A Positively Poetic Priest

Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Second Sunday of Advent BCP 211) One of the many things that has come to light during this year is the full depth of what it would mean for our country to truly repent of the sin of racism, and how we haven't managed to do so yet. This coming Sunday in the Gospel reading we will hear the call of John the Baptist by the River Jordan asking people to confess and repent. John was not the first and he hasn't been the last prophet sent by God reminding us to repent and return to God. What does it truly mean to repent? The root word for repentance in Hebrew means to turn around. Repentance means a fully life change. When we recognize and confess our sins, we name th...

"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...

Two years ago, when I moved here, I experienced a baptism by fire. For the first time ever, I hosted my family in MY home for Christmas. I don't know how you felt about it, but hosting Christmas in my house the first time for my family was a big deal, Which made me feel very pressured going into the Christmas season. I needed to make sure I had multiple rooms all done up properly. I needed to find all the dust in the house and get rid of it.  I had the nightmare of my mother coming to my house with the white gloves and running her finger along the mantel and making a face about my house cleaning skills... I needed to stock all the foods.  I have two twenty something year old brothers.  We are talking ALL the food. I needed to make sure I took care of our family traditions of having a pickle ornament for the tree and the particular Christmas morning CD we always listen to with the one wrong note in the seventh piece. I had to buy the ri...

12/7/18 John the Baptist Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Second Sunday of Advent BCP 211) Because we live in a time after Jesus' first coming, it does seem a little odd to be preparing for him to arrive. Yet, each year we hear and relive the proclamations of John the Baptist who was sent to prepare the people for Jesus' arrival. The coming of the Messiah was not going to be sudden or unannounced, John makes sure to tell everyone he can that the Messiah was coming and time was short to prepare. Thankfully, this remembrance of John the Baptist and the season of Advent allows us time each year to prepare again for the coming of Jesus into our hearts and lives. When we truly open our li...

In the gospel of Mark The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ Starts before Jesus is even on the scene. It starts with Isaiah... It starts with the prophets! Isaiah being the representative And then we get John. The crazy evangelist. Luckily we don't all have to wear camels hair and leather And eat honey and locusts. Though I thought about bringing some in for coffee hour this week... Any story really begins back before the main character Many times I've heard people tell their life stories by beginning with their parents or grandparents, because what comes before us makes a huge impact on who we are and what we do. Personally I know the truth of this in my own story My parents' stories have impacted my life in so many ways. I am named after my mother's mother, Sharon, who died in a car accident long before I was born. Yet, her name, her legacy, and her death, all impacted how I was raised and who I am today. So...

Epiphany 3A Matthew 4:12-23 We tend to think of being arrested as a bad thing. In many cases, this is the truth. However, for a number of people throughout the world, being arrested was the necessary catalyst for changing the world.  Every movement has a catalyst. A  precipitating event that causes the rest of the story to happen. We know this well. For Martin Luther King Jr., the precipitating event that turned him into a national civil rights leader was the Montgomery Bus Boycott, sparked by Ms. Rosa Parks, an African American woman, being arrested for not giving up her seat on a bus for a white person.  In Jesus' case, according to the gospel of Matthew, the catalyst was his cousin's John's arrest. John's arrest proved to be a little bit of a wake up call and a time of acknowledgement of the risks of what he was doing. Jesus probably knew that his ministry was not going to be easy. Spending forty days in the desert to prepare yourself for the task is...