Proclaim by Word and Example

This sermon was preached for Day of Pentecost Sunday, May 19, 2024 at St. Mark's, East Longmeadow. The texts for this sermon were: Acts 2:1-21,  John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15, and  Psalm 104:25-35, 37. May God’s word only be spoken and God’s word only be heard. In seminary and priest training, we spent just about as much time learning how to listen well as we did learning how to speak and teach. This is because the key to all loving relationships is skillful listening. And good connection is all about listening to understand rather than listening to respond. Now one of the most important types of listening priests and chaplains-in-training are drilled on is called reflective listening. At its most basic, reflective listening is simply reflecting back to the people what they just said. Your response is your understanding of what they said. Done without skill, it can sometimes land as sort of annoying. Yes, yes, that’s what I said. But the deeper skill to reflective listening is ...

  This sermon was preached for "Peace Sunday," the seventh Sunday of Easter, May 12, 2024 at St. Mark's, East Longmeadow. The texts for this sermon were: 1 John 5:9-13,  John 17:6-19, and  Psalm 1. In the hospital chaplaincy office where I worked one summer, there were two beautiful pottery bowls that sat on a small table by the door. One bowl was usually empty but the other right beside it was filled with smooth stones that were the exact right size to fit in the palm of my hand. The bowls and stones were pretty enough that at first glance they might appear to be an odd sort of decoration. But it wasn't a display - the bowls and the stones were an invitation to a particular kind of prayer practice for each of us chaplains. See, one of the hardest parts of serving as a chaplain is that you are most often with people for just one brief, intense moment in their lives - right after a birth or a death, right before a surgery or in the midst of a journey with cancer - and...

This sermon was preached for Rogation Sunday, May 5, 2024 at St. Mark's, East Longmeadow. The texts for this sermon were: 1 John 5:1-6,  John 15:9-17, and  Psalm 98. This is not the sermon for today, at least not all of it. I hope today’s sermon will be preached to you not by me, but by the St. Mark’s grounds - by all of God’s creation that surrounds this church on either side - both the gardens we’ve cultivated and the natural gardens that have been guided only by God’s hands. We will be going out into the St. Mark’s gardens toward the end of our service to bless them, but also to be blessed by them. If you choose not to join us for whatever reason, then I hope sometime today or this week, you will go out into a yard or park to listen and look for the rest of this sermon.  This is a quintessentially Anglican exercise. Episcopalians are guided in faith by three sources: scripture, tradition, and our personal experiences. Sometimes we talk about them like they are thr...