An Episcopal Priest's Sermons, Prayers, and Reflections on Life, Becoming Human, and Discovering Our Divinity
I’m not sure if this is a confession or just a description of where I am these days but I don’t want to do Lent this year. Do you? Let me explain what I mean by that. We began tonight…
Read More I Don’t Want To Do Lent This Year – An Ash Wednesday Sermon On Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Photo by Ahna Ziegler on Unsplash Most weeks as I am preparing my sermon at some point I call a retired priest who, for almost thirty years, has been my spiritual director, mentor, and one of my two best friends. We talk about…
Read More Pulling Back The Husks On My Life – An Ash Wednesday Sermon On Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Ash Wednesday - Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” That’s the last line of Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Summer Day.” I had never thought of my life…
Read More The Perfect Question For Ash Wednesday – An Ash Wednesday Sermon
We live in a tension between the uncertainty of life and the certainty of death. And we work pretty hard at denying, ignoring, forgetting, outrunning, and overcoming those twin realities. But they are always there. They are always present to us in the same way the ashes with which we will be marked were already a part of and present in the palms we carried last year on Palm Sunday.
What’s that like for you? In what ways have those two realities, the uncertainty of life and the certainty of death, made themselves known in your life? Maybe that's what you are facing today.
Where we begin our Lenten journey is not as important as where it takes us. In the same way, what we give up, take on, or do for Lent are not as important as what those things do for us.
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 Several years ago someone said to me, “One day I finally realized people were not spending nearly the amount of time thinking about me as I was spending thinking about them thinking about me, and wondering what…
Read More Yesterday’s Palms, Today’s Ashes – An Ash Wednesday Sermon on Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
As I write this reflection it’s the third week in Epiphany and I’ve been thinking about Lent for a couple of weeks now. I am thinking about Shrove Tuesday; the pancake supper, the palms we will burn, and the ashes…
Read More I Don’t Want To Do Lent This Year
A couple of years ago I was talking with a women who is and has been for many years my therapist, counselor, mentor, and teacher all rolled into one. I told her that I worked really hard to always get…
Read More Welcome to the Human Race – An Ash Wednesday Sermon, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, we will gather to be marked with ashes and remember that we are dust and to dust we shall return. The gospel for Ash Wednesday is Matthew 6:1-6,16-21. Jesus said, "Beware of practicing…
Read More Sermon for Ash Wednesday
Interrupting the Silence 