God’s Hope in Suicide
This week we heard of two prominent people who committed suicide. Two people who seemed to be at the peak of very successful careers. And CDC issued a report showing that between 1999 and 2006 the national suicide rate jumped by 30%, making suicide the 10th leading cause of death. So this morning I think we should spend some time thinking together about suicide. According to the CDC report the problems most frequently associated with suicide, are strained relationships; life…
Hearing God’s Call
I have often wished that I could hear the voice of God as clearly as Samuel did in the first reading this morning. It’s worth noting where he was when he heard God – he was in the temple, where the ark of God was. For the Hebrew people, the ark of the covenant was the resting place of God, the Holy of Holies. Samuel was physically in the presence of God. Our contemporary understanding of God is that God…
Trinity
Many of you know that I enjoy playing golf. Some golfers spend a lot of time thinking about their shot before they hit the ball. They think about how far the green is, which way the wind is blowing, which club they should use, how high their tee is, which leg is carrying the most weight and so on. Me, I skip most of that, put the ball down and hit it in the general direction of the hole. After…
Trumpet Blast of Liberty
I don’t often spend time thinking about our baptismal vows. But this week I found myself explaining to a friend, “My baptismal vow is to seek and serve Christ in all persons and that includes the president.” She was amazed that I could consider the president to be my neighbor. Our baptismal vows are not easy nor are they simple. We say them quite fast and rarely spend much time focusing on them. But if we were to live by…
The Ascended Christ
When I was in elementary school, my mother took me out of school once a year on a Thursday to go to church for the feast of the Ascension so I totally agreed with St Augustine who called it the crown of all Christian festivals.[1] The Ascension is celebrated on the Thursday that comes forty days after Easter, but we no longer have a service that day. So it is the focus of our worship this morning instead. The…
Enough is enough (plastic)
Luke 12:13-21 Today’s gospel story described one individual who had so much stuff that he tore down his barns and built new ones to hold everything. But then he died so it was all a waste. I can imagine Jesus’ listeners must have had a good laugh about that. Most of them couldn’t imagine being so wealthy that you would need bigger storage units, let alone demolishing the ones you have to build bigger ones. Unfortunately, it’s not a funny…
Why?
Acts 3:12-19 Luke 24:36b-48 Why do you wonder at this? Why are you frightened and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Both this morning’s readings ask why. Why are we surprised at the way God works among us? Why do we doubt when miracles happen? The first reading this morning from Acts is a short passage taken out of its context in a longer story. In the exciting, heady days of the early church, Peter and John were going…
Faith and Fellowship
Acts 4:32-35 1 John 1:1-2:2 John 20:19-31 When I was a teenager I had a very definite faith. I believed that the Bible was the inerrant word of God. I knew pretty much all there was to know about Christianity, and I practiced it. But as I grew up I suffered from severe depression and my faith gave me no answers. I became confused between the sacramental and symbolic Anglo-Catholic faith that I had grown up in, and the fundamentalist…