Week of February 10, 2019
A few weeks ago I wrote about my experiences trying to minister to the strangers in my neighborhood using my new snowblower. Most of those people didn’t know me, beyond a passing face walking a dog around the block. Last Sunday’s gospel reading (John 4:21-30) reminds me of the struggles of ministering to people who…
Week of February 3, 2019
Last Sunday the passage from the eighth chapter of Nehemiah was read with little context or introduction. The prior week we heard from Isaiah, and the following we will hear from Jeremiah (who actually preceded Nehemiah chronologically). But the Nehemiah passage is a powerful one in terms of the history of the Hebrew Bible, for…
Week of January 27, 2019
Both my wife Mandy and I hate shoveling snow, so we recently treated ourselves to a new, small, electric snowblower, and this past week I had the first chance to us it. I had so much fun clearing the driveway and the sidewalk that I rounded up my two daughters, armed them with snow shovels,…
Week of January 13, 2019
Many of you have asked: during this time of transition, this liminal period in the church, what can I do to help? There are always opportunities to volunteer for various outreach ministries, worship assistants, and children’s ministry helpers, but right now we have a particular need in certain areas of ministry. We need office volunteers…
Week of January 6, 2019
There’s a term for a period of time like this: liminal. It means to be barely perceptible, or just bridging a threshold. You might be more familiar with a more complex form of the word, “subliminal,” which means just below a noticeable threshold. Trinity is right now in a transition, about which only God is…
Week of December 23, 2018
If you are one of the lucky few who have seen pictures of Sheryl Poole’s Christmas Village, aka “Poolesville,” you should be particularly amazed that she could get any Christmas decorating done at all given all the work that happens as the church approaches the holiday, including two bulletins for Sunday, another two for Christmas…
Week of December 16, 2018
In last Sunday’s sermon I mentioned how we may know a neighbor both figuratively and literally in our lives. The reference was to those of us who currently do some kind of ministry for someone in our community. But I said that we often have more than one neighbor in our lives. Recently, I was…
Week of December 9, 2018
Many, many years ago I was on staff at a camp program being run by another denomination (that will go nameless). They sought to do work projects on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where I had previously lived and worked while in the employment of the Episcopal Diocese of South Dakota. My job was to…
Week of December 2, 2018
“Love your neighbor(hood)” is the theme I am introducing this Advent at Trinity Church. It is a term I picked up from the Rev. Cathleen Bascom, bishop-elect of the Diocese of Kansas. For me, it is a reminder that one of the two greatest commandments identified by Jesus has a local context. As we begin…
Week of November 25, 2018
I mentioned at last Sunday’s Adult Forum that thankfulness is at the core of Episcopalian spirituality and discipleship. We do not take Jesus’ teachings to heart out of fear of punishment or a desire to please an impossibly strict God, but because we recognize what God has already done for us. God’s actions are not…