All Saints’ Church / July 26, 2015

Proper 12 / Year B

2 Kings 4:42-44 / Psalm 145: 10-19 / Ephesians 3:14-21 / John 6:1-21

I stood here two weeks ago and preached a sermon about John the Baptist being beheaded. And now, on this day when we get to talk about the loaves and the fishes, there is just one thread that I want to pick up from my sermon a couple weeks ago.

But first let me just say, it is totally okay if you were not here two weeks ago. I’ll fill you in on what you missed. And if you were here, please excuse my brief recap:

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All Saints’ Church

July 12, 2015

Proper 10 / Year B

Amos 7:7-15 / Psalm 85:8-13 / Ephesians 1:3-14 / Mark 6:14-29

I was leading a retreat for St. Lydia’s this weekend–the church where I work the other half of my time. And the centerpiece of the whole retreat was the Road to Emmaus story, from the Gospel of Luke.

It’s just after Jesus has died, and the disciples are walking along the road. Jesus is there, too, but they don’t recognize him until he breaks bread and gives it to them. It’s a beautiful story about knowing and remembering and resurrection and eating bread and how Jesus loves us. The kind of story that makes you feel really good about the bible and church.

So I had to leave the retreat a little bit early to come here and I told everyone, sorry: I have to go preach about a beheading.

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All Saints’ Church

May 31, 2015

Trinity Sunday

Isaiah 6:1-8
Psalm 29 or Canticle 2 or 13
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-17

In the name of One God, a holy & undivided trinity. Amen.

Way back in the 1300s in England, there was a Christian mystic who we call Julian of Norwich. She was what we call an anchoress–which basically means she stayed in her room all day and wrote about God. In 1395, she wrote a book called Revelations of Divine Love, and it is the first book in the English language known to have been written by a woman. 1395! In it, she wrote about the Trinity. She said:

The almighty truth of the Trinity is our Father, for he made us and keeps us in him. And the deep wisdom of the Trinity is our Mother, in whom we are enclosed. And the high goodness of the Trinity is our Lord, and in him we are enclosed and he in us. We are enclosed in the Father, and we are enclosed in the Son, and we are enclosed in the Holy Spirit. And the Father is enclosed in us, the Son is enclosed in us, and the Holy Spirit is enclosed in us, almighty, all wisdom and all goodness, one God, one Lord.

A little while ago, I did an exercise with the youth group here at All Saints’. I asked them: what does God look like?

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5^th Sunday of Easter, Year B

Acts 8:26-40
Psalm 22:24-30
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8

All Saints’ Church

May 3, 2015

John said “Beloved, let us love one another.” In the name of one God, who is love. AMEN

I was sitting around a table with a few friends after dinner back in November when we heard the decision that there would be no charges against the police officer who killed Michael Brown.

One friend broke our angry silence and said: “Well, what can we do about it?”

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