26th Sunday after Pentecost - 11/17/2024

Readings.

I’m imagining the disciples taking in the size and grandeur of the Temple in Jerusalem and I can only equate it with my experience of the National Cathedral in Washington DC.  Towering ceilings. Flying buttresses.  Breathtaking stained glass and mosaics. Beautiful stone carvings of saints inside, and gargoyles outside everywhere.  

It took 83 years to build the Temple in Jerusalem, and it was under construction during Jesus’ lifetime.  The stones were HUGE. 35’ x 18’ x 12’  All cut and placed by human power alone.  It’s mind boggling.  A visible testament to the cruelty and oppression of people who worked and died to bring that grand human vision to reality.

As Mark, our gospel writer, foreshadows, less than 10 years after its completion, the people of Judea revolt against Roman occupation, and the Temple is destroyed in the violent quelling of the uprising.

25th Sunday after Pentecost - 11/10/2024

Readings

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." Hebrews 13:8

It has been a week of many and varied feelings within us individually, and in this Trinity community. This short verse reminds us that, no matter what our feelings about the outcome of the many elections and initiatives this week, we set our gaze on Jesus and his ministry to guide our lives.  

Going back to last week’s sermon for a moment, we are constantly scanning the headlines and the media, taking the emotional temperature of our surroundings, monitoring our own feelings. Wherever our scanning pauses and we focus on one thing, we give power to that thing.  Power to influence our thinking about ourselves and who we are, our place in the world and society, and our relationship with our neighbors, God and creation. That’s a lot of power.  We choose whether to give that power to fear, or gloating, or Jesus.

All Saints' Sunday & the week of a Presidential Election - 11/03/2024

Readings

I have noticed a general malaise in my body and mind these past couple of weeks.  For me it has been a sick feeling stomach that I keep feeding too much sugar (thanks Halloween) and too much coffee. Add to that a lack of focus and low level feeling of being off balance. I know a number of people who have had a nagging cold or headache, or been short-tempered or tired.  Our bodies are speaking to us.

If you are feeling anxious and overwhelmed about the election this week, YOU ARE NOT ALONE.  I can correlate my malaise to the amount of media and social media I allow myself to consume.  It’s the news about how close the election is.  The rhetoric that has escalated from what was already violent, abusive, and disrespectful language.  

Our anxiety and stress are signs of fear.

23rd Sunday after Pentecost - 10/27/2024

Readings

This past weekend, your Trinity delegates and I gathered with about 450 people from for the annual diocesan convention.  Our diocese includes about 100 Episcopal congregations in Western Washington, from the Canadian border to the Oregon border, crest of the Cascade Range to the Pacific Ocean.  Friday was a day of workshops and a plenary session guided by our new bishop, and Saturday was a business meeting.  

I would like to invite the delegates who attended either day to come up and share something that they found exciting or interesting from diocesan convention.

22nd Sunday after Pentecost - 10/20/2024

Readings

Walk in Love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. - Ephesians 5:1-2

Many weeks of the year, that sentence transitions us from the Liturgy of the Word to the Liturgy of the Table, inviting us to offer our whole lives to God.  As we are able, we bring forward bread and wine and money to represent our best efforts in this life. Humbly, we place them on the altar to be blessed, broken, and shared to nourish our community for serving the world.

20th Sunday after Pentecost / Last Sunday of Creation Season - 10/06/2024

Readings

That is one doozy of a gospel reading, isn’t it?

The question of divorce is a thorny legal question in both the civil and religious law of Jesus' time, as it is in ours.  

In ancient Palestine, women were property of their fathers and then their husbands.  Without a man at the head of the household, women and children were vulnerable and often marginalized.  

All three synoptic gospels include some variation on the question about the legality of divorce, and each gives a different representation of the law. 

18th Sunday after Pentecost - 09/22/2024

 

Photo by mediamonk on Pixabay.com

Readings

Mary Oliver, that wise and amazing American poet, published more than 30 volumes of poetry in her life. Ask the interwebs and you can find thousands of quotes attributed to her.  Among them are these "Instructions for living a life:  Pay attention.  Be astonished.  Tell about it." [1]

Four short phrases hold so much.

Instructions for living a life.  She doesn’t say what kind of life, but we can imagine she meant the very best, fullest, most holy and wise kind of life. From her poetry, we can glean it to be a life in tune with the eternal rhythms of creation and its creator.  A life of integrity, where carefully-considered values and actions align.  

And then she tell us how to live that life.