Worship. Serve. Grow.

Sermons by The Rev. Sally Harbold (Page 3)

New Life in Baptism

Happy Easter!! Allelulia, Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen Indeed, Allelulia! This is the night, this is the day, this is the season to celebrate new life in all of its forms!! Spring is showing up all around us…there is hope that winter is over…

Wilderness Places

When I was growing up, my family went camping a lot. It started when I was in elementary school, camping in tents, and we even had a teepee for a little while. Then we got this trailer we pulled behind our station wagon. It was 17 feet long and seven people could sleep in it. So I still love camping but I have learned in my adult life to go “wilderness camping.”…

Nets for Life

When I was a young adult I remember my father repeating a story that his father was born before cars existed. That means probably before there were any roads. Then by the time Grandpa died and he was 95 years old and we had put a man on the moon. So my dad was overwhelmed about the amount of change that had taken place in our world in these less than 100 years of his own father’s life…

Care and Share

The historian and theologian Diana Butler Bass, in responding to the tragedy in Arizona last week was quoted as saying that: ” ..the core values of our faith are at odds with violence and the rhetoric of violence. We need to give our people hope that the God born a few weeks ago in a manger is still among us, deeply grieving and deeply caring.”

In every tragedy, whether near or far, in every loss, whether ours or another’s, in every fear and doubt and any crisis that we encounter (and we all encounter many throughout our lives) in all of these instances it is eventually to God that we turn for answers, for comfort, for a reason to go on…

What We Believe About Christmas

Four or five years ago the neighbor behind me moved out and someone new moved in during the Fall. At Christmas time, as is my habit, I was taking sweets around to my neighbors and I stopped, for the first time, at this house. Two children answered the door with the dad close behind: a boy about 3 years old, and a girl, maybe 5 years old. I said “Merry Christmas” and introduced myself and offered my gifts. There was a tree in the living room, decorated, and the house had outside lights. So I asked the children, do you think that Santa will be able to find you in your new house?

I Will Write it on Their Hearts

Jeremiah 31:31-32a, 33, 34b
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with [my people] It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors….a covenant that they broke…. This is the covenant that I will make…. I will put my law within them,… I will write it on their hearts’ and I will be their God, and they will be my people….From the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Launch of the Center for Hope and Healing (CHH)

Good morning. I greet you on this the 18th Sunday after the Day of Pentecost. Today is also a momentous day in my own life, in the lives of many volunteers here at St. Paul’s, and, I hope, in the life of our entire parish and community as we celebrate the launch of St. Paul’s Center for Hope and Healing. The Center for Hope and Healing is a new mission and outreach of this parish which offers counseling, education, support and resources to persons at St. Paul’s as well as those within the greater community…

The Simplicity on the Other Side of Complexity

Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” Let me give you a visual on this so you can follow me here. Let’s just say that this (points to lectern), right here where I’m standing, is the complexity of our lives…

Independence Day 2010

Today is the sixth Sunday after the day of Pentecost and the two hundred and thirty fourth annual celebration of our nation’s independence from Great Britain. So I greet you with God’s blessing upon us all and a cheerful good morning. In a letter to his wife Abigail, John Adams wrote in 1776 that our national independence day ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty…

Job Description of the Holy Spirit

Today is the Sunday following the Feast of Pentecost and is named Trinity Sunday. We are reminded that the God that we seek and serve is three in one. This feast is actually our last celebration before we enter into the long season of ordinary time that finishes out the church year…