An Episcopal Priest's Sermons, Prayers, and Reflections on Life, Becoming Human, and Discovering Our Divinity
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” Jesus says in today’s gospel (Matthew 4:12-23) How’s that working for you? Who here has repented today? Anyone? No? Okay, well it’s still early, not even lunch time yet. Did anyone…
Read More Rethinking Repentance – A Sermon On Matthew 4:12-23
Photo by Sage Friedman on Unsplash As I reflected on today’s gospel (Luke 13:1-9) and prepared this sermon I thought about the Russian war on Ukraine, the six million covid deaths worldwide, the collision between a pick up truck and a van that…
Read More Reimagining Our Lives – A Sermon On Luke 13:1-9 and Exodus 3:1-15
There’s a particular person in my life I sometimes just don’t want to be with. It’s often uncomfortable and sometimes scary to be together. There are times when I intentionally avoid this person. Sometimes I don’t like what I see…
Read More Looking At The Landscape Of Our Lives – A Sermon On Luke 3:1-6
I don’t know and never will know what it’s like to have the knee of a police officer against my neck, but I still can’t breathe. I want to be able to breathe again. I want you to be able to breathe. I want the George Floyds of the world to be able to breathe. I want us to breathe faith, hope, and love. I want us to breathe repentance, forgiveness, and healing. I want us to breathe compassion, justice, and peace. Don’t you? Don’t you want those things for yourself, for your kids and grandchildren, for the people of our country, for the world?
The Second Sunday in Advent, Year A - Matthew 3:1-12 By Visitor7 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons What if I preached like John the Baptist? What if I was as blunt and direct as he is? What…
Read More Life Can Be Different – An Advent Sermon On Matthew 3:1-12
I remember asking the what-to-do question in my teen age and early adult years as I thought about and made decisions. I asked it during my separation and after my divorce. I asked it after our son Brandon died. I’ve asked it after I said or did something that hurt another. I’ve asked it when I felt lost, overwhelmed, powerless, scared, or guilty. I’ve asked it when the pain of the world is palpable, when those I love and care about are hurting, when others are dealing with the hardships and the difficulty of life. What then should I do? Who and how do I want to be in this moment?
Does any of that sound familiar in your life? When have you asked the question? And what was going on?
What do you see when you look at your past?
What are the feelings and thoughts?Regardless of how we view our past, regardless of what did or not happen back then, to the degree we are enmeshed, entangled, or enslaved to our past, “we can expect the future to look like the past” (Caputo, The Weakness of God, 169). We repeat the same patterns, tell ourselves the same old stories, and listen to same old voices. And not much changes. Life becomes static and we are stuck in the past trying to live a life that is no longer.
John’s call for repentance is the call for us to face and deal with our past.
We've known times in our lives when we felt unprepared for what we were facing. We looked down the road at what was coming and we didn't like what we saw. We wanted to cry out, "No. This isn't happening. This cannot be. This must not be." Haven't there been times when you felt scared, unprepared for, or overwhelmed by life? Haven't there been times when you just didn't want to face what life was bringing you? Haven't there been times when you just didn't know whether your faith was up to the demands of life? Love my enemy? Forgive not once, not seven times, but seventy times seven? Turn the other cheek when the first one is still red and stinging?
The First Sunday in Lent - Mark 1:9-15 I don’t know how I can stand before you today with any sense of integrity and faithfulness and not say something about the Florida shooting. Something has to be said. I’m just…
Read More The Wilderness Of Gun Violence – A Sermon On Mark 1:9-15
In what ways are you living as a displaced person? What parts of your life feel uprooted and disconnected? What is your displacement?
"Comfort, O comfort my people," are God's words to displaced people. Isaiah first spoke those words to people exiled in Babylon, people whose lives had been uprooted. Those same words come to the displaced people of God today. In some way the prophetic word is always directed to displaced people. And we long to hear those words of comfort. We want to find our place. More than anything displaced people want to be a placed people.
Interrupting the Silence 