Perhaps you’ve heard someone describe themself as a “Friend of Bill”? That doesn’t mean they’re literally a friend of a person named Bill, they’re not in a relationship. It means that the person is a following the 12 Step program that Bill W had a part in creating. It means that the person is working on overcoming their addiction and trying maintain their sobriety. It’s not a relationship as much as it’s a commitment to […]
This surfaced in my daily review of highlights from books I’ve read over the past couple of decades. I hope we still have space in our common life in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion for the irrational holiness of the numinous.
All nourishment, all life comes from him. We use that nourishment and that life to bring forth fruit and seeds. Fruit that will feed others. Seeds that will plant new vines, with roots that go deep into the dark rich soil and bring forth everything that is necessary for more fruit and new seeds to be created. That seems simple and clear, but I don’t think we generally think about what it means. Our life […]
Describing the ruler of the people as a shepherd of the people is common in Mediterranean cultures. The Pharaoh is often depicted holding a flail and a shepherd’s crook as a sign that he was both a war leader and a shepherd to the people of his Empire. The rulers of Babylon and Assyria were described in the same way. King David was a shepherd before he was the King. And the Psalms often use […]
My apologies again this week. I’m writing this from our diocesan Camp and Conference Center (ECC) where I’m spending the weekend on retreat with the deacons of Rhode Island. It’s an incredible blessing to spend this time with them, to get reacquainted after being dispersed around the state and from each other for over a year, to hear their stories, and to pray together. In fact it’s such a blessing that I lost track of […]
It’s been quite the week for me. We had a wonderful celebration of Easter Day at Trinity Church in Newport RI, and then I jumped headlong into a long list of chores and tasks that got put off during the last weeks of Lent and Holy Week. I say all that to ask for your understanding that I’m not posting a new sermon, but rather reposting one from three years ago. (It was a good […]
There’s good reason to be worried. There’s good reason to be pessimistic. There is little reason to be hopeful. But Easter brings hope in the midst of doubt. For those who have eyes to see, or hearts to discern; Easter changed everything, though only a small group of people understood that at the time and that might well be true now too. In the decades following the Resurrection, things didn’t get better, they got worse. […]
What we think of success and power is not how God thinks of them. God who has everything, all success and all power, gives it all up to save us and to transform who we are, and to remake the Creation that had gone sideways. Jesus, stages the “anti” Triumph when he enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. He comes as saving victim, who forgives us while he is dying, a death that happens because of […]
The Divine role of Emperor or King seems to be making a comeback. The Return of Sacral Rulership?: Ancients would learn, and our Founders too, that the language of sacral rulership is incompatible with a functioning democracy or republic. In 1787 Ben Franklin famously declared that with the Constitution, the founders had given America “a Republic, if you can keep it.” Franklin knew well the perils faced by republics because he had an extensive understanding […]
Jesus came into this world, specifically to die on the Cross of the Roman Empire. He came to be die a death of humiliation and dehumanization. And he came to live again after that happened. The Easter moment is the overthrowing of the violence and horror of the cross. It is God’s emphatic rejection of violence and alienation from one another. It is God’s emphatic rejection of revenge. The Empty Tomb and the Resurrected Jesus […]
