Sermons
So You May Come to Believe
It is the first Sunday after Easter, which every Episcopal priest knows means it's Doubting Thomas Sunday. The gospel reading we heard today is exactly the same the Sunday after Easter every year. I'll let you in on a clergy...
Out of Our Tombs
Wow! I could just stand here and look at you all morning. It is so wonderful to see your faces, or at least your eyes. It is so wonderful to hear more than one or two voices joining together to say the prayers, the psalms, the responses. It is so...
Can I Get A Witness?
Unimaginable suffering. Excruciating pain. Bottomless grief. Incomprehensible cruelty. All of that is on display on this most somber day when we remember the death, the execution, of Jesus. It's a hard story to...
The Heart of a Killer
“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” These words are from the 51st Psalm, considered to be scripture’s quintessential prayer of penitence. Tradition says the verses were penned by the great King David after he...
Measuring A Year
Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes. Five hundred twenty five thousand moments so dear. Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes. How do you measure? Measure a year? In daylights? In sunsets? In midnights? In cups of coffee? In inches?...
Confronting Christian Nationalism
The picture from my childhood remains amazingly clear in my mind all these years later. My illustrated Bible, given to me by my grandparents when I was three years old, has picture after picture of Jesus. There is the sweet, cherubic, haloed...
Absurdly Faithful
Lent this year seems to be a time of waiting. We're waiting on vaccines, waiting for the pandemic to be over, waiting to get back to our normal lives, waiting to see one another in person, to go to church, to travel....
Propelled by the Spirit
It is not exactly the kind of post-baptism celebration to which we are accustomed – no brunch with proud family, friends and godparents, no champagne, no gifts, no oohing and aahing over the newly baptized. There is none of that for Jesus....
Don’t Give Up
"I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church to an observance of a holy Lent." This year, these words that I have said almost every Ash Wednesday for more than a quarter of a century sound different to me....
A Lenten Prayer
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...
Have You Not Known?
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...
Epiphany 4 – The Rev. Deborah Silver
The Rev. Deborah SilverSt. Dunstan’sJanuary 31, 2021Epiphany 4 There is a car that someone drives around my neighborhood that is covered in bumper stickers. Many of these bumper stickers espouse a liberal cause. Here are some that I especially...
Epiphany 3 – The Rev. Bill Deneke
The Rev. Bill DenekeSt. Dunstan’sJanuary 24, 2021Epiphany 3 Both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospel tell stories of being called to get up and follow where God is leading. In Mark’s account several fishermen were called to follow Jesus who said I...
Epiphany 2 – The Rev. Deborah Silver
The Rev. Deborah SilverSt. Dunstan’sJanuary 17, 2021Epiphany 2 May we, like the prophet Samuel, say, “Speak for your servant is listening.” We stand this morning at a strange juncture in time. On one side, we look back ten days ago to the horrific spectacle that...
They Have No Shame; They Have Forgotten How to Blush
There is a common theme running throughout all three Scripture readings today. Did you notice it? The Holy Spirit appears in each of the lessons. In Genesis we hear that the Spirit, appearing as wind, was with God at the first moment of...