#sermons

The evils of the dance. 1850.

They say you can’t let her outrun you at any cost! If you lose a race against Turbo Granny, you’ll be cursed!

They sit and wait and pray and prostrate themselves, and for what? An empty promise, as bare and cold as the grave. A salvation they cannot prove, that will not come. They deny themselves - pleasure, empathy, truth - all of it in service to a corpse long turned to dust.

Was there even a carpenter's son to die for them? For a god who leaves them so empty and wanting that this shadow of a thing is what they call life? Can you imagine, as I do, a group of jealots, stealing away a moldering corpse in the night, three days of rot stiffening the stinking flesh, denying even their so-called savior the rest of eternity? Hiding the body away somewhere, unnamed and unclaimed, while they crowed about resurrections and phantoms in the streets. Do you not, as I do, feel some shred of pity for the fool of a carpenter's son, who would have lived a better, fuller life had he not been blinded by his own delusions? What lives he and his dozens, hundreds could have led, wasted in service of a lie.

And now, two thousand years hence, we suffer under the yoke of their oppression, under a people so unfufilled they must drag the rest of us down with them into the dark. They destroy the lands their carpenter called home in service of a resurrection that will not come. They claim the very existence if our fellows is sin, folly, pagan nonsense, all the while they paint their faces with ash and burn their palms and cry out for an empty tomb and an empty throne that will not be filled.

Not this year, not the next, no matter how much they deny themselves, no matter how many they try to destroy to get it.

The world is on fire, children of the Ministry. Do not turn away from the sight, horrid though it is, for there is still hope. The light of reason, the light of the Morning Star guides our hands - we can douse the flames, we can pull each other up off our knees, and we can stand, arm in arm, in the face of a new dawn.

Remember to care for each other. Not just here, in your home, but out there, where it seems each day our Adversaries seem intent to open every seal and summon every horseman. We must care for each other, here and abroad, to raise each other up from the rubble. Remember to keep your heads high, you resolve sure. If we must be the vanguard of a new age, then we shall wear the weight with dignity and pride.

For #CoffeeWithACodex on March 20, Curator Dot Porter will bring out Ms. Codex 742, a collection of anonymous sermons for Sundays from the Second Sunday of Advent through the 25th Sunday after Pentecost. It was written in France in the 13th century.

Coffee With A Codex is an informal lunch or coffee time to meet virtually with Kislak curators and talk about one of the manuscripts from Penn's collections. Each week we'll feature a different manuscript and the expertise of one of our curators. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Register here: