Sermons

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...