Author Archive

VII Epiphany – February 20, 2011 – Year A (RCL)

Our bishop makes it a point to pray daily for her clergy colleagues and for the congregations they serve.

She also is careful to keep “the diocesan household” –by which she means everybody in the Diocese—informed, when there’s something she thinks all of us should be praying about or someone all of us should be praying for.

And every once in a while she shoots her clergy a suggestion or two about how ...

VI Epiphany – February 13, 2011 – Year A (RCL)

I’m afraid there’s not much warmth to be found in this week’s lessons from Holy Scripture.

At least on first reading them, on first hearing them, they do sound pretty bleak.

You may have gotten the feeling that I tried to read the Gospel lesson in as gentle a tone as possible—at least I hope you did—but it takes some doing.

(Hey! It’s almost Valentine’s Day! Where’s the love?)

It may be helpful to know ...

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany – February 6, 2011 – Year A (RCL)

Today’s readings offer yet another opportunity to explore the dynamics of evangelism and Christian mission.

The apostle Paul, writing to Christians in the city of Corinth, emphasizes the need for Christian faith to “rest not on human wisdom but on…the power of God.”

The only wisdom worth having, as far as Paul is concerned, is not what he derogatorily refers to as “the wisdom of this age”, but what he calls “God’s ...

IV Epiphany – January 30, 2011 – Year A (RCL)

In this morning’s Gospel lesson Jesus takes his disciples up a mountain to acquaint them with the way life is in the kingdom of God.

The writer of Matthew says that Jesus did this “when he saw the crowds”—so it’s possible that Jesus did it for a reason.

He may have done it because he was afraid that what he had to say might not be heard in the marketplace or wherever the ...

II Epiphany – January 16, 2011 – Year A

“”Teacher, where are you staying?”

That’s what the two disciples of John the Baptist, one of whom was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother—that’s what they asked Jesus, instead of answering his question, when he turned around and discovered that they were tailing him.

“What are you looking for?” is what Jesus had asked them, and they responded with a question of their own; and when they expressed the desire to know where he was staying ...

I Epiphany – January 9. 2011 – Year A

Well, Christmas is over—even in the Episcopal Church, where we try our darnedest to observe the Twelve Days of Christmas and the Feast of the Epiphany—and now what is called the Season after the Epiphany or Epiphanytide has arrived.

During the Season after Epiphany the lessons from scripture that we read each Sunday focus on the process by which God’s glory was revealed and the Word in the mind of God found its ...

I Christmas – December 26, 2010

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

Try as we might, I doubt if we could find a more eloquent summary statement of why it is that we who call ourselves Christians choose to meet together as often as we do to give thanks to God, unless it’s that other even more familiar summary statement which ...