July 18, 2021 - The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Lectionary Readings

Gracious and loving God, may only your Truth be spoken and only your Truth be heard ☩ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            A few weeks ago, in preaching on the subject of generosity and giving, I recounted the story of a pastor who, instead of saying “Praise God from whom all blessings flow” when the collection came forward, said, “God, this is what we think of you.” And while that may be true in some sense, the grace of God is that regardless of what we think of God, God shows us unrelenting grace, mercy, and love. Well, today the topic isn’t giving or money, but rather relationships and reconciliation. And that statement might also be a helpful one for this topic; when it comes to how we treat God’s children, that is, one another, we are saying something like “God, this is what we think of you.”

July 11, 2021 - The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Lectionary Readings

Gracious and loving God, may only your Truth be spoken and only your Truth be heard ☩ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            Paying off the mortgage, making sure the kids can go to college without debt, giving to charity, and no longer driving a minivan – those are the first things I’d do if I won the lottery. I’m not sure that I’ve ever bought a lottery ticket in my life, and yet, when I see that billboard on 85 between exits 75 and 76 with the estimated winnings, I engage in “lottery fantasy.” And now that there’s a million-dollar lottery for getting a COVID vaccine, all of us who have done the right thing and had our vaccine are now enticed to think about how we’d spend that million.

July 4, 2021 - The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Lectionary Readings

Gracious and loving God, may only your Truth be spoken and only your Truth be heard ☩ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to him belong, they are weak, but he is strong.” Many of us learned that song as children, but little did we know that it’s not some simple Sunday School song – it’s actually the sort of deep theological truth that St. Paul is writing about in the passage we heard from 2 Corinthians. Yes, “Jesus loves me” is an important message and you’ve heard me preach on that idea many times. Today, I want to focus on the other part of the song – “they are weak, but he is strong.”

June 27, 2021 - The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Lectionary Readings

Gracious and loving God, may only your truth be spoken and only your truth be heard ☩ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            You all remember that, before the pandemic, back when we were passing the offertory plate, when it was brought to the altar as a symbol of our thanksgiving, we would either say “All things come of thee, O Lord; and of thine own have we given thee” or sing “Praise God from whom all blessings flow…” Both are fitting words to accompany this liturgical action. I recently heard of a minister though who said something different; something, a bit more truthful and provocative. When the offering would reach the front of the assembly, the offering plates would be raised with the minister saying, “God, this is what we think of you.”

June 20, 2021 - The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Lectionary Readings

Preached at All Saints' Episcopal Mission, Linville, North Carolina

Gracious and loving God, may only your truth be spoken and only your truth be heard ☩ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            My guess is that if you had a time machine and could talk to people of different eras, most would say that they lived through unsettling times. The first followers of Jesus dealt with proclaiming a crucified and Risen Messiah. Subsequent generations dealt with persecutions. Throughout history, there have been warring tribes and foreign invaders to disrupt lives. There have been uprisings, famines, and plagues. Going from the colonies to a new nation must have been a disruptive time. The introduction of the train, then the automobile, then the aircraft had a disorienting effect on society. In our own lifetime, the rise of the internet and computers that fit into our pockets has redefined normalcy.

June 13, 2021 - The Third Sunday after Pentecost

Lectionary Readings

Gracious God, may only your truth be spoken and only your truth be heard ☩ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            Have you ever had an experience that caused you to see things differently? The question reminds me of a 10-minute short film called “The Lunch Date,” in which a woman is hurrying through a train station and misses her departure. So she goes to get lunch at a restaurant in the station. She gets a salad, puts it down on the table, and then walks back to the counter to get a napkin and silverware. When she gets back to the table, she finds a man sitting there, eating her salad. She rants and complains, but to no avail. So she takes her fork and starts eating the salad as well. After a few minutes, the man goes up to the counter and comes back with two coffees – one for him and one for her. Well, she drinks the coffee and then gets up and leaves to head back to the train platform to catch the next train, but realizes that she left her bag at the restaurant. She goes back only to find her bag sitting at a table different from the one she had been eating at and on the table sits her uneaten salad. She thought this man had sat at her table and eaten her salad, when, in reality, she had sat at his table and eaten his salad. She laughs to herself in a moment of embarrassment, surprise, and epiphany. Again, it’s called “The Lunch Date” and is a poignant 10-minute film that explores what happens when we act on faulty assumptions and the grace that can come through seeing things differently. The Scripture texts this morning from 1 Samuel and 2 Corinthians help us to see things differently.

June 6, 2021 - The Second Sunday after Pentecost

Lectionary Readings

O Lord, you are the Way, the Truth, and the Life; may only your truth be spoken and only your truth be heard ☩ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            Before diving into the Biblical texts this week, a larger question has to be asked about how we read Scripture. On the Sundays after Trinity Sunday, the lectionary readings start to be more chronological than thematic. In Lent and Easter, there was a fairly easy-to-spot thread that connected the readings thematically, but for the next several months we will be reading Biblical books in course. The Old Testament readings will take us through the narrative of King David and then into wisdom literature in the fall. Our Epistle readings will take us through 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, James, and Hebrews. And other than a five-week excursus into John in August, the Gospel texts will be coming from Mark.