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Category Archives: sermon
Healing miracles
Let’s look for the good news, though. Jesus supports our efforts toward healing, whether they be grand gestures or creeping, shuffling steps through the crowd. Jesus affirms our faith that things can be better, and that he will help make it so. For the sake of Jesus, we are gathered not as individuals wounded by violence, but as a community pulling together to heal one another’s hurts, to pray and to salve with balm the troubled spirit. Continue reading
Posted in gun violence, homily, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged community healing, gun violence, Mark 5:21-43, Psalm 130, Year B Proper 8
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The ship
A sermon on Mark 4:35-41 – Jesus stills the storm Jesus, do you not care that we are perishing? Many years ago, as I was preparing for ordination, I was assigned to do fieldwork at a church far, far … Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon, story
Tagged church, Mark 4:35-41, storm, vocation, Word of God, Year B Proper 7
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To speak in parables
To speak in parables: to open the teeth and loose the tongue, to taste truth beyond the metaphor, spit out outrageous similes for God, who is similar to nothing and almost everything; to explain them to his friends: to draw … Continue reading
The having of forgiveness
It seem to me that the way to remain unforgiven is to look forgiveness in the face and to mistake it for something altogether other, like a child in a hall of mirrors who sees distortion as reality and recoils … Continue reading
Pride
I think that the message that Jesus is sending here is that we do not need to deny that we are hungry, aching, withered, beloved and loving, marvelously (fabulously) made; but to know that God feeds us, heals us, restores us, loves us; that this is what sabbath is about: resting in the love of God. Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged God loves you no exceptions, Jesus, LGBTQ, love of God, Mark 2:23-3:6, Pharisees, pride, psalm 139, sabbath, Year B Proper 4
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Sabbath
Sabbath jubilee: release for the withering will, slow unfurling of a sharply-curved grasp to rejoice in defiant mercy, revolutionary rest; the gift and obligation to lie down like a branch strewn before the quiet feet of God After a hiatus, … Continue reading
Trinity Sunday: I and we
Have you ever been in a floatation tank? You know, one of those sensory deprivation set-ups filled with salt water that makes you float as though you were in the Dead Sea; or as though you were back in the … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged birth, Body of Christ, born again, community, Jesus, Nicodemus, rebirth, Trinity
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Pentecost – Prophesy!
It is not naïve to preach peace in the midst of war, nor disarmament in a country that has turned homes into arsenals and loaded them with danger. It is not naïve to advocate instead for mercy, for grace; it is the will of God that these dry bones should live, and be filled with the Spirit of God, the dream of the kingdom of God, the vision of resurrection. Continue reading
This world
When Jesus prays for his disciples, when Jesus prays for us, who will become his disciples generations later, when Jesus prays he casts the world as a dangerous place, even an ugly place in its tendency toward hate; and yet still, he sends his disciples into the world, just as Jesus himself was sent into the world, that all who know him and see God’s love in him might know the life that is eternal. That they may know the joy that God takes in the world, the joy that Jesus knew in this world, despite everything. Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, holy days, homily, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Ascension, discipleship, gun violence, Jesus, ordination, prayer
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Destined
One was destined to be lost so that the ninety-nine could wonder why a good shepherd would leave them alone to go looking for the lamb of perdition, imagining him already fallen beyond rescue into the valley filled with shadows … Continue reading
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