Whether you call them homilies, sermons, or talks, there’s a lot you can learn from the spiritual leaders in our community. While in a perfect world, you’d have time to listen to everyone, that simply isn’t possible for most with limited time to spare. To help, we’ve surfaced and summarized the teachings from the audio sermons of some of the most influential priests and pastors from around town and in the Christian sphere.
You can skip to a specific section by clicking the links below.
Jump to:
- Fr. Mike Schmitz
- Buckhead Church
- Cathedral of Christ the King
- Passion City Church
- Trinity Anglican Church
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Fr. Mike Schmitz
This homily, titled “Meant to Be,” reflects on the significance of the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica and applies its meaning to the life of every Christian. Fr. Mike begins by exploring the idea of a consecrated space—a building set apart for a purpose. He explains that the Lateran Basilica, the Pope’s Cathedral, is the mother church of all Catholic churches and was dedicated to be both a sign of global unity and a visible sign of God’s invisible presence. This concept traces back to the Old Testament Temple, which the prophet Ezekiel described as the place where God’s presence would dwell and from which a life-giving stream of water would flow.
The homily then establishes the ultimate fulfillment of the Temple in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus identifies himself as the true Temple, and the imagery of Ezekiel’s stream is realized during the Crucifixion when a soldier pierces his side. From Jesus’ body flows blood and water, which symbolize the life-giving sacraments of the Eucharist and Baptism—the source of God’s life for the world. Because of Christ, the idea of the Temple is radically extended to every follower: St. Paul teaches that Christians are now “God’s building,” the very “temple of God where the Holy Spirit dwells.”
This means the central purpose of every Christian is to be God’s presence in the world and the “vehicle through which God saves the world.” Fr. Mike recounts how the Church, when it lived this identity, fundamentally transformed civilization. Early Christians introduced the intrinsic value of every human person, revolutionized the Roman Empire, gave the world the first coherent legal system subject to law, elevated marriage, and founded world-changing institutions like the first orphanages, hospitals, schools, and universities. These acts were born from the conviction that they were meant to be the agents of God’s salvation.
Fr. Mike concludes with a powerful challenge, asking if the Church has become merely what it used to be rather than who it is meant to be. He shares the moving story of the original Massachusetts Humane Society, which was founded for life-or-death rescues but whose purpose has since softened, warning against giving the life-saving mission to only a few “pros.” He urges all Christians to re-embrace their radical purpose—to reach out to the lonely, the hopeless, and those without meaning. Citing the Humane Society’s intense motto for their rescue operations, “You have to go out. You don’t have to come back,” he emphasizes that saving lives demands risk and self-sacrifice, stating that if we truly become who we are meant to be, “it’ll set the world on fire.”
Listen to the full version here.
Buckhead Church
Joel Thomas begins his sermon by challenging the congregation on the true reason for the church’s growth, dismissing common factors like the facility, location, and production. He reveals that the single, primary reason for growth is personal invitation—the strategy of “Invest and Invite.” He introduces the core topic: the difference between passively being a witness (experiencing something) and actively bearing witness (sharing that experience), arguing that for the church’s mission to move forward, both are essential.
Thomas traces this invitation strategy back to the start of the Jesus movement in John Chapter 1, where John the Baptist bore witness to Jesus, the Lamb of God. When Jesus encountered John’s disciples, his initial invitation was not a challenge to their eternal destiny but a simple, open question: “What do you want?” This was immediately followed by the core invitation: “Come and you’ll see.” The followers, having “spent that day with him” (referencing the Greek word meno, meaning to remain or abide), found what they were searching for. This pattern of Declare, Invite, and Follow was repeated by the first disciples like Andrew and Philip, who brought others, including the skeptic Nathanael, with the simple challenge: “Come and see.”
The sermon emphasizes that the early movement succeeded because the goal was for people to experience someone, not to explain something, noting that when someone encounters the real person of Jesus, no explanation is needed. Thomas then introduces the concept of the “lynchpin”—the smallest act that is indispensable to the movement—which Jesus identifies in John 15 as “abiding” (or remaining) in Him. Abiding is the crucial link that connects being a witness to effectively bearing witness, stressing that “apart from me you can do nothing.” The movement’s wheels fall off when we stop abiding and experiencing God’s love.
Finally, abiding is practically defined as remaining in Christ’s love by keeping his commands, which is a demonstration of trust rather than an attempt to earn salvation. The single elevated command is to “love each other as I have loved you,” making horizontal love the validation of one’s followship. He warns against “telling without showing” and concludes with “homework”: read 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, replacing the word “love” with your own name, and reflecting on Jesus’s patience and kindness. This exercise is meant to inspire followers to be the hands and feet of Jesus, living out their faith in a way that changes the world.
Listen to the full version here.
Cathedral of Christ The King
Fr. Jared Kleinwaechter’s homily, delivered for the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica, explains that the celebration of this ancient cathedral is not about the beauty of the building, but about the Holy One who dwells there. This truth frames the Gospel reading, in which Jesus expresses righteous anger by driving out the money changers, condemning those who turned God’s intended dwelling place—a home of prayer and worship—into a greedy marketplace. The message underscores that anything dedicated to God is sacred, and its purpose is not commerce or worldly concerns, but love and devotion.
The homily then transitions to Christ as the ultimate, true Temple. Jesus’s prophecy to “Destroy this temple and in 3 days I will raise it up” refers to the temple of his body, signifying that God’s presence is no longer constrained to a single physical structure. Fr. Jared emphasizes that the Church itself is the prolongation of the Incarnation, and through baptism, this sacred identity is extended to every Christian. Citing St. Paul, he confirms that every baptized believer is the “temple of God” because the Holy Spirit dwells within them, making each individual soul the dwelling place of the Most High on earth.
This transformative identity is objectively reinforced by the Sacraments, independent of how one feels. Baptism is a spiritual cleansing that makes the soul a “living temple”, Confirmation strengthens this life, and Holy Communion is a transformative experience where the believer says, “Let me become the body of Christ on earth.” Referencing the prophet Ezekiel’s vision, Fr. Jared explains that the divine life infused by Christ is not meant for the self alone, but must flow outward. As recipients of this cleansing and transformative water, Christians are asked to go into the world as a fruitful expression of God’s love so that others may experience the grace of Christ.
The homily concludes with a stark challenge: Is your life a “dwelling place of God or a marketplace?” Fr. Jared warns against the modern temptations that clutter the soul, such as “doom scrolling on our phones” and attachments to physical things, which are essentially the money changers of the contemporary temple. He challenges the faithful to make time for God daily and to live a life distinct from the secular world—not reacting with anger in traffic, but doing good to those who hate them. The ultimate call is to align one’s daily life with the sacred identity received in baptism, concluding, “You are the temple of God. So go out there and live like it.”
Listen to the full version here.
Passion City Church
Louie Giglio’s sermon, “The Glorious Comma—From Do To Done,” begins by establishing the “bad news” of the Gospel, summarized by Romans 3:23: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Giglio emphasizes that sin does not just make people bad, but spiritually dead, meaning they are completely unable to help themselves or reach the mark of God’s holiness and perfection. This spiritual death necessitated God’s action in banishing Adam and Eve from the Tree of Life in Eden, as living forever in a spiritually dead state was not what they were created for.
The natural human response to this separation is to try and get back to God through “religion,” which Giglio characterizes with the word “do.” This effort-based system is flawed for two reasons: people never know if they have done enough to earn back paradise, and more fundamentally, spiritually dead people are incapable of performing works that meet God’s standard. Giglio illustrates this futility by comparing religious striving to an Olympic shooter hitting the wrong target or a person on a stairmaster exerting great effort without ever moving closer to their destination, stressing that “no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law.”
The dramatic transition to the “good news” is marked by the phrase “But Now” and the central theme: The Glorious Comma. Giglio reveals that Romans 3:23 is often mistakenly read as a complete sentence when it actually ends with a comma, leading into Romans 3:24: “…and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” This justification, meaning “to be made righteous” or “just as if I’d never sinned,” is a gift received solely through faith in the finished work of Jesus on the cross—it is completely “done.” It is not based on human performance, effort, or earning, but on the shedding of Christ’s innocent blood for the sins of the world.
This free gift of righteousness provides believers with a brand new identity. Giglio asserts that Christians are no longer primarily “sinners” but are “holy and righteous, purified and spotless” in Christ. He uses the analogy of a baseball player instantly changing teams: the identity is absolute and sealed the moment the deal is done, regardless of how they feel. The ultimate call is to live out this new, justified identity—to do the right thing because they have been made the right thing, thereby rejecting the “ministry of condemnation” and the shame of the past to live righteously from the inside out.
Listen to the full version here.
Trinity Anglican Church
The sermon uses the strange story posed by the Sadducees—who deny the resurrection—to challenge the congregation’s understanding of the age to come. The Sadducees intended to trap Jesus with an absurd hypothetical about a woman married to seven brothers in sequence, asking whose wife she would be in the resurrection. Speaker Kris McDaniel clarifies that the goal is to think truly and rightly about resurrection itself, arguing that too much Christian thinking is influenced by Greek philosophy, specifically Plato, which favors a purely spiritual, escapist view that rejects the body.
The first crucial theological point established is the difference between life after death and life after life after death. Life after death is what the Bible describes as Heaven—being absent from the body and present with the Lord. However, this is not the end of the story. The Christian faith, unlike the Sadducees’ belief, holds to resurrection, which necessarily involves getting one’s physical body back to live an embodied life on a resurrected Earth. This conviction that our bodies and the physical world matter, and that God is committed to renewal, is foundational to New Testament theology and stands in contrast to the idea of merely escaping to a disembodied heaven.
Jesus’s response highlights the characteristics of this resurrected existence, noting both continuity and discontinuity with the current age. While the resurrected body will retain a recognizable identity (continuity, like Jesus’s scars), it will also be fundamentally transformed, possessing new properties (discontinuity). Most notably, resurrected people will “neither marry nor be given in marriage,” eliminating the societal hierarchy that often elevates married over single people, and highlighting that the deepest desires for connection and intimacy will be fully satisfied by God. Furthermore, resurrected people “can no longer die,” meaning death, the great tyrant, will be utterly conquered.
Ultimately, the sermon asks what it means to live today in light of this assured future. McDaniel emphasizes that “worthiness” of the age to come is based not on performance, but on trust and reliance on Jesus. The sermon concludes by stressing the present-tense reality of believers who have died, stating that God is the God of the living, not the dead. This deep assurance that all manner of things will be well at the consummation of the age should compel Christians to embrace their lives, run toward trouble, and work for renewal in the present, because no hardship or brokenness can have the last word.
Listen to the full version here.
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