Words of the Mouth and Meditations of the Heart

  A sermon for Pentecost 24, or Christ the King Sunday Texts: Jeremiah 23:1-6 , Colossians 1:11-20 , Luke 23:33-43 This is the 26th week after Pentecost, and the last Sunday of the liturgical year. We’re at the equivalent of New Year's Eve, and resolutions for the next year are not inappropriate. This Sunday is also known as Christ the King Sunday, and we have heard about kings and kingdoms in all three readings this morning. The reading that sticks out, that seems out of place, is Christ’s crucifixion in Luke’s Gospel, definitely not a kingley event. We would expect to only read that passage during Holy Week, so it is puzzling why we read it now, just before Advent when we prepare for Christ’s birth into the world and our lives. But that gospel reading also is about his kingship, and his kingdom. Jeremiah starts off describing the kings in his time as shepherds, and for him, those kings have failed the people whom they rule. Rather than keeping the people safe and cared for, the ...

Below is a reflection I offered at a funeral on November 3, 2022, arranged by the Catholic Charities office and attended by volunteers of the Society of Saint Joseph of Arimathea. We celebrated All Saint's Day with a choir of Catholic high school students and laid to rest Willie Fitzpatrick. Willie died several years ago, and his cremains were recently found in a dumpster. They were turned over to the coroner's office, who contacted Catholic Charities to help with find a final resting place for Willie. The funeral, as with all SSJOA funerals, took place at the city's Meadow View cemetery in Valley Station, KY. In the Apostle Paul’s letters to the churches of his day, he addresses faithful Christian members with a Greek word that is translated in some English Bibles as the word “saints”, as we heard in the New Testament reading. It is clear that Paul considers those saints as faithful members of the church wherever they are and whoever they are, rather than people of excepti...

 Sermon for Pentecost XXI,2022, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: Luke 19:1-10 This morning, we find ourselves in Jericho with Jesus. Jericho is mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible, starting with Moses. The area across the Jordan river from Jericho, called Moab, was where Moses and the nation of Israel camped as they were led by God in conquering the area. Later, Joshua circled the walled city of Jericho for 6 days with his army, and on the 7th, blew horns that made the walls fall down. The people of Jericho were killed by Joshua’s army, except for the prostitute Rahab, because she had helped Joshua’s spies hide in the city when they first discovered it. Joshua then spoke an oath that anyone who tried to rebuild Jericho would be cursed. After Joshua’s curse, Elijah is taken up in a whirlwind before Elisha’s eyes, near Jericho, presumably having been rebuilt. Clearly, it is an important place in the Hebrew bible, and not having the best reputatio...

Sermon for Pentecost 15, 2020, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY  Text: Luke 16:1-13 Reading the Gospel this morning, we have to wonder what Jesus is getting at with the parable he tells his disciples. First, we have a dishonest manager who is not taking care of his employer’s money very well, and finding out that he will be fired, tells the employer’s debtors to reduce their bills of debt. Then, the rich man, the manager’s employer, finds out what he’s doing and says that the manager has acted judiciously and wisely, instead of being angry at having been shorted money owed to him. Jesus goes on to say that it’s good to make friends through using wealth, because then you will be welcomed into eternal homes. Then he winds up the parable with words about faithfulness, honesty and dishonesty, and not serving God and money. This does not sound like something Jesus would teach when we’ve heard that dishonesty is unacceptable, and the ends do not justify the means....

Sermon for Pentecost 12, 2022, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY. Text: Luke 14:1, 7-14 , Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16 Reading the Gospel lesson for this morning, I was taken back to when I was about 10 and with my family, my aunt and uncle and cousins, and my grandparents. We were in Williamsburg, Virginia for a family gathering, and had come to a fancy restaurant for dinner. We were in a room with a long table with place settings, and at one end of the table was a large cobra wicker chair. It dominated the room and was the focal point of the table. As we were gathering, I sat down in it, and my grandfather came up to me and said that it was not my chair to sit in. He was going to sit there and I should pick another place. I was chagrined and embarrassed, and I never made that mistake again. I wait until I’m invited to sit down. My grandparents entertained a fair amount and knew all of the rules of etiquette and how to maneuver socially to be visible and near the c...

Sermon for the 9th Sunday after Pentecost, 2022. Delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY. Text: Luke 12:32-40 “Sell all your possessions and give alms.” This is not the first time that Jesus says to get rid of things that people own. There was the rich man who asked Jesus what he needed for eternal life, and Jesus said that he had to sell all of his possessions. Then Jesus said that it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. There was also the story of the rich man in hell seeing Lazarus, the beggar who lay sick at the rich man's gate, in paradise. Jesus seems to have it out for the wealthy, subversively saying that they should give up all of their riches if they want salvation. This sentiment doesn’t go over too well in our time, because we take pride in our successes and hard work and measure them with things that we accumulate, things that we show off, things that show we have worth. So this ide...

Sermon for Pentecost VI, 2022, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: Luke 10:38-42 In August of 2018, we drove to my mother’s house in Nashville, Tennessee to see the total solar eclipse that passed over the city. I brought all of my photography equipment and a telescope that I had recently bought. As we sat in a parking lot with dozens of others, I was busy setting up, checking and rechecking everything. I wanted the perfect, Pulitzer-prize winning photo of the total eclipse, as if no one had ever taken such a picture before. I had rehearsed everything in my mind over and over, and when the sky went dark and that dim, silvery eclipse light shone down on us, I took pictures, and looked through my telescope, and took more pictures. I almost missed the eclipse itself. About mid-way through it, I stopped and looked around at everyone else marveling at the sight. So, I took it all in, and for the remaining precious few minutes, I experienced the eclipse. I saw ...

Sermon for Pentecost 3, 2022, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: Luke 9:51-62 Elijah is walking down from a mountain where God has told him to go find his successor as a prophet of God. Eventually Elijah comes across Elisha, who is plowing a field. Elijah says “Follow me,” to which Elisha replies “Let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you.” Elijah replies with “if you must, but I am calling you now.” Later on, Elijah hears that the Samarian king Ahaziah had fallen and been seriously hurt. Ahaziah sends his messengers to ask the god of the city Ekron if he would survive the fall, and Elijah tells the messengers that he won’t because he doesn’t follow God. Ahaziah takes offense at Elijah’s words, and orders a company of 50 men to bring Elijah to him. Elijah refuses to go, and the company is killed by fire raining down out of the sky. These are the stories that Jesus refers to in the Gospel passage this morning, one being where he rej...

Sermon for Pentecost, 2022 Text: Acts 2:1-21 , Romans 8:14-17 , John 14:8-27 Сьогодні день П’ятидесятниці. І за своєю особистою традицією я розмовляю іншою мовою. Сьогодні цією мовою українська. As is my personal tradition on the Day of Pentecost, I say  something in another language. And today, that language is Ukrainian. But listening to the Gospel reading this morning, I realize that Pentecost is more than just a group of people breaking out  into other languages, and other people understanding them. It’s about the Holy Spirit. The disciples didn’t do a flash mob sort of event to entertain and surprise people. They were full of  the Holy Spirit. Paul doesn't say that we are the Children of God because of our faith, but  because the Holy Spirit bears witness that we are truly God’s Children. And Jesus says that we  will not be taught and reminded of his works by word of mouth or written words, but by the Holy  Spirit. There is a mystery in how our conscio...

 A sermon for the 5th Sunday after Easter Text: Acts 11:1-18 , John 13:31-35 I have prided myself on having a broad palate, appreciating different food from different parts of the world. I have my limits, like anyone else, and discovered two of them when I lived in France. My first experience was when my wife Kim and I arrived in a village in Alsace, and stayed with the parents of the graduate student we had welcomed to Bloomington a month before. Our first meal with them was cheese and cold cuts. I saw salami and sausage, and there was some other sliced meat that I didn’t recognize. At bedtime, Kim warily asked me if I was aware of what I had eaten: head cheese, and I had had seconds of it. It tasted that good, but knowing what it was has taken my appetite away for it. I graciously thanked her for not telling me at dinner what I had just eaten. My second experience of setting limits on what I would eat came several months later, when my Alsatian language classmates and I went out ...