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 stars in Africa shine brightly. Like when you were a child, and there was far less light pollution than there is now. The dark of a night without moon would ignite the stars as bright sparks. The stars in Africa are those sparks. If you look patiently, you can see the Milky Way, as…

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,…

It is Christmas Eve once again. We welcome the sweetness of this night and all the memories that give meaning to it and make it unique among anniversaries. And, we dread it. For those among us whose youth is past, this evening is bittersweet—another year has gone by, another season of Advent has ended, and…

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…

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…