Sermons

  Trinity Sunday May 31, 2021 Monroe, NC Introduction It is said that more heresy preached on this day than on any other. I don't know about that, but the saying itself gives a clue about this day -- Trinity Sunday -- that the church observes on the first Sunday following Pentecost. I viewed last week's Morning Prayer on Youtube ® and I have to tell you that I was really impressed. Between Jo's reading and Charlotte's preaching I thought, "Whoa, I'm not sure it's a good idea to follow on that!" I was a little intimidated. I guess I've felt that way just about every Trinity sermon I've ever preached. When I was young I was genuinely concerned about heresy and orthodoxy and I knew enough to know that indeed the concept of the Trinity was one of the basic test-cases about whether one was orthodox or not. At some point I had come to a simplified definition of heresy as an over-emphasis on one of the three persons of the Trinity: the Fathe...

Sunday after Ascension #easter7 lectionary page   Community event Interesting time I remember from long ago I first heard the response of someone that we live in “interesting” times. Probably none of us here would disagree with that. But interesting is a – well, it’s an “interesting” term. It’s an ordinary word and we think we know what it means. But to say that of the times we live in isn’t simple at all. It’s complicated. critical times? challenging times? special times? or maybe unexpectedly “ordinary” times? I want to suggest another term to describe the time we live in. We live in a “liminal” time. It’s a fancy word – I apologize. But it seems useful because it signals to us that, “Wait. Maybe we should pay attention.” 35 years ago this month, my father died suddenly of a heart attack. I realized this past week that pretty close to 40 days later I heard his voice for the last time. In addition to facing the grief of my father’s death, I had had a ton of ...

May 2, 2021 Fifth Sunday of Easter St. Paul’s, Monroe Lectionary Spring It’s Spring all around us. There are signs of green happening everywhere all around us. Almost as we speak, the boundaries and limits that have been imposed to deal with the pandemic, are being relaxed. The Easter season, running for a week of weeks from Easter Day to Pentecost, is more than half through. Theophany through surprise and unexpected I made a decision a long time ago, when I was in my 20’s, that there were 2 things really important to me. One was the result of having experienced a variety of things that today I would call “theophanies” or “epiphanies.” I experienced – I didn’t read about or think about – I experienced – a breaking in of the sacred. The divine. The particulars of my experiences don’t really matter here. They were peculiar to me – although probably similar to the kinds of things that you also have experienced. But it’s the 2nd thing that I decided that I want to focus on for...