On a beautiful summer weekend, even though this is the feast of the Trinity, I think the last thing you are probably needing is a homily that tries to explain the Trinity. I went back and looked at my previous homilies over the years on Trinity Sunday, and once or twice I think I actually went a little in that direction, so I think I should start by saying that if you were around for any of those, I’m really sorry. So instead today, one thing to notice about the Trinity. And let’s take that one thing from the first reading. So God the father is supposed to be unapproachable…
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We all have a question after hearing this story, and we have this question no matter how many time we’ve heard it. And the question is, “Why?” Why did this have to happen? We’re told Jesus in some way died for us, that this was necessary. Even he said so, it had to happen, and no one understood him, and we don’t either. So how do we answer this “why” question that is here each Good Friday? Our mistake is to see what happened here as a tragedy, someone who got something terrible he didn’t deserve. But we can’t ever forget what kind of story this really is. Because what…
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We all love the Christmas message, which is that there is a God of love who cares about this world enough to be with us. And now we find out something more, what we find out is that God doesn’t just love us. In the end, God wins. Death is not the worst thing that can happen to us. Like at Christmas, the signs of this aren’t always spectacular. There is just an empty tomb, and the reports of people who are absolutely certain about what they saw and experienced, which is that someone they knew and loved was fully alive and present in a completely new way that no…
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My mom was not a mean person at all, but she had a few phrases that she would use whenever she saw something in this world that really irritated her, and what often irritated her was people who put themselves forward in what she thought was a big-headed or pushy way. And when that happened, the phrase you’d hear was, “Who does he (or she) think he is?” I grew up in the Midwest, where traditionally people who put on airs are regarded with great suspicion, but I don’t think this is just a midwestern thing. I suspect that many of us have grown up with this phrase or something…
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So let’s take a moment and think back before Christmas, if you can, back when we heard about John the Baptist here in the gospel readings. We heard about him back in Advent because he was someone who felt called by God to be on the lookout for God alive and active in this world. He believed that God was sending someone to us, someone who would change everything. John attracted huge crowds and gotten them very excited, telling them that he, John, was not that person, but that when that person came, you’d know him. And yet, when Jesus came, John did not know him. He says twice in…
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Jesus’s ascension is a very hard scene for us to picture. It’s a moment of spectacular special effects, maybe, or a religious vision that most of us have never experienced anything like. But however it happened and however you picture it, this ascension is something Jesus told the disciples would happen, that after his resurrection his physical presence would only be with them for a while, and then their world would be turned upside down yet again. It must have been hard for them. On that first Easter they all found it hard to believe the story of the women, they all found it hard to accept that he was…
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We often hear it said that human beings were created in God’s image. And most days, we have no idea how that could possibly be true. Because after all God must be perfect, while here on earth, the rest of us behave in ways that don’t seem very perfect, and there are places where evil and death have their way, sometimes on a horrifying scale. How could we possibly be made in God’s image, when all of us seem so far from being anything like God? But on Good Friday, our task here today is to see God’s image differently and to see our own image differently too. Because it…
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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 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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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…