Sermons
Good morning St. George’s, it is so good to be back with you after being away for our Shrine Mont retreat and a few weeks of vacation this past month. Now it is Rev. Shearon’s turn to take some well-deserved time off for her sabbatical which began this week. She will be back with us at the end of the summer on August 20th and I hope you’ll join me in lifting her up in prayer while she’s away resting, traveling, and re-grounding herself in God’s love.
The Fourth Sunday of the Easter season is Good Shepherd Sunday. On the first three Sundays of Easter, we hear accounts of Jesus’ post- resurrection appearances to his disciples. And today, instead of hearing about Jesus showing his hands and feet to astonished disciples, Jesus talks about what kind of relationship he wants with his followers going forward. He describes himself as the Good Shepherd who cares for the sheep, who even lays down his life for the sheep. And, as Jesus says this, we hear psalm 23 in the background.
This past Monday, people all over our country were caught up in the wonder of the solar eclipse. Many people travelled to the places that experienced totality, including some Saint Georgians. And here in our area, it was wonderful to see people, even for just a day, joined together in a way that had nothing to do with anything going on that divides us. I was out in our front yard from 3 to 3:30 that day with the glasses that Ben Keseley, our Minister of Music, gave us from his stash. And I was amazed to see the eclipse. Even if it was only 89% here, it was still incredible. Parents were walking back from the school across the street from us, after a viewing party, with their children chattering away about how great it was. Two of my older neighbors walked by and wanted to show me the cool crescent-shaped shadows that the eclipse made on the street, as the light was filtered through the leaves of a tree. It was a lovely moment of shared spiritual connection. Moments of wonder are a wonderful thing, they are part of what makes us human, and seasons of wonder are even better.
Alleluia. Christ is risen. (The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.). What a joy it is to come together today to proclaim these words. We join with Christians around the world and across the ages to rejoice that God has conquered sin and death and that we live forever in the risen life of Christ.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church there is one sermon preached at the Easter Vigil and that is the paschal homily of St. John Chrysostom, written in 4th century. And as far as I’m concerned, it is the best sermon ever written. So when I sat down this week to write my own paschal homily, I swiftly realized that there is no point in trying to imitate perfection, when perfection is already before us. So I’d like for us to be Orthodox for the next ten minutes and I’ll preach it for you. Chrysostom captures so perfectly the theology of Easter, which is the theology of Christ Jesus himself. And the theology of Easter is that Christ, through his death and glorious resurrection conquered once and for all any power which sin and evil holds over us. Christ conquered death and we are free. Full stop.
Today is Good Friday, the darkest day of the church year. We gather to remember Jesus’ death, just as Christians throughout the ages have gathered on this day to remember that day, that day of unspeakable cruelty, violence, and injustice. We gather because looking at it alone would just be too painful. And we come together to remember not just the first Good Friday, but to also look at ourselves and our world today.
Today, Palm Sunday, we are thrust directly into the drama of Holy Week. There is no soft peddling or easing into things. We begin this liturgy in the exact manner we know this story will end – with triumph. Jesus’s triumphal entry to Jerusalem is a foreshadowing of what is to come on Easter Day with Jesus’s triumphal resurrection, and on the last day, with Jesus’s triumphal return.
Today is Saint Patrick’s Day and we might expect to focus on that in church today. But when Patrick’s feast day falls on a Sunday, we don’t observe it because the readings for the Sundays in Lent supersede lesser feast days. Patrick’s life and witness does inform our understanding of today’s Gospel, however. Patrick lived in Britain during the fifth century. He was captured by Irish slave traders when he was 16 and was forced to work as a shepherd. After 5 years, he escaped and returned to Britain. He could have lived out the rest of his life in privilege, being from a wealthy family, but he felt God calling him back to the land of his captors, so he returned to Ireland to share the good news of Jesus with them. It’s amazing to think that Patrick had such love for the people who had once enslaved him.
This Sunday we are deep in the season of Lent, equally far from the celebration of Shrove Tuesday and the rejoicing of Easter. The midway points of our journey through the Lenten wilderness often bring the toughest trials as we struggle to maintain our enthusiasm for the discipline and repentance that the season calls for. We might find ourselves grumbling at the thought of several more weeks of sober liturgy, we might find ourselves getting lax in our prayers and our Lenten commitments. We might just be getting tired of the color purple.
As we approach the halfway point of Lent, there’s a particular spiritual discipline that I’d like to commend for your consideration: foolishness. And not just the variety you may or may not have partaken of on Mardi Gras.
But before you tell your friends that your priest told you to go out and ‘act a fool,’ as they say where I’m from, hear me out. Foolishness is baked into our theological tradition from the very start. We hear St. Paul gesture towards the notion of holy foolishness. In his letter to the Corinthians as he writes: “God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe… for God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, God’s weakness is greater than human strength” (1 Cor. 1:21ff).
Lent is a time for preparing for Easter. And it is a time that many people who haven’t been in church in a while, decide to give church another try. Despite the decline in awareness in our culture overall of Christian practices, most people have heard of Ash Wednesday and most people know that Lent is a season for reevaluating your priorities in life. And it is a long-standing part of Christian tradition to take on specific spiritual practices during Lent OR to give something up. Giving up things and taking on new practices are both good things to do, as long as we do them as a way of increasing our awareness of our dependence upon God. The trouble comes when we use these things as a way of fooling ourselves into thinking how righteous we are, as in, when I resist ordering that vanilla latte that I gave up, that I love so much. OR when I think I am earning heavenly brownie points when I succeed in doing my 15 minutes of prayer time every day for a week straight. The issue with looking at things this way is that the focus is on me and my power to control my own destiny, rather than on God, and my reliance on him. Most of us grow up thinking that if we do all the right things, if we follow all the rules, we will be rewarded, and that if we just work hard enough, we can achieve anything we desire.
Today is the First Sunday in Lent and things look and feel pretty different around here. Lent is a penitential season and everything in the liturgy and in our sacred space reflects that. The liturgical color is purple and it symbolizes our need for self-reflection and the call to deepen our connection to God. It also reminds us of the color of the robe that was put on Jesus as he was mocked and scorned before he was condemned to death. So purple points us to where the season is headed, to Jesus’ death and to his resurrection. We also have firepots on the altar instead of silver candlesticks. The fire evokes a sense of the wilderness and God’s provision within it. The liturgy is also more somber during Lent.
oday is the last Sunday of the season of Epiphany. Sandwiched between Advent and Lent, Epiphany is sometimes one of those seasons whose purpose can be unclear, so before we enter into Lent next week, I wanted us to take a look back on Epiphany to understand how it fits into our understanding of who Jesus is. First of all, the seasons of Advent, Epiphany, and Lent all go together in that order. They each walk us through three distinct periods in Jesus’s life. Advent of course is about preparing for Jesus’s birth and arrival in the world. Lent is about preparing for Jesus’s death and resurrection. And Epiphany is about everything in Jesus’s life in between. His public ministry, his teaching, his casting out of demons – lest we forget that – and most importantly, the small and large epiphanies his followers discover along the way about who exactly Jesus is, and how he shows up for them.
St. George’s let’s talk about demons. There comes a time in every liturgical year, when the lectionary turns to Jesus’s extraordinary public ministry, that the awkward topic of Jesus casting out demons arises. We all know and love the stories about Jesus the healer, Jesus the teacher, and Jesus the miracle worker, but when it comes to Jesus the exorcist… we’re often left feeling a little itchy and scratchy. The reality is we just don’t have a cultural and theological hook on which to hang this talk about demons anymore. Demons are just not something most of us really think about or know how to deal with when they come up in scripture.
“I will make you fish for people,” Jesus said to Simon and Andrew. This is one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite passages in all of scripture. It’s playful, it’s creative, it’s poignant, and for me it’s personal. Whenever I hear the passage of the calling of the fisherman, I cannot help but connect it to my own family history. For generations, since they arrived off the boats from the shores of Ireland at the turn of the century, the men in my family did two things. They were either commercial fishermen and oystermen along the coast of the American South and mid-Atlantic, or, if they were clever and did well in parochial school, they went to seminary and became priests. I was fortunate enough to fall into the latter category, though if I had not become a priest, I like to think, perhaps with a degree of romantic naivete, that the life of a fisherman would have also suited me just fine. After all, the Gospel today reminds us that ministry and fishing are not so different after all. In many ways they draw on a similar set of skills, at least metaphorically.
This weekend our nation commemorates the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And what a life it was. He became the most prominent leader of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. King had an unparalleled gift for oratory and he used his speaking gifts to inspire and galvanize people and call them to righteous, non-violent action for the common good.
Yesterday something both ancient and new, something wonderful and extraordinary happened. The Reverend Paddy Cavanaugh, along with six others, was ordained a priest in “Christ’s one, holy, and apostolic Church.” We are all so happy for you and very proud of you, Paddy. It has been such a blessing for all of us to be with you, Paddy, first as our seminarian for two years, then as deacon for the last 6 months, and now a priest. We are so grateful for your ministry to and with us and I am very thankful for the ministry that you and I share. You are a wonderful colleague for me and all of us are blessed to have such a faithful, loving and exceptionally capable Associate Rector in you. Thanks Paddy.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Where is God?
When you think of him where does God reside?
Hold onto that first image that comes into your mind.
It is such a joy to greet this Christmas morning! We come together to remember that first Christmas and to think about its significance for us today. We bring the experience of 2,000 years of Christmases and we bring the very particular circumstances of Christmas 2023.
Dear friends and newcomers alike, today is finally the Eve of Christmas and we are gathered this evening to hear tell of the story that you have no doubt heard told countless times by now, in your life, and during this season of Advent. It’s the story of the fulfilment of a long-awaited promise. It’s the story of the light of hope breaking into the darkness in the least likely places. It is the story of the incarnation of God through the birth of Jesus Christ in the manger.
We have been thrown a delightful curveball this liturgical year in that Advent IV and Christmas Eve are coinciding, and so to do justice to these two theologically distinct observances, I invite you to suspend your ordinary sense of time with me during this service. Let’s try as best as we can to set down our thoughts about all of the wrapping that has yet to be done, the meals that need to be prepared, and the cookies that will get set out for Santa this evening. For now, let’s simply take this hour or so of calm before the storm to dwell in peace, in God’s time, which we share this morning with a most special guest. A guest whose humility, courage, and incredible faith are why we are able to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus at all. Today we have the great honor of spending time with God in the presence of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Today is the first Sunday in Advent and we mark the beginning of a new liturgical year by entering a season of preparation for the arrival of our Lord, Christ Jesus, into the world. But how, exactly? And why? Didn’t Jesus already come to us through his miraculous birth to the Blessed Virgin Mary in a manger two thousand years ago? Even in our world where the Feast of the Incarnation, also known as Christmas, has become thoroughly commercialized, we still hear carols on the radio proclaiming the wonder of the nativity story in shopping malls, advertisements, and on the radio. As ubiquitous as Christmas is this time of year, it’s easy to take for granted the story of God’s arrival on earth as just that – a cozy story of a possible historic event that is a nice aesthetic embellishment to a season filled with so many other mixed symbols of ambiguous origin.
Last week I prepared an activity on contemplative prayer for the youth in our EYC group. My idea was to have all of us gather here in the nave on the eve of All Saints week, dim the lights, put on Gregorian chant, to invite our youth into a space of quiet contemplation in the hope that we might carve out time in our chaotic lives to simply be still, listen, and be present to God’s loving presence in our midst. The coup de grace of this contemplative moment was that we were going to light the thurible – our liturgical incense burner – and experience how the smoke, rising up like our prayers, can help prepare us for a bodily encounter with the divine.
On this Feast of All Saints, something incredible is about to happen. We are going to welcome someone special as the newest member of the Communion of Saints, which is the whole household of faith, past, present, and future. And we are going to do this by baptizing her in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. But first, what is baptism, exactly? What is going on when we do it?
If you had been contemplating tax evasion – or pledge evasion – this morning, the Gospel lesson may have complicated these plans for you. Today we hear the famous ‘render unto Caesar’ passage in Matthew, as it is translated in the King James Bible. The situation presented to us is this: the Pharisees come to Jesus and pose a question to him in bad faith. The question is whether it is lawful for faithful Jews such as themselves to pay taxes to the Roman emperor. Now, why is paying taxes for them a problem? Their problem is not the obvious financial inconvenience of taxes. Observant Jews at the time had no issue with the notion of taxes in general. Every adult Jewish male was expected to pay a modest tax for the work, worship, and upkeep of the Temple, that functioned much like our pledge to support the ministries of our parish today. Rather, the issue with paying Roman taxes was the moral dilemma of whether or not it was in their interest, as a colonized people, to pay taxes to their colonizers. Because the Roman empire had taken over the region of Palestine in the 1st century by use of military force, which, in a sadly familiar situation, resulted in much religious and political conflict.
The Episcopal Church is not known for having a lot of easy, straightforward answers to difficult questions, so you might be surprised to learn that in the back of the Book of Common Prayer, we actually do have a catechism, a helpful teaching tool with simple questions and answers explaining the basics of our faith. There’s a section explaining the Ten Commandments—it offers useful paraphrases that boil down the central teachings of the commandments: our duties to God, and our duties to our neighbor. But it’s the last question of the commandments that really interests me: “Since we do not fully obey them, are they useful to us at all?”
Last Sunday we heard the dramatic Exodus story of God delivering the Israelites from captivity in Egypt. Moses raises his arms, staff in hand, a fierce wind blowing, commanding the Red Sea to open, and it opens. The Israelites walk through on dry ground and just as they are on the other side, the water comes crashing down on their Egyptian oppressors. There is rejoicing all around. Moses’ sister Miriam, tambourine in hand, leads her people as they sing and dance, giving thanks to God for everything God has done for them. But almost before the last note is sung, all that exultation and joy turns to frustration and anger. God had wrought an incredible miracle in leading them out of Egypt, but then they enter the wilderness. They start a long journey to a new land of their own that God had promised them, an abundant land, a land “flowing with milk and honey”. But the people quickly discover that getting there is going to be hard work. They want to trust in God, but their anxiety about survival is choking their faith. They have forgotten all that God did for them to get them out of captivity. What they remember is the really good food in Egypt. They forget the part about being were slaves, they forget that they weren’t free. They used to have plenty of food, but here in the wilderness, they are free, but they are worried about where their next meal is coming from. God gives them bread, plenty of bread in fact, it meets their needs, but it is strange and not very tasty. There is more than enough for everyone each day, but they aren’t allowed to save any for the next day, so that they will learn to trust in God’s provision, day by day by day. Even the wilderness is a place of abundance because God is there, but they just can’t see it that way.
Today we hear one of the most iconic stories in all of scripture; the story of God delivering his chosen people, the Israelites, from the pursuit of their enslavers, the Egyptians. As we know, the story goes that God miraculously parts the Red Sea to allow the Israelites to cross to safety, while the Egyptian army is left scrambling in the muck until the sea comes crashing down upon them, swallowing them into the depths.
Last Saturday, thousands of people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington. They came together to pay tribute to the landmark civil rights event in 1963 where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. They also came to stand against all of the current threats to the racial progress that we have made in this country over the last 60 years. Just as last Saturday’s March on Washington was ending, a young white man walked into a Dollar General store in a predominately Black neighborhood in Jacksonville, Florida and killed 3 African Americans, 19 year old "AJ" Laguerre Jr., 29 year old Jerrald Gallion, and 52 year old Angela Carr. How utterly heartbreaking. The chasm between God’s dream for us and how things really are is so very great.
Good morning. For those who don’t know me, my name is Josh House, and I’ve been at Saint George’s for about 8 years. I’m also honored to say that I’m the most recent member of Saint George’s to be sponsored for ordination as a priest and to be sent to seminary.