A Positively Poetic Priest

If you have been reading along this Lent with the Episcopal Relief and Development Lenten Meditations booklet that we handed out this year, you will know that one of this week's reflections was about a rock polisher, a coffee-can-sized cylinder that turns rocks around and polishes them. Michael Buerkel Hunn, a Canon in the Presiding Bishop's office, wrote about how he used to love rocks and loved to see what they would look like when they came out of the rock polisher. He used that metaphor to describe the church. "So I think of church as God's tumbling coffee can for our souls. We come together and as we interact we bump into one another, sharing our conflicting ideas and diverse perspectives. In the process, our souls are polished." Michael Buerkel Hunn, Lenten Meditations 2017, p. 44 In any community we interact with the other people involved in that community. Since no two people are alike, everyone is unique, we always have the opportunity to be learnin...

3/26/17 Lent 4A It was a beautiful Saturday morning. Jesus and his disciples were walking around Jerusalem, deciding what they were going to have for lunch and what he was going to teach about in the synagogue that afternoon. As they were walking, Jesus happened to lock eyes with a blind man and when his disciples saw who he was looking at, they asked him a question. Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?  They assumed that he had been born blind, he must not have been an old man. Neither, Jesus replies, he was born blind so that God may be glorified. And he makes one of his famous I AM statements, I am the light of the world. Seems like a bit of a non-sequitur. Then Jesus spits on the ground, makes mud, and spreads it on the blind man’s eyes. Reminding the disciples of the story of creation, where God created humans out of mud. Jesus tells the blind man, face covered in mud, to go wash in the pool. It wasn’t far from where they were and the man...

Lent 2A 12 March 2017 “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” A very logical question, Nicodemus. Unfortunately, Nicodemus is thinking a little too logically. Because when Jesus answers back with this gem, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” It’s really no surprise that Nicodemus is a bit confused. What does he mean, born from above? Whatever can Jesus mean? The phrase, “born from above,” in the NRSV is the same phrase that is translated as “born again” in other translations. “Born again” is definitely a buzz word in modern Christianity. It stands for inclusion into the more fundamental evangelical conservative groups on the Christianity spectrum. Only if you have had an experience of being born again, having a total life reversal because of an encounter with Jesus, can you be born again. When I think of the phrase, born again, I think of televangelists and celebrities who have done bad things and then...

Lent 1A 5 March 2017 “Forty days and forty nights, thou wast fasting in the wild; forty days and forty nights tempted, and yet undefiled.” Hymn 150 begins. We have officially started the season of Lent. The gospel passage for today sets us firmly in the season of Lent and it fits the beginning of Lent so very well. We are told that Jesus is led into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights. The number forty in the Bible is symbolic of a time of transition, and this story comes as the transition for Jesus between his baptism by John in the river Jordan and the beginning of his ministry throughout the region of Judea. Jesus is led by God into the desert for some transition time to test and strengthen his call to ministry and his identity. This passage calls to mind another transitional testing period in the wilderness – the time the Israelites spent in the wilderness between Egypt and the Promised Land. However, we know full well that the Israelites failed the testing they ...

Ash Wednesday 3/1/17 Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 Paradox always seems to hit in the most sacred of moments. Today, I am experiencing some serious conflict between what we have come here together to do this morning and the gospel passage for today. Ash Wednesday is best known for the imposition of ashes in the sign of the cross on our foreheads, but it is also known as a major fast day for the Church. A day where people give up food, sweets, meats, and all manner of other things in order to focus on God. Yet, in the gospel passage from Matthew, Jesus tells us very specifically not to make it known to everyone that we are fasting… which is slightly incongruous with putting ashes on our heads. Paradoxical? Maybe. Hypocritical? Maybe. The true question underneath this ironic situation is, “What is appropriate piety to practice?” This passage in Matthew is structured around the three major ways of the Jewish tradition to practice piety, to practice following their beliefs. First, alm...