Direct Access to Grace - Tym House

Sermons from the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer

...the reality is, is that God shows up through Christ and the Spirit to show us that we are a blessing. He has come to heal us and to reconcile us, and for us to then go and share that hope with the world because God is with us where we are presently and where we are moving forward. But how is that possible? Well, that's where Romans 5 enters in. Before we jump in to explore the text together, though, I would just like to share a little bit of my own story with you all, not unlike all of us, I am a makeup of many things that make me who I am and create my identity. To share a few; I am a father, I'm a son, I'm a brother. But also, I am divorced, I'm gay, and I'm a youth minister. So let me maybe unpack a little bit of that for you. I grew up going to a very conservative evangelical church. Now, I will not stand up here and say that it was all bad because I gained a lot of things from my church home. A lot of good things that have shaped me, informed me, and that have rooted me in the faith that I have today. But as you can imagine, there were also things that I learned growing up that made me question, and really caused harm to me for things that I came to learn later about myself, specifically regarding my sexuality. It wasn't until later in high school where I started to even understand what that looked like, but my foundation had already been laid for me to question that part of who I was.