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Category Archives: sermon
Cleansing the temple
Christ, cleanse our temple courts where money changes hands to purchase sacrificial lambs offered on the high altar hymned with thoughts and prayers and the black sheep, tethered, set aside for the devotions of white-robed acolytes, while mourners shuffle ceaseless intercessions … Continue reading
Their cross, our cross
I have been trying to imagine how the words of Jesus to the pre-resurrection people would have sounded. We cannot hear of the cross without spiritualizing it, sublimating it post-resurrection. To have the same impact today as he had on that crowd in first-century Galilee, what might Jesus say? Continue reading
Posted in current events, lectionary reflection, prayer, sermon, story
Tagged Jesus, repentance, righteousness, salvation, take up your cross, Year B Lent 2
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A perfectly imperfect marriage
I think John Henry was lonely, and that Christ was as much his consolation as his committed husband.
He approached his ordination like a wedding, with excitement and dread, with joy and cold feet. Continue reading
Posted in homily, sermon, story
Tagged church, holiness, John Henry Newman, Oxford Movement
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Bruising God
Just before setting the bow in the sky as a sign of the covenant of mercy between God and all flesh, God tells Noah that since humanity was made in God’s image, God will require a reckoning for our lifeblood. God considers violence against any one of us violence against God’s own self. Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, sermon, story
Tagged #Parkland, 1 Peter 3:18-22, AR-15, domestic violence, Genesis 9:8-17, gun violence, Lent, Mark 1:9-15, Noah's Ark, repentance
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Do not give your heart to the ashes
The landscape within which we live is littered with sin, from the scars we inflict upon the earth on up through the twisted veins of hearts that would burn down a church built in the image of God’s mercy. And it is impossible to stand here in an attitude of repentance tonight without acknowledging the complicity of our common life in the deaths of 17 students, children, at a high school in Florida this afternoon. Our participation in systems of sin, as its priests and as its victims, is as inevitable as the ice of winter. Continue reading
Posted in holy days, poetry, sermon, story
Tagged Frank X. Walker, gun violence, mercy, R.S. Thomas, repentance, school shootings, wildfires
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A fleeting vision of glory
If Epiphany is about its revealing, then Lent is about our looking for it; but we have the assurance, as we enter the search, the forty days of wilderness wandering, that it has already been found, and that God, the God of Abraham and Hagar, of Ismael, Moses, and Elijah, the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ will not let us wander alone, nor fail if we falter. Continue reading
This is not Sunday’s sermon
On Sunday, I may speak of mountaintop miracles, the art of the divine fuller, bleaching all blemishes out of our vision of God Incarnate, revealing glory. But today is Friday. The week was long and the mountain high and hard. … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, lectionary reflection, prayer, sermon preparation, story
Tagged Epiphany, Jesus, Transfiguration
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Good news!
A sermon for Annual Meeting Sunday at the Church of the Epiphany, and the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany. “Have you not known? Have you not heard?” The good news of the gospel is bursting out of today’s readings. … Continue reading
Love builds up
We serve Christ, who cast out demons and reconciled the word of God to its application, because love is more important than letters. Anything less brings the gospel into disrepute. Continue reading
Posted in sermon
Tagged 1 Corinthians 8:1, Community Meal, interfaith, parish collaboration, sabbatical, Year B Epiphany 4
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Sharkbait
If we give up on Nineveh, we run the risk that instead of becoming fishers of men, we become like Jonah, in need of a fishing vessel to rescue us from the deep water we get ourselves into when we turn our backs on the grace and mercy that God has for all that God has made. Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged discipleship, fishers of men, forgiveness, God, Jonah, Nineveh, politics, repentance
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over the water 