Unbinding Isaac

God said to Abraham: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.”

Let’s just pause for a moment to take in the gravity of these words we have heard. The words we have just proclaimed “Thanks be to God” after hearing. God – the God of love; the God who granted Abraham and Sarah a miraculous son, Isaac, in their old age; the God who promised to make a great nation of Abraham, whose children will be “as numerous as the stars in heaven,” has now commanded Abraham to commit filicide, to kill his promised son.

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The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh
A Holy Economy of Love

This past week I had the real joy of spending time with four remarkable young men from our parish, JS Wilson, Nicholas Lowe, Sam Arny, and Nick West – and two multitalented chaperone-extraordinaires, Parks Gilbert and Matt West, on a service trip to Appalachia in a tiny mountain town that was incidentally called Appalachia located the westernmost part of Virginia, but not West Virginia. We were in the mountains. Each day we rose early in the morning and shared a brief devotion with our fellow service trippers before setting off for a shady holler where we spent the day rebuilding a rotted out floor for an incredibly hospitable older couple who had lived nearly their entire lives beneath the coal mine above us where the husband had once worked.

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The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh
A Deacon’s Call to God and You

Good morning St. George’s! I am so overjoyed to be with you this morning as your new associate rector and I can’t express how grateful I am that you called me. It’s really a tremendous gift to be called to a community that is as vibrant, faithful, and downright fun as this one is, and to be honest it makes me feel a little spoiled, especially after hearing some of the call narratives in today’s lections, which I’ll touch on later. But first, I wanted to give you an update on something remarkable that happened in my life since I last saw you, and that of course is getting ordained as a deacon at the Cathedral in Boston last week. In this ordination ceremony I entered the church as a lay person, the bishop laid hands on me and called down the Holy Spirit, and I left the church, ordained as a deacon. So what exactly does that mean, being a deacon?

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The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh
The Life of the Holy Trinity and RevMo Crystal’s Farewell

“Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness”…

So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them.”

It is wonderful to be back with you this morning!  All sorts of great things went on while I was away this past month, thanks to RevMo Crystal, our amazing staff and our extraordinary lay leaders.  We really are especially blessed that everyone at Saint George’s is so invested in their ministries.  God has graced us with a special charism, a particular gift for people working together for the good of the whole.  And it all comes down to relationships.  

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The Rev. Shearon Sykes Williams
Air. Water. Fire. And Us.

The Day of Pentecost places the Holy Spirit front and center. That third person of the Blessed Trinity, alongside the Father and the Son, is, perhaps, the most mysterious, the most provocative, and the most elusive of the three.

And yet, we receive hints as to the Holy Spirit’s whereabouts, movement, and power as we move through Holy Scripture. There is the sense, for those looking, that she is right there behind and a part of the action and yet unable to be fully grasped or articulated.

C.S. Lewis, in his beloved Chronicles of Narnia, [1] respects these aspects of the Spirit, writing her into the narrative in a similar fashion to how she is portrayed in Scripture. The Spirit’s presence is evident, yet she is never named nor addressed. Never in direct communication nor a recipient of the same. She is merely hinted at and, as in Scripture, these hints often come in the form of the elements: particularly air, water, and fire. [2] So, let’s take these in turn.

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The Rev. Crystal J. Hardin