A Christmas Eve Homily Of all the carols and hymns in the Christmas repertoire, I think the one that best captures the sentiment of this particular year is “In the Bleak Midwinter,” in which the frosty wind made moan and earth stood hard as iron. The earth is hard, in the cold days in the … read
There are days when I think that stories are all that we have. I wonder what stories we will tell when this pandemic is over—stories a year from now or stories a decade from now. We don’t always remember the facts, and we don’t always get all the details right, but the stories we tell … read
Well, we are back to the season of waiting. In the life of the church, the four Sundays before Christmas Day are known as Advent, in which we are waiting for the birth of Emmanuel: God with Us. The scripture this morning calls us to prepare, to ready ourselves to receive God. Writer Michelle Blake … read
To really get into the Scripture text this morning, I decided to do an experiment—I decided to make a bowl using a children’s pottery kit. I made a video of it, which you can see online here: “We are the clay, and you are our potter, we are all the work of your hand.” What … read
In preparation for this sermon, I was in a Zoom meeting with some other clergy from around the United States. The Reverend Angie Shannon is a Lutheran pastor, an African-American woman, who serves a congregation in Maryland. Her grandmother lived to age 100. As Angie said, “She seen some stuff. She saw how you hold … read
What are you afraid of? What do you dream of doing? Let’s let those two questions sit for a while; I promise I’ll come back to them. These parables at the end of Matthew should give the community of faith pause. They are not for the faint-hearted, those who think of the end times in … read