Proclaim by Word and Example

This sermon was preached for Sunday, June 25 at St. Mark's Episcopal. The texts for this sermon were: Genesis 21:8-21,  Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17, and  Matthew 10:24-39. So this is a rough Gospel. Not my favorite. When I read Jesus’ words about the sword, about setting family members against each other, about giving up one’s life for the Gospel, though, it helps me to think of how precious those words must have been to early church martyrs like Perpetua.  Perpetua was a recently married noblewoman in Carthage in modern-day Tunisia in the first two hundred years after the death of Christ. She was just twenty-two years old and a new mother when she was condemned to public execution for refusing to make a sacrifice for the welfare of the Emperor. Her account of martyrdom is dramatic and told in first person, full of visions of dragons and battling the devil. One climax comes when her father begs Perpetua to recant her faith. She recounts: “While we were still under arrest my...

This sermon was preached for Sunday, June 18 for the occasion of the baptism of Margot Inez and James Andrew. The texts for this sermon were: Genesis 18:1-15,(21:1-7),  Psalm 116:1, 10-17. and M atthew 9:35-10:8. When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” There’s a black-and-white photograph from Hamburg, Germany, 1936 of a crowd gathered at the Blohm and Voss shipyard. The first thing you notice about the photograph is that it is of a sea of hundreds of people all raising their arms in the Nazi salute. The second thing you notice is that there is one man, in the upper right of the photo, just one, who is refusing to salute, his arms crossed in defiance.  Hamburg, Germany, 1936; man believed to be August Landmesser refuses to make the Nazi salute, Wikimedia Commons When I meet with parents and godparents t...

This sermon was preached for Sunday, June 11 (Proper 5, Year A) at St. Mark's Episcopal Church. The sermon references our guests for this Sunday from the LGBT Asylum Task Force . The texts for this semron were: Genesis 12:1-9,  Psalm 33:1-12, and  Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26. The icon behind me was written by Brother Robert Lentz, an American Franciscan friar. He called it “Christ of Maryknoll” in honor of the clergy, nuns, monks, and laity of Maryknoll, who have been imprisoned in China and other parts of the world for their work among the poor, the broken, and the oppressed. The icon shows Jesus standing up against a barbed wire fence, his wounded and bloodied hand pulling down one of the wires so that he can stare through, straight at the viewer with an unwavering gaze.  Christ of Maryknoll by Brother Robert Lentz, OFM Brother Lentz made it intentionally unclear as to which side of the fence Jesus is standing on. “Is he imprisoned or are we?” he writes.  Is Jesus o...

This sermon was preached for Trinity Sunday, June 4, 2023 at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in East Longmeadow, MA. The texts for this sermon were: Genesis 1:1-2:4a,  Matthew 28:16-20, and  Psalm 8. When I was serving in Medford, I had the chance to attend a prayer service at the Kurukulla Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies. I sat cross-legged amidst rows of chanting monks, with no clue as to what was going on. Everything was in Tibetan, of course, and the liturgy was entirely unfamiliar. My hosts had kindly set a three ring binder with lists of chants in front of each meditation pillow and I remember frantically flipping through in a futile attempt to decipher each chant’s transliterations and the corresponding translations. Finally I gave up and sat back and let the chanting wash over me. Only then, only in letting the chants just be what they were, and letting me be what I was, did a spiritual experience begin to open up before me. Only then did I hear the beauty of the ...