May 7, 2023: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen. Happy Easter everyone! I attended a funeral yesterday for the husband of Mother Lauren Ackland, the long-serving Rector of Grace Episcopal in Madison, where I first served as a seminarian. George Hayman, or Mr. Lauren Ackland, as he sometimes referred to…
April 30, 2023: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen. Happy Easter everyone! Well, if you haven’t figured it out by all the readings we have heard this morning, the Fourth Sunday of Easter is always Good Shepherd Sunday. Now, Jesus as a shepherd is not a new thing to us,…
April 23, 2023: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen. Happy Easter everyone! Yes – still Easter. In fact, while we celebrate Eastertide for 50 days, in reality we are always a resurrection people. And today we get my favorite of the early resurrection experiences of the first followers of Jesus,…
Easter Sunday – April 9, 2023: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen. Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Dang, that never gets old. And perhaps that is why you are here. You already know the story – just as with Christmas. And yet, here you are. Now,…
Maundy Thursday – April 6, 2023: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen. Tonight we begin. Tonight we enter into a three day service – the Paschal Triduum. And as I note each year, there will be no dismissal at the end of the services tonight and tomorrow night…
Palm Sunday – April 2, 2023: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen. This past week in the Thursday night bible study group, we were talking a bit about the upcoming Holy Week as we discussed the readings for this very chaotic day. And as we talked about the palms, I…
March 19, 2023: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen. Several years ago, the BBC published a story about how people choose political leaders. While most people say that competence is why they vote for someone, how they determine that quality is sadly superficial – based entirely on the person’s appearance.…
March 12, 2023: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen. One thing we can say after last week and today – the authors of this forth gospel are not lost for words. The narratives are long discourses that make the stories in the synoptics of Mark, Matthew, and Luke look…
March 5, 2023: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen. Well, we are now in the second week of Lent, and as the Lent Madness smackdowns have progressed, my bracket predictions are starting to look very sketchy. Harriet Monsell lost this past week to Johann Sebastian Bach. Now, as much as…
February 26, 2023: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen. On Friday, a friend and colleague, the Very Reverend Patrick Malloy, Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, posted on his Facebook page a notice. Part of it read “…We have learned that tomorrow, [the 25th of February], has…
