Inner & Outer Journeys
Self Examination in Lent During these 40 days of Lent we follow Jesus in the Gospel readings as he makes his way toward Jerusalem and the Cross. Every year in these days before the Feast of Easter, the church invites us to a season of self examination. –How are we doing on our own journeys? both the inner dimension that we experience in our inner lives, our hearts, souls, and bodies? – and the outer dimension that we travel on…
Remember Who You Are
We began the season of Epiphany with the baptism of Jesus and this morning, the First Sunday in Lent, we get a flashback to what happened next. Jesus spent a long period of time in the desert, fasting and preparing for his ministry. And while he was there he was confronted by the sin matrix personified in the devil aka Satan. Some people get very bothered by the idea of Satan – they can’t wrap themselves around the medieval Satan…
What do you see?
This morning is the last Sunday in the season of Epiphany – the season of the revelation of Christ – this coming Wednesday is Ash Wednesday when we start to prepare for the bittersweet events of Holy Week and the great mystery of Easter. Since the date of Easter Sunday varies from year to year depending upon the moon, the number of Sundays in Epiphany also varies from year to year. But two of those Sundays always have the same…
A Call to Transformation
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a Luke 4:14-21 I. A Renewal of the Covenant A. On this 3rd Sunday of Epiphany in Year C of our three year cycle of scripture readings we hear for the one and only time from the Book of Nehemiah. So, it may help to highlight it today briefly. 1. The book narrates the time of Israel following their return to their homeland after years of captivity in Babylon. 2. In Babylon, Nehemiah, a prominent…
The Wedding Banquet
1 Corinthians 12:1-11 John 2:1-11 I’ve always been in awe of quilters. Their ability to construct beauty from small bits of fabric amazes me. Ann-Lining Smith, an amazing quilter who also happens to be an Episcopal priest and who often took our services in the interim period before Mary Elizabeth was called as rector, made us the three quilted hangings for the Long Green Season. When I visited Ann-Lining in the middle of her creative process, she was surrounded by…
Encountering the Christ
Matthew 2:1-12 A few weeks ago we read some of Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth and I mentioned that some scholars think we can look at these early stories as a kind of prologue to the gospel itself; a narrative that sets out the key theme of the gospel. Today we hear from Matthew. Matthew starts with a genealogy to show that Jesus was descended from Abraham and then David through the male line even though he too makes it…
Transformed into Christ
I. Images A. Once again we encounter these timeless passages for Christmas, not so much hearing the words, as seeing the images, the great and timeless images of this most lovely and powerful season. — — — 1. Every year waxes and wanes, the good and the bad happens to us and our world, and then fades into memory. — a. We are tempted to wonder, is life simply a circular cycle that comes and goes, lives and dies, our…
Peace and goodwill to everyone?
Earlier this week I went to buy a bottle of wine for a gift. I really don’t know much about wine so it’s always a bit of a challenge to guess from the outside what the wine in the bottle will taste like, especially if I want to buy something that costs more than my normal $5 budget. As I was wondering around looking at wine labels, a man came up to me. He knew who I was and he’s…
Mary’s Song
Luke 1:39-45, (46-55) Today is the fourth and final Sunday of Advent, the season when we prepare for the coming of the Christ, both at Christmas and in the second coming. Over the past three Sundays we have heard from the prophets – those who are given God’s visions. But today prophecy comes home. Specifically it comes to the doorstep of the home of Elizabeth and Zechariah in an unnamed town of Judah. There, Elizabeth greets Mary. There, the yet…
Prophets: True and False
Have we become a nation led by ‘false prophets’? (In the history of Israel, a prophet was someone who brought the word of God to the people. A false prophet was someone who told the people what they wanted to hear.) The day after the San Bernardino shootings, I was driving downtown and thinking about the unending violence in our nation and our world. In my mind I was hearing the cacophony of national voices pretending to be prophetic, shouting…