Recent Sermons

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith It is hard to believe that we had our first Sunday here at Greencroft on July 26th, Trinity 8. Now we are celebrating the feast of St. Luke on Trinity XX—today marks twelve weeks, three months for the project! We are a third of the way through! I would like to say that time has flown by and in no time we will be back again in our own church, but to me, it has felt like a long time! And looking ahead

They marvelled, and glorified God, who had given such power unto men. + The ninth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew opens in the middle of a travel narrative. Jesus had—just in the previous chapter–gotten into a boat with his disciples to cross the Sea of Galilee when a storm suddenly overtook them. Jesus, asleep below deck, only wakes up after being roused by his disciples. He awakes, goes up, and he stops the storm and calms the sea with only the words of this

That in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge. For the last two weeks, Fr. Gene has preached from St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians, helping us understand Paul's encouragement to the Christians at the cosmic level. It has been a great reminder of the exciting work of the church--of bringing the kingdom of God to all Creation, generation after generation, leading/looking forward to the Resurrection in which we will be recreated with new bo

For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which p

Between weeks 16 and 22 in Trinitytide, there are five readings from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. This epistle was not specifically written to the Ephesian church; the earliest manuscripts don’t have that designation in the introduction. It does not resemble the letters to the Corinthians which were meant to address the problems of a particular congregation. Instead, it was a circular letter for all the churches in Asia (= Asia Minor/modern Turkey). Maybe this letter i

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Early in my teaching career, I had an interaction with a young boy in my Latin class that changed how I taught for the rest of my years. I was preparing the students for a quiz later on in the week, and I noticed there was a

Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see. + The first thing that we have to confront in this Gospel reading for the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity is what we read plainly in verse twenty-three of chapter ten: there are distinctions of spiritual knowledge. Some people are brought into a deeper understanding of the things of God. Jesus tells his disciples: you are blessed because of the things that you see. They had just been sent out, along with dozens of other

“Such trust have we through Christ to God-ward: not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God.” + This week’s propers teach us about the sufficiency of God’s grace. But sufficiency for what? In today’s Collect, we ask God to Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and medi

Brethren, I declare unto you the Gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand. + As many of you know, some years before I went to went to seminary and became a priest, I attended graduate school and earned a PhD in history. A good historian will spend plenty of time puzzling over that mysterious subject known as the human person, which is a task that can be done just about anywhere. In order be a historian, all you really need is the tim

Have you ever done anything embarrassing out of complete ignorance? This can easily happen when you are visiting another culture. If you do not know the customs of the place, then you can inadvertently do something which can cause your own embarrassment, or worse scandal. After high-school, I visited Madagascar for a few months, and while there I got to go on a back-country trip with the missionary I had been assisting. We went to the south central part of the island, which

+ Travel used to be dangerous. It still is, of course, and it can still be arduous, as many of us who have spent time this summer on the interstate or in the air can confirm. Travel and especially moving is no easy task. But going on a journey is not nearly the same experience as it once was. In the age of discovery in the early modern period, it has been estimated that a quarter of all people who travelled by sea perished. That’s a remarkable statistic. And in the ancient wo

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Recently, I took my boys to see Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing up in Barboursville. It is a play I have seen many times, and still love to see live. To be honest, it is strange play for while it starts clearly as a comedy and ends well, the last third of the play is actually very serious—Shakespeare is very funny until he sudd

Now being made free from sin, and become servants to god, ye have your fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life. One of the main features of Trinitytide, this season dedicated to spiritual growth, is that each year we read through many of Paul's Epistles. We start this season with two Sundays from the Epistles of John and then two from Peter, but the rest of Trinitytide, all the way to Trinity 24, are from Paul's Epistles. This is no surprise--Paul wrote most of the E

O GOD, who hast prepared for those who love thee such good things as pass man's understanding; Pour into our hearts such love toward thee, that we, loving thee above all things, may obtain thy promises, which exceed all that we can desire The Collect for this morning is very ancient--the earliest manuscript coming from the 8th century, but sources from the 5th century or before. It speaks of a special gift from God, love, which he pours into our hearts so that we can obtain h

For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at the draught of the fishes which they had taken. In the Gospel for this morning, we read the famous and profound narrative of the multiplication of fishes. We pick up the story in Luke 5, which is actually quite early in the Gospel--this is Luke's account of the calling of the Apostles. Already, Jesus is known as a great teacher, as Luke adds: "it came to pass, that, as the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God, h

Stanley Spencer, The Resurrection, Cookham (1924–1927) As we continue to prepare for our renovation, I am feeling a sense of longing for this building. I realize that soon I will walk out of here and demolition will begin. What has been my refuge and place of worship for sixteen years is going to change. I am excited, yes, but there is a sadness with every change for this building we know so well will never be what we know right now. Someone was visiting last week who had bee

May the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. + Normally, I would have started this sermon by saying that we are settling into the long season of Trinitytide, and that this season affords us the opportunity for growth, marked by the liturgical color of green. But this year is different. In a month's time we will be packing up this church, having serv

And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the high-ways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. + In his hymns on paradise from the middle of the fourth century, Saint Ephrem the Syrian wrote about the new heavens and the new earth in verses that are loaded with symbolic imagery. Drawing on hints from the book of Revelation about the monthly yield of trees in the new Jerusalem, Ephrem describes paradise as a place of perpetual and accelerat

Today’s Gospel—the story of Lazarus and the rich man—embodies three sweeping biblical themes. The first is the reversal of fortunes. As we say during Evening Prayer, “He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away.” A second and related theme is the danger of wealth. The Bible never teaches that wealth is, in and of itself, bad — but it is always dangerous. The