Proclaim by Word and Example

This sermon was preached for Sunday, September 24 at St. Mark's, East Longmeadow. The texts for this sermon were:  Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45,  Philippians 1:21-30, and  Matthew 20:1-16. Last week Western Mass News reported on a back-to-school controversy in Lebanon, Ohio of all places. The Donovan Elementary school had posted about the ice cream social for its third and fourth graders, so kids about 8 or 9. But not everyone would get ice cream. The school explained that students with a negative balance on their school lunch account would not be allowed to get ice cream, not even if they brought money to school to purchase it. Moreover, other students would not be allowed to buy an ice cream for a friend who didn’t have one. A lot of parents and community members reacted with outrage, sharing and flaming the post. But some went a bit further. They called the school district, offering to pay off students’ accounts. These folks, they weren’t thinking about the precedent it would ...

This sermon was preached for Sunday, September 17, 2023 for the occasion of the baptism of Michael James and Anika Mae. The texts for this sermon were: Psalm 114,  Romans 14:1-12, and  Matthew 18:21-35. I originally got this book ( “Will it be okay?” by Crescent Dragonwagon, with illustrations by Jessica Love ) for the church as part of my children’s pastoral care resources - books that I can lend to parents whose kids are going through a hard time - but my son Auggie liked it so much that I think I’ll end up needing to get a copy for my house, too.  "Will it be okay?" by Crescent Dragonwagon, illustrated by Jessica Love. For each of the daughter’s fears in the book, every “but what if...?” the mother character responds with a list of specific steps she can take to find her way back to knowing that it will be okay. When I first read the book with my son, I found its specificity confusing. The steps are so particular to the book’s character that they seemed to me to b...

  This sermon was preached for Sunday, September 10 at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in East Longmeadow. The texts for this sermon were:  Psalm 149,  Romans 13:8-14, and  Matthew 18:15-20.  “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Jesus’ words here have given me a great deal of comfort in recent years. I think especially of all those sparsely attended evening services and noonday services and nursing home services - basically all the Eucharists I have offered over the years for the people who can’t make it to the main service at church on Sunday with everyone else. Whenever one or two people have shown up and looked around awkwardly and wondered if I was still willing to worship with them, Jesus’ words here have helped me affirm: this is still church, this still matters.  During the pandemic shutdown, I prayed this verse a lot because it’s part of one of the ending prayers in our Episcopal Morning Prayer service. When I led vir...

This sermon was preached for Sunday, September 3, 2023 at St. Mark's, East Longmeadow, MA. The texts for this sermon are:  Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c,  Romans 12:9-21, and  Matthew 16:21-28. This past Thursday, I got a chance to run a workshop on intentional community with the young adults of Lawrence House, the Episcopal Service Corps program in South Hadley. As I looked around the living room at each of the young person’s faces, I was brought back almost a decade to when I was sitting where they were sitting, an intern myself, trying to orient myself to a new household of young adults and a new pattern of work and prayer. It was one of those where the heck does time go moments I've been having more and more of these days. How did I get here when I swear I was just there? How the heck is it my turn to be the priest leading a workshop?  Then I took a deep breath and refocused on the actual question that had brought me here today, the one that I'd been holding in my mi...