This is much more than the usual healing story from the gospels. We know that Jesus healed people who came to him, or sometimes even people who didn’t seem to be seeking him out. But this is a long story that seems to have a much bigger message for us, about what following Jesus really involves. It’s actually a story about what it means to be a holy and grace-filled human being and how you get there. Let’s start by noticing all the talk about sin and uncleanness in this gospel. As a blind person of course this man who was healed was an outcast, but it seems like he…
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I have checked the records, and over my years here at St. David the King, I’ve given more than 400 different homilies. I put in the word “different” just because I realize that to many of you, some of those 400 homilies probably ended up sounding kind of similar. But really, they were at least intended to be different. And in all those years, I’ve never, I think, had anyone walk out or get angry because of a homily. I have seen a few people rush out during a homily carrying a child, so I assume it was the child who needed to leave, but it may have been an…
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So what really happens when someone is baptized? Today is the feast of Jesus’s own baptism, and sometimes people hear the gospel readings about Jesus himself being baptized and they’re puzzled. Just for example, I’ve been asked this question several times over the years: If baptism is all about protecting us from original sin, and washing us clean from it, which is what many of us came to understand, then why was baptism even necessary for Jesus, since sin was not part of his life? And that’s a good question, but maybe what it shows is that we all underestimate what is really happening with baptism. Because there was more…
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I don’t know if you’re the kind of person who wants everything at Christmas to be perfect. You know what I mean: everything perfectly decorated, the perfect gift chosen for everyone, and above all that everyone close to you is where they should be. If you are like that, my guess is that for the second year in a row, you haven’t gotten your Christmas wish. I know I haven’t. We’re here tonight well aware that as humans we’re just not as in charge as we would like to be. For all of us it’s a source of frustration, for other it’s a source of real loss. The world turns…
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Sometimes, like today, the first Sunday of Advent is on Thanksgiving weekend, and when that happens, it’s like Advent arrives even more suddenly than usual. Here we are, all distracted and maybe exhausted by the holiday, and now, the colors change, the mood changes, and something new is here, and kind of like the end of the world in this gospel reading, it takes us all by surprise. What are we supposed to do in this brief season that arrives so quickly, and that gives us just four weeks, which doesn’t give us very much time to do anything at all? Sometimes our first instinct is to think that Advent…
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Back when I was growing up in Chicago there was an archbishop who was known to be a very autocratic and difficult personality. He didn’t take criticism from anyone, and if you were an official who questioned his authority you would quickly find yourself assigned to the outer reaches of Chicagoland where no one wanted to go. When he died, his funeral was big news, and a local priest was quoted anonymously in the newspaper about the archbishop’s career: “His only desire was to serve the Lord,” he said. And then, after a pause, “of course, in an advisory capacity.” Today’s gospel has something for all of us about what…
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Jesus is rarely angry in the gospels. But today is one of the days when he is, and it’s worth looking at exactly why. It starts with the famous passage when Peter is the only one among the disciples, who can answer correctly the question about who Jesus is: he is the messiah, the anointed one, the savior who is going to gather his scattered people together and show them the way to freedom. But then, Peter shows that he doesn’t understand everything about what that means. Jesus decides to say more about where this life of the messiah is going. He says that he won’t be living a long…
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One of the most striking things about the gospel stories is that calling disciples was one of the first things Jesus did. It was central to what he was about from the very beginning. So let’s ask ourselves today, what does it mean to be a disciple? And what I will propose is that there are two things we can learn about it. On the one hand, of course, it involves following Jesus, which means learning from him, and spending so much time with him getting to know him and the way he is that you gradually have his life in front of you all the time, and at different…
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A few weeks ago we had some online gatherings of parishioners, and one of the things everyone was asked was what they missed the most about the parish during the pandemic. And as I was thinking about how I would answer this question, I thought two things. One of course is being in the church. I mean it’s wonderful what has been accomplished here in the great hall, a million cheers for everyone who has made it possible. But you’re all so far away. Over in the church, we are facing one another, as if we’re sitting around a table at a meal, which is what we are doing after…
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The Pentecost reading we heard first today describes something that sounds hard to believe in, It is the Holy Spirit finally arriving as Jesus said it would and what it really is, is a picture of real liberation. First it seems to bring an enormous release of energy. These disciples have been locked in a room, puzzled about what is next, maybe just a little the way we’ve been locked up for more than a year, but all of a sudden they feel a tremendous readiness to get out of there. And when they do, there are suddenly no barriers of communication between them and total strangers, they find words…