[RCL] Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126 or Canticle 15 (or 3); 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8,19-28 We are already a week away from Christmas, and for good reason, this Sunday is called “Joy Sunday”. This is because of the exhortation given to us by St. Paul at the beginning of the reading from 1 Thessalonians:…

Listen to the words of Isaiah: The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners. Listen to the words of Mary of Nazareth: He has cast…

Imagine the scene. You are downtown in one of the world’s great cities. You’re standing at the main entrance of a huge, opulent hotel, whose solid stone walls soar upward for many floors. The canopied entrance features a red carpet that crosses the sidewalk to the street, and brass fittings that gleam like gold. It’s…

A Sunday school teacher in Kansas reports this conversation in her class: “If I sold my house and my car, had a big garage sale and gave all my money to the church, would that get me into Heaven?” she asked the children in her Sunday school class. “No!” the children all answered. “If I…

Sometimes the folks who put the Lectionary—the lists of Sunday readings—together do a really wonderful job. Sometimes it’s questionable, as in August, but today it’s a perfect pairing. John the Baptist, the Gospel tells us, was traveling around baptizing people. This was a departure from traditional Jewish practice, and that—and the fact that he was…

One of the classic stories that is repeated each December is Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The timeless character of Ebenezer Scrooge demonstrates the consummate selfish, self-centered, unforgiving and unloving qualities of human kind. This originator of the “bah-humbug” was the perfect embodiment of sin. Whether we read this famous story in a leather bound first…