Bread, Wine, Salt

  “Hope” is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without the words - And never stops - at all - And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - And sore must be the storm - That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm - I’ve heard it in the chillest land - And on the strangest Sea - Yet - never - in Extremity, It asked a crumb - of me. ~Emily Dickinson   I love a new notebook: lined or gridded, sketchbook, or thick watercolor paper, a planner or just fresh, blank pages. I do a lot of writing, and a new notebook and a good pen is always the best part of a project. Together the pen and notebook represent the launch of something new; the anticipation of success. In fact I love new notebooks so much that I bought too many and now I am not allowed to buy any more. This is my own rule and I have only myself to blame. I get really excited about the new thing, but my enthusiasm wanes and the notebooks sit abandoned with only a f...

 “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...

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 ...

“In those days . . .” our Gospel reading begins. “In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness . . .” You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar to know that a story that begins with “In those days  . . .” is a story about things that were and things that are and how they’re different. There is a new thing coming, the Gospel writer tells us. And if we’re to believe the description in today’s reading from Isaiah about wolves living with lambs, and lions eating straw, this new thing is completely different from anything we’ve seen so far. If you’re paying attention to the rhythms of the church year, you’ll know today is the second Sunday of Advent. Advent, of course, is the church season when we wear blue, light candles on a wreath, and open tiny boxes to eat the tiny chocolates inside, all while stubbornly refusing to listen to Christmas carols and being smugly satisfied that we are doing the Liturgical year the right way, not letting any spare merriment sneak into the s...

Seventh Sunday After Pentecost Year C, Proper 9 (track 2) If there is a theme that stands out in today’s readings it might be joy.  The prophet Isaiah tells the people of Jerusalem to rejoice and be glad. The Psalmist tells all the lands to be joyful in God. In the Gospel the seventy are sent out ahead of Jesus and they return with joy. The work that God has for us to do is meant to fill us with joy. If that’s not good news I don’t know what is.  What is the work? In Galatians Paul tells us to work for the good of all and to bear each other’s burdens. I could just give a nice three sentence sermon today.  Love God.  Love your neighbor.  Be joyful. Great talk. Enjoy your holiday weekend. Except there is a little bit more to say. Our readings today are also about vulnerability. The people rejoicing in Jerusalem were home from exile and everything was supposed to be great again. For the whole time they’d been in exile the prophets had been telling them it...

Today’s readings are packed full of things that we as a church would rather not talk about: disobedience, shame, exile, despair, demonic possession and the unforgivable sin. Oof. It’s no wonder that the first commentary I read about these suggested that preachers talk about Jesus expanding the boundaries of family. That’s a nice gentle thing to talk about on a Sunday morning, isn’t it? Jesus sitting with his followers and claiming them as his brothers and sisters. I’ve already written at least one sermon about that idea, and I’m sure I could write another. But I’m not going to do that today. I’m also not going to spend a lot of time on the Fall of Man in our Old Testament reading. If Carol would like to invite me back to preach in June of 2018, when this reading comes up in the lectionary again, that might give me enough time to put together a coherent sermon on snakes and apples, maybe. Our Gospel reading is just a snippet of Mark which we’ll be hearing more of as the summer goes ...

I love Liturgy. It’s one of the reasons I am an Episcopalian. But there’s no doubt that because we say the same words week after week, year after year, we sometimes say them without giving much thought to what they really mean. In the Apostles creed, the one that we use every time there is a baptism, we say I believe in the Holy Spirit,     the holy catholic Church,     the communion of saints,     the forgiveness of sins     the resurrection of the body,     and the life everlasting. My guess is that most of you are like me, and don’t give a lot of thought to the resurrection of the body most of the time. And when we do think about it, we don’t think of resurrection in our current bodies. We imagine better bodies, taller, thinner, stronger bodies, bodies that don’t ache when it rains or wheeze when the flowers bloom, bodies that don’t grow malignancies, bodies without depression, anxiety, or bipolar disorder. One of the thi...

It’s a good time of year to hear about John testifying to the light. The days are short, and even when the sun is supposed to be out the sky is often grey. It’s no surprise that when early Christians talked about God they talked about light. Darkness used to be dangerous. For us, it’s easy enough to push back the darkness with the flip of a switch. I got a letter from PEPCO last week that compared my home’s electrical use with other similar homes. We are “better than average” but not “the best.”  And according to the helpful line graph, most of my electricity use happens between 5 and 11 PM.  “Think about who is using electricity in your home at that time.” said the letter.  The answer is we all are. That’s dinner time and bath time and if I don’t start laundry now my son won’t have clean pants for school tomorrow time. It’s also a time when I am prone to leave lights on in rooms I’m not using simply because it drives away the gloom.  I put the letter on my refrige...

As prepared for delivery, November 16, 2014* St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, College Park, MD There are lots of sheep in the readings today. Sheep in the Hebrew Scriptures and sheep in the Gospel, with some goats thrown in for good measure. As I was working on the sermon this week I joked that the Bible is fifty-percent sheep.  You could say that all of Christian tradition is fifty-percent sheep. Sheep in the histories, sheep in the prophesies,  sheep in the psalms, sheep in the parables, sheep in the liturgy, sheep in the stained glass, sheep in the hymnody. We have metaphorical sheep stacked to the rafters,  but because we are mostly urban and suburban residents most of us don’t know a lot about actual sheep. I am not an expert on sheep, but I was an Animal Science major in college, where I learned a little bit about sheep. I learned how to flip a sheep, which sounds like tossing a sheep on its head, but really means gently sitting the sheep down on its backside, a...