Sermons

Homily: September 16, 2018. Proper 19 St. Christopher’s, Spartanburg, SC Opening Thank you for the invitation to celebrate the Eucharist with you this morning. The weather’s a little bit dicey – but on the whole … Spartanburg has been for us generally a place we pass through on our way to somewhere else, Asheville, Atlanta, even Ohio. But now I’ve been here twice to supply. It’s good to get to know the people who call Spartanburg home . I learned just this past week that one of the clergy I meet regularly with spent some formative time here back in the 1980’s, Sally Franklin. Scripture I’m preparing a talk to be given in October where I’m supposed to say something about what is distinctive about the Anglican communion – particularly with regard to Scripture, Tradition, and Sacraments. In my ministry it has been common place to hear from teachers of various kinds that the Episcopal Church takes Scripture very seriously. Our liturgy comes with a very heavy dose of Scripture re...

Homily: Proper 17. Grace, Camden [Lectionary]ia( http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp17_RCL.html ) Introduction For the next 4 Sundays we will be hearing from a part of the Heb Bible most of us are unfamiliar with: Wisdom literature. We hear from the book of Psalms every week. We kind of have a sense of what they are. We’re a little less familiar but accustomed to hearing words of the prophets. And we have listened to historical narrative material – as with the readings from the book of Samuel this past summer long. But Wisdom literature comprises some very different kinds of material: the book of Job, Song of Songs (Solomon), Ecclesiastes, Wisdom of Solomon, Ben Sirach. These are less familiar. We have a chance to listen to some of it during the next weeks. This week we hear from the Song of Songs, then for 3 weeks we hear from the book of Proverbs. Listen to the readings from Proverbs. Some people make a regular discipline of reading a chapter from Proverbs e...