On Friday, I presided over the funeral for a man who had many friends when he was younger, but most of his family and friends had predeceased him. While there were only 11 of us in church, it felt like those who were present were just who needed to be there. Have you ever been…
The biggest question that I receive as a priest is how our loving God could let bad things happen to us. The grand mystery is that a life of faith is not free of pain and suffering. Because joy, peace, and love are present too. Our problems don’t mean that we are outside of God’s…
As children, we are naturally curious and poke or bite everything we can get our hands on in order to learn more about the things we do not understand. But something about adulthood—its certainty, knowledge, experience, or maybe even access to Google at our fingertips—seems to stifle our curiosity. What is lost when we lose…
Our culture tries to convince us that perfection is possible if we just try a little harder. We can have it all if we just master our mornings or reach that elusive inbox zero. We’ll feel better if we take that pilates class or start juicing. Our families will be happier if we read this…
We live in a culture that tells us we are blessed when we are independent, perfectable, and have it all together. But on Ash Wednesday, we practice the opposite. Today, we proclaim that the fragile are the blessed. Humans in their very nature are dependent and imperfect with broken bodies and sometimes broken spirits….
One of the advantages of our lectionary — the stories we hear over a three year period — is that we get to hear how the different Gospel writers portrayed different events that appear in the various accounts. Today, we hear of the transfiguration, the story of Christ’s glory which almost certainly preceded the written…
Today, we get the second installment from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. Last week, we heard Jesus’ blessing for those of us who live in certain ways, examples of which were called out in the Beatitudes. Remember that Jesus was talking to people on the northwestern shore of Galilee, between Capernaum and the archeological…
For the next three weeks, our Gospel reading from Matthew will be an excerpt from the Sermon on the Mount, perhaps the most famous extended teaching of Jesus from the Gospels. This week, we have the first part of the Sermon, what is often called the Beatitudes. You may recall a sermon where I said…
There are weeks that there is nothing in the readings on which I want to preach, and then there are weeks that have multiple themes that seem like good avenues to preach. There are weeks that the readings that we get just don’t seem to connect to our congregation, and then there are weeks that…
Whenever I invite people over, I check the house—at least the public parts. Is everything relatively neat and clean? Laundry hanging anywhere? Kitchen counters cleared? Magazines and books straightened? If people show up unexpectedly, they get what they get, and it might not be pretty. I could even be embarrassed that things aren’t as perfect…
Isaiah’s words from today’s first reading always get to me in a different way each time we read them. The writer of the passage says “See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them” (Is 42:9). You’ll have to give me…
You won’t find a sermon for today, because it’s actually our Christmas Eve service. And you won’t find a sermon for January 8, because it’s actually my report for our annual meeting. But we’ll be back soon with regular sermons!
