Category: Sermons

Lessons You can read the scripture for February 5, 2017 here. Audio Roughly nine months prior to my call to serve here at Church of the Ascension, Hurricane Sandy struck, hitting the Jersey Shore and a great number of locations on the shores of the five boroughs. The storm hit very hard. At the time I was serving in a small mission parish situated

Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things both in heaven and on earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of your people, and in our time grant us your peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Lessons You can read the scripture for January 22, 2017 here. Audio Interesting times. It’s safe to say we live in interesting times, is it not? In fact, I’m feeling much in agreement with Thomas Paine who, in December of 1776 wrote the words, “These are the times that try our souls.” (Well, he wrote “men’s souls”, but times have changed – and women’s

Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit: Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

Lessons You can read the scripture for Christmas 2016 here. Audio One of the divas currently reigning at the Metropolitan Opera is a supremely gifted soprano with an enormous vocal range. Her name is Joyce DiDonato and I was fortunate enough to attend her recital at Carnegie Hall a little over a week ago. The evening was entitled “In War and Peace: Harmony through

O God, you make us glad by the yearly festival of the birth of your only Son Jesus Christ: Grant that we, who joyfully receive him as our Redeemer, may with sure confidence behold him when he comes to be our Judge; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Lessons You can read the scripture for December 4, 2016 here. Audio I’m unendingly amazed at the ways in which the Holy Spirit moves in the world. She’s been at it a long, long time. I say “she”, in part, because Judaism has a long history of recognizing “Wisdom” as both feminine and co-eternal with God. But the gender assignment is not the point.

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

What are we celebrating in our observance of the Reign of Christ? The very words suggest magnificence and great power – the grandeur of a king whose rule exceeds all others.

Then why this gospel text?

These last few moments of Jesus’ life seem, at first, to run counter to all we might value in the world, let alone a royal ruling over it all.

To be with Jesus in this moment on the cross – as we celebrate his reign – invites us to consider the ways use of the language of royalty and ruling risks missing the whole point of the gospels, because of the way “king” or “ruler” might connote a fixed sense of order, rather than a dynamic sense of God’s action on earth.