Palm Sunday, Year B, April 5, 2012

O God, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Holy Week – beginning with Palm Sunday – is often a time when we hear and are encouraged to identify with failure – failure of trust, failure of faith, failure to stay awake and alert, failure to pray, the failure of truth, failure of government, the failure of troops charged with keeping the peace, the failure of religious leaders, the failure of crowds of people. Most of the time in our Palm Sunday services, in a practice that goes back 1000 years, the congregation is expected to take the part of the crowd that shouts “crucify him.” I have to tell you I don’t like that practice at all. Continue reading →

Lent 5B, March 25, 2012

O God of surprises, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

In my experience, Gospel lessons usually raise more questions than they answer. I do like that. I’m much more interested in questions than I am in answers. Still, the gap between questions and answers seems especially pronounced in today’s Gospel lesson. At our vestry meeting this past Tuesday as we were doing a Bible study on this Gospel reading, someone observed that this reads like a speech in which some of the speaker’s index cards have been inadvertently dropped! Continue reading →

Lent 4B, March 18, 2012

Lent 2B, March 4, 2012

O God of life, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

When Abram was 99 years old – in other words, when Abram was as good as dead, he had a vision of the Divine. The One-Whose-Name-is-too-holy-to-be-spoken appeared with a message for him. And Abram fell on his face. He fell on his face.

I’ve spent some time this week wondering about that. Was it intentional or unintentional? Was his belly-flop in the dirt an act of reverence or did he completely lose his balance when the Holy One appeared and spoke? The scene is a little funny to me – the voice of Almighty God commands “walk before me” and then offers, yet again, the promise of exceedingly numerous offspring, and Abram doesn’t walk anywhere. Abram immediately falls down. My curiosity about this face plant prompted me to look to see if Abram falls down every time he encounters the vision or the voice of the Holy. In fact, no. Abram has heard the voice of the Holy One numerous times before this point in the narrative of the Book of Genesis, with no mention of falling down. Continue reading →

Last Sunday of Epiphany, Year B, Feb. 19, 2012

Our Epiphany season began with the Gospel of Mark’s story of the baptism of Jesus, in which Jesus alone hears the voice of the Divine saying, “You are my son, the beloved. With you I am well pleased.” Our Epiphany season ends today with the Gospel of Mark’s story of the transfiguration of Jesus, in which Peter, James and John hear the voice of the Divine saying about Jesus, “This is my son, the beloved. Listen to him.” This second Godly admonition is, in fact, the centerpiece of the Gospel of Mark – and that is no coincidence. Mark, like other ancient writers, employed the literary device of chiasmus (or chiastic structure) to emphasize and highlight particular pieces of information in narrative, the most important being the innermost or center point. This scene is it. Oddly, though, Jesus doesn’t speak in this story. So, one might ask the Divine voice, listen to what? Continue reading →

5th Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B, February 5, 2012

O God of wonder, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

I want to interrupt my preaching on the Gospel of Mark to spend a few moments with you talking about our Hebrew Bible lesson from the 40th chapter of Isaiah. It’s “Second Isaiah,” actually – which is what chapters 40 through 55 get called because they are so clearly written at a different time by a different author than the first 39 chapters of Isaiah and the last 11 chapters of Isaiah. The writer of Second Isaiah might be considered the great poet, rather than the great prophet. This writer never once refers to herself as a prophet. I imagine these words might have come to Jesus’ mind more than once when he found deserted places to pray in the morning while it was still very dark. Continue reading →

4th Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B, January 29, 2012

O God of blessing, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

For those of you who have been following along in the Gospel of Mark, we have arrived at verse 21 in the first chapter! (If you blinked, you missed the first 20 verses.) I’ll summarize: John has appeared in the wilderness, calling for repentance for the forgiveness of sins quoting the prophets Isaiah and Malachi. He has announced that one is coming who is greater than he; has baptized multitudes in the Jordan, including Jesus. Jesus has experienced the pleasure of God and the temptation of Satan; he has been with the wild beasts and messengers sent from God served (or deaconed) him.[1] John has been arrested and Jesus has taken up the same call for repentance, proclaiming the good news that God’s love and justice are so close. Jesus has recruited two pairs of brothers for companions. He has promised to show them how to fish for people! And, now it’s as if the Gospel writer leans forward and says, “watch this!” Continue reading →

 
3rd Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B, January 22, 2012

O God of good news, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

This morning, I want us to notice that we have before us in our Gospel reading, Mark’s story of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (we’re only 14 verses in to first chapter of the Gospel of Mark). After John was arrested, according to Mark, Jesus came out of the Judean desert and into the Galilee announcing that God’s realm was very near. Jesus’ instructions were the same as John’s: to repent, that is, turn around toward God. A complete re-orientation is what they were calling for. “Turn around, the God you are searching for is right behind you, loving you, supporting you!” Jesus began to assemble a team to help him spread this good news that there is an entirely different kind of kingdom – or realm – an entirely different way to be governed than the way the empire does it.
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2nd Sunday after Epiphany, Year B, Jan. 15, 2012

O God of calling and questing, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may and cost what it will.

Those of you who hear me preach on a regular basis know that I often comment on the reading appointments made in our common lectionary. And today is no different. In the midst of sequential readings during the season of Epiphany that are all from the Gospel of Mark, we have a passage from the Gospel of John. I don’t have the foggiest idea why. The answer often given is that the Gospel of Mark is just too short – it moves too fast. (I’ve parroted that answer myself.) But when I stop to think about it, I realize that I’ve never heard anyone in church complain that a Gospel reading (or a sermon, for that matter) was too short!
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1st Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B, January 8, 2012

O God of new beginnings, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will. Amen.

One of the peculiarities of the Western Christian liturgical calendar in these post-modern times is that the glorious Feast of the Epiphany, which always falls on January 6, the 12th day of Christmas, doesn’t get much purchase in our parish churches unless January 6 happens to fall on a Sunday. And the first Sunday after the Epiphany is the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord. That is the feast we observe today. And the problem, at least for our organist Nancy Granert and me (and probably others), is that that leaves no proper place to sing the most exquisite hymn setting of “Brightest and best of the stars of the morning,” except for maybe a hymn-sing in the summer. And so, as we did our usual weekly collaboration on music, we noted with regret that it would seem out of place to sing this hymn on a day that celebrates the Jesus’ encounter with John the Baptist at the Jordan River some three decades after his infancy. But I couldn’t let it go. I asked if it would be too weird to sing it. And Nancy’s enthusiastic response was “it would be weird and fab!” And I thought, “hey, that’s just like us – weird and fabulous!” Continue reading →