The last part of May is for many of us a season of transition, a time for weddings and graduations. It's also a season of transition here at Grace Church as we begin looking ahead to the new fiscal year that begins on July 1. By now most of you have received the eloquent letter that Doug Adler and Jane…
Every year on the Sunday after Easter we listen to that marvelous and mysterious story we just heard from the Gospel of John, the story of Jesus showing himself to the disciples on the evening of Easter Day and then returning a week later to reassure and convince the disciple we call Doubting Thomas that yes, the Risen Lord is…
Not too long ago, at the end of a meeting in the Parker Room, a parishioner and I got to talking about the suffering and anxieties that beset the world.
"There's so much to worry about!" she said, shaking her head. "Suicide bombers. Terrorism. Global poverty. The carnage in Darfur. The war in Iraq. The possibility that Iran will…
I have been reading about the difference between "cold memory" and "hot memory." (1) Cold memory reduces the past to a collection of facts, bits of more or less random information that have no particular meaning, no particular bearing on our lives. With cold memory, we look back at the curious things that people used to do, the curious
It may be tempting sometimes to think of church as a predictable place, a haven where the liturgy becomes soothingly familiar and nothing much ever changes and we can basically sit back and relax. And then along come readings like the ones we heard this morning, readings that begin and end with surprise and that tell us that God is…
Why was Jesus baptized? What led Jesus to take that plunge into the Jordan River? John the Baptist was preaching repentance from sin, but Jesus had no sin. He had nothing to repent and nothing to confess. He was the Savior, the Son of God, living with unbroken faithfulness to the Father. He didn't need to be baptized by John. …
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel. Amen.
In most sermons, the preacher usually tries to find just the right
anecdote or story to illustrate the main point. But on this holy morning, there's no need for another story. Today
How did the angel come to Mary? Did Gabriel come in a rush of wings, like a gust of wind suddenly blowing in through the window? Or did the angel come as gently as snow, quietly approaching from the garden or descending from above, drawing near so silently that Mary had to look up, she had to turn her head:…
My son Sam is fifteen, and he's been asports fan all his life. In the summer, he follows baseball, and whenhe was a kid, I'd hear him shout, "The Red Sox rule!" In thefall, because his father grew up in Wisconsin, Sam would announce withgreat satisfaction, "The Green Bay Packers rule!" I alwayssmiled when I heard the exuberance i
What do you make of today's Gospel? It's a prickly one, no doubt about it, complete with a raging king who sends out his troops to burn down a city and later commands his attendants to bind an unfortunate man without a wedding robe and "throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth"…
