Episodes
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A Time Set Aside for Remembering and Reflecting (Matthew 5:1-12)
On All Saints Sunday, Pastor Margot Ann Perez-Greene invites the congregation to remember the people who shaped their faith, living and departed. She shares stories of a first-grade teacher and a childhood pastor, and notes that John Wesley counted All Saints among his favorite days of the year....
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Disciples in the Details (Acts 6:1-7)
Pastor LyAnna Johnson closes the Social Holiness series with an easily overlooked story from Acts 6. A dispute over neglected widows gets resolved by people from the very community affected. She uses it to introduce the Book of Resolutions, the issue-by-issue companion to the Social Principles…
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Government for Good (Micah 6:8; Jeremiah 22:13-17)
In the second-to-last sermon of the Social Holiness series, Pastor LyAnna Johnson takes on the word “political” and reclaims it. It started as “the affairs of the city,” and she argues it still means government working for the good of everyone, not partisanship or the pursuit of power. Pairing...
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Noble Neighbors (Romans 12:9-13)
Pastor Margot Ann Perez-Greene opens with the “Do You Love Me?” scene from Fiddler on the Roof to make the case that love often comes down to faithful action, especially on days we don’t feel it. In this week’s Social Holiness message on the social community, she pairs Wesley’s insistence that...
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Ecclesial Economics (Leviticus 19:9-18)
Continuing the Social Holiness series with the Social Principles' section on the economic community, Pastor LyAnna Johnson starts with an old agricultural command: leave the edges of your field unharvested so the poor and the immigrant can eat. From there she asks what that instinct looks like in…
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Sacred Stewards (Genesis 1:26-31a)
Continuing the Social Holiness series, Pastor LyAnna Johnson traces how Methodism went from the 1908 Social Creed to today's Social Principles (through a string of denominational splits and reunions, and an eight-year, globally-sourced rewrite completed in 2024) before diving into the first...
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American Advocates (James 2:14-17)
Continuing the Social Holiness series, Pastor LyAnna Johnson jumps from 18th-century England to turn-of-the-century America, tracing the child labor, sweatshop conditions, and industrial-era suffering that led five Methodist pastors to draft the 1908 Social Creed, the first time a denomination…
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The Wesleyan Way (1 John 3:11, 17-18)
Opening a new series on the church's social principles, Pastor LyAnna Johnson goes back to 18th-century England to introduce the "weirdo" at the root of it all: John Wesley, shaped by a mother who drilled her children in Hebrew and Greek, a childhood fire he narrowly escaped, a failed mission…
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The Breadth, Length, Height, and Depth Love of God (Ephesians 3:14-21)
Closing out the summer series on love, Pastor Margot Ann Perez-Greene turns to Paul's prayer for the church in Ephesus and asks whether "God loves you" has become so familiar it barely lands anymore. Drawing on voices from Thomas Long to C.S. Lewis to Rowan Williams, she traces the story of God's...
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Love Made Visible (1 John 4:7-12)
Family Ministries intern Morgan Garrett builds this sermon around a childhood neighbor, a pastor named Paul who Morgan knew only as a warm, playful presence, never once talking theology, until learning after his death that he'd led a Gulf Coast diocese through the recovery from Hurricane Katrina....
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Known and Loved (Psalm 139:1-18)
Pastor LyAnna Johnson takes Psalm 139's meditation on being searched and known by God and pairs it with something almost nobody tells new parents outright: you cannot spoil a baby with love, and you cannot spoil a person with it either. Drawing on her own experience of unconditional family love…
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Love God. Love Your Neighbor. (Matthew 22:36-40)
For the Blessing of the Backpacks, Pastor LyAnna Johnson swaps her usual sermon for an extended, fully conversational kids' time built around the two greatest commandments. She walks through the Greek word agape, a love that costs something, and stretches the idea of "neighbor" from the solar...
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Can We Be Both Worshipers and Doubters? (Matthew 28:16-20)
Pastor Margot Ann Perez-Greene closes out the summer lectionary with the ending of Matthew's Gospel, walking through three things that make it significant: the gathering of the disciples, the mountain setting, and the Great Commission itself. She lingers on one small but pivotal detail, that the...
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A Sacred Scuffle (Genesis 32:22-31)
Pastor LyAnna Johnson takes on the story of Jacob wrestling an unnamed figure until daybreak, refusing the tidy, well-lit religious art version in favor of the real one: two bodies in the dirt, all night, ending in a limp and a name change. She reframes Israel, literally "wrestles with God," as a...
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Called to be Light (Matthew 5:14-16)
Family Ministries Director Caasi Grove starts with a piece of acolyte symbolism that's easy to walk past every Sunday: carrying the flame in signals Christ's light entering the room, carrying it back out signals what the congregation is meant to do next. From there, she draws on a flood relief…
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Wheat and Weeds (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43)
Pastor LyAnna Johnson takes on a parable that gets read as a story about sorting people into categories and pushes back on that reading directly: this isn't us versus them. Weaving in the one-year anniversary of last summer's hill country floods, a raccoon rescue that went viral, and some honest...
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Can This Be About Me? (Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23)
On the 50th anniversary of worshiping in WUMC's sanctuary, Pastor Margot Ann Perez-Greene takes the familiar Parable of the Sower and asks the congregation not to interpret it, but to let it interpret them. Framed by the movie Seven Days in Utopia and grounded in the story of the church's 82...
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Yoked to Christ (Matthew 11:28-30)
Pastor LyAnna Johnson unpacks the yoke, the same image behind the clergy stole she wears, on the anniversary weekend of last year's deadly hill country floods. She moves from Christ's incarnate presence in celebration, service, and grief alike into an unexpectedly tender teaching moment: how...
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Warmest Welcome (Matthew 10:40-42)
Back from annual conference in Corpus Christi, Pastor LyAnna Johnson flips a familiar Gospel passage on its head: instead of picturing ourselves as the disciples being sent out, what if we're the ones doing the welcoming? She traces that idea from the practical, life-or-death hospitality of the...
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Faith, Fathers, and Forgiveness (Luke 23:33-34)
On Father's Day, lay preacher and longtime church member Jay Brim opens with the surprising origin of the holiday itself (a Spokane woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, raising her five younger brothers after their mother's death) before turning to Jesus's words from the cross. He traces how Jesus...
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Hope That Does Not Disappoint (Romans 5:1-8)
Preaching just days before Juneteenth, Pastor LyAnna Johnson holds up two translations of the same verse (justified by our faith versus made righteous through Christ's faithfulness) to get at a very Wesleyan point: it can be both. From there she moves through prevenient, justifying, and…
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The Strong Season of Ordinary Time (Luke 4:1-2, 13)
As the church settles into ordinary time after a long stretch of Advent, Lent, and Eastertide, Pastor Margot Ann Perez-Greene turns to a shortened version of Jesus's wilderness temptation, skipping past the specific tests to sit with what comes before and after them. Weaving in the story behind…
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Go, Therefore (2 Cor. 13:11-13 & Matt. 28:16-20)
For Trinity Sunday, Pastor Margot Ann Perez-Greene opens with a children's reading from Rachel Held Evans's What Is God Like? and carries that same instinct for image over abstraction straight into the sermon. Skipping the dense "theological treatise" version of Trinity Sunday, she walks through...
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Who is the Holy Spirit, and Where is the Spirit Taking Us Now? (Acts 19:1-2)
On Pentecost Sunday, the church's birthday, Pastor Margot Ann Perez-Greene takes on two questions: who the Holy Spirit actually is, and what the Spirit calls us to do. Drawing on voices from Thomas Aquinas to Tim Keller to her own years as a courtroom advocate for children, she makes the case…
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Chosen Family (Philippians 2:19-24)
Guest preacher Rev. Tina Carter looks at Paul's brief, personal words about Timothy in Philippians 2 and finds a much bigger idea underneath them: chosen family. Drawing on figures from Ruth and Naomi to Jacob to a present-day foster father who cares for terminally ill children, she traces how...
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A Heritage of Love (John 14:15-21)
On Mother's Day, Pastor LyAnna Johnson pairs Jesus's farewell words to his disciples in John 14 with the surprising true origin of Mother's Day, a story that runs through abolitionist Julia Ward Howe and Civil War era organizer Ann Reeves Jarvis, not greeting cards. Both threads land on the same...
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God's Weirdos (1 Peter 2:1-10)
Continuing the Along the Way series, Pastor LyAnna Johnson digs into 1 Peter's call to be "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation," and makes the case that holy really just means set apart, a little bit weird. She traces that idea back to John Wesley's own eccentric discipline and the...
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Gathered in the Name of Jesus (Acts 2:42-47)
In this Eastertide message, Pastor Margot Ann Perez-Greene turns to the earliest days of the church in Acts 2:42-47, where a crowd of strangers from every nation somehow became inseparable. She traces what actually held such a wildly different group together (not shared background, but a common...
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Along the Way (Luke 24:13-35)
On the road to Emmaus, two grieving disciples walk beside the resurrected Jesus and don't recognize him. Opening the Along the Way series on the third Sunday of Easter, Pastor LyAnna Johnson looks at why redemption so often arrives differently than we expect, and how honesty about despair, along...
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The Scars That Reveal Resurrection (John 20:19–31)
In this Easter season reflection from John 20:19–31, the risen Jesus appears to his disciples—not by erasing suffering, but by revealing it. Even in resurrection, the wounds remain. This sermon explores how Christ is recognized through his scars, and what that means for us. Rather than hiding…
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Love that Always Remains (John 20:1–18) – Easter Sunday
On Easter morning, the story begins in the dark. With grief, confusion, and a tomb that does not hold what was expected. In this message, we follow Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Christ and consider a God who works not through power as we imagine it, but through a persistent…
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A Counter-Procession (Matthew 21:1–11)
On Palm Sunday, what looks like a simple parade takes on deeper meaning. Set against the backdrop of Roman military power entering Jerusalem, Jesus’ arrival on a donkey becomes a quiet but pointed counter-procession—an embodied contrast between domination and humility, fear and love. This message...
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Blinded by Grief (John 11)
In this Lenten message from John 11, we enter the story of Lazarus and the raw reality of grief. Rather than rushing past loss, the sermon reflects on how grief can cloud our vision—and how Jesus meets us within it. Holding together the imagery of dry bones in Ezekiel and the tomb in Bethany…
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Blinded by Fear (John 9:1–7)
In this sermon from the Gospel of John, the healing of the man born blind shifts the focus from blame to revelation—what God is showing us through the moment. Drawing on insights from My Body Is Not a Prayer Request by Amy Kenny, the message reframes healing as wholeness rather than cure, and...
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Give Me This Water (John 4)
In this sermon from John 4, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well in the heat of the day—a place where isolation, shame, and daily survival intersect. Rather than condemning or ignoring her, Jesus offers something unexpected: living water that restores dignity and opens the possibility of a...
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Blinded by What We Were Taught (John 3:1–17)
What if the very things we were taught about God are the things keeping us from seeing clearly? In this week’s Blinded series, we encounter Nicodemus — a deeply educated religious leader, formed by tradition and confident in what he knows. Yet when he comes to Jesus under the cover of night, he…
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Blinded by Temptation (Matthew 4:1–11)
At the beginning of Lent, we turn to Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness. Immediately after his baptism—after the voice from heaven names him “beloved”—Jesus is led into a season of testing. This sermon explores how the temptation narrative is less about spectacle and more about identity: Who is...
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Dust to Dust (Matthew 6:1–6, 16–21)
On Ash Wednesday, we begin Lent with a sober reminder: we are dust, and to dust we shall return. In light of that truth, Jesus’ words in Matthew 6 take on sharper meaning. This sermon explores Lent not as a season of public performance or ritualized guilt, but as a quiet return to what matters....
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Stewardship of Time (Acts 2:42–47)
In the final week of our stewardship series, we turn to what may be our most limited and most revealing resource: time. Drawing from Acts 2:42–47, this sermon explores the early church’s intentional rhythms—worship, shared meals, prayer, generosity—and what they teach us about how we order our...
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Giving with Good Vibes (2 Corinthians 9:7–9)
In this week’s message from our stewardship series, Abundant Life: Trusting God and One Another, we turn our attention to treasure—the financial resources we share to support life together in Christ. Drawing from Acts 2 and 2 Corinthians 9, this sermon explores how the earliest Christian...
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Fully Alive Together (1 Corinthians 12)
This week we begin our stewardship series, Abundant Life: Trusting God and One Another, by reflecting on talent, the gifts, skills, perspectives, and experiences God has woven into the life of the church. Drawing from 1 Corinthians 12, this sermon explores the biblical vision of the body of…
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When You're Afraid, Give Me Your Hand (Matthew 1:18-25)
On the 4th Sunday of Advent, Pastor LyAnna explores Joseph's story—the often-overlooked figure in the nativity who faced fear, scandal, and an impossible choice. When Mary showed up pregnant, Joseph's world turned upside down. But instead of going it alone, he chose to "go with"—to journey...
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When We Are Running out of Hope, God is at Work (Mathew 11: 1-11)
This week’s Westlake UMC sermon podcast shares Pastor LyAnna Johnson’s message titled When We Are Running Out of Hope, God Is at Work, reflecting on Matthew 11:1–11.
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In The Time of Herod We Long For God to Break In (Luke 1:5-13; Lamentations 3:55-57)
This week’s Westlake UMC sermon podcast shares Pastor LyAnna Johnson’s message from November 30, titled In the Time of Herod We Long for God to Break In, reflecting on Luke 1:5–13 and Lamentations 3:55–57.
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A Befitting Crown (Matthew 27:27-31)
This week’s Westlake UMC sermon podcast shares Pastor LyAnna Johnson’s Christ the King Sunday message from November 23, titled A Befitting Crown, reflecting on Matthew 27:27–31.
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For Everything There is a Season (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)
This week’s Westlake UMC sermon podcast shares Pastor LyAnna Johnson’s message from November 16, titled For Everything There Is a Season, reflecting on Ecclesiastes 3:1–8.
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Prathia Hall
From the sermon series "Preach"
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Maria Stewart
From the sermon series "Preach"
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Howard Thurman
From the sermon series "Preach"
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Jan 30th, 2022 Sermon
From The series "New Year, Now What?"
About this show
Weekly sermons from Westlake United Methodist Church in Austin, TX.
Hosted by
Westlake United Methodist Church
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