Trinity Cathedral Episcopal Church Sermons

1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11
A Sermon by the Very Rev. Bernard J Owens on May 21, 2023

1 Peter 3:11-22 A sermon preached by the Rev. Adrienne Koch at Trinity Cathedral on the sixth Sunday of Easter 2023.

Whether it’s the Timelord, Doctor Who, or the trans warp conduits of Star Trek’s Borg or the middle-aged Chinese immigrant woman in the recent film Everything Everywhere All at Once, all these time and space traveling fantasy characters point us toward something true that writers of scripture have tried to convey before today’s theories of time-travel and the multiverse ever existed.The cross of Christ was an outside-of-time event.

Biblical Greek has two common words for time: chronos (chronological time) and kairos (now time). “Kairos” means something like “everything everywhere all at once.” And Kairos is used more often by writers of the New Testament than chronos because kairos describes God’s timing; eternal timing. Outside of chronological time kinda stuff. The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans, “At just the right Kairos… Christ died for the ungodly.” Christ’s death is a kairos moment, a now moment, a God-moment outside of time and space.

Baptism is a Christian’s entry point into the eternal sermon of Holy Saturday while in this life. Baptism allows us to begin living into Kairos time, now. And that’s really good news for us. But what’s really really good news for all people, The Gospel news, is that whenever and wherever human beings are, dead or alive, Christ always finds them.

John 14:1-14
A sermon by the Very Rev. Bernard J Owens on May 7, 2023 at Trinity Cathedral.

If you believe in a judgmental, exclusive, capricious God who uses eternity solely as leverage to make you behave, then you are almost certain to create some kind of hell for other people, and quite possibly yourself too.

If Jesus is our way, our truth, and our life, then we have a chance to create a little bit of heaven for those all around us, right here in the living present.

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life; he offers a path a path that winds through this life and the next, that arcs through our prayers and our relationships and our worship and our love of our neighbor and our joy and our grief and our death and our resurrection.

Jesus is life, one of integration and grace that weaves together all facets of our lived and hoped-for reality into a single tapestry of love and compassion, one that is not by any means ripped apart by death.
There is no way to God or to heaven or to nirvana or to inner peace without incarnate, sacrificial, self-emptying love.

A sermon preached by the Very Rev. Bernard J Owens Sunday, April 30, 2023.

Luke 24: 13-35

A sermon preached by the Rev. Adrienne Koch Sunday, April 23, 2023

Jesus dies on Friday afternoon and rises by sunrise on Sunday, and this tells us that the third day is a metaphorical concept that does not depend upon 24-hour cycles or how many times the sun chases the moon. Jesus’ resurrection on the third day is like a compass pointing humanity toward where God is creating something new, and timing of the third day is always perfect, always right when it needs to be.

If circumstances in your life today have left you stranded in the pain and suffering of a Good Friday of the soul; If you feel like you’re still waiting in the darkness, the foreboding unknowing of Holy Saturday, let this third Sunday of Easter remind you that the third dayis still now; you haven’t missed Easter, your new life is pending, awaiting you to recognize as Pythagoras did, that "beatitude is found in the perfection of the numbers of the soul.”

My friends, it is NOW the third day. So let the strong arms of our Triune God, that Great Builder of the cosmos, carry your burdens away today. Jesus himself said told us that burdens are light for him to carry.

John 20:19-31
A sermon by the Very Rev. Bernard J Owens delivered April 16, 2023.

Jesus did say to Thomas “do not doubt but believe” but when we take a simplistic view of either doubt or belief then something expansive and generative gets downgraded to a crass dealbreaker. “Either/or” thinking has made us perpetually insecure in our relationship with God and produced a religion fearful of anything that would suggest doubt or uncertainty or even free thinking. The worst sins of religion get committed when that need for certainty is brittle and unyielding. When we are in a living relationship with something that is unknown or uncertain, doubt simply comes with the territory. It’s part of a growing comfort with moving through the dark, learning to trust the grace and love of God when certainty and clarity of vision are hard to come by. Doubt is fuel for faith: to have doubt is to have a living relationship with the unknown…and faith according to Thomas Merton means “integrating the known & the unknown into a living whole.

A sermon by the Very Rev. Bernard J Owens on Easter Sunday, 2023

Joy is what comes when we move through the valley of death and come out the other side to find new life waiting for us. Joy is not just a happy feeling, but what happens to our whole bodies, our whole selves, when we live our lives as moving not towards death, but towards the greater life. Every moment we feel joy, it’s like an eruption of realizing that life is really all about resurrection. Because of love, death is not the most powerful force in the universe. Because of love, we have new life. Because of love, we have joy. Even in the midst of the hardest of times, the love of God fills us with new life, and echoes with the hymns of joy.

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

A sermon preached by the Rev. Adrienne Koch on Maundy Thursday , April 6, 2023.

A sermon by the Very Rev. Bernard J Owens on Palm Sunday April 2023.

If your means are violence, coercion, intimidation, or any other instrument that fails to respect the dignity of every human being, then you will be hard pressed to find any ends that truly justify the means. Our means – our actions - say far more about our ends than any manifesto or vision statement. Choose your means wisely, then, for they determine not just your path, but your destination. Suffering cannot just be cut away: we must go through it, we have to walk with one another when they are going through it. If we can’t move towards suffering, then we’ll just push it off onto others, and ultimately make it worse for ourselves. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Live by the gun, die by the gun, he would say to a nation willing to set human sacrifice on the altar of the second amendment. Six more in Nashville, 3 of them children. How Long, O Lord, How Long?

John 11:12-45

A sermon preached by the Rev. Adrienne Koch at Trinity Cathedral on March 23, 2023.

Exodus 24:12-18, Psalm 95 A sermon preached by the Rev. Adrienne Koch at Trinity Cathedral on March 15, 2023.

March 5, 2023
A sermon by our guest preacher for the day Ruth Mercer. She serves as program director for the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio.

A sermon preached by the Very Rev. Bernard J Owens at Trinity Cathedral on Sunday, February 26, 2023

Isaiah 58:1-12

A sermon preached by the Rev. Adrienne Koch at Trinity Cathedral, Ash Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Exodus 24:12-18

“Perspective," a sermon preached by the Rev. Adrienne Koch on Sunday, February 19, 2023. The last Sunday after the Epiphany.

1 Corinthians 3:1-9
Matthew 5:21-37

"Our Brand is Love," a sermon by the Very Rev. Bernard J Owens from Trinity Cathedral on February 12, 2023.

Matthew 5:13-20 "
The Church of God, Unsalted," a sermon by the Very Rev. Bernard J Owens from Trinity Cathedral on February 5, 2023.

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

“Things that are…Not!," a sermon preached by the Rev. Adrienne Koch on Sunday, January 29, 2023. The fourth Sunday after the Epiphany.

Matthew 3:13-17 "
"…And Never Be The Same," a sermon by the Very Rev. Bernard J Owens from Trinity Cathedral on January 23, 2023.