Rector’s Corner

Stephen Waller First Sunday after Epiphany Isaiah 43: 1-7 Psalm 29 Acts 8: 14 -17 Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22 THE FEAST OF THE BAPTISM OF OUR LORD: This morning you and I will be renewing our vows made by us at our Baptism or by our parents and Godparents for us.  The Renewal of Baptismal Vows happens every time there is a baptism in the Church.  The rubrics suggest that we do this only on certain days in the Church Year when it is especially appropriate:  The Easter Vigil, The Day of Pentecost, All Saints’ Day or the Sunday after All Saints’ Day, on the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord…today. The other suggested day for Baptisms is any day when a Bishop is present.  “Holy Baptism is appropriately administered within The Eucharist,” the rubric tells us, never privately. Some of you among us today may remember your own…

For Unto Us a Child is Born, Unto Us, a Son is Given! Isaiah 9:6 December 22, 2021 Dear Doubters of Great Faith, Our Advent journey has led us here again, to the foot of the manger.  What a spectacular sight to behold.  Incarnation, Emmanuel, the holy intersection of divinity into humanity.  Heaven and earth collide, again, thankfully, in the strangest, and most wondrous, of places! I hope your nativity-journey includes spending time here, with your St. Thomas the Apostle family.  Many different hands, hearts, minds, and spirits have invested time, love, and effort into insuring a blessed experience as we gather in awe and wonder yet again.  On Christmas Eve, we will gather in our candlelit nave surrounded by sights, and sounds, and fragrances that bespeak the wonders of this most holy night, culminating with kneeling at the foot of the manger, as I imagine those folks might have…

December 16, 2021 Dear Doubters of Great Faith, It hardly seems possible, but the fourth Sunday of Advent has already arrived.  The season of preparation, the journey into deeper, fuller expressions of love, joy, peace, and hope, the journey that draws us ever closer to the immanence of divine dwelling among us, is about to come to fruition, yet again. I hear people ask, “Are you ready?” Questions of readiness link so closely to worthiness.  They really are questions of both/and.  Am I ready for a savior?  Yes.  Am I worthy of this Savior?  No.  For if I were, completely ready, and worthy, I wouldn’t need the Savior, this Savior.  Can I face this strange, twisted paradox of readiness and worth? The answer, I believe, lies in Mary’s response.  Let’s be clear – it’s easy to over-spiritualize Mary 2000 years later.  “She was filled with the spirit, and knew this…

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits that befit repentance.” -John Baptist I have always wanted to send Christmas cards with John Baptist’s warning on them.  Alas, some fear of the possible responses has prevented me from doing that. We hear these words…we heard them Sunday…every year.  They should cause us some pause as we all rush toward the Feast of the Incarnation, celebrating it before it actually does happen and then letting it drop like a hot potato on the 26th of December…at the very beginning of Christmastide. Older members of Saint Thomas the Apostle will recall my severe attitude about the proper observance of Advent. I turned down more invitations to “Christmas parties” in Advent than I can recall.  If I went, I insisted that they were “Advent” parties and all the red and green decorations were premature at…

December 2, 2021 Dear Doubters of Great Faith, Advent is the season of new beginnings, yet again, for us as Christians, as we strain toward the light of Incarnation that we know streams from a manger, and yet we wonder in our wanderings, will it come again?  For isn’t that the question that haunts our journeys through most every wilderness time?  I know light has split darkness, every single time, and yet, as I look to the future, I still wonder, will it again?  Can I move in assured confidence that as I step out in darkness, God will meet me with light?  Will everything be ok? The ever reoccurring themes of Advent tell us, again and again, through hope, peace, love, and joy, that the light WILL meet us in our wanderings. A baby can, will, and does save our world.  We don’t take that for granted; rather we…

November 17, 2021 Dear Doubters of Great Faith, On Saturday, November 20, 2021, at 11 am, in Pegasus Plaza (1500 Main) in downtown Dallas, a significant singular moment in the life of our city will finally be acknowledged.  A man will be “re-membered,” a marker placed, after he was so tragically and horrifically “dis-membered.” One Mr. Allen Brooks, sometime 59-year-old handyman who’s only proven crime was the pigment in his skin, was lynched, strung up from a light pole, his garments stripped as souvenirs, his only remaining likeness being postcards printed up to glorify the sadistic event, for the purpose of making a clear statement about the eventual outcome of such crime of color. Moments in time are important.  They don’t go away.  You are important.  I am important.  Mr. Allen Brooks is important. “But Father, that was then, and this is now.  Our city has moved on from such…

November 11, 2021  Ecclesiology – The study of the Church, the origins of Christianity, its relationship to Jesus, its role in salvation, its polity, its discipline, its eschatology, and its leadership. from Wikipedia Dear Doubters of Great Faith, I did a (somewhat) exhaustive search of my theological library to find a good working definition of “ecclesiology,” and the most concise commitment I could find actually came from the source of all modern wonders, Wikipedia.  It may be because talk of “ecclesiology” is about as fungible, moving from left to right when you try to nail it down, as the body of Christ itself.  But, to put it plainly, ecclesiology is the role the gathered body (the Greek “ecclesia”) plays in the doing of theology, or the work of God in the world. Every time the body comes together, the work of God is lived out, in one form or another. …

November 4, 2021  Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you. From the Collect for the Feast of All Saints Dear Doubters of Great Faith, This Sunday we will once again celebrate the feast of All Saints, the time we gather up into our collective consciences those we love who have gone on before us, those upon whose shoulders we stand.  I like to think that, in addition to Christmas and Easter, All Saints Sunday and Palm Sunday are “High Holy Days” of the Episcopal Church.  Real Episcopalians make their way to church on those days because there is something about the draw of singing the familiar hymns and hearing the familiar readings that help us to feel the deeper sense of connection to those…