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Thoughts on the Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ 2017

In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet Juliet is frustrated that her love for Romeo is forbidden for no other reason than that he belongs to her family’s rival family, and has their name: What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other word...

Thoughts for Christmas 2016

“Fear not!”[1]  That, according to Luke, was the first word of the angel’s Christmas message to the shepherds. And as we listen to Luke’s story, following the decree of Caesar Augustus and all those other high imperial goings-on, it is also the first word of the...

Thoughts for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, 2016.

This morning’s gospel passage is from the first chapter of Matthew’s gospel. If you know your Bible you’ll know it’s preceded by what Matthew calls “an account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah”—or, as the old KJV translated it, “the book of the generation...

Thoughts for the Third Sunday in Advent, 2016: the Sermon that was NOT preached at Epiphany, Sherwood because I thought the congregation looked too cold to be able to listen!

Gospel: Matthew 11:1-13 “Are you the one that is to come?” John the Baptist asks Jesus from prison. And so John reveals that even he—rough, gruff, uncompromising John the Baptist—has his moments of doubt and uncertainty. Some find that shocking. I don’t know why they should....

Thoughts for the Second Sunday in Advent, 2016. Text of a Sermon preached in All Saints’ Chapel, Sewanee, Tennessee, four days after the United States’ election

For the gospel: Matthew 3:1-12 “Repent,” said the Baptist, “for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’” And it seems that they did. Many came to be baptized, “the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan”—in...

The First Sunday in Advent, 2016. A Sermon preached in All Saints’ Chapel, Sewanee, by Mother Julia Gatta

In the northern hemisphere, Advent falls during the darkest weeks of the year. And for us this year, the darkness of Advent is intensified by our post-election situation, a season of deep spiritual and moral darkness. Last week Chaplain Macfie noted the hundreds of reported...

Thoughts for Advent

[caption id="attachment_471" align="alignright" width="200"] Christ in Glory. Wall painting by Aidan Hart, Church of the Holy Fathers, Shrewsbury, England[/caption] It was more years ago than I care readily to admit, but I can still remember vividly the morning of my ordination to the diaconate. Thirty of...

All Faithful Departed. A Sermon by Mother Julia Gatta

The Commemoration of All Faithful Departed,[1] which we celebrate today, has a somewhat different history and a different character from yesterday’s high festival. If the observance of an All Saints’ Day came about because of a deep Christian instinct to honor, first of all, the martyrs, and then later those exemplary Christians who were “the lights of the world in their generation,” the saints with a capital “S,” All Souls’ Day came into being because of another sort of Christian instinct: the urge to pray for the dead.   Both feast days are grounded in the doctrine and the experience we have of the “communion of saints.” Our bonds to one another are not severed by death but are still, in fact, quite lively. And because we are still tied to one another in the living Christ, we believe that we can still help each other through prayer. In Christ, the veil separating this life from the next is quite permeable. And so it happened that by the late tenth century, a commemoration of all the faithful departed began to be observed first in monastic houses and then throughout the Western Church. It was set on November 2 as something of an extension of All Saints. But the spirit of this day is more somber.   On All Souls’ Day, as it is popularly known, we recall the countless numbers of not especially heroic, but rather ordinary Christians who have lived before us, most of whose names are forgotten to all but God. Today we inevitably hold before God those dead who are especially dear to us, family members and friends. Some of these blessed souls were deeply faithful; others, like ourselves, were deeply flawed. Because God’s transforming grace reaches everywhere, including the realm of the dead, the life of the faithful departed is not one of static repose but a continual journey into the infinite depths of God, who purifies, reforms, heals, and irradiates us with his love. Our prayers for the dead articulate such a dynamic sense of grace. We began this liturgy by praying, “Grant to the faithful departed the unsearchable benefits of the passion of your Son.” In the burial office, we ask that they will increase in “knowledge and love” of God and “go from strength to strength in the life of perfect service” in God’s “heavenly kingdom.”  There is movement, and our prayers lovingly connect us to all the faithful departed as they go forward ever more deeply into God’s light and life.

Thoughts on Jeremiah after hearing Propers 23 and 24, Year C

The prophet Jeremiah isn’t generally associated with being particularly upbeat or cheerful. The prophetic book that bears his name is dominated by his predictions of doom and destruction for Israel and her king, and the other Biblical book associated with him—Lamentations—though not actually by him, is a series of poetic laments over that destruction after it’s happened. It’s surely not an accident that Jeremiah’s name has entered the English language in the word “jeremiad”—which the Oxford Dictionary defines as “a very long sad complaint or list of complaints.” Yet the readings from Jeremiah that we had last Sunday and this are actually rather hopeful and encouraging in tone, even though they date from a time when all Jeremiah's gloomy prophecies have come to pass. Jerusalem has fallen to the armies of Nebuchadrezzar, Israel is now in thrall to the pagan empire of Babylon, and many of her citizens have been forcibly deported to Babylon.

Thoughts on the Story of the Unjust Steward

[caption id="attachment_269" align="alignleft" width="244"] Domenico Ghirlandaio. St. Luke. c1488[/caption] At the heart of his gospel Saint Luke presents us with a  collection of four parables (Luke 15:1-16:8). They come in two pairs. We have a parable about a man (a shepherd with a lost sheep) matched with a parable about a woman (a housewife with a lost coin). Following those we have a parable about a father with two very difficult sons. That’s the parable that we usually call “the Prodigal Son,” although of course it’s as much about the elder brother who was not a prodigal as it is about the younger who was. And that parable is matched with the parable that the church, or at least those parts of the church that follow the Revised Common Lectionary, appoints to be read as a part of Proper 20 in Year C: a parable about a master with an unsatisfactory manager, or “steward” as the older translations generally have it.