The final day of our General Conventions (this is my 10th) is always bittersweet. It’s part legislative body and part family reunion. The final day is when we start hammering away on getting everything bolted down, but it’s also the day when you see the halls and exhibits being broken down and packed up. We won’t be together again in the same way for three years… We did a bunch of things (as the kids […]
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 […]
I am at the House of Bishop’s Spring retreat and am not able to post a sermon, and I didn’t want to try to repost the one from three years ago… we’re in a different context now than we were then, and I don’t think it speaks to this moment. As I mentioned in the sermon filmed last week, one of my favorite preachers and writers in the Episcopal Church is the Rev. Andrew Gerns. […]
This week’s Gospel reading tells of Jesus surprising teaching to his disciples that the Messiah must suffer and die. He told them this just outside the gates of the seat of Roman power in the region, a place that the Hellenistic conquerers of Palestine used a cultural center to spread the Greek cult of Victory. It’s not surprising, given the context, that the disciples argued with him. But God works in ways that we don’t […]
The motif of the secret or hidden Messiah in Mark’s Gospel reminds us that ofttimes God obscures the truth from us. God is present, all around us at every moment, constantly speaking to us but is not easily seen or heard. Jesus says again and again: let those with eyes see, let those with ears hear. What he means is that, if you’re prepared and trained, you can see God all around us, all the […]
So this might be useful. I’ve installed a plugin that lets me use my blog as its own Mastodon instance. I’ll have to play a bit with it, but this combined with a few other instance might make it so that I can have a much more unified presence on Fediverse. (And people can follow me directly then by using @wnknisely from whatever ActivityPub hub they’re using.)
There’s an old description of the Internet as a network that, because of its inherent distributed nature, has the ability to route around damage in a way that maintains connection. In the last decade the corporate voices on the network have managed to push most of the interesting and thoughtful voices to the fringe and replaced them with outrage and click-bait that plays to an advertising based economic model. But perhaps the protean nature of […]
Yesterday morning, as we began our House of Bishops meeting, we were greeted by two representatives of the native communities on whose ancestral lands we have gathered. The speakers began by telling us that this was the common custom of the native people’s of Alaska – that when people came for a visit, it was proper to be greeted by the people who lived in the place. One of the speakers was a the leader […]
When we keep Jesus at the center, we gather the largest number of people into the Reign of God.
For those who are preaching this weekend on John the Baptist’s proclamation of Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the Sin of the World”, this ancient song is worth reading: The Lamb Replaces the Scapegoat. Romanus Melodus: Now the the garment of mourning is rent; we have put on the white robe Which the spirit has woven for us from the lamb’s fleece of our Lamb and our God; Sin is taken […]
