A Positively Poetic Priest

Merry Christmas! Today is the last day of the twelve days of Christmas. Have you all seen the Home Alone movie? The movie focuses on Kevin, the youngest of the family and the cousins who gets left home by accident. The family was going to Paris for Christmas to visit relatives and there was an accident and the parent's alarm didn't go off. They were woken up by the doorbell ringing with the bus pick up service. Kevin, asleep on the third floor, after being sent there as punishment the night before doesn't hear the hustle and bustle when they all run to the buses to get to the airport to go on their vacation. The oldest of the kids is told to do a headcount, but she comes up with the right number because she accidentally counts the neighbor boy who has come to see them off. It's not until they are on the plane over the ocean does his mother realize they don't have Kevin with them. She screams his name and passes out. I can imagine...

Greetings! Glory to God! Merry Christmas! I suppose I have already made some first impression on you all already can't change it now, huh? I thank you all for coming this evening to celebrate the Feast of the Nativity here at St. John's and Grace. I am thrilled to be celebrating this joyous occasion with you. We all know from life experience that first impressions are important. The way we greet people,  for the first time ever,  or for the first time in a day, makes a huge difference in how our relationship is going to be. If I got up here and yelled at you,  you wouldn't feel that great about me and our relationship would probably suffer for it. If your spouse texted you something mean every morning without saying Good morning, it would cause some problems in your relationship. But when someone greets you nicely and happily it shares the joy and makes our relationships better. When we listened to the gospel passage for ...

In the Gospel passage from Matthew this morning, we get to hear one of the most significant moments of the entire Bible, and it gets 10 words. "She had borne a son; and he named him Jesus." Sadly anti-climatic. For anyone who has had a child, you know it takes more than 10 words more than 10 seconds. More than 10 hours, 10 months, or even 10 years of your life. Giving birth is not for the faint of heart. Birth, new life is such a strong part of our Advent season an overarching theme of the whole beginning of the church year. We are waiting with Mary for the birth of Jesus. Which in our world today would mean packing the go-bag to take to the hospital preparing the last minute items in the nursery long hours waiting in the doctor's waiting room moments of panic and hours of boredom deep breathing and muscular pain and pushing And then the last gush of pain, heat, blood,  and the miracle of new life a baby. We don...

"Who are you? Who? Who? Who? Who? Tell me, who are you?" (play the opening lines of The Who song) The chorus ends with "Cause I really want to know" Can you imagine John the Baptist singing out to the Who while in prison? Tell me, who are you? But this truly what John is asking Jesus Who are you? Are you the Messiah?  I can hear John thinking,  Jesus, I thought you were going to be the Messiah, but I'm in prison and I'm not so sure anymore... Who are you? Some of you know I am participating again this year  in the Franklin Civic Operetta Association's Messiah production at the Barrow Civic Theatre.  If you haven't heard Handel's Messiah,  I highly recommend attending or finding another production of it to watch.  During one of the parts, the singers have a dialogue, starting with this same question, "Who is the King of Glory?"  We sing it over and over, Who is the King of Glory? (sing it three ...

Have you ever been in the situation when you get out of the bath or the shower and you forgot to get a towel out and you don't want to step off the bath mat get water all over the floor, or make your feet all cold, especially in the winter, so you do the little shuffle with the bath mat... crossing the floor to get your towel? This is one of the skits in Ellen DeGeneres' most recent comedy special.  I'm sure most of you know who Ellen DeGeneres is.  Thankfully, as a celebrity, she does like to highlight good things in the world most of the time. But anyway, she had stopped going out on comedy tours around the country for fifteen years  and was thinking about going out back on the road and some of her friends asked her, Do you still think you're relatable?  So much had changed in her world over those years,  and her friends were concerned. Anyway, after being asked a few hundred times,  she decided to call her newest comedy...