The God of Peace

Sermon for Sunday, October 15, 2023 || Proper 23A || Philippians 4:1-9

In this week of bullets and bombs, of terror and retaliation, of so many dead in a part of the world that always seems one explosion away from the end, I began writing this sermon with zero words on my lips or in my heart. So I did what I always do in that situation. I read poetry, because poetry does not ask you to make sense of the world, only to see the world with new eyes that might, in time, retrain your heart towards beauty. I’m going to begin and end this sermon with poems and we’ll see how the middle shakes out.

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The Meditation of My Heart

Sermon for Sunday, January 23, 2022 || Epiphany 3C || Psalm 19

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my
heart be acceptable in your sight,
O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

Many preachers begin each of their sermons with this verse from today’s psalm. I can hear my father’s voice in my head praying these words time and again as I grew up. He always pluralized the second half, saying, “The meditation of all our hearts.”

I’d like to talk about meditation today and invite you all into the practice that I began when I was on my sabbatical in 2019. I honestly cannot say where I’d be in the midst of all the anxieties and pressures and hardships and sorrows of the last two years without this practice of meditation.

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Sabbatical Notes, Week 9: Pictures of Pilgrimage

Week Nine of Sabbatical notes finds me really, really jet-lagged. Like can’t form full sentences jet-lagged. So instead of writing a piece for this week, I put together a slideshow of some of my pictures from the nine-day pilgrimage, accompanied by some rambling voiceover. Enjoy!

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