Prayer of Assent
This morning’s gospel reading comes from the very beginning of Mark’s gospel. Jesus was beginning his ministry, and we are told that he got up early in the morning and went to a deserted place to pray. Mark doesn’t tell us anything about how he prayed, but we can imagine that this was a regular practice of Jesus’. He rose early in the morning to pray. Prayer, contemplation or meditation are fundamental to the spiritual life. Prayer was foundational to…
The Light of Hope
Each day on my way to work I get to have alone time with God. And, one of my daily prayers is a verse from Psalm 51, which reads: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Today’s gospel story is Mark’s account of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry following His baptism in the River Jordan. Immediately preceding the story, Jesus has just called Peter, Andrew, James and John from their boats to…
A Whale of a Tale
Jonah 3:1-5, 10 The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh…
Sermon for Martin Luther King Jr. Day by Pat Henry
One of today’s readings, in 1st Samuel states “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears it tingle. On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them.…
Pageantry and passion
There are at least two ways of approaching Scripture. I’m going to loosely categorize them as the Engineer’s way and the English Major’s way. The hypothetical engineer wants to know the facts of the situation and how these fit with other known facts; the English Major is more interested in metaphoric layers of symbolism in the passage. This morning’s reading is especially troubling to the engineer. There are more unanswered questions than there are certainties with this narrative. Where did…
The Welcoming Jesus
The Welcoming Jesus at the National Cathedral’s Children’s Chapel.
God Likes Us!
In the Dickens story, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge the miserable and cold-hearted miser is visited by the ghost of his former partner, Marley, who also spent his life making money and exploiting the poor. Marley warns Scrooge that if he doesn’t change his ways he will, like Marley, be damned. But in order to give him one last chance at redemption, Scrooge is visited by three spirits, the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present and the Ghost…
The Bigger Picture
I don’t usually watch television, but every morning I check the headlines on the BBC News app. This morning the first one is “Row over Trump team email trove.” If I were the BBC I might have led with the deadly attack on a Methodist church in Pakistan or the mudslide that has buried a remote village in Chile. Life is hard, and now we have learned our connectedness with others across the planet, we know more than ever about…