Preached at The Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Chappaqua, NY

October 30, 2025

John 15:9-16

“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.”

Thank you, St. Mary’s, for having me to preach at the institution of Chris Lee as your 9th rector — I am honored to be here and really feeling the joy that Jesus talks about in the Gospel tonight. God’s joy is in us, God’s joy is in you — thank you to the choir and all the many people who are making this service the celebration that it is. 

I’m a priest in this diocese; for 7 years, I’ve been the associate rector at Grace Church in Manhattan. 

But 12 years ago, I was the seminarian in a different diocese, at All Saints’ Church in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Very briefly, allow me to paint a picture of 28 year-old Julia, not the polished specimen you see here: 

At Grace Church this year, ten adults will be baptized during The Great Vigil of Easter at 7pm on Saturday, April 19. I was baptized in November 1985, when I was about 12 weeks old. Of course, I don’t remember a thing about it. I remember the priest and the place and my parents and my godparents from later times in my life. I remember the words that were said because I’ve said them hundreds of times since — as fellow congregant, as parent, as godparent, and as priest. But I was curious — what’s it like to get baptized as an adult? So I asked a handful of folks who can remember their baptisms (all in Episcopal churches) to share their experiences. Here are some of them:

Grace Church in New York

The Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost

October 29, 2023

Let me paint a New York City scene for you: You’re on the subway. You’re lucky enough to have gotten a seat. It’s one of the cars with the light blue seats, and you’re on the edge, against the silver arm rest and rails by the door. It’s nice, you can kind of lean your head to the side and rest for a second. But then the train starts to get crowded, taking on more and more people at every stop. People are tripping over your feet, their scarves are dangling over your phone. And then someone jams in the door at the last second, the back mid-section of their body now protruding slightly through and against your face.

“Get out of my space,” you think. You look up at the back of this interloper and think, “Do you not realize there is someone here?” Every little thing they then do becomes fodder for your increasing annoyance and anger towards them. Ugh, you can hear the music through their headphones and it is awful. Their backpack, thrown on the ground, is perilously close to leaning against your leg. “You are the worst of humanity,” you think.

Now here’s another familiar subway scene: You’re waiting and waiting and waiting on the platform. You were about 3 minutes late when you left your apartment, but then you remembered you forgot your umbrella, so then you were 7 minutes late, and then you just missed a train. So now, all of a sudden, you’re 17 minutes late for work and maybe you know your boss will not be happy about that ….

The train finally comes 3 minutes later and now you’re 20 minutes late and the car is also crowded. So you sneak in the best you can, sidewise, so you’re leaning against the side rail next to a seat. You take your backpack off because you’re a good subway rider and put it on the ground wherever you can find a spot and put in your headphones to try to get a little peace of mind but every single person around you is driving you crazy. If people would just move in there would be enough space. And if this person who is so lucky to have a seat behind you would just stop leaning against your backside. “Ugh, you are the worst of humanity,” you think.

Who is the worst? You’ve probably figured it out by now, you are both people. Have we not all been both people?

Grace Church in New York / The Easter Vigil / April 8, 2023

Genesis 1:1-2:4a / Matthew 28:1-10

This is the night! This is the night when we tell the stories of salvation, the stories of our journeying from one place to another, the stories of transitions: from the void to creation, from slavery to freedom, from death to life, from the dark, to our handheld flames, to the bright light and flowers and joyful music of Easter. This is the night!

It is also the night for the four newest members of the household of God: Thomas, Marigold, Brandon, and Gene, who were baptized into the death of Jesus Christ and made new in his resurrection.

Grace Church in New York / Ash Wednesday / February 22, 2023

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 

Do you know the characters Frog and Toad? They’re from children’s books from the 1970s written by Arnold Lobel. Each book tells five short fables about the friends Frog and Toad. One of them is called “Cookies.”

In the story, Toad makes some cookies. He shares them with Frog and they both eat a lot of cookies. “We have to stop eating these so we won’t get sick,” says Frog. “We need willpower!”

Toad hides the cookies, but with every place Toad hides them–even up where you can’t reach–or however he tries to protect them–tying them up with string–Frog can still get to them. “We can use a ladder,” he says! And eats some more cookies. “We can use scissors to cut the string,” he says! And eats some more cookies.

“What we have to do,” Frog decides, “is put the cookies outside.” When he does this, the birds come and eat them.

Grace Church in New York / The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost / August 11, 2019 / Audio

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Luke 12:34 

When I moved in with my now wife Caitlin, it was a merging of aesthetic styles. Her style being clean and mine being … cluttered. Messy. In fact, we took a relationship test as part of our preparation for marriage and the number one thing it told us to do was hire outside help for the cleaning, so that Caitlin would not live in constant resentment of me.

Grace Church in New York / The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost / August 4, 2019 / Audio

“And I will say to my soul, ` Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’” Luke 12:19 

I have a confession to make to you today; there is nothing I enjoy more than relaxing, eating, drinking, and being merry. The prospect of those things being absolutely secure for many years would make my soul very well, indeed. So perhaps you, like I, can relate to the “rich fool” Jesus tells us about today, who only wants to make sure that he can do all of those fun things in his retirement. And my further confession is that of those four fun things—relaxing, eating, drinking, and being merry—I hold eating above all the rest. Sure, I love to relax and I’ll take a drink at the end of a long day, but there is nothing that makes me merrier than a good meal. Continue reading →

Burial of the Dead and Holy Eucharist / Saturday, June 23, 2018, 2pm

St. Luke in the Fields, NYC / Scripture: Isaiah 25:6-9 / John 11:21-27

Like most of you here today, I would rather not be here at St. Luke in the Fields on Pride weekend, laying our brother Paul to rest. I would rather see Paul tomorrow, corralling all of us Episcopalians around a float that declares to the world: “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You,” a message from the core of who Paul was and is to us still: whoever you are, wherever you are from, whatever you believe, whoever and however you love–you are welcome here, you are invited to the table of this feast of life. It feels completely unfair that Paul won’t be there tomorrow, spreading that love that was his life’s work, that he won’t be here next year, or for years and years to come, marching with us, feasting with us, celebrating with us. Continue reading →

Preached on January 21, 2018 at All Saints’ Church, Brooklyn at Evening Prayer, 5pm

Third Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B

Jonah 3:1-5, 10

The Old Testament story this evening is a very brief snippet of the story of Jonah, or as it is popularly known, Jonah and the whale. But if you know anything about bible scholars, the kind who like to tell you that what you learned in Sunday School was wrong, then you know it wasn’t a whale, it’s really a Big Fish. 

This passage is just a tiny little part of the story, and it includes what I think might be the worst sermon in all of the bible. Jonah preaches to the people of Nineveh: Jonah’s big sermon in the center of the city is not quite as eloquent as Jesus’s famous sermons on the mount or the plain, Jonah’s sermon is just, in a strangled voice: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” That’s it. That’s all it takes for the whole city to be convinced, to repent, to do what God wants for them. Continue reading →