Proclaim by Word and Example

This sermon was preached for Sunday, August 25, 2024 for the fourteen Sunday after Pentecost. The texts for this sermon is  Psalm 84,  Ephesians 6:10-20, and  John 6:56-69 . Most Friday evening, as my little family of four sits down for dinner someone reminds the rest of us it’s time for Shabbat prayers. Now you’re really supposed to do the opening Sabbath ritual when the sun goes down. And you’re supposed to have candles, bread, and wine, at the very least. But in our family we do it when the kids are hungry, regardless of what’s going on with the sun. And we make do with what we have: hopefully, if we’ve kept on top of our shopping that week, there’s some grape juice for the kids. Sometimes “the wine” is actually just whatever beer we have in the fridge. In a pinch, I’ve even mixed some lemon juice with sugar and water. The bread is usually just part of what we are having for dinner: anything from a piece of tortilla to a macaroni shell to a chunk of chicken nugget....

  This sermon was preached on Monday, August 19, 2024 at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in East Longmeadow for the burial office of George Edward Mont.  My name is the Rev. Mia Kano. I’ve only been priest-in-charge here since 2022, so I didn’t get a chance to meet George while he was a parishioner here. But as it turns out, I did celebrate Eucharist once a month at The Reserve. One time that I came, the social activities director called me over to say that there was a new Episcopalian resident who had heard about my services and was specifically excited to meet with the Episcopal priest. It was George. I thought I was just stopping by to say hi, but instead I had one of those deep, memorable conversations that makes me feel so blessed and honored to get to be a priest. That day, George was feeling weighed down by life. He opened up to me in a profound way. It was clear that it wasn’t about me specifically though - George was reaching for God and his faith.  Much of what we t...

This sermon was preached for Sunday, August 18, 2024 for the thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in East Longmeadow. The texts for this sermon were:  Who knows the song Mr. Brightside by the British band The Killers ? Raise your hand. Those who don't - I apologize for forcing some of my generation’s pop culture on you. For those who do - is probably because it's one of the most popular songs ever made. The dance-pop single has set the record for the longest time on UK top 100 singles charts - almost 8 years and counting. It’s the second most streamed song from before 2010 on the streaming platform Spotify. It’s been a staple of party playlists for two decades now.  I never really thought much about why this song is so good and so popular until I stumbled across a music theory analysis of the song by YouTuber 12tone . On its surface, the song tells a story - a true one, recounting the moment when the lead singer discovered his lover’s infidelity ...

This homily was preached for the wedding of Karen and Russell Partlow on Wednesday, August 14, 20024. The texts for this sermon were: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 and John 15:9-12. Our Bible talks about love, a lot. New Testament scripture talks about three kinds of love: romantic love, brotherly love, and love for humankind. When we read scripture in English we just read “love,” but the original Greek differentiates between the three kinds. Mostly, when Jesus and St. Paul speak or write about love, they are talking about that third kind of love - the love of neighbor that defines Christians - that challenging love that changes the world. But today, and every wedding, really, is a reminder that God is constantly transforming hearts and draws people closer to the divine through all sorts of kinds of love. The love between spouses is holy, too - and a key part of God acting in our world. In the Episcopal Church, a sacrament is an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace. It helps ...

This sermon was preached for Sunday, August 4, 2024 at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in East Longmeadow on the occasion of the baptism of Finley Oscar. The texts for this sermon were: Psalm 51:1-13,  Ephesians 4:1-16, and  John 6:24-35. A couple years back, my mother-in-law gave me a bread-baking book for my birthday. It’s a really nice book and I love baking bread so I was really excited. But then I opened it up and started to read and got quickly overwhelmed. Turns out it’s a Whole Wheat bread baking book, so the recipes are absolutely delicious and fairly nutritious. But holy cow, I had no idea how much more time and expertise whole wheat flour bread takes to do properly - several risings and just-so kneading and all these precise measurements whose ratios you’re supposed to experiment with over time to perfect for your particular oven and elevation. It’s so much work and so much time.  So, I have to admit that, for now at least, I’ve been sticking with my cheater w...

This sermon was preached for Sunday, July 28, 2024 for the tenth Sunday after Pentecost. The texts for this Sunday were: Psalm 14,  Ephesians 3:14-21, and  John 6:1-21. I have a lot of dear friends who are mothers to newborns right now - I celebrated FIVE new babies born to close friends in this past year alone. So I've been thinking a lot lately about the fraught history of how we feed babies. Excuse me while I recount a tiny slice of the history of American breastfeeding here - while acknowledging that it's history many of you may have lived through in very intimate ways.  In the 1960s and 1970s, most American babies were not breastfed. As little as 22% of American infants born in 1972 were breastfed. This all had to do with the advent of good baby formula, but as solid scientific evidence about the benefits of breastfeeding and breastmilk emerged, governments began to enact policies to counteract the decline in breastfeeding. In 1991, the year I was born, the Worl...

This sermon was preached for Sunday, July 14, 2024 at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in East Longmeadow. The texts for this sermon were: Psalm 24,  Ephesians 1:3-14, and  Mark 6:14-29. I can’t read today’s Gospel story about the beheading of John the Baptist without thinking of the strangest party I ever attended. Some context: I was studying abroad during the first semester of my college’s Arabic language program in Amman, Jordan. Now this program had been rather hastily put together after my college’s established Arabic program had been evacuated during the Egyptian revolution of 2011. The director of our program, in scrambling to find last-minute housing for the female students, had had to forgo the usual placing of students with host families and instead selected a women's dormitory near the University. It’s important to the story to note that director chose our particular dorm because it had the latest curfew out of all the female dorms near the University - the absolut...