Sermon Archive

When they were adolescents, our sons used to tease me when I would try to impart some bit of wisdom to them.  I seldom tried to talk to them at the same time about anything important because I knew that effort would be doomed to certain failure from the start.  But even when I took the precaution of speaking to them separately, whoever I got to first would end up alerting his brother to what was up.  If I talked to David first, when he heard me say, "Adam can I talk to you for a minute?" he'd … [Read more...]

As I read the gospel for today, I found myself wondering how successful Jesus would have been as a recruiter...for the military, for industry, for business, for anything.These days, as probably has been true since forever, the demands of a job may be stated clearly, but the rewards that job promises are, or used to be, also stated clearly and quickly and, perhaps, even first.To be fair to him, I have to acknowledge that this is not a recruitment speech he's giving his disciples, but when I think … [Read more...]

  When I was growing up in the Episcopal Church of the 1950s and ‘60s, I can’t remember ever hearing the word Pentecost except in the reading we just heard from the Acts of the Apostles...if I was even listening to that.  What I do remember is a Sunday called Whitsunday.  Whitsunday, I learned, was the birthday of the church which I vaguely understood to involve a lot of people gathered in some place called the “upper room,” a bird...a dove to be precise, a strong wind and flames of fire.  What … [Read more...]

This past Thursday was Ascension Day. It comes forty days after Easter, and marks Jesus's final leave-taking from his disciples after the resurrection. As I pondered this morning's passage from the Acts of the Apostles during the week, a sentence caught my attention in a way it never has before. As you probably know, the evangelist Luke is credited with this record of the early Church, and he writes it as a continuation of his gospel, an "orderly account" set down after "investigating carefully" … [Read more...]