Join us October 3 at 5pm for an outdoor Blessing of the Animals. Animals on leashes or in carriers are warmly welcome, as are stuffed animals and photos.
“It feels like this is something of our last Sunday of the school year, before we shift into summer mode next week with one 9am service. It’s also like we are at this societal moment of pivoting out of COVID-19 restrictions and more or less going back to normal – if there ever was such a thing. What’s been a bit disorienting for me was the radical abruptness of reopening. It was like the CDC and our civic leaders just got tired of the gray zone of semi-regulated communal life, and rather than slowly undimming the lights, they just decided to flick the switch on, and many of us, accustomed to the dark and coziness of quarantine, are squinting a little bit, trying to acclimate to the bright lights of normal.”
“Imagine a Portrait Gallery approached you and wanted to capture your image for posterity. How would you like to be portrayed? What picture of yourself would you like others to see? And do you think that picture ties up at all with the pictures others have of you? How would you be in this portrait? Where would you be? What emotion, position, look would just capture you?”
“Human beings take around 650,000,000 breaths in their lifetime;
About 25,000 a day. How many of those are we aware?
My Apple watch rings once an hour with a reminder to Breathe.
It’s kind of annoying:
What does it think I’ve been doing for the last hour?
It doesn’t give me a reminder to tell my heart to pump blood
Or to my intestines to digest food.
Why does it suppose I’ve neglected my breath?”
“I’ve always felt some sympathy for poor old ‘Doubting Thomas.’ I’ve always had the suspicion that Thomas, in this story, is the one who’s in the right. Out of all these disciples who have seen Jesus, Thomas alone is singled out: ‘Have you believed because you have seen me?’ You can picture Thomas's response. ‘Who, me? What about these other tens guy?’ Poor Thomas.”
“Easter rocks. Easter is a cool holiday. And no, not all holidays are cool. I think we can all admit that Trinity Sunday is boring. Labor Day celebrates work. But Easter—Easter we celebrate Jesus’ victory over death itself. That is boss! That’s enough to make anyone say, ‘Alleluia!’ But did you notice—nobody actually says that in the gospel that we just heard? There’s not even a tasteful Episcopalian ‘woohoo!’ You get the picture that what we think when we picture that empty tomb is not what they thought when they saw the empty tomb.“
“This Gospel we hear, year after year, is an extraordinarily rich one. Today, I would like to stop and linger on the encounter between Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea, and the rabbi Yeshua ben Joseph, as they would have known each other. This is a story set in a particular time and place, but one that I think is remarkably applicable to our time. It’s a story of an encounter between two kinds of power, and two people who had very different understandings of the nature of the universe and this world and the humans who inhabit them…It is a story of a tyrant and a bully confronting something he cannot understand. It is therefore a story for our time.”
“It would be completely understandable to me if the whole bizarre foot aspect of tonight’s gospel distracted you from the meaning behind the footwashing, but I hope you will just power through the weirdness because the significance of the gesture just can’t be overstated: it might define the essence of Christianity.”
“If Easter is just a fairy tale—if Jesus’ death and resurrection is just a parable from which we have to extract some kind of spiritual or ethical meaning—then I’m not sure that Palm Sunday is worth celebrating with a parade. But if Jesus is our Harry Potter—if Jesus is the one who faces his own death to free us from Death—then Palm Sunday is final opportunity to cheer him on.”
“So, I am a huge fan of both the Marvel and DC universes. I know that makes me anathema with certain purists everywhere, but I cannot choose between Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman. They’re both awesome…And given the gajillion dollars people have spent on DC and Marvel films, I’m clearly not the only one who likes superheroes and supervillains…Well, I think maybe John the Evangelist was also a fan of superheroes and supervillains.”
“If you’re in Sunday School normally, what do you call that? ‘The Loving Father,’ I love that. What did the rest of us learn the title of this was? ‘The Prodigal Son,’ exactly. And how fitting is it? It’s not really the prodigal son’s story, is it? This is a parable about a dutiful son. But of course the younger son got the title, just like he got the party, and the fatted calf, and the ring and the sandals and the father’s love and attention. Is that fair? No! Admit it! It’s not fair at all.”
“In thinking about humility, I was remembering the personal experience I had at the gym with a muscle-bound personal trainer trying to sell me on getting a ‘Fit 3D Scan.’…I explained to my friend that I already knew that I had an unrealistic body image; I also think I’m smarter than I am, kinder, more generous. This web of self-deception is precious and dear to me! I did not get that scan. On the other hand, I do believe that God scans me inside and out. But that’s different, because I know that God really loves me.“
“When I think as an American about these acts of explicit white supremacist violence—about Christchurch and Charlottesville, Pittsburgh and Oklahoma City, Charleston and Birmingham—I have to admit that I also think as a Christian about St. Paul’s words in today’s reading from the letter to the Philippians.”
“Every so often, something happens that's so epically important or memorable that the event gets its own name. It doesn’t have to be a huge event to other people; in my family, when we talk about The Camping Trip, my kids know it doesn’t mean any of the campouts they went on with the Y guides or any of their school trips.”
