The Brightness of God
I went to Mitchell Road Elementary school over in Greenville. I used to ride my bicycle there and back every day. One day there was some construction and they repaved a section of the sidewalk. Unfortunately they didn’t mark off the sidewalk afterward. So that afternoon when all the students were released from Mitchell Road […]
In Time
The candles are burning low, the wax is dripping and pooling, time is passing and time is running out. The charge in the smart phone is almost gone. The gas gauge is running low, is the next gas station close enough? The boat is taking on water, the mad scramble for the life boats. A […]
Summer is Near
I love figs. I didn’t care for them as a child. But I love them now, and I love the crazy branchy trees that they grow on, dropping sticky sap and fruit all over everything that wanders too close. I had a jar of fig preserves that a friend made and gave to me. I […]
Out of Place
Today is Christ the King Sunday. We begin the last week of the Christian year. Today we celebrate Christ as the true king of all creation, who redefines what it means to be human and what it is to be Lord. I’ve been wondering lately if I could come up with a one-sentence summary of […]
The Mystery of Faith
What do we do when our world falls apart? The Gospel response is to hope beyond reason. We begin a short apocalyptic season today, the last two Sundays of the Christian year and the first Sunday of the Christian year. Three weeks to mark the ending and beginning of the Christian calendar. Three weeks about […]
Yes
A cup to drink. A baptism to be baptized with. There is every reason to say no. A reason to yes can be hard to find. Will we share in Christ’s suffering for the world? Will we enter into the suffering of others? Glory. That is what our Lord calls his Cross, his throne. Glory. […]
Walk with God
“Come on, camel! Push on through! Come on, camel I’m pulling for you! Come on, camel, give it your all. Come on camel, we’re counting on you!” The chant goes on and on like it does every year. It is the one thousand nine hundred and ninetieth annual Camel and Needle Convention. Every year they […]
Things Fall Apart
Eventually everything falls apart. Like building a sandcastle at high tide. Even the stars, they wear out and die. Marriages die. Despite everything or often because of everything marriages die, and it makes a mess. Sometimes choices run out, the only choices left are all bad, and the least bad choice is divorce. There are […]
Have Salt
God is sticky. Like climbing a pine tree and getting covered with pine sap that gets you all sticky so that you get stuck on everything else. Or like roasting marsh mellows to make s-mores and getting that sticky melted sugar all over everything and getting stuck to everything. Or like spilling honey, or molasses-the […]
The Hidden Sacrament
When I was a child I began my lifetime habit of getting things wrong. When I was learning about how we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, I wanted to know why don’t we run out of oxygen? I was told that plants turn the CO2 back into breathable oxygen. So I thought […]
Grab Your Cross
The Rev. John C. Bethell Grace Church – Anderson I speak to you in the name of God, the most compassionate, the ever merciful. Amen. Today’s gospel lesson makes a little more sense if we put it within its own context. In the last chapter, Jesus has come up against his own people on […]
Walking with God
Walking with God. It carries so many understandings. A companion in a time of trouble -giving comfort, and support. Or following in a certain pattern of living. Or following in a particular way or path, discerning a call, vocation. Today we see an image of walking with God as lover, of being in love with […]
Outrageous
What do you think of when you think about communion? What picture comes to mind? The last supper of Jesus with the disciples being told to remember as the cross rapidly approaches? The altar rail here at Grace? The table of fellowship? What comes to mind? Comfort, hope, strength, love, sacrifice? For the Gospels according […]
Wishfull Thinking
If you could wish for anything you wanted what would it be? What would you wish for? There are all sorts of stories in folk lore about being granted a wish, and the unexpected consequences, stories about the djinni in the bottle, or a leprechaun, or the monkeys paw, or the stories of the devil’s […]
The Life of the World
A world, a universe that overflows, dripping and flooding with God’s glory, the radiant light that fills all things with life. Is that how we understand the Universe? We all live in our own little bubbles of how we see the world. Do we see a vision of God as we live our days? I […]
Love Anyway
Eventually everything goes to hell. Despite our best efforts, our careful planning, hard work, our prayers and loving attentiveness, taking our vitamins-eventually things fall apart, sometimes slowly, sometimes spectacularly. Our world ends. Our dreams and hopes collapse. We betray those we love best, we are forsaken by those we thought loved us. Life as we […]
UNRELENTING
A day of festive celebration, of flowers, and family and friends and food. Or is it a day of fear, of terror, of being seized, of running away, of being so afraid that throats are clamped shut unable to speak about what has happened? This is Easter according to the Gospel of Mark. The resurrection […]
The Mandate
What is precious to us beyond measure? The irony of being human is that what we treasure most we so often take for granted. Is it the Church? Is the Church precious beyond measure? Not the Church as in history and architecture and institution, but Church as in people, the living body of believers who […]
CRAZY LOVE HOLDS THE UNIVERSE TOGETHER
Have you ever thought that some people just shouldn’t be allowed to drive? Or to own a hand gun? Or to cook? Lord knows the things I shouldn’t be allowed to do! Like filing my own taxes or talk about what ever sport season happens to be occurring. Sometimes I think that some people just […]
Bones
The stories we tell, the stories we remember, they shape who we are, they help us to see and to interpret our world. They are the bones that give shape to the flesh of our lives. What are the stories of light being brought into a dark time in our lives? What are the stories […]
Spectacular Failure
What do we do with suffering? Explain it? Justify it? Turn away? Hide? Bury it deep inside? Push it away? Addiction? Distraction and numbing agents? Seek it out? Inflict it? Despair? Lash out? Offer comfort and company? Try to fix things even if it makes things worse? Try to feel useful by inflicting further harm? […]
SABBATH MAKING
I get easily disoriented. I have many memories of things like State Fairs or amusement parks or haunted houses or flight simulators all involving my being rescued and carried away by my brother or my wife or random passersby. I lose track of which way is up or down, which for some reason makes it […]
WILD BEASTS
So here we are. Lent again… No more fun stuff. No more alleluias. No more chocolate… What if Lent is really not about giving up fun and tasty things? What if Lent is about something completely different? What if Lent isn’t some drab cosmic diet plan? What if Lent is about dropping what we are […]
SEARCHING
I like books. I used to spend a great deal of time trying to find books that were often out of print or hard to find. Sometimes I spent years. As a teenager I literally did spend years looking for a story by Jules Verne called Clipper to the Clouds. I eventually found it by […]