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Category Archives: sermon
The Visitation
I love that, for a moment, you embraced, neither wondering how the other came to be in her loosened state, knowing next to nothing of the contractions to come, spasms of envy slaughtering the innocents and the barely belated, cruel blows which would fell them both, … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, lectionary reflection, poetry, prayer
Tagged Luke 1:39-56, Luke 1:44, the visitation
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Pentecost 2023: Would that all of God’s people would prophesy!
Medad and Eldad were not silenced. Peter, when the people grumbled and dismissed the disciples as drunk and deluded, said, “Nah, the bars aren’t even open for brunch yet!” They knew that they had their commission directly from the Holy Spirit. And I wonder what it was that Eldad and Medad were saying to the people in the camp, the ones getting on with their daily lives, prophesying in the midst of them while the elders and elite were pontificating from the outside… Continue reading
Posted in holy days, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Acts 2:1-21, Holy Spirit, John 20:19-23, Numbers 11:24-30, Pentecost, prophecy
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Christ, our true Mother
If Mother’s Day were a day to observe the commandments of Christ, our true Mother, to love God and to love one another as Christ has loved us, we would leave fewer orphans. Continue reading
One or the other
One says, Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb; another, Thou shalt not covet the livestock. One says, Give as good as you get; another, Do not repay evil for evil, but overcome evil with good. … Continue reading
Many dwelling places
There is more; there are many rooms, Jesus says, in God’s house: room for all of God’s children to roam and find their place. In God’s home and heart are many dwelling places, and sometimes we need more than one in a lifetime, if we are to grow and become the person God intended us to be. Continue reading
Many dwelling places
There was a hill covered in cloud that resisted the imprecations of the wind that tossed the crows about and hurried us to shelter beneath a bare crag, eroded by the dwelling of the centuries, bodies it had harbored, of … Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, poetry, prayer, sermon preparation
Tagged John 14:1-14, many mansions, Year A Easter 5
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Unhinged
I am a gate, I swing this way and that, inviting you to step into my dance, leading with the song you have heard before: creak and sigh of hungry humanity herded like sheep by fear and faith by turns. … Continue reading
The road to Emmaus
If the risen Christ stumbled through our doors, unexpected and unrecognized, visibly wounded in his head and his heart and his hands, how would we treat him? As a victim of our human violence, or as a threat? Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, lectionary reflection, sermon, story
Tagged Luke 24:13-35, Year A Easter 3
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Reeking of resurrection
“Have you believed because you have seen me?” asked Jesus. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” And blessed, he might have added, are those who have the words, the wisdom, the love, and the compassion to show them how to believe in the overwhelming love of God in Christ. Continue reading
Posted in sermon
Tagged Christian living, Easter 2, John 20:19-31, Resurrection, Thomas
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Blessed
He breathed on them the scent of grave-clothes, myrrh, and aloes, the stench of forgiveness; I imagine that smells of olive oil pressed from the groves in the Garden of Gethsemane, drowning out with unction the fetor of betrayal and blood. All day long they shed … Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, poetry, prayer, sermon preparation
Tagged Easter 2, John 20:19-31
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over the water 