Some Words with Jon Jordan

About Some Words with Jon Jordan

Jon is a husband, dad, priest, and classical school headmaster. These are some insights into some of what he is working on throughout the week.

Publisher

Jon Jordan

Category

religion & spirituality

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

30 May 2024

Latest episode

12 May 2026

Latest episodes

18 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   12 May 2026

   Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Epiphany 2026 (Beatitudes)

   Are the Beatitudes merely beautiful words — or do they actually mean something in a broken world? The Beatitudes are not simply moral advice or self-help teaching, but Jesus’ announcement that a new world is breaking in. Spoken into a first-century world shaped by violence, power, and fear, the Beatitudes declare that those who live by God’s kingdom values now are already blessed.

2. 

   12 May 2026

   Palm Sunday Sermon 2026

   Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week—but this week is more than what it appears to be. It is easy to move through these days as just another stretch of time filled with responsibilities, schedules, and routines. But Holy Week invites us to see more deeply—to recognize that beneath the surface, something eternal is unfolding. The story of Jesus breaks through the “enchantments” we live under: the belief that we are in control, that we are self-sufficient, or that our deepest needs can be solved by the world around us. Instead, Holy Week reveals the truth—our greatest need is deeper than we think, and only Christ can meet it.

3. 

   12 May 2026

   Sermon for the 5th Sunday of Easter 2026

   Many of us feel the tension—wanting to follow God fully, while still holding on to the life we want for ourselves. Can we live our way now and God’s way later? The invitation of the Gospel is not a loss of joy, but the discovery of it—both now and forever. To entrust our lives to God is to find the meaning, freedom, and joy we were made for.

4. 

   14 Oct 2025

   Sermon: Holy Cross Day

   In which I reflect on the meaning of the cross, not only as a symbol of suffering, but as the ultimate victory of God over sin, death, and evil. The cross was meant for destruction, yet through Christ it has become the source of life, hope, and salvation. Transcript (https://jonjordan.com/transcripts/2025/10/14/2455.html)

5. 

   16 Jul 2025

   Sermon: Becoming Saints (Proper 10, 2025)

   In which I explore the deep human question of identity through Deuteronomy, Colossians, and the parable of the Good Samaritan. Before we ask “What must I do?” we must first ask “Who am I called to be?” Transcript (https://jonjordan.com/transcripts/2025/07/16/2268.html)

6. 

   5 Jul 2025

   A proposal: what it takes to maintain proper human interaction in the digital age.

   Note: as is often the case, this short note started with a quick thought I recorded in a parking lot. Below is the first attempt to put down in words some of what I am trying to say. If you are curious and okay listening to unpolished thoughts, here is the original voice memo. Here is the slightly more polished attempt: Opening Premise Humans are better off when they spend more time talking with family, friends, and neighbors than they do listening to strangers. This approach to personal interaction leads to the good life. Historical Overview Before the popularity of radio and television, it was impossible to do the reverse. You simply could not spend more time listening to strangers than talking with family, friends, and neighbors. (Lewis raises a red flag about the barrage of “the weekly press” in Screwtape Letters, and his point is valid. But his is in a different world than ours. Many of us are trying hard to return to only consuming news media weekly!) So, radio and television made it a little easier to listen more to strangers than to dialog with people you actually know. The dawn of the telephone—and eventually the cell phone—was different: these devices actually made it easier to talk with family, friends, and neighbors more frequently. One pathway towards the good life was strengthened, if you chose to take advantage of it. Video calls, an extension of this technology, also widened the pathway towards the good life, for those who use them well. (N.B., meetings with people you could otherwise see in person != using them well.) The dawn of the smartphone flipped all of this on its head. With email, an internet browser, and social media all in your pocket, it is nearly impossible to spend more time talking with family, friends, and neighbors than listening to strangers. If you are seeking to return to an older, better way of human interaction and you own a smartphone, the deck is stacked against you. Conclusion Some of the technological developments of the past century actually help people maintain this balance. Others actively hinder this sort of healthy alignment of interactions. How then shall we live? The only way to begin to return to an older, better way of human interaction is to use these technologies well. And one major implication of the data is this: without actually getting rid of your smartphone, your only chance at turning the tide is to remove email, internet browsers, and social media from your smartphone entirely. Force yourself to sit down at a computer to engage in these forms of technology.

7. 

   19 Jun 2025

   Social Media that doesn't shrink your soul?

   This is a new recording of an essay originally published in June 2022: livingchurch.org/covenant/… (https://livingchurch.org/covenant/social-media-that-doesnt-shrink-your-soul) Social media is a form of the unexamined life Socrates warned us about. But does it have to be so? Are the current popular iterations of social media, which I will refer to as Big Social, our only option for consuming information, connecting with friends and strangers, and developing bonds across borders and oceans? Transcript (https://jonjordan.com/transcripts/2025/06/19/2225.html)

8. 

   11 Jun 2025

   Sermon: The Upstream waters of Pentecost

   The Tower of Babel and Pentecost call us to reject the murky, downstream pursuits of self-reliance and instead seek the pure source of life found in God. At Pentecost, God comes down—not to control us, but to dwell within us, empowering us to live a Spirit-filled, unified, and abundant life. Transcript (https://jonjordan.com/transcripts/2025/06/11/2210.html)

9. 

   12 Aug 2024

   Sermon: Humanity in Christ

   A sermon on rest, interruptions, and what it means to be human. Mark 6 is the primary text. Proper 11, the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost 2024.

10. 

    12 Aug 2024

    Sermon: Hungry for God (John 6)

    By moving Jesus’s words about his body and blood out of the Last Supper and into the context of this chapter, what is John trying to reveal about humanity, and what is John trying to reveal about Jesus? A sermon for Proper 13 2024: the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost. The primary text is John 6:24-35. Transcript (https://jonjordan.com/transcripts/2024/08/11/1385.html)

11. 

    29 Jul 2024

    Classical And Anglican Conversion Part 2: This world is enchanted.

    Part 2: This world is enchanted. This is the second exploration of the various realizations that contributed to my conversion into the worlds of Anglicanism and classical education at (roughly) the same time.

12. 

    4 Jul 2024

    Classical And Anglican Conversion Part 1: God Is Infinitely Grand

    This is the (perhaps?) first short exploration of the various realizations that contributed to my conversion into the worlds of Anglicanism and classical education at (roughly) the same time.

13. 

    22 Jun 2024

    Sermon: Praying Psalm 22 in the season of Lent

    A sermon from Lent 2024 on adopting Psalm 22 as a prayer for Lent.

14. 

    7 Jun 2024

    Josef Pieper on Work, Leisure, and Life as Gift

    “The inmost significance of the exaggerated value which is set upon hard work appears to be this: man seems to mistrust everything that is effortless; he can only enjoy, with a good conscience, what he has acquired with toil and trouble; he refuses to have anything as a gift.” Joseph Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture Transcript (https://jonjordan.com/transcripts/2024/06/07/1208.html)

15. 

    6 Jun 2024

    A Poem: Baptized In The Jordan River

    You don’t have to travel across the world to be baptized in the Jordan River; only through the space time continuum. By the power of the Spirit of God The still clear water of the modern font Becomes the flow of that ancient river; Cleansing you as it was itself once cleansed by him who came after and yet before. “This is my beloved,” the voice beckons, Echoing from those first century shores, And into our very own, and beyond. Calling out to the called out ones, it rings Truer than our own truths we held so dear Before we, too, were brought through that River. Transcript (https://jonjordan.com/transcripts/2024/06/06/1203.html)

16. 

    3 Jun 2024

    AI, School, and You

    This was a letter sent to our student body in May 2023 about the rise of AI in education. You can read an essay of mine that expands on these things here (https://livingchurch.org/covenant/artificial-intelligence-is-no-substitute-for-wisdom/).

17. 

    3 Jun 2024

    Let them be born in wonder

    Let Them Be Born in Wonder (https://comment.org/let-them-be-born-in-wonder/) is the title of an excellent article that highlights the work of the storied, but relatively short-lived, Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas. Part of the reason the program no longer exists is that a disproportionate number of students in the program were converting to Christianity as a result of their studies. The program was closed for this reason in 1979, despite the fact that the investigative committee found “no evidence that the professors of the program have engaged in such activities in the classroom.” It was, in many ways, the mere exposure to great minds and works of the past that drew students to God. But the three founding professors also noticed something about the students entering the program that is worth us considering today: they had lost an interest in real things. These professors were convinced that before their students could encounter great works, they needed to reencounter, and be drawn again, to reality itself. Aristotle and St. Thomas teach that the human person, as a union of body and soul, lives an integrated life in which the intellect and will rely on the senses, the imagination, and emotions. The professors recognized that the new generation of students was sensibly and emotionally disconnected from reality. Their technology, their whole environment, pre-internet thought it was, cut them off from God’s creation, and inclined them toward fantasy. Their basic correspondence to reality, to the true, good, and beautiful, had been blunted. They were not interested in real things, were restless, and could not focus. What makes these observations more poignant is that they were made in 1968. Our world has grown to prefer the virtual and the digital even more in the decades that have followed. I share all of this for three reasons. First, I hope that you read the article, and grow to appreciate what the IHP sought to be and do. Second, I hope this gives you some perspective on why any classical Christian school worth its salt will insist on nature studies, physical activity, art and music appreciation, and a direct encounter with great works from the past. We learn to learn from thinkers who we may not entirely agree with, but who nonetheless had a better picture of ultimate reality than most in our own age. And finally, I hope this encourages us to remedy our own preference for the virtual and the digital; to sharpen our “blunted correspondence to reality” by seeking to “be born in wonder” by the natural order and human community around us. If we are all determined to begin this work in our own lives, we might just stand a chance at leading our students to do the same.

18. 

    30 May 2024

    A Letter to the Class of 2024

    On May 18, 2024, the Coram Deo Academy Dallas Campus graduated its first class of Seniors. Below is my message for that class, shared at the Class of 2024 Commencement Ceremony. There have been many times—perhaps more than I care to admit—that I have stood in the hallway outside the doorway to your classroom thinking to myself “I don’t have time for this. I need this hour for something else.” To reflect on what just happened. To prepare for what is to come. To plan, or to pray, or to respond. But I stepped inside regardless—mostly because I know you well enough not to trust you in a room alone together. After spending that hour with you in the classroom, God has not once failed to use each of you as a gift of grace: to refresh, or restore, or challenge, or comfort. I leave time with you thinking, “I needed that hour more than I knew. I don’t have time to not have this time together.” You—as individuals and as a class—have a gift that our mutual friend C.S. Lewis liked to call “the good infection.” You rub off on people. You are like the house of the patient’s girlfriend that Uncle Screwtape describes in Letter 22: Could you not see that the very house she lives in is one that he ought never to have entered? The whole place reeks of that deadly odour (of Christian love). The very gardener, though he has only been there five years, is beginning to acquire it. Even guests, after a weekend visit, carry some of the smell away with them. The dog and the cat are tainted with it. It is a house full of the impenetrable mystery. Whether in the classroom or around campus, at a dinner table or in a living room, in Dallas or Austin or Arkansas—I leave time with you changed for the better. You have shaped me. You have shaped my family—all of them. You have shaped this community and many others beyond it. Today is an occasion marked by joy—despite the misty eyes in the room—and here is why: This is a big crowd in a big room full of “the good infection.” But beyond these walls is a bigger crowd in a bigger room. Sitting behind you are just some of those who have cared for you in this season of your life at this school. In front of you are even more who have done the same in your homes and in your churches. The older you get the more you will realize the sacrifices they have made for you to be here. Now it is your turn. Because beyond those doors, there are people you haven’t even met yet who need you. There are a people yet unborn, who need you. They need you to witness—in word and deed—to the Good News of God in Christ. To pursue ever more deeply the Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of God. Not to shout into the darkness about how dark it is, but to light a candle, no matter how small, wherever God leads you. It is a joy to send you out with that mission. And we are at peace in doing so, because you are in excellent hands, hands that have been there all along, hands that I pray you will notice more and more as you grow up: you are safe, no matter what you face, in the wounded hands of our Lord. Amen.

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Contact Some Words with Jon Jordan

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.