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.
Sunday, April 24, 2022
April 24, 2022 - The Second Sunday of Easter
Sunday, April 17, 2022
April 17, 2022 - Easter Sunday
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.
Saturday, April 16, 2022
April 16, 2022 - The Great Vigil of Easter
April 16, 2022 - Holy Saturday
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?
Friday, April 15, 2022
April 15, 2022 - Good Friday
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.”
Thursday, April 14, 2022
April 14, 2022 - Maundy Thursday
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.
Wednesday, April 13, 2022
April 13, 2022 - Holy Wednesday
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.
Tuesday, April 12, 2022
April 12, 2022 - Holy Tuesday
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.
Monday, April 11, 2022
April 11, 2022 - Holy Monday
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.
Sunday, April 10, 2022
April 10, 2022 - Palm Sunday
Sunday, April 3, 2022
April 3, 2022 - The Fifth Sunday in Lent
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?