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Transgender Day of Remembrance

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Below is a message I gave at the 2024 Transgender Day of Remembrance hosted by the Western Iowa Synod of the ELCA.  Beloved child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.  Those are the words that are said at someone’s baptism, they are the words that claim us as God’s own child, marked with the cross of Christ, marked with the love of Jesus lived out in his life, death, and resurrection. They are the words that invite us to trust in the Holy Spirit to lead us in places we haven’t even begun to imagine yet, they are the words that hold us in moments of darkness and despair.    These words have followed me throughout my life, they held me close as I have grieved the death of friends and family. These are the words that have supported me as I battled the insecurities of adolescence. These are the words I turned to many years ago when I began questioning who I was created to be, questioning did God make a mistake with me. These are the w
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Created to Be: wHoly You

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Below is a sermon I preached at opening worship at the tAble, a pre-event to the 2024 ELCA Youth Gathering. It was based on Psalm 139 which grounded our time together as we explored how we are created to be wHoly.  Grace, peace, and mercy be to you from God our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Amen.  Wow. The day is finally here, the day we have been waiting for, working for, praying for, is finally here. We are gathered here, in this space, with each other because we all share something in common, we are all created to be wholy. We are created to be authentic, created to be free, created to be one, created to be claimed by our Creator as beloved.  Over these next few days, we will take time to explore what it means to be created. What it means to be loved by a God who took such care in creating us that we are not only named but that we are claimed as beloved. Exploring what it means to be created means we will get a chance to explore who we are, who our neighbors are, who we are as a
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Rejection led to my why

  Below is the sermon I preached on October 8, 2023, at Bethany Lutheran Church in Crystal Lake, IL. The Gospel for the day was Matthew 21:33-46, you can read it here .  To watch a video recording of the entire service, you can watch it via Bethany's Facebook page or here . My sermon starts around 7:20.  A note, there might be grammatical errors or missing words, I don't edit the sermons I preach and often do not read word for word.  ---------------- Grace, peace, and mercy be to you from God our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Amen.  Rejection.  The dismissing or refusing of a proposal, idea, etc.  Simply put, rejection is being told no, having a door closed, and an opportunity taken away from you. Rejection is something that we face daily, as humans we have the choice to go after what we want, to strive to do better, and to attempt to make the world as we know it a better place.  When we strive to be better than we are right now, we face the possibility of rejection, the po
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Go and Do

  Sermon preached on  Matthew 21:23-32  at First Lutheran Church in DeKalb, IL Grace, peace, and mercy be to you from God our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Amen.  When I moved to Nebraska for college, one of the first things I focused on was finding a church home. I went to a Lutheran school and was active in campus ministry, but I wanted something deeper, I wanted something that got me out of bed on Sunday mornings and allowed me to get off campus and involved in the wider community.  The church I landed at, gave me a home, supported me through college and seminary, and even gave me my first experience of working in the church as their Director of Christian Education. It is where I preached my first sermon and assisted in my first funeral, it was a place that is still dear to my heart even after all these years.  One of the things about the physical building, which is like many of the Lutheran Churches out there, that I remember the most is something I didn’t see right away. When
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Coming for the Blessings

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Sermon preached on Matthew 14:13-21 at First Lutheran Church in DeKalb, IL Grace, peace, and mercy be to you from God our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, amen.     Often I have found that the texts that are most familiar, the texts that are found in all four gospels, the texts that are the nuggets we heard growing up in Sunday School, the ones that are in the media, are the hardest texts to preach on. I think that they are the hardest ones because they are so widely known which means that people have opinions on them, they are the ones that have been taught over and over, and it is almost as if we can’t see any deeper than what it is right in front of you.  Take today’s gospel for example, we have probably all heard the feeding of the 5000 a dozen or more times. It is found in each of our four gospels, each providing slightly different information, and different details but at its core, the story stays the same. Jesus has the masses on a hillside, it is getting near dinner time and
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Location: DeKalb, IL, USA
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Jesus' Coming Out

Below is a sermon I preached at First Lutheran Church on Transfiguration Sunday, February 19, 2023. The gospel for the day was Matthew 17:1-9 Grace, peace, and mercy be to you from God our creator, redeemer, and sustainer.     We are on the tail end of Epiphany, a season that has been focused and celebrating the various manifestations of Jesus in his ministry, there is healing and teaching, there is a constant revealing of who Jesus is, there’s taking note of who God is in Christ and what it means for the world. Today we witness, experience, ponder a manifestation of Jesus that is different, we see Jesus in full radiance, we witness his Transfiguration, his coming out.    Transfiguration is not the same as transformation, transfiguration is a complete change of form or appearance, in Jesus' case, he went from the drab of generic clothing and likely wild hair to dazzling white, something that no one would ever be able to match even with all the bleach in the world. This transfigurat
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Bio

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  I am Mack, a young adult who is following God’s call to ordained ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Originally from Colorado, I did my undergrad at Midland University in Fremont, NE, and found a home in the Nebraska Synod. During my senior year of college, I came out as transgender and began the journey of living authentically me. After college, I headed to Dubuque, IA to attend Wartburg Theological Seminary. It was an exciting time as I was for the first time living fully as a male and getting to be involved in a worship-centered community. I graduated from Wartburg in May of 2018 and spent the next year waiting for my first call. At the end of May, a call from Grace Place Campus Ministry at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL was extended to me and I graciously accepted. I began my ministry there on August 1, 2019, and was ordained in the ELCA on September 7, 2019, at Holy Love Lutheran Church in Aurora, CO. In August of 2022, I was invited to joi
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Location: DeKalb, IL 60115, USA
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