2nd Sunday of Advent - 12/08/2024

image by WOKANDAPIX from Pixabay

Readings

Hope.  I have noticed that I use this word a lot.  I use it as a way of acknowledging possibilities.  I also recognize that it can sound wishy washy or pithy, as in ‘hopes and prayers.’  It can sound like it doesn’t have a lot of substance.  I learned something new about hope this week: hope is learned strength.

Researchers tell us that we experience hope when we have 3 things: 

1. the ability to set realistic goals, 

2. the ability to figure out how to achieve those goals (including staying flexible to develop alternative pathways), and 

3. we believe in ourselves that we can do it.  (We have agency) [1]

Hope doesn’t magically manifest itself.  Hope is born of struggle, of making our way through adversity and discomfort. [2]  Like when we face challenges to who we think we are or should be, what’s important to us or should be, our values, the way we think the world works, or our self confidence. Hope relies on change being possible because sometimes we cannot change social constructs.  We learn hope by trying, by working through challenges, and recognizing our learning along the way to our goal.  Those learnings are our strengths that tell us we can have hope again.

1st Sunday of Advent - 12/01/2024

Photo by Tina Francis Mutungu

Readings

Happy New Year!  I opened the Gospel book this morning and it’s a blank page on the left and the big words “Year C” on the right.  There’s always some excitement at starting a new year. We know what’s coming, whether it’s the months of our Gregorian calendar or the seasons of the church year.  We have four Sundays of Advent, then 12 Days of Christmas, which end with the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6.  Of course, knowing what’s ahead, there’s a lot to do as we prepare for God’s arrival in the world, but it’s something we anticipate with hope rather than fear.

Fear is all around us, as it was in Jesus’ time, such that, “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world” (Luke 21:26).  Today’s Gospel reading is one of three apocalyptic readings in a row, foretelling the end of the world.  Or at least the end of the world as we know it and find comfort in it.  We’ll know the apocalypse by signs in the heavens and on the earth, roaring of the sea and the waves, earthquakes.  

The same kinds of disruptions will extend to human interactions. Human civility will cease, there will be atrocities of human against human, governments will no longer protect basic human rights, and we will live in constant fear of war, famine, and global destruction. Fear, and its cousins Hate and Scarcity, will dominate.

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.