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What kind of landowner keeps sending servants to tenants who beat and kill them? What kind of father sends his own son? In this sermon on the parable of the wicked tenants, we look at Jesus' constant confrontations with the Pharisees and discover they aren't about picking a fight. They're about a love that refuses to quit. Jesus never gave up on the Pharisees. He never gives up on the broken.  And he will never give up on you.If you've closed the door on God, if you're carrying something you've never told anyone, if you've decided you're too far gone, this message is for you. He just keeps on coming. Preached at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Keller, Texas, on the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, October 4, 2026. Scripture: Matthew 21:33-46

Some people spent this week being told they do not belong. Here is the good news we could not keep to ourselves: God's love does not need a permit. In this sermon on Matthew 21:23-32, we step into the temple the morning after Jesus turned over the tables and threw the gate wide open. The people in charge show up demanding to know by what authority he welcomes the ones they would keep out. Jesus answers with a story about one family, two sons, and a Father whose love is not rationed to some and denied to others. This is not a message about enemies. It is about a God who tears down walls, runs toward the very people the world locks out, and looks each of us in the eye to say the truest thing we will ever hear: you belong.

We all carry an unwritten mental ledger, constantly tracking who hurt us, who owes us, or who forgot to say thank you. But what happens when we bring that scorekeeping mindset into our faith? In this sermon by the Rev. Alan D. Bentrup, we explore Peter’s question to Jesus about forgiveness and dive into the parable of the unforgiving servant. Rather than asking us to work harder at forgiving, Jesus reveals a radical truth about the Kingdom of God: the ledger has been completely torn up. Discover how letting go of cosmic scorekeeping frees us to live in the endless grace we’ve already received.

Peter says the truest thing he will ever say, and within the hour Jesus calls him Satan. We hear "Get behind me" as a door slamming. What if it is an arm across your chest instead? This week Peter wants to order things his own way, and so do we. We ration our love like the tank is almost empty.  The people closest to us first, the stranger maybe, the one who wronged us never. Then Paul reaches into that fear and takes it apart. No inner circle first, no enemies never. He just keeps widening the circle until no one is left outside it. Because in Christ, love does not run out. Jesus does not save his love for the deserving. He just loves. Period. Readings: Romans 12:9-21 and Matthew 16:21-28. Proper 17, Year A. A sermon by the Rev. Alan D. Bentrup, Senior Priest at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Keller, Texas. If you are near Keller, we would love to worship with you in person. New here? Come as you are. There is a place for you behind him.

In 1897 a group of Texas educators went looking for a cooler place to hold a summer school. Boulder, Colorado, won the contract. The trouble was the site: a bare mesa at the foot of the mountains with nothing on it but grass and rock and a view. Thousands of people would soon board trains in Fort Worth, ride north, and arrive at the end of a long journey, hungry. Boulder had fifty three days.Hold that hillside, because it is where the Gospel starts.Jesus has just heard that John the Baptist is dead. He gets in a boat looking for a deserted place to grieve, and the crowds follow him around the shore on foot. Thousands of them. Grieving and exhausted, he looks at them and his stomach turns over with mercy. Evening comes and the disciples do the math and bring him the only sensible plan anyone has: send them away. Jesus says no. They need not go away. And when the disciples protest that five loaves and two fish is nothing, he does not tell them to try harder or find more. He says, bring them here to me.This sermon is about what God does with our nothing. Everyone ate. Everyone was filled. And there were twelve baskets left over, more at the end than at the beginning, which is not arithmetic. That is what God is like. Nobody on that grass was asked where they came from, or whether they had earned it, or whether they had done the right things. Jesus fed a crowd he never vetted. Thank God, because if he had, none of us would be at this table.Empty hands are not a disqualification. Empty hands are what Jesus asks for.Reading: Matthew 14:13-21 (Proper 13)Preached on Call to Feed the Hungry SundaySt. Martin's Episcopal Church, Keller, Texas

All week at Vacation Bible School the kids learned a "festal shout," two big words for whenever they saw how amazing God is. Wow, God! This VBS Sunday children's message starts there, with the line from our psalm, happy are the people who know the festal shout, and turns it loose on a place every kid in Keller knows: the Fort Worth Zoo. There is a marker at the zoo that tells a story most people walk right past. Long ago a flood washed the very first Fort Worth Zoo away, but the people found safe, higher ground and started it over, and it became the oldest zoo in Texas, still open today. That one little sign carries almost everything the kids learned this week. God made everything. God knows everything. God is our safe place. And God is forever. The loudest Wow of all comes last, the one we save for the end: God is love, shown on a cross and an empty tomb, a love that lasts forever and ever. A short, joyful message for the whole family, with plenty of room for the kids to shout along.

Outside Pilot Point there is a cemetery called St. John's, the oldest Black cemetery in Denton County. Around four hundred people are buried there, and only about twenty graves still have a stone. Someone working to save it said these people have been buried twice. Once in the ground, and once by being forgotten. This short homily from our early service starts on that ground and lets Paul answer it. The wages of sin is death, he writes, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Not a better wage. A gift. Left to ourselves, we are dead and forgotten, and no marker holds that back forever. But God knows every name, even the ones the stones have lost, and he does not only remember the dead. He raises them. Eternal, abundant, forever, the life of the age to come, freely given at the table. Reading: Romans 6:12-23 (Proper 6)Part of Roman Roads, a summer series through Paul's letter to the Romans, each week paired with a historical marker from the roads around us.

Three historical markers stand within a few steps of each other on a trail in North Arlington. One remembers a peacemaker who freed captives and brought them home. One remembers a raid that attacked a village. One remembers a treaty that opened a people's land to be taken. A mercy, a killing, and a displacement, all on the same small patch of ground. That is where this sermon begins.It turns out Paul stands his people on honest ground too. Romans 5 does not arrive until he has spent chapters proving that no one is righteous, not one. He tells the worst of the story first. And only then comes the line that changes everything: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.This is not a sermon about cleaning up your past in order to be loved. It is the announcement that the love came first, and that is the only thing that ever makes honesty survivable. We can tell the whole truth about ourselves, and about our history, because we are not justified by the story being clean. We are justified by faith. In a year when the country is arguing over how to tell its own story, that turns out to be good news.Part of Roman Roads, a summer series walking straight through Paul's letter to the Romans, one passage at a time, each week paired with a real Texas historical marker standing on the roads around us.Reading: Romans 5:1-8 (Proper 6)Markers: Jesse Chisholm, the Site of Bird's Fort, and the Sloan-Journey Expedition, North Arlington

A land company promised poor settlers nearly two million acres of North Texas. For some of them the promise fell apart and left only graves on the prairie. That is where this sermon begins, at a roadside marker in Grapevine, and it turns out to be where Paul begins too. In Romans 4 he points us to a promise made to a man whose body was as good as dead and a womb that was closed, and he tells us why that promise held when so many others break. It never rested on anyone's strength. It rested on grace. This is not a lesson about having enough faith. It is the announcement that the God who makes the promise is the God who gives life to the dead, in a closed womb, in a house full of mourners, and in a sealed tomb outside Jerusalem. Part of Roman Roads, a summer series walking straight through Paul's letter to the Romans, one passage at a time, each week paired with a real Texas historical marker standing on the roads around us. Readings: Romans 4:13-25 and Matthew 9:18-26 Marker: The Peters Colony in Tarrant County and the Hedgcoxe War (Grapevine and The Colony)

You leave vacation days on the table. You overschedule the summer. You live like the whole thing falls apart if you stop. This Trinity Sunday sermon is the Gospel’s answer to that exhaustion: you are not the main character of the story. God is.Drawing on Genesis 1, Psalm 8, 2 Corinthians 13, and the Great Commission in Matthew 28, we walk through what the Trinity actually means for a tired life. The Father creates you and calls you good before you do anything. The Son redeems you, and nothing you do or fail to do adds to or subtracts from the cross. The Spirit sends you, not because God needs you, but because God invites you. The outcome was never yours to secure.You are a creature made in love. A sinner held by grace. A servant accompanied by presence. The story does not depend on you. You can rest.St. Martin’s Episcopal Church | Keller, TexasReadings: Genesis 1:1-2:4a, Psalm 8, 2 Corinthians 13:11-13, Matthew 28:16-20

What does your mom have to do with evangelism? More than you think. This sermon starts with a simple question: if you wanted to tell someone about a woman who shaped your life, what would you say? You wouldn't hand them a spreadsheet. You wouldn't list her measurable outputs. You'd testify -- about how she loved you, showed up for you, changed you. So why do we think sharing our faith looks like winning a debate? Drawing on 1 Peter 3, this message reframes "always be ready to give an account" away from intellectual self-defense and toward something far more honest: testimony. Something happened. It changed me. Let me tell you about it. The hope Peter is talking about isn't a vague feeling that things will work out. It's the specific, resurrection-grounded claim that we are free to live differently right now -- free to do good even when it costs something, free to love even when it's easier not to. That's a hope worth knowing well enough to say out loud.

On the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Fr. Alan Bentrup preaches from Acts 7, John 14, and 1 Peter 2 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Keller, Texas. Two of the most misused texts in the New Testament show up in this week's readings. John 14 has been turned into a border checkpoint. 1 Peter 2 has been stamped onto a flag. Both readings have been used to draw the circle small and keep people out. But then Luke slips a single sentence into the story of Stephen's martyrdom: the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. The man who wrote half the New Testament was holding the coats. This sermon asks what it means to worship a God whose mercy is bigger than our categories, bigger than our politics, bigger than our preferences, and bigger than the lines we have drawn around who deserves it. St. Martin's Episcopal Church | Keller, Texas Easter 5, Year A | Acts 7:55-60, Psalm 31, 1 Peter 2:2-10, John 14:1-14

What does it mean that the risen Jesus keeps saying the same thing? To frightened disciples behind a locked door. To Thomas in his doubt. Over and over: "Peace be with you."In this Easter Sunday sermon at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Keller, Texas, Fr. Alan explores John 20:19-31 and what the resurrection has to do with a plumber named Mike Jesus, a week of doubt, and the moment every Sunday when a room full of people turns toward each other and says the peace.Jesus does not wait for the fear to lift. He does not wait for the doubt to resolve. He walks in and says it anyway.That is not a small thing. That is the resurrection moving through a room.St. Martin's Episcopal Church | Keller, TexasSecond Sunday of Easter | Year AJohn 20:19-31

All week we have been listening. A crowd. Water poured out.  A hammer.  And then silence.T onight the ground shook. In this Great Vigil of Easter service from St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Keller, Texas, Fr. Alan offers a brief reflection on what the resurrection actually sounds like: not a quiet next chapter, but an earthquake. The sound of a door torn off its hinges from the inside. The sound of death discovering it has been outsmarted. Hell made its move on Friday. It looked like a victory. It was not a victory. And no one has ever said that better than John Chrysostom. Written in the fourth century and never improved upon, his Paschal Homily is one of the great proclamations of the Christian faith. Rather than compete with it, Fr. Alan steps aside and lets Chrysostom preach. Listen. The Sounds of Holy Week St. Martin's Episcopal Church | Keller, Texas Scripture: Matthew 28:1–10

Easter is not optimism. The people in this story are not people for whom hope came easy. They watched their friend die. They buried him. They came back to the tomb in the dark because they didn't know where else to go. Jeremiah wrote to survivors who had lost everything: the people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness. Not after the wilderness. In it. That is the world Mary Magdalene is living in when she comes to the tomb before sunrise. She is not coming in hope. She is coming because grief pulls you back to the last place you saw someone. And then Jesus says her name. One word. One syllable. The whole resurrection in a single breath. In this Easter Day sermon from St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Keller, Texas, Fr. Alan explores what resurrection actually sounds like. Not a trumpet blast over easy circumstances.  A name spoken quietly to someone in the wilderness. To someone who came expecting nothing. Grace does not wait for you on the other side of the wilderness.  It meets you inside it. He is already ahead of you. Already calling. The Sounds of Holy Week St. Martin's Episcopal Church Keller, Texas Scripture: John 20:1–18