In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen. Our reading from John today is like a three-act play. In Act 1 we have the story so many of us know so well, the only miracle story of Jesus told in all four Gospels. Jesus takes bread, blesses it, breaks it,...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. “As Jesus went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” “No Child Left Behind.”  That’s the name of a federal law passed in...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. Today the lectionary includes not one, but two stories of prophets who got in a great deal of trouble for the messages they offered to their communities. While Amos apparently survived his...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain For purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain! America!  America! God shed his grace on thee, And crown thy good with...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. I will exalt you, O Lord, because you have lifted me up * and have not let my enemies triumph over me.   O Lord my God, I cried out to you, * and you restored me to health.   You...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. A former parishioner of mine is a professional photographer.  And, as a parting gift to me, she gave me a photo of the altar at the church where we used to serve together.  It’s in my office at...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. “For the greater glory of God.”  That's the motto of the Society of Jesus, a Roman Catholic religious order for men, commonly known as the Jesuits.  The Jesuits are committed to living as...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. “Out of the depths have I called to you, O LORD.  Lord, hear my voice.” By the time we reach adulthood, sometimes earlier, most of us have experienced death and grief.  And, as I’ve shared with...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. Dear Mr. Vernon, We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But, we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. This August, Tracey and I will have been married for twenty-eight years. And, by my count, we have moved ten times now since we got married.  Whenever we move, we always chip or break several...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. Today’s Gospel comes from the so-called “high priestly prayer” of Jesus.  Every year, we read part of it on the Sunday after Ascension Day.  And we do that to remind ourselves that Jesus is...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. Last week, we heard from the fifteenth chapter of John, where Jesus says “I am the vine; you are the branches.”  And, whenever I preach about that lesson, I stress the importance of staying...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches.”  Some of us may hear these words and worry we need to be pruned.  A few of us may even worry we’ll get thrown away and burned. We all need...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. There is a beautiful, beautiful line from the Exsultet, the ancient hymn that we sing toward the beginning of the Easter Vigil, and it always strikes me:  “How wonderful,” we sing, “and beyond...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. “Touch me and see.”   Jesus spoke these words to the disciples on the evening of the very first Easter.  “Touch me,” he said, “and see.” This, more or less, is Luke’s version of the Gospel we...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. About thirty years ago, a man named Greg Brown recorded what I can only describe as a Gospel song for an unbelieving age.  In it, he manages to be haunted by the figure of Jesus and the...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. Some of us, no doubt, remember 1968.  The Vietnam War had deeply divided our country.  Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated.  There were riots in the streets.  King was...

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. There is a house my dad helped build in Council Grove, Kansas. I have seen it with my own eyes. My dad helped build it when he was just a teenager, and the hardest part was probably working with...

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. One summer, when I was about fourteen years old, I rented a boat and went out sailing. It was nothing new for me. I’d done it hundreds of times before. In fact, I owned a boat at the time, and it...

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “Where there is no love, put love in—and you will draw love out.” In this way, St. John of the Cross, the sixteenth-century Carmelite brother and spiritual teacher, counsels us to pray—and to...