Always in Progress

My rector, John, suggested that we should both have blogs to link to our Church's website. I find the idea sort of daunting, given that my only blogging experience is our family blog that we update with pictures about once a month, if we're lucky, and never can get anything looking quite right. But, like life and faith, surely blogging too can be always in progress.

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Gospel as Stand-Up Comedy

April 8, 2018 Easter 2 John 20:19-31 Today in the church world is often called Low Sunday because of the generally low attendance. After all, everyone came last week and heard the biggest story of all! So church can be crossed off the to-do list for a while. Have you heard the joke about the man who came out of church on Easter and the minister pulled him aside and said, "You need to join the Army of the Lord!" The man replied, "I'm already in the Army of the Lord." The minister questioned, “Then how come I don't see you except at Christmas and Easter?" The man whispered back, "I'm in the secret service." I recently heard a name for today that I much prefer to Low Sunday - Holy Humor Sunday. Apparently, the early church had a tradition of observing the week following Easter Sunday as "days of joy and laughter" with parties and picnics to celebrate Jesus' resurrection. And so there is a (small but grow

Ascension Day for Modern People - the Overview Effect

May 8, 2016 Ascension Day The Ascension of Jesus into heaven is a tricky story for us modern people. We imagine, maybe, the medieval religious art that shows Jesus wearing his white robe floating up into the sky above the astonished disciples, emerging above the clouds. Or, maybe instead, we imagine it more like a scene from Star Trek: “Beam me up, God!” In the early Church’s world view, this story would have made more sense. Back when people understand the world to be flat and hadn’t yet explored the heavens with space shuttles and satellites and telescopes. It’s harder now to take this story seriously. We’ve been above the clouds - we know what’s up there. Luckily for the modern Church, the Feast of the Ascension falls 10 days before the Feast of Pentecost, which means it’s always on a weekday and is pretty easy to skip. We can go straight from Easter and the post-resurrection stories to Pentecost and never have to worry about Jesus floating overhead. Bu

Prayer Stations through the Church Year

Yesterday instead of a sermon I created a series of prayer stations. We are on the cusp of Advent, the start of the Church year, so it seemed like a great time to take a walk through the seasons of the Church calendar. Advent Advent is a season of waiting and hoping. At this prayer station, people could create a different kind of Advent calendar. We each chose 25 strips of purple and pink paper and write a prayer, scripture passage, or idea of something to do on a day of Advent on each strip. Each day, a link is added to the chain until it is complete for Christmas. Christmas During Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus. At this prayer station were gathered multiple nativity creches. People were invited to read the Christmas story from Luke and Matthew and walk through the story, imagining what it might have been like for its participants. We had on hand the People of God figures from Godly Play so we could even place ourselves into the story. Epiphany During Ep

Faith in Progress

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