Making Room
Lee Davis • December 8, 2025
Sermon, 2nd Sunday of Advent
Stephen is about to die. He knows it. The stones are already in people's hands. And he looks up, and someone is standing. That is a claim about the nature of God
When we gather around the Eucharist table every Sunday, we are continuing a practice that was, from its very beginning, a political act.
Jesus the gentle shepherd, leading his flock. It's Good Shepherd Sunday, and we know exactly what to expect. Except this year I kept reading.
The Baptismal Covenant — those five questions asked at every baptism in the Episcopal Church, is the most demanding document most of us have ever agreed to
Every Sunday we pray a collect. A structure so carefully designed that it has been teaching people how to pray for over a thousand years.
The tomb was empty. Nobody has ever been able to explain it. And everything that follows — flows from that one inconvenient, impossible, world-altering fact.
The tomb is empty. They couldn't stop it then. They cannot stop it now.
Every voice in the Good Friday story is some version of the same demand. Come down. Stop this. Prove who you are and get off that cross. But he stayed.
Jesus knew. He knew exactly what was coming. He knew who was about to betray him, who was about to deny him, who was going to run. And he washed their feet anyway,
Most of us learned confession wrong. We learned it as a transaction — you sin, you confess, you feel bad, you're forgiven, you try harder. The point was the guilt.