First Fruits

A Homily for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

Text: I Corinthians 15:12-20

Grace to you and peace from God our Heavenly Father and Christ Jesus our Lord, who has risen victoriously and set us free. Amen.

We have spent the past several weeks discussing ministry – both Christ’s ministry in this world and our own call to ministry as members of the Body of Christ.

But what is this all for? Are we saved by Christ’s moral teachings, as though if we could perfectly follow him, we could earn our salvation? Are we saved by answering God’s call into ministry? Is it up to us?

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Scripture is Being Fulfilled

A Homily for the Third Sunday after Epiphany

Texts: St. Luke 4:14-21

Grace to you and peace from God our Heavenly Father and Christ Jesus our Lord, who fulfills the Law and the Prophets. Amen.

Two weeks ago, we read that the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus at his baptism in the Jordan. St. Luke doesn’t tell us much else about this; unlike Sts. Matthew and John’s longer descriptions, Luke gives us a scant three sentences before the Evangelist is off describing Jesus’ human lineage. Lest we think this was merely a momentary apparition, though, Luke picks up the story again by saying that Christ leaves the Jordan and enters the wilderness (we’ll read this in about six weeks when we get to Lent). This isn’t just a quick trip out to the desert but rather a time of wrestling with temptation and Satan. And Christ does not go alone – he is, as St. Luke puts it, “full of the Spirit.” Now, today, we pick up the story: Jesus, back from the wilderness, begins his public ministry “in the power of the Spirit.”

Christ’s entire ministry is infused by the presence of the Holy Spirit. And so it is that, in the synagogue, he takes the scroll and reads from the prophet Isaiah – “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”

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Signs of a Coming Kingdom

A Homily for the First Sunday of Advent

Texts: Jeremiah 33:15-16; St. Luke 21:25-36

Grace to you and peace from God our Heavenly Father and Christ our Lord, who is coming again in glory. Amen.

Have you ever gazed up at the heavens and marveled at the lights piercing the inky black expanse?

I’m not much one for finding stellar constellations, those mythic signs traced through the stars – not for lack of trying but for lack of ability. But without fail, I can find Orion – the great hunter with his tell-tale belt and Canis Major steadfastly by his side. As a teenager in Kansas and on long, late-night rides through the Georgia countryside in college, and now, watching him rise over the trees in my neighborhood, I know that Orion’s appearance in the evening means one thing: winter is coming.

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Behold Our King

A Homily for the Feast of Christ the King

Texts: Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; Revelation 1:4b-8; St. John 18:33-37

Grace to you and peace from God our Heavenly Father and Christ Jesus our Lord, the King, who comes riding on the clouds. Amen.

This is our King?

Arrested, standing trial, bound, headed for Golgotha?

It’s so far removed from our expectations. This does not look like the One Like a Son of Man who, in Daniel, comes with the clouds of heaven to receive dominion and glory and kingship from the Ancient One, standing before a fiery throne. Hours before his death, this does not look like one who will be served by all peoples, nations and languages, who will receive everlasting dominion and kingship that shall never be destroyed.

This is not exactly Alpha and Omega, Who Is and Who Was and Who Is to Come. This is not our picture of the Almighty.

This is not even our picture of an earthly ruler.

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Dogs at the Table

A Homily for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Texts: St. James 2:1-17; St. Mark 7:24-37

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord, who came to feed the children of God. Amen.

We’ve seen something like this before.

Jesus is staying at a home in the area near Tyre when a woman comes to him, asking that Christ might cast a demon out of her daughter. There’s a familiar pattern for healing stories and exorcisms like this. There will be some little exchange, the disciples will get annoyed, onlookers will scoff at the entire situation, and Jesus will tell the woman that she has great faith and the daughter will made well. Standard enough fare for the Gospels.

We see these healing narratives over and over again. So much so that we get used to them and, to be honest, we stop paying attention until the end. Oh, hey. Jesus healed the person with…what was it this time? Another leper? Leprosy! Jesus healed the person with leprosy. Yea. Alright. They get a little boring, we lose focus, and the details often evade us as long as it’s a happy ending.

Usually, any sort of disturbing details are floating just under the surface; they demand a close reading of the text to really get at the real point of the story.

But not this time.

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The Trinity

A Homily for the Feast of the Holy Trinity

Texts: Isaiah 6:1-8; Romans 8:12-17

Grace to you and Peace in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

To what can we compare the Most Blessed Trinity?

God’s existence as three persons united into one being is perhaps the most confusing belief in the Christian faith.

How Christ can be present in heaven and here at the Altar? That’s easy enough – he’s God.

How can water do such marvelous things? It’s not water but water with the Spirit and Word of God.

Ok, we’ve the Sacraments down.

What’s the deal with the Crucifixion? Well, through his death and resurrection, Christ destroys the power of death. That makes sense. We that every year when spring brings green life out of the barren death of winter.

But the Trinity? One-in-Three and the Three-in-One? That brings with it all sorts of caveats to try to clarify it, and it just makes it more confusing.

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Come Out From Behind Your Locked Doors

A Homily for the Second Sunday of Easter

Text: St. John 20:19-31

Grace to you and peace from God our Heavenly Father and Christ Jesus our Lord, the Risen One who has set us free for the Kingdom of God. Amen.

Our Gospel reading today opens on a scene that, until last year’s pandemic Easter, was unfamiliar to most us: in the midst of our Easter joy, as we celebrate these great fifty days, we enter a room full of fear. The disciples, in the wake of the Crucifixion, are huddling in a locked apartment, hiding out of sight. They saw what happened to Jesus, and they are terrified that it might happen to them – that Jewish zealots and Roman soldiers might come after them as well, that they may be forced to bear their own crosses. They have heard Mary Magdalene’s testimony, that Christ is risen, but we can see their doubt. Picture their faces: jumping at every sound, the pit sinking in their stomach every time they hear a group of pilgrims walk by, every time a band of soldiers marches by. In the midst of Passover, the disciples are holed up in Jerusalem, afraid that the crowds outside might turn against them.

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Love, Service, and a Meal

A Homily for Maundy Thursday

Texts: I Corinthians 11:23-26; St. John 13:1-17, 31-35

Grace to you and peace from God our Heavenly Father and Christ Jesus our Lord, who loving nourishes us with his Body and Blood. Amen.

Cast your mind back, if you will, to just before the beginning of Lent – roughly two months ago, on Transfiguration Sunday. Simon Peter, James, and John climb the mount with our Lord and behold the revelation of his glory as Jesus stands, radiant, talking with Moses and Elijah. Do you remember Saint Peter’s response?

He wants to stay, to build shelters for Christ, the Law Giver, and the Prophet. “Lord,” he says, “it’s good for us to be here.”

How much more so do you think he felt that during the Last Supper?

After the emotional high of entering the city in triumph, things had taken a turn. Suddenly, Jesus was in direct confrontation with the religious, economic, and political powers. He had turned over the money changers’ tables in the Temple, had debated with the Pharisees and Sadducees, and his teachings have taken a turn for the apocalyptic. If the Romans hadn’t been paying attention to this Nazarene preacher before, then the parade into the city and the scene in the Temple had surely drawn unwanted attention from Roman soldiers.

Maybe Peter and the other disciples felt the tension, or maybe they were too caught up in the excitement. But had he known everything that was about to happen – the tears in Gethsemane, the betrayal and arrest, the sham trial, his own denial, the torture, the cross – how much more would he have begged Jesus to stay at the table, tearfully pleading, “Lord, it’s good for us to be here.”

Let us stay at this last supper. Let us eat, drink, and be merry. Don’t go unto dark Gethsemane, Lord, because the soldiers are waiting there for you. But here – it’s good for us to be here.

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Rest & Freedom

A Homily for the Second Wednesday in Lent

Text: St. John 5:1-18

Grace to you and peace from God our Heavenly Father and Christ Jesus our Lord, who sets us free. Amen.

What comes to your mind when I say “blue laws?” Usually, banning the sale of alcohol on Sunday, right? Maybe laws about horse racing, hunting, and car sales (and, according to one unconfirmed urban legend, sodas, which through a bizarre bit of marketing and legal loop holes, birthed the ice cream Sundae) but most of us think about those laws that kept the beer aisle in Georgia grocery stores dark on Sunday until about a decade ago (depending on which county you lived in).

These laws date back to a time when Sabbath observance was serious business – in this country, most famously in Puritan New England. Shops were closed and work was strictly prohibited. More than working, though, New England’s blue laws targeted anything that would distract from the Lord’s Day. (This even became a plot point in the novel Johnny Tremain.) The Massachusetts Bay colony enshrined in law:

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One With Authority

A Homily for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

Texts: Deuteronomy 18:15-20; St. Mark 1:21-28

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord, who calls us to proclaim his authority. Amen.

A prophet like Moses. It’s quite a promise for the people so recently rescued from slavery and following the law-giver through the wilderness.

Here he is: their great liberator who has worked mighty deeds in the name of the Lord. How excited the people must have been to hear that there would be more prophets like Moses. And today, we know their names: starting with Joshua, followed by the likes of Deborah, Hannah and her son Samuel, Nathan, Elijah and Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Hosea, to name but a few.

These people were not mere fortune tellers, as we think of prophets in modern days, but rather these are the ones who give voice to God’s divine message of redemption and liberation. What a relief it must have been to hear that God will continue to speak to the people.

But this promise is not entirely good news. It comes with a warning: false prophets will arise and attribute to God that which the Lord has not said. These lying prophets are both a curse and accursed, speaking deception and oppressing the people. These liars will “presume to speak for the Lord” while serving only their own interests.

How do we know who’s who? When a prophet proclaims, “Thus says the Lord,” how do we know they are speaking truly? How do we discern the good from the bad?

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