Sermons

Christmas Eve 2020 St. Peter’s, Great Falls, SC Incarnation as God’s remedy to great need. There is an ancient tradition, from the earliest centuries of Christianity, that the sin and brokenness of the world as we know it was of such a weight, such a consequence, so much a burden, that the only remedy God had was to send His Son – the Incarnation. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. … Now the Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We saw his glory—the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth, who came from the Father. So we read from the opening of John’s Gospel. It’s the appointed gospel reading for Christmas morning. The need for the Incarnation was very great. And in response to the great need that we presented, God made the Word to become flesh. That’s what the word incarnation . Great need We’ve become accustomed to great need this past year. There was a great need for treatment of Covid-19. A great need for ...

September 6, 2020: Ordinary Time, Proper 18 Opening It is good to be back with you at The Church of Our Saviour. Last time I met with you – you still looked like a computer screen. And here we are, back at the computer screen. But it’s about to change, isn’t it? Next week a new chapter is being forged as you return to modified in-person worship. It will be an exciting and adventurous time. An important time. You will be discovering a new way to be church, even as you seek to return to what you used to do. It will be the same, but different. It will provide unexpected experiences and spawn new hopes. “Faith, hope, and love abide – but the greatest of these is love.” We gather today on Labor Day weekend. Again, it’s not like any Labor Day weekend I have known. But that can be a serendipitous thing. To be unique. To be unlike anything we’ve known. Labor day, a day for parades and barbecues. Family gatherings and one last trip to the beach. But mostly that’s not what this Labor Day i...

June 21, Third Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 7): – Church of Our Saviour Intractable difficulty of the gospel passage The other day I was talking with the priest of another congregation about preaching on Trinity Sunday – which we observed two weeks ago. He said, “It’s one of those days in the year when you make a determined effort to find someone else to preach.” Today’s Gospel passage presents another one of those kind of days. Really, if anybody finds the passage obvious or easy to grapple with I would welcome them to replace me. Unfortunately, either they didn’t get in touch with me or I failed to reach out to the right people. Here I am. First of all, this talk about a slave not being above a master – sounds too much like the pro-slavery arguments that have been wrested from the Bible for centuries. It makes me uncomfortable from the start. The world-wide demonstrations that have been occurring these past few weeks makes me especially uncomfortable. There’s a litany-like ...

June 14, 2020 Second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 6): – Church of Our Saviour & St. Paul’s Old story about how “you can’t get there from here.” Back in the 70’s there was a comedy team that produced a series of comic albums with the title “Bert and I” . They were set in the “down east” part of the country, Maine and environs. There was one story that I have not forgotten – largely because I have retold it from time to time. A visitor is passing through town and stops to ask for directions. He receives a monologue that goes something like, “Waaall, ye go down here a piece and ya turn right at the big oak tree thaar, and the you go a ways …” After a series of such directions the voice says, “Ya know, come to think of it, you caaan’t get thaar from heeer.” I thought of that story as I reflected on this week’s scripture readings and the gospel in particular. The church makes a gear shift change between last week and this week. We ended Trinity Sunday at the end of Matthew’s gosp...

June 1, 2020 Minneapolis police chief says all four officers involved in George Floyd’s death bear responsibility - CNN CNN report As we tape this liturgy for broadcast in 6 days, we have no idea where the world is going to be. But we do know today that people from around the world have come together in solidarity to stand against the betrayal and injustice that was perpetrated on George Floyd last week. The chief of police in Minneapolis said, “Mr. Floyd died in our hands and so I see that as being complicit,” Chief Medaria Arradondo told CNN’s Sara Sidner. “Silence and inaction, you’re complicit. If there was one solitary voice that would have intervened … that’s what I would have hoped for.” Police officers around the world have knelt in solidarity with protesters. In a separate interview Sunday night, another police chief, this time from Floyd’s hometown, stood in solidarity. Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo told CNN he wants his department to provide escort services when Geo...

June 7, Trinity Sunday: – Monroe Celebrating a “doctrine” – This is an unusual day in the Christian calendar. A day for celebrating and focusing on a “doctrine”, a “concept.” In the whole history of Christianity there are a few others, but none with the prominence of the feast of Trinity, occurring on the 1st Sunday after Pentecost. It has been observed in its present form at least since the 14th c. In the church calendar we usually focus on persons – Jesus, of course, mainly; disciples; Mary; Paul; present-day witnesses and saints … the impact of our faith on us – but on this day – our focus is on a doctrine. For many people it’s not easy to get excited about a doctrine . There is a pretty long and deep tradition to distrust rational doctrines and to prefer the personal, that which you can touch or feel. As an illustration of that, I had a parishioner at my church in Michigan City who was at first perplexed by the doctrine of the Trinity. Then, ultimately she was put off by the ...

May 31, The Day of Pentecost – Monroe Whitsunday: white clothes of Pentecost. In the BCP the collect for this day is titled: The Day of Pentecost: Whitsunday I first heard about the source of “Whit” in “Whitsunday” when my youngest children were being born. Several different interpretations have been offered through the years. The title goes back many centuries. The first explanation I heard was that it had to do with the nasty weather in Britain in the months of March and April. Looking back many centuries before that, the custom was that Baptisms were most appropriately done on Easter. They usually included some form of taking your old clothes off and putting new clothes – after you had been dunked in water. By the middle ages baptisms were usually of infants, who might be unhappy with being dunked into the frigid water in the font. It might even be dangerous. Since the next most advantageous time for baptism was the end of the Easter season – Pentecost – baptisms in Britain we...

May 24:The Seventh Sunday of Easter: The Sunday after the Ascension – Monroe Ascension was last Thursday It was the day we scheduled to record this our community celebration of the 6th week of Easter. One day revolving and emerging as another day, each linked and urging us into the presence of God. Psalm 19 Heaven is declaring God’s glory; the sky is proclaiming his handiwork. 2 One day gushes the news to the next, and one night informs another what needs to be known. It is the Sunday between the feast of the Ascension and the feast of Pentecost. Ascension Day occuring on the 40th day of Easter. Pentecost occuring on the 50th day after Easter. In another week, on Pentecost, we will observe a Week of weeks . That’s the magic of the 50 in the name of Pentecost. The Christian festival of Pentecost is derived from the older and original Jewish feast of weeks. The week of weeks. In their case 50 days after Passover. For me, this weaving of weavings of days and weeks, numbers ...

Easter 5 – Monroe Before I say anything more, I want to acknowledge a major secular feast that is marked tomorrow. Mother’s Day . It is a day that has traditionally been observed in churches with a variety of special events. At my church in Hawai’i the equivalent of St. Paul’s “E-males” serenaded the women of the parish. For some time it has seemed to me important to acknowledge the huge range of emotions and memories that are conjured up when we say “Mother.” There is nostalgia but also anguish. There is celebration as well as sadness. Not all women become or are able to be mothers. I tried my hand at “mothering” for a while in the 1980’s. What has seemed to bind us all together is the notion that we all have or have had mothers. We pray for our mothers. We pray for Grace and favor. We pray for forgiveness. We give thanks for mothers past and present. Thank you. The times they are a changin’ I know it evokes Bob Dylan and the 1960’s. But it feels more true to me today than did e...

April 26:The Third Sunday of Easter Monroe (Sat 4/25) Easter continued We are still in Easter. In fact the Gospel reading is placed on Easter evening. So if you think time is moving in a strange fashion during this time of Corona Virus – you’re absolutely correct. This episode in the Gospel of Luke – 2 of Jesus’ disciples on the road out of Jerusalem. Outside the city. Not yet to their destination. It is so well-known as to be almost a clichè. For that reason it is a passage that is for me scary to try to preach on. It is the pattern of readings during Easter that we listen to a series of excerpts from the Acts of the Apostles. As if to say, “Having experienced the Resurrection – now, what are you going to do about it?” Peter stands up boldly and preaches for all he’s worth. We heard the first part of this sermon last week. He continues. Imagine, if you will, the strongest, boldest, preacher you’ve ever heard or seen. That’s Peter. Next week’s reading tells us the effect of hi...

April 12:Easter Day – Monroe Thin space – The time between times It all comes down to an image for me. I saw it literally and frequently in Hawai’i. Sitting on a shore, looking out at the ocean, wistfully, peacefully, longing. A priest I knew once saw me doing that on the island of Moloka’i. He told me that when he saw me looking that way, across the lapping waves out to sea, it explained to him in a flash what it meant to live in Hawai’i. What I was looking at was the intersection of the ocean and the land. At a certain point in that intersection it’s a little bit of ocean and a little bit of shore – but neither at the same time. A poet and a philosopher by the name of John O’Donohue gave me that image as a metaphor for what the Irish Celtic spiritual tradition has called thin places. Thin places are where the distance between God and human is not very great. It is a place where the mundane is made sacred. It is a place where the grandeur and majesty of the divinity is made hum...

April 5, 2020: The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday – Monroe This Day Today is a strange day. Today the church wraps together Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday. What used to be the two Sundays preceding Easter is now just one. And it is the first time the Eucharist has been celebrated in this place since March 8 – almost a month. Palm Sunday for me has wonderful and joyous memories. My favorite part was the custom I developed at St. Mary’s in Honolulu. We would bless palms in the gathering room and then march in procession out the doors, through the parking lot, cross one of the major thoroughfares coming out of downtown, and sing as we passed McDonald’s. There was a dear little Japanese lady, Jane Oki was her name, it was her favorite too. One year we had a leading musician from the Hawaiian Waikiki scene playing his accordion as we sang and marched. As Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, with people singing and waving palms, the city was an intense place. There many factions...