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.

February 26, 2020 - Ash Wednesday

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            Ash Wednesday is a unique day in the Christian year. On every other day of the year, our focus is outward – we focus on caring for those in need, or the environment, or the Church and we focus on glorifying and praising God. Certainly, we praise God in all things, Ash Wednesday included. But today is unique because our focus is not outward, but rather inward. On Ash Wednesday we come face to face with our sinfulness, our mortality, and our neediness. It’s important that we spend one day a year doing this sort of introspection because, for one, it’s honest, but also because such reflection prepares us to receive more fully the grace of God.

September 22, 2019 - Proper 20C

Lectionary Readings

O God of healing grace, cure our sin-sick souls and make us whole that we might serve the world in your most holy name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?” The down-trodden prophet Jeremiah asks that question of lament. This past Holy Saturday, in the homily I mentioned that we often overlook lament as a type of prayer. The Prayer Book lists adoration, praise, thanksgiving, penitence, oblation, intercession, and petition as the different types of prayer, but, in an error of omission, they forgot lament.

A prayer of lament is about expressing a sense of doubt, pain, grief, despair, hopelessness, or Godforsakenness. It is a prayer of brutal honesty and truth-telling with, or, even, against God. These laments are offered because there is a faithful assumption that when we boldly tell the truth that God will hear us. So often we avoid lament though – we don’t want to burden others with our problems, we want to appear strong and put together, we don’t want to admit our pain even to ourselves because we know that if we name it, we might fall apart. But as we will see through our faith and this Scripture, it is through naming the truth of brokenness that we receive the healing balm of God’s love.

Jeremiah is sometimes called “the weeping prophet,” because much of book that bears his name is a lament. Jeremiah’s ministry occurred between the years 625 and 585 BC, which was an incredibly turbulent time in Israel’s history. The Assyrian Empire had occupied the nation, but its power was fading. So King Josiah was able to restore the religious life of Israel and made restorations to the Temple. But Josiah died in a battle and was replaced with King Jehoiakim who abandoned all of these reforms and Israel was plunged into a time of idolatry, of ignoring widows and orphans, of making political alliances with idolatrous nations, of abusing the resources of the earth for quick economic gain, of abandoning the covenant with God. The end result of all of this is that by 587 BC, the Babylonian Empire would invade and crush Israel. Indeed, there was much to lament over.

The reason why we still read Scripture that is 2,500 years old is because there really isn’t much new under the sun. There is much to lament in our world right now – whether it was the 9/11 remembrances earlier this month, bullying in schools, the destruction in the Bahamas, a cancer diagnosis, an opioid epidemic, the plague of gun violence in our nation, the waning of church attendance across the country, or the impending environmental doom. Now I’m not suggesting that we should ignore the positive things in our lives because there are many things to be thankful for. But we’ve forgotten how to lament. Lament is not the same thing as complaining, or being hopeless, or blaming others for our situation. Lament is truth-telling, it is about acknowledging the fact that we are broken, that there is injustice and we do not possess the means of healing in ourselves.

Lament is a necessary and healthy part of faith because it prepares us to receive the restoring and healing grace of God. There’s a particular phrase in Christianity that I really don’t understand, even though I hear people use it all the time. When someone is struggling with something, you’ll often hear them say “I’ve turned it over to God.” I have no idea what that means. Maybe other people have more discipline than I do, but I can’t control what I think about. If I’m worried about something, I don’t have the ability to just say “That’s God’s problem now, so I’m not going to worry about it.” Again, if you’ve got the willpower to do that, God bless you. But for those of us who still struggle, prayers of lament might be the medicine that we need.

Lament involves us not pretending that the problem is gone because we’ve told God to take care of it, but lament is about continuing to name the fact that things are broken. Lament insists on God’s justice. Lament is about anticipating that God will heal us. And lament is about taking an active role in this salvation – now we might not actually be doing much to cause the healing, but by continuing to acknowledge the pain instead of pretending that everything is okay, we keep ourselves open to God’s gracious healing. Without lament, we might either forget injustices or abandon hope. The steady drumbeat of lament is crucial to our faith and prepares us to receive God’s healing balm.

I truly don’t know why it is this way, but healing comes through pain. The central message of Christianity is that God loved us so much as to become vulnerable and come among us as one of us, enduring the shame and pain of rejection and Crucifixion and then rose from the dead to open to us the way of everlasting life. Pain is central to the story of faith. So any version of Christianity that purports to be about receiving blessings, happiness, or living your best life now doesn’t understand the first thing about Jesus. Acknowledging pain isn’t being pessimistic, it’s being real. Lament helps us in receiving that healing balm of God.

But what is the balm of Gilead? Gilead is a region just across the Jordan River, it’s in modern-day Jordan. It was a place where medicinal herbs were grown and there was some sort of ointment that was made there that had healing properties. But what is interesting in Jeremiah’s question of lament is that he knows that he cannot look towards Jerusalem for this healing. Nor does he ask the religious or political leaders for their assistance. Some problems just can’t be solved by the people who created and are perpetuating the problems. And so Jeremiah turns his hope away from the authority figures. It’s a reminder to us that we might be looking for salvation in the wrong places. Jeremiah isn’t trying to find someone to make the problems disappear, he just wants a balm to soothe the pain and start the healing process.

The thing about a balm is that it doesn’t erase our wounds, rather it heals our pains and promotes healing. Redemption and healing will come from the balm of Gilead, but the scars will remain. The healing balm of God’s grace will not erase the fact that we have reasons to lament, but it does promote healing. You all have heard me quote the famous line from Julian of Norwich before – she writes that “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” At the core of my faith and hope is that sense of trust in God’s love to be a balm that will make all things well.

But in a conversation with one of you about that line, I clarified that even though all will be well, it doesn’t mean that all will be easy. Central to Julian’s writing is an abiding trust and hope that is rooted in the Passion of Jesus. Throughout her writing, Julain notes that healing comes despite and through pain. At one point she writes, “God wants us to know that he keeps us equally in joy and in sorrow, and loves us as much in sorrow and joy.” It’s not that God loves us when things are going well and ignores us when things are going poorly, but God is always with us. And then she writes that “The love that made Jesus suffer his Passion so far surpasses all his pain as heaven is above earth, for his suffering was a deed performed at one time through the working of his love, but love was without beginning, and is, and ever shall be without end.”

The thing about love is that it doesn’t always fix everything, it doesn’t take away pain, it doesn’t erase wrongs, but love promotes healing and transforms despair into hope. Of the things that Julian heard Jesus say to her in her visions was that he willingly and joyfully endured the pains of the Cross and would have suffered more gladly had it been necessary. Only love can do that. And this is what makes Jesus our great physician and what makes lament effective. The person who hears our lament is none other than Jesus Christ who suffered on the Cross out of love for us all. As we see in the Cross, his love is limitless, and while not all pain can be avoided, all pain can be transformed. But it takes bold and honest lament to open ourselves to the power of love to heal us.

We all need the balm of God’s love in our lives and in our world. Perhaps one of the greatest examples of the power of this healing balm of God’s love is found in the African-American spiritual “There is a balm in Gilead.” You’ll notice that Jeremiah asks a question: “Is there a balm in Gilead?” and this hymn proclaims that, indeed, there is a balm in Gilead. The hymn dates back to a song sung by enslaved Africans in this country. There were under no illusion that slavery would end overnight or that the whips would stop cracking at their backs. But they had such tremendous faith in the power of God’s love to make all things well that they were able to sing, in the face of pain and persecution, that there is a balm in Gilead. They knew more about the power of the healing balm of Jesus than I probably ever will. We also see this spirit of hope that comes through lament in what is sometimes called the “Black National Anthem,” the hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” It includes the inspiring line, “Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod, felt in the days when hope unborn had died… we have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered, out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last where the white gleam of our bright star is cast. Lift every voice and sing till earth and heaven ring, ring with the harmonies of liberty.” The witness of our brothers and sisters in Christ who have endured so much shows us the power of lament to name injustice while anticipating God’s redemption, and that ability to lament with hope is what sustained a people who endured so much pain.

It is with their example in mind that I want to say something about the process of lament that we’ve been undertaking at St. Luke’s over the past year. We haven’t called it lament, but a lot of the work that we’ve been doing around Becoming the Beloved Community is lamenting. We’ve been naming the sin of racism and anticipating that God will transform our hearts and heal our sin-sick souls as we seek reconciliation. The Beloved Community framework that was given to us by Presiding Bishop Curry’s office has several components to it, and the place that we’ve begun is a phase called “telling the truth.” This truth-telling is where lament begins.

Over the next several months, these laments will be voiced. On October 20, we’re going to premier an incredibly powerful video series that we produced which captures the voices of five African-Americans, three of whom are members of this congregation, telling the truth about their experiences of growing up in Salisbury in the Jim Crow era. I’ve watched a first draft of the video and I’ll tell you that it really is lament – there were moments when I was on the verge of tears to hear the pain that people I love experienced, there were moments when I was angered that such injustices were tolerated, and there were moments of hope where I saw the balm of Gilead healing wounds and doing the work of reconciliation.

Then on November 8, 9, and 10 we’re going to have two national leaders, Catherine Meeks and Will Willimon, at St. Luke’s to help us in lamenting the role the racism has played in our society. And on January 19, the Sunday of Martin Luther King weekend, we’re going to have a presentation by a historian that we’ve commissioned to explore this parish’s history as it relates to slavery and race. In all of these events, truths will be told. Some of these truths will be inconvenient, some will be uncomfortable, and some will be disturbing.

A crucial part of truth-telling is truth-hearing. I ask you, starting today, to start praying for the Holy Spirit to prepare our hearts to hear these truths as the laments that they are. Some of the truths you hear you might not agree with – and that’s okay. Someone else’s experience of truth doesn’t have to be your experience of truth, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s their lament and we need to be prepared to hear those laments. Many of the Psalms are psalms of lament, so in preparation for these events, you might start reading through the book of Psalms and see the power of honestly naming what is broken as a means of preparing those wounds for the healing balm of God.

This work of Becoming the Beloved Community begins with telling the truth and lament because there are wounds that are still festering, that are not yet healed. This injury cannot be ignored, but has to be named with the expectation that God’s love can make all things well. We lament as a commitment to the process of reconciliation and healing. Never underestimate the importance and power of lament, of naming what is broken, because with God as our healer, indeed, “there is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole.”

March 31, 2019 - Lent 4C

Lectionary Readings

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.

            If you were to turn to the Catechism in the back of the Prayer Book, you’d read that the mission of the Church is to “ restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” That’s a pretty tall task – restoring all people to unity with God and with each other. But this audacious mission statement comes not from a grandiose sense of what the Episcopal Church thinks it can accomplish, but rather is grounded in the words of St. Paul. In the second letter to the Corinthians, he writes “God has given us the ministry of reconciliation.”

July 22, 2018 - Proper 11B

Lectionary Readings

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ☩ one God and mother of us all. Amen.

            You’ve probably heard the cliché “Good fences make good neighbors.” Maybe that’s true for some neighbors, but it simply doesn’t work when it comes to our faith. Good fences make terrible Christians. In the letter to the Ephesians, we heard this morning that “For Jesus is our peace; in his flesh he has made both Israel and Gentiles into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” The Greek actually says that Jesus “destroys the dividing portion of the fence.” You might know that the saying about good fences comes from a Robert Frost poem called “Mending Wall,” in which he makes the point that good fences do not actually make good neighbors. Frost writes “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” As we read in Ephesians, that something that doesn’t love a wall is called the Gospel.

February 19, 2017 - Epiphany 7A

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            What does it mean to be a Christian? That, I realize, is a big question. But it seems that we who gather on a Sunday morning in the name of God ought to be able to answer that question. I suppose the simplest answer is “Being a Christian means believing in the triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” But then we might ask, “what does it mean to believe,” and we’re right back where we started – struggling to articulate what our faith is all about. Both our readings from Leviticus and Matthew offer some insight into how we might coherently understand our faith and what it means to be Christian.

February 5, 2017 - Epiphany 5A

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

                “You shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.” Isaiah conveys the message that God intends to restore the people to the peace and righteousness that they are destined for. And furthermore, God intends that it is our godly behavior that will bring this about. Would that we be deserving of such a title – repairers of the breach.

            Because of the reality of human sin, brokenness has always been a part of our story. There has never been a time when we perfectly obeyed God’s law and lived without war or oppression. There is a gap between God’s loving purposes and the way we live our lives. That gap is the breach. It’s not that we need to find some golden-era of our history and make that happen again. Rather the work of our faith is to do our part to fill in that gap, which sometimes seems more like a chasm, between the love, justice, mercy, and peace of God and the violence, greediness, and selfishness in our lives.

            I’m younger than most of you, and so I don’t have your lived experience. But from where I sit, born in 1984, the breach that we seem to be in right now as a nation is wider than it has ever been. The anxiety, the dissention, the vitriol, the mistrust, the tension, the brokenness are all palpable. We wake up each morning and log-in to Facebook, open the paper, or turn on the news to see what it is that we’re supposed to be angry about today. It’s almost as if we’ve forgotten what peace or tranquility feels like. We’ve become so accustomed to scapegoating and raging that we can’t function when we don’t have an object to absorb our anxiety. This era that we’ve living in feels different than any other that I’ve lived through.

            As I said, I didn’t live through World War II, the Vietnam protests, or the Civil Rights movement. Maybe those of you who did live through those times have felt this societal tension and unrest before, I don’t know. But I do know that we can’t go on like this much longer. Our collective blood-pressure is too high, the tone of conversations is too caustic, the prospects for our future are too dim.

            In our text from Matthew, Jesus conveys the importance of the writings of the Old Testament. We would do well to take a cue from our Savior and focus in on the words from Isaiah this morning. This passage of Isaiah comes in a section of the book known as Second Isaiah. Chapters 40-59 were written after the Exile of Israel in Babylon, as the people were liberated from their captivity. As they return to the land, they sought to reestablish their religious rituals – fasts and sacrifices. But they were also returning to some bad habits – an inwardly focused religion, ignoring the needy, and constant quarreling with each other. If it sounds like the version of Christianity that seems to be prevalent in America, well, then all the more reason to pay attention to Isaiah’s prophecy.

            There really are two sorts of religion out there. One version focuses on the individual – God’s salvation to me and my allegiance to God. There is certainly some truth in this sort of faith, but it misses the larger point. It’s sort of like confusing one puzzle piece for the entire thing. God, through Isaiah, critiques this version of the faith, saying “Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.” God notes that the people are seeking to follow God, claiming to be a nation of righteousness, asking for God to bless their nation. The people even like to draw attention to their faith with public prayer services and picking religious fights with others, even saying to others “My sincerely held religious beliefs dictate that I tell other people how to live their lives.” They were becoming me-first nation, one that was closed off to others and focused on securing their borders instead of helping those in poverty. I want to be perfectly clear on this: I’m talking about ancient Israel – all of this stuff is in the Bible, you can look it up. If you find parallels to our modern situation, all the more reason to keep paying attention to Isaiah.

            But God isn’t swayed by this legalistic and uncompassionate sort of faith. The Lord says “You serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers.” God asks his people, “When did I ever ask you to make yourselves a miserable bunch people who spend all day judging each other and fighting with each other?” Rather, God has made it clear through Abraham, Moses, Ruth, and Micah that God chooses a fasting from injustice, a cessation of slavery, a stoppage of oppression. God isn’t as interested in the things that we do not do, but rather the things that we actually do. Instead of people saying “My faith tells me that action is immoral” and then forcing that opinion on others, God makes it clear that the sort of faith that God is expecting is the sort of faith that eliminates poverty, and homelessness, and breaches in community.

            And in our society you can see that these two sorts of religious understanding are still alive and well. I want to be perfectly clear, Republicans or conservatives are not to be identified with the self-serving version of faith any more than Democrats or progressives are to be identified with the justice-oriented version of faith. Political party or ideology is not a part of this conversation. The issue isn’t what beliefs you bring to the table. God’s altar is plenty big enough that there is room for everyone. The issue is what you do at the table.

            When you see someone who is hungry, do you share some bread? When you have an extra room, do you invite in the homeless refugee? When you see someone without a winter coat, do you give them one? When you encounter someone you disagree with, do you say “thank God I’m not like them,” or do you see them, first and foremost, as a child of God? This is what God expects our religion to be about – not following rules, but doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God.

            This is what St. Paul writes about in his letter to Corinth. He says “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” There were fierce debates in the early Church about all sorts of things – whether the faith was only for Jews, or if foreigners should be allowed in, or who was qualified to be a leader. Paul could have gotten sucked into this deformed version of Christianity. He could have weighed in with his opinions or thoughts. But he doesn’t. In another place, he says that he regards all of that sort of stuff as “rubbish.” All that matters is Christ crucified. And what does the Cross shows us but the realization that being right doesn’t count for anything, that those who seek to preserve their life will lose it while those who lose their life will find it, that compassionate action is preferred to pious thoughts.

            The Cross is so crucial because it repairs that breach between us and God, between God’s intention for us and our sin, between our divisions and God’s peace. Because Jesus was willing to stand in that gap of being forsaken, bloodied, and beaten, he becomes a bridge for us who are willing to follow his way.

            In Matthew, Jesus exhorts us to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth. It’s a question of what we do with light and salt. Do we put the light in a lantern or a lighthouse? The same candle can either be used selfishly, or for the good of the whole world.  Jesus knew what he was doing when he offered us these metaphors. The interesting thing about light and salt is that when you use them, they dissipate and dissolve. It goes back to the reality that faith isn’t to be self-serving. Sure, we can hoard onto our light and our salt, just as we can use our religion to validate our political agenda – that isn’t hard to do, we’ve been perfecting that approach for thousands of years. Light and salt though only become effective and find their purpose when they are given up to something bigger than themselves. This is what the Cross shows us, that because Jesus was willing to give up his life, we were able to see the love of God in a deeper way.

            Isaiah makes the choice clear: “If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer food to the hungry, and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness.” We have breaches that need to be repaired, we have dark places that need light. In Lent, we’ll focus on the breach of racism in our culture during our Wednesday night program.

            God trusts us and empowers us to do this work. Isaiah writes “The Lord will guide you continually… Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.” If we are going to be deserving of these titles, if we are going to practice the sort of religion which God desires, then we are going to have to realize that Jesus was right when he said “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

            You’d think that after 2,000 years we’d have figured this out, but we haven’t yet. New life only comes through death. Resurrection only comes through the Cross. Salvation only comes through defeat. If our religion, or politics, is self-serving, focused on being right, or about following rules, we’ll never get to the hope of Resurrection.

            There are plenty of breaches to be repaired. It is up to us whether they grow wider or find healing and reconciliation. What sort of religion do we practice – one that draws people together or one that divides people, one that tells others what not to do more than it informs what we are to do, one that focuses on our comfort and security more than on the suffering and oppression of others? It is not my job to tell you what to believe, what to think, or what to do. I’m not in that business, because, God knows, I don’t have it all figured out.

            But here’s what I can tell you – as a nation, we need to decide what kind of people we want to be. Are we a nation with a priority of security and prosperity or a priority of “liberty and justice for all”? Do we want to be a lantern or a lighthouse? And as individuals, we will also have to decide what sort of person we want to be. Will we focus on ourselves or will we be the light of the world and the salt of the earth? Will we seek first our power, prestige, and comfort, or will we die to ourselves so that we might live for God? Is being right more important to you than being together? Will we repair the breaches of our world? Is your faith more about you or more about God, more about judgment or mercy, more about gaining your life or losing it?

            Whatever you decide, however you choose to live, whatever you choose to believe, whomever you choose to judge, how much you decide to love, whether or not you seek to save your life or to lose it – that’s your choice to make. Just make sure that you’re comfortable with that choice. We begin most Sundays with a prayer that acknowledges that to God “all hearts are open, all desires known, and no secrets are hid.” Make sure the choice that you make is the one you want to be judged by.

April 10, 2016 - Easter 3C

Lectionary Readings

In the name of the Risen Lord. Amen.

            The Book of Common Prayer, drawing from Scripture, states that the mission of the Church is to “restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” In other words, the mission of the Church is reconciliation. Reconciliation is what the Easter season is all about – reconciling the dead to eternal life; reconciling sin to forgiveness; reconciling those who denied Jesus to the grace of the Holy Spirit. Reconciliation is about restoring things which have gone astray, about setting things rights. So you might say that doing the work of reconciliation is to do the work of justice, and that is what our readings today are all about.

March 6, 2016 - Lent 4C

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            With all due respect to Shakespeare, a rose by any other name would not be as sweet. Names matter. The passage from Luke that I just read often goes by the name “The Parable of the Prodigal Son.” Notice that that word, “prodigal,” is found nowhere in the passage itself; but, nevertheless, that is the name by which this story is known. And that name influences how we hear the parable and what we take from it. The name changes our perspective. What if we called it “The Parable of the Fatted Calf”? How about “The Parable of the Gullible Father”? Or perhaps, “The Parable of the Self-Righteous Older Brother”? Just by changing the name of the parable, which isn’t actually in the Bible, we can change the entire meaning of Jesus’ words.

June 21, 2015 - Proper 7B

Lectionary Readings

Almighty God, may you guide us to seek the Truth: come whence it may, cost what it will, lead where it might. Amen.

             “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” If we read Mark chronologically, then by the time this storm arises on the sea of Galilee, the disciples have already been called by Jesus, have witnessed him heal people, and have heard his first parables. Perhaps the disciples were beginning to put together that there is something different about Jesus. That night on the waters, a violent storm popped up and Jesus calms the wind and the waves. And so they ask the question that has been asked, fought over, and prayed over for thousands of years- “who, then, is this?”

May 24, 2015 - Pentecost B

Lectionary Readings

Descend, O Spirit, purging flame and brand us with Jesus’ name. Confirm our faith, consume our doubt; sign us as Christ’s within, without. Amen.

There’s a story of a parish secretary who wrote all of the priest’s sermons, but never got any of the credit for doing so. Finally, she could stand it no longer, so on Sunday when the priest was in the pulpit he said “and this is the most important thing to understand, it is an example of the most complex feature of the human condition as expressed by the great fourth century theologian…” The priest turned the page and saw a blank sheet of paper marked only with the words “You’re on your own now.” Last Sunday, our Collect prayed, in part, “Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit.”

May 10, 2015 - Easter 6B

Lectionary Readings

In the name of the Risen Lord. Amen.

Have you ever been at a social gathering where you walked up to a group of people having a conversation in which you had no clue what was happening? That’s what today’s reading from Acts feels like. The whole of chapter 10 of Acts is, I think, one of the most compelling and informative passages in the entire New Testament, but it’s hard to understand in isolation. So before we dive into the text and consider what the Holy Spirit is saying to us today through it, let’s review the tenth chapter of Acts.