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Tag Archives: repentance
Ash Wednesday
Lent is a time, if nowhen else is, not to perform piety, but to practice humility; not to perform beneficence, but to practice generosity; not to perform mourning but to practice grief, for all that is done that should have been left undone; for all that should have been done that has been left undone; with tears and trembling, and the sure and certain knowledge that God, who is compassion and mercy, sees us. Continue reading
Posted in holy days, homily, sermon
Tagged Ash Wednesday, ashes, dust, God, Lent, Matthew 6:1-6 16-12, mercy, repentance
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Come, let us argue it out
A sermon for October 30, nine days before the US midterm elections. The readings are for Year C Proper 26, Track 2, and include Isaiah 1:10-18 and Luke 19:1-10, the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus. ______________________________ What does repentance look … Continue reading
Posted in current events, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged gun violence, Isaiah 1:10-18, Jesus, Luke 19:1-10, repentance, salvation, Zacchaeus
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Ash Wednesday comes around again
Ashes line the grate after the great snow storm. Chill strikes down the chimney; a ghost stepping over the grave of last night’s fire. Ashes lift and shiver, settle and sigh, whisper to the warm wood tales of passion; eagerly, … Continue reading
Being human in Nineveh
This byword for sin and evil changed its ways, and its fine robes for sackcloth and ashes, because a prophet, reluctant, inadequate, and very fishy, walked among them. Because he came to see them not as political cartoons, memes, or caricatures, he found himself acting as a human toward them. Continue reading
Word, will, work
A sermon for September 27, 2020, at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio. This week Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lay in state at the Capitol. The US passed a grim milestone with 200,000 deaths from COVID-19. One … Continue reading
America, it is past time to repent
The deadly combination of targeted hatred coupled with widespread individual armouries – an obscene proliferation of weapons of death tucked into our daily life – continues to wreak havoc among us. This is the product and the consequence of sin. Continue reading
Remembrance, repentance, and reconciliation
In Lent, we bury [the word of ululating praise] beneath our tongues, yet even in dust and ashes it is our song, tuning in to Christ’s love, our hope, the truth of God’s undying mercy. 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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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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over the water 