Today we are invited to swim against the tide. Let us consider that invitation. In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A man was recalling his grandmother’s recipe collection. Some, he remembered, were in well-used cookbooks, and some were on index cards. But he recalled the oldest recipes in her vast collection…

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” — BCP 265 The season of Lent begins with one word: Remember. “Remember,” says priest or minister as a cross of ash and dust is traced on our brows, “that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” It is a sober beginning…

During the recent commemoration of the liberation of the concentration camp at Auschwitz, in Poland, in a moment of almost eerie silence, a rabbi sounded the ram’s horn, the ancient “trumpet” of Israel. Sixty years after the Nazis were driven from that dreadful place, survivors mingled with world leaders to pay homage to the dead,…

I invite you, therefore to a holy lent… Ash Wednesday and these forty days of Lenten preparation often bring with them a lot of bad childhood baggage as well as a true invitation to wholeness and renewal. Contrary to the message many of us received as children, Lent is not about making us good after…

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent. On “Fat Tuesday,” or Shrove Tuesday, we (at least symbolically!) use up all the rich foods in our houses to ready ourselves for a time of fasting and preparation. On Ash Wednesday, we are invited “in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent,…

[Note to the reader: this sermon is based heavily on the Joel reading for Ash Wednesday] For the day of the Lord is coming, it is near — a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! The powerful symbolism of ashes this year seems to need little explanation. For all…

“You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” It is one of the most ancient phrases of Scripture, coming right out of the early chapters of Genesis. As we are about to be reminded by our tradition, it forms the central theme of what we’re about here today on Ash Wednesday. We’re being reminded…

[This sermon is meant to connect to the Ash Wednesday liturgy as found in the Book of Common Prayer.] Today we retrace our Baptismal crosses with ashes. Once upon a time there was a five-year-old girl named Eleanor who, after she was baptized, asked, “Can you still see the cross on my forehead?” A marvelous…

There is an ancient Egyptian myth about a bird which regenerates itself by burning itself up. Imagine, the living phoenix literally makes an offering of itself: it carefully builds a nest, settles down in it, and burst into flame. From the ashes left by those flames emerges a magnificent reborn bird. The new phoenix is…