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Category Archives: homily
Christ the King (or, the king is not the thing)
One of my favourite biblical reflections on kingship and humanity is Jotham’s parable from the book of Judges:
The trees decided to anoint themselves a king. First, they asked the olive tree: Come be our king! But the olive tree did not want to give up its vocation to produce oil for anointing, to honour and to heal, in order to govern other trees. So they asked the fig tree. But it would not give up its vocation to feed people and animals, birds, and all with its sweet goodness, so it declined. So, too, the vine, when asked, said why would I give up wine-making in order to govern other trees? Finally, they asked the bramble. The bramble, said, if you can find shelter under me, fine, go ahead; but if you are pricked by my thorns and shut out or caught up in my briars, it will be the worse for you. Continue reading
Posted in holy days, homily, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Christ the King, Jesus, John 18:33-37, Judges 9:7-15, neo-nazis, parable of the trees, Pilate
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Witness
A sermon for All Saints Sunday We all know about Lazarus, don’t we? Lazarus has become a byword for those who return from the dead. In paleontology, Lazarus names those species that disappear from the fossil record as though extinct, … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, homily, sermon
Tagged All Saints, grief, Isaiah 25:6-9, Jesus, John 11:32-44, Lazarus, love, Year B All Saints
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Ransom
Left to our own devices, to our own imaginations, to ourselves – well, the devil makes play for idle hands and inflated egos. James and John, the anger of the disciples, left to spiral like a cyclonic wind, their bloviating would only cause them to wrap their errors more closely around themselves. If Jesus had agreed that they could sit at his left and right hands, the next argument would be who got right and who got left! Continue reading
Posted in homily, lectionary reflection, sermon, story
Tagged Aesop’s fable, james and john, Mark 10:35-45, north wind, serve, service, Son of God, Son of Man, sun, Year B Proper 24
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Worth it
It is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle – yet God shrank Godself into a human body, a human soul, a human being, in order to reach us. It is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle – yet God reaches through the eye of the storm to grasp our hands and pull us through. It is harder for the camel to pass through the eye of a needle, yet Jesus looked that young man in the eye, and he loved him. Continue reading
Posted in homily, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged camel, God, Jesus, Mark 10:17-31, rich young man, rich young ruler
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For the love of Jesus
I think that in this gospel reading, Jesus is asking us to see him for himself, as himself. To spend the time, to invest ourselves in knowing him. Not because he needs us to, but because if we can see him more clearly, and follow him more nearly, we will learn to love more truly, to heal more fully, to find the image of God where we most need to see it, where it most needs to be seen. Continue reading
Posted in homily, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Jesus, Mark 8:27-38, prayer, Springfield Ohio, St John of the Cross, Year B Proper 19
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Humanity
It is a call not to lose sight of the humanity of Jesus at work in the most difficult situations, even among the demons. … Continue reading
Posted in homily, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged bias, humanity, Jesus, sin, Syro-phoenician woman, Year B Proper 18
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For the love of God
You have to wonder how the Song of Songs ever made it into the Bible. … The poem never explicitly mentions God, but if we read it as sacred story, then we affirm and proclaim that this is God’s love for us; this is God’s love song.
That’s what I wanted to preach about this morning. Then, the night before last, there was a mass shooting outside the high school down the street. Five teenagers were hospitalized. One of them has since died.
God loves these children too much for us to continue to let this happen. Continue reading
Posted in gun violence, homily, sermon
Tagged gun violence, James 1:17-27, Jesus, Mark 7, nonviolence, Song of Solomon, Song of Songs
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Body parts
Don’t give up, Paul might say, despite the worn and broken nature of the world, despite our own limitations, whether every part works or not. For we are each formed by God and called together in the love of Christ, and when we work together, to support and to encourage and grow one another’s faith, we will discover and do more than we can ask or imagine, by the love of God. Continue reading
Posted in homily, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Body of Christ, Ephesians 4:1-16, Year B Proper 13
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Abundance
We live in a world, in a country and a community, hungry for love, starving for mercy, thirsty for good news. We have all that is needed to provide those essential nutrients to the people before us, around us, among us. And that is exactly where Jesus asks us to begin. Continue reading
Posted in homily, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged abundance, Ephesians 3:20-21, feeding, feeding five thousand, Jesus, John 6:1-21, politics, prayer, providence
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The compassion of Christ
The compassionate life is tricky enough in the everyday, and my guess is that even the least political among us will find our last nerve twanged by the rhetoric and anxiety and all that will pile onto the social psyche in the coming months. We may be tempted to try to love our enemies into submission. We may be tempted to try to grind out compassion through our clenched teeth. We will not succeed unless we are grounded in the love of Christ … Continue reading
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