The Nexus Podcast

A Beautiful Thing (S15 Episode35)

Now, to the final sermon of the year, A Beautiful Thing. In a world that prizes practicality, efficiency, and utility, the story of Mary pouring a small fortune’s worth of perfume on Jesus’ head, and his strong reaction to the gesture, stands in contrast to many of our cultural values.

“She has done a beautiful thing to me,” Jesus says of the act. On this final Sunday of the season, I want to explore why beauty matters deeply in the economy of God, and how even awkward, seemingly wasteful gestures can carry the most lasting impact. This is a story not about doing what is right or efficient—but about doing what is beautiful.

So, I hope you will join us as we reflect on the fleeting nature of time, the courage it takes to act on love, and the aroma that beautiful acts leave behind.

Whispers (s15 Episode34)

Friends, we have arrived at the penultimate episode of our season. I am excited for these last two sermons, and I hope they might set us up well for the summer before us.

This week, my sermon is driven by this question: Is there a way to tune our minds so that they become better receivers? The question is driven by a sort of epiphany I had a few years ago. While our minds are most certainly thought generators, they may also be thought receivers. I cannot recall if it was our beloved Murray who shared this with me, or the author Dale Allison. Regardless, I am sure these ideas sound a bit confusing. Even still, if our minds are receiving (not just generating) thoughts, well, is there a way to tune into certain frequencies, while ignoring others? I am as confused as you about all of this, which is why we must embark on a most interesting journey together on Sunday.

To puzzle this out, I have an assortment of tales and reflections to bring you: from rabbit ear antennas to Muhammad Ali, the Young and the Restless to Barack Obama, Crispers to the Tom Foolery ancient shepherds performed, and the young prophet Samuel hearing a voice to the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility (which happens to fry birds in mid-flight; mind you, that has no bearing on my sermon, but I thought you might like to know). Anywho, it is quite the trail we must travel together. 

Drenched (S15 Episode34)

Friends, I don’t have a lot of positive things to say about birds, but I will grant them this: some of their mating rituals are just hilariously fantastic (see flamingos or birds of paradise). The choreography is mesmerizing; their movements flamboyant and fun to watch. Of course, acts like these are not exclusive to birds. In the animal kingdom, from birds to elephants, rituals are found everywhere in nature.

And yet, no creature is as ritualized as we Homo sapiens. Rituals are a human universal, with ceremonial practices serving many important functions.

This Sunday, I want to take us into one of the most unique rituals of the Christian faith: baptism. Of course, back in the day, ritualistic washing or immersion rituals were present and practiced in various cultures and religions outside of Christianity. Even today, the “cold plunge” has echoes of a baptism ritual. Yet, by and large, baptism is almost an exclusively Christian ritual. Why? Why is it important? What does it mean and communicate?

Preyer Of The Heart (S15 Episode33)

Is it just me, or are lots of us more like Hobbits than is good for us? Valuing comfort, home, and a quiet life, living in our cozy hobbit-holes, eschewing adventure and exploration…nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things! Even if we don’t live like Hobbits (though that would probably be my dream), we might act like Hobbits in certain corners of our minds and hearts. 

And yet, our heart needs more; we are invited out of our comfort zone to more reality, more life, more connection, more freedom…more adventure. Does that sound appealing? Adventures are exciting, but they also include confusion, danger, wrestling with big questions, and when we return - if we return - we are not the same. 

Last week we faced our illusions which can get in the way of living fully and truly connecting with ourselves, others, and with God. By definition, all illusions pull us out of reality into an echo chamber of the stories we tell ourselves. The illusion of control, for instance, can cause us to cling to our comfortable and safe routines where we feel better able to control the outcome. 

As we wrap up our journey through Henri Nouwen’s book Reaching Out, we’ll now explore prayer as the opposite pole to illusion. Nouwen claims that as we move toward prayer, we will move away from illusion. This may feel backward at best or simply confusing, as our experiences in life in general and with prayer in particular may have us feeling ambivalent towards prayer. When life is chaotic and God feels far or nonexistent, prayer can seem pointless and empty, maybe even deeply disappointing. 

I wonder if seeing prayer as an adventure can invite us to explore prayer with fresh eyes, finding more than we thought was there at first. We may find more reality and more life. 

We may find something new to go on as we explore some themes around prayer such as experiencing God’s absence, paradox and confusing messages around prayer, and we’ll get a little practical with a way of praying that’s both simple and profound as we listen for our Prayer of the Heart. 

I Am Losing My Illusions (S15 Episode32)

Remember that scene from the Matrix where Cypher enjoys a steak? He betrays his comrades and condemns humanity in order to be reinserted into the Matrix, to return to a false reality where he can live a life of luxury and to be "someone important, like an actor." In the scene, he delights in eating a perfectly cooked steak and wine, a stark contrast to the bland, unappetizing "goop" the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar eats in the real world. Cypher acknowledges that the steak isn't real, but he savors the sensation, stating, "I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss."

This line encapsulates his weariness with the harsh reality of the human resistance and his desire to return to the comfortable illusion of the Matrix, even though he knows it’s not reality. 

Cypher represents our very human temptation to choose comfort and illusion over harsh truth and freedom, even at the cost of betrayal. We can be more like him than we’d like to admit, tending to resist reality a lot of the time. We have whole collections of strategies against the real. We actually can be quite masterful at protecting our hearts and minds against harsh truths. We can live asleep, doom scrolling while avoiding our life, particularly if it’s uncomfortable or painful. In some ways, why wouldn’t we? We all do this, even when it doesn’t make sense. And we may be so good at it, we may not even realize we’re doing it. Nevertheless we’re invited to face the Real, and to turn to God as Ultimate Reality. 

As we wrap up this mini-series walking through Henri Nouwen’s book Reaching Out, we’re exploring the movement from illusion to prayer. So this week we’ll face our illusions, see how we’re pretty fond of them, and consider what we might do instead of remaining in their grip.

Navigating Barriers To Intimacy (S15 Episode31)

For this week, I want to piggyback off last Sunday and the work we did around mapping our loneliness. As we move into the terrain of our loneliness, I want to explore whether the reason we struggle with loneliness might be because of the quiet barriers we’ve built between ourselves and true intimacy?

All of us carry a deep longing to be fully seen and still fully loved—a longing that goes all the way back to Eden. To navigate towards that, I want to draw from Jesus’ words in John 15 and invite us to reimagine intimacy not as a fleeting feeling or dramatic act of love, but as a lifelong pattern of laying ourselves down for one another in the ordinary, sometimes painfully boring, rhythms of real life.

To that end, I want to walk us through three subtle, but powerful barriers that often keep us from closeness with others: the illusion that life should always be interesting, the weight of unspoken and unrealistic expectations, and the everyday irritations of difference. If you've ever felt like your relationships — romantic, platonic, or communal — fall short of what you hoped for, I hope this message can offer us a grace-filled path forward: not to escape or idealize, but to stay, die to ego, and find new life on the other side of disappointment.

Mapping Our Lonliness (S15 Episode30)

Hey friends! When we asked the Nexus community to submit cards a while back around the sufferings we face in life, 32% of the cards mentioned struggles with loneliness. For a third of us, it would seem this is a sensitive spot.

Loneliness is often treated as a personal failing or something to hide, but what if it’s actually a shared human experience? This Sunday, I want to unpack this quiet ache that so many of us carry but rarely name. Drawing on Scripture, personal stories, and cultural insights, we will explore five distinct types of loneliness—alienation, restlessness, fantasy, rootlessness, and psychological depression. Each one reveals something about who we are, what we long for, and how we were created to live in connection.

Whether you're single or married, surrounded by people or feeling unseen, I hope this message offers a gentle guide for navigating the lonely places in your life—with truth, grace, and maybe even hope.

Easter Sunday (S15 Episode29)

For Easter Sunday we launch into a theological conspiracy theory and the final chapter of Pilate’s part in the Jesus Path story. Then into the meaning of resurrection itself. I hope what we find will be both challenging, but also full of hope.

Good Friday (S15 Episode28)

After a long winter and Lenten season, Holy Week is finally here! The culmination of the Jesus Path lies in front of us via Good Friday and Easter. We will be observing both Holy Days with services at 10:30am at St. Andrew's. We hope for these services that you might enter Iona Hall quietly and contemplatively.

The cross has many meanings, but for this Good Friday, we will examine but one of those meanings. In doing so, I hope that it will bring our ‘Jesus before Pilate’ trial full circle in a meaningful way. I hope you will join us for our Good Friday journey that will take us from poetry, to song, to a Venice art museum, to the cards about suffering you filled out, to Lake Bled, to more songs and poetry, and of course, back to our old friend, Ivan Fydorovich and his case against Christ. Ultimately though, I hope it will take us to one of the most profound meanings of the cross.

The Way Of Expediency (S15 Episode27)

In life, most decisions are routine and quickly forgotten. But sometimes, we’re faced with a choice so profound it alters the course of our lives—and maybe even echoes through history. This Sunday morning, we step into the tension of such a moment through the eyes of a man whose legacy hinges on a single verdict: Pontius Pilate. A Roman governor known for political savvy and self-preservation; Pilate didn’t set out to become infamous. But one Friday morning 2000 years ago, his desire to please the crowd outweighed his willingness to stand for truth.

As we examine Pilate’s struggle to render a verdict in Jesus’ trial, we’ll discover something deeply unsettling and strangely familiar—ourselves. The hesitation, the fear of consequence, the subtle slide into compromise—it’s a mirror for our own moments of decision. Will we do what is right, or what is easy? Listen in as we wrestle with the question Pilate could never bring himself to fully answer: What is truth?