Luke 7:36-8:3; 1 Kings 21:1-10, 15-21a
Over the course of 18 years in ordained ministry, it’s remarkable how many times in the midst of adult education classes I’ve heard people say that they much prefer the New Testament to the Old Testament, because the Old Testament God is a God of punishment and vengeance, they say, where the New Testament God is a God of forgiveness and love…
Luke 7:11-17
Today is Picnic Sunday. You don’t find that in the prayer book… It’s a good time in the middle of the year to be together in fellowship and delight in who we are, who we’ve been, and who we can be. There’s so much in the life of this parish that happens that we don’t all see or experience, and yet we’re a part of it.
Luke 7:1-10 At first glance, this gospel reading sounds like a healing story… Jesus healed someone… We think that’s the end of the story, but I think on a deeper level, there’s a lot we can hear from this reading besides a healing story. This really in many ways is a story of Jesus breaking down some of the barriers of his tradition.
John 16:12-15
What a joy it is to be with you at St. Paul’s Cary… Today is Trinity Sunday, the only day in the church year that celebrates a doctrine rather than an event in the drama of God’s reaching out to humankind… It was the experience of Christians in the first centuries of the church’s life that led to the creedal formularies of Trinitarian faith. As Christians listened to the spirit-filled stories of Jesus and experienced the power of faith in action, their conclusion was that God is not static but an eternal expression of love as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a dynamic dance that touches all humankind.
Graduating seniors Andrew (0:00) and Jonathan (5:01) offer a homily on their personal journeys at St. Paul’s.
John 17:20-26, Sunday after the Feast of Ascension
I’d like to share a quote with you this morning: “One cannot level one’s moral lance at every evil in the universe. There are just too many of them. But you can do something, and the difference between doing something and doing nothing is everything.” That’s a quote by someone I’d like to share a few thoughts about this morning. It’s the quote of a Jesuit priest who was very active, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s. His name was Father Dan Berrigan…
John 5:1-9
So it arrived in my inbox. I tried to ignore it because it looked like spam… I had my finger on the delete key, until I glanced at the subject, and it said “Truck Stop Chaplain Wanted.”
Acts 11:1-18; John 13:31-35
“Where I am going, you cannot come.” Last summer, the community theater called On the Isle on Nantucket invited us to a wonderful story called The Trip to Bountiful . . . You may know the story. It’s a story about the longing for home; it is about our yearning for a place of comfort and security and stability, a place of deep acceptance and unconditional love, a place where we can be ourselves, a place and a people that feed our souls . . .
Acts 9:36-43; John 10:22-30
“I can’t take it. I just can’t take it.” Ever use that phrase? I think most of us, at some point in our life, get to that point where we say “I just can’t take it.” I want to reflect on that phrase this morning. It’s probably one of the most honest things that we say, because what we’re saying is, “I can’t take it.” But what I think the challenge is… While we can’t take it, the only thing we can do is give ourselves to it. And that’s the hard part.
John 21:1-19
Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do.” Now, anyone who’s been around children knows that you sometimes have to repeat yourself… But it’s not just kids. I have events on my to-do list, projects to be finished, calls to be made, and emails to be responded to that have been on my list for more than one day. So saying “I love you” almost always has to be repeated. It’s never enough to hear it just once, to say it just once… Love bears repeating.