Intending Our Ending

A sermon about right relationship with God

We’ve all heard about the straw that broke the camel’s back. In other words… Year by year the pounds pile on, until one infamous morning those beloved pants just won’t zip up. Month by month the credit card balance creeps up, until one embarrassing afternoon we swipe our card at the counter and the system flashes ‘declined.’ Day by day we keep cramming more and more storage into the garage, until one awful evening we discover we can no longer fit the car in.
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Ursula’s Blessing

A sermon about saints

Today our scriptures tell of “a great multitude that no one could count, from every people, standing before God’s throne, robed in white, crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to the Lord!’”

“Who are these people?” the writer asks. “Where have they come from? They are the ones who have come through the great ordeal, and now worship God day and night …not hungering any more, no thirsting any more, all their tears wiped away…”
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The Joy of Halloween

A sermon about the Irish people coming to know Christ

This is a true story about things that happened at the end of October faraway and long ago, in a land called Ireland. Imagine how it would have been for a brother named Sean and a sister named Erin. Each year at this time the children worked hard in the fields with their parents, binding up the last of the barley stalks and the gourds on their vines. Early every morning as they finished their porridge the family left for the fields in the frosty darkness; the sun would rise and set over their heads as they worked, and then they would trudge home exhausted in the dark. Each night they watched the moon rising in the sky and getting fuller and fuller. They knew what was coming…All Hallows’ Eve.
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Consider the Source

A sermon about seeking relationship with God

This summer following my writing leave, Luke and I embarked on a long-anticipated river cruise down the Danube, from Vienna to the Black Sea. Years earlier we had traveled the upper reaches of the river, passing through the hills of southern Germany into Austria; that journey had been studded with textbook cities and long-famous sights. Now heading 1000 miles eastward into the heartland of Central Europe, and on into the expanse of the Serbian and Bulgarian Balkans, proved to be a whole new experience.
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Choosing to be Chosen

A sermon about the power of responding to God

“When you are not chosen.” This is the wistful title of an article posted last spring on a wedding planning web site, in anticipation of the rush of summer nuptials. The “you” in the title calls out to any woman devastated by not being chosen as a bridesmaid.
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Embrace Another Year of Grace

A sermon about putting God’s grace into circulation

Today we lead into a new program year with one of the most liberating sentences in scripture: Genesis 15:20, “Though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.” Letting these thirteen words loose in our lives can be truly transformative.
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Two Faces of Love

Have you ever seen the famous mirror image theater masks, one laughing and one wailing? They have been around since the 6th century BC, and probably they have endured because they touch something enduring in life: sometimes a situation is sad, and sometimes it is glad. We never have one without the other for long.
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The Tipping Point

A sermon about breaking free to follow Jesus

As we read in today’s Gospel, huge crowds are now following Jesus, and something about the situation isn’t sitting well with him. He turns on his heel and challenges the hangers- on, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”
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The Pecking Order

A sermon about leveling the playing field

Today’s Gospel is all about pecking order. This is a hard piece of Scripture for us to wrap our heads around. People in Jesus’ time made a big deal out of personal honor, and everyone agreed that some persons were more honorable than others. Once you had taken your place at a gathering, if someone more highly esteemed showed up you would be sent to the cheap seats. Whereas America is an equal opportunity nation, where everyone is worth just as much as everyone else. Nobody gets to automatically peck on anybody. The American Dream provides that whoever starts with rags can end up with riches.
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Moving On

A sermon about the surprising Spirit

As some of you know, for several years now I have been leading a clergy project called Resurgent Church. The purpose is to help us clergy tune in to some fresh direction the Spirit might be leading our congregation, and go with it. A group of 5-10 comes together to read up on the experiences of forebears throughout Scripture and Church history—to see what it was like for them when the Spirit led them anew. Then clergy survey their own congregations for similar promising leads, and see what might be done with them. Throughout the year they let one another know how things are going, and ask for feedback and suggestions.
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The Depth Dimension

A sermon about seeing beneath the surface

Have you heard the hype about the new 3D HDTVs? Current TV spot is pretty hard to ignore—a giant aquarium of neon tetras fins their way up, across the screen and into the family room where mom, dad and daughter float ecstatically among the fishies…
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The Craze for Quantity

A sermon about less really being more

When we left on vacation in Sunriver a few weeks ago I took along our July 12th Newsweek. One of the articles I read was just perfect: Malcolm Jones’ appropriately belated story on the International Day of Slowness, which had been celebrated on the summer solstice three weeks earlier. The observance got its start in Italy a few years ago, as a push back against the velocity of modern life. On the International Day of Slowness the point is—or was—to take time to do less and reflect more. Go for a long walk, make a meal from scratch, curl up with a good book, sit and do nothing…heck, this story was MADE for reading in Sunriver!
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Just Blue

A sermon by laypreacher Christine Peterson

Today, as you all know, is Fathers' Day. While I obviously am not a father, I do have a father, and Paul's message to the Galatians this morning put me in mind of a story about him that I want to share with you.
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The Tragedy that Turned

A sermon about grace edging out disaster

Today we watch a tragedy unfolding in three acts. Act I, set on a rooftop patio in Jerusalem, around an al fresco dining table. Jesus shares a final foreboding meal with his friends. “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you,” he begins, “before I suffer.” “Before I suffer”—these are strange words to start out a dinner dedicated to God’s eternal strength and victory!
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The Missing Person Report

A sermon about life-changing surprises

It all started with a missing person report. A group of out-of-towners were in Jerusalem for Passover, when one of them fell afoul of local authorities. He was tried on trumped up charges in a kangaroo court, got the death penalty, and was executed immediately, poor wretch.
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Doubt

A sermon about certainty and faith

“Do not doubt but believe.” These are the words Jesus speaks to the apostle Thomas, and they are read every year on the Sunday following the Resurrection: “Do not doubt but believe.”
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Open Our Eyes

A sermon about halting progress

Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold Christ in all his redeeming work.
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Room for the Holy Spirit

A sermon about leaps beyond all bounds

When I was growing up in the central Jersey suburbs, some of my high school classmates were transfers from Mount St. Mary’s Catholic, up in the hills north of town. They told many tantalizing stories about their parochial school experiences, including one about nuns who would bring along 12” rulers when they chaperoned dances. Rumor had it that whenever the sisters saw a young couple dancing too close they would step up and enforce the “12” rule,” reminding their young charges that they must “always leave room for the Holy Spirit.”
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Willing to Be Willing

A sermon about trusting God

Today we meet Abraham, the first follower of God for whom we’re given specific places and dates. At God’s instigation, at a time when Abraham is already 75 years old still childless, he and his relatives depart their west Asian homeland for the place we call Israel. As Abraham follows along the route he keeps listening for further messages from God. With each one he piles up a stone landmark to commemorate the interchange. After several hair-raising adventures with foreign leaders and food shortages, an exhausted Abraham is finally ready to settle down, when one night God speaks to him again—the dialogue we overhear in today’s reading.
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Transformation

A sermon about closing the gap between heaven and earth

I think it’s poetic justice that on this Fat Sunday, when wearing masks in church makes perfect sense, both Old and New Testament readings deal in veiled and unveiled faces. I do believe God has a sense of humor!

In our own day we seldom see covered faces any more. True, a few decades ago when ladies still wore hats to church, it was common to see a swatch of netting crossing their brows. And today at weddings a cascade of white gauze is not unusual floating over the blushing bride. But as for the burkahs of Muslim women, they frankly strike us as strange. We’ve grown too used to viewing one another out in the open, face-to-face, and so getting the gist of today’s scriptures will take a bit of digging.
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The Sound of Music

A sermon about what can happen while you’re making other plans

A few years ago while touring Austria, I got a glimpse of the von Trapp family home in Salzburg—a large, gracious mansion made famous through the Broadway musical, The Sound of Music. Perhaps you recall the true story of a young teacher named Maria who is determined to be a nun, despite her irrepressible spirit that raises eyebrows around the convent. When a local widower calls seeking a tutor for his daughter, the mother superior seizes the opportunity to get Maria out of the house for awhile.
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Love in God’s House

A sermon about love that leads us somewhere

By now having officiated at about a hundred weddings, I can no longer hear someone read 1 Corinthians 13 without also hearing the rustle of white satin, and the throat clearing of nervous grooms.

St. Paul’s famous paean to love is far and away the most popular scripture read at weddings—repeatedly selected by brides and grooms, I am sure, in sincere belief that Paul is talking about the romantic love that is saturating the moment.
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Through God's Eyes

A sermon about God's thumb on our scale

Even though you all began without me this morning, I know just how you began. You began with that wonderful prayer about reading, marking, learning and inwardly digesting scripture, building up blessed hope for everlasting life. I’m betting that as soon as that prayer was offered, you added your own audible Amen—your own affirmation of “so-be-it”—and then sat down to listen to the first reading. As you were praying and reading, the SCRIPT teens and I were gathered in my office around—you guessed it—our own reading from scripture, pooling insights about ways these pages offer a script for living our lives. It comes as no surprise that whenever we Episcopalians are asked what we’d like to learn more about, we say scripture. 80% of our Prayer Book is made up of scripture arranged for public worship. The lyrics of our hymnal are scripture set out for singing. Our entire worship service is one extended encounter with scripture designed to draw us in, and give us voice, in the telling of God’s unfolding story.
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The Lasting Judgement

A sermon About God's challenge for our future

Even though you all began without me this morning, I know just how you began. You began with that wonderful prayer about reading, marking, learning and inwardly digesting scripture, building up blessed hope for everlasting life. I’m betting that as soon as that prayer was offered, you added your own audible Amen—your own affirmation of “so-be-it”—and then sat down to listen to the first reading. As you were praying and reading, the SCRIPT teens and I were gathered in my office around—you guessed it—our own reading from scripture, pooling insights about ways these pages offer a script for living our lives. It comes as no surprise that whenever we Episcopalians are asked what we’d like to learn more about, we say scripture. 80% of our Prayer Book is made up of scripture arranged for public worship. The lyrics of our hymnal are scripture set out for singing. Our entire worship service is one extended encounter with scripture designed to draw us in, and give us voice, in the telling of God’s unfolding story.
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Crisis and Connection

A sermon about helping in Haiti

When I was a kid I proudly packed a shiny silver cap gun in my dime store holster and donned a wide-brimmed felt hat—just like all the other kids in my sleepy Shenandoah Valley hometown of Harrisonburg, Virginia. TV had barely entered our remote world, but radio was ripe, and we all instantly recognized the neighing of a horse and the clopping of hooves, signaling that the Lone Ranger was on his way. The Lone Ranger was our anonymous hero. Galloping into our bedrooms to the strains of the William Tell overture, astride a silver-white steed and peering through a mysterious mask, he fired only silver bullets and vowed to fight injustice wherever he found it. He invariably won the day, and then wheeled his trusty mount around, hollered “Hi-yo Silver!,” and galloped off into the sunset.
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A Future God Can Live With

A Sermon about fitting in with God’s happy ending

A week ago Luke and I took in a matinee, and what should pop up among the previews but a promo for the action thriller “2012.” Instantly the widescreen exploded with Technicolor chaos and carnage as solar flares superheated the core of the earth, plunging the crust into convulsions, and toppling California into the Pacific Ocean. Whereupon the ancient Yellowstone caldera erupted, and a mega-tsunami swamped the flanks of the Himalayas. The cast of adrenalin-charged characters narrowly escaped one catastrophe after another in a life-and-death race to reach lifeboats stowed high in the Himalayas, where an elite few would be buoyed above the apocalyptic flood.
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Mary’s Family Album

A sermon about memory and hope

Summer is a popular time for family weddings, family vacations and reunions, time for bringing far-flung relatives together again. Wherever there are reunions, there are cameras, lenses zooming and flashes flashing to capture the occasion for posterity, and bank a wealth of memories to bring home for those who hadn’t been there. More...


Our FICO Score

A sermon about everyday faithfulness

Do you know your FICO score? Or better yet, do you even know you have a FICO score? If not, it’s time we talked. FICO is a registered trademark of the Fair Isaac Corporation, the folks who pioneered credit ratings back in the 1950s. Credit rating has today ballooned into a huge industry, and the minute you or I become financially active we pop up on the screens of the big three rating companies, TransUnion, Equifax and Experian. More...


September 4, 2005

In the Name of Katrina’s Victims

The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen the misery of my people; I have heard their cry, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to bring them up to a good land flowing with milk and honey…I will be with you.”

During the past week hurricane Katrina has sorely tested this ancient image of the way God is with us. Our homes, our hearts and our headlines have been filled with cries of suffering from the Gulf states. First this absolutely horrific hurricane hits, and then catastrophic flooding and violence follow, pushing hundreds of thousands of ordinary people to the breaking point. As we look on helplessly we are haunted by their faces, their gestures, and their voices. Where is God in all this suffering, and how are we believers to respond? More...


Angels Among Us

St. Michael’s Day 2007

Just look at all the bright-eyed angels our children have made for St. Michael’s Day! Imagine being one of those angels, alighting the ladder heading up to heaven and giving us one last glance over the shoulder as he departs. Or imagine being one of those angels heading down the ladder to earth, squinting and sizing us up.

These angels have seen it all over the millennia—remember, they’re immortal and don’t get born and die like we do, they just go on and on until the end of time. Why, to the angels it seems like only yesterday that Jacob was double-crossing his brother and deceiving his father and running for his life. And so the angels held their breath in wonder as he fled…what would he do next? More...


Two Kinds of People

A sermon about the sort of people God works with Jesus says he tells the story in today’s Gospel for the benefit of two particular kinds of people: first, for people who trust in themselves, who feel well satisfied with the quality of their own lives; and second, for people who contemptuously look down their noses at others. Because Jesus lumps these two attitudes of self-satisfaction and contempt together, we’re safe to assume that they have something in common, that there is some link between complacently putting up with our own behavior, while putting other people down. Let’s take a close look at the two poster children Jesus gives us for these attitudes, the Pharisee and the tax man. More...


God's Messengers

A sermon about the unseen world

The Bible is a truly visionary book. From Genesis in the beginning to Revelation at the end, it is filled with accounts of people discovering more in the here and now than they ever imagined. And their discoveries make all the difference, because as soon as people see the world as it really is—heaven along with earth, unseen along with seen—then they are never the same again. More...


Two Roads

A sermon about choosing

In the turbulent 1920s, poet Robert Frost penned memorable lines about life choices. Frost captures here the universal human experience of having to choose one course of action over another: the regret we often feel over choosing one when that means foregoing the other; our procrastination and hesitation evoked by that regret; our anticipation about what the future might hold, tempered by equivocation over the exact future we desire. More...