ in a mysterious stranger. Eventually, at Pentecost, they come to experience that same spirit in one another.

In this series, Rev. Rigby explores the message of these particular resurrection stories:

Is Easter the story of a walking cadaver or an experience of the spirit of life itself? When the risen Christ calls us, are we being called to the Christian Church? Or to the one life of us all?

Palm Sunday

Apr. 5: “When You Don't Know What to Do” (Audio and transcript (in Word) available.)

The Biblical Roots of Activism

In March, Dr. Jim Rigby reviewed the Scriptural call to Jubilee and its significance to the way we are called to live today:

Working with the Emotions

In February, Dr. Jim Rigby explored what Scripture has to say about our emotions and how we are called to work with them:

The Book of James

Saving Christmas

The task of theology is to build a bridge between the sacred as presented in our scriptural traditions and the world in which people actually live. Rather than fight against secular aspects of Christmas, we must attempt to reclaim the secular elements of Christmas wherever we can without betraying the message Christmas is intended to proclaim.

This series includes five sermons from Nov. 30 through Dec. 28, 2008.

Bringing AGAPE to Life

This series presents the background for the model we use at St. Andrew’s to ensure that we follow a balanced approach in pursuing our mission.

Dr. Rigby gave these five sermons from Oct. 20 through Nov. 17, 2008.

Earlier Sermons

To find other sermons delivered at St. Andrew’s:

Please use these opportunities to share our progressive Christian message with interested friends, family, and those unable to attend our worship services.

You might also be interested in other articles about St. Andrew’s and our mission.

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Links to
Coming Events:


Film:
Miss Representation
Sunday, May 20, 6pm
$10 suggested donation

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For Children:

Kith n' Kin Camp
VBS 2012

Activities
For Youth