A Positively Poetic Priest

Sometimes Jesus is as subtle and vague and confusing  as David Lynch movies or television, I am not sure anyone has ever figured out Twin Peaks. Jesus is subtle and vague when he tells the sly steward parable.  Twenty centuries later and we still don't know what he was getting at with that one.  Other times... He is as blunt as.. Well, as blunt as only a middle aged man can be.  The rest of us have to be more diplomatic than that.  This is a really difficult passage.  For lots of people. There has been a lot of chatter on the Facebook in the clergy groups I am in  about how to address this Sunday. Our views on divorce have changed. People don't keep any vows like they used to. Swearing is not a big deal anymore, it happens in the work place commonly now. (unfortunately in our office here, its isn't April or Pastor Judy that lets lose an occasional curse word, I must confess my sin, if anyone, its me.) We try to ...

St. John's Episcopal Church in Tallahassee has been standing in downtown Tallahassee since 1829. After wonderful years of active history, unfortunately their membership and active lay leadership started lagging. They were still living their faith in Jesus and being a presence in downtown Tallahassee, but people were not coming to church as they used to. People were not connecting to the real life and gifts of the community. That is, until they started learning about the principals of Invite Welcome Connect and started rethinking their hospitality and community connections. The rector of St. John's Tallahassee, the Rev. David Killeen, wrote in the Invite Welcome Connect book, "Connect is a particular area on which we needed to concentrate. I personally witnessed many of our newcomers leaving the party through the back door. They would be active for six months and then disappear. Through Invite Welcome Connect, we are much more intentional about ...

The use of personal candles in the church always evokes a child-like wonder response in me. The way the fire lights up our faces  and the way we get quiet and all the special prayers. Christmas, the Great Easter Vigil, Candlemas,  there are not a large number of services in which we use personal candles, so they add a touch of special right away. The child-like wonder aspect of our relationship with God is so important and its one we tend to lose in the middle of our lives. Children are blessed with the ability to wonder, and it seems to return as one gets older in life,  spending more time in quiet and reflection, but the middle years - so full of hustle and bustle and too many concerns, we complete overwhelm the child inside of us losing our ability to feel wonder, and in doing so, lose some of our wonder at God. At least, that can happen. There are ways to retain and practice losing oneself in awe and wonder most of which requ...

The foreign country I have been to the most number of times,  and spent the most amount of time in,  is Turkey. When I was in college, I went to Turkey for a class, almost three weeks in Turkey, reading, touring, learning and experiencing a very different culture. The class was a joint religious studies and geology class. We studied Paul's travels around Asia Minor, went to some of the same places he went on his travels and learned about the geologic nature of Turkey and the volcanic areas. We learned about the cave churches in the early centuries and climbed up into some of them, marveling at the audacity and perseverance of the early Christians,  who would sneak out of town to climb up or down into caves  in order to meet together and worship God. They would carve the rooms out of the volcanic rock, carving spaces for community members to be buried and rooms to eat together and worship spaces. The geology and geography of the land mad...

"Come and see!" Since they are very easy words, they develop early in childhood, and then they spend years telling everyone to come and see, see their painting, their little hop with foot touching, See whatever it is they think is really cool at that moment the weirdly shaped pumpkin in the grocery store. Come and see! The Gospel books are full of people saying, Come and see!  The women at the well, Philip to Nathanael, and from the gospel passage today: Andrew to Simon and Jesus to the disciples. Come and see.  Come and see really means, however I could tell you, would simply not be good enough. You have to experience this for yourself. Its an invitation, a simple one,  but one we all use over and over again in our lives. Come and see this!  After John the Baptist, who had a little help, Andrew is the first one to figure out that Jesus really is the Messiah. And he doesn't wait around, he immed...