My One Sermon (Preached 21 April 2024)

It’s said that every preacher has just one sermon that they preach over and over again; one core message that runs through their whole body of work. And every time we preach, no matter how original we think we are being, or how novel a direction we think we are taking, it is still basically the same sermon.

Now as you can imagine, I’ve thought a lot about what I want to say to you today. And I’ve been wondering, what is my one sermon? And what might you who have been hearing me over these last several years say it is? Because what you and I hear is shaped by where we are when we hear it and, I think, what we need. And there is this space, between what’s said and what’s heard where very mysterious things can happen.

Still, if there was ever a time it is now, for me to say as simply and clearly as I can what I think my core message is. And it is this: God is here. Christ (God in human flesh) is here. Here in this place. Here in this moment. Here in every one of us, and in the space between us.

I believe this with all my heart. And sometimes, when I’m paying attention, and sometimes when I’m not, I see it. I feel it. It’s like “oh!”. I’m pretty sure this happens to you too.

Well last weekend it didn’t matter if I was paying attention or not – God’s holy presence was manifesting all over the place. And if you will bear with me, I’d like to tell you how it was...(read more)

Resurrection is Out There... (Easter Day 31 March 2024)

So they (that’s Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus and Salome) went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

 

This final sentence in this morning’s Gospel that we just heard isn’t just the last line in Mark’s account of what happened on the first Easter morning. It’s the last line in Mark’s Gospel period. Curtain down. Which means that in what is believed to be the oldest version we have of the Easter story, the risen Christ does not appear. Anywhere. 

Not cooking breakfast on the beach or showing his scars to Thomas in the Upper Room. Not falling in with travelers on the Emmaus road. Not commissioning his followers to make disciples of all nations. Matthew, Luke and John all go on, from the empty tomb, to describe actual encounters with the resurrected Jesus.

 

Mark ends with three brokenhearted women having to take a stranger’s word for it. Women who are so freaked out at the idea that “he has been raised”, they can’t even talk about it. It is kind of a disturbing ending, right?

 

Well, yes. So much so that early editors actually felt compelled to add more. Open up any Bible, and you’ll discover two additional chunks of text after this final line of Mark’s, one labeled a “shorter” ending and the other a “longer” ending, neither of which is found in the earliest manuscripts. It seems no one wanted to be left on that morning, with the disciples still in hiding and three women fleeing...(read more)

 

Transformed by Remembering (Maundy Thursday 28 March 2024)

“This day shall be a day of remembrance for you...”, declares the book of Exodus, after describing in exacting detail how the people are to celebrate the Passover. “Do this in remembrance of me”, says Jesus, after taking, blessing, breaking and sharing the bread and the wine at the Passover meal with his disciples on the night before he is arrested. “I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you...that our Lord Jesus said ‘This is my body that is for you…This cup is the new covenant in my blood, do this in remembrance of me’”, writes Paul in his first letter to the church in Corinth. 

The word “remember” comes from the Late Latin rememorari, meaning to be mindful of. To remember, then, is to bring something back to mindfulness. The Hebrew in the Exodus passage is zakar, whose meaning is essentially the same. And the Greek in the New Testament is anamnesko, which means “to deliberately recollect in order to better appreciate the effects or intended results of what happened.”

 

So you see, this idea of intentional, thoughtful practice of remembrance lies deep in the DNA of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is what we are about throughout the church year as we gather Sunday after Sunday to remember our story through the reading of our Scriptures and to remember our deliverance through the celebration of Holy Eucharist.

 

And why do we do this? Because we believe that our communal remembering not only shapes us; it also transforms us....(read more)

Let's Not Bury the Lead (Sermon preached 10 March 2024)

This past Wednesday, at the 10am Chapel Eucharist, one of the small group that comes regularly to this little service arrived bearing gifts.

 

From her purse, she pulled out a handful of little notebooks with blank lined pages, with pens to match. She said “a little pre-Easter gift in anticipation of Easter joy. I just thought they were so pretty”. Of course, the other four of us, all women, loved them! So cute, so thoughtful, such a sweet shade of pink – it’s “Easter-y”, right? Reminds me of Easter bonnets and Easter dresses.

 

Then as is my habit, I’m afraid, I started thinking out loud. “Well, you know”, I said, “the liturgical color on one of the Sundays in Lent actually is pink, rather than purple – just like one of the Sundays in Advent is pink – that’s why one of the candles on the Advent wreath is pink. Pink, or rose, symbolizes a lightening of the purple penitential tone. The same thing happens in Lent, somewhere in the middle. Maybe last Sunday or this coming Sunday…we are between the third and fourth Sundays, I’m pretty sure.”

 

So of course she got out her phone and Googled Lent/pink and there it was! The Fourth Sunday in Lent (which is today) is called Laetare Sunday – laetare being Latin for “rejoice”...(read more)

Broken and Beloved (Ash Wednesday 14 February 2024)

When I first realized that Ash Wednesday was going to fall on Valentine’s Day this year,

I thought oh! Such a paradox! This placing, side by side, of the acknowledgment of human sin and an homage/celebration of/ to human love.

 

And then, I thought, no, this is really wonderful. This year, on Ash Wednesday, we get to hold these two things together. We get to embrace, at the same time, our brokenness AND our beloved-ness. Which is what the God who both made us and saves us, is doing all the time. These two aspects of being human cannot be separated. Our brokenness and our beloved-ness cannot be pulled apart.

 

Today we begin, though, by leaning into our brokenness. Not because it’s more important, or bigger; but because until we face its reality, we cannot begin to comprehend how utterly and completely we are loved... (read more)

Ever Turning on a Dime (Sermon Preached 21 January 2024)

“You know, life can turn on a dime” That expression has been around for a long time, right? When my bishop back in Central Pennsylvania said it to me, I had definitely heard it before.

 

We were having coffee at a funky little place in Williamsport, the small town where I lived with my family. They had a great selection of coffees and teas, items for sale by local artisans, and deep chairs and couches that looked like they’d been pulled out of people’s attics.

 

We were talking about my job prospects. This was in 2010, I think, so I’d been ordained maybe 6 years, and had served first as the Missioner for a cluster of three small local churches, and then as the Interim in a parish 100 miles away, which had meant me splitting every week between there and home.

 

There were no decent openings within reach for me. The two full-time positions in Williamsport had come and gone, both parishes having called straight white married men, with children, from other dioceses; and no I’m not bitter! And now, this was the second bishop (his predecessor was the one who ordained me) – the second bishop who was saying he would sure hate to lose me, but didn’t seem willing to help me, much, job-wise.

 

“You know,” he said, “life can turn on a dime”. I think he thought he was being encouraging. But as far as I was concerned, there was not a dime in sight...(read more)

 

Waves, Particles, Absorb, Amplify, Shine! (Sermon preached 31 December 2023)

Some years ago, I had a conversation with an old friend who had been, for many years, teaching optics at the graduate level.

 

Now, you need to know: though I enjoyed physics in high school, it was definitely not my first language. Anyway, we were driving to the airport late in the afternoon and ended up talking about how polarized sunglasses work. He was explaining that the way they cut down on the glare is by filtering out half of the sun’s light waves.

 

But isn’t light a particle? I asked. Well, yes, he said. That is also a model for light. In some situations, the wave model works better for describing how light behaves; and in others, the particle model works better. The fact is that light is neither wave nor particle. Both are ways we can think about, and talk about, light; but neither completely accounts for the “miracle” of light.

 

So, here you and I are, just about a week after Christmas, with the stable at Bethlehem, courtesy of the Gospel of Luke, still right here, listening to the Gospel of John’s version of how Christ came into the world. These first eighteen verses of John 1, which is called “The Prologue”, are offering us another model, if you will. A model that is as different from a young woman giving birth in a stable as particles are from waves...(read more)