Category Archives: homily

Ash Wednesday: grace is not in vain

Posted on February 26, 2020 by

Lent is a good discipline for me. The soul-searching, the self-denial, the study of God’s grace is something that I need constantly if I am to recognize the enormity, the ridiculous span and spread of God’s mercy.

But constantly is hard to do. Continue reading →

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The imagination of eternity

Posted on December 4, 2019 by

There is danger, nonetheless, in rendering Christ in wood and ink, oil and water, his features flattened, pressed under the weight of our expectations and experience, Mary’s milky flesh lightened and whitened, the divine darkness artificially brightened with gilt and gold. There is the danger that instead of conforming our imaginations to Christ’s likeness, we will attempt to fix him in ours. Continue reading →

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Do good. Don’t stop.

Posted on July 7, 2019 by

The seventy returned to Jesus excited and amped up, saying, “You should see how we owned the forces of evil! How we slayed in the name of the Spirit! We are on fire!”
And Jesus said, “Yesss. Awesome. You are amazing. You are undefeatable. I know, I know that the way of love wins (because, ahem, I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life). I know that you have it in you to do great things. But, not to rain on your parade or anything, but … Do not become distracted, even by your own indisputable awesomeness, from the way of love.” Continue reading →

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Preach

Posted on May 17, 2019 by

I am at the airport, waiting for my ride home from the Festival of Homiletics, and what shall I say? I have been broken and I have been stitched up. I have been blown away, and I have been blown … Continue reading →

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Reconciling love

Posted on April 28, 2019 by

Into this covenant Ann and Ben now come to be married. May their witness to the love and faithfulness of Christ warm our hearts, our may our joy at their union be reckoned to us as a reconciling righteousness. Amen. Continue reading →

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Why have we come here? Good Friday 2019

Posted on April 19, 2019 by

We come not to glory in his death, but out of fear of our own; and not only, nor even the death of our bodies, may they never endure such pain as his; but the death of our souls, the diminishing returns of our humanity, the erosion of love and the weary wearing away of compassion. On the cross, we see the destitution of our humanity, what it has come to, that we would sacrifice Christ to keep an unquiet peace, and pile on the death of God to weight the scales of injustice. We see where it could all end up, if we would prefer instruments of death to a way of life that makes us vulnerable to the demands of love and of mercy. Continue reading →

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Maundy Thursday: the end of love

Posted on April 18, 2019 by

Love is a decision. It is our choice to make, and we cannot make the excuse that someone else destroyed it, if Jesus washed Judas’ feet, and healed the ear of the servant sent to arrest him, and restrained the angels from coming down from heaven to frighten the hell out of Herod and that weasel, Pontius Pilate, letting love be his gospel, and his end. Continue reading →

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