The Rev Alissa: Sermons
A place to listen to sermons preached wherever I go as Canon to the Ordinary in the Episcopal Diocese of New York.
Episodes
34 episodes
The 15th Sunday After Pentecost: Ordinary Hands
"There is no one ritual that can make you perfect or worthy or whole, but there is one God who loves you enough to be with you – who shows up over and over in ordinary ways, through ordinary moments, and every religious practice we do together ...
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Season 2
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Episode 15
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13:13
The 14th Sunday After Pentecost: The Difficult Teaching
"What is interesting to me is not that some people leave Jesus here when things get real. What is interesting is that some of them stay. Jesus lays out the reality – following him is about to get hard, they will need to not just be next to him,...
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Season 2
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Episode 14
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12:32
The 13th Sunday After Pentecost: Devour Your Life
“ for us, for Christians, there is no choosing the spiritual over the physical. Christians do not get to pick and choose what a life to experience and what to escape, and we are not called to anywhere but where we actually are.”Text: Jo...
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Season 2
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Episode 13
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12:00
The 12th Sunday After Pentecost: Do You Trust
“ We tend to think that belief means intellectual assent, or factual certainty. So if you hear that you need to believe in God, and in Jesus, you might think that you need to come to intellectual certainty about the existence of God or divinity...
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Season 2
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Episode 12
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11:11
The 10th Sunday after Pentecost: Choose Your Power
“ How was Bathsheba presented to you, the first time her story crossed your awareness? History and interpretation have been almost as cruel to this woman as her king was. She must have done something to prov...
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Season 2
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Episode 11
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15:19
The Third Sunday After Pentecost: The Cost of a Strong Man
"That’s the problem with strong men. It’s been a problem since the very first kingdom asked if they could have one. Strong men want to use the power we give them. They want to use the muscles they have. They want to provide borders and protecti...
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Season 2
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Episode 8
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11:49
Trinity Sunday: The Third Way
" Because of our Trinity, we have permission to always be looking for a third way – because that’s what God does, and that’s who God is. We have permission, right there in the mysterious and unfathomable nature of our God, to be curious instead...
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Season 2
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Episode 7
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12:51
The Fifth Sunday of Easter: Imagine the Impossible
"So here is the challenge: We will meet people on the path ahead who are not like us. Who do not share very many, or any of the identities that matter most to us. People who enjoy privilege we don’t, who defy norms we are used to.And som...
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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15:24
The Third Sunday of Easter: Street Level
"This Easter is harder to want, isn’t it? This is an Easter that is not about winning as much as it is about turning and re-orienting ourselves toward God and each other. This is an Easter that is less about a huge, visible victory and more abo...
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11:53
The Second Sunday of Easter: They Will Be Retained
"This is the commission that Jesus gives his community in the world, the little baby church, our ancestor. Forgive people, and love them. Forgive people and hold them fast, even when they doubt. Even when they don’t believe in the way that you ...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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11:40
Easter Vigil: The Easter Invitation
"Easter is not a fix, but it is an opening. Resurrection is an invitation. It is a stone rolled away, opening up possibilities we could never have dreamed on our own, God’s possibilities for justice and hope, after trauma, for heali...
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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13:39
Maundy Thursday: What Makes the World
"Friends, love isn’t a resource that can be used up or spent up. It isn’t all we need – Love is all we are. It is the engine that runs the world, the only action worth taking, the only identity worth living. "Text: John 13:1-17, 31b-35<...
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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10:43
The Third Sunday of Lent: The Question We Don't Want to Ask
"So if the resurrected and living body of Jesus is the answer – what is the question? Here it is: How do we survive, when the temple where we meet God and find our own identities as God’s people is destroyed? How can we be God’s people, if we d...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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13:59
The First Sunday of Lent: Transition Wilderness
"Change is a thing that happens – you move to a new city, lose a relationship, a messiah is baptized and named. Transition is the process of a human being responding to change, and it takes a lot longer to happen than the change itself. Becomin...
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Season 1
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Episode 35
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13:32
Sermon for Celebration of New Ministry for Paul Lebens-Englund & St. Andrew's: Words reveal Worlds
"Words create worlds.I think this is precisely what Jesus is about in our gospel reading tonight. We may be tempted, as humans who inhabit our particular culture to read the beatitudes and try to make them an individual prescription for ...
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11:42
The 4th Sunday After the Epiphany: Only the Beginning
"This is how Jesus begins his big work of love and life and hope – with the one human being in front of him. This is how Jesus begins to author the story of God’s kingdom- not with words but with an act of love, offering freedom and conne...
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Season 1
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Episode 20
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13:36
Sermon for the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany: Called Into Relationship
"It is such a big project, to see the full humanity of every person and every type of person in our lives. And yet I think this is the project of the incarnation, the big idea of Jesus Christ’s enfleshing among us. "Text: 1 Samuel 3:1-2...
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13:15
Sermon for Christmas Eve: God Moves Closer
"One of the tasks of human existence is to figure out what to do with our own strangeness. Do we run from our shadows? Ignore them, try to erase or medicate them? Can we get close and somehow embrace the chaotic and unmanageable parts of who we...
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Season 1
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Episode 17
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13:38
The Second Sunday of Advent: Threshold
"Advent is a threshold moment – it is the deep breath before we are asked to step into renewed relationship with the mystery of God made flesh. We ritualize this threshold moment because we need practice, friends. We need practice noticing the ...
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Season 1
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Episode 16
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14:04
The First Sunday of Advent: Wake up to Hope
"This passage is not about despair, did you notice? And it is not about punishment – nowhere in it does Jesus say bad things will happen to those who fall asleep. It is about hope after horrible things. And it is about trusting that every momen...
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Season 1
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Episode 15
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13:28
Christ the King: Eternity
“I know that when you and I hear words like eternal life or eternal punishment, our minds go straight to the afterlife – heaven and hell. But that’s not what eternal means – it doesn’t mean afterlife or even unending life. Eternal means without...
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Season 1
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Episode 14
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15:54
The 25th Sunday After Pentecost: Got Talent?
"Here is this parable, asking you and I a question: what extravagant gift from God are you holding in your life today? And I’m not talking about how well you dance, or sing, or spit pillows. I am talking about the extravagant ability to love, t...
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Season 1
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Episode 13
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14:47
The 24th Sunday After Pentecost: The Strength to Show Up
"How do we get ready for an unpredictable God? How do we prepare ourselves to be Christians in a world that, really, we cannot prepare for? How do we fill our lamps with oil so we can be providers of life and light when something new from God d...
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Season 1
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Episode 12
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11:45
The 22nd Sunday After Pentecost: With All Your Attention
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength. Give God all your attention, Jesus tells us. The way you do that is to pay attention to the neighbor – to see hear, and attend to their needs, AND to pay attention to y...
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Season 1
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Episode 11
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15:39
The 21st Sunday After Pentecost: The Trap
"I think we humans want to pick a side because that feels like doing something. Then we can rage and judge and fight, and that also feels like doing something. But, is it? I wonder what we lose, when we accept the story that there are only two ...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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13:26