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There are many challenges to churches today: Some are small and struggling, hoping to grow and not finding their numbers increasing. Others have problems finding qualified clergy or raising enough money in pledges to balance the budget. Others have significant repairs to do on their buildings and lack the funds for the project. And some…
Today we find John Baptist at the River Jordan, where he preached repentance, baptized Jesus, and admitted how much greater Jesus was than he. John’s is a story of such great significance that we hear parts of it every year — twice, sometimes three times. John Baptist was quite a character — wild and woolly,…
Where should we look to see the magi, the wise men, the Gentiles of today, the people perhaps different from us who are following the star to Jesus? May we consider this question with open hearts. In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Today’s Gospel presents an epiphany. Epiphany comes from a…
Today we celebrate the first Sunday in the Octave of Christmas. Many of us see it as an anticlimax, a time of letdown after the Big Day, when we gather all the family and share all the gifts and eat all the food. Far too often, this is a day when “Sabbath” basically means that…
Who is this child born into our midst? It’s the question left before us on Christmas Eve, when the story opens with Jesus’ birth to Mary and Joseph, the angels sing, and the shepherds, real working and struggling people like us, come and behold this strange new gift to a world on the edge of…
This sermon, appropriate for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, focuses on Luke 2:1-20 from either of the first two lections appropriate for Christmas. “But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” Luke 2:19, NRSV The beauty of Luke’s narrative seems so appropriate for this time of year, when many of us…
The Gospel today, like the date, brings Christmas very near. As our attention turns to Mary and the birth, we are back in step with the world. Life out there is reaching its own peak of anticipation for Christmas; and those haggard and glassy-eyed faces of the determined shoppers are easier to find every day….
Remember when you were expecting your first child? Most of you know what that’s like. It was really something — keep it in mind. That feeling is probably clearest today, the third Sunday of Advent. This day is traditionally called “Gaudette Sunday.” It means “rejoicing Sunday,” from the Latin word, gaudere, to rejoice. The rose candle…
In the third year of the presidential term of George W. Bush, when Ariel Sharon is the Prime Minister of Israel and Yasser Arafat is the President of the Palestinian Authority and Frank T. Griswold is the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States and Rowan Williams is the Archbishop of Canterbury,…
Happy New Year! Indeed, this is an appropriate greeting on this the first Sunday in the liturgical calendar of the church. And we mark this beginning with the season of Advent-meaning “arrival.” It signals for us the dawn of a new day. Our readings today point to the final advent of our God-to that time…
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