Christopher Gillespie

by Christopher Gillespie May 11, 2026

“The Father Himself loves you… pray!” Rogate 2026

Prayer in the name of Jesus is not a formula appended to a petition. It is a location. To pray in His name is to come to the Father as one who is in the Son — wrapped in the Son, carrying the Son’s own standing before the Father. You are not the poor man at the gate any longer. You are not approaching from outside, hoping to have moved Him. You are praying from inside the love the Father has for the Son. That is where the font placed you. That is where you stand.

by Christopher Gillespie May 7, 2026

"Christ went where you could not go" Friday of Cantate (observed) 2026

The new commandment is a finished love. Christ made it on a cross. He gives it to you here in water and word and bread and wine. It is yours. The commandment and the gift are one. Faith and love are baked together like one loaf. Christ holds the one, and you hold the other, and there is no separating them. Christ went where you could not go, so that you could love as you have been loved.

by Christopher Gillespie May 5, 2026

"Draw from the well of His salvation, Jesus." Cantate 2026

This is the advantage. Not God near in the way you wanted. Better than that. The Spirit who convicts — your sin named and buried, Christ’s righteousness declared and given, the ruler’s judgment executed and delivered — doing his work here, in this service, for you.

by Christopher Gillespie Apr 27, 2026

"Come receive what Chronos cannot touch!" Jubilate 2026

Two kinds of time run through this Gospel. Chronos, which counts every loss and draws its conclusions. And kairos, which speaks the word of the risen Christ into the middle of those losses and names them for what they are: labor pains, not graves.

by Christopher Gillespie Apr 23, 2026

“The friends of the Bridegroom cannot mourn as long as He is with them” Friday of Misericordias 2026

The Bridegroom gives you new wineskins. He gave them to you at the font, where He drowned the old garment and clothed you in His own. The robe you wear before God is His obedience, His death, His resurrection. He does not repair what you bring. He replaces it. This is the grace that cannot be patched onto anything — it must be received whole, given whole, or it is lost.

by Christopher Gillespie Apr 19, 2026

"The Shepherd stayed when it cost Him His life" Misericordias Domini 2026

The hireling runs. That is the only fact Jesus gives you about him. He sees the wolf coming, and he runs. The sheep scatter, the wolf takes what it wants, and the hireling is already down the road. Jesus does not tell you the hireling's reasons. He does not need to. The man ran. That is his whole character, stated in a single act. Set that figure next to the Good Shepherd, and you have the entirety of the Gospel for this Sunday: He stayed.

by Christopher Gillespie Apr 16, 2026

“Fear and joy together. That is the life of faith.” Friday of Quasimodo Geneti (observed) 2026

You want joy without the terror of standing before the God who raises the dead. Or you settle for dread with no hope of mercy. The women leave the tomb with both, and Matthew does not apologize. He tells you: this is what the resurrection does. It gives you fear and joy together, because the One you meet at the empty tomb is both Judge and Savior, both Holy God and your Brother.

by Christopher Gillespie Apr 12, 2026

"Faith is born from the breath of God" Quasimodo Geneti 2026

Faith is born from the breath of God. The pneuma of Christ fills us. We live. We believe. We are blessed, because we have not seen and yet we have believed. The Spirit has breathed. The word has raised us. We stand. We confess. We live in His name.

by Christopher Gillespie Apr 9, 2026

"The risen Christ opens what we cannot" Easter Tuesday 2026

The risen Christ opens what we cannot. Christ opens Scripture. He opens understanding. He opens His hands and His feet to show the wounds. He opens His mouth to eat broiled fish. Through all this opening—this unveiling, this unlocking—He opens heaven itself and seats us there with Him. We cannot open our own eyes to see Him. We cannot unlock the meaning of Scripture on our own. We cannot break down the door that separates earth from glory. The risen Lamb who was slain has won the keys, and He opens what no man can shut.

by Christopher Gillespie Apr 4, 2026

"The Son of David is the answer to every one of David's cries" Good Friday Tenebrae 2026

John lays the old story of David over the Passion like one transparency laid on another, so that you see the pattern. The parallels are deliberate. Absalom gathered Israel against its rightful king, stealing the hearts of the people. The chief priests and the Pharisees did the same — they turned the crowds against the One whom the Father had anointed. Absalom's rebellion was the rebellion of a son against his father. The Passion is the rebellion of the creature against the Creator, of the children of Israel against the God who had carried them out of Egypt in His arms.

by Christopher Gillespie Apr 3, 2026

"Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up!" Good Friday Chief Service 2026

You are here this afternoon because the Holy Spirit has not finished building. He still calls by the Gospel. He still places stones. The cornerstone holds. The building rises. The Church endures — not by your effort, not by any human strategy, not by the wisdom of her architects — but by the blood of the Lamb laid into the earth's foundation, and raised again on the third day.

by Christopher Gillespie Apr 3, 2026

"God comes all the way down, down to the floor, down to the cross" Holy Thursday 2026

God is Most High. His eyes look down. He sees what you are — the poverty, the squalor, the weight of it all. He sees it, and He does not look away. He comes down. He comes all the way down, down to the floor, down to the cross, down to this altar. The Most High becomes the Most Low so that the lowly might be raised to the Most High.

by Christopher Gillespie Apr 1, 2026

"I looked, but there was no one to help" Holy Wednesday 2026

"No One to Help” Isaiah saw it before it happened. Many centuries before Calvary, he asked the question that hangs over everything you have heard this morning: "I looked, but there was no one to help, and I wondered that there was no one to uphold." Look through the Passion, and you will see that he was right. There was no one.

by Christopher Gillespie Apr 1, 2026

"The righteous Man is inconvenient to us" Holy Tuesday 2026

"Let us lie in wait for the righteous Man, because He is inconvenient to us." That is the voice of the conspirators in Wisdom, and it is an honest confession. They are not pretending to be virtuous. They know exactly what they are doing and why. The righteous Man is inconvenient. He reproaches their sins. His manner of life is unlike theirs. The very sight of Him is a burden. So they have made up their minds: He must go.

by Christopher Gillespie Mar 30, 2026

"Zechariah saw it all. Isaiah saw it all!" Holy Monday 2026

Jesus did not stumble into the Passion. He was not simply a good man who ran afoul of powerful enemies. He is the eternal Son of God who became flesh for the express purpose of offering that flesh to be broken. The Zechariah cento your ears received this morning is a mosaic of prophetic fragments, and together they tell the whole story of the week before it unfolds: the King riding in lowly; thirty pieces of silver weighed out; the shepherd struck; the sheep scattered; darkness at midday; living water flowing from the city. Zechariah saw it all. Isaiah saw it all. The thread running through every prophet points to this one Man, this one week, this one death.

by Christopher Gillespie Mar 29, 2026

"Given for you. Given to you. Full of His forgiveness!" Palm Sunday 2026

This is what the church does when she reads the Passion over you. She declares it. The Word does what it says. It puts you under the torn curtain, in the company of the saints who walked out of their graves, in the place of Barabbas. This is not a report on something that happened long ago to someone else. It is a delivery—to you, this morning, in this place.

by Christopher Gillespie Mar 26, 2026

"You do not believe, because you are not of My sheep" Wednesday of Judica 2026

The cross is coming. You can feel it gathering through these weeks. Every story this season — the plotting, the stones, the thickening opposition — it is all converging on Jerusalem, converging on one man walking steadily toward it. No one takes His life from Him. He lays it down. For sheep who wander. For sheep who sleep in Gethsemane. For sheep who deny three times before the rooster finishes crowing. For you.

by Christopher Gillespie Mar 26, 2026

"Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad" Judica 2026

And His blood does what the blood of bulls and goats could never do. It does not merely cover. It cleanses. It reaches the conscience. It purifies from dead works. It makes you clean, not in a ritual sense that wears off, but before God, forever. This sacrifice is offered once for all. It is not repeated because it does not need to be repeated. It is finished. He said so.

by Christopher Gillespie Mar 19, 2026

"There is mourning, and there is rejoicing, all the way through Lent" Wednesday of Laetare 2026

There is mourning, and there is rejoicing. Both. All the way through Lent. Not mourning for six weeks and then a gasp of relief on Easter morning. Both. The question is where you are looking. Look at yourself, and you can only mourn. Look at Him — and rejoicing is already there underneath everything, because of what He is doing.

by Christopher Gillespie Mar 16, 2026

"The One who is going to Jerusalem to die is the one who feeds you" Laetare 2026

But Jesus does not operate by human arithmetic. He takes what is insufficient, and He gives thanks, and He distributes until everyone is full and there are twelve baskets left over. He does not run out. He will not run out. Not on that hillside, not at that Upper Table, not at this rail.