August 30, 2020 - The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Lectionary Readings

Gracious and loving God, Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; and nourish us with all goodness. This we pray in the name of the God who is. Amen.

            What is religion? It seems like such a simple question, but the answer has implications that will, quite literally, change our lives and our world. There are certainly many ways to think about religion – as being the defining narrative story of our lives, as the ultimate truth of the world, as the beliefs about God that bind us together, as our value and ethical system, or, as one person has put it, our preferred sin management solution.

August 23, 2020 - The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Lectionary Readings

O God, grant us always to remember who you are, so that we might know that we are your beloved children. Amen.

            Stories matter. Just consider the popularity of documentaries or how many times families reminisce about their shared memories. Stories are one of the few things that set apart human society from the animal kingdom – we analyze, celebrate, and remember the past. One theologian has noted that the problem of modern society is that we have convinced ourselves that the only story that we have is the story that chose for ourselves. The problem with choosing our own story to live by is that is simply doesn’t work. I might wish that I was a 10-time Wimbledon champion, I might even tell people that’s true, I could even buy replica trophies and put them on my fireplace mantle. But that wouldn’t make the story true. Instead of us choosing the story we live our lives by, we have been given a story by God. It is the story of our loving Creation, our grace-filled redemption, and our empowerment by the Holy Spirit. When we forget that story, we lose our guiding star, our hope, our purpose, our identity. And forgetting that story, we turn to other stories to tell ourselves and these other stories are called idols.

August 16, 2020 - Proper 15A

Lectionary Readings

O God, in the Holy Trinity there exists a beloved community in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We give you thanks for bringing us into that beloved community of divine love and pray that we might foster it on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

            This week’s Collect notes that, from Jesus, we receive the fruits of his redeeming work and are to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life. One of the fruits of this redeeming work of Jesus is the reconciliation that we are given with God and the opportunity for this reconciliation to be a rule of life for us as we strive to follow him as our Lord. A good shorthand way of talking about this is “beloved community.” Through the sacrifice of Christ, we have been brought into the beloved community by God’s grace and in following his blessed steps, we find our fulfillment in living as a beloved community. At St. Luke’s, we’ve been talking about and striving to become the beloved community. Using today’s Scripture texts, we’ll consider what exactly what the phrase “Beloved Community” connotes.

August 2, 2020 - The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Lectionary Readings

Be with us, O Lord, for if you are with us nothing else matters; and if you are not with us, nothing else matters. Amen.

            One of the Psalms asks, “Can God set a table in the wilderness?” That’s the question, isn’t it? When we are deepest in our need and have nowhere else to turn, can we trust in God to provide? When we get a bad diagnosis, when the interview doesn’t go our way, when the addiction is taking over, when the bullies won’t go away – is God with us or not? And in this midst of this pandemic which is dragging on and leaving more and more death and disruption in its wake – in the midst of this wilderness, can God set a table of refreshment? I don’t know about you all, but for me, the Good News of the Gospel is that, indeed, God can and does set tables in the wilderness.