There is no them

Welcome!!!   Welcome all!!!   Happy Easter!!! You are many and you are here! Some of you have been here all week, some of you are back from last Sunday, some of you are back from Christmas, and some of you are back from a previous Easter. Some of you have never been here until today. You are welcome here!!! Some of you are here because of your tradition, practice and devotion.   Some of you, because of your experiences, are wary of such things. Some of you are here to support your family.   Some of you are searching, some of you feel found, some of you are unsure. You are many, and you are welcome here. We need each other, especially now, since none of us can or should stand alone.   We are different, with different views and understandings.   But in Christ we are one, and in Easter we bring new hope to one another. Madeleine L’Engle once said of Easter, in her book of spiritual quest The Irrational Season , “that the strange turning of what seemed to be a ...

  It is a challenge to “post” my sermon from yesterday. You see, this past Sunday's service for many years has beared the burden of an incredible weight.   What you mostly see in pictures are people waving palms, shouting “Hosanna”, and smiling faces. But by the end of the service, there is something completely different. Ever since the 1928 Book of Common Prayer Book renamed the day “Sunday of the Passion:   Palm Sunday”, the Sunday before Easter in the liturgical Episcopal Church has two responsibilities.  The first is   to recount or reenact (pending your community) the event known as the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.   Equally important, the Sunday must show that the way to Easter Sunday and shouts of “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” only happens because of his crucifixion and death, and works under the assumption that many people attending Church will not be back until Easter.   The traditional way of engaging this second responsibili...

I’m a lectionary preacher.   I use what’s given to us for readings on Sunday as a basis for and to craft my sermons.   The vast majority of time it’s the Gospel lesson, and people who’ve been around me for awhile know that there are particular lectionary quirks that get me fired up. I’m not a fan of leaving things out:   I like the complete section of a Gospel text.   I often reference what’s just happened before the text so we can discern where it is going.   So I especially don’t like it when the text gets lifted out of its context:   that might work in the vacuum of Sunday morning Church, but it gets us away from the intent of the story. And what REALLY gets me is when we are humming along Sunday after Sunday within a Gospel text, and then suddenly we switch Gospels.   That’s so frustrating!   Our four Gospels are not interchangeable!   They can’t be condensed into one singular “authentic” story of Jesus.   So when we’ve been hearing ...