Words of the Mouth and Meditations of the Heart

Newsletter item published September 27, 2024 This has been an unusual election season by any measure. A lot of rhetoric from and posturing by candidates for elected offices has been carried by the media. We have been looking for, and sometimes heard some signs of what the two presidential candidates will do if elected, and the same is true for congressional, state, or local races. However, if we look beyond all of what we have been exposed to in the campaigns, we find a deeper level of discussion about who we are and who we want to be as a nation, and as an American society. The campaigns and debates talk about specific ideas that fall into categories of good or bad, or competing postures of belief or apostasy, or claims of a coming triumph or apocalypse. It is not surprising that we fall back on our faith to make sense of what we hear and talk about, and defend our beliefs from people who tell us that we are gravely mistaken in who we agree with and support.  There are two opposin

Sermon for Pentecost XIX, 2024, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: Mark 9:38-50 A while ago, a Facebook friend of mine posted a question, “Why does my box of salt have an expiration date on it?” There were several responses, one being “it’s an FDA thing; any food item has to have an expiration date,” and another response was actually a question “can you still use it past the expiration date?” I finally posted “I’m still working on how salt could go bad.” Chemically, table salt is one of the most stable things we have to eat. You don’t have to worry about getting it wet, you don’t get bugs in it like you do with sugar or flour, and you can’t burn it. There's bourbon smoked salt, sure, but have you ever seen fire-roasted sea salt on the grocery shelf? Even at Trader Joe's? So, when I read in this morning’s Gospel where Jesus asks how can you use salt that has lost its saltiness, it stood out to me. How can salt not be salt, and not taste like salt,

Sermon for Pentecost XIII, 2024, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: John 6:56-69 This morning’s Gospel reading sounds a little familiar, similar to the reading for the fifth Sunday in Easter at the beginning of John 15. In that passage, we heard Jesus say. “Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” This morning we hear, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” The word “abide” appears again in our cycle of Gospel readings, representing a theme in John's Gospel. This time it is a more positive statement than what we heard about the vine. It says the same thing, though, that there is more than one way in which we can live in or dwell in Jesus. While one way sounds like we’re eating Jesus and the other sounds like we’re a plant, both are metaphorical, whether we are a part of Jesus or that he is a part of us. Contrary to what has been said negative

Newsletter item published July 26, 2024. Late Saturday night on July 13, I began to see headlines telling of an assassination attempt on former President Trump at an election rally. My heart sank at the thought that someone felt that this was necessary, and that they felt that it would solve the problem they thought was justified by murder. As I was preparing for the first worship service the next morning, I looked over the Gospel reading, which was the story of Herod having John the baptizer beheaded because his wife hated John ( Mark 6:14-29 ). I immediately saw parallels in that story and the drama of the attempted assassination and thought back to the article I wrote in last month’s newsletter about civil political discussion. In both cases of murder and attempted murder, someone justified their call for death by a morality built on self-righteousness and loathing, a seething hatred of someone amplified by power. In the case of Herodias, she hated John because he called out her

Pentecost X sermon, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: Ephesians 3:14-21 , John 6:1-21 A long time ago, in a university not too far away, I failed calculus. Twice. As I stand here before you today, I can say that in the long run, it didn’t really matter, even though at the time it was a big deal to me. I was a student and I was focused on succeeding at what I thought I wanted to do, not on what I was capable of doing. I didn’t have the advantage of experience to know that there were second, third, and even fourth chances to find success where I had failed. And I can say that it ultimately didn't matter from the advantage of hindsight. But what about today? Am I going to say something today that will have a negative impact on my life later on? I hope not. Will a decision that I may make this week change my life in some unexpected way sometime in the future? I don’t know. If I dwell on this too long, I can start to have a deer-in-the-headlights reactio