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...

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...

Because very few of us regularly sit down and read entire books of the Bible from start to finish in one or just a few readings, we don’t often think about why the author of a particular book put a story where it is in the narrative. For example, Matthew...

Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am...

If I were to ask you to tell me the Christmas story from memory, with no peeking at Scripture, you would probably tell me the story we see portrayed in Christmas pageants. A very pregnant Mary travels to Bethlehem with her husband Jospeh because of a Roman census. The inns...

I’ve confessed from this pulpit before that the Gospel of John has never been my favorite of the four Gospels. Mostly this is because the Jesus portrayed in John’s Gospel is just too certain for me. He is too all-knowing to be convincingly human. For this life-long Episcopalian, the incarnation...

During the season of Advent, I have been using an Ignatian Spiritual exercise in which I imagine myself sitting alongside Elizabeth and Mary as we see them in the first chapter of Luke and getting to know them better. My spiritual director suggested this chapter from Luke to me because...

Another week with John the Baptist. I think we can all agree that for us, citizens of the Western world in the 21st century, he is a strange and uncomprehensible figure. With his wild appearance, strange diet and apocalyptic words he is more than a little off-putting to us and...

I had a very good friend who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer several years ago. Now, if you know cancer at all, you know that of all the various kinds of cancer you can be diagnosed with ovarian is one of the most difficult to treat. It was of course...

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...