Sermons

  Message: Ss. Peter and Paul 2021 Thank you for welcoming me and my wife Mary Pat today. We have driven by your home so many times in the last 7 years that I couldn't begin to count them. But I've never been inside. The feast day today is very ancient. Saints Peter and Paul. The feast is particularly important for the church in Rome in as much as both of these pillars of the church were martyred in Rome -- at about the same time. I can remember a time when what I knew about the two of them was not very much. It was approximately this: Peter had tried to walk on water, following his teacher, Jesus. He didn't have sufficient faith and required saving by Jesus. I used to dream that I would follow Peter. I wanted to have sufficient faith to walk on water. Sometimes I thought I was almost there. Paul had been zapped and blinded while he was on the road to Damascus. That's an account that Luke told about Paul, and, of course, Paul wrote a considerable amount of the N...

  Proper 8b 2021 June 27, 2021 St. Paul's, Monroe [^1](http://lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp8_RCL.html) Opening I had occasion this past week to think of my father. Or rather to think about my relationship with my father . My earliest memories of him were that he was god-like. I was named after him. I accepted that I would be a physician just like him and his father before him. And then it changed. Some of you may know the kind of thing I'm referring to. This is not the place to unpack all of that -- except for one thing. At a certain point in high school I knew that I was not going to be a physician. From the beginning, the rationale I gave was that I didn't like biology in my sophomore year. I think I got an adequate grade, but it just didn't seem right. Only in more recent times have I realized that there was no doubt a lot more to it than that. But I had made the decision that I would not be a physician. At some point after ordination I came t...

Proper7B June 20, 2021 Church of Our Saviour Intro I wasn't drawn to the ordained ministry because I relished standing in front of people and speaking. In fact, after ordination, when I quickly realized that the whole future trajectory of my life was going to be involved in just such activity, I could readily sympathize with the data that someone told me at the time, that 80-90% of the population would rather die than speak in public. In the light of that, I have often said through the years that my goal in preaching was to speak in complete sentences. It was intended as a ludicrously low bar overcome. I do, of course, recognize that the technique of effective public speaking does not depend on complete sentences the way, say, a middle school English teacher might. I suppose that what I really mean is that rather than complete sentences, my goal is to be cogent. Not to speak nonsense or an unintelligible jumble. That is, in fact, challenge enough. Still a fairly low bar. I...

Proper 6B June 13, 2021 Church of Our Saviour 1 Introduction I start off this week where I left off last week. I wasn't here, I was at Lancaster, but it's a continuation of the same narrative. There's a prophet named Samuel. The people complain and want to be like everybody else. They get their wish to have a king. It doesn't go well. There's another prophet like no other prophet before named Jesus. The people imagine he's a prophet like all the others. He confounds them. And then, of course, there's God. He is still in the story. And we pick up this week amid the wreckage of getting their wish to have a king like everybody else. Samuel is still at work, though he's kind of worn out from a lifetime of being a prophet. He sets out to choose the 2nd king. God is still guiding his hand. And God does not disappoint. He does not choose what was expected. It wasn't the oldest. It wasn't the most experienced. It really was the least obvious choice....

  proper-5-2021 Proper 5, year B Christ Church, Lancaster June 6, 2021 Introduce myself Opening From practically the beginning of our life here in South Carolina 7 years ago I have met with the local clergy, which included your priest Gordon. It makes it feel like I know you as a faith community, but in fact this really is the first we have met. So now begins a new chapter in your life together. You deserve to know something about me since I do know something about you. Raised in west I was born in Arizona and raised in Colorado. I've spent stretches of time in Wisconsin, Indiana and Hawaii. I was ordained in 1982. From before I went to seminary I had conceived of my ministry as being a combination of pastoral work with small congregations or neglected groups. I remember telling my bishop at the time that I imagined paying for that sort of ministry by having some other outside employment, most likely teaching. For the most part I have pursued that throu...