Sermons on Church's Year (Page 6)
The Ascended Christ
When I was in elementary school, my mother took me out of school once a year on a Thursday to go to church for the feast of the Ascension so I totally agreed with St Augustine who called it the crown of all Christian festivals.[1] The Ascension is celebrated on the Thursday that comes forty days after Easter, but we no longer have a service that day. So it is the focus of our worship this morning instead. The…
It is not yet the end
Alleluia The Lord is Risen! He is Risen indeed! Alleluia! We often think of Easter as being the end of Jesus’ story. After years of preaching, healing and challenging the religious authorities, he was betrayed and died. But then, like all good heroes, he turned the tables on his opponents in the ultimate triumph and rose from the dead. This morning I want to suggest to you that the resurrection is not even the climax of the story, let alone…
HOW DO WE KNOW JESUS ROSE FROM THE DEAD?
Tonight I would like to share one of many theological theories regarding the idea that God had a master plan at creation, and how the manner of death, burial and resurrection of Jesus was an integral part of that plan. This theory says that God, being omniscient and knowing that man would sin and perish without divine help, had prepared a plan for salvation for us to be reconciled with God. This salvation was to be through the death and…
For God so Loved
Once a year, usually the week before Holy Week, the clergy of the diocese meet together to renew our vows and to bless oil to be used for healing and blessing in the coming year. When we met last week, the Bishop shared a TED talk by academic and author, Brene Brown. Brown has spent hours interviewing people about guilt and shame. She distinguishes between the two by suggesting that guilt is when you feel bad for something you did…
Mimetic Desire
This morning I’m continuing the Lenten series on the meaning of the cross and of atonement. Today I’m going to focus on the work of Rene Girard. Much of Girard’s early work was in literary criticism, and he became a Christian through studying the work of Dostoyevsky. Later he formulated a specific theory which he and others have applied to theology. It is known as the “mimetic” theory. Girard says that we all imitate one another. In fact, we want…
Transfiguration
I’ve always been a bit bothered by this gospel. I can understand transformation – when one thing gets changed into another – and in the spiritual life we constantly seek to be transformed into the Christlike beings we were created to be. But transfiguration has seemed fairly pointless. Why would God go to the trouble of changing Jesus’ appearance for a brief time with only three witnesses who were later sworn to secrecy? This year it makes more sense to…
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…
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…