Sermon archive for category: Rev. Javier Almendárez-Bautista

If you ever walk around the old city in Jerusalem, you’ll find a lot of commemorative plaques all over the place. Now it is primarily a Jewish and Muslim city, but you’ll still find markers of various Christian sites and points of pilgrimage, places that people have visited again and again to remember and walk in the footsteps of Jesus…. (Matthew 15: 10-28)

The Rev. Javier Almendárez Bautista contemplates Genesis 28:10-19a: ““It’s not about the mountaintop experience. It’s about who we are afterward, between those moments.”

Just prior to our Gospel today, we meet Jesus speaking to the twelve disciples for the first time, newly commissioned to do the work that he has given them to do. They are to go to the lost sheep of Israel and preach the good news…. Matthew 10:40-42

The Rev. Javier Almendárez Bautista reflects on Trinity Sunday: “The story is difficult to believe sometimes. I don’t mean because of how the math plays out, the three in one. It’s difficult to believe because we don’t often have the clearest sense of God’s presence in our day-to-day lives, God’s presence with and among us.”

The Rev. Javier Almendárez Bautista considers John 14:1-14: “At this point, the disciples had been following Jesus for some time… and yet even then, the disciples still struggled to understand what it means to follow Jesus… Following Jesus rarely comes with a road map.”