Words of the Mouth and Meditations of the Heart

Sermon for Advent IV, 2023, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY. Text:  The Song of Mary ( Magnificat ) , Luke 1:26-38 In this morning’s first reading we heard, My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exalted in my God. My mouth derides my enemies because I rejoice in your victory. There is no Holy One like the Lord, no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God. Talk no more so very proudly; let not arrogance come from your mouth, for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed. The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird on strength. If this sounds familiar, but not quite right, you are correct. This is actually the song of Hannah, one that Mary, the mother of Jesus, would have known. Hannah was the wife of Elkanah, and had not borne any children to him. In deep sadness, she went to the temple, and fervently prayed to God for children.The temple priest, Eli, assumed that she was drunk. He berated her, and she replied th...

Sermon for Advent III, 2023, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 and John 1:6-8,19-28   This is the third Sunday in Advent, and we are drawing close to the birth of Jesus. The church is adorned in rose colors this morning, not because it looks fashionable, but because we are halfway through this season of preparation and celebration. Advent has an air of mystery surrounding it, because we celebrate the birth of the Messiah, the Christ child, a baby. We have all been around babies, and as adorable as they are, it is hard to conceive how a helpless baby can accomplish as much in the world as Jesus did. Only two of the four Gospels talk about Jesus’ birth and the other two start with his ministry in his adult life. Compare that to the adults we watched grow up, and it is a mystery how they live adult lives when we remember them as infants. This mystery is underscored by the beginning of winter, when we prepare for Christmas in the dark o...

Sermon for Advent I, 2023, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: Mark 13:24-37 Winter is approaching, and the last of the leaves fell into my gutters at home, meaning that it was time to climb up on the roof and clean them out. And, as long as I was up there, I also put up some Christmas lights. The trees are bare and standing starkly against the cold sky, but in the Gospel reading, Jesus talks about the fig tree putting out new leaves. There has also been the familiar drop in temperatures and shortening days, but Jesus talks about summer approaching, with its warm temperatures and lengthening days. Some of this generation has passed away contrary to what Jesus says, notably my mother last January, and Maxine and Glenn Davis, members of this parish, and family members of St. Paul’s congregants. For some of us, this is our first Christmas season without them. Yet, Jesus’ words persist, and there is joy and anticipation when he talks about being the Son of Ma...

Sermon for Pentecost XXIV, 2023 Delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 , Matthew 25:1-13 Several times in my life I have had a recurring dream that I have discovered others have had, too. In it, I am wandering around some school, a high school or a college, and I’m desperately looking for a classroom that I am supposed to be in. I am filled with dread because it is finals week, and I haven’t been to class at all, and I worry about how I am going to pass the final exam. By the time I find the classroom and go in to sit down, I wake up, so I don’t know how badly I did on the exam. It’s a feeling of being unprepared like the five foolish bridesmaids in Jesus’ parable in this morning’s Gospel reading from Matthew. But this feeling that I have goes beyond just feeling unprepared to feeling like I missed out, and it’s my fault. I don’t like that dream when I have it because it leaves me feeling anxious and guilty. I wonder how those five br...

Sermon for Pentecost XXI, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: Matthew 22:15-22 We’ve been decluttering at home recently, which means a trip to the Meriwether electronics recycling center and a drop off at Goodwill. There’s usually no one around at Meriwether to check what I've brought in, but there’s always someone at Goodwill asking me if I want a receipt for the things I donate to the store. I never have said yes to a receipt because to me it wouldn’t be a true donation if I could lessen my annual taxes with my offerings. I have to give without receiving anything in return to feel that I am truly showing God’s love and giving things away. There’s another reason, though, and it comes from this morning’s Gospel reading where Jesus says the phrase that we hear every now and then: give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s. What I give to God is my material possessions and what I give to Caesar is my taxes. It can be a little difficul...

Sermon for Pentecost XVIII, 2023, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: Matthew 21:23-32   The Gospel reading this morning reminds me of an Islamic parable of sorts that I first heard a long time ago. It involves Nasrudin, a Mullah or a learned leader in the Islamic faith. The story goes like this: One day the people in a village thought they would play a joke on Nasrudin. As he was supposed to be a holy man of some indefinable sort, they went to him and asked him to preach a sermon in their mosque. He agreed. When the day came, Nasrudin mounted the pulpit and spoke: “O people! Do you know what I am going to tell you?” “No, we do not know,” they said. “Until you know, I cannot tell you,” said the Mullah, overcome with indignation. He descended from the pulpit and went home. Slightly chagrined, a deputation went to his house again, and asked him to preach the following Friday, the day of prayer. That day, Nasrudin started his sermon with the same question as...

Sermon for Pentecost XV, 20203, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: Matthew 18:15-20   If there is one thing that I have learned well during my time as a productive, contributing adult in our society, it is that when you have at least two or three people gathered together, for whatever reason, there will be politics. A leader will emerge, and as the group grows from two or three, an anti-leader may emerge to keep the leader in check and advance another operating philosophy of the group. This is not always a Good Thing, because where contrast and difference can be a productive influence, it can also be a destructive force. You can’t avoid politics and leadership, and how they are dealt with depends on the individual members and the reason for the group. So it isn’t too much of a surprise to have Jesus addressing this in the Gospel reading this morning. It’s one of the few passages where he is clear on what to do in a specific situation. The necessity of th...

Sermon for Pentecost XII, 2023, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: Matthew 15:10-28   We have yet another baptism this morning, Navy, daughter of Stephanie and Bill, and granddaughter of Linda. I’m getting good practice with my baptism sermons from so many of them recently. We’ll come back to Navy’s baptism in a moment. There’s something we need to explore first. There is a midrash, or part of a Jewish set of rules based on the Hebrew Bible, regarding things we eat and drink from. One of the midrash passages reads as follows: “When the outside of a vessel is contaminated by an unclean liquid, its exterior is unclean;...but its interior and its rim and its hanger or its handle are still considered clean...When one is drinking from a cup with an unclean exterior, one need not worry about the liquid in one's mouth, that it will be contaminated by the outside of the cup and in turn will contaminate the cup.” In other words, if the outside of a cup is u...

Sermon for Pentecost IX, 2023, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: Matthew 13:31-33,44-52   This morning’s Gospel reading has several short parables in a row that Matthew intends to use to illuminate aspects of the kingdom of God. Maybe they are about faith, how a small faith can still have great worth. Maybe it is about our relationship with God, where God would give up everything to keep a relationship with us alive. There is no common thread through these parables, no hidden message to be discovered that opens the heavens and the angels sing hallelujah. Each of the parables in the reading is a treasure itself found in God’s kingdom, a treasure that leads us to discover something new or something we didn’t think had any value. We are surrounded by yeast and flour, mustard seeds, fields, and pearls. But, those things won’t look like what we expect them to look like in our lives because they are metaphors. That is the challenge of reading these parables, ...

 Sermon for Pentecost VI, 2023, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY   Text: Romans 7:15-25a , Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30    Three weeks ago I was on vacation in the GTA, otherwise known as the Greater Toronto Area. GTA sounds cooler. We stayed in an AirBnB that had a washer and dryer, and on the night we did laundry, I threw a dishwasher packet into the clothes washer. My wife had said earlier that she had already dropped a laundry detergent packet in, but it didn’t register with me. When I realized what I had done, I told her, and said that I didn’t know why I had made that mistake. I take care of the laundry at home, as well as starting the dishwasher on occasion, so I know what the dishwasher packets look like. I knew that it was the wrong thing to do after it happened, but I did it for a reason that I couldn’t explain. The load I threw the dishwasher packet into were white and light-colored clothes, so there wasn’t a noticeable effect. Everythi...