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Homilies (Page 59)

If You Can’t Say Anything Nice…

Proverbs 1:20-33
There is something that many of you may or may not know about being a preacher at St. Paul’s. That is at the 9:00 service we only normally have three of the four readings. The preacher is usually the one who gets to choose which reading will be included. Today for the 9:00 service I picked the Proverbs text to be read over the James text…

A Journey to Discover One’s True Self

Mark 7:24-37
I really think that Jesus came to an understanding of who he was as he lived ever more deeply into his life. Jesus was on a journey, just as we are all on a journey. We discover who we are in the midst of that journey. Thomas Merton uses the phrase, “The journey of life is really a journey to discover one’s true self.”…

Their Hearts are Far from Me

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Last week it was a joyous occasion to watch so many children and young people come up at the 9:00 and 10:45 services to have their backpacks blessed and get ready to go off to school. As I watched this I thought, “If I could only stick one book in everyone’s backpack…”

Does This Offend You?

John 6:59-69
I’m a huge fan of mob movies: Godfather, Goodfellas, Sopranos. I just find there are so many levels to those movies. You may say, “George, are those the kind of movies a priest is supposed to like?” But then you may say, “That’s alright, he’s from New York.”…

I am the Living Bread

John 6:51-58
If you heard Lauren’s homily last week, you know how she spoke of the recurring theme of bread that keeps popping up in our Gospels of late. I must admit I have had this overwhelming desire to stand up here and simply say “ditto” to all she said last week and then sit down…

Bread

I don’t know how many of you have been paying attention to the lectionary readings every Sunday over the past couple of weeks, but you might have noticed that in our Gospels we are reading a lot about bread…

Should Jesus be a Religion?

It has been said that one of the mistakes that the early Christians made was that of turning Jesus into a religion. Religion can mean a lot of different things in our lives. If I were to ask you, “What does that word religion mean?” there could be lots of descriptions…

God’s Inclusiveness

2 Samuel 6:1-5,12b-19
Today our reading from the Old Testament has a vivid description of a celebration as David and all of Israel come into Jerusalem with the ark of the covenant. Now as you may know, the ark of the covenant was believed to be the throne or the seat of God…