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Category Archives: story
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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Transfigured
I saw the sun glow white, clothed in winter’s glory, the cold light of distance, diffidence; for once it shone so pale that my eyes could look upon it and live.
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
The Feast of the Presentation
Simeon has been dismissed. Anna shed her widow’s weeds, went dancing with the turtle doves, snowing feathers; all that remains is dust and the rubble of a memory, the echo of a prayer, and a child, caught by his woven … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, poetry, prayer, story
Tagged Jerusalem, Nunc Dimittis, Simeon and Anna, The Feast of the Presentation
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Marking time
The action of turning the calendar page is a challenge to understand how each day anchors us in that moment between the gravity of time and the weightlessness of eternity. Continue reading
Posted in prayer, story
Tagged creation, Ecclesiastes 1:9, eternity, Genesis 1, psalm 118:24, time
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Holy innocents
Their wisdom was not wanted by the powers that be, in case it would unseat their certainty of their own anointed state. Warned in a dream, they went home another way, pursued by rumours of mothers kneeling in the ashes of … Continue reading
Posted in current events, holy days, poetry, story
Tagged Epiphany, Holy Innocents, Martin Luther King Jr, three kings
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Nazareth, Norway, Nathaneal
“What do you know of me?” Nathaneal demanded.
“I know enough,” answered Jesus.
“Oh, Christ,” Nathaneal swore.
“You have no idea,” replied the Christ. Continue reading
