Category: Sermons

According to the Los Angeles Times, Ascension parishioner, composer and performer Eve Beglarian “is a humane, idealistic rebel and a musical sensualist.” She was awarded the 2015 Robert Rauschenberg Prize from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts for her “innovation, risk-taking, and experimentation.” Eve’s current projects include Descent, an immersive music-theater piece about a downed female aviator; the long-term undertaking A Book of Days, text/music/visuals, one for each day of the year; and Brim, the ensemble and repertoire she has created in response to her 2009 journey down the Mississippi River by kayak and bicycle.

Despite the suggestion that the tension between Jesus and his family or hometown may have been an on-going sub-plot of Mark’s story, Jesus rises above this first depiction of that tension, and provides himself an alternative. He gives himself a new name. By referring to himself as a “prophet”…

O Lord, make us have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name, for you never fail to help and govern those whom you have set upon the sure foundation of your loving­-kindness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Ultimately, a parable may leave multiple impressions over time. Why? Perhaps because Jesus is asking his hearers not only to listen, but to think as well. And that’s a combination that is not only a challenge, it’s an art – some would say a lost art. Lost because it involves too much effort.

O God, from whom all good proceeds: Grant that by your inspiration we may think those things that are right, and by your merciful guiding may do them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Karl Rahner was a German Jesuit, a brilliant man, a deep thinker and a very familiar name in Christian theology – some would say his work fairly dominated Christian Theological thought in the 20th century. And yet it’s said he claimed that if the doctrine of the Trinity were to quietly disappear out of Christian theology, never to be mentioned again, most of Christendom would never even notice its absence. That sounds like a pretty provocative statement, but, let’s face it…

Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

While I have observed many Ascension Days in my life, I honestly don’t think that I’ve ever preached on Ascension Day. Being a lover of liturgical history, it was rather fun boning up on some of the church customs around the feast day. Traditionally, it was on Ascension Day that there was a blessing of the first fruits — usually grapes and beans. In

“Hope.” There’s that word again; it must be important. I’m thinking in fact that hope is at the very foundation of what it means to be in relationship with God. We can’t prove God exists, so we have faith in God — faith that includes doubt. Faith plus doubt equals hope. And when I think of hope, believe it or not, I actually often think of the Hebrew Bible. The story of salvation in Jewish Scripture is incredibly rich and vibrant with bright colorful imagery and poetry with drama and intensity. The stories themselves not only reflect God’s movement through vast oceanic expanses of feeling that undergird the behavior of individuals, tribes, and nations; these stories reach into our very core places.