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)