Faith in Progress

Lent 1, Year B February 26, 2012 Genesis 8:8-17 Depending on what sort of person you are, you might create two different headlines from the story of Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood from Genesis. If you are a glass half-empty sort of person it would be something like “God Destroys World” and if you are a glass half-full sort of person it might be something like “God Gives World Another Chance.” But neither headline would be complete. Read one way, this story of the flood is a horrendous one about evil and punishment. With only one family excepted, the entire population of the earth is evil and no good. A horde of animals along with this one family are holed up in a dark, smelly, crowded boat on what must have been a scary ride on a raging sea. Every other person and creature is drowned in the waters sent by an angry and punishing God. And then it finally ends and they are sent out to start all over again. To create houses, forage for food, forever reminded of this horrible catastro...

Epiphany 6, Year B Mark 1:40-45 My husband and I are political junkies, so we’ve been watching the recent Republican debates and turmoil with great interest. There’s always somebody putting his foot in his mouth over something. One recent gaffe was when Mitt Romney asserted last week that he is “not concerned about the very poor" because they have an "ample safety net.” He added that if the net is “broken” he’d “fix it”, but that was too little too late for the firestorm that met him in response. It is outrageous to be unconcerned about the very poor when 15% (or more than 46 million people in this country) are living in poverty, which means making less than $22,350 for a family of 4. Can you imagine living on that? It is outrageous to be unconcerned about the very poor when you take a stroll down the less attractive parts of Route 1 and see people carrying all their belongings in trash bags. The safety net” that Mitt relies on so heavily isn’t close to enough. More than...

This past weekend, we took a group of middle and high schoolers from St. Aidan's to New York City.  It was a quick trip - left Friday at noon and returned Saturday at 9 p.m.  But full of adventure.  We arrived in time for dinner and ate at a pizza place across from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.  I'm not sure if it was really the best pizza in the world, or if I was just starving and thrilled to have arrived safely. After dinner, we checked into the Cathedral for its Nightwatch program, which is basically a lock-in.  There were about 80 youth from Connecticut, NY, Maryland, and Virginia, some Episcopal and some not.  They started us out with some ice-breakers.  (This is our group watching the Cowboys, Ninjas, Bears tournament -- lock rock, paper, scissors but more of a full-body experience.) They had a great band of young and very talented musicians that led music for worship.  We started with a singing downstairs in the gym, where we wo...

Epiphany 3, Year B January 22, 2012 In seminary, one of my good friends was always complaining about how the lectionary didn’t include enough of the great Old Testament stories. I hate to admit it, but I always thought it was much ado about nothing until I started preaching and thus really started paying attention. We go through pretty much all of the Gospels in our 3 year cycle, and get plenty of time with the Epistles, but other than the Psalms we only get one Old Testament reading each week. Only one-in-three of our major readings are from the part of the Bible that is 3 times longer than the New Testament. So I guess it’s not surprising that our coverage of the Old Testament is reduced to snippets and sound bites. But today’s example, from the book of Jonah, is especially egregious. The miniscule portion of Jonah that we get today is not enough to bother with. It makes both Jonah and God seem like boring and one-dimensional characters, when in reality they are anything but. ...

Christmas Eve, 2011 Luke 2:1-20   This is an odd time of year. There is such an intense build up to Christmas – the stores marketing all the things we need to buy in order to prove our love to people, the pressure from our families to spend more time with them or from our kids to get them this or that, the barrage of holiday gatherings and events. Sometimes it feels like the world is screaming for our attention from so many directions that it’s easy to miss the miracle that we celebrate tonight. I found myself more frustrated by the world’s hijacking of Christmas than usual this year. The newspaper has been my particular area of anguish lately. First it was the Macy’s ads that caught my eye – the ones telling us to “Believe” – but as far as I can tell, even Macy’s isn’t sure what we should believe in beyond spending money. Then the Bloomingdales’ full-page ads that assault us with their “Nifty Gifty” ideas, none of which cost less than $50. But it isn’t just the ads and the bu...

December 11, 2011 Advent 3, Year B Isaiah 61:1-3 I know I mention the stories from our Godly Play Sunday School a lot in my sermons, but it really has been a great treasure trove of theology for me. Maybe it’s like that book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, where Robert Fulghum shows how kindergarten laid the foundation for everything that is essential for us as adults (sharing, working well with others, cleaning up our own mess, being patient, and my personal favorite “being aware of wonder”). Sometimes the simple but well told stories, and the quiet beautiful metaphors are just what I need to think about something that I feel like I already know in a new way. So I’m going to share with you my newest favorite piece of theology from Godly Play by showing you something that the kids do each week of Advent. During Advent, we are getting ready to enter the mystery of Christmas by lighting candles. Each week, we have a chance to become part of the story. The fi...

November 20, 2011 Christ the King Sunday Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Matthew 25:31-46 Today is the last Sunday of the season after Pentecost. It’s called either “Christ the King Sunday” or its more PC version “Reign of Christ Sunday.” Advent starts next Sunday, and with it the beginning of a new Church year. So maybe we can think of our celebration brunch later this morning as a sort of New Year’s Eve party for the parish. I always feel surprised and a bit overwhelmed on December 31 as I think about New Years’ resolutions, so I think it is very kind of the Church to give us an entire week to get ready for the beginning of the new liturgical year. I sometimes get ready for a new year in three parts – past, present and future. I look back at where I was when the year began and think about all that has happened -- what has gone well or maybe not so well. And I think about who I am now and what is important to me. And then I think about what I would like to add or change in the coming ...