Proclaim by Word and Example

  This sermon was preached for the second Sunday in Lent, February 25, 2024. Texts for this sermon were: Romans 4:13-25,  Mark 8:31-38, and  Psalm 22:22-30.  Someone recently asked me about ashes on Ash Wednesday - what it was all about and why we were running around smearing dirt on people’s faces all day. When I explained that the ashes were a reminder of our mortality, the preciousness of life, and our equality before God, she made a profound observation that stuck with me - probably because it resonated with so many conversations I’ve had with folks over the years. “I’m used to thinking about church as all about feeling guilty,” she said. “But church isn’t about that, is it? It’s about feeling connected to God.”  Lent is the perfect time to talk about guilt and church. And frankly, the predominantly Catholic Western Massachusetts is the perfect place to talk about it, too - so many active, lapsed, and former Catholics I’ve met associate their religious identity with feeling guilty

This is the Lenten devotional that changed my life - the one I read when I was first becoming an Episcopalian. It’s called A Season for the Spirit and the author is former Society of St. John the Evangelist brother Martin L. Smith. In Chapter two, Martin remembers sitting alone sobbing in an Oxford movie theater.  As the scene of Jesus’ baptism played across the screen, Martin realized for the first time what the typical depiction of Jesus’ baptism had obfuscated. In all the stained glass he’d ever seen, images of the baptism featured just the two holy cousins standing in beautiful, clear water in a sort of private ceremony. But in the film, Martin finally saw Jesus’ baptism portrayed the way it is told in each of the Gospels: happening right in the midst of great throngs of folks wading into a muddy river, with hundreds more crammed waiting on its banks. A couple of verses before our reading, the Gospel of Mark reports, “The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem wen

  This sermon was preached for Ash Wednesday, February 14, 2024 at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in East Longmeadow, MA. The texts for this sermon were:  Isaiah 58:1-12 , Psalm  103:8-14 , and  Matthew 6:1-6,16-21 . Today is the day we stare our own mortality in the face. Lent is a disruption in our daily lives, an upending of our usual rhythms so that we might reexamine how we’re living out our faith. It’s why I love that we purposefully rearrange the sanctuary for this season, sometimes in intentionally uncomfortable ways. Most deliciously, the interruption of Lent begins in the rudest of ways - by forcing us to confront the reality of our own deaths.  I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what death reveals, the truths it often uncovers. I was recently idly browsing a list of public figures who were revered throughout their lives - that is, until after their deaths, when the reality of how they really spent their time or wealth or power was made widely known. Once the extent of th

This sermon was preached for the funeral of Wendy B. on Friday, February 2, 2024. The texts for this sermon were: Psalm 116, 2 Corinthians 4:7-11, 16, and John 13:31-36.  When Bryan and Brett told me about Wendy on Sunday, the word that kept coming up was strength: the strength of her love and the strength of her character. Wendy was so determined and so strong. Even when her body was failing her, Wendy’s inner nature shone through. She gave you all one last happy Christmas, full of fresh baked cookies and carols and a pageant. As St. Paul writes, we are afflicted, but not crushed, perplexed, but not driven to despair. Wendy chose strength, and she chose love.  My son has a beautiful book called, “Will it be okay?” by Crescent Dragonwagon, illustrated by Jessica Love. It’s a simple conversation between a mother and a daughter who asks her again and again, “Will it be okay?” with various “but what if…” When I listened to Bryan and Brett speak of how deeply and fully Wendy loved her chil