Sermons in the Key of Life

The sermon traces the preacher’s spiritual journey, beginning in 2002 at Tassajara Zen Center, where a sense of emptiness despite professional success—completing a degree and securing a tenure-track position—sparked a search for faith. After years of struggle (career dissatisfaction, the 2008 financial crisis, resistance to seminary, and precarious circumstances), the preacher entered seminary in 2010, graduating in 2013 and marrying Angela. The sermon interprets Jesus’ cursing of the barren fig tree and cleansing of the temple as a call to choose a life-giving path, free from distractions and harmful influences. Forgiveness, especially of oneself, is essential to restoring the sacred inner te...

You can praise God with your words. You can place yourself there. Because what does it mean to praise God? God who is beyond our understanding, beyond knowing. We can praise that God — the God who says, "I want to be known by you," and still remains unknowable in some very fundamental way. What does it really mean to say, "I'm praising God"? Choose words. Choose better words, different words. It's a way of bringing yourself into a space of awe and gratitude. Praise be to God. It's like — I'm in awe of the fact that I'm alive at all...

That depth of resourcefulness that is in each and every one of us is something that we can know about because of this incredible history that has come through slavery and Jim Crow and all the other forms of oppression — from within the African-American community, who have plowed the depth of that resourcefulness that was yours to begin with, that was ours to begin with, that was theirs to begin with. It was created and put there because you were created by God and you were an heir of God, receiving all that God had to offer, already here an...

To have a consistent life of prayer — it's not a self-evident trajectory in our lives. We are more and more distracted. Everybody will tell you that our attention span is shrinking, that we're pulled on by so many different objects and messages, technologies and people. If you feel that is happening to you, no shame on you at all. There are billions and billions of dollars being put into developing distraction for all of us. As someone who had worked at Facebook in the early days once said: "The brightest minds of my generation are all interested in getting yo...

In the sermon The Church and the Mountaintop, delivered on July 5, 2026, the speaker explores the intersection of personal gratitude, national identity, and the radical inclusivity of the Gospel. The message begins with a poignant personal story about visiting a dying World War II veteran in a poorly maintained nursing home. The veteran had been a P-51 Mustang pilot who crash-landed in the Netherlands—the speaker’s home country. This connection leads to a profound moment of realization: the speaker’s own life was made possible by the veteran’s service and the liberation of Holland. This story serves as a founda...

It's Pride Sunday today, and many people are in San Francisco marching, celebrating, having a grand old time. They've been doing it for a few days. You know how that goes. There was the Trans March on Friday, the Dyke March yesterday, and then the general Pride March today. Some people go to all of it. Some people have their favorites. I used to be a pride monitor for several years, contingent monitor. I was a contingent monitor for the first LGBT Muslim contingent that ever marched in a pride march in San Francisco. I mean, that was a...