Faith in Progress

Easter 2017 John 20:1-18 Alleluia!  Christ is risen!  The Lord is risen indeed!  Alleluia! A few years ago, my oldest daughter went to sleep away camp for the first time.  The drop-off was so much harder than I’d expected.  I was completely comfortable with the place.  She was going to Shrine Mont, the Episcopal retreat center and camp for this Diocese, a place where this parish goes for a weekend every summer and where I’ve been for countless clergy events.  I even knew the camp director fairly well.  But I was nervous.  I was worried that she’d miss us, or get scared, or have a mean girl in her cabin, or feel claustrophobic with the lack of privacy.  And so my stomach was clenched as we awkwardly and fairly silently gathered under the open air pavilion with the hundred or so other families waiting in line to check in their children in.  Waiting to leave them in cabins with perfect strangers and kiss them goodbye and ge...

March 26, 2017 John 9:1-42 Another sermon conversation between  John Baker and I.  We split the long Gospel reading into parts and took turns preaching about those parts. v. 1-7 As Jesus walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”  When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. (John) Before we go any farther, I have to say a word or two about that line that probably just stopped many of us from hear...

Because this Gospel reading is so long, John and I decided it would be fun to preach it as a conversation.  We broke the reading into six parts and took turns both reading the scripture pieces and preaching after each.  I'm including the reading pieces below to help give context for the preaching. John 4:5-9        Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)  The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)   (Elizabeth) Right before this reading John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus is heading to Galilee, but he has to pass throu...

February 5, 2017 Matthew 5:13-20 I wish that our Gospel reading today was about Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well.  Because instead of having 5 husbands, I have 5 sermons, and my present sermon is not really my sermon.   But instead today we get Jesus talking about salt and light.  And in the end, maybe that’s just what I needed to hear.  Maybe it’s just what we all need to hear right now.  It just might take some time working on it to get to the point where we can begin to figure out what to do with it. “You are the salt of the earth.  You are the light of the world,” Jesus tells the crowds gathered before him.  Or, from another translation, “Let me tell you why you are here.  You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth….  You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world.” The light part sounds familiar, we’re used to hearing, singing, praying about light.  ...

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 r...