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...

  This sermon was preached for the Feast Day of St. Mark's on Sunday, April 21, 2024 at St. Mark's, East Longmeadow. The texts for this sermon were: Ephesians 4:7-8,11-16,  Mark 16:15-20, and  Psalm 2:7-10. A book from my own childhood has made it into our nightly bedtime routine a lot lately. It’s called “Rocks in My Pockets.” It’s a sort of folksy parable about a poor family who lives on the top of a very windy mountain with very rocky soil. Their grandpa tells them they must always keep rocks in their pockets at all times or else they will be blown away by the wind. The rocks have other uses, too: the resourceful family uses them as balls thrown back and forth, they rub them in their hands every night during storytime, they even warm them in the fire and use them as foot-warmers on winter nights. They are ordinary rocks pulled from the earth of their mountaintop, but over time, the rocks become smooth and shiny and beautiful.  Rocks in My Pockets by Marc Har...

This sermon was preached for the third Sunday of Easter and the baptism of Joseph Matthew, Sunday, April 14, 2024. The text for this sermon were: 1 John 3:1-7,  Luke 24:36b-48, and  Psalm 4. Whenever I meet to prepare a family for baptism, I ask the parents and godparents to choose the question from our baptismal covenant that they like best and are most excited to teach their child or godchild about. In the case of our baptizand today, both his mother and his godfather had the same answer. They loved the sixth question, which is actually the most recent question added to our baptismal covenant: “Will you cherish the wondrous works of God, and protect and restore the beauty and integrity of all creation?”  Joseph’s mother, Jenn, lit up as she spoke about teaching Joseph to cherish the littlest of God’s creatures - even the ants that get in the house! Greg lit up as he spoke about teaching Joseph to appreciate the wonder of natural phenomena. He can’t wait to bring hi...

  This sermon was preached for Sunday, April 7, 2024 for the second Sunday of Easter. The texts for this sermon were: 1 John 1:1-2:2,  John 20:19-31, and  Psalm 133. In my childhood church’s Sunday school classrooms there was a chart on the wall with all of our names and little boxes with dates for putting stickers in for all the Sundays you were there in class. The stickers on my and my sister’s rows were neatly placed in just about every other column, for just about every other week, because the other weeks we attended my father’s Catholic church. I remember wondering what happened on those Sundays we weren’t there. Wondering if we only half belonged - even though my name being there on that list meant I surely did belong for real.  I’ve heard many stories over the years from folks whose Sunday schools had perfect attendance awards at the end of the church school year - and I’ve also heard other, heat-breaking stories about being shamed, subtly or not so subtl...

This sermon was preached for Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024 at St. Mark's in East Longmeadow. The texts for this sermon were: John 20:1-18, Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24, and Isaiah 25:6-9. So how many of you can confidently say what LOL is short for? Raise your hands. Phew, I’m relieved. Because believe it or not, LOL has been common internet and texting slang for more than thirty years - plus it was formally recognized by the Oxford English Dictionary in 2011. As it looks like you all know, LOL technically stands for “laughing out loud.” You type LOL in a comment or text to someone to indicate that what they said was funny, but here’s the thing: it really quite rarely means you actually laughed out loud - at the most you maybe let out a little huff from your nose. What a striking image for how diminished, muted, literally abbreviated joy has become when we don’t set aside time to be present and actually with one another. All of us in our separate places behind our separate little...