When I think of Epiphany, I think of a story about Jesus as I would imagine it. I picture him as a boy — the oldest of several boys in his family. A boy from a nondescript northern Galilean village. Of course, he was close to his mother and father and his brothers, but he always seemed connected to something much bigger. His mother seemed to understand this part of him from the very beginning of his life. She remembered that at his circumcision an old man named Simon said some pretty strange things about her child. She also remembered that trip they took to Jerusalem at the festival of Passover. As a 12-year-old boy, he disappeared from them for several days and was finally found sitting among the rabbis in the temple, asking brilliant questions. Now as the child grew in strength and spirit, she continued to wonder, as…
GIVE US GRACE, O LORD, TO ANSWER READILY THE CALL OF OUR SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST AND PROCLAIM TO ALL PEOPLE THE GOOD NEWS OF HIS SALVATION, THAT WE AND THE WHOLE WORLD MAY PERCEIVE THE GLORY OF HIS MARVELOUS WORKS; WHO LIVES AND REIGNS WITH YOU AND THE HOLY SPIRIT, ONE GOD, FOR EVER AND EVER. AMEN. Not many of us who have answered the call to follow Jesus Christ were fishermen when we were called, nor tax gatherers, nor religious leaders of any sort. But, all of us, no matter the circumstances of our lives were just as surely called to follow Jesus as were those first century fishermen who were busy with their nets hauling in the catch and helping their dad at that job. Think about it: you are sitting in your comfortable office as an attorney or in your classroom teaching students or giving medical advice…
“I recently saw a post on Facebook entitled “10 Signs You Know You’re Doing Well in Life.” If you have a roof over your head, clean water to drink, ate a meal today, have breath in your lungs, clean clothes to wear, etc… you are doing well. To this list of ten signs, I am adding “knowing Jesus.” By contrast, those who are the recipients of Self Denial grants can often say these things are not true for them. Self Denial grants help fund missionaries or mission trips that serve a variety of needs. The Order’s goal is to fund thirty missions this fiscal year. Daughters have received grants for mission trips to spread the Gospel to girls, some of whom are Junior Daughters in Honduras. Daughters in Spain minister to the elderly and unemployed by delivering food supplied by the government. Others provide Vacation Bible School to young people in…
Beloved in God and Thomas the Apostle: How are you doing? No, really, how are you doing these days? In these very strange days in which all of us are experiencing levels of stress greatly increased due to the events in our country and due to the ongoing, seemingly endless pandemic which has changed all of our lives jarringly and dramatically, how are we? I ask the question of you who read this because it seems important to me for everyone of us to give careful thought to our answer. How are we doing? Part of our answer centers on what we are doing to “protect” ourselves from the onslaught of the incoming “missiles” bearing yet more and more stressful news. Because the world today is “connected” electronically, hardly anything happening anywhere in the world escapes our knowing it. I long to not know much of what the electronic connection…
Be still and know that I am God! – Psalm 46:10, NRSV Dear Doubters of Great Faith, This is my first opportunity to say to you, in this time and space, “Happy New Year!” It may seem a bit redundant, some 14 days into the New Year, considering all that’s happened in the still so new 2021. I am imagining that most of us held, and continue to hold, the highest of hopes that this new year will be filled with the brightness of Epiphany light, in the sure knowledge that our God, Immanuel, resides among us. The turning of “new years” naturally evoke thoughts of time, evaluations of past, present, and castings of hope for the future. It is just part and parcel of who we are as humans, in our self-revelatory process as we seek God’s ongoing and ever-going revelation. And so, on Sunday, we will congregate, again…
Christopher Thomas Sermon for the First Sunday after the Epiphany, Baptism of Our Lord, Year B – 1/10/21 Genesis 1:1-5 Psalm 29 Acts 19:1-7 Mark 1:4-11 “I love to tell the story of unseen things above, of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and His love. I love to tell the story, because I know ‘tis true; it satisfies my longings as nothing else can do. I love to tell the story, ‘twill be my theme in glory to tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love.” – Katherine Hankey, William Fischer Listen…to the story. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the…
Presiding Bishop Curry’s Word to the Church: Who shall we be? And now in the name of our loving, liberating, and life-giving God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. In another time of national crisis, another time of danger for our nation, in 1865 on March the fourth, Abraham Lincoln concluded his second inaugural address with these words: With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations. Lincoln knew in that moment, in the moment of a national crisis, a moment of great danger, that…
On this day of the Feast of the Epiphany, Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Michael Curry invites Episcopalians and people of faith to turn and pray on behalf of our nation. Today is January the 6th, 2021. It is the Feast of the Epiphany. And on this particular day at this particular moment, even as our nation’s capital is being endangered and assaulted, we pray that the Lord Jesus Christ, we pray that God, in his Way of Love, might prevail in all of our hearts. The events at our Capitol today are deeply disturbing. We believe the actions of armed protesters represent a coup attempt. We are a democracy, with long-standing institutional norms that must be honored, foremost among them, following the processes laid out in the Constitution and Federal statute to facilitate the peaceful and orderly transition of power. Today’s protesters pushed through police barricades and forced their way…
Christopher Thomas Sermon for the Second Sunday after Christmas Day, Observing Epiphany, Year B – 1/3/21 Jeremiah 31:7-14 Psalm 84:1-8 Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a Matthew 2:1-12 “Tell out my soul, the greatness of the Lord! Unnumbered blessings give my spirit voice; tender to me the promise of God’s word; in God my Savior shall my heart rejoice!” Most of you know that for many years I was the Parish Business Administrator, and many years before that, a member, of Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Houston, Texas. Christ Church Cathedral holds a lot of different, fascinating distinctions in its journey story, being the second oldest surviving congregation in Texas, and the only one of the original Houston congregations still worshiping on its original site some 180+ years. The parish currently worships in the third structure to stand at that location, a beautiful, turn-of-the-20th century Victorian-Gothic building that is loaded with signs and…
