Hello, let me introduce myself to you this morning. My name is Reuben. Your rector needed a little break this morning from preaching, so she asked if I would say a few words to you. I was born in the first century by your calendar. Probably around the same year...

At the beginning of the week, when I first sit down with the Gospel reading for the coming Sunday, I am always looking for themes in the passage that are relevant for us today. There are many possible themes in our Gospel reading from Luke for today that could be...

All of us live by a story or a narrative that forms how we see the world and ourselves. Most of the time we are unaware of the story that guides our every action and thought. We just think that the way we see the world is the way the...

I am going to read aloud some of Jesus most difficult words. Not all of them mind you, for that would take too long. As I read them aloud, think about which one is the most difficult for you. I am then going to ask for some of you to...

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...