In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We have several of Jesus’ hard sayings today. It starts with a memorable scene. Jesus and his disciples are heading south from their native Galilee to Jerusalem, and to do so they need to pass through the territory of the Samaritans. When the Samaritans learned […]
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Although Easter comes every year, this Easter Sunday feels like it has been a long time coming. Too long in fact. So long that I’m not sure my heart is as open to the joy of it all as it should be. It has become […]
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This morning we read one of Jesus’ most famous parables, the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). This is a story near the heart of All Saints’. We have a wall size precious stained glass window of the whole scene in the chapel. It […]
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Last Wednesday was the first time in two years where I stood in-person putting ashes on the foreheads of people that I love saying, “From dust you came to dust you shall return.” It felt personal and holy. It is also felt like the proper […]
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One of the reasons the Bible is so often misunderstood is because a number of its stories are deceptively simple, too simple to understand, too simple to contain the profound everyday truth that it does. Today’s gospel story is one of those. It appears to […]
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. “If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” This is a familiar text, dear to the Christian tradition, that we most frequently […]
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Look for a letter from me this week explaining our fall offerings starting on September 12th (that is, next Sunday). The reason it hasn’t already gone out is that I’m pretty frustrated right now. You may be too. We all we told and believed that […]
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. How good it feels to have our first Holy Eucharist in-person after so long! Look around! We are still here! Having survived what we have suffered, we gather today boasting with St. Paul, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not […]
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As Luke explains the growth of Jesus’ followers in their faith in the resurrection: the risen Jesus asks them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?” In a striking phrase, Luke describes how “in their joy they were disbelieving and […]
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Last Easter Sunday, we could hardly believe that we couldn’t celebrate Easter together. I encouraged you to lean into the Easter experience, hard, to get through the unknown number of weeks that the pandemic would go on. I imagined with you that our first fully […]