I Came to Bring Fire to the Earth
I. Backpacking A. One of my favorite summer projects over the past 10 years has been back-packing in the High Sierras of Yosemite National Park. I’ve had to put it aside the past few years but it is still bright in recent memory. It would all begin after Christmas with careful planning, pouring over trail maps, for a 7 day itinerary in the mountains; then, gathering our usual group of up to 10 young people and parents; getting a wilderness…
Looking for Heaven
It seems as though about every 500 years, the church gets to re-think its understandings of the ways of God in the light of contemporary science and society. The last time was the Protestant Reformation. We are currently living in one of those pivotal times. Times when the old wine skins can no longer hold the new wine and things seem to fall apart. Times when we get to reformulate the way we talk about the ways of God and…
The Lord’s Prayer
Thoughts on the Lord’s Prayer Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.” …
For our sake…
This is Caro’s sermon from this morning; Fr Barry also spoke and his is only available as an mp3 file here. There’s a young man in my neighborhood who has just graduated from Poly. If you ask him he may tell you his name is Bill.[1] But that’s not his real name. His real name is Mohammed, and although his Mom is American, his Dad is from Saudi Arabia. I tell you this because after the horrific massacre in Nice…
St Benedict’s Day
We were fortunate to have Brother Adam McCoy, Prior of Mount Calvary in Santa Barbara, Order of the Holy Cross, for our guest speaker at our patronal festival. His talk is available as an audio file only.
Jesus the Christ
Today we come to the second part of our sermon series on the Nicene Creed and we’ll be looking at the relationship between God the Creator and Jesus the Christ. As I explained in my last sermon, this was a very difficult and contentious issue in the first few centuries of the Christian church, and became such a problem that it caused a big split. One of the reasons it was so divisive was that people thought that wrong belief…
Being an Apostle
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20 “The Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him…” In Greek, the word for ‘he sent’ is apesteilon which has the same root as the English word apostle. When we talk about “the apostles” we are usually referring to the disciples after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, when they were sent by Jesus to preach the gospel. But in today’s gospel reading, we see that apostleship is not limited to twelve men; 70, or some…
Putting a hand to the plow
Galatians 5:1,13-25 Luke 9:51-62 On Friday I went to a class at the gym. One of the benefits of taking a class is that you get to spend an entire hour looking at yourself in a full-length mirror. Consequently, as I was driving into San Luis afterwards I wondered what exactly it is going to take for me to lose weight again. Clearly, I thought, I am going to have to re-examine what I’m eating because I don’t have…
God Who Heals, Luke 8
sermon on June 5, 2016: God Who Heals Luke 8