“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” (Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2). Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet meet and fall in love in Shakespeare’s lyrical tale of “star-cross’d” lovers. They are doomed from the start as members of two warring families. Here Juliet tells Romeo that a name is an artificial and meaningless convention, and that she loves the person who is called “Montague”, not the Montague ...
Continue Reading → ShareOne more time we face the question: why? Why did a young man make a bomb and blow up a building? Why did he then take a gun and kill and wound people? Why is destroying property or killing or wounding someone else the perceived answer to our frustration, despair, loneliness or hatred?
One more time we face the question: how? How do we respond to an action that makes no sense to us? We know how to pray for ...
Continue Reading → ShareOne of the strengths of the Episcopal Church is its desire to be a via media. That is, to be a church that is a middle way between Catholicism –with a capital “C” – and Protestantism. To find the best of the traditional, orthodox church that grew up following the death of Jesus and the reforms that we usually think of as starting with Martin Luther and expressed first in his 95 Theses nailed to the church door in Wittenberg ...
Continue Reading → ShareOne of the optional tours at the National Plymouth Owners Club meeting held in Detroit a couple of years ago was a bus tour of automotive sites including some that had been shuttered but had historic significance. The tour was both fascinating and very sad. Sad to see how many factories that used to employ hundreds if not thousands now stand in acute disrepair.
Broken windows. Broken asphalt. Sadness that what was once a bustling hive of activity is now forlorn, left ...
Continue Reading → ShareGive me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these — the homeless, tempest-tossed — to me;
I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door.
Emma Lazarus wrote these words. They are inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. They are a symbol of what this country represented to the world when it was founded. During the years that immigrants were processed at Ellis Island, the Statue loomed large- a sign ...
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Thank you to some of the children from the Summer Enrichment Program who came to fill bags for the Non-food pantry.
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The Day of Pentecost: Whitsunday – June 12, 2011
Well, we’ve already done some special things this morning (not that we haven’t done them or things like them before on this day)—like trying to suggest what “a mighty wind” might have sounded like (assuming you could get the CD player to start up on cue!) and releasing a bevy of balloons over the congregation; one year I remember we had the kids recreate the moment in John’s Gospel when Jesus “breathed ...
Continue Reading → ShareVII Easter – June 5, 2011 – Year A (RCL)
Last week I got an email message from a retired colleague in Bloomington, Don Jones, who has substituted for me here on several occasions, stating that he was looking forward to attending the farewell festivities planned for next Sunday, but expressing surprise that I had picked the Day of Pentecost to be my last Sunday to preside and preach.
“Ascension Day would have been a lot more appropriate,” Don wrote.
Needless to say, ...
Continue Reading → ShareVI Easter – May 29, 2011 – Year A (RCL)
As I think I’ve mentioned before, I grew up a Methodist, and, as I think I’ve also mentioned before, if I were preaching in a Methodist church, this morning’s sermon would have a title, and the title would be posted in big metal letters on a signboard out front (if we thought we could afford it) and in the bulletin, and the title would be “Is God Into Doing Extreme Makeovers?”
This ...
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