Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as our Helper, our Advocate, the one he sends to be with us in his apparent absence. But what does that mean in a practical sense? At one level, people understand the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives as the one who stands beside us in the moment of judgment and pleads for mercy and understanding. And that’s undoubtedly true. But there are ways the Holy Spirit is […]
Thank you again for your prayers and good wishes as I was recovering from my latest bout with Covid. Thanks to all of you and the wonders of science and medicine, I’m doing much better now. I’m impatiently waiting out the ten-day quarantine as I recover and looking forward to returning to my regular schedule. In this week’s gospel reading, Jesus tells us that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life… and the […]
My apologies. I’m home ill with COVID and not feeling well enough to get a sermon filmed and posted this week. God willing, we’ll get back next week. I do have a sermon to share that I preached on Easter 4 (Good Shepherd Sunday) in 2017 in Oklahoma. Easter 4A 2017 St Johns,Tulsa This is Good Shepherd Sunday – and here we are reading one part of the 10th Chapter of John. (We read […]
Listen: The story begins with the two disciples journeying together. Jesus joins them as they walk, though they are not able to recognize he is with them. The story places the encounter in the present experience of the disciples, and the focus initially is on what is happening. Together they begin to open the scriptures and to use the scriptures to understand their present experience. That’s essentially what happens every Sunday in our churches in […]
Years ago, we had a tradition in a church I served, of taking down the Stations of the Cross in the nave on Holy Saturday before we set up for the Easter Vigil. It always struck me, looking at the walls where they had been, how plain the room looked in their absence. I mentioned that to the director of Children’s Education and the next year she surprised me with festive Stations of the Cross […]
Why is this day such a big deal? Because Jesus’ came back from the dead? Because his tomb was empty? Other people have cheated death. Some of them – like Elijah – and (according to many) the Virgin Mary – managed to avoid dying at all. That’s not it apparently. At least not if you read the text carefully. It’s reasonable to expect that the women at the tomb on Easter Morning were present with Jesus in […]
Our preacher this year at the Rhode Island Episcopal Diocesan Chrism Mass was the Rev. Elizabeth Nestor, MD, MDiv, FACEP – an Episcopal priest of this diocese and an Emergency Room doctor who served courageously through the recent Pandemic. Her sermon was a moving reminder of how God uses the broken bits of the World to do things no one would have expected. In a particularly moving passage of the sermon she talked about what […]
Palm Sunday, the day we commemorate the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, is the opening act of the Passion narrative that is at the center of our worship for the next week. Each Gospel has a version of the last days of Jesus’ earthly ministry. The events are mostly the same but the accents made by the writers are different. To have four different, though likely related, accounts of the same event is unique. There’s […]
There’s so much to unpack in this story. It happens just before the final chapters of Jesus’ journey to the cross, and it’s really his great signifying miracle, at least in the way that St. John tells the story of Salvation. Anyone who hears it is left with all sorts of questions. Why did Jesus tarry? Did he choose to let Lazarus, the person he loved so deeply, die deliberately? What was that purpose? He […]
This week’s Gospel reading tells the story of how Jesus used mud to give sight to a man who had been born without it. It is another account that will let those with understanding and real insight recognize who Jesus is and what he is doing in the World. I am following St. Irenaeus, a 2nd century bishop, martyr and commentator’s interpretation of what is happening in this passage. Jesus shows himself to be completing […]
