A Voice Crying Out in the Wilderness On the second Sunday of Advent we turn our focus to John the Baptizer. He is a transitional character—one foot in the old world, one foot in the new. This wild man, clearly on the margins of society, attracts the attention of those in the center: “the people […]
Counting and Waiting As a child I always had what we called an Advent calendar – a way to understand how many days until Christmas Day. But in actuality, it was a Christmas countdown calendar, because it followed the December calendar (starting on December 1), rather than with the first Sunday of Advent. But this year, […]
Christ the King On the final Sunday of the church year, we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. This is a very recent addition to the liturgical calendar—it was first instituted in the Roman Catholic Church in 1925, a time of great unrest throughout the Western World. The Episcopal Church, as well as many […]
Weaving Our Nets Together: One Service at 10:00 am this Sunday This Sunday we have our annual Ingathering Sunday, where each of us makes his or her estimate of giving to St. Paul’s Church for the coming year—but with a twist. In this coming year we are going to focus on our stories: specifically, how […]
Life and Death This week’s reading from the Gospel of Luke (20:27-38) ends with, “[Our God] is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” What a profound statement! Following up on our commemoration of the Feast of All Saints, it speaks to the Christian understanding […]
Losers to Winners This Sunday we celebrate the Feast of All Saints, remembering those we love who have died. The readings for this year include the Beatitudes as recorded by Luke (Luke 6:20-31). Matthew, whose gospel was written after Luke’s (and used Luke as source material), provides the eight beatitudes with which we are most […]
Justification In this week’s reading from the Gospel of Luke (18:9-14), Jesus tells a parable wherein a Pharisee and a tax-collector pray. Their prayers are quite different—and, Jesus tells us, engender different responses from God: the tax-collector is justified. Exactly what is justification? Wikipedia defines it as, “God’s righteous act of removing the guilt […]
Persistence in Faith Persistence, annoyance, stubbornness are the marks of faith in this week’s Gospel story (Luke 18:1-8) about the widow and the unjust judge. In this parable, a widow persistently seeks help from a judge who repeatedly ignores her and sends her away. Not to be deterred, she returns over and over again, becoming […]
Breaking Chains This week’s reading from Paul’s second letter to Timothy (2 Timothy 2:8-15) includes a phrase that really struck me: “the word of God is not chained.” What a profound observation! I imagine the power this statement has had for enslaved people through the centuries. But it is also fuel for us. Sometimes […]
If Only… In this week’s reading from the Gospel of Luke (Luke 17:5-10) Jesus challenges the disciples: “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed…” But how often does each of us question our faith? For many of us, faith can be elusive. What is faith, anyway? It is difficult to define. […]