For those of you who notice details or are familiar with the idiosyncrasies of Episcopal worship you will have registered that the colors of our adornments are not green today, as would be the norm for the ordinary time of Epiphany, but have instead returned to white. One reason for this, of course, is because […]
In this week of the Presidential Inauguration, an interesting article from the Smithsonian Institute Magazine popped up in my feed entitled “A brief history of presidential inaugural speeches from George Washington to today” (Claire Jerry, published 1/14/2025). Being the history-minded person that I am I clicked on the link. The article cited the work of […]
Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I […]
When I woke up on the morning of November 6, the day after the election, the first action I took was to pick up my phone to see the results, I suspect most of you did the same thing. For some, the results brought joy and a sense of relief, a feeling that the world […]
Why do we dedicate a Sunday every year to the commemoration of all the saints who have preceded us? All our other Feast Days focus on Jesus. Why this day that focuses instead on us, his followers? Is it simply to give us a chance to grieve those we love who have died? Is it […]
As most of you know, there is a wide range of thinking within Christianity about how to understand Scripture. Some Christians argue that every word is to be understood literally and followed to the letter. Other Christians argue that Scripture was inspired by God but written by humans and is therefore filtered through human culture […]
Our Gospel passage for today is hard, or at least hard for anyone who has a dime more than they need to provide the basic essentials of life. As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit […]
It is the late 12th century in central Italy, Assisi to be exact. Italy itself is not a united country but is made up of city-states of varying sizes and degrees of power, the largest and most powerful of which is the Papal city-state. Traditionally these various city-states had been controlled and ruled by members […]
Our Old Testament reading for this morning comes from the Book of Esther. This is the only Sunday in our entire three-year lectionary cycle that we hear from this book, so I am willing to bet that most of you do not know the story that this book tells. For that reason, I am going […]
Last week I spoke about wisdom and that an aspect of having wisdom is the ability to imagine a world that is different from the world in which we currently live and move and have our being. I think a lot of what Jesus preached, taught and did were his attempts to help his followers […]