The late bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts, The Right Rev. Thomas Shaw, posted a series of videos on YouTube called “A Monk in the Midst.” He was a brother of the Society of St. John the Evangelist as well as being an Episcopal bishop. He spoke in one of these videos about an encounter…

Mary’s time had come. After the long journey, the road to Bethlehem, and the days of worry before that – what would Joseph say when he found out she was pregnant? How did this happen anyway? But Joseph had stood by her, and now the time had finally come, in a strange city, with no…

Christmas is an occasion that brings families together. Surely there is at least someone here tonight wondering how he is going to be able to sleep on that fold-out couch that awaits him. That bar across the back starts to get really uncomfortable sometime in the middle of the night. And someone else is wondering…

Part of the wonder of this night is the possibility of the meeting of worlds, the coming together of time. We sing, “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” Though we live so long after those events in Bethlehem, tonight we find ourselves at the manger. In our mind’s…

On this holy night, we celebrate the birth of Jesus, who, according to Luke, was born in Bethlehem, in a stable, because the town was full of out-of-town visitors who had come to pay their taxes. But if you look around, you will see that we’ve made much more of this celebration than the observance…

The birth of the Messiah in a lowly stable is current news. Just a year ago Newsweek devoted a December issue to the topic. It was quite good! It talked about how modern scholarship attempts to unravel what happened or didn’t some 2,000 years ago. It leaves the reader with a lot of unanswered questions,…

That story, the Christmas story, and all that goes with it, continues to draw us; it continues to have a strange, haunting power over us. And that power is not just nostalgic; it is not even mostly nostalgic. As important as Christmases past have been — both that first Christmas in Bethlehem and our own…

Miss Manners would bury her head in shame! Miss Manners would hang her head in shame at the regrettable hospitality and gift-giving that appear in the Christmas story. Joseph returns to his old hometown. What takes him there is no pleasure jaunt, but a government census designed to increase income from taxation. No doubt this…

The Christiams Story according to St. Luke has to be one of the most familiar of all of the stories in the Bible. Our earliest memories of it may be visualized in the pageant, children in bath robes with towels on their heads… animals… sometimes made of cardboard… sometimes real children in costumes and makeup……

What do you do when you love someone? Whether it’s a couple falling in love, a mother to a child, a friend to a friend, a husband to a wife… you want to communicate your love. And so you say, “I love you.” Sometimes you make a phone call to the beloved in the middle…