Sermons

Ash Wednesday 2026  The Rev. Dale C. Hathaway Liturgy of actions We begin a season of liturgies that convey as much through our actions as through our words. Today is one of two days the Prayer Book stipulates as fast days. Just two days, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, we’re asked to fast. Some of us will. Some of us won’t. This beginning to the season of Lent, Ash Wednesday, of course means ashes, ashes on the forhead. We do that even though the gospel reading seems to say, “Don’t do that.” At the end of Lent we will wave palm branches, branches we could have pruned from our own trees at home. Traditionally on Maundy Thursday we would wash feet, at St. Alfred’s we wash hands, not in private but quite publicly. One of the illustrations for how powerful our actions can be is a clear memory I have. On an Ash Wednesday more than 40 years ago, my oldest son, then about 3, was so upset by seeing the ashes on people’s foreheads that he immediately walked out of the service. Each Sunday w...

  author: Dale Hathaway date: St. Alfred's Episcopal Church title: Advent 4 Sermon Draft 3 Intro I remember sitting up late beside the bunk beds that were shared by my little brother and my cousin Peter who was older than I. We were forcing ourselves to stay awake in order to see the signs of Santa flying across the sky and appearing in our house. Peter was several years older than I, so I looked to him as an authority. There was a part of me that was old enough to be silently wondering, "Was I being too childish or childlike? Surely Peter is old enough to know." We didn't make it that night. We were asleep when Santa arrived. There's some part of me that, with some kind of irregular schedule in my subsequent years, I never gave up. I have looked for signs throughout my life. Signs of what's really going on. Signs in the midst of chaos happening in my life that might indicate that it was going to be okay. Signs as I grieved when my children moved 1,000 m...

author: Dale Hathaway date: September 21, 2025 subtitle: Hearing the prophets in our midst A long time ago A long time ago, in the 1970s, I was younger then than now. My priest at the time thought that I would be interested in listening to a man, a Carmelite priest, who had recently published a book called  Mystical Passion . We drove down to Pueblo from Colorado Springs — that’s pronounced Pe'ehbla not Pueblo. Some things were different in those days and some things were the same. I had hair that ran down to the middle of my back then just like today. But it was brown then. There were great divisions in the country then just like there are now. One thing that was different than is that I knew far more things than I know today — At least I thought I knew. Today the list of things, important things, that I really know can be written on a paper napkin. There was also a spirit in the times then that was searching for a new way to experience the divine. William McNamara, that was the a...