Faith in Progress

June 26, 2016 Luke  9:51-62 Early on in my parenting ventures, I discovered that kids tend to see things as white or black, yes or no, good or evil.  And so I would often find myself trying to soften their play.  When games involved killing bad guys, I suggested that instead of execution we find ways to redeem the offenders. When sticks became weapons, I suggested that instead of shooting out fatal bullets or lasers we could send out bubbles of love that would surround the intended recipient.   As you might guess, there is a fair amount of eye-rolling that results from such parental suggestions. But when I look at the news  - the mass shooting in Orlando, wars and refugee crises, the Brexit vote, vitriol and inaction in American politics - I can’t help but wish I could employ my imaginary love-producing weapons pretty much everywhere.  But recently, I was reminded of my own tendency to assign labels of good and bad, right and wrong, w...

Prayer Stations for Ordinary Time May 29, 2016 The Church calendar is strange -- all the big things happen in one half of the year. We begin the Church year with Advent, when we get ready to enter the mystery of Christmas.  Then Christmas, when God came among us as Jesus.  Epiphany, with it's stories of light.  Then before you know it, Lent and time to get ready to enter the mystery of Easter.  We go through Holy Week, living inside the events of Jesus' last week.  Then it's Easter, and we are celebrating his resurrection and hearing about how he was with his disciples in new ways.  We hit Pentecost, with the coming of the Holy Spirit like fire to enliven and empower the disciples and the Church.  Finally Trinity Sunday last weekend, which ties some of these other pieces together.   But now through November we are done.  For the next 20-some weeks, we are in what the Church calls the "season after Pentecost".  Which, to me...

Trinity Sunday  May 22, 2016 I speak to you in the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Or, wait, I speak to you in the name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.  Or how about in the name of God: Rock, Redeemer, and Friend.  Or maybe God: The One to Whom, the One by Whom, and the One in Whom we offer our praise.  Or should we just keep it simple: I speak to you in the name of the Trinity, one God.  Whatever that means.  Amen. If you didn’t see it on the bulletin you’ve probably caught on by now that it’s Trinity Sunday.  The only day on the Christian calendar devoted to a doctrine rather than an event or person.  Today we celebrate that the Christian Godhead is one God in three persons: traditionally termed Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  In other words, 1+1+1=1. This week my clergy friends on Facebook have been bemoaning their sermon-writing.  As one put it: “The Trinity Sunday sermon is like the story of...

Pentecost May 15, 2016 When I was in college I spent a long weekend with a group camping by a lake house that somebody’s parents owned.  One night we all lay on their deck on our backs and looked up at the stars.  I even saw my first shooting star that night.   I think the new surroundings, and the darkness, and the infinity of the sky opened us up to speaking about things we might not have ordinarily broached in the midst of the library shelves or the dancing bodies at a frat house.  We wondered together about God and we wondered about how all that we’d learned from our religious backgrounds fit into what we’d discovered about the world since we’d left home.  And one guy admitted that he thought he felt tugs from God, thought God was going to be really important to him at some point, but he had decided not to do anything about it yet because he wasn’t ready to change his life or to start living differently. At the time, that made no sense ...

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...

Easter 3 April 10, 2016 John 21:1-19 Earlier this month, I saw on Facebook that the Standing Commission on Liturgy for the Episcopal Church had just approved for trial use a supplement to the Eucharist.  It allows for the addition of fish to the usual elements of bread and wine.  I, perhaps oddly, did not think much about that news until I started working on my sermon for today and read our Gospel story.  The Gospel of John doesn’t have Jesus hand out bread and wine as part of the Last Supper story; this post-resurrection breakfast of bread and fish that we hear today is the closest it gets to the Eucharist in John’s Gospel.  So I went looking again for that Facebook article, interested to see how this resurrection breakfast had been incorporated into the Eucharist.  It wasn’t until I got to the part in the article about finding “sustainable seafood” and “liturgically-appropriate” types of fish and avoiding “distracting fish odors” that it occurred to...