Easter 4B, April 29, 2012

O God of love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Some of you know that every Monday night, ten months of every year, for the last fourteen years, I have volunteered at Suffolk County House of Correction in a program called “Art & Spirituality.” I like to say that we have completed fourteen years of what was meant to be a one-year project. The program provides the time to make greeting cards to give to people we love and are thinking about. The unconvicted and undetained sit together with the convicted and the detained at small tables spread with paper and envelopes, crayons, markers, pencils and pens, glue and scissors. (Yes, even scissors!) The “art” is primitive and the “spirituality” is subtle. It is the most spare, the most basic kind of Gospel ministry – a practice of showing up and being together in spite of the concrete and razor wire, and the myriad other barriers and traps that conspire to keep us apart. Continue reading →

Easter 2B, April 15, 2012

Acts 4:32-35  Everything they owned was held in common.
1 John 1:1-2:2 We are writing these things so that our [or your] joy may be complete.
John 20:19-31 Peace be with you.

O God of life, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Of all the Gospel lessons that get read in church on Sundays, the only one that gets read every year without fail in the 3 year lectionary cycle, is this one that we just heard. There are 5 written accounts of Jesus resurrection that made it into our canon of scripture – accounts that have significant “factual” discrepancies — and within those five separate narratives, there are about a dozen Risen Lord appearance stories. But it’s this story that gets repeated over and over — read every year on the Sunday after Easter, no matter what. The effect is that this appearance story becomes THE appearance story – and too often, the heavy-handed moral made of this story is that somehow a faithful Christian does not have doubts. Nonsense. Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is essential to faith.[1] Continue reading →

Easter, Year B, April 8, 2012

Isaiah 25:6-9 The LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.
1 Corinthians 15:1-11 By the grace of God I am what I am.
John 20:1-18 I have seen the Lord.

 O God of mystery and mischief, grant us the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may and cost what it will.

You might know that I have been spending a considerable amount of time with Mary Magdalene lately (or Miriam from Migdal as she would be called in Hebrew). She is the namesake of the prophet Miriam, who was the sister of Moses. The prophet Miriam was a religious leader in ancient Israel, divinely commissioned to lead the Hebrew people along with Moses and Aaron during the journey in the wilderness which followed the Exodus from Egypt. The Song of Miriam in the book of Exodus is thought to be the oldest piece of scripture in the whole Bible. Continue reading →

Palm Sunday, Year B, April 5, 2012

O God, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Holy Week – beginning with Palm Sunday – is often a time when we hear and are encouraged to identify with failure – failure of trust, failure of faith, failure to stay awake and alert, failure to pray, the failure of truth, failure of government, the failure of troops charged with keeping the peace, the failure of religious leaders, the failure of crowds of people. Most of the time in our Palm Sunday services, in a practice that goes back 1000 years, the congregation is expected to take the part of the crowd that shouts “crucify him.” I have to tell you I don’t like that practice at all. Continue reading →

Lent 5B, March 25, 2012

O God of surprises, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

In my experience, Gospel lessons usually raise more questions than they answer. I do like that. I’m much more interested in questions than I am in answers. Still, the gap between questions and answers seems especially pronounced in today’s Gospel lesson. At our vestry meeting this past Tuesday as we were doing a Bible study on this Gospel reading, someone observed that this reads like a speech in which some of the speaker’s index cards have been inadvertently dropped! Continue reading →

Lent 4B, March 18, 2012

Lent 2B, March 4, 2012

O God of life, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

When Abram was 99 years old – in other words, when Abram was as good as dead, he had a vision of the Divine. The One-Whose-Name-is-too-holy-to-be-spoken appeared with a message for him. And Abram fell on his face. He fell on his face.

I’ve spent some time this week wondering about that. Was it intentional or unintentional? Was his belly-flop in the dirt an act of reverence or did he completely lose his balance when the Holy One appeared and spoke? The scene is a little funny to me – the voice of Almighty God commands “walk before me” and then offers, yet again, the promise of exceedingly numerous offspring, and Abram doesn’t walk anywhere. Abram immediately falls down. My curiosity about this face plant prompted me to look to see if Abram falls down every time he encounters the vision or the voice of the Holy. In fact, no. Abram has heard the voice of the Holy One numerous times before this point in the narrative of the Book of Genesis, with no mention of falling down. Continue reading →

Last Sunday of Epiphany, Year B, Feb. 19, 2012

Our Epiphany season began with the Gospel of Mark’s story of the baptism of Jesus, in which Jesus alone hears the voice of the Divine saying, “You are my son, the beloved. With you I am well pleased.” Our Epiphany season ends today with the Gospel of Mark’s story of the transfiguration of Jesus, in which Peter, James and John hear the voice of the Divine saying about Jesus, “This is my son, the beloved. Listen to him.” This second Godly admonition is, in fact, the centerpiece of the Gospel of Mark – and that is no coincidence. Mark, like other ancient writers, employed the literary device of chiasmus (or chiastic structure) to emphasize and highlight particular pieces of information in narrative, the most important being the innermost or center point. This scene is it. Oddly, though, Jesus doesn’t speak in this story. So, one might ask the Divine voice, listen to what? Continue reading →

5th Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B, February 5, 2012

O God of wonder, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

I want to interrupt my preaching on the Gospel of Mark to spend a few moments with you talking about our Hebrew Bible lesson from the 40th chapter of Isaiah. It’s “Second Isaiah,” actually – which is what chapters 40 through 55 get called because they are so clearly written at a different time by a different author than the first 39 chapters of Isaiah and the last 11 chapters of Isaiah. The writer of Second Isaiah might be considered the great poet, rather than the great prophet. This writer never once refers to herself as a prophet. I imagine these words might have come to Jesus’ mind more than once when he found deserted places to pray in the morning while it was still very dark. Continue reading →

4th Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B, January 29, 2012

O God of blessing, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

For those of you who have been following along in the Gospel of Mark, we have arrived at verse 21 in the first chapter! (If you blinked, you missed the first 20 verses.) I’ll summarize: John has appeared in the wilderness, calling for repentance for the forgiveness of sins quoting the prophets Isaiah and Malachi. He has announced that one is coming who is greater than he; has baptized multitudes in the Jordan, including Jesus. Jesus has experienced the pleasure of God and the temptation of Satan; he has been with the wild beasts and messengers sent from God served (or deaconed) him.[1] John has been arrested and Jesus has taken up the same call for repentance, proclaiming the good news that God’s love and justice are so close. Jesus has recruited two pairs of brothers for companions. He has promised to show them how to fish for people! And, now it’s as if the Gospel writer leans forward and says, “watch this!” Continue reading →