July 23, 2021 The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ keep you in everlasting life. Amen BCP, p. 365 My Dear Doubters of Great Faith, I have to admit, even on my best days of effort, fasting is not one of my favorite discipline actions, the ones that I lean to and reach for when I need to feel a stronger, closer, more intimate connection to my God. I’ve never quite been able to make the leap from the empty pangs of hunger to the loving, liberating, life-giving God. (I’m usually just cranky!) And so, I am always relieved to make it through the two days of fasting obligation, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday! However, our Theologian-in-Residence, Dr. Stephen Sprinkle used a phrase that has me wondering about the fast in a different way. He talks about “presence in absence,” God’s great ability to be in all things, including the…
Christopher Thomas Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 11, Year B – 7/18/21 2 Samuel 7:1-14a Psalm 89:20-37 Ephesians 2:11-22 Mark 6:30-34, 53-56 “What’s the buzz, tell me what’s a-happening? What’s the buzz, tell me what’s a-happening? What’s the buzz, tell me what’s a-happening? What’s the buzz, tell me what’s a-happening? What’s the buzz, tell me what’s a-happening? What’s the buzz, tell me what’s a-happening?” What’s the buzz? What’s the buzz? Tell me what’s happening! What’s the buzz about this thing, this Jesus thing, this movement, that’s out there, that’s afoot, that’s alight, that’s aloft? There’s something out there, in this. Can’t you feel it? Don’t you want to know? I want to know, what is it, that’s got the whole world buzzing? But this is not the first time that I’ve wanted to know, what it is, “What’s the buzz?” I’ve stood on a corner…
Respectfully submitted by Paul McCright, Clerk
St. Thomas the Apostle Episcopal Church
Christopher Thomas Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 10, Year B – 7/11/21 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19 Psalm 24 Ephesians 1:3-14 Mark 6:14-29 The collision of truth and power. It’s the tale that is old as time, and yet it defies time, this cornucopia, a banquet feast of sexual lust, seduction, political ambition, scandal, and murder! It titillates, scintillates, actuates, if we are honest, our most intrinsic human responses. For we are after all, and in the end, gloriously and wonderfully made, in the image and likeness of God, we humans. Not perfect. But human. For it is in these tragedies that we so often identify resonant traces, footprints, of our own humanity bound up in “larger-than-life” representations of who we have been, who we are, and who we aspire to be. Maybe that is why these stories hold such great allure! Has the Baptizer John been…
