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 […]
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 […]
When the people are murmuring in the wilderness, dreaming of returning to captivity and oppression, God sends the seraph, the “dragons” to lead them to a change of mind, a metanoia, a repentance. Moses makes a bronze serpent and lifts it up – so that people, looking up, changing their vision, their perspective, by viewing a bronze serpent, like the one on Pharaoh’s headdresss and will see it and live (repent). Now, hear what Jesus […]
We begin our Lenten journey this, as is customary, by reading the Gospel story of Jesus’ trials and temptation in the Wilderness. But this year, the middle year of our three year lectionary cycle, we read this story according to St. Mark. And Mark, in his unique way, compresses the narrative. So instead of reading the details of the temptation as we do in other years, this year we also read (again) of Jesus’ baptism […]
In David Brooks new book “How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen” he speaks about the process of illumination – how someone can so totally see another person so that the viewer glimpses the light that shines within the one at whom they are gazing. He talks too about people who are naturally, or who have learned to be, “illuminators” who, by the ability to see the […]
The Church in Corinth, founded by St. Paul and comprised of mostly Gentile believers, was deeply divided over many things. One of the things that they struggled with was how much they should separate themselves from the culture around them, from which many had come. Should they keep themselves totally pure and strive not to break a rule or violate a tradition of the community that they were joining, or should they recognize that they […]
