Authors

Joshua Bowron

Josh Bowron is the rector of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Charlotte, N.C.. where he lives with his wife, four chickens, three children, two cats, and one amazing dog.

Sermons and Bible Studies

Five Acts, Christ the King Sunday (B) – 2021

November 21, 2021

[RCL] 2 Samuel 23:1-7; Psalm 132:1-13 (14-19); Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37 Happy Christ the King Sunday! Here we are on Christ the King, on the very cusp of Advent. Part of the supposition of this day is that everyone might have a working knowledge or direct experience of kings. In this modern age, very few […]

Sheeple, Proper 11 (B) – 2021

July 18, 2021

RCL: 2 Samuel 7:1-14a; Psalm 89:20-37; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56 This sermon, written by the Rev. Joshua Bowron, originally ran July 22, 2018. What do you suppose are the most prevalent metaphors that we use for God? Likely Father, King, and Shepherd are in the top three, if not the top three. There are, of course, […]

Regarding Sin, Ash Wednesday – 2021

February 17, 2021

[RCL] Joel 2:1-2,12-17 or Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 103 or 103:8-14; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6,16-21 Sin. Mention of sin usually puts us on the defensive. Even worse, the discussion of sin puts us on the dismissive. The dismissive is when we have made up our minds to refuse to even listen. Well, here we are […]

All Sinners, Epiphany 6 (A) – February 16, 2020

February 16, 2020

[RCL]: Deuteronomy 30:15-20 or Sirach 15:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37 There have been many good and talented comedy troupes throughout the years: Burns and Allen, Martin and Lewis, the original cast of Saturday Night Live, for instance. Of course, there is Monty Python, so good it hurts. But of all the wonderful […]

Testimony, Epiphany 2 (A) – January 19, 2020

January 19, 2020

[RCL]: Isaiah 49:1-7; Psalm 40:1-12; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42 Don’t you find it remarkable that we know anything at all? If you think about it, we don’t know much of anything unless we have been taught it by another person. Engaging in a website or a film or a book privately is being taught […]

Engaging with Scripture, Proper 28 (C) – 2019

November 17, 2019

[RCL]: Isaiah 65:17-25; Canticle 9; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19 It seems almost self-evident that children’s literature contains some of the most unvarnished truths among any genre. Certainly, we all have our favorites, but two, in particular, have something to do with our life in the church hinted at in our collect and the readings […]

Across the Chasm, Proper 21 (C) – 2019

September 29, 2019

[RCL]: Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15; Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16; 1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31 We’ve just heard the story that Jesus tells, but I’d like to highlight a couple of details. Jesus mentions that the rich man, who is not named, is feasting sumptuously every day and wearing purple. This guy is ostentatiously rich – filthy rich, […]

Sheeple, Proper 11 (B) – 2018

July 22, 2018

What do you suppose are the most prevalent metaphors that we use for God? Likely Father, King, and Shepherd are in the top three, if not the top three. There are, of course, hundreds of names and images in the scriptures for God. The sheer number of images for God present in the scriptures is enough to […]

Hometown, Proper 9 (B) – 2018

July 08, 2018

Several years ago, a diocese was celebrating its one-hundredth anniversary. At the time, the diocese had produced a beautiful coffee table book that contained short histories of each of their parishes, along with a generous helping of pictures. At the diocesan convention that year, the book was being sold everywhere and anywhere, between legislative sessions, […]

Taking on Jesus’ Yoke, Proper 9 (A) – 2017

July 09, 2017

There is some debate about whether or not people can change. The spiritual and psychological sages throughout the millennia basically agree that people can learn better ways to cope with who and how they are, but people don’t change all that much. Transformation can occur, though that’s for later in this sermon. But changing is […]

Let Your Idols Fall, Good Friday – 2017

April 14, 2017

This is really not a day for words. When we grieve, all words are too much. It is much better for us to take in the facts about how Jesus was treated: the injustice, the spiritual blindness, the narrow thinking, the positioning for power. It is better that we just sit with that grief and […]

You Are the Salt of the Earth, Epiphany 5 (A) – 2017

February 05, 2017

Youth ministers are a vicious lot. They are wonderful human being, but they are vicious. Youth ministers are wonderful because they work with a population that many people are either afraid to work with or simply don’t know how to work with. They have a life-long, enduring impact on the youth they serve; but youth […]

17 records

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