Tag Archives: baptism

Pentecost: fear and tailfeathers

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (John 14:27) “I do not … Continue reading

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Promise and practice

Promises require practice. It is our call and our promise to bring comfort to the broken-hearted, to make peace without sacrificing justice, or mercy, for peace cannot survive without them. … It is our call, and our promise, to resist evil, to proclaim the gospel by word and practice, to serve our neighbour as Christ himself, to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being. And God promises us eternal life and an end to this separation, this wrenching of the spirit, not because we do these things, but because Christ does these things. Continue reading

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Trinity Sunday, 2019

Within God’s perfect being is the reconciliation of relationship, the interplay of love, the communication of difference and solidarity. Those aspects of God promise that we are understood, that we are accepted in all of our difference, diversity, struggle, and longing; that within the heart of a God who knows all about it from experience, we are healed. Within the heart of a God who knows even brokenness, betrayal, the shadow sides of love, we are recognized, accepted, restored. Continue reading

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Keeping promises

I have no doubt that God was with me in that river, whose banks Jesus knew, whose rapids perhaps he had played in. I have no doubt that God would have stayed with me, whether I lived or died that day. But in order to remain alive, in that moment, I also needed my people, the little community of foreigners with whom I had set out that morning in a black tyre inner tube to float down the river towards the Sea of Galilee. Continue reading

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Our own devices

Small victories, born of God, have a profound effect on the people who encounter them. Small victories born of God, born of love, grow up to conquer the world Continue reading

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Resurrection

In Jesus’ day, around one in five Jewish women bore the name of Mary, so it is not that much of a coincidence that the two women named returning to Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning share the same name. Continue reading

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Marked men

Later, they sit silent as the grave side by side,
watching a late sun set over the Jordan… Continue reading

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Advent light

A sermon for the First Sunday of Advent, November 27, 2016, at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio. Year A Advent 1: Isaiah 2:1-5 Romans 13:11-14 Matthew 24:36-44  When we have finished the act of Baptism with water, and … Continue reading

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Remembering our baptism

we all embraced on the slippery steps, laughing with the sheer sacredness of it all Continue reading

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Crossing the Jordan

It’s been twenty-nine years since I was in the Holy Land. My memories have become like a photograph album full of moments in time, frozen in stasis, many frayed at the edges or fading. There are a few that stand … Continue reading

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