Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia! There is a practice in the Orthodox tradition to tells jokes at Easter in honor of the joke that Jesus played on death in the resurrection. Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one before. It happened in Sunday School. It’s always Sunday School, isn’t it? You see, Ms. Clara…
Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia! Fire and water, bread and wine: these are the primal elements of our faith, the means by which we encounter God. Tonight as we’ve gathered they have been wrapped in darkness, and now light – and above all love. Lent is the journey through the wilderness of the sin of…
Today everything is stripped bare. We gather on this Good Friday to contemplate the death of Jesus. As much as we may want to, we can’t make the story either stop before Jesus dies, or fast forward to the empty tomb. Today we must linger with the broken body of Jesus. The inevitability of the Good Friday story holds so much…
One of my favorite children’s books is The Easter Story by Brian Wildsmith. I love it for two reasons. First, it has the most amazing illustrations – the kind that set your heart to singing; and secondly, because it is a wonderful telling of the Easter story for children that in no way dumbs down the events from Palm Sunday all…
Guest preacher Kate Riley, Youth Missioner for the Diocese of Maryland. Diocese of Maryland Youth!
Gracious God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and work through them; take our hearts and set them on fire. Amen. Parables don’t tell us what to do or how to behave, they tell us something of the nature of God. It’s important to remember this as we read again one of the most well-known…
Gracious God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and work through them; take our hearts and set them on fire. Amen. My son Zachary was born during spring break of my second year of seminary. When he was 3 months old I had a crisis of faith. You see, he went in for his second…
As we enter this Lent, may we Pause, Reflect, Pray. Amen. We have entered Lent. Ash Wednesday reminded us that we are dust, and to dust we will return. We were invited into observing this holy season by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Some of us have accordingly given things up for these 40 days. Others have instead…
As we enter this Lent, may we Pause, Reflect, Pray. Amen. It has been said that on Ash Wednesday, Christians attend their own funerals. It is no mistake that this liturgy in which we partake leads us to contemplate our own mortality. We will soon be marked with ashes and admonished with these words: Remember that you are dust, and to…
Gracious God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and work through them; take our hearts and set them on fire. Amen. Today we are on the mountaintop with Jesus and his closest friends. What happened up there is a mystery. It’s no mistake Jesus’ transfigured appearance evokes Moses’ shining face when in the presence of…