STARTING OVER
The great thing about soup is that if it doesn’t turn out right it can always be adjusted, it can be souped up, kicked up a notch, Bam! Sometimes all it needs is just a little more of the secret ingredient or to just let it sit for a day. Or if all else […]
AGITATION
Visiting one another is a holy thing. Visitation. It is an old sounding word isn’t it? It sounds almost archaic. One of those words rarely used, but everyone knows, it sounds formal and mysterious and ancient all at once, emerging out of the mists of history like some ancient and forgotten pilgrim finally coming home, […]
CRAZY TABLES
Oops. Look out. It’s that John the Baptist again, you know, the prophet. About this time of the year, every year, he shows up and does something crazy/impossible. Sometimes he hijacks Christmas parades and leads them off on an adventure, sometimes he has that roto tiller and tills up a straight line all the way […]
THE VOICE
Words. Words are power. They are the greatest power. Words can sink ships, crack the atom, light an inferno, crush the life out of entire nations. They are the sticks and stones that break all our bones. Words are the greatest weapon of mass destruction. Words. Words are power. They are the greatest power. […]
BRANCHING OUT
Jeremiah may have been a bull frog, but Jeremiah the prophet, was a bullhorn. He was loud. He wants our attention. And he wants us to know that history belongs to God and that God can be trusted. It may look like God is not involved or that God has forsaken us, but God is […]
FUTILITY AND FAITH
Have you ever noticed that things have a habit of falling apart? There is a scientific word for that, “Entropy.” Stained glass, bell towers, planet earth, the sun, the moon and the stars. Our bodies, our relationships, our sense of perspective, our faith. It’s all just one big sandcastle and high tide is coming […]
TWO CENTS WORTH
Chairs are interesting things. They give rest. They help us gather together. They symbolize hospitality. Pull up a chair. Sit a spell. In philosophy class they always seem to be used as an illustration for platonic philosophy, this chair is the appearance of the ultimate form of chair-ness that exists in a higher reality. Chairs […]
THE CRAZIEST THING
How would you sum up the Bible? God is love? God loves you? Or how about God gets involved in the craziest things? Or you won’t believe where God showed up? God gets involved in the craziest things. The Book of Job. Today God shows up in the whirlwind of pain and confusion that […]
GREATNESS
“Let me win. But if I cannot win let me be brave in the attempt.” That is the athletes’ oath at the Special Olympics. There are many great things about being the priest at Grace Church. One of the greatest is that I frequently give the invocation at the Special Olympics opening ceremonies here in […]
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
It was groundbreaking, earth shaking, mind quaking! That’s what Jesus was doing! A gentile woman, someone who was not of Israel, not one of God’s chosen, her daughter was demon ridden. She begged for Jesus to heal her daughter. Jesus said no. The children come first, before Gentile dogs. And she answered. […]
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
It was groundbreaking, earth shaking, mind quaking! That’s what Jesus was doing! A gentile woman, someone who was not of Israel, not one of God’s chosen, her daughter was demon ridden. She begged for Jesus to heal her daughter. Jesus said no. The children come first, before Gentile dogs. And she answered. […]
The Song
Talk about Romance! Talk about the joy of sensual desire and intimacy! Way before Danielle Steele. Way before romance novels. Way before Fifty Shades of Gray and all that. Way before the great romantic poets, before Byron, before Shelley before Browning. Way, way before all that, there was the Song of Songs. Some folks call […]
GOOD DIRT
There is good dirt and there is bad dirt and there are various states of goodness and badness betwixt the two. Bad dirt: nothing grows there, it kills whatever is planted or it twists and sickens. Most of us have struggled with spots of bad dirt where what we plant just slowly lingers or […]
POWER
We begin today an old familiar story that has replayed itself over and over again in human history. We begin today the story of the books of First and Second Samuel, the story of the first Kings of Israel. We will be skipping across and touching down on the high points of these books for […]
Grandmom
Christian burial is a peculiar thing. The basic traditions of burial usually come down to remembering a life, celebrating it in some way and finding comfort that the dead are having a pleasant afterlife. But Christian burial is peculiar. We aren’t simply allowed to remember and celebrate and find comfort. We have to do […]
HOSPITALITY
Have you ever not been welcomed? Have you ever not welcomed someone else? Have you ever been a good host? A bad host? Have you ever been a bad guest? A rude visitor? Hospitality. Hospitality can be complicated. Very few of us are natural hosts. Very few of us are natural guests. It takes […]
CAN THESE BONES LIVE?
Some of you may have noticed my admiration for Flannery O’Connor the southern fiction writer from the mid 20th century. I don’t use very many quotations in my sermons, though I’ve noticed that when I do they tend to be from Flannery O’Connor, C.S. Lewis or B.B. King. For a while she moved among […]
REMEMBER
Have you ever just forgotten something? Not something little, but something… big? Like last month, I was supposed to give the invocation at the Special Olympics. It is one of my most favorite days. I’ve been giving the invocation for years. But it never crossed my mind. I never showed up. It was just […]
BREATH
Spirit. The Holy Spirit. What is it? Who is it? What does it do? What are the images of this the third person of the Trinity? What comes to mind when we think of the Holy Spirit? Today we see the Holy Spirit as Breath, we hear the Holy Spirit as breath, we […]
THE LAST WORD
“Christos Anesti!” Christ is risen. Mary Magdalene held up an egg to show Caesar, the emperor Tiberius, a symbol of new life, of Christ bursting from the tomb. She had traveled a long way to meet with the emperor and to let him know the news. Caesar just laughed at her and said, “A man […]
Good Friday 2012
When I was in high school we had this ugly dog, he was a dachshund. He was all out of proportion even for a dachshund, boney, big headed, but sweet and gentle and kind. His mother was a beautiful dog but lacking in character and sweetness, we owned her as well. One day the mother […]
REPLANTING
Springtime. The mind and imagination turn toward planting, gardening and yard work. Have you ever seen a piece of earth where nothing would grow? It could be a naturally occurring piece of geography, a desert, a salt flat, some strange mineral deposit close to the surface. Or perhaps a piece of earth destroyed through human […]
LAUGHTER
There are different kinds of jokes, different genres if you will. The bar joke is one of the best. Here is one… So a priest, a rabbi, a pretty woman, a farmer and a dog all come walking into this bar, and the bar tender looks up and says…what is this some kind of a […]
UNDER RE-CONSTRUCTION
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 […]