When a couple gets married in the Episcopal Church, our canon law requires that they spend some time in pre-marital counseling, usually with the priest who will preside at their wedding. That didn’t happen in this case. I’ve spent no time helping P____ and L____ to build a strong foundation for their marriage; we haven’t talked about the theology of Holy Matrimony, or about communication, or conflict resolution skills, or any of the key issues of married life like dealing with finances, children, and extended family. No, my colleague the Rev. Lisa _______ did all of that. She was supposed preside today, but a member of her family announced that they were getting married today, so she asked me to step in, so it’s my privilege to witness and bless P_____ and L_____’s union.
In any event, I know that Mother Lisa has been over all of that with them, so this sermon is not for them. It’s for you, their family and friends; it’s about their marriage, but it’s for you.
If you were raised in the church you probably went through confirmation classes at some point and had to learn some bits of the catechism. You may remember learning about the Sacraments; there are seven of them. Holy Baptism and Holy Communion are the big ones, the ones Christ himself established. Then there are five others which the church created under, we believe, the guidance of the Holy Spirit. One of those five is the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony.
Do you all know what a tort is? Tort … T-O-R-T … no E on the end; I’m not talking about those wonderful little German or Austrian pastries. A tort is a civil wrong that causes harm to another person, resulting in legal liability for the person who commits the wrong. You leave a puddle of milk on the floor of your grocery store knowing it’s there, then someone slips in it and injures themselves: you have committed a tort. You speed through a stop sign, collide with another car, and injure the driver: you’ve not only broken the law, you’ve committed a tort.
A few weeks ago, as I was looking forward to my annual cover-Rachel’s-vacation gig here at Harcourt Parish, my plan was to preach a sort of two-part sermon on play and playfulness. Seemed like a good summer-time thing to do. Last week, on Pentecost Sunday, I suggested to you that playfulness is a gift of the Holy Spirit, that play is why we were made. Today being Trinity Sunday, I planned to follow-up with a few words about how a metaphor of play and playfulness can help us understand and participate in the relational community which the triune God is. 
Let’s have a show of hands: everyone who believes that there is a Constitution of the United States raise your hand. OK, good. Now everyone who believes in the Constitution of the United States raise your hand. Some of you might be thinking, “Wait. Didn’t he just ask us to do that?” Well, no. There’s a difference between “belief that” and “belief in.” 
One of the things I try to do when I read the stories of Jesus in the Gospels, when he uses an odd or striking metaphor like “I will make you fishers of people”
“They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats.”
Again this week as last, our first reading today is from the First Book of Kings and like last week’s, it is a prayer spoken by King Solomon. Last week, it was a private prayer spoken in a dream late at night. Today, it is a public prayer. As long as it was, this reading is just a small part of the dedicatory prayer that Solomon offered when the Temple was finished and consecrated. In it, Solomon asks an important question, “[W]ill God indeed dwell on the earth?”
Here we are at the end of the first period of what the church calls “ordinary time” during this liturgical year, the season of Sundays after the Feast of the Epiphany during which we have heard many gospel stories which reveal or manifest (the meaning of epiphany) something about Jesus. On this Sunday, the Sunday before Lent starts on Ash Wednesday, we always hear some version of the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration, a story so important that it is told in the three Synoptic Gospels, alluded to in John’s Gospel, and mentioned in the Second Letter of Peter.
In the Episcopal Church, when we baptize a person, we pray that God will “give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will, and to persevere, a spirit to know, and love, [God], and the gift of joy, and wonder in all [God’s] works.”
On April 12, a little more than seven months ago, I was privileged to officiate and preach at a service of Choral Evensong at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Cleveland. Following the service, on our way home to Medina, my wife Evelyn and I stopped at a Lebanese restaurant in Middleburg Heights for a late dinner in celebration of our 43rd wedding anniversary, which that day was. After a lovely meal of hummus, baba ganoush, spicy beef kafta, and chicken shwarma, we went home to bed. A few hours later, around 2 a.m., I woke up with a horrendous case of heartburn. I took some antacid and went back to sleep sitting up in my favorite armchair. At 7 a.m. the next morning, I woke up knowing that I hadn’t had indigestion after all; I was having a heart attack.
