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A Family Like Mine: Biblical Stories of Love, Loss, and Longing
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Category Archives: sermon
Advent IV: Impossible love
The angel didn’t need to oversell the child, the mundanity of human love, which is become the love of God made manifest, evidence that God loves us despite the risk, despite our sin, despite our pain, because God delights in us, because God is love. Continue reading
Posted in advent meditations, homily, sermon
Tagged family, grief, Incarnation, love of God, Luke 1:26-38, year b advent 4
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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
The promise of apocalypse
In the apocalypse that Jesus describes, the sun, moon, and stars are shaken out of their usual routine and function by the opening of heaven. But this is not a catastrophe, a failure of the light; rather, the created order and its finite light is overwhelmed and outshone by the inbreaking of the glory of God. … Continue reading
Posted in advent meditations, sermon
Tagged Advent, apocaypse, Emmanuel, Mark 13:24-37, Year B Advent 1
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Endings and beginnings
Unfurl the sails and let them cover the sun, the moon, the stars with the urgency of glory glorying in the new creation, with tender attention to the fig tree that you always loved, seeing it swell and fall over … Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, poetry, prayer, preparing for Sunday with poetry
Tagged Mark 13, Year B Advent 1
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Words that do not pass away
I do not remember well my mother’s voice any more; the soprano on the cd is younger than I knew her. What I carry buried deep within my skull are nursery rhymes and nonsense that emerge like sea mammals, occasionally, … Continue reading
Christ the King
The Son of Man, the king of kings, summons the nations of the world and mirrors back to them the ways that they have treated the image of God in their own people and in one another’s people; in all people made in the image of God. I find it striking that the question both groups ask, sheep and goats, is, When did we see you? Continue reading
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