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Category Archives: story
Seventeen
At ten o’clock on the fourteenth day of the third month of year two thousand eighteen of this portion of our history, twenty-eight days after seventeen of their generation died in one school, in one day, countless students will leave their classes, searching for one more word of covenant, one more promise of life redeemed from the chaos. Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, story
Tagged beatitudes, Noah's Ark, numerology, school shootings
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Idols made of metal
The bronze serpent was not an amulet, but an icon of futility; an emblem of the impotence of evil in the sight of a gracious God.
The modern casting would be an AR-15 made into a museum piece, rendered harmless, useless, toothless by its irrelevance, not empowered by false reverence. Continue reading
St David’s
Sheer skyfall, blue to blue, plumb-lined from the heavens to the deep measures a cliff, eroded from creation, where only dune-grass and sheep may grow, miraculously rooted as the earth turns. We set out on a narrow path littered with … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, poetry, story
Tagged adder, creation, Fall, innocence, St David’s, viper
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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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“Startled” is putting it mildly
“I mention all of this because I am able to consider Donald Trump’s suggestion that teachers in school should carry weapons, recalling my roles as a soldier, an educator and a parent.” Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, story
Tagged #Parkland, arming teachers, gun violence, school safety, school shootings
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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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As though
Repent! the echoes ricochet off the bible.
I will require a reckoning for your lifeblood,
says the Lord. Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, story
Tagged #Parkland, #StonemanDouglas, #WearOrange, God Before Guns
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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
over the water 