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Love in Action

1 Corinthians13:1-13 Luke 4:21-30 If you are like me, these words from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians make you feel warm and cozy and sweet; Valentine hearts and weddings and celebrations of love. But I don’t think either Paul or the Corinthians felt that way. Let me tell you a little bit about the Corinthians. Paul made his way to Corinth during his traveling evangelist years, by way of Athens, which was apparently the original ivory tower city. In Athens, Paul discovered how much the people there enjoyed an intellectual discussion of ideas. He offered them a very creative and compelling case for Christ, they sparred back and forth with him for a while. And at the end of the day, they said, “Good argument, Paul. Enjoyed it thoroughly. Maybe we’ll come back and do it again tomorrow.” An outcome that might very well have left Paul feeling a […]

Seasons of Grief and Joy

Nehemiah 8:1-3,5-6,8-10 Luke 4:14-21 When we first went into COVID quarantine, back in March of 2020 we thought it would be for a couple of weeks. That was only the beginning of our COVID delusions. The season of Lent passed. Then Easter passed. I remember telling people we were going to come back by Pentecost with a blow-out celebration, for the sake of all the things we had missed. We would wave palm branches, set out Easter lilies, and have red balloons to represent the flames of Pentecost. We would hug each other and sing all the hymns we had missed, with gusto. But then Pentecost came and went…and we were still waiting. A whole year passed before we came back together in the sanctuary for worship. And it wasn’t the massive, multipurpose celebration I had envisioned. We were few in number. We were carefully spaced. We were masked and […]

When the Hour Arrives

John 2:1-11 When Kim turned 50 years old, I threw him a surprise birthday party. I invited all our friends and family; it was a great celebration. And we ran out of beer. I didn’t panic, though. Because in Pennsylvania you just call up your local beer distributor and they will deliver a case right to your door. So I did. And my brother-in-law happened to answer the door when it arrived, and he paid for it. Which was a nice bonus. So everything turned out well. I know how important these things are. I learned at my mother’s side that the very worst thing that can happen to a host is to run out of something a guest might want. It is the stuff nightmares are made of. Still, I know that there are plenty worse things that can happen in life. Running out of your beverage of choice? […]

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Isaiah 43:1-7 Luke 3:15-17,21-22 There is a pretty good chance you know the origin of the sermon title: “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.” It’s the theme song from the old TV show Cheers. Set in a Boston bar called Cheers. There was a crew of regulars who appeared in every episode. One of them, Norm Peterson, would always walk through the door and be greeted with a chorus saying, “Norm!” Then Norm would go sit down on his regular seat at the end of the bar. The place where everybody knows his name. It’s great to have a place like that. On some level, we all long for a place where everybody knows our name. Someplace where you feel comfortable, where you have friends. It might be a coffee shop, a bar, a barbershop, the YMCA. It is a place where […]

Forgetting

Philippians 3:12-13 Graham Greene was a great English novelist, and among the many wonderful books he wrote was a slim volume called Monsignor Quixote. It’s about a priest who is traveling with a companion, someone with whom he does not always agree. They have very different beliefs and somewhat different values and a lot of “discussion” about these differences. One morning, after a night of heated disagreement, his companion comes to the priest to apologize about last night. Father Quixote says he has no idea what he is concerned about, for he hasn’t any recollection of whatever they discussed the night before. “I am trained to forget what I am told,” he says. Even when it’s not in the confessional? “It’s much easier for a priest to treat everything as a confession. I make a habit of never repeating anything to anyone – even to myself, if possible.” Most people, including […]

Home – Part 2

Luke 2:41-52 I have some clear memories of losing a child in the mall or the grocery store or the park – you name it. I don’t really think I am especially careless. It’s the children. Unless you tie them on a string or lock them in a room with you, it’s really hard to keep track of children. Because children are careless. Young children are careless about wandering off because they don’t yet understand the consequences – that they may not find their way back. They don’t understand the possibility of being separated from the ones who care for them. Children are so careless about getting themselves lost. My sister Katie was especially careless, always wandering after anything that caught her eye. My mother once lost Katie in the mall and frantically ran around looking for her. Eventually she found her way to a department store security office. My […]

Home – Part 1

John 1:1-14 If you go into a busy, crowded place this time of the year, you are likely to hear one word buzzing through the air: home. People asking each other, “Are you going home for Christmas?” “Will you be home for the holidays?” “Are your kids all coming home?” Home. Home. Home. The word seems to be everywhere. Everyone talking about home. Every year at this time, we think about home, we want to be home. We associate home with Christmas. Yet, in a time when our ability to travel anywhere is severely hindered by a pandemic, going home is hard. In a time when gathering with others is subject, always, to our best understanding of a changing situation, changing rules, tests and vaccinations; when our efforts to gather together and be home are fraught with anxiety on top of all the usual emotions; we ask ourselves what does […]

Advent 4: A Room for Love

Micah 5:2-5a Luke 1: 39-55 About 15 years ago there was a woman driving home from work in Chicago and, driving through an underpass, she saw a vision of the virgin Mary on the wall. And thus was born Our Lady of the Underpass, a place of pilgrimage, where the faithful bring flowers and candles to a little altar they have set up. In the underpass. Have you ever driven in Chicago? The thought of supplicants kneeling before the shrine while traffic whizzes by, inches away from their bodies – terrifying. Yet, it’s a reminder that the image of Mary is extremely powerful for the church, particularly the Roman Catholic church. She is venerated because she was chosen by God to bear God’s son in her body. She is called, in Greek, Theotokos, which means God-bearer. She is holiest among women because she was chosen to be the vessel of God’s […]

Advent 3: Enough

Isaiah 12: 2-6 Luke 3: 7-18 The moment you have been waiting for all year: John the Baptist, the cranky prophet, here to tell us it’s the end of the world as we know it. Cheers. I don’t often think about the end of the world. Hardly ever by choice. But when I do think about it, I start to think about what I would miss. Do you ever think about those things? I would miss a good seafood dinner and a nice wine to go with it. I would miss the taste of good chocolate. There are so many good tastes I would miss. I would miss the sound of music. Not necessarily the Julie Andrews movie, although that’s nice, but just hearing music, making music. Playing quiet instrumental music on the speakers while I work, listening to Norah Jones sing while I cook dinner, singing hymns on Sunday. […]

Advent 2: A Place at the Table

Baruch 5: 1-5 Philippians 1:3-11 When I was a child, we lived in a crowded house. I had three sisters, and my grandmother lived with us for much of my childhood, as well. And there was about a year when we had someone else living with us too. My mother brought a young woman into our home who was struggling with grief. I was too young to understand the circumstances; I just knew that Marie was broken, fragile. Still, she was a beloved big sister to me and my sisters. I remember, too, gaggles of young Filipina women in our house. Back in the 1960s the U.S. opened immigration and many nurses came into the country from the Philippines, to meet the need at the time. The hospital where my mother worked hired a lot of them. When my mother looked at these nurses she saw girls who were lonely […]

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