Bread, Wine, Salt

 “Do not fear,” so says our reading from Isaiah.  ( Click here to listen to the sermon ) The book of Isaiah as we have it can be divided into three parts. The first part deals with the Babylonian exile. Our reading from today comes from the middle section, a collection of materials around the themes of hope, divine comfort, and an end to the exile. The period of punishment is over, and God will redeem Israel.  The God who created them, the God who calls them by name, makes a promise to bring them home. It is a forward-looking and hopeful message emphasizing God’s actions, and affirming God’s nearness and compassion.  The book of Isaiah is part of the biblical prophetic tradition focused not just on the historical prophet, but also on how the living tradition remained applicable across generations. So if you find yourself in the wilderness of our modern world, it might be helpful to look to Isaiah.  “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and the r...

“Get up and eat!”   ( Click here to listen to the sermon. ) At the beginning of our reading from chapter 19 of 1 Kings the great prophet Elijah sits down under a Broom tree and asks to die. Does anybody know why Elijah, a man whose very name means “Yahweh is my God” would be in such despair that he would sit down in the dust and ask for death?  This is a real question. Put a hand up if you think you know. As you might have guessed from the name of the book, Kings tells the story of Israel in the years before the exile when there were Kings. You probably remember that the Israelites asked for a king when the prophet Samuel was an old man. God told Israel, through Samuel, that a king was a terrible idea and they shouldn’t do it but they were stubborn and demanded a king anyway so God and Samuel said “Okay, have a king. See how it goes.” It did not go well. By the time we get from Samuel to Elijah the kings of Israel have gotten well off track. The King in Elijah’s time was ...

What is the reputation of our church? What do people say about St. Andrew’s? This is not an idle question. As a member of the Vestry in the middle of a Rector search, our reputation is something I have been thinking about a lot. Any candidate considering a call to St. Andrew’s will surely ask around to find out about us. The Episcopal church is small enough that any priest will know someone who knows someone who knows us. What will they say? Our reading from Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians today is the very beginning of the first of the two letters we have from Paul to the church at Thessalonica. This epistle is one of the earliest writings of what is now the New Testament. Paul visited Thessalonica in the late forties or early fifties, that is, the first century CE, not the 1940’s. The letter, written from Athens, was written as a Pastor to his congregation. This opening section is an example of Paul’s “Thanksgiving” sections. He opens almost every letter to his churches by listin...

  I have been thinking about what to do with the toxic pieces of your family history: The bank letter of credit issued to the cotton merchant. The portrait of a man and wife who were on the wrong side of a war,  not the losing side  the wrong side. The letter crafted to convey the most pain in perfect rolling script. The hurt feelings that have no physical form but are  solid all the same;  weight that you carry. The heroic stories you believed when you were small But now you realize they have no heroes in them You can burn them,  store them in the attic,  put them in a box you give to your cousins at Christmas,  fling them without ceremony in a dumpster on the other side of town and drive away quickly,  keep them wrapped in archival tissue paper and take them out to show at family gatherings.  If anyone objects you can say that things were different then.  Offer no further explanation. You can weaponize them: use them to fuel ...

Our Gospel reading today opens with Jesus praying what is known as the high priestly prayer in the hours before he will be arrested. Unlike other accounts which have Jesus praying alone while the disciples doze elsewhere, Jesus is in midst of his disciples here, and praying out loud. In the first half of the prayer, Jesus uses the word glorify a lot. He glorified the Father and now he’s asking the Father to glorify him so that we may know God.  We need to ask what Glorify means here. To me, glorify sounds like “raise up on high and add some back lighting so that the sunshine seems to be radiating out of the glorified person”, like something from a Monty Python sketch, but I am assured by better Biblical scholars than myself that Glorify here means to reveal the presence of God, which involves fewer crowns and sunbeams and more knowing God and being in relationship with God.  It is knowing God that gives us eternal life, and it’s not just something that will happen to ...

With thanks to Saturday Night Live and Melissa McCarthy