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Showing posts from May, 2018

Sunday, May 27 - The Question to Which You Are the Answer

This sermon was preached for Trinity Sunday, May 27, 2018 at St. Paul's, Mount Lebanon, PA. The readings for this sermon were:  Isaiah 6:1-8 ,  Romans 8:12-17 ,  John 3:1-17, and   Psalm 29 . Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!” Every year, the night before the first day of school, my father would enact the same little ritual with each of his three girls at bedtime. Dad would come and sit on the end of our beds and ask my sisters and me the same three questions every year. “What’s your job?” he’d ask. “To learn,” we’d answer. “What’s your teacher’s job?” “To teach.” “How can you make you and your teacher’s jobs easier?” “Ask questions!” we’d all say, sometimes too excited to let our father finish his sentence. And ask questions we did. At my father’s encouragement, we knew that asking questions didn’t mean we were slow or left behind. It wasn’t anything to be embarrassed about. It was simply doin

Sunday, May 13 - Farewell Prayer

This sermon was preached on Sunday, May 13 for my last Sunday at St. Aidan's Episcopal Church. The readings for this sermon were: Acts 1:15-17, 21-26, 1 John 5:9-13, John 17:6-19 and Psalm 1 .   Their delight is in the law of the Lord, and they meditate on God’s law day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither. Two Novembers ago, when the results of the national election were becoming clearer and clearer, the first thought I had was, “We need to open the Chapel.” And open the seminary Chapel we did, posting on our seminary Facebook page and then my own, that the light was on and the doors were open. A place to pray and be held in prayer. To my surprise, dozens of friends from all different parts of my life liked my status. Christian friends, Jewish friends, friends I’m pretty sure have never stepped foot in a church, acquaintances I had not spoken to in years. Somehow, even though they were al