Merry Christmas. It is such a joy to be spending Christmas morning with you all, and I am so glad to see each and every one of you on this blessed Christmas morn. Christmas is about joy – the joy of God’s love coming to us in Jesus, the joy of gathering as beloved community to receive the gifts of God in music, Scripture, and Sacrament, and the joy of hearing the Good News of our salvation.
Gracious God, give us hearts to be enchanted by
your love on this most holy night ☩ in the name of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Tonight is about enchantment. By enchantment, I mean an openness to trust that there is more to the world than meets the senses. That there is a truth, goodness, and beauty that surrounds us that is waiting to be discovered and is making itself known to us. This is a truth that our ancestors knew in their bones – that instead of us being the masters of creation, we are very much a part of it and are susceptible to forces beyond us. Sometimes these forces were called spirits, sometimes they came through incantations, sometimes through the actions of God. But we live in what some have called a buffered world – a world that has been disenchanted by rationalism, closed off from possibilities beyond what we can imagine or make for ourselves. On Christmas though, we are enchanted by Good News that a child has been born for us, a son given to us, and that he is Christ the Lord.
O God of our salvation, grant us to trust that
because of your grace, all shall be well ☩
in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
There are things in life and faith that we wonder about, even if we do not worry about them; things that we are curious about or questions that we have for which the answer is not really a make-or-break issue. That’s not to say such topics are not important and can’t have an impact on us, it’s just that they aren’t foundational to how we live life and follow Jesus. Given the season and today’s readings, I want to consider such a topic: the virgin birth.
Lord Jesus, as we await the day of your coming,
give us eyes to see your grace all around us. Amen.
If we are doing God’s work, why is the church’s budget so tight? If God cares about justice, why is there so much inequity and injustice in our society? If love is the way, then why does it seem like bullying and greed get better results? If Jesus gives us the peace that passes all understanding, why do so many struggle with depression, anxiety, and addiction? Or, in the words of John the Baptist, “Is Jesus the Messiah, or are we to wait for another?” Would it be better for us to put our trust in strength, our investments in the market, and our hopes in self-improvement plans?
Loving God, we thank you for having prepared the
way for us through your servant John the Baptist, give us grace to walk in that
way which leads to abundant life in Jesus Christ. Amen.
Have you ever noticed that is often easier to do something once someone has showed you how to do it? Whether it’s a golf swing, singing a particular melody, having a difficult conversation, or learning how to tie a knot – when we can watch or hear someone do it first, not only do we have a better sense of what to do, but we also gain confidence in knowing that the task can be accomplished. Every Second Sunday of Advent, John the Baptist appears in our Gospel text just as he appeared in the wilderness of Judea proclaiming the message – “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
O God of our salvation, awaken us to your love and
enchant us by your grace ☩
in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Imagine a world in which different people got their news from different sources. Maybe there isn’t much imagination required. But imagine what it would be like to change the network and get our news from a completely different vantage point. At its best, this is what the season of Advent helps us to do. Advent reorients and repents our understanding of time, our vision of ourselves and the world, and our hopes and fears. Our assumptions about life are seen afresh and anew by the coming light of Christ. Advent helps to correct our vision.
“Come, ye thankful people, come, raise the song of harvest home.” It is so good to be here with you all this morning to celebrate Thanksgiving. I have nothing at all against parades, turkeys, or football, but Thanksgiving never feels quite right to me without gathering to give thanks to God. The danger of being thankful in the abstract without having a subject for our thanks is that we start to think that we earned all the good that we have by our own striving or by being lucky. It is meet and right though to gather in the name of God, to sing hymns of praise to God, and to celebrate the Eucharist, the Great Thanksgiving, on this day of gratitude. Such worship directs our thanks not inwardly or to chance, but rather to the God who has chosen us and loves us in Jesus Christ and intends these blessings for us.
O God of the living and the dead, help us to come
and see the glory of the Resurrection which is more than we can ask for or
imagine. Amen.
The phrase “more than we can ask or imagine” is familiar to us because it is one of the verses of Scripture that we close Morning and Evening Prayer with. It comes from the letter to the Ephesians in which St. Paul writes, “Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.” Because of our self-reliance and limited imaginations, we can be unaware of just how awesome and grand the Resurrection is. It’s like the story of the two fish who are swimming along and one fish says to the other, “The water seems nice today” and the other responds, “What’s water?”. Because we live in a post-Easter world, one in which the stone at the tomb has already been rolled away, it can be easy to be oblivious to the Resurrection all around us.
O God of the living and the dead, help us to wait
in faith, hope, and love. Amen.
“I wait for the Lord; my soul waits for him; in his word is my hope. My soul waits for the Lord, more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning,” so says the Psalmist. On All Souls, we watch and wait. We name the fact that the idiom “time heals all wounds” is a lie. We acknowledge that grief is never something we “get over,” but rather it is like a scar that reminds us of a wound. In a world that does not know how to sit in grief, on All Souls’ Day the Church says that such waiting is the holiest thing we can be doing.
A blessed Feast of All Saints to you all. On this holy day on which we celebrate the Communion of All the Saints, it is good to be with the saints of St. Luke’s Parish. There are some feasts, such as Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, the Ascension, and Pentecost on which we remember particular events, but on All Saints, we are not recalling something that happened in a particular place or time, rather we celebrate something that happens in the fullness of time. All Saints is the celebration of the beloved community of God. The icon that we dedicated earlier this year of the Feast of Pentecost can also be interpreted as an icon of All Saints because it portrays the wonderful and blessed diversity of the Body of Christ.
Thank you, O God of grace, for bringing us into
your story of love through Jesus Christ. Amen.
Stories are powerful. Our family is deep into the Star Wars universe and after watching each new episode of Andor, I can tell that the throttles of our imaginations are wide open. And what else is tomorrow all about? Yes, free candy. But the costumes allow us to enter into a different story than the one we normally inhabit. Even if it’s just for an hour, we can be a world-famous athlete, a superhero, an astronaut, or a dinosaur and live by a different story. Last weekend, we went to the Carolina Renaissance Festival, which is always fun. If you’ve never been, it’s a 25-acre medieval village filled with actors and attendees dressed as knights, princesses, goblins, and monks. The website describes it as “A day at the Festival is about leaving your cares behind and escaping to a simpler time and place.” In other words, it is about entering into a story.
God, be merciful to us sinners. Amen.
Writing 1,000 years ago, the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote, “you have not considered the weightiness of sin.” As we heard in Psalm 65, “Our sins are stronger than we are.” Other translations put it as “My deeds of mischief are too much for me” and “We are overwhelmed with our inequity.” Sin is one of those words that can often conjure up images of a wrathful god, inducing fear, guilt, and shame. And though we have a Confession each week in worship, and pray daily “forgive us our trespasses,” it does not mean that we have considered fully the weight of sin. Certainly, some traditions overly focus on sin, which is not what I am advocating for. But as someone who swings kettlebells six days a week, I can tell you that we can get into a whole lot of trouble if we don’t know how heavy the weight we’re working with is.
Lectionary Readings for Proper 24C & The Feast of St. Luke
O God, in your abundant grace you sent your Son to
be the light of the world: Grant that we may come and see the difference that
Christ makes in each of us as we seek to become your beloved community; and as
we gather in intentional worship, may we ever be reminded of your
transformative love which is the foundation of our faith; through Jesus Christ
our Lord, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Today, we mark the Feast of St. Luke and as we remember this saint who wrote both Luke and Acts, we also celebrate this particular beloved community that bears his name. It was 8 years and a month ago that I was called to serve as the Rector of St. Luke’s and there’s not a day I don’t give God thanks for this call. This is such a fantastic parish – we have a gorgeous building, we have dedicated members, we have become known as a church of beloved community, the Foundation and mission committee help us in spreading the love of Jesus beyond our walls, our liturgies are vehicles for God’s grace and peace to be communicated to all, and, in all serious, this is pretty much a drama-free congregation. Truly, this is a special place and it is a blessing to be a part of it.
Give us grateful hearts, O God of love, that we
might receive your grace ☩
in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
The English poet and priest George Herbert wrote, “Thou hast given so much to me / Give one thing more – a grateful heart; / Not thankful when it pleases me, / As if thy blessings had spare days; / But such a heart whose very pulse may be / Thy praise.” When it comes to life and faith, grateful hearts make all the difference. When we receive as a gift, we are opened to the transformative power of God in our lives. And, when we are not grateful we end up with a lot of resentment, entitlement, and fear. Gratitude is a forgotten virtue, but it is one of the ways in which Christ makes all the difference.
O God of love, grant us the gift of your grace,
mercy, and peace ☩
in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
We’re all here this morning because of faith. When times are tough, we sometimes hear “You’ve just got to have faith.” As an introduction to the Creed, I invite us to “proclaim our faith in the words of the Nicene Creed.” In this morning’s reading from 2 Timothy, we heard St. Paul write of how the faith was passed down from grandmother Lois, to mother Eunice, and then to Timothy. But this all begs the question: what is faith?
Compassionate God, help us to see what you would have us to see and not be blinded by the distractions all around us ☩ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
If last Sunday’s parable of the dishonest manager is the most difficult parable there is, we might have run into the second most challenging parable this morning. Sure, it seems like a fairly straightforward parable about the consequences of ignoring the needy, but, as always, Jesus doesn’t give us the parables as moralistic fairy tales. Instead, the parables are about the shocking, subversive, and saving grace of God. What makes this parable difficult is that there are so many things going on in it that we can be distracted from those notes of grace.
Gracious Lord, help us to follow you, especially
when we do not know how to ☩ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I hate this parable. Yes, I know that in Second Timothy we read that “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” but still, I hate this parable. I mean, seriously, “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth”? That sounds more like something from an Enron deposition than it does Jesus. The parable does not have a clear meaning, it’s confusing, and just has a general feel of “ickiness.”
Help us, gracious God, to love in you all
things and above all things ☩
in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the reading from Jeremiah, we have that wonderful image of God as the potter and us as the clay. Psalm 139 speaks of the intimacy and profoundness of God. And Philemon is the only Biblical book with only one chapter – so preaching on an entire book is rare opportunity. For the last week and a half, I’ve been trying to plan a sermon about one of those three texts.
O God of grace and glory, thank you for inviting
us to eat at your table ☩
in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Ambition used to be a vice. Shakespeare wrote of the “canker of ambitious thoughts” and for most of history, ambition was seen as perhaps the greatest vice. The saying was “Fling away ambition: by that sin the angels fell.” St. Augustine wrote of ambition as a “pernicious sin,” saying that ambition is the primary obstacle in the way of Christian faithfulness. Today, we tell people to “reach for the stars” and that “you can do anything that you set your mind to,” which is an absolute lie. We speak of ambition not as a vice, but a virtue – an up-and-coming person is described as “ambitious.” Just this week, Meghan Markle debuted a podcast and the first episode is called “The Misconception of Ambition.” She says she had always thought of ambition as a good thing until meeting the Royal Family and was chided for it. Markle picked up the lesson that we teach in our society – you deserve the best and the only thing holding you back is how bold and ambitious you are.
Loving God, set us free from all that holds
us back from finding our rest in you ☩
in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
One of the best feelings in the world, at least as I’ve experienced it, is actually the lack of feeling. When you’ve been in pain and the pain goes away, it’s one of most wonderful feelings there is. Sometimes it’s a sunburn, sometimes a headache, sometimes a pulled muscle, sometimes the relief doesn’t come until after surgery to fix a knee, shoulder, or back, but there’s simply nothing like that feeling of relief. That release from pain, which might also call liberation or salvation, is what God intends for us all and one of the ways that God seeks to grant us this relief is through the Sabbath.
At St. Luke’s, we have an identity statement. I’ve never been much of a fan of mission statements because organizations invest a lot of time and money into creating one, and then everyone promptly forgets about it and gets back to business as usual. Furthermore, the mission statement of a Church is really quite simple: to do whatever it is that the Holy Spirit tells us to do. But an identity statement is different as it helps us to remember not what we are supposed to do, but rather who we are. And the difference between those two is significant.
O Lord, help us to worship you in Spirit and Truth ☩ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Ritual without justice is heresy. This is the message of the prophet Isaiah and one that the Church must always bear in mind. So often we think that religion is about what we think of God. But we have little evidence in Scripture or Tradition to suggest that God is concerned more about what we say in the Creed than how we treat our neighbors. When the people of God get into trouble it is by neglecting to do justice. To be clear, worship is always the foundation. There’s a reason why the Ten Commandments begin with prohibitions against serving false gods or using God’s name inappropriately. Worship is at the very heart of what it means to be God’s people. But what good is a heart without the rest of the body? This is what Isaiah and the prophets of God challenge us to see – faith isn’t simply about rituals, it is about justice. And if we practice some perversion of the faith without justice, well, that’s heresy.
O Lord, help us to know that our lives are
safe in you ✠ in the name
of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
We’ve all heard the phrase “you are what you eat.” And there’s a lot of truth to that idea – what we consume makes us who we are. This is true not only of foods but any sort of content that we take it. If we listen to a lot of partisan news, we shouldn’t be surprised to find ourselves with stronger than average political opinions. If we read a lot of poetry, our speech might be a bit more lyrical. Studies have shown that children who watch violence in cartoons are then more violent in their interactions with others. We become what we consume.
If there has ever been a set of words spoken more often than the Lord’s Prayer, I’d be surprised. For 2,000 years, Christians have been praying these words, often multiple times a day. And there’s a deep beauty to this – these words are prayed at weddings, gravesides, battlefields, hospital rooms, chapels, and living rooms. I have prayed these words with people as they died, I have prayed with people who know these words even when, because of dementia, they do not know who they are, I have prayed these words with children as they are just learning about the wonderful and amazing grace of God. This is the richness of such a familiar prayer. The other side of familiarity though is that, because we know this prayer so well, we can say these words while on auto-pilot. So it is always good when we have a chance to reflect on and rejoice in these words that our Savior Christ has taught us.
A quick Google search will tell you that “time management” is in high demand. We can watch videos, attend seminars, and read books that all promise to teach us how to better manage our time so that we can be more successful, or whatever the supposed goal of having our time better managed is. We give school children and young adults all sorts of lessons about how to best structure the day to maximize productivity and minimize stress. Judging by the overall feel of our culture right now, I’m not so sure it’s working. We’re just more stressed about how productive we are, or are not. Now, to be clear, I say all of this as probably the most neurotically organized person here, so it’s not that I don’t value time management, it’s just I’m not convinced when we hear Jesus say that “There is need of only one thing” that he is referring to productivity, success, or returns on investments.
In the name of the God who is love ☩ Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Amen.
It’s all about love. It really is. If we could all know just how deeply we are loved, remember this love as the core of our identity, and recognize that participating in and sharing this love is the only the worth doing then we would come and see the abundant life that Jesus intends for us. A life well lived is a life lived in the way of love. This is what today’s Collect and Scripture passages are pointing us towards.
Gracious and loving God, guide us to seek
your Truth: come whence it may, cost what it will, lead where it might. Amen.
This sermon begins with a disclaimer about what I ask of you, as a listener. I do so because this sermon will address the topic of abortion. As a note, I wrote and planned this sermon before the Supreme Court's decision on Friday. I would have preferred the decision to come out this upcoming week so that this sermon could be heard more reflectively and not reactively with tensions high, but I'll play the hand we've been dealt. For one, I ask that you trust me. I hope that you know that I love you and my only priority is pointing to the love of God. I ask that you would listen, and re-listen if necessary, to this sermon. Then reflect on it. Then examine your reactions. And then, finally, to respond after listening for the Spirit. This sermon will be a bit longer than normal, not that I can cover everything, but this is an important enough conversation to not have an artificial time limit imposed on it.
What are the things that matter most? I’m sure we could all come up with responses, and because we’re all in the same culture, our answers would likely be fairly similar: family, church, community, vocational goals, hobbies, serving the least of these. None of these, of course, are bad things. But finding someone who has found the balance in actually prioritizing all of those things would be quite the find. And I don’t know about you all, but I’m exhausted by all of the things that are constantly in front of us. Because of technology, we know far more about the world than we are able to handle. Within a span of just a few minutes on a phone, I can see that we’re in a bear market and quite possibly heading for a recession, I can see reports of the latest carnage in Ukraine, I can read about partisan gridlock in Congress, I can look at charts showing that our nation is still averaging 100,000 new daily COVID cases, I can hear forecasts about violent hurricane season fueled by the climate catastrophe that is upon us and all of that is without thinking about all the people I know who are dealing with cancer, addiction, or depression. Between all that we want to do and care about, it’s exhausting just thinking about it.
In the name of the Holy Trinity, one God ✠ Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Amen.
Today is the Feast of the Holy Trinity, which might come as a surprise to you as this holy day doesn’t have a section in the greeting card aisle and there are no mattress sales associated with it. You might wonder why we have these church holidays that seem a bit obscure and detached from reality. To put it simply, we keep these feasts because this is who we are.
“Hear what comfortable words our Savior Christ saith unto all who turn to him: Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you. God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. This is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be received, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the perfect offering for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.”
In the name of our Risen and Ascended Lord – Jesus Christ.
There’s a book I read earlier this year called How God Became King which was a good read about the message and context of the Gospel. That title though is what is of interest this evening – how God became King. Yes, God has always been King, but we didn’t always know that and recognize it. At the Ascension, we have a glimpse into the fullness of just how exactly it is that God in Christ became king.
This morning, we come to the conclusion of the sermon series on Revelation in the season of Easter. Yes, Easter does have one more Sunday in it, but I’m not going to be here next Sunday. You all know that it’s been a long two years. Public school teachers and hospital physicians and nurses have borne the brunt of this pandemic, but it hasn’t been a walk in the park for clergy and church program staff either. Due to the uncertainty caused by the Omicron surge back in January, I decided, again, to delay taking a sabbatical for another year. But I know that I need some rest. I had planned to go to a monastery for some quiet time; apparently, a lot of people had that same idea because it was all booked up. So I’ll be taking the train up to Washington on Saturday to spend a day in prayer at the Cathedral, to visit the African American Museum, to visit friends, and to worship next Sunday at the first church I served. I mention all of this because some of you have told me that you hope that I’m taking care of myself and getting some rest. Truly, I appreciate your care and concern for me. So all this is to say, I am looking forward to some rest and today’s sermon will wrap up the series on Revelation.
In the name of the One who is Alpha and
Omega, our Way, our Truth, and our Life: Jesus Christ. Amen.
Here’s a riddle: a father and his son are in a horrible car accident and the father died at the scene. The son is rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery. The surgeon enters the operating room, sees the patient on the table and says “I can’t operate – that boy is my son.” How is this possible? According to rigorous research at Boston University, only about 15 percent of people figure it out the first time they hear this riddle. The answer is quite obvious and simple: the surgeon is the boy’s mother. Also, nearly identical results are found when the scenario is changed to a mother and daughter being in the accident and a nurse saying “That girl is my daughter” with the nurse being the father. And, of course, children of same-sex couples would likewise be overlooked as possible answers to the riddle. This riddle is often used in racial equity workshops to demonstrate how bias clouds our judgment and makes us miss the obvious. When it comes to considering the topic presented to us in today’s text from Revelation we are similarly confused.
The Good Shepherd is a beloved image for many Christians. Some of the earliest depictions of Jesus found in shrines and catacombs are as a shepherd. For Jews, the shepherd was a regal figure who followed in the line of Rachel, Moses, and David. Here at St. Luke’s the Good Shepherd stained glass window in the Baptistry has welcomed generations into this sacred space, beckoning them into the green pastures of God’s gracious love. Personally, this image of Jesus is one I cherish. At home, I have a prayer desk where I pray Morning and Evening Prayer each day and on the shelf, I have an icon of the Good Shepherd. It’s no accident that Psalm 23 is one of the most treasured and memorized passages of Scripture – it assures us of God’s comforting presence with us in all times and places.
The top two grossing movies so far this year are “The Batman” and “Spider-Man.” We love the idea of the superhero. Whether it’s James Bond, Xena Warrior Princess, or Luke Skywalker, the idea resonates with us – that we are helpless and we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves, and so we need someone who is better equipped, or divinely appointed, or uniquely gifted to help us. As we continue this sermon series in Easter on Revelation, we are introduced today to the superhero of Scripture: the Lamb.
No, that Gradual hymn was not just me indulging myself with my favorite hymn. Well, maybe just a tiny bit. But in the reading from Revelation, we heard “Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be.” When Charles Wesley worked with this text, he gives us the well-known, “Lo! He comes, with clouds descending.” This hymn makes fits well in Eastertide because the Resurrection is God’s future invading our present. If you want a fuller explanation of this, listen or read the sermon from the Easter Vigil. A hymn about the coming of Christ makes complete sense in Easter because Resurrection is when God’s future and ultimate salvation is experienced in our lives.
In the name of the Risen Lord ✠ Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Amen.
This is the day that the Lord has made, a glorious day unlike any other, that blest day that art hallowed forever whereon Christ arose and made all things new, so let us rejoice and be glad in it. My blessed brothers and sisters, it is so very, very good to see you all this morning. The last time we gathered together like this on Easter was three years ago on Easter of 2019. Seeing you in your Easter best, your smiling faces gladdens my heart and I know that God is pleased and rejoices with us in that we are able to again gather to proclaim that the Lord is risen indeed.
O Lord, stir up in us the flame of that love
which burned in the heart of your Son as he bore his passion, and let it burn
in us to eternal life ✠ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord” opens Psalm 130. After yesterday, where else could we be? We gather in a darkened and stripped church for the barest of liturgies in the entire Prayer Book. There is no Creed, no extended prayers, no Eucharist, it takes up only half a page. This is not because the composers of the Prayer Book were out of ideas or lazy, but rather because we are in depths, and what is there to say after the bitter betrayal, the painful crucifixion, the horrendous murder that we witnessed yesterday?
In the name of the crucified God ✠ Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Amen.
When you go to the Holy Land, there’s a sign that you’ll often see at the front door of many churches – “Silence – No Explanations.” That’s a fitting sign for us to put in the front of our minds today. In Israel, the signs are there to maintain a sense of reverence and worship in churches that are often treated as tourist attractions more than holy sites. At any given location, there are sometimes dozens of tour groups in the buildings, and if each guide tried to point out all of the various things to pay attention to then those who were there to pray would be distracted and frustrated. And so the sign is there at most holy sites – “No Explanations.”
O Lord, stir up in us the flame of that love
which burned in the heart of your Son as he bore his passion, and let it burn
in us to eternal life ✠ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Maundy Thursday may well be the most liturgically complicated gathering of the entire year. For one, we remember the Passover meal of the Jewish faith whereby we recall how God saves us from oppression. We recall that on the night before he died, Jesus gathered his disciples around the table and instituted the Holy Eucharist, telling us to “do this in remembrance of me.” There is the betrayal by Judas, the denial by Peter, and the arrest of Jesus in the Garden after a time of intense prayer – all events that the Stripping of the Altar evokes. Though we are not enacting it this year, this is also the night when Jesus models the nature of true leadership when he serves his disciples by washing their feet. There is the new commandment, mandatum in Latin, which gives us the name Maundy Thursday, in which Jesus says that we are to love one another. Finally, Maundy Thursday begins the Triduum, the three holy days which encapsulate tonight, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and the Easter Vigil. As the notes in the bulletin point out, worship tonight does not end, we simply pause at the close of this first act before returning tomorrow for Good Friday to continue the liturgy. All of this: Passover, Eucharist, foot-washing, betrayal, agony, love, and Jesus’ Passion make Maundy Thursday the most complicated liturgy of the Church year.
O Lord, stir up in us the flame of that love which burned in the heart of your Son as he bore his passion, and let it burn in us to eternal life ✠ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Jerry Seinfeld has a bit in which he talks about the difficulty of being a child: “Wait up!” That’s what kids say. They don’t say “wait,” they say “Wait up! Hey, wait up!” Because when you’re little, your life is up. The future is up. Everything you want is up. “Wait up! Hold up! Let me stay up!” Parents of course are just the opposite. Everything is down. “Just calm down. Slow down. Get down. Sit down. Quiet down. Put that down.” This sense of waiting for things to go up, to improve, is also one that the Psalmist knows. We heard, “Be pleased, O God, to deliver me; O Lord, make haste to help me… come to me speedily, O God… O Lord, do not tarry.” It is a Psalm about living in the meantime when it seems as if God is delaying and keeping us down.
O Lord, stir up in us the flame of that love
which burned in the heart of your Son as he bore his passion, and let it burn
in us to eternal life ✠ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
We continue through Holy Week with the Psalms as our guide, and this evening we have before us Psalm 71. We see the idea mentioned in verse 9 with the reference to “old age,” this Psalm has a superscription, a title, “God’s help in old age.” Now, how we define “old age” is open to interpretation. At 38, I don’t really fall into the category of “old age,” but that doesn’t mean this Psalm isn’t for me. Sure, in another 30 years I might hear it differently, but this is a Psalm about the precariousness of life. All of us face trials, calamities, challenges, and the reality of death. Unfortunately, being younger doesn’t exempt me from any of those things. “Old age” is just another way of saying “when time is short” and it’s short for us all.
In this week which we call “Holy” the Psalms will guide the sermons. The Psalms have served as something like the Prayer Book for the faithful for 2,500 years. One of the things that I so value about our Anglican tradition is that it is saturated in Scripture. Nearly all of our liturgy comes from Scripture and there is hardly a time when we gather for worship that a Psalm is not said or sung. When we pray the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, we read at least 2 Psalms each day and the entire Psalter once a month. The Psalms are a companion to the faithful, helping us to sing praises to God, to lament, to find comfort, and to guide us in faith. This was true for Jesus as well – the Psalms served as a prayer book for him; he even died with a psalm on his lips, showing us the importance of this book for our spiritual lives. So it seems meet and right to focus on the Psalms this Holy Week.
O Lord, prepare us for the beauty and the
wonder of new life in Christ ✠ in the name of the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Have you ever wondered why, for some people, faith is the foundation of their lives and for others, it’s barely a passing thought? It’s a question I often think about. Why are Christians in Iraq willing to risk their lives to gather for Sunday worship while American Christians don’t think twice about skipping church if the lawn needs to be mowed and the weather is nice? Why do some members give thousands of dollars each year to support the ministry of St. Luke’s and others give only a hundred or two, if anything? Why do some people find church to be the most beautiful, stirring, and majestic experience of the week and others find it pedantic, irrelevant, and boring? Or, in terms of our identity statement, why does Christ make all the difference for some, and to others it seems there is hardly a difference at all?
O God, we thank you for being a God who seeks
and finds the lost ✠ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Throughout Lent the Sunday readings there is a common theme – we are dead and God brings us into new and abundant life in Jesus Christ. Today, that theme is about as clear as it gets. In many ways, we experience death – sometimes it’s the death of a dream or idea, sometimes the end of a relationship, sometimes physical or mental decline, and sometimes it is the physical death of a loved one or friend. A lot of these life-draining realities are the result of human sin – war, partisanship, greed, jealousy. Whatever the cause, the result is that we are often left wandering in the valley of the shadow of death. But there’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea; God seeks out and finds the lost and brings us back into the grace of his love.
O Lord, we do not live by bread alone, but
by the grace of your Word made flesh ✠
in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
We mark the season of Lent not because we like doing traditional things, not because we are melancholy, not because we are particularly reverent. From the earliest days of the Church, followers of Jesus have recognized that Easter is most fully celebrated and appreciated when it has been prepared for. Forty is a significant number for Jews and Christians – it’s the number of days that the rain fell when Noah was in the ark, the number of years the Hebrews journeyed from Egypt to the Promised Land, the number of days that Jesus spent in the wilderness being tempted. Forty is a number of completeness, signaling that the proper amount of time has passed. And so forty days before Easter, we begin preparing for it with Lent – a season of examination and honesty, when we name the inevitability of Death, the pervasiveness of Sin, and our utter reliance on God to sustain us.
