“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” That was the request of some Greeks who were visiting a festival in Jerusalem, or someplace close by. They ask this of one of Jesus’ disciples, Philip, who tells his friend Andrew. The two of them go to Jesus with the...
Sunday morning has a language all its own, full of words that we seldom, if ever, use other times of the week. Words like repentance, righteousness, grace, incarnation. Words that I suspect we would be hard pressed to easily define. Sometimes the strange...
Every year during Lent we begin our service with a version of the Ten Commandments, either the full reading of them as we did today, or a condensed version of what Jesus calls the two greatest commandments – to love God and to love your neighbor. The...
Today’s service is a little bit different from what we would normally do on the Second Sunday in Lent. As you know, this week our parishioner David Abner died after a stay in hospice. David’s children preferred not to have a formal funeral for their...
The story of the rainbow is a curious reading for the first Sunday in Lent. We are at the beginning of the most somber season of the church year, a time set aside for reflection and repentance, for fasting and self-denial. We began the service today with the Great...
Today is the last Sunday of the season of Epiphany, those weeks between Christmas and the beginning of Lent. Epiphany ends every year with the reading we heard today, the story of the Transfiguration – the ultimate mountaintop experience where Jesus meets...
Today’s reading from the prophet Isaiah finds the people of Israel in deep despair, wondering if they’ve been abandoned by God. The land that God promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the land that God led them to after freeing them from slavery in Egypt;...
When I was in college someone gave me a button that I probably still have in a drawer somewhere. “Question Authority” it boldly proclaims. “Question authority” was a philosophy that suited a journalism student well. In fact, I spent my college years, and many years...
