First Sunday after the Epiphany 2024

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“Why have You done this?” Mary is not the first mother to say that. And it’s understandable. Her boy was missing. Three minutes would be horrible. Three days, that’s nearly unimaginable. When Mary and Joseph do find Him, I’d like to know exactly what her tone was like: “Son, why have You done this to us? Look, Your father and I have sought You anxiously.” Quite appropriately, the NKJ capitalizes the pronouns for Jesus. It looks all respectful: “Son, why have You—the exalted One—done this to us?” I’m not sure it’s spoken so gently. She maybe says it more like you would. It sounds like she’s accusing Jesus of sin….

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The Epiphany of Our Lord 2024

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Tribulation is a gift. It doesn’t feel like it at the time. Nevertheless, tribulation is a gift. It is a gift because it prepares us for the Gospel.

The journey of the Magi (“wise men”) to the Christ shows this to us. The Magi don’t find Jesus where they are looking (Jerusalem). Instead they meet a fiendish and duplicitous Herod. Led by the Holy Spirit, the path to Christ went through anxiety and need….

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The Nativity of Our Lord: Christmas Day 2023

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“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” And He made man in His own image.

He fell. The image is marred.

Our beginnings are thus already headed toward endings. Some children don’t even make it out of the womb. Others are cut down too soon….

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Christmas Midnight 2023

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“When all was still, and it was midnight, Your almighty Word, O Lord, descended from the royal throne.” That’s the antiphon for Christmas Midnight. By itself, it’s serene, much like this service. There’s something joyously peaceful about assembling here when all through the town not many creatures are stirring, and celebrating the first liturgy of Christmas while everyone else is nestled all snug in their beds.

“When all was still, and it was midnight, Your almighty Word, O Lord, descended from the royal throne.” The context, however, is not so serene. It comes from the Wisdom of Solomon, and it describes the beginning of the tenth plague, bringing death to all the firstborn in the land of Egypt….

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Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols 2023

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The satire in Peter Gabriel’s song Big Time is often missed. From college basketball to professional wrestling, it’s bumper music for success. “I’m on my way, I’m making it, big time.” It’s the American dream: you can be anything you want to be; you can make it big.

There’s a religious dimension to the song that fits perfectly the modern obsession with bigger and better churches. “And I will pray to a big god as I kneel in the big church.” Then later, “And my heaven will be a big heaven, and I will walk through the front door.”

The way God works couldn’t be more different….

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The Vigil of Christmas 2023

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Joseph is in agony. He’s spent the very first season of Advent contemplating divorce. Joseph is betrothed to Mary. Some Bible translations render it “engaged,” but it’s much more than that. Betrothal is a legally binding marriage that is not yet consummated. Today, you can break an engagement without any consequence except the down payment on the reception venue. But Joseph and Mary are not engaged, they are betrothed, and the only way out of that is divorce….

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Gaudete 2023

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Life goes through seasons. Some days, or years, it doesn’t feel there’s much to rejoice about. Some people are determined to fight. The Psalm says, “I am for peace, but they are for war.” In this life people often show themselves to be our enemies. We want peace. But there is something in the human spirit, a corruption. This corruption of the heart imitates the Satan. In Hebrew, the satan is the accuser. Enemies are quick to accuse us, sometimes unjustly. Jesus bears it in silence. Do we? No, too often, in turn, we are quick to assume the worst about others. Thus we become their satan, their accuser. Our only rejoicing, then, is at the downfall our enemy. This is not the proper Gaudete, the proper rejoicing….

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Thanksgiving 2023

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But here’s the astonishing kicker: we are to present these cries of desperation with thanksgiving: “The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” We’ve been accustomed to think of thanksgiving as an acknowledgement of abundance. Thanksgiving is for the prosperous and well-fed, with family gathered in a warm house and a rest from work. But here, Paul directs our thanksgiving to arise from our lack, our poverty, our need, our desperation….

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Trinity 26 (observed), 2023

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Children are “offered,” committed, handed over in Baptism. We hand our children over when we need help, when they need something we can’t do for them ourselves. You ever handed your child over to a surgeon? You hope you get him back, but there are no guarantees. In suffering and trial, God is teaching us to relinquish control, to hand over all our cares to Him….

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Trinity 18, 2023

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There are many congregations, but one church. The one, holy, catholic and apostolic church finds its expression in local assemblies. That’s what the word church means: assembly. Today’s Epistle reading is a letter to one of those local assemblies: “To the church of God that is in Corinth.”

We tend to think of Christianity in individual terms, a private faith, a personal experience or decision. Certainly the individual is involved, but Paul writes to Corinth as he does to all the other local congregations: collectively…

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