October 29, 2023 - The Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost

Lectionary Readings

Help us, O Lord, to love you in all things and beyond all things. Amen.

            Does anyone think that love is a bad plan? Maybe I’m out of touch with the world, but I just don’t think many people hear Jesus’ summary of the Torah, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets,” and then think “Yea, that’s not right, there’s got to be a better answer.”

October 22, 2023 - The Feast of St. Luke

Lectionary Readings (Epistle Reading)

Thank you, gracious God, for Luke and his witness, and grant that we follow faithfully in becoming a church that looks and acts like Jesus. Amen.

            Today, we celebrate our patron, St. Luke. Why this Parish ended up with the name “Luke,” we’re not entirely sure. When we were established in 1753, that’s the name given by the Colonial Assembly, but there’s no further explanation. In the 270 years since then, we have been a part of the fabric of this community of Salisbury, a leader in mission, a refuge for those facing the storms of life, and a place where people have come and seen the love of God in Jesus Christ. For this legacy and for St. Luke, whose witness has guided and inspired our ministry, we give thanks to God and we pray for the continued guidance and grace of the Spirit.

October 15, 2023 - The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Lectionary Readings

Come Holy Spirit, and root, awaken, and open us to your peace which passes all understanding. Amen.

            In his letter written from a prison cell to the Philippian church, St. Paul writes, “The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” This past Lent, the program that I offered focused on prayer and I made the claim that to be a Christian is to be someone who prays. One modern theologian has said that the primary and most important job that clergy have today is to teach people to pray. As I’ve said in several sermons this year – given changes in society and declines in church attendance, what the future of the Church looks like is uncertain. And while there is no single or simple response to this reality, the answer, most certainly, begins and ends with prayer.

October 8, 2023 - The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Lectionary Readings

Help us, gracious Lord, to walk in the path of your love. Amen.

There was a notoriously callous businessman who said “One day, I intend to go to Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments, just as Moses did.” Reportedly, Mark Twain responded, “We would all much prefer that you stayed here and kept them.” And that’s the tension with these ten sayings that God gives to Moses – we hold them in high esteem, and that’s about it. You’ve all heard of the fights about putting plaques of these up in schools and courthouses – but when a child cheats on a test, rarely does the detention slip read “Breaking the 8th commandment and stealing answers” nor does a judge ever dismiss a divorce case and say “The defendant violated the 7th commandment against adultery and this case is now over.” When given the chance to put these words into practice, many fall short. And even when it comes to knowing the content of these supposedly central tenets of our faith, one survey found that Americans are more likely to be able to name the ingredients of a Big Mac than they are to list the Ten Commandments.

October 1, 2023 - The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Lectionary Readings

Help us, O Lord, to live with your cross at the center of our lives. Amen.

            If someone asked you to define who God is, what would you say? As our culture becomes more and more secular, this isn’t a hypothetical question. It’s something that we, as people of faith, ought to have considered. Who do we say that God is? Most responses to that question are rooted in a sense that God is Almighty; that God is powerful in a way that we are not. So we might say that God is unlimited whereas we are finite, or God can control or do anything while we are so limited in our abilities, or God is all-knowing and we are ignorant about most things, or that God is eternal and we are running out of time. And when people talk about what God has done, power is generally rooted in very big things such as God being the creator of all that is, or God being the one who separated the waters at the Red Sea, or God showing up with booming thunder and flaming fire on the mountaintop, or God watching over all things.