A Positively Poetic Priest

Easter Sunday Sermon Stone Three years ago this May, I spent three weeks traveling and studying in the Holy Land. Every day was packed full with visiting places throughout Israel, my classmates and I had adventures to the tune of singing Christmas carols in the caves where Jesus may have been born in Bethlehem, drinking from Jacob’s well where Jesus talked with the Syrophoenician woman, swimming in the Sea of Galilee, renewing our baptismal vows in the Jordan River, taking time to walk across the barren hills of the Judean wilderness, and walking the stations of the Via Dolorosa, the way through Jerusalem Jesus is believed to have walked on the way to his crucifixion. On one of our action packed days we experienced an unplanned stop at the border wall separating the Israelis and the Palestinians. The guards went through our tour bus, checking all of our passports, asking a few of the group to get out and check through personal items. We waited there for a while, with the ...

They laid Jesus in the tomb. A tomb cut out of the rock of the garden. A tomb of stone with a large stone standing in front of the entrance as a door, as a barrier, as a wall. The stone represents the end. Nothing else can happen now. There is such a sense of finality to the ending of the story today. We know death. We have experienced death in our lives before. Death is the end. We see Jesus finish his earthly mission and accomplish everything the Father has sent him to do. I wonder if he felt any sense of relief or success in completing his mission. Yet, it looks so much like failure. There is such a sense of loss. The Messiah, the Christ, the Rabbi Jesus is dead.  Naturally, the first question after any loss is why? Even if there exists a perfectly reasonable explanation for why a person died, it is never enough to comfort the bereaved after the loss of a loved one. The disciples must have asked this question as we do today. Why? Why did Jesus die? The most direct answers ...

Palm Sunday 4/9/17 The reality of the situation this morning is, that after the story we read and heard, I feel emotionally tired and confused. We could rename this day, Whiplash Sunday. Palm Sunday is the most emotionally confusing day in the whole liturgical calendar. Why do we start with Jesus being proclaimed King, only to witness the whole story of him being betrayed, condemned, crucified, and dying, and then leave it there. Waiting for the rest of this week to reenact the story again. What is there to be gained from starting in triumph, only to end in defeat? What is there to be gained from starting in celebratory community, only to end in personal isolation? What do we gain from listening to the hopes of an entire people for their freedom, only to end in their leader being nailed to a cross? There is a deep seated irony in the layout of the church service this morning. We come together to share this story, letting it rest in death for a while, and then after the pr...

At St. John’s this year, we have been focusing on the theme of community for Lent. We have been reflecting on community in the newsletter each week, we have been learning about the agreement that makes it possible for St. John’s and Grace to be together in community during our Wednesday night program, and we have been studying some of the theological questions which have brought together the Church community throughout the centuries. While Lent is a time of many different spiritual practices, there is one pretty popular one that focuses on this theme of community, especially the communion of all the saints. Lent Madness is a Lenten spiritual devotion that seeks to inspire and educate people about the communion of saints through humor and competition. Based on a tournament style, single elimination bracket system, those who take part in the community of Lent Madness gradually learn about different saints throughout the season of Lent and eventually chose one saint from the year’s ...

Lent 5A 4/2/17 Jesus if only you had been here... We all know what it feels like to have loved and lost. Maybe you have lost a beloved pet, a spouse, a child, a parent, or another family member or friend. Maybe this loss hit you in ways you hadn’t thought it would, making life harder, each day more painful, making rational thought less focused. We all know the feelings of individual loss. And as a congregation, St. John’s has gone through communal losses, the losses of beloved community members, the loss of church buildings due to fire, the loss of priests due to death, vocation change, and family transitions. Each time one of these situations happen, we find it easy to say with Martha and Mary from the gospel passage today, Jesus, if only you had been here… implying that if Jesus had been here, we would not have had to lose what was beloved to us. Both Mary and Martha voice this longing to Jesus, knowing that he could have stopped their brother Lazarus from dying, and feeling ...