I don't know the exact history of how Grace Church came to celebrate its anniversary on the feast day of St. Michael and All Angels. Rob tells me that our building is patterned roughly after that of the Parish Church of St. Michael at the North Gate in Oxford, England, whose tower, dating back to the 11 century, is the…
One summer day in Ashfield, as I was eating lunch on the back porch, a sparrow with a light-brown belly made a landing on a banister nearby. I held my spoon of yogurt in mid-air, frozen in place. Sparrow and I looked each other over, briefly taking each other in. I tried to imagine its experience of the world. I…
Our Gospel is paired this morning with a passage from Hebrew Scripture about a similar, decisive choice. Joshua gathers all the tribes of Israel to Shechem -- a city in Canaan -- and he summons the leaders, and they stand together in the presence of God. Joshua tells them, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Now therefore revere…
I find this a wonderfully evocative image. I think of these two men roaring their way up into the sky, moving beyond the pull of gravity and the blue-green sphere of our planet, passing through the silence and darkness of space, traveling to an entirely new place, and sharing Communion there -- as if to say: God's redeeming love is…
Before we get into the stories, let's set the scene. Jesus is beside the shore again, and with another large crowd. He has crossed the Sea of Galilee at least four times now -- last week we heard about one of those crossings, when a sudden storm came up and nearly swamped the boat. Mark's Gospel seems eager to underscore…
Or maybe it is emotional healing that you most seek tonight -- maybe healing for a marriage that has grown stormy or cold, or resolution of a difficulty between friend and friend, or parent and child, or neighbor and neighbor. Is there a relationship in your life in which communication has broken down, or mistrust has built up, or
These are worthy questions to tackle, although it may relieve you to know that I am not going to take two hours and address them now. What I do want to say is that this morning seems a good time at least to mention the existence of such questions. Today is the last Sunday of the Easter season, the Sunday…
Macdonald thought “it seemed a little early in the narrative for this much enthusiasm,” so he assumed he had made a mistake -- maybe he had mispronounced the words in Navajo. So he tried again: “It was early in the morning...'” This time he heard an even louder and more enthusiastic Yes. After Communion, the bishop went up to on
You and I hear the events of Holy Week in relation to what is on our hearts and minds just now, and for me, the words and actions of Holy Week take place this year in relation to the distress of the natural world. Sometimes it seems that I can almost hear the relentless melting of glaciers as our climate…
So I find it interesting that on this Sunday for refreshment, this Sunday for rejoicing, our assigned readings from Hebrew Scripture and from the Gospels focus directly or indirectly on the cross. These two passages are in fact the same ones that we hear in September on Holy Cross Day. We may associate the cross with a lot of things,…
