Faith in Progress

January 22, 2017 Matthew 4:12-23  We are now several weeks into the filler season.  It doesn’t even have its own name; we just call it The Season After Epiphany.  The miraculous stories of Christmas are over and we have ages before anything exciting happens.  There’s a whole month and a half until Lent when we start getting ready to come close to the mystery of Easter.  So here we sit in this in-between time, which the Church used to call Ordinary Time.   Which certainly doesn’t sound very exciting, but at least it’s honest.   But we’re in luck, because today we are being invited to escape this ordinary time and head out on an adventure!  Today we see disciples-to-be Peter, Andrew, James and John doing what they did before Jesus - casting and mending their fishing nets.  The waves are lapping at the shore, the stench of yesterday’s catch still lingers.  They are in the midst of their ordinary world, with their ordinary relationships and responsibilities.  And then

Epiphany January 8, 2017 This always feels like a strange time of year, this season after Christmas. It’s only been two weeks, but it feels like forever since we gathered in here on Christmas Eve, candles lighting up our faces as we sang Silent Night.  You could almost feel the angel chorus joining us. But now the world around us feels grayer.  All the planning and wrapping and cooking and gifting is done.  The pageant costumes are folded carefully in their plastic tubs.  Christmas trees line the streets in lumps.  The decorations have mostly returned to basements and attics.  If you’re like me, your New Years resolutions have already been broken more times than kept.  We’re back to work and commuting and homework and school-lunch making.  It’s a different kind of busy-ness. We’re back to regular time.  The time when it’s harder to feel God with us.  It’s harder to believe that the mystery of back then is still a part of now.  After Christmas is said and done, it a