Proclaim by Word and Example

This sermon was preached for All Saints' Sunday, October 29, 2023. The readings for this sermon were:  Revelation 7:9-17,  Psalm 34:1-10, 22,  1 John 3:1-3, and  Matthew 5:1-12. So I listened to an episode from my one of my favorite theologians, Dr. Kate Bowler. She was interviewing an expert on teenage mental health on her podcast, Everything Happens. And I’ve been mulling over what they talked about ever since. It may seem quite unrelated to gifts, and saints, and puzzle pieces to start, but bear with me.  In the episode and in her book, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers , Dr. Lisa Damour offers a definition of mental health that’s a bit different than mainstream cultural discourse she often hears, but a whole lot closer to what mental health professionals and academics mean when they talk about wellness. Mental health is 1) having feelings that fit the situation, even if they’re not pleasant feelings and 2) managing those feelings effectively, that is coping ...

  This sermon was preached for Sunday, October 22 at St. Mark's, East Longmeadow. The texts for this sermon were: Psalm 99,  1 Thessalonians 1:1-10, and  Matthew 22:15-22. In our Nicene Creed, the one we say each week after the sermon, we recite that Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate. Why do we include that little tidbit, other than to torture people with difficult-to-pronounce foreign names? I was taught that it serves to locate Jesus to a particular time and a particular place. So we remember that God became incarnate in a specific moment in history. As it happens, Jesus’ moment was filled with controversy and strife - revolt against the Roman occupation of Palestine was brewing and people were choosing sides in what would soon explode into war, destruction of the temple, mass murder, and exile.  What happened when the religious leadership attempted to pin Jesus down to a particular political stance on the most controversial issues of his day? We have one su...

  This sermon was preached for Sunday, October 15, 2023 for St. Mark's Episcopal Church in East Longmeadow, MA. The texts for this sermon were: Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23,  Philippians 4:1-9, and  Matthew 22:1-14.  I’ll be honest here. I find Matthew’s parable of the wedding banquet very difficult. For starters, it reminds me of two aspects of weddings I’ve found very stressful: figuring out the right thing to wear and, for my own wedding, the guest list. But it’s mostly because this parable also strikes at the heart of what’s deeply stressful about relationships - human to human relationships and human to divine relationships; that is, the question of worthiness and the need for connection.  The sociologist (and Episcopalian) Dr. Brene Brown defines shame as the fear of disconnection. Like many other psychologists and sociologists, she also identifies shame as the root of so much human hurt - hurt directed inward at ourselves and outward at each other. Shame is ...

  This sermon was preached for Ben and Bella's wedding on Sunday, October 14, 2023 at St. Mark's Episcopal Church, East Longmeadow, MA. The texts for this sermon were: 1 Corinthians 13 and John 15: 7-21.  The first time Bella and Ben came into my office to prepare for the wedding I gave them some homework. I asked you to work together to find a central metaphor for what marriage means to you. And the next meeting you two came in and smiled sort of sheepishly at each other and said, “Well, we came up with grass.”  Just…grass.  And as we worked together to prepare for this day and as I had the privilege of getting to know Ben and Bella better and better, I began to see just how appropriate and beautiful a metaphor that really was. They made it clear to me that they didn’t want anything flashy for their ceremony, didn’t need anything unique - just what’s traditional, tried and true. For Bella and Ben, grass represents the ordinary and sustaining love they strive for and...

This sermon was preached for Sunday, October 8 at St. Mark's, East Longmeadow, MA. The texts for this sermon were: Psalm 19,  Philippians 3:4b-14, and  Matthew 21:33-46. A thirty-year old married woman asked the internet at large a question many, many other people her age have been asking lately. “I need someone to tell me if having kids is worth it… Is the loss of sleep, is the loss of identity, is giving up your body, is it worth it?”  On her podcast, “ Tales She Told Me ,” writer Farrah Haidar said she returned again and again to that woman’s question, “Is it worth it?” before deciding that it is the wrong question for someone contemplating parenthood. “Parenthood is not about what you get,” she says, “parenthood is about what you give.” She points out that no one can answer the question about whether it’s worth it because you have so, so little control over what happens in parenthood. You have no clue what kind of kid you’re going to get - and that’s just for sta...

This sermon was preached for the 8am service for Sunday, October 1 on the occasion of the Feast Day of St. Francis. The texts for this sermon were: Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16,  Philippians 2:1-13, and  Matthew 21:23-32. At our 10am service today, an intergenerational band of St. Mark’s actors and singers will perform a retelling of St. Francis’s sermon to the birds, complete with chirping babies and toddlers and all the beautiful handmade props you see around me. I do so love that our music director, Susan Matsui, chose the legend of St. Francis preaching the good news of God’s love in creation to the birds as the central story to retell on our celebration of his feast day because it points us to the extreme irony of the saint’s most famous misattributed quotes. You may have heard that St. Francis once said, “Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” But as St. Mark’s will experience later today, St. Francis was an exuberant, fiery preacher. Words sprung from him....