A Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, with Lessons appointed for Independence Day

The men who gathered in Christ Church in Philadelphia in 1789 to write the first American prayer book knew what a state church looked like. They also knew from experience some of its downfalls... So when they wrote the first American prayer book, they made careful choices. They took the king out of the prayers, but they didn’t put George Washington back in his place. Someone proposed a feast for Independence Day. They said no.

Independence Day was added to our Book of Common Prayer in 1928. But even then, that choice was made with caution. The readings appointed are calls to humility...

Has our church lived up to our ideals?

I like the idea that we’re all connected through Abraham’s ancestry. But I’m not sure I’d want to actually be his child. One abandoned in the wilderness. One almost sacrificed on an altar.

These are hard stories. Some of the hardest in scripture. Jewish tradition doesn’t look away from this story, and we shouldn’t either.

There’s a gift in the hard reading...

Certainly, there was some drama in the apostles’ lives. But most of what even the most famous saints did was slower, more ordinary. They walked along dusty roads, traveled light, talked with those they met along the way.

And that’s what discipleship looks like most of the time, even today.

Again and again, God does new things. Again and again, we sing new songs.

One God, three persons. The Trinity is a mystery.

But we can learn about God by learning about ourselves — about the world the Father created, about the humanity the Son became part of, about the Spirit who still moves in the world today.

Good… Created in God's image… We matter to God… God loves us whether we’re useful or not… God’s love comes first….

Today, we remember the day the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus’s disciples with “a sound like the rush of a violent wind” and with “tongues, as of fire”... the day the Apostle Peter stood up to speak, and reached back for the words of the Prophet Joel: “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy..."

The question sounds a bit like criticism, but I’m not sure that’s fair. Because what those two figures in white robes are really doing is ...

What does faith offer when God feels far away, unknown, even unknowable?

“Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.” Stone is a curious spiritual metaphor. If you look closely, though, you’ll find stone everywhere in scripture.

In 1937, the German secret police shut down a seminary in a town called Finkenwalde. For the two years the seminary operated, the students and teachers in Finkenwalde knew that they were under threat. But still they prayed together, studied together, and ate together.

The book of Acts speaks of a community that seems utopian: "they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.” I think they were simply living a Christian life.

Look again at what the book of Acts is actually describing.

Christ walks with us even when we don’t recognize him. Even when we’re walking in the wrong direction. Even when we’re running away. Christ walks with us even when all hope seems lost.

I love the Prayer of St. Francis, but I think we too often get the logic of grace backwards. “Make us instruments of your peace.” We often understand those words in a way that puts us at the center of the action. As if we alone can carry peace into rooms where hatred lives. As if we alone bear the responsibility of driving out doubt and despair and sadness wherever we find them.

Easter Day

I love Easter, but Easter’s tricky. We try to turn it into something tame. But really, there’s nothing tame about Easter.

A Sermon for Maundy Thursday

Everything we do tonight does actually have one purpose, one focus.

The edge of a tomb can be a hard place to talk about hope...

A man was blind. Jesus gave him sight. You’d think that’s the whole story. But John gives us thirty more verses after the healing, telling us about what happens when people who think they understand how the world works are confronted with something that doesn’t fit what they already believe.

It doesn’t go well.