Sunday sermons from St. John’s Episcopal Church, a growing, vibrant, inclusive community in Charlestown, Massachusetts.
Reading the feed…
Who gave you your name? Do you go by the name your parents gave you at your birth? Is it a nickname that you got along the way? Is your name really your middle name? Has it changed, by marriage or by choice? Did it take time for you to discover what your true name really was? Do different people call you different things? (I can think of a number of people I know who affectionately call their spouses by their full, legal names, and not the nicknames everyone else uses.) I’m named “Greg” in part because there’s no diminutive to change; there is no parallel in a young Greg’s life to the moment a
Just before I left for vacation, movie theaters around the world began showing the epic action fantasy film The Odyssey. Has anyone seen it? I haven’t. And in fact, I forgot my copy of The Odyssey at home, so I didn’t even read any Homer on the beach. But I did read an adaptation that I hadn’t read before: a novel by Natalie Haynes entitled A Thousand Ships, a re-telling of the stories of the Trojan War from the perspectives of the women involved. It’s a great book, a powerful reminder of the horrors that lurk behind these stories of war. And it reminded me of one of the ironies of epic tales:
So I have to admit: I don’t really like traveling. I might even say I really don’t like traveling, especially by plane. My problem with travel is not the being-in-a-new-place. It’s the uncertainty and the waiting that drive me nuts. I wait anxiously before a trip, worrying that the worst could happen. And then I spend my time away worrying about the trip home. And then I return home safe and sound. And I wonder: wait, would I have enjoyed this more if I’d known in advance that none of the things I worried about were going to happen? (None of them have ever happened, by the way. Maybe one day,
In the next two weeks, we’ll hear two stories on two Sundays about sowing seeds. Anyone who’s ever seen me in a garden knows that I am not at all qualified to speak about seeds, although I’m very good at killing houseplants. But then again, Jesus was a carpenter and his disciples were mostly fishermen. And let’s be honest: it’s another warm summer day, and the Parable of the Sower doesn’t really need much explanation, does it? It’s a famous parable, one that’s well-known (and tame) enough that it even appears in our Sunday School curricula. And it’s a pretty simple story. A sower goes out to s
An Emerson College poll last year revealed a surprising paradox about news consumption in America: social media is the least-widely-trusted and most-widely-used source for information about the news. More than half of Americans reported that they put “not much trust” or “no trust at all” in the information they received from social media sites; even so, nearly 40% said that social media or YouTube were their main sources of news. Some would say that this is an example of what economists call “revealed preferences”; the idea there’s a difference between what consumers say they prefer and the pr
This story of “The Binding of Isaac” is one of the most beautifully written stories in human history, about one of the most horrifying acts any of us could imagine. It raises some challenging questions for those of us who receive it as Holy Scripture. What kind of man would respond to a vision like this so immediately, with so few questions? Who is the God who would test someone in this way? Part of the power of the story comes the contrast between the intensity of the emotions and the simplicity of the words. God “tests” Abraham, and he says to him, “Abraham!” and Abraham answers, simply, “He
I generally avoid making a big deal out of certain days that are widely celebrated in the world around us but aren’t Christian “holy days.” I don’t give a “Mother’s Day sermon.” There are no special prayers for Father’s Day. And that’s really because, while there are many people celebrating these days, many people find them hard; I’ve known more than a few people who avoid going to church on Mother’s Day or Father’s Day entirely: because they never wanted to be parents, and don’t want a whole morning about how great parents are; or because they do want to be parents, but aren’t; because their
You’ve probably heard the saying, “We make plans, and God laughs.” I don’t always love this phrase. It does a good job of expressing the unpredictability of a world in which our best-laid plans so often go awry. But I think it makes God sound a little too mean-spirited. A few years ago, for example, I was training to run in the Bunker Hill Day road race. I was all ready to prove once and for all that I was the fastest priest in Charlestown. And then, a couple weeks before the race, we went on a trip to New York to visit my in-laws and I cut my shin on a broken toy teapot, so badly that I ended
There’s a story told by the Irish writer Frank O’Connor that comes from his childhood wandering through the countryside outside Cork in southern Ireland. If you recognize it, it’s probably because it was popularized by President John F. Kennedy, who re-told it in speeches several times. In his autobiography An Only Child, O’Connor writes, “When as kids we came to an orchard wall that seemed too high to climb, we took off our caps and tossed them over the wall, and then we had no choice but to follow them.” It’s an idyllic image of audacity and determination and the spirit of adventure.
This time of year is a season of goodbyes. At colleges around the country, graduating students are saying goodbye to their campuses and professors, to roommates and friends, and maybe even to education itself—although hopefully not to learning. In local schools, teachers are getting ready to say goodbye to this year’s class of students, and students are saying goodbye to friends as they scatter to camps and vacations for the summer.
People sometimes celebrate Pentecost as “the birthday of the Church,” with red balloons and a birthday cake at Coffee Hour. But I like to think of it as an anniversary, instead, because what begins at Pentecost is more like a marriage than a birth. What begins at Pentecost, or what begins in a wedding ceremony, is not a new individual’s life, but a new form of common life; a way of being together that doesn’t subsume the individuals involved into one blended personality, but rather includes them in something new.
Imagine being one of Jesus’ disciples on that first Ascension Day, two thousand years ago. The last six weeks have been pretty crazy. You’d first come down to the city of Jerusalem for Passover with a group of friends who’d spent the last year following this remarkable man named Jesus as he traveled around Galilee. You’d heard him preaching about the coming of what he called the kingdom of God. You’d seen him do things you couldn’t explain. You’d come to believe that there was something special about Jesus. Surely he was going to be the one to restore the kingdom to Israel. Surely he was going
Nautical enthusiasts and dictionary editors alike have argued for centuries about the distinction between a ship and a boat. Everyone agrees that ships are big and boats are small; as Merriam-Webster puts it, “You can put a boat onto a ship, but you can’t put a ship onto a boat.”[1] What’s less clear is the exact nature of the distinction. Is a ship just a boat of a certain size? Or is a ship what you get when your boat comes with more boats? (Lifeboats, for example.) Who’s to say? Now, don’t worry. That’s not what this sermon is actually about. This sermon is about something entirely differen
Back in high school, when I ran cross-country and track, I’d often find myself lost with my friends somewhere in the Middlesex Fells. There were a few kids on the team who lived near the woods, and they could usually find their way around. Personally, I have a terrible sense of direction, and so it wasn’t that uncommon for me to get turned around, and come out half a mile further down South Border Road than I thought we’d gone, and to have to slowly wind my way back to the high school from Medford. My friends and I often ended up on detours, as a result, but we were never really that lost. Aft
Last Sunday after church, Nancy and I met with four of the kids for a class about communion. One of them is preparing for her first communion a little later this spring, one of them maybe next year; two of them were older, and joined us to lend their wisdom and eat snacks. But we were all there to talk about what exactly it is we do on Sunday mornings, and why. I showed them how we set the table at the altar. They fought over who got to break the (unconsecrated) priest’s host, like I do. And they asked me a few tricky questions about this beautiful and strange communion ritual of ours. Why is
Now, poor Thomas got stuck with the label of “Doubting Thomas” for the rest of time. But that’s not entirely fair. When Thomas gets arrives with his bags full of Pringles, all he asks is to see what the other disciples have already seen. They hear the good news of the Resurrection from Mary Magdalene, and that same day they see Jesus and it confirms what they’ve been told. Thomas hears the good news from them, and he has to wait a week, but then he too sees Jesus and it confirms what he’s been told. And okay, maybe Thomas really does doubt what he’s told more than the other disciples. He’s the
The story of Easter morning is the story of an empty tomb. After Jesus’ death on Friday afternoon, the two Marys, his most faithful disciples, don’t have time to prepare Jesus’ body for burial before the Sabbath begins. They wait anxiously throughout the day of Sabbath rest, mourning the loss of their friend. After the Sabbath is over, it’s too dark to see inside the tomb, and so they spend the night in restless sleep, and then they head out as early as they can. And just as the day begins to dawn, Mary and Mary arrive at the tomb. But when they get there, they don’t find what they expect.
Whether we’re leading processions through our churches, or hanging jewelry around our necks, coming up with a symbol to put on signs and flags or offering a blessing, we Christians don’t tend to choose the empty tomb or the washing of feet, Lazarus raised from the dead or the Sermon on the Mount. No; we choose the Cross, because the story of the Crucifixion is so central to us that it has become the symbol of our entire faith. That can make it hard for us to remember that at the time, the Crucifixion wasn’t “The Crucifixion” at all.
In a Lenten devotional published this year, Brother Luke of the Society of St. John the Evangelist reflects on one of the verses in the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5) He notes the humility and meekness of Jesus in the stories we hear this week: “Jesus showed love and leadership by riding a donkey, not a stallion,” he notes, “and by washing feet” on Maundy Thursday. And then he connects this to a wider point: “Gentle and strong patience,” Brother Luke writes, “does not mean giving in or giving up. The meek are not weak.” And then he uses a phr
I have to admit that I find some parts of this story unsatisfying. Jesus speaks to the disciples in a confusing and misleading way, telling them at first that “this illness does not lead to death,” (John 11:4) only to act like they’re slow on the uptake moments later when he tells them metaphorically that Lazarus is “sleeping,” and then “plainly,” that “Lazarus is dead.” (11:11, 14) Jesus waits two days before setting out for Bethany, (11:6) delaying while Lazarus suffers, putting Mary and Martha through grief and pain—seemingly so that he can prove a point to the disciples about his own power
I’m always reminded, when I hear this Gospel story, of the classic TED Talk entitled “The Danger of a Single Story” by the Nigerian-American author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her talk is all about what happens when we reduce another person to a single, set understanding. She grew up in a middle-class family in Nigeria, and she tells the story of going to visit the village in which one of her family’s servants lived. She’d been taught to pity these poor people, whose lives in the countryside were so dire that they’d had to leave and come into the city to cook and clean for a family like hers. Bu
“After an accident on a winding road,” the synopsis for a 1997 film begins, “four teens make the fatal mistake of dumping their victim’s body into the sea. But exactly one year later, a mysterious fisherman begins stalking the friends.” This horror film was called I Know What You Did Last Summer, and it was such a success that the studio produced a sequel the next year, entitled (almost inevitably) I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, in which (spoiler alert) “the murderous fisherman with a hook stalks the two surviving teens.” A few years later, in 2006, trying to squeeze the last dollar fr
I’ve heard of buildings being named after people, schools named after people, and even cities named after people; but I really have to ask: what do you have to do to get a whole God named after you? Seriously. Someone asks, “Which god should we praise?” and of all the choices for a name by which to identify God—the Holy Trinity; the Creator of the heavens and the earth; the God who raised Jesus from the dead—the Methodist preacher Thomas Olivers sat to write our opening hymn and chose to say: “the God of Abram praise.” But he didn’t come up with the idea. He was quoting Jesus, who identifies G
Imagine that Jesus Christ came back to earth, Ivan Karamazov says to his brother Alyosha, in Dostoevsky’s great novel The Brothers Karamazov. Imagine that Christ returned in 16th century Spain. He’s heard the prayers of his people for fifteen hundred years, and he’s finally come to help, and the people are amazed. Wherever he goes, joy fills their hearts. People who are sick are healed. A girl rises from the dead. “The Sun of Love burns in his heart, and warm rays of light, wisdom, and power beam forth from his eyes.” The Cardinal Grand Inquisitor himself comes to Jesus, and puts him under arr
Our preparations for Ash Wednesday really begin on Palm Sunday, when we wave green fronds and leafy branches and sing the ancient song of longing and hope for the arrival of the Messiah: “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord—Hosanna in the highest!” “Hosanna,” we say on Palm Sunday, which means in Aramaic: “Save us!” and we certainly need saving. The palms symbolize the hope of salvation: the hope that maybe this year, the Messiah will set things straight. Maybe this year, we’ll see God’s kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven. Maybe this year, we’ll see the dawn of a new world o
