Sermons

May 13: The Seventh Sunday of Easter: The Sunday after the Ascension (Mother’s Day) – St. Paul’s? lectionary The Collect O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before the lot fell on Matthias 1 John: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. John 17: And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. We have just heard a small slection from the very long address that Jesus gives his disciples on his last night with them – as related in the gospel of John. The “Final Discourse.” In this long address he tells them that he will be leaving soon – in the gospel tomorrow he wi...

May 13: The Seventh Sunday of Easter: The Sunday after the Ascension (Mother’s Day) – St. Paul’s? lectionary We have just heard a small slection from the very long address that Jesus gives his disciples on his last night with them – as related in the gospel of John. The “Final Discourse.” In this long address he tells them that he will be leaving soon – in the gospel tomorrow he will be executed – and that the Holy Spirit will be given to them as a comfort in the absence of his death. In the final section – which we hear from today – he prays for them. His prayer for them – for us – is that while one part of the relationship is coming to an end, another more wonderful one is about to begin. Themes of Ascensiontide: Last week we were anticipating Ascension and I said here that there would be time to deal with Ascension when this Sunday rolled around. The 40th day of Easter has come and gone and here we are....

May 19, 2018, St. James, Las Cruces, NM: Funeral for Helen Marie Swanson Detwiler Opening Thank you to the interim rector and the people of St. James for the invitation to preach the homily at this – my mother’s funeral. I really didn’t have to think very hard about my answer to the question about whether I would like to preach. I knew, I know, that it meant a lot to her that I was a priest. After saying “Yes,” – at the next moment, I must tell you, I thought “What in the world am I going to say”? These past 4 years, as I have been traveling about North and South Carolina, supplying on Sunday mornings in churches that need a substitute priest, a number of folks have asked me if I repeated my sermons? I answer them with a clear response, “No.” That is clearly the case today. The truth is, I have never preached at my mother’s funeral before. I don’t have any sense of how to do that. So this is all experimental . We have just heard the gospel proclaim that there are “many mansio...