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Category Archives: lectionary reflection
It is the Lord: Come and see
Evangelism, Year B Epiphany 2, 1 Samuel 3, John 1:43-51, Nathanael, Philip, Eli, Samuel, church hurt, church healing Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon, story
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Anything good
Anything good this way comes, fragrant from the desert, fat from fasting, presumptuous in his humility,faint traces of aloe following him like a draft, children hanging from his heels like lambs trying to suckle from the hem of his garment. … Continue reading
Forewarned
They left by another way to avoid the falling stars bombarding the night sky, minor apocalypses scoring their trails across the Red Sea. They dreamed of corridors between the waters knowing that God created dry land once. Cradled by sand dunes haunted by Herod’s gaudy and the Child’s humble glory they … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, lectionary reflection, poetry, preparing for Sunday with poetry, sermon preparation
Tagged Epiphany, Gaza, genocide, Herod, magi, red sea, Suez, war
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Word, words, wordless
In the beginning, says John, and you can tell that he is thinking back to that old story of beginnings, the one in Genesis that begins, In the beginning… And so as God spoke light into creation, and life, so … Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Christmas, Incarnation, John 1:1-18, John's Prologue, ministry of presence
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The Word
In the beginning, the Word breathed light. In the beginning, the Word formed the vowels of the ocean, hard consonants of land. In the beginning, Word crawled, swam, flew, blossomed. Before flesh, there was the Word; utter God, utter Being, utter Love. John 1:1-18
Nothing is impossible
If nothing is impossible with God, what can be trusted? The sun may lose its grip on heaven, fall helpless to the ocean, sink or set the world aflame, melting its willing, molten heart. Birds of prey may sing lullabies … Continue reading
Rejoice, repent, renew
I had a realization on Tuesday evening that our Bible Study group witnessed me coming to in real time: that John the Baptist was an Episcopalian. In our daily office prayers, and even in our Sunday Eucharist, if we turn … Continue reading
Posted in advent meditations, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Advent 3 Year B, John the Baptist
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The great forerunner
A star is a miraculous being, born of the infalling of dust and ashes, the sacred debris of creation set aflame on the altar of nightfall; A miracle blazing by night, as dawn breaks open the path of the rising Sun, outshone, the star remains, its fire … Continue reading
Lucy and the Light of the World
I think of the long aperture of a camera taking pictures of the night; instant to instant, our eyes see only the tiniest pinpricks in the darkness, but left open to the sky, the camera is able to absorb and interpret those tiny messages into images of great light and beauty; images of hope. Continue reading
Posted in advent meditations, holy days, homily, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Bethlehem, Desmond Tutu, Holy Land, John 1:9-14, John Donne, light, light of the world, manger, Saint Lucy, war
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John, the post-traumatic prophet
My first Advent as a priest was the season of Sandy Hook. That Sunday the Gospel was about John. I realized that he must have grown up in the shadow of that massacre of innocents committed by Herod; although he, like his cousin, escaped, it would leave its mark on his parents and his small self.
I find myself this Advent once again, for obvious reasons, contemplating post-traumatic John the Baptist, his infant self and all that imprinted itself upon him through the coming of the Christ child and the world’s unwillingness to accept the angels’ proclamation of peace upon the earth.
#preparingforSundaywithpoetry Continue reading
