The elderly and rheumy-eyed bishop climbed to the pulpit slowly and with difficulty. While he recovered from the effort, the congregation noted the kindness, wisdom, and experience evident on his face. He smiled a wan smile and hunched his shoulders in that familiar gesture of despair and said, “Whenever I have to preach from the…

We are poised today on the threshold of the Ascension, with Pentecost rising on the horizon. The reading from John’s Gospel today reflects that. It is part of the long love-letter that scholars call Jesus’ “Farewell Discourse” in which Jesus promises his friends that although the time has come for him to depart, he will…

[Y]ou shall love your neighbor as yourself… Leviticus 19:18 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. John 13:34 Here we have, from two separate stories and two separate times, the instruction to love each other. The first is from…

In a little town in a little church in southwest Missouri, the children and their Sunday school teacher were talking about Jesus. “Did Jesus speak English or Spanish?” the children wanted to know. For the most part, their parents speak Spanish as their “first” language. Their teachers, for the most part, speak English. The kids…

For centuries, in many parts of the Early Church, virtually all baptisms were reserved for the Great Vigil of Easter. The entire year was built around this, and the centrality of Easter Baptisms was shown in many ways. One of these ways is still very much with us. The readings from scripture we hear during…

Once when a certain preacher launched into a children’s sermon, she was confronted by a visiting child, an eight-year-old friend of a regular member. The boy was new to this church, but was a regular attendee at another congregation that did not have children’s sermons. Nevertheless, the visitor tried his best to follow the line…