Don't Eat Alone

We almost had a show-and-tell sermon this morning. I seriously thought about bringing Elena, one of our Schnauzer rescue pups. We have had her almost two years, though we got her thinking it was a hospice situation and she would only be with us for a couple of months. We were going to be her soft place to land. Elena was found abandoned in a house in Paterson, New Jersey, along with twelve cats.…

It’s getting down to crunch time in the baseball season, which means it doesn’t take much for my sermon to intersect with the Red Sox. Here’s what I said on Sunday. ________________________________ In the fall of 2004, I was the Associate Pastor of the First Congregational Church of Hanover, Massachusetts, which is about halfway between Boston and Cape Cod. We had two morning services, at 8:30…

Last week’s lectionary passage is one of my favorites. Here’s what I had to say on Sunday. __________________________ Right after Ginger and I got back from our trip to Durham last month, we noticed a plant that had sprung up along our back fence line. It was not there because we planted it, but since it had taken the energy to grow and it wasn’t hurting anything, we left it alone, allowing it to…

Mary and Martha have been compared for years. Maybe there’s a different way to look at it. ___________________________ I find it interesting that Luke tells the story of Jesus’ visit to Mary and Martha’s house right after the parable of the Samaritan that we read last week. We don’t have any real indication that one happened right after the other, as if Jesus finished the parable and then said,…

The parable of the Samaritan who stopped is well-worn and often told, thanks to the Revised Common Lectionary. This year, I found him in the supermarket parking lot, straightening the carts. Thanks for reading. _________________________ We reveal a lot about ourselves in a supermarket parking lot. Specifically, we reveal a lot by what we do with our empty cart once we have put our groceries in…

I am playing catch up after forgetting to post my sermons from the last couple of weeks. The title of this sermon came from the first words of The Message version of Galatians 6:1-10: “Live creatively, friends.” Thanks for reading. ____________________________ I love the way our passage for today begins: “Live creatively, friends.” These words come on the heels of what we read last week about the…

For the past four summers, as most of you know, I have spent time in the north of Ireland as a part of peace retreats intending to learn about and from the centuries of division in that land that culminated in violence the refer to as The Troubles and then in the Good Friday Agreement, which was signed in 1998, that sought to bring an end to the violence and pave a way for peace. It took almost a…

The first Sunday of the month is Communion Sunday in our tradition, so my sermon ends at the Table, wandering first through the legacy of love that lets us all belong there. ____________________ One of the scenes that replays often around our house around mealtime, is Rachel my mother-in-law telling Ginger how good a cook I am and how much she enjoys the food. But she says it as though I’m not in…

I have always been drawn to the story of Jesus’ encounter with a man who had been paralyzed for thirty-eight years and I got to talk about it in my sermon this week. __________________________________ Our passage this morning tells an odd story. It’s odd because of where it takes place. In Jerusalem there was a human-constructed pool called Bethsaida. Both the Romans and the Greeks built baths:…

We understand some words better when we tell stories. Here is my sermon for this week. ________________________ About fifteen years ago, when my parents were both still living, Ginger and I were in Texas seeing them as well as friends, which meant we did a good bit of driving. As we were going from Houston to San Antonio, I mentioned that we were nearing the town of Seguin, the self-proclaimed…

I veered from the lectionary this week to look at Jesus’ encounter with the two on the road to Emmaus, one of the stories I most love. ____________________________ One of my favorite things about reading scripture is coming across the gaps that remind us that we don’t have the whole story. We have talked about them often. We read a name we haven’t heard before or become aware of a relationship we…

This is my sermon for this week, based on one of my favorite stories in the gospels, which I came to see in a new light based on the way life has been crashing down around here lately. It was a Communion Sunday for us, so my sermon led us into the meal. I hope you find something that feeds you here. ___________________________ I have spent most of the last week driving back and forth to Yale New…

My sermon this past Sunday had less to do with trying to explain Thomas and more to do with what lies beyond our fear. It’s a little site specific, since I was preaching before our congregation’s annual meeting, but I hope you find something here. __________________________ Over the past few months, I have become enamored of a South American animal called a capybara. It is the world’s largest…

My sermon for this morning. ________________________ No one remembered exactly what happened. They knew the tomb was empty when those who came to anoint the body got there—but the list of exactly who went to the tomb with Mary Magdelene differs from gospel to gospel, though all four make it clear that it was the women who first learned that Jesus was resurrected. The men—the ones who get called…

choosing life when we moved to Connecticut almost a decade ago I had an idea to plant a tree each year as a way to mark time and to leave something growing when we left and so I planted two peach trees over two summers today I cut them down not because they were dead but because we also tell time by schnauzers and one who was not here when I planted the trees but has been here when the meager…

ice age if you have to go out in winter ice is not your friend whether the white ridges or the translucent layer disguised as asphalt ice will take you down maybe that’s what they had in mind when it became the acronym for those who knock down doors and scour streets scraping people into oblivion it chills me to think that evil appreciates metaphor freezes me in my tracks to watch the hail of…

mirror image what is it about grief and loss that makes life feel as if the clouded glass through which we gaze carries the same caution as the passenger-side mirror: “objects may be closer than they appear” the old songs sing of crossing rivers and farther shores, of flying away like a bird freed from prison bars but life is so much more than a sentence we are meant for more than an escape as…