My sermon this week comes from Mark 1:14-20 where Jesus calls four of his disciples. The song that follows is “The Summons” by John Bell, which I learned at youth camp with Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas. ____________________________________ As a boy, I was fascinated by the story where Jesus told his disciples to go into…
Saturday morning means I get to have some fun making breakfast. The day starts early because I drive to Madison, Connecticut (once East Guilford) to meet a group of guys for coffee around 6:30. They have been meeting for twenty years and were kind enough to let me join in. For some reason, as I…
I love that the story of Samuel falls on MLK weekend, thanks to the lectionary. Here is where the two stories took me this week. _____________________________ Today is the second Sunday of Epiphany, if we mark time by the liturgical calendar. As we know, epiphany is a word that means “awakening,” and points us to…
Like many people preaching this week, the sermon I worked on before Wednesday is not the one I preached. The events in Washington sent me back to Matthew 2:1-12 for a second time—with a bit of a different emphasis. _______________________________ Yes, I know I am preaching on the same passage I read last week. I’m…
travelogue the depth of the darkness meant we had our choice of guides that’s what it means to stargaze to lose yourself in the night and then dash into the dark at the drop of a meteor but you can only go so far listening to someone whistle when you wish upon a star the…
Since we don’t have a service on Epiphany, my sermon for this Sunday turns to the sages following the star (Matthew 2:1-12). Here is what I found on the road with them. The song that follows is “May I Suggest” by Susan Werner–one of my favorites. _______________________________ Ginger and I moved to Boston about thirty…
Since we didn’t get to have a Christmas Eve service, I chose to preach on Luke 2:1-7 for the first Sunday of Christmas. If you are watching the video, the reason I am singing acapella is I cut my finger on one of my sharp knives while I was putting them up and ended up…
postpartum Mary rose before sunrise; the baby was still sleeping, as were Joseph and most of the animals, except for one cow who looked a little sheepish. The shepherds were long gone. In their excitement, they had not cleaned up well after themselves. The magi were resting somewhere, waiting to be guided by darkness. But…
I think it was about fifteen years ago, maybe more, that Ginger asked me to write a story for our Christmas Eve service at North Community Church in Marshfield, Massachusetts. That story, A Faraway Christmas, has shown up off and on since–several times on this blog. This year, because of COVID and because I am…
star treatment we drove down to the water last night to see the suggestion of a star made by two planets closer than they have been in eight hundred years close enough to imagine a star worth following a beautiful night on the shoreline snow on the rocks all of us spread out staring in…