I would like to say a few words about
freedom, because freedom is in the air. For one thing, it is summer,
when many of us go off on some sort of vacation and are free of our
daily schedules and routine. Freedom will be the national focus in a
few days when we celebrate the…
Last week Ton Whiteside commented that worshipping in the Parish Hall would be a bit like going to church camp, and I think he's right. I never went to church camp, but I did go to regular camp, and I see some resemblances to what we're doing here. We don't have a campfire, but in a while we will gather…
Today's Gospel passage is a good text for an in-between time, a time of transition in which something is coming to an end and the new has not yet come. Jesus is saying farewell to his disciples at the Last Supper and preparing them for his crucifixion. But because we read this passage in Easter-tide, we also hear it as…
Today is a good day to talk about doubt: yours and mine. We have just shared the marvels of Christianity's most sacred week. Most of us here this morning participated to one degree or another in the experiences that make up the journey from Palm Sunday through Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter - candle light and star light, atte
Some of you may recognize tonight's Gospel reading as the one we heard little more than a week ago, when the lectionary assigned most of this passage for the Fifth Sunday of Lent. Rob Hirschfeld preached a wonderful sermon that morning, and being handed the same text on which to comment 8 days later leads
In last Sunday's sermon, Rob spoke of pilgrimage as an image of the Christian life. Through baptism, we are drawn into intimacy with God in Christ, and - as I once heard someone put it - even though God loves us exactly as we are, God loves us too much to let us stay the same. By the grace of…
I am not much of a fisherman. Except for a single lesson in fly fishing, my experience of fishing is limited to a few summer afternoons, when as a kid I dangled a line off the edge of a dock in a Minnesota lake and tried to snag a sunfish. I don't remember ever catching any.
You may know a…
Water into wine. When in your life have you experienced water turning into wine?
Maybe one night you have a bad sleep. You toss and turn, fretting about something that you just can't shake - maybe a financial concern, or a conflict in your family, or the increa
I can almost hear a sigh spreading across the Pioneer Valley this
morning - a sigh of relief, a sigh of rest. Whatever we did or did
not do in the countdown to Christmas - whatever cards we did or did
not send, whatever Christmas tree we did
Today is the first day of Advent,
the period that starts four Sundays before Christmas, and today we
begin a new church year. We often think of Advent as the season in
which we prepare for Christmas, and of course that's true: our English
word "Advent" comes from the Latin word for "arrival" or "coming," and…
