sermons

Dogs: A Theological Palindrome

jamescalvindavis

A sermon preached at the Congregational Chuch of Middlebury (VT) on August 3, 2025

Texts: Genesis 2:15–22; 1 Corinthians 13

Friends, in my time with you all this summer, I have talked about some weighty considerations to being Christian in our particular moment. In June, I suggested that the most important witness we could offer in this divisive and dehumanizing time is to stand for the capaciousness in the Christian Gospel, the Good News that God loves all of us, that God desires relationship with all of us, and that God calls us to exercise this wide embrace in our relationships with others as an antidote to the hate all around us. Last month, I suggested that liberal Christianity ought to embrace a robust role in our political life, even engaging in partisan debates when it is clear that particular parties and politicians stand for values we consider godly and others clearly do not.

Today I want to talk with you about a dimension of the Christian life that is at least as important as these topics, one that some of you practice with righteous enthusiasm day after day, but that others of you may find a challenge to your sense of Christian responsibility. I want to talk to you today about the theological importance, the importance to a godly life, of dogs.

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IRS just removed limits on church involvement in politics

jamescalvindavis

Why that’s great news for liberal Christianity

Church and State: A sermon preached at the Congregational Church of Middlebury (VT) on July 13, 2025

Texts: 1 Samuel 8:4–22a; Romans 13:1–7

Friends, I would like to think with you this morning about two things that the aphorism tells us we should never discuss in polite company, certainly not together: religion and politics. You may have seen that the IRS released a policy change this past week on churches and other tax-exempt charitable organizations engaging in partisan politics. For decades, churches have been barred from endorsing particular candidates for public office, at risk of losing their tax-exempt status. This is a result of the so-called Johnson Amendment of 1954, and it has been the policy of the IRS ever since: churches cannot endorse specific partisan candidates for public office. But that prohibition has been skirted and violated by churches without much repercussion, sometimes creatively and more recently rather boldly. Conservative evangelical organizations have sued to change the policy, and this week, the IRS said OK. Churches can engage in partisan politics with no penalty.

It will surely come as a surprise to some of you that I think this is a remarkably good development. I will make the argument this morning for why I think it is a good development—more precisely, I will make four arguments: a theological argument, a historical argument, a practical argument, and, finally, a moral argument.

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Capacious Christianity

jamescalvindavis

A Pentecost sermon preached at the Congregational Church of Middlebury, VT, on June 8, 2025

Friends, I want to suggest to you today that we are ripe for a new Pentecost. The world in our moment needs people who are set afire and possessed with a message of grace and hospitality and inclusion, to push against the destructive trinity of arrogance, fear, and dehumanization that now reigns. We need a new Pentecost. We need the rebirth of capacious Christianity.

Click the link below to watch the full sermon:
https://www.facebook.com/MiddUCC/videos/3955528118003925

Birth Pangs

jamescalvindavis

A sermon preached at Putnam United Presbyterian Church November 17, 2024

Text: Mark 13:1–27

Well, we can say this much: another presidential election is over. Roughly half of the country is pumped and feeling bullish about the future, while the other half is collecting canned foods and researching bomb shelters online. But we can say this pretty confidently: no matter who you were rooting for, this election cycle was brutal to endure. I made the comment last month during the concerns and joys that the only thing that seems to unite Americans these days is the nausea we all were feeling about the election.

A cloud of doom settled in over this election and the perception many of us have about the health of our country and state of the world, and this pessimism really was a nonpartisan experience. We saw it in Republican TV ads that depicted the US as being overrun by marauders from the south and cast into a new Great Depression by an economy allegedly driven into the ground. Democrats matched those doom-and-gloom pictures of the country with their own predictions of the end of democracy and Western civilization if they lost. And since the Democrats lost (in spectacular fashion), the anguish has only intensified with Democratic leaders and voters wearing black, crying openly, packing go bags, and either doomscrolling addictively or retreating from social media as if it were the comforting days of the 1990s.

Wherever you are on the political spectrum, if you’ve been paying attention to politics, our reality has felt ominous to you at some point recently. Today’s Gospel reading fits right into our current collective mood, because there is a lot of doom in this story, too.

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