One, holy and catholic
Today I am continuing with the series on the Nicene Creed, and we have reached, “We believe in one holy, catholic and apostolic church.” There’s a certain irony in tackling this subject on Storm Sunday as the church has tended to be a stormy organization with a lot of dissension. Sometimes the church is described as a ship. In fact, the word “nave” for the body of a traditionally built church, came from the medieval Latin navis which means ship.…
Creation’s Suffering
Today is Fauna or Animal Sunday, but I’m not going to talk about polar bears or about cats or coyotes. Instead I want to talk about pain. Last week, several of you spoke to me about the pain of seeing the oceans heating up and the water rising; the pain of knowing about the plight of sea mammals hurt by our trash. This is painful stuff. And it is right for us to feel the pain and difficulty that human…
Ocean Sunday
For most of the last two thousand years, theology has focused on our relationship with God and with each other. Now we are realizing that loving our neighbor includes loving the whole of creation. As a reflection of this we will be celebrating the Season of Creation during September. This is not yet part of the normal Anglican cycle but is a liturgical tradition started in Australia some twenty years ago. As we turn our attention more and more to…
Take me to the Alley
A Meditation on Luke 14: 1, 7-14 Posted on August 23, 2016 by Gregory Porter, May 2016 “Take Me To The Alley” Well, they gild their houses In preparation for the King And they line the sidewalks With every sort of shiny thing They will be surprised When they hear him say Take me to the alley Take me to the afflicted ones Take me to the lonely ones That somehow lost their ways Let them hear me say, I…
The Holy Spirit
This morning we continue our series on the Nicene Creed by considering the work of the Holy Spirit. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. The church fathers who created the Nicene Creed were very concerned about the relationship between the persons of the Trinity. At the time, you will…
I Came to Bring Fire to the Earth
I. Backpacking A. One of my favorite summer projects over the past 10 years has been back-packing in the High Sierras of Yosemite National Park. I’ve had to put it aside the past few years but it is still bright in recent memory. It would all begin after Christmas with careful planning, pouring over trail maps, for a 7 day itinerary in the mountains; then, gathering our usual group of up to 10 young people and parents; getting a wilderness…
Looking for Heaven
It seems as though about every 500 years, the church gets to re-think its understandings of the ways of God in the light of contemporary science and society. The last time was the Protestant Reformation. We are currently living in one of those pivotal times. Times when the old wine skins can no longer hold the new wine and things seem to fall apart. Times when we get to reformulate the way we talk about the ways of God and…
The Lord’s Prayer
Thoughts on the Lord’s Prayer Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.” …
For our sake…
This is Caro’s sermon from this morning; Fr Barry also spoke and his is only available as an mp3 file here. There’s a young man in my neighborhood who has just graduated from Poly. If you ask him he may tell you his name is Bill.[1] But that’s not his real name. His real name is Mohammed, and although his Mom is American, his Dad is from Saudi Arabia. I tell you this because after the horrific massacre in Nice…