That Which We Have Heard & Known

Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: Lectionary (Page 8 of 99)

Unpacking Scripture’s Cultural Baggage: Sermon for RCL Proper 7, Track 2, Year C (23 June 2019)

June 20, 2019 / / 1 Comment

This is a special Sunday for me. Friday marked the 28th anniversary of my ordination as a priest in the Episcopal Church. It was on Sunday, June 23, 1991, that I celebrated my first mass. So I am grateful to you and to Fr. George for the privilege of an altar at which to celebrate the Holy Mysteries and a pulpit from which to preach the gospel on this, my anniversary Sunday.

Now that I am retired, I am filling part of my time studying Irish. In the world of Irish studies, I am what is known as a foghlaimeoir, which is to say “an Irish learner.” The truth is that I have been a foghlaimeoir for over eleven years, but I have not yet progressed to the level of Gaeilgeoir, that is, “an Irish speaker.” Studying Irish is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done; it is both fascinating and maddening, and I think that among the reasons for that are the cultural assumptions which underly the language.

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The Trinity Comes to Dinner: Sermon for Trinity Sunday, June 16, 2019

June 12, 2019 / / 1 Comment

There is an old tradition in the church: on Trinity Sunday, rectors do their best to get someone else to preach. If they have a curate or associate priest, he or she gets the pulpit on that day. If not, they try to invite some old retired priest to fill in (as Father George has done today). No one really wants to preach on Trinity Sunday, the only day of the Christian year given to the celebration or commemoration of a theological doctrine, mostly because theology is dull, dry, and boring to most people and partly because this particular theology is one most of us get wrong no matter how much we try to do otherwise. Back when I was a curate getting the Trinity Sunday assignment, my rector encouraged me with the sunny observation that, listening to a sermon in almost any church on Trinity Sunday, one could be practically guaranteed to hear heresy.

As I started preparing to preach on this Trinity Sunday, however, I thought, “I have an out, a handy escape hatch” because today is not only the church’s feast of the one, holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, it is also the secular, some say “Hallmark,” holiday of Father’s Day. So, I thought, “I’ll talk about Father’s Day and if the Trinity decides to show up, well … that’ll be fine.”

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Lenten Journal 2019 (30 March)

March 30, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Lenten Journal, Day 24

Before I met my wife, I played racquetball a couple of times a week. I backpacked and went wilderness camping in the desert with friends. I rode a 15-speed bike to work. I was a downhill skier.

Before she met me, my wife played tennis. She went camping in the mountains of northern Nevada with her family. She rode her 12-speed bike across the continental US. She was a Nordic cross-country skier.

When we dated, we talked about these activities, imagining that we would share them with one another. We never did them as a couple . . . but we talked about them.

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Point of View: If I Were Preaching, Lent IV, 31 March 2019

March 29, 2019 / / 0 Comments

I’m not preaching this week, but if I were . . .

I often read poetry as part of, and frequently as a substitute for, a homily. This is especially true on “high holy days” when the liturgy and the lessons of the lectionary speak so eloquently that the attempt at exegesis seems at best irrelevant and at worst intrusive, e.g., Good Friday or Palm Sunday. On such days, in such liturgies and with such lessons, the poets seem to get and to give the message so much better than I can.

There are two poems that I’ve used on Palm Sunday which look at the story focusing on or speaking through one of the often-ignored characters, the donkey which carried Christ into the city of Jerusalem. One is Mary Oliver’s The Poet Thinks about the Donkey in which the poet expresses her hopes for the animal.[1] The other is G.K. Chesterton’s The Donkey[2] in which the animal speaks for itself.

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Lenten Journal 2019 (27 March)

March 27, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Lenten Journal, Day 21

God, I’m depressed. “My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick.”[1]

Going through Lent without the regular support of a faith community while also recovering from major orthopedic surgery and observing the state of American politics and the state of American Christianity really has me in a blue funk and I can feel the “black dog” prowling around in the fog. It’s too much. Maybe this retirement thing, or the surgery, or both were bad decisions. “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?”[2]

I’m pretty certain that checking the New York Times and the Washington Post, Facebook and Twitter is occasionally a bad idea, maybe frequently a bad idea.

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Lenten Journal 2019 (22 March)

March 22, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Lenten Journal, Day 16

I blew my Lenten discipline! I didn’t write anything yesterday. I thought about doing so all day long … I thought about writing down my reaction to something the Current Occupant had said and done, but just couldn’t bring myself to do so. I thought about writing about being taken to task online for using the word “hell” in a comment to a news article (“What kind of priest do you call yourself….?”), but (again) I just couldn’t get started on it. So, in the end, I wrote nothing.

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Lenten Journal 2019 (20 March)

March 20, 2019 / / 1 Comment

Lenten Journal, Day 14

She was known to her friends as “Jo” or “Josie”. She was Josephina Magdalena Ekaterina von Binkerstaff-Wigglesbutt, Countess von Binkerstaff. Jo was a wealthy heiress (the Stilwell Wigglesbutts, you know) who, like Lady Grantham of Downton Abbey, had married into a failing aristocratic family (the Blaues Tel von Binkerstaffs) to prop up their fortunes. Widowed early, she became a patron of arts endowing several museums in her late husband’s memory.

She was also our first cocker spaniel, a stray we adopted while living in Blue Valley, Kansas (hence the “Blaues Tel” part of her story). We still remember Jo with considerable love and refer to her as “the best dog ever.” With Josephine began our tradition of inventing silly aristocratic names and outrageous histories for our canines.

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Lenten Journal 2019 (19 March)

March 19, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Lenten Journal, Day 13

I had a first-in-the-morning appointment at the digestive disease medical office today, a pre-screening for the colonoscopy I have scheduled in two weeks. Weight, blood pressure, review of medications, instructions on which medications to discontinue ahead of the procedure, medical history review, that sort of thing … and, of course, the preparation instructions for the day before.

I can’t really think of anything more appropriate for Lent than colonoscopy prep, can you?

OK, I’m being facetious.

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Lenten Journal 2019 (18 March)

March 18, 2019 / / 1 Comment

Lenten Journal, Day 12

A few months ago I had to take Evelyn to the Emergency Room because of rapid on-set, stress-induced, and disabling inflammatory arthritis; she had awakened about 3 a.m. with severe joint pain a quite literally could not move. We tried to deal with her situation on our own, but it became clear that more was needed. About 4:30 a.m., I called 911 and she was transported to our local community hospital. I dressed as quickly as I could and followed.

I arrived at the ER about 5:30 and waited while a man probably in his late forties checked in an elderly woman. She waited patiently while he dealt with her paperwork. He was much more distraught than she, trying to hurry the process (which only delayed things). Once all was done, he made sure she was comfortable in the waiting room, saying, “Mom, I have to go home and see to the kids. They’ll come get you soon and I’ll be back as quickly as possible.”

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Lenten Journal 2019 (17 March)

March 17, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Lenten Journal, Day 11 – Second Sunday in Lent

It has been a busy St. Patrick’s Day although Evelyn and I did nothing in the nature of Irish celebration other than pick up some deli corned beef and Swiss cheese for lunch sandwiches and in the evening meet friends for Mexican food. Margaritas are green; they count, right? We went to church where we heard a sermon about God’s faithfulness, stopped at the store to by that corned beef, and came home to do the things married people do on a Sunday afternoon. By which I mean laundry and housekeeping.

Yesterday, I listened to an NPR interview with a musician promoting her art at Austin’s South by Southwest Festival. In the course of the interview, while she was talking about making a political witness through her art, she said, “There are so many things I don’t want to believe….”

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