All Souls Parish Sermons

All Souls Parish, Berkeley
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These are the weekly sermons of All Souls Parish in Berkeley, CA.

  1. 2d ago

    Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

    the Rev. Dr. Ruth Meyers Using the All Souls youth's encounters with day laborers at the U.S.–Mexico border, the sermon explores Jesus's parable of the laborers in the vineyard. The youth discovered that hearing people's stories and seeing their faces made it impossible to dismiss their humanity. Jesus similarly invites his disciples to see the humanity of those who are overlooked and to reconsider assumptions about who deserves what. In the parable, workers hired at the end of the day receive the same wage as those who worked from morning. The first workers resent this, even though they received exactly what they were promised. Their complaint reveals how easily another person's good fortune can make generosity seem unfair. Drawing on John Chrysostom's Easter homily, the sermon presents God's kingdom as radically abundant: those who arrive first and those who arrive last are all welcomed into God's joy. Day laborer and landowner, immigrant and native-born, longtime disciple and newcomer all share God's gifts. Rather than competing over who deserves more, Jesus invites everyone to rejoice together in the extravagant generosity of God.

  2. Sep 14

    Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

    the Rev. Phil Brochard The sermon argues that forgiveness is essential to both the nature of God and the life of Christian community. Beginning with Francis of Assisi's addition of pardon to the Canticle of the Creatures, it presents forgiveness as something as fundamental as the rest of creation. Jesus' parable of the unforgiving servant makes the point through an enormous contrast: a servant forgiven an impossibly large debt refuses to forgive a much smaller debt owed to him. God's extraordinary mercy toward us calls us to extend mercy to others. Forgiveness does not mean forgetting harm, permitting abuse, or pretending wrongdoing did not occur. Rather, it means relinquishing revenge and refusing to hold another person's debt forever. It may require considerable time and patience. Ultimately, the sermon insists that a community not grounded in forgiveness is not grounded in God, because the mercy we give reflects the mercy we have received.

  3. Sep 6

    Feast of Creation in Christ

    the Rev. Emily Boring The sermon celebrates the Feast of Creation in Christ by exploring the Christian belief that everything is created, sustained, and ultimately gathered together in Christ. Beginning with the preacher's awe-filled memory of watching a humpback whale repeatedly slap its tail against the ocean at sunset, the sermon contrasts scientific explanation with the deeper experience of wonder and relationship. Genesis and John's Gospel reveal creation not as something God made and left behind, but as an ongoing expression of God's creative love. The incarnation of Christ reveals God's relationship with matter and the profound interconnectedness of all existence. A whale—and every human being—is part of a vast web involving stars, oceans, microorganisms, food webs, and cycles of matter and life. Recognizing Christ within this interconnected creation transforms environmental responsibility: we care for the world not primarily because of guilt, fear, or obligation, but because we recognize our relationship with it and learn to love it.

  4. Sep 5

    Memorial Service of Howard Perdue

    the Rev. Phil Brochard

  5. Aug 30

    Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

    the Rev. Dr. Mark Richardson The sermon continues the previous week’s Gospel lesson, in which Peter boldly identified Jesus as the Messiah. The preacher approaches Peter sympathetically, seeing him as a stand-in for all of us: sincere in his faith, courageous enough to make a great declaration, yet not fully aware of what that declaration will demand. Like Peter stepping onto the water, he understands enough to take the first step, but fear and incomplete understanding soon reveal his limits. Immediately after Peter declares Jesus to be the Messiah, Jesus begins explaining what his messiahship actually means. He will go to Jerusalem, suffer at the hands of the authorities, and ultimately be killed. Peter cannot accept this. His response is not a gentle disagreement; he rebukes Jesus, insisting that this must never happen. Jesus responds with equal force: “Get behind me, Satan.” The preacher emphasizes the extraordinary intensity of this confrontation. Peter is presenting precisely the temptation Jesus has already rejected—the possibility of exercising power according to the world's familiar systems rather than following God's radically different way. The argument therefore represents much more than a disagreement about what will happen to Jesus. Peter is confronting a choice that will eventually confront every disciple: whether to seek security within established institutions and systems of power or follow Jesus into a radically different understanding of life, power, suffering, and selfhood. Had Peter understood from the beginning where following Jesus might lead, the preacher wonders whether he would have followed at all. Jesus' path threatens not simply Peter's safety but his entire understanding of himself and the life he expected to live.

  6. Aug 24

    Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

    the Rev. Emily Boring Jesus’s question, “Who do you say that I am?”, is not a question Christians answer once and for all. We inherit understandings of Jesus from scripture, tradition, theology, worship, and culture, just as the disciples interpreted Jesus through their own religious history and political circumstances. But Jesus asks us to bring those inherited understandings into conversation with what we ourselves have experienced. The preacher illustrates this through worship at the U.S.–Mexico border, where Christians on opposite sides of the wall pray, sing, exchange the peace, and celebrate Eucharist together. There, the wall—an instrument of separation—becomes like both cross and altar, making tangible the claim that Christ’s love overcomes division. Theology is therefore a lifelong conversation between inherited faith and lived experience. Our answers will always be partial, just as Peter could correctly identify Jesus as Messiah while still misunderstanding what that meant. Christian faith is less about possessing a perfect answer than continually allowing Jesus’s question to challenge and transform us: Who do you say that I am, and how will your answer shape your life?

  7. Aug 16

    Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

    the Rev. Michael Lemaire Rather than defending Jesus’ harsh treatment of the Canaanite woman, the sermon asks whether the encounter actually changed Jesus. The woman crosses cultural, religious, and gender boundaries to seek healing for her daughter. Jesus initially rejects her, describing his mission as limited to Israel and comparing outsiders to dogs who should not receive the children’s food. But the woman brilliantly turns Jesus’ image around: even dogs receive crumbs from the master's table. Her persistence and love expose the abundance of the grace Jesus carries and challenge the limits he has placed around his mission. Jesus listens, changes his response, and heals her daughter. The sermon suggests that this may reveal something profound about divine love: genuine love means being open enough to be moved and changed by others. Perhaps encounters like this helped Jesus understand that his mission extended beyond Israel to all people. Even more provocatively, this mother’s willingness to risk humiliation and rejection for someone she loved may have offered Jesus an example of the self-giving love he would ultimately embody on the cross.

  8. Aug 10

    Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

    the Rev. Phil Brochard Following the execution of John the Baptizer, Jesus seeks solitude to grieve and pray while his disciples cross the Sea of Galilee. During the night, they become trapped in a storm. In the exhausting “fourth watch,” Jesus comes toward them across the water and says, “Take heart. I am. Do not be afraid.” The sermon emphasizes that “I am” echoes the biblical language of God’s divine presence. Peter steps out of the boat toward Jesus but becomes frightened by the storm and begins to sink. When he cries, “Lord, save me,” Jesus immediately reaches for him. The preacher hears Jesus’ question—“You of little faith, why did you doubt?”—not as condemnation but compassion: I am here, and I will hold on to you. Faith, the sermon argues, is not intellectual certainty, optimism, or a guarantee that life will be easy. Faith is trust—where we place our hearts. Sometimes we choose to step into storms; sometimes storms find us. Faith does not promise that we will never be frightened or overwhelmed. It promises that we will not be abandoned.

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These are the weekly sermons of All Souls Parish in Berkeley, CA.

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