Sermons

Easter 4CMay 11, 2025St. Dunstan'sThe Rev. Patricia Templeton Today is the fourth Sunday of the Easter season, a day that is known as Good Shepherd Sunday. Every year on this Sunday the prayers and scripture readings reference shepherds and their flocks. We see that...

Easter 3CMay 4, 2025St. Dunstan’sThe Rev. Patricia Templeton Every Sunday one of the most dramatic moments of the Eucharist is the breaking of the bread. The loaf of bread is held up and broken, a symbol of Christ’s body broken for us.  For a long time here at...

Easter 2025April 20, 2025St. Dunstan'sThe Rev. Patricia Templeton Early this Holy Week a post showed up on my Facebook feed that has stayed in my mind all week. It was by Joel Webbon, the pastor of a large church in Texas. Webbon describes himself as a hard-core...

Good FridayApril 18, 2025St. Dunstan'sThe Rev. Patricia Templeton "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" This opening line of the 22nd psalm is one of the most plaintive cries in scripture. It's a cry of agony, despair, and abandonment. It is the cry of Jesus as...

Palm Sunday CSt. Dunstan’sApril 13, 2025The Rev. Patricia Templeton We entered church today at one of the highpoints of Jesus’ ministry – his entry into Jerusalem. Jesus is at long last coming into the city that is the political and religious center of life in his...

“There was a man who had two sons.”  Thus begins what is probably the best known of all of Jesus’ stories, usually known as the parable of the prodigal son. This tale of the son who takes his inheritance, squanders it, then comes home to be greeted with joy by...

They have almost made it. After almost 40 years of in the wilderness, the Israelites are gathered on the plains of Moab, on the verge of entering the land that has been promised to them so long ago. After almost four decades of feeling lost, unsure, discouraged, and...

“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Those somber words are at the heart of our Ash Wednesday service, a sobering reminder of our mortality. No matter how rich or powerful or beloved we may be, our end is the same. We all return to dust. I’ve...

On the top of a mountain,  Jesus kneels in prayer as his friends struggle to stay awake. As he prays, Jesus is suddenly filled with radiant light, his very face aglow.  Then two figures from another time and place appear, Israel’s two greatest prophets Moses...

Have you ever picked up a book, opened it about three-fourths of the way through and started reading? You don't know the characters, the plot, the context. Even if you can tell that something important is happening it doesn't quite make sense.  To read only the...

Blessed are the poor, we hear Jesus say today. Blessed are the hungry, those who weep, and those who are hated because they follow him. In these beatitudes, or blessings, Jesus is naming those on the margins, the outskirts of society, and saying that in God's kingdom...

We have competing events on the calendar today. On the secular calendar it is Groundhog Day. Sometime this morning a groundhog in Pennsylvania will come out of its hole and blink at the cameras surrounding it waiting to see if it sees its shadow, something to which...

Those of you who have been here for a while may remember that about 10 years ago I participated in a program put on by the National Park Service commemorating the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, and the ensuing successful voting rights march from Selma to...