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Category Archives: sermon
Trinity Sunday: playing favourites
Is it wrong to have a favourite person of the Trinity?
One of the things I love about Trinity Sunday, which is always the first Sunday after Pentecost, is how we find ourselves thrown into confusion by the image of a God who is One, who is Three, who is Spirit, who is Incarnate, who has known breath and who breathed breath into being. We are tempted to try to make sense of it all, with pictures and patterns of three-leafed clovers and Celtic knots. But God is not a mathematical problem, and God – while we can see God everywhere – God will always be more than our vision can contain, or our words describe, or our hearts need.
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Posted in holy days, homily, sermon
Tagged Genesis 1, Great Commission, Trinity Sunday
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Incongruity (or, Fireworks at Pentecost)
No gentle breeze to nurse the flames but a gust, a buffet that knocks out other sources of power, so that all we see is one another’s wonder by light of a fire that reveals, does not obliterate the features … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, poetry, preparing for Sunday with poetry
Tagged #preparingforSundaywithpoetry, Pentecost
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No longer Monday
It’s not Monday any more, but the scent still lingers in the house when they awaken, and Lazarus is grateful for the distraction; he hardly knows himself these days, still amazed at the complicated gift of life. The echoes of … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, lectionary reflection
Tagged Holy Week, Isaiah 42, Jesus, John 12:1-11, Lazarus
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If these were quiet …
Think of the palms, crushed and bruised by the colt and the crowds, and of the ones who came back, the poor, the quiet, who came back to collect their broken stems and bleeding leaves, and wove them into something new, something to sell back to … Continue reading
God’s time
His last breath took him by surprise. Until its vapour dissipated in the ragged inhalations of his sisters, beginnings to convert his death into ululation; until then, he had thought that he would come. Hard to say what happened next: … Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, poetry, prayer, preparing for Sunday with poetry, sermon preparation
Tagged death, hope, Jesus, John 11:1-44, Lazarus
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A world of miracles
Do you also want to be his disciples? asked the man. Then try this: Listen. Listen to the stories of the one you have walked by a thousand times in as many days dripping with pity without breaking your stride. … Continue reading
Dramatic irony
I find myself drawn to the contrast between reports this week that some military commanders are framing the war against Iran as an effort to bring about the end times, as though we may decide these things for God, in our wisdom; the contrast between that and Jesus’ words to the woman that the hour is already come, quietly, unnoticed over a cup of water, when reconciliation happens, and the truth of God’s love for the world, in all of its invented factions and fractions, has been revealed. Continue reading
Posted in current events, lectionary reflection, poetry, prayer
Tagged Armageddon, dramatic irony, Jesus, John 3:1-17, John 4:1-17, Samaritan woman, war, woman at the well, Word, year a lent 2, Year A Lent 3
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The well
Fed by generations, torrents of history running wild within the earth, the holy ground shaped and watered by the tears of war and weddings, piety and pity. Still waters run deep within the earth, seep between the shoulders of the land, shrugging off the stories that we … Continue reading
Amongst the Babel of war
We too often misunderstand, I think, what it means to become like God. We build our towers, our satellites in the sky, posing as heavenly bodies, the better to crater and control the earth. We rain down judgement as though … Continue reading
Posted in current events, lectionary reflection, sermon preparation, story
Tagged Genesis 11:1-9, Iran, John 3:1-17, war, year a lent 2
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Nicodemus has insomnia
He couldn’t sleep for the moon light streaming through creation, for the sound of the wind sighing over a sea too deep for words, for the shiver when he heard him speak liberty as though it were at hand,the shock of justice overturned, the taste of mercy … Continue reading
over the water 